Saturday, November 16
Nov. 17th, 2024 01:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
I don't know. I had a weird day that just felt like I was struggling all the way through it.
I had to get up by a set time again, which is how the whole week has been, and it's not much fun. I know that most of the world has to wake up by a certain time, whether they've had enough sleep or not, but I'm not used to it, and for whatever reason if I know that I have to get up by a certain time, half the time I can't even sleep.
So, all week I've been getting very little real sleep, and today felt like there wasn't a good enough reason for it.
We needed to go to town to the Christmas sale that our craft center has each year as a fundraiser (this is where the pottery studio is, within the craft center). I had put two mugs in the sale, and every year they expect members of the craft center to volunteer for something. My husband and I chose to volunteer for clean up from this sale.
Well, at least this year they did need us. The dozens of people from the craft center that were there when we showed up melted like the first little snow in October, and somehow there were only a few people doing most of the clean up and putting away of all the craft tables and putting all the unsold items onto carts to go upstairs to the studio (the venue was on the main floor of the same building our studio is in) for the owners to come pick up.
We ended up helping with clean up for over an hour, so I guess at least it mattered that we showed up for it.
Then we donated some of the stuff I cleared out of the garden shed ages ago. It's been sitting in the cab of the truck for over a month. We were able to donate some of it to the local ReStore, but they couldn't use some of it.
Then we went back to pottery to throw.
My husband didn't seem to be in the mood really. He trimmed the bowl he threw on Monday, and then was kind of just...there.
I wanted to really enjoy the day, take our time, actually have the time to MAKE SOMETHING since it's Saturday and we didn't have to leave for some other class or anything.
He was like "just have fun, keep throwing, it's fine if I'm not into it today". So, I did my thing.
At one point I said "you could go get groceries if you don't want to throw", so he did.
By then, a woman we've talked to before came in, also to make use of the "free" studio time. She's fairly new to pottery, we got talking about me throwing vases and stuff, and I offered to show her how to throw something bigger (she's been stalled at making very small things like tiny coffee mugs, and can't seem to make anything larger).
My Sweetie all of a sudden was SO ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT POTTERY. I did help this person throw for a while, then my husband ends up helping her throw a bowl, which turned out great, so she wants to make another one, and well....after a while I felt left out.
No, I don't feel like he was "flirting" with her. My husband loves to be needed. Loves to teach people things. He GLOWS when he gets the chance to show someone how to do something. Like his niece a few weeks ago staying on the phone with him for over an hour on two occasions because he was helping her with her computer programming class. He just gets absolutely ABSORBED in HELPING SOMEONE and he will just POUR himself into helping that person, and he's so SMART, and HELPFUL, and on and on.
That said, it was okay for me...until it just wasn't. I was just DONE with this crap that he does of becoming so wrapped up in this person and teaching them or helping them that he just doesn't seem to even notice that I'm getting tired, or impatient, or that I even really exist.
I cleaned up all the tools, all the tables we had used, put everything away, and started washing the floor, and he's still just gently talking away to this woman about how to make a bowl, you'd think he was Jesus talking to a newborn lamb about everlasting life.
This, from the guy who "wasn't feeling like throwing" just a short while ago. All of a sudden, you'd think that pottery was life itself to him, instead of me lately putting in all the work into making sure he actually GETS TO COME TO THE STUDIO,....ME insisting on setting up a wheel in our garage, ME trying to just put him in proximity to clay to give him an opportunity to remember how much he used to seem to enjoy it.
I'm not begrudging this woman the chance to actually learn something, everyone needs that opportunity. I'm just angry at my husband for becoming "Pottery Jesus" only when he can teach someone something so that it strokes his ego.
I did express all of these feelings once we got home, and of course THAT didn't go well. Somehow, I SHOULD HAVE SAID SOMETHING at the studio. Well, how do you do that? Just tell this other woman "time's up"? Do we need a safe word that tells my husband to stop being Pottery Jesus? (Or computer programmer Jesus, or Carpentry Jesus, and all of the other kinds of Jesus he becomes when he senses a follower in need).
Sure, it is a form of jealousy for me to feel this way. I think he's being thoughtless by tuning me out like this and focusing on someone else for over an hour while I just clean up everything.
This was supposed to be an evening where he and I BOTH THREW POTTERY TOGETHER, and enjoyed that process that he so claims to love SO MUCH. What does he do? Trim something for ten minutes and then go "MEH", and proceeds to just reclaim some old clay and then stand there looking at his phone. At one point I did get him to coach me through making a big bowl (he's better at bowls than I am), but overall I kept feeling guilty for wanting to stay and work when he was so obviously bored.
I don't know that it did anything, for me to voice my feelings. I don't feel like he understood what I was saying at all. As usual, I got angry, I tried to express why, and he just stands there going "you don't want me to help people any more. I get it. I should just never help anyone with anything ever again because it will make you angry".
Just pointless.
He doesn't seem to understand "helping someone" with "being utterly absorbed with someone else's needs for hours at a time while I stand there feeling like a tool".
