gottawonder

Today I am grateful for:

It looks like R should be able to get hay from her regular hay supplier after all. Which would be a relief, because hay might be tight this year.

I was frustrated to also wake up to a message from the farrier, saying it was too hot for her to come today, and she postponed AGAIN, and a week from now again. The horses are long over due now for a trim, and this is very frustrating, because now I wonder whether or not she will actually make it at our next appointment, or if some other thing will come up.

This did not start me off well, but I made an effort to still get something useful done.

I had talked to my husband about going to town today, because Monday is generally when I get groceries.

He is used to not having a particular day for groceries, because when he is at work he usually lives in a town, and just shops whenever he needs something, even if he only needs one or two things. He just picks something up on his way home, and it's not a special trip.

For me, town is about half an hour away, and I stack my errands to make good use of the day, so that I don't have to make multiple trips. Well, now that my husband is home, looks like we'll be driving to town all the time now, because he seems to like doing that.

Today I WANTED to get garden ties (basically timbers for edging) for the mulched area. I wanted to get another cube of mulch. I wanted to get more cardboard. We needed groceries, and we needed more of the compressed bedding pellets that I use for cat litter.

My husband and I looked at which stores might carry the timbers I wanted, looked at prices, and so on AT HOME, and I thought we'd settled the matter. Turns out, no.

For some reason, I hadn't noticed on the way to town that he hadn't hooked the trailer up to the truck. You don't really notice it, it's small and doesn't make much noise.

I asked him why he hadn't brought the trailer, since we were getting lumber. He says "I wasn't going to buy it today, I just want to look at it, and see what they have".

No shit. I had asked him to compare the prices and so on online, while we are at home, and he had said yes, and then didn't follow through.

THEN he says, "They're cheaper at XYZ, in the OTHER town, and I'll just go there tomorrow and get them".

So, WHY DID WE COME TO TOWN TODAY, AND WASTE A WHOLE DAY NOT GETTING ANYTHING THAT I SAID I WANTED?".

Well, we could still get groceries.

We were going to get cardboard at the recycling depot, except of course it closes early, and we didn't actually PLAN any of this properly, as usual, by calling or anything, so no cardboard. EXCEPT, that I was determined to get something, called a furniture store right around the corner, and they had at least SOME cardboard, and I made the call in spite of my husband saying "don't bother calling them, they said they never have any on hand'. Well, they did.

At least when we were at the recycling center, they had an area where they put out free books people bring in, and there was also a box of DVDs. We found several promising books and movies, and if we don't like them, they are interesting enough that they would likely serve as trade ins at the second hand book store.

The only reason we stopped to look at the books, is because I asked him to stop, in an effort to make the day count somehow.

SO. At one of the stores where we were apparently only looking at wood with no intention to buy it, I said we could buy one bag of soft wood pellets for cat litter (we were at the store that usually carries it, and they were out, which was also frustrating), as it is more or less the same as the animal bedding I buy, but it had to be softwood. The clerk assured me it was. At stores like this, you buy it, then go to a back storage area to pick it up, which is stupid for one bag of pellets, but there you go.

What frustrated me AGAIN, is my husband didn't want to drive to the back yard, just walk. Turns out the pellets are WAAAYYY at the back, we get there with the yard hand, and...they are hard wood pellets. So then we had to go back to the store, and get a refund. Wasted at least half an hour in that store and got NOTHING.

Not only did it feel like my husband was just wasting our whole day, but it seemed like the stores were also conspiring to do so too.

So here we are. All day, I felt like I was pulling and pushing my husband to try to do something that would move our projects forward, and all day he's just not telling me his intentions, not managing our time well, not planning, and we pretty much come up with almost nothing to show for our day in town.

Monday was ALSO the day he said he would start on siding the house, and that didn't get started at all.

Last week before he was even done work, I told him to contact the contractor, and tell him to be ready to start this week, because he would need at least a week to be ready. No. My husband didn't do that either. He only texted him today, and NOW it will likely be days and days of back and forth trying to get a day they can start.

By this time, I was just spitting mad, tired, and I constantly feel like I am powerless to do ANYTHING to get SOMETHING ACTUALLY HAPPENING on our work projects. NOTHING I DID WORKED. Nothing.

