Monday, December 6

Today I am grateful for:

Getting to pottery earlier than last week, and making a few potentially nice things (thrown is a long way from surviving two firings).

I am pretty upset that my husband didn't end up being at the pottery studio for very long today.

I had been looking forward to having him home on a day where we could go throw together, and I have been planning this with him for a week.

Our pottery studio has been closed for almost three years now, and has now been open again for almost a month, but because of my husband's work schedule he hasn't been able to make it yet to a class. So, I made a big effort to try to get him in early before he had to leave for work, and to do everything in my power to keep that day clear of working at home or whatever, so he could enjoy it with a clear conscience.

I thought he was totally excited to get back into the studio, after THREE YEARS of waiting for it to be open again in a new location, one that he hasn't seen yet.

I talked to the group leader and asked her permission for my husband and I to come in WAY early to give him time to throw before he had to leave for work at 5 pm, and she said yes.

I tried to make the whole afternoon clear and free of other tasks, and asked my husband SEVERAL TIMES what was the best way to allocate our time on the other three days that he was home so we had nothing hanging over our head for today, and nothing special came up. I went to the garage and found some of our stored clay and wrapped it in wet towels and such so it would be soft enough to work with.

Yet, in spite of all of that preparation, today he decides at about 1pm (almost exactly when I wanted to be leaving for the pottery studio), that today was the day we needed to add extra insulation to the automatic horse waterer.

Now, I won't disagree that this job needed to be done. What upset me, is that I asked several times what jobs he had planned for this set of days off, long in advance.

Prior to today, I have been trying to get him to insulate the waterer for months. MONTHS. I gave up nagging him about it, because I get tired of trying to get him to do things sometimes.

He said it occurred to him only last night that he should really be doing it, since it is now cold (not any time in the last three months when I told him we should do it BEFORE it gets cold).

I said "so why didn't you get up a little early so you could do it before we had planned to leave?". I literally got him to agree on us being at the studio no later than 2 pm. days ago. You know, so we could PLAN TO GO DO SOMETHING FUN. He only got up at about noon. He went to bed about midnight last night. I'm not asking him to get up and work at the crack of dawn. He gets up at 5 am for work, could he not have gotten up at maybe 10 am and done this one job that was burning a hole in his head?

We could have done it on his last set of days off. He didn't do much else for jobs. We could have done it on any other day he was home THIS time. I tried to press him for what we could do to make Monday an open day for us.

Nope. At 1pm. on the last day of him being at home, right when he agreed with me all weekend that we would leave to do pottery together, he tackles this project. That eats up about two hours. That means there was absolutely no point whatsoever in making all that effort to try and get to the studio early so he could get a chance to make something or practice.

Nope.

Instead, we get there at 4 pm, meaning he more or less looked around and then left for work.

So, when I got angry at him, he says "I didn't know this was important to you".

Well, I think the real problem is that I didn't know it wasn't important to HIM. Here I thought he actually cared about doing pottery, and felt like since we had paid a fair chunk of money for him to be in it this year, and on and on. So I asked him what the heck?!!! He said "I just didn't feel like it today".

It's not like he has that luxury, of just going in when it feels right. He's only home for four days every two weeks, and right now ONE of those days is our class time. I know he's waiting for when things loosen up a bit and we can come on other days, but STILL.

He knew about me doing all this preparation all weekend, and I was excited for us.

I guess I should just stop trying to get him to pottery, and just be excited for ME.

Then he had the nerve to ask me if I knew when this other member was going to do a teaching tutorial, SO HE COULD TRY TO BE THERE FOR IT. I told him he could find out on his own.

All of this really hurts. I don't feel like there's much I can give my husband. He's also away at work a lot. He earns the money, he comes home and he's the one building the house. I help the same way a kid helps. I hold boards. I pull nails. I can't buy much for him that means anything either. He doesn't want anything except for highly specific things that I would never be able to predict accurately. So I can't give him anything.

Me trying to find a way for him to have a planned afternoon at pottery was certainly something I wanted, and I thought it would be like a gift I could give him that would be meaningful. Time spent together where we weren't putting up drywall or just watching a show. Where maybe we would talk, or have fun.

Turns out he didn't want it.

Anyhow, I HAD FUN ALL ON MY OWN. I managed to throw a few things that might be worth finishing, and I talked with the other members, and it was nice to do something creative with a group of great people.

Then I went and got a fairly large haul of groceries, and I am grateful for access to food, the means to pay for it, a car to carry it home, and the physical strength to get it all in the house and put away.