Saturday, June 4

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

Good weather. It felt like it was going to rain, but did not. Too bad, we could use a bit.

My Sweetie went into the city to lend a hand again with one of our work-trade friends to help with his garage again. While it takes away from our projects, this guy is willing to come help here some more too.

I talked with my Sister E, and I was talking about how I need to start seeing some concrete work on the house, and I think it brought out her own frustrations.

She and her husband are at that point in life where decisions need to be made about where you want to stay when you aren't able to keep up with a big acreage. They are about 70, and while my sister is in decent shape, her husband has a lot of health issues. He is diabetic, and he is looking pretty frail.

I think he is doing his best to keep up with things, but it isn't reasonable to expect him to cut down fallen trees and remove them, to get up on a ladder to clean the eaves troughs, to clear snow in the winter, to haul hay for the horses, or any of the heavy work. He mows the lawn a lot.

My sister says he too, gets very defensive when asked about tasks, and really, both of them should be ready to expect the answer to be "let's pay someone else to do it".

They should also be planning to move soon. Not many people without kids willing to help do a lot of the heavy work stay out in the country at their age.

I think her husband is very bad at talking about difficult things. It was this sister that I mentioned recently was trying to help her husband's family start the process for moving her to a care home. I can easily see her husband blowing up if she tries to get him to commit to a course of action, and I can also see her being really hard on him for not doing the hard work himself.

From seeing them when I went home, I feel that he is REALLY not feeling very well these days, and she's not seeing it. He is probably not being open about how sick he really is, and is unwilling to just say to her "I feel like shit, I can't keep up. Let's just hire someone to do it". She almost bullies him for "being lazy".

I think both of them need to be open about what is happening here. They are at a transitional moment, and both of them need to recognize that her husband isn't able to do the work around there any more.

They do have money, so it isn't unreasonable for them to stay there for now if they can accept that they will have to pay someone else to do more of the work, and to downsize their expectations for having things like a garden, or big renovations.

I was a little taken back by her take on my husband. She more or less advised me to pull out the big guns and threaten to leave him if he didn't start making real progress. Well, it's not like the thought hasn't crossed my mind that I would like to just live in a house that is finished until this one is done, and refuse to come home until it was done, but would I really want that? I would have to do something with the animals.

I am mostly pretty happy living here, and with my husband, but I AM really tired of this whole thing with the house. As you all know.

I also don't like how when I try to talk to him about setting deadlines for things, he won't consider it. It makes it really difficult for me to have any idea of how long we will have to live this way. I don't like the internal vision of this just stretching out on and on. He always sees a vision of it being done already, because he's been thinking about it. He seems to think that it will all fall into place easily, and I don't get to be in on it.

The reality is, unless I am ready to leave, and to be divorced, this is how it is. There doesn't seem to be a middle ground where he works with me to set goals where I can see an end. He wants me just to have faith in him, and to never question it.

Today I talked to him about it, in the most un-threatening submissive way possible, and he confidently feels that now we are at a good place again to really make progress. He wants me to just stand back and let him do it on his own terms.

It makes me so exhausted.

I mostly worked on the garden again, clearing a different area of grass for the zucchini and tomatoes. He helped me for a while when he got home.

Then we went to the park down the road for a walk, and saw goslings and ducklings everywhere.

Then we got home and watched an absolutely god-awful movie called "The Sands of Oblivion". It had an interesting premise, which was the excavation of the lost sets from the Cecil B. DeMille movie "The Ten Commandments", but it was just terrible.

I learned that there is no wild population of dromedary camels (not to be confused with Asian/Bactrian camels). There are groups that are feral, as in domestic animals that are living in loose herds again. All modern dromedary camels are considered to be domestic/feral.

http://www.ultimateungulate.com/artiodactyla/camelus_dromedarius.html

Comments

[ratunderpaper]

Life is stressful enough; it's not wise for someone to advise you to use threats to help to express the seriousness of your point of view.

It would be nice to see motivation to get more hometime done, but it's hard to see how advice like that could be well-meaning and not wholly destructive.

[gottawonder]

Yes, I really didn't see the point in using threats, especially because I could not back them up with actually leaving. Nor do I want to.

