Everything seems to bother me.

[gottawonder]

We are making very good progress with the trailer tear down, there is only a small section of it left now.

My husband has been doing this with the help of mostly just two other guys, and their equipment (I'm sure that my sweetie will be called upon at some point to help them out, too).

I have scaled back my involvement with the tear-down, as it is now to the point where it's mostly just big equipment tearing things down, and as a section is torn down, my sweetie loads material onto the bucket of the CAT, and it goes onto a trailer. I'm not feeling too comfortable working around the machinery, and I think they are doing well with the rhythm they've established. I don't feel like there's a useful way for me to contribute.

I DO feel like I'm being lazy. It bothers me that my sweetie is working all day, every day, and I just do my normal routine of caring for the animals and mowing, running errands, cooking, and so on. Yes, I am making sure that life goes on for the animals and I make sure we have food to eat and clean clothes to wear, and so on, but it seems like by the time I have routine things done for the day, around four or five in the afternoon, the guys are done for the day and I haven't done a thing to help with the tear down.

I have to say that I'm okay with having time to heal. My lower back was really hurting from moving boxes up stairs and out to the sea can. I was having issues with a pinched nerve that was going down one leg, and even making it hard to sleep, much less walk or move things. That is doing a lot better now. My knees were also hurting all the time, and they are doing a lot better this week. I am grateful not to be in pain all the time. I don't think I even knew how bad it really was until I got enough of a break to feel better.

One of the things that always happens with this kind of project, is that I struggle with what my role should be. It seems horribly selfish to go back to just taking care of the animals and getting groceries, and my normal duties. I feel like I should be doing more to help with the tear down, and if I'm not doing that I feel like I "should" be more of a "woman", and I'm not. Traditionally, a "woman" would be feeding these guys almost constantly, and it should be something like lots of meat, potato salad, and home made pie or something. I should plan my day around making sure they have a big lunch. But I don't. My sweetie just makes himself some kind of a lunch, if he remembers, and the guys go home for supper.

I starkly feel that I am putting a lot on my husband, who has been working on the house every day beginning at about 8 am, and with my sleep schedule, I am getting up at about 11 am. Normally, I would even be kind of excited about getting up before noon, because I often don't.

I feel very self-conscious about this, because the two guys working on this with my sweetie are there, every day, right outside the house. They know I don't get up until late. They know I'm not going to make them lunch. They know I'm not working on the tear down, either. Whether or not they are judging me, I feel judged.

It makes me feel like this past week or so, I've been contributing nothing.

I've also been struggling with the stress of having people around all the time. Today when I went to go outside to feed the animals, there's the one guy right on the steps, making small talk, and I don't know him very well, and I'm caught a little off guard by it. I'm not used to having people around so much, even if I don't really have to talk to them or entertain them. I DO feel like I should be doing SOMETHING more, but I'm not sure what it should be.

Today too, I was upset because the one guy has been bringing his dog here even though we asked him not to, and is just letting it run loose everywhere the last two days. I normally don't allow anyone to bring dogs to our place, because I have had a lot of problems over the years with dogs attacking our goats. I normally tell people that dogs can't run loose on our place if they come to visit, and usually it's just easier all around if they don't bring them at all.

This guy has no reason to bring his dog, even if it is good-natured. It is running around when the machinery is tearing down the trailer, and people are backing up and dumping materials in the trailer, and when people are up on ladders and operating power tools. I feel like it is a danger to everyone, and the dog might get hurt too. It's a distraction, because people have to constantly look out for it, and it's a hazard because it might bump someone or cause them to drop something, or to fall or trip over it.

No one is going to be making sure it isn't getting into the goat pen.

So, my sweetie had told this guy to leave his dog at home, for the sake of everyone, and he still brought it today. I got mad and told my husband that he had to toughen up and tell this guy to leave the dog at home, because every time we just back down and let this guy do what he wants, means that it will be really tough to set boundaries in future dealings with him. I know that we will have more dealings with him, because my sweetie will owe him work.

This is the same guy who drove over my flower bed, after we had told him not to, because he didn't think it was important enough to care about it. So, it seems like here's another area that he is just ignoring our boundaries too. I guess we know what to expect from him.

It makes me exhausted that so often, people come to help with this project, but it ends up violating my boundaries and making me angry to either have to suppress my needs (as in the case of my sweetie's family), or have to get tough on people and seem like a bitch, and it sucks because why does no one get it that I have boundaries, and that shouldn't make me a bad person to enforce them?

So, I feel lazy, I feel like I am an inadequate "woman", also an inadequate "construction worker", and I am likely being perceived as being a "typical bitchy woman" by the guys helping my husband. There seems to be nowhere where "I" am valuable, respected, or useful right now.