I don't know. I had a weird day that just felt like I was struggling all the way through it.
I had to get up by a set time again, which is how the whole week has been, and it's not much fun. I know that most of the world has to wake up by a certain time, whether they've had enough sleep or not, but I'm not used to it, and for whatever reason if I know that I have to get up by a certain time, half the time I can't even sleep.
So, all week I've been getting very little real sleep, and today felt like there wasn't a good enough reason for it.
We needed to go to town to the Christmas sale that our craft center has each year as a fundraiser (this is where the pottery studio is, within the craft center). I had put two mugs in the sale, and every year they expect members of the craft center to volunteer for something. My husband and I chose to volunteer for clean up from this sale.
Well, at least this year they did need us. The dozens of people from the craft center that were there when we showed up melted like the first little snow in October, and somehow there were only a few people doing most of the clean up and putting away of all the craft tables and putting all the unsold items onto carts to go upstairs to the studio (the venue was on the main floor of the same building our studio is in) for the owners to come pick up.
We ended up helping with clean up for over an hour, so I guess at least it mattered that we showed up for it.
Then we donated some of the stuff I cleared out of the garden shed ages ago. It's been sitting in the cab of the truck for over a month. We were able to donate some of it to the local ReStore, but they couldn't use some of it.
Then we went back to pottery to throw.
My husband didn't seem to be in the mood really. He trimmed the bowl he threw on Monday, and then was kind of just...there.
I wanted to really enjoy the day, take our time, actually have the time to MAKE SOMETHING since it's Saturday and we didn't have to leave for some other class or anything.
He was like "just have fun, keep throwing, it's fine if I'm not into it today". So, I did my thing.
At one point I said "you could go get groceries if you don't want to throw", so he did.
By then, a woman we've talked to before came in, also to make use of the "free" studio time. She's fairly new to pottery, we got talking about me throwing vases and stuff, and I offered to show her how to throw something bigger (she's been stalled at making very small things like tiny coffee mugs, and can't seem to make anything larger).
My Sweetie all of a sudden was SO ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT POTTERY. I did help this person throw for a while, then my husband ends up helping her throw a bowl, which turned out great, so she wants to make another one, and well....after a while I felt left out.
No, I don't feel like he was "flirting" with her. My husband loves to be needed. Loves to teach people things. He GLOWS when he gets the chance to show someone how to do something. Like his niece a few weeks ago staying on the phone with him for over an hour on two occasions because he was helping her with her computer programming class. He just gets absolutely ABSORBED in HELPING SOMEONE and he will just POUR himself into helping that person, and he's so SMART, and HELPFUL, and on and on.
That said, it was okay for me...until it just wasn't. I was just DONE with this crap that he does of becoming so wrapped up in this person and teaching them or helping them that he just doesn't seem to even notice that I'm getting tired, or impatient, or that I even really exist.
I cleaned up all the tools, all the tables we had used, put everything away, and started washing the floor, and he's still just gently talking away to this woman about how to make a bowl, you'd think he was Jesus talking to a newborn lamb about everlasting life.
This, from the guy who "wasn't feeling like throwing" just a short while ago. All of a sudden, you'd think that pottery was life itself to him, instead of me lately putting in all the work into making sure he actually GETS TO COME TO THE STUDIO,....ME insisting on setting up a wheel in our garage, ME trying to just put him in proximity to clay to give him an opportunity to remember how much he used to seem to enjoy it.
I'm not begrudging this woman the chance to actually learn something, everyone needs that opportunity. I'm just angry at my husband for becoming "Pottery Jesus" only when he can teach someone something so that it strokes his ego.
I did express all of these feelings once we got home, and of course THAT didn't go well. Somehow, I SHOULD HAVE SAID SOMETHING at the studio. Well, how do you do that? Just tell this other woman "time's up"? Do we need a safe word that tells my husband to stop being Pottery Jesus? (Or computer programmer Jesus, or Carpentry Jesus, and all of the other kinds of Jesus he becomes when he senses a follower in need).
Sure, it is a form of jealousy for me to feel this way. I think he's being thoughtless by tuning me out like this and focusing on someone else for over an hour while I just clean up everything.
This was supposed to be an evening where he and I BOTH THREW POTTERY TOGETHER, and enjoyed that process that he so claims to love SO MUCH. What does he do? Trim something for ten minutes and then go "MEH", and proceeds to just reclaim some old clay and then stand there looking at his phone. At one point I did get him to coach me through making a big bowl (he's better at bowls than I am), but overall I kept feeling guilty for wanting to stay and work when he was so obviously bored.
I don't know that it did anything, for me to voice my feelings. I don't feel like he understood what I was saying at all. As usual, I got angry, I tried to express why, and he just stands there going "you don't want me to help people any more. I get it. I should just never help anyone with anything ever again because it will make you angry".
Just pointless.
He doesn't seem to understand "helping someone" with "being utterly absorbed with someone else's needs for hours at a time while I stand there feeling like a tool".