I may not express it enough here, but on many levels I connect very well with my husband. It gets lost in the translation when I am overwhelmed by the house project and I don't see an end in sight. That is what I hate about the house project, is that it takes over everything, when we used to have time to do fun things together and not always have to be looking at fixtures on line or finding the best price for lumber, or drawing out our ideas until both of us agree on something. It is always looming.

For now at least, he does seem organized enough to make another bigger push. He got a big delivery of materials (which IS sometimes just a delaying tactic, to get the materials but not do anything with them), but he finally made a point of getting up at a reasonable time and trying to get something done in the last couple of days.He was getting up very late in the day over the winter on his days at home, and then more or less saying it was already too late in the day to get anything done. Very frustrating.

In the last few days, he did make some actual physical progress. Things you can see and touch, like a frame for the wall in the basement that becomes the wall beside the stairs. Some of the sheets of particle board-ish stuff laid over the plywood floor to make a smooth surface for linoleum. It isn't a huge amount, but enough for me to see that he's trying. That's all I need to see, is SOMETHING progressing.

[ratunderpaper]

Hometime work is tedious. I find that the closer I get to completing a project, the more I want to leave it alone. Then I have to weigh frustration (at not completing it) with tedium (the project feels never-ending and is messy). There's no satisfaction until the blankety-blank job is done.

Frustration takes the upper hand when someone else is supposed to take care of a project and they don't, even when it becomes time-sensitive. I don't like feeble excuses, either.
"Were you able to finish the frame around the potting shed window?"
"Yeah, well..."

No one reacts well to threats. I might learn to use the miter saw this summer if nothing gets going on the sunroom panelling.

[gottawonder]

I'm glad someone else recognizes the way that frustration is worse when you can't control the pace of the work.

I do things when it is within my abilities, but these jobs require serious skills. Not things I could just give it my best shot and good enough.

[ratunderpaper]

I will get angry if I feel that the responsibility to keep a promise to do/begin/complete a project has been derailed by a "yeah, well". It will make me angrier still if, after the "yeah, well", there is still no flurry to make good on that promise.

That's when I say something like, "Have you got the stud finder handy?" It puts the fear of God into a malingerer if I take action on something that's been put off. (In this case, it's a blessed basement bawth mirror that has been lying propped up on the countertop for nearly a year without being hung on the blasted wall. JUST HANG IT. Here, I've got the hanger. HANG IT. HANG IT. HANG IT.)

[gottawonder]

Yes, the hardest part of all of this, is trying to have some kind of relationship outside of working on a house. There is ALWAYS something that needed doing a long time ago, and a lot of lapsed deadlines.

I too, resort to just standing in one spot pointing at the thing that should have been done, and yelling at it until something happens. It's not a nice thing.

I have been known to romanticize living in a cave. A nice dry cave with a sandy floor and good ventilation doesn't sound bad, does it? As long as it can be kept a reasonable temperature. I suppose it would still have it's issues.

[ratunderpaper]

It's generally a nice thing if SOMETHING can be crossed off a hometime list, but I don't feel the acquisition of materials counts.

Today I have to learn how to plane the bottom of an old window. My saying I have to do it and getting the hand plane in hand isn't the same as getting it done, however. I've also kicked up a lot of dust about hanging that bawthroom mirror. (The ceiling in that room still hasn't been sanded and it's been nearly a year.)

A basement is almost a cave. I'd happily live in the Bat Cave (Adam West's).

[gottawonder]

I sometimes have to acknowledge that getting materials is necessary for things to happen, but if things are purchased, then the next action needs to be physical progress, not another trip for materials.

I know that sometimes my husband doesn't really want to start a bigger project, so he procrastinates by saying "let's go to the city and see if we can find an air nailer", which means going to at least three stores. Sometimes it has to be done, but sometimes it is a dodge.

Why are you planing the bottom of the window? Can you take it right out of the frame to do it?

What is required to hang the mirror?