Well, I said, why don't we just go to pottery for a while, we're not doing anything useful, the stores are closed. Maybe we can manage that.

I was so angry.

As we were driving there, we pulled up to a red light, and I turned my head (I was the passenger, and I was directly beside the driver of the car beside us), and this woman was just head down staring at her phone. It is straight up illegal to be looking at your phone while driving, even at a stop light. I am so sick of everyone being so idiotic, and her window was down, as was mine, and I just GLARED at her, and she was like, "what?"?

I didn't yell, but I was pretty firm, and I said "MAYBE PUT DOWN YOUR PHONE WHEN YOU'RE DRIVING". She of course yelled something stupid back, and I was even more angry. No, I didn't get into it with her, I just sighed at the stupidity of it all. She was saying "WHAT, I'M NOT DRIVING RIGHT NOW". It's illegal at any time you're driving to be looking at your phone. There are huge fines for distracted driving in Alberta. HUGE FINES.

Yet, my husband was like "maybe that wasn't a good idea". Right. She's head down staring at her phone while driving, but me calling her out for it, is the wrong thing to do.

Well, what a lovely day.

Then we get to the building where the pottery studio resides, AND....the combination on the front keypad has been changed. We can't get in.

I did call one of the higher ups in the group, and she said "yes the combination changed", and I was like "Umm, maybe LET US KNOW?". Well, it was a glitch and they're working on it, but dear lord. At least I got the new combination.

By the time we got upstairs to the studio, I sort of was resigned to this just being a stupid, wasted day, and if I give up all hope of anything going the way you think it might go, then maybe I'd just try to survive it, and hope for something better another day.

Pottery itself was fine. I worked on a few things, was happy enough with my work, and so on. One other woman came in, and we chatted with her.

Then, we going to get groceries. My husband, thinking like he does when HE shops, thought it was going to be a tiny little trip like his shopping trips. Not the epic once a week trips that I make, where there's no turning back.

I had told him to bring shopping bags. He brought....two. Two bags.

He didn't want to get a cart. He never wants to get a cart, he likes to just walk through the store with a shopping bag, fill it, and when it's full he knows he's done. I put my foot down and said "WE ARE SHOPPING FOR THE WHOLE WEEK, GET A STUPID CART".

Then I had to pull him and drag him around the whole store, because I KNOW WHAT WE NEED TO GET, but if I listen to him, we just run around like chickens with our heads cut off, and not get half the food we need.

I still did my best to be kind to the woman at the checkout, who I seem to get a lot (probably because I shop at about the same time on Mondays). She always look tired, it's almost the end of her shift, and I was like "You're almost there, you can do it".

Tired and getting more bitter by the moment (though I am somewhat hopeful because at least we are leaving town, it's late, there's nothing more to be done, maybe the thwarting of my expectations can be finished for the day), we load our purchases into the truck. Without bags.

Nonetheless, I am grateful for getting food, and for having the means to do so. I never take this for granted.

We get home, I tried to talk about how the day sucked for me, and why does he not just LISTEN TO ME!!!!!

WHY DOESN'T HE JUST DO WHAT HAS TO BE DONE?

Now he is going to town tomorrow, to do some of the things that we were supposed to do today. Again, that means that NOTHING WILL HAPPEN TO BEGIN SIDING THE HOUSE. Even though, when I ask him when he can begin to do meaningful work, he says, in all purity..."tomorrow". Nope. He will go to town, them come home, and say that his trip to town was a meaningful task, and nothing will begin on the siding.

Wednesday, nothing will happen on the house, because we are meeting a friend in town. Yes, in the very same town that he is driving to tomorrow. Day after day we will drive to town.

With gritted teeth, I watched some more "American Gods" with him.

I learned about very early spy satellite "Corona" program. They used actual FILM, which was put into a bucket, and retrieved out of orbit by an airplane that would bring it down to Earth to be developed.

It doesn't make much sense described so briefly, but this video does an excellent job of explaining the cameras, the film (3000 feet of it!), how it was ejected in a bucket (think of how old school film rolled into a storage cylinder to protect it when you took it out of the camera), and then picked up.

Very interesting!

https://youtu.be/rLmpXgdgNZM

This is a more complete overview.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CORONA_(satellite)