[ratunderpaper]

The planer was never located, and the mirror wasn't hung. Then again, I took an extra class (as offered by the teacher) so I returned home late. Tomorrow I'll mark the spots on the wall in the basement bawth for the mirror, which is big and heavy. It belonged to my mother. I already have a couple of big picture hangers ready. The studs must be located and then screws put in to hold the picture hangers. I'm going with 50 lb weight hangers.

There are two 3-1/2' windows in the sunroom that are not fixed; they swing into the room. And their exterior windows swing outward. When I open the interior window of one, its bottom frame sticks along the sill. The hinge has been adjusted and I sanded both the frame and sill, but the window still sticks and drags. It needs to be planed in situ. I really don't want to pull the window off its hinges or deal with the mess of a palm sander.

Tomorrow I'll fix the problem and finish painting the edges of the frame. I just have to prime and paint the part that can be seen when the window is opened. I won't do the outside-facing part, which is another colour. It's a mess, though, and I'll have to reputty it some day.

[gottawonder]

That makes perfect sense. We had to plane one of the old wooden doors in this house. Apparently there was a shift in the house that made the door stick. It shouldn't be too tough, but you might have to take the window off if the sticking point is hard to reach. If it is near the edge farthest from the hinge you're good.

That must be one heck of a mirror!

[ratunderpaper]

It amazes me that a second floor sunroom can exist at all without anything underneath it - you'd think it would have come crashing to the ground. Yet this thing has lasted over a hundred years.

Every time I pass by a house in the city that has a sunroom, I feel a pang of envy; I'd lived for a long time wishing I had one and for a moment or two I forget that I do. It happens each and every time.

The sticking part is farther from the hinge, so things will (hopefully) go well once that blasted plane is located. If it can't be found, I'm going to keep sanding.

[sherlockishere]

Actually, I think your fondness for your husband does come through here. I see it in the way you call him your sweetie and in the way you two spend time together. Clearly there's a lot of respect there. I'm also a little disturbed that she would go directly to threats of separation. I don't think any threats are a good idea unless you're ready to take action on them.

Hang in there, my friend. I'm sorry things have been so tough lately...

[gottawonder]

I think my sister's reaction came from her own frustrations. Apparently she HAS moved out a few times as a way to get him to pay attention. I wonder how things are actually going for them.

They've been together for over 40 years, so maybe this is just how they do things with each other. Who knows.

As I said in my post above, in the last few years his health has really taken a dive, but I don't think she's really processed that. She seems angry that he isn't doing a lot of work on their acreage, but I don't think he CAN anymore. I think she realizes that they might have to move soon, and she doesn't want to do that, and is angry that he isn't stepping up more.

I really don't know if she recognizes how sick he is. He has diabetes, and you can just see how tired he is. That said, he doesn't seem to be able to just talk to her about how sick he is, because he doesn't want to admit it either.

This is what I felt that I was observing when I stayed with them for a while this time.

So, my talk about my need to get things done with my husband turned into HER issues.

[sherlockishere]

That's really sad, isn't it? Her not realizing that he may be in an actual physical decline. I used to see that problem a lot when I worked in the hospital. We'd have an older patient who really was ill, with family members who didn't understand that they weren't being difficult-- They just didn't have the same strength anymore. I hope your sister can find some source of support in dealing with the farm, or face the decision to give it up...

[gottawonder]

Well, here's the thing. I felt like last October, that was the same kind of conversation I was having with my family about Mom. That she REALLY needed to be in a care home. They were all like "but she says she doesn't want to go", and I'm like "are you all okay with her dying on the floor of the bathroom, then?".

My sister E is also having that kind of conversation with her husband's family about her Mother In Law, who is 97 and still lives in a somewhat assisted living apartment. They aren't recognizing how hard it is for her to take care of herself. Earlier this spring there was a late snow storm that kept everyone from their usual trips to help her, and that meant that no one made sure she had food etc. They are lucky nothing happened to her.

So, yes. My sister E is kind of treating her husband as if he is just "getting lazy in his old age" instead of seeing it for what it is: just old age.

He's not THAT old, but being 70 is old enough to not want to move square bales or build a deck if you are diabetic and are wearing a catheter 24/7 like he is now.

Maybe she is just trying to keep him active, hoping that it is better for him than to become sedentary.