Thursday, March 12

[gottawonder]

Today I am grateful for:

That the drywall work began today.

It began early, and VERY LOUDLY. The two fellows (I thought there was only supposed to be one?) came, and made a very loud entrance, talking loudly and stomping around.

Then they went downstairs and proceeded to crank their dance music to the point where it would have been loud if I had been playing it upstairs.

Since all of this has been my husband's thing, and he apparently never got a direct phone number to these fellows, and I was still in bed trying to sleep, I called my husband and asked him to call Dan (who arranged for these two) and then Dan could call his subcontractors and tell them to shut the heck up.

Yes, that's how stupid this is. I had asked my husband a few days ago if he had the number of the mud/tape guy, and my husband said no, all of this goes through Dan.

So, if everyone is going to be like that, I will make all of them call each other like the ridiculous creatures that they are, so that it is up to THEM to deal with the noise.

It did settle down shortly after, but I didn't fall back asleep.

Then I got a dumb phone call from H&R Block, as they wanted to know if my husband and I are married or common law. I asked the person if there was no record anywhere in their files, as we have literally filed our taxed with them for...15 years? Then she asked if we had any children or dependents. Same thing...no, we don't have children and are truly unlikely to have any.

So that was ridiculous.

Then when I got up, I spoke with D from pottery. Since every last person who was involved in organizing my husband's upcoming workshop fumbled the whole thing to the point where we didn't even know if he was supposed to be doing it or not, no one has signed up. The poster only got put up a few days ago and the workshop is supposed to be this Saturday.

Most of the workshops has an entire month of lead time, with advertising on the Facebook page, the poster in the studio, and emails.

So, we will now look like idiots, for all the effort we've put in trying to do these workshops, thanks to every last person involved not doing their job.

So that's basically all happening within an hour or so of me getting up. Just one stupid thing after another.

So I did normal chores, felt my usual horrible guilt at Dandy being sore (though walking, carefully), and didn't get much done today because I was exhausted and angry at everyone and everything.

I did go out into the pottery studio to try to do something to make my day feel worth doing, and my husband came out there when he got home.

I made supper, though it's frustrating that half the time my husband seems to want me to make two suppers, like he doesn't want the same thing or ....?

Tonight I was cooking, and he was like "do you want me to just make my own food, the frozen veggie/egg thing?"

Why? What would be wrong with just eating the food that I am right in the middle of cooking, and obviously making enough for both of us? This makes me feel the same way as when he just eats something on the way home from work instead of coming home for supper, only he doesn't tell me, so I'm often cooking supper for both of us when he walks in and says he ate in town.

It's rude.

He ate what I cooked, and actually seemed happy enough to eat it, and why not? It was perfectly fine.

We watched an episode of "Slow Horses", and after he went to bed I went back out to the pottery studio.

I have no idea when the mud/tape guys are coming back to sand, and neither does my husband. Apparently one morning they will just show up.

Comments

[ratunderpaper]

Frustrating day. Spouse should be pleased with home cooking, without counter-suggestion!

[gottawonder]

Yes, though we do sometimes eat different things. My husband eats more carbs, things like noodles or perogies, that I don't eat.

I think what bothered me, is that it was obvious that I was well into making supper, and had obviously made enough for us both.

When he makes his own version of "frozen veggie curry" he makes it as his full meal.

I've noticed that when he cooks, he's often making too much food because he makes more than one version of the vegetables "in case I don't want to eat that"...it's a bit strange.

All he needs to do is talk to me before I start cooking, or to ask me before HE starts cooking instead of wondering what we should cook. I will eat pretty much whatever he cooks, and he knows it. He will generally eat and enjoy what I cook.

It's possible that he was trying to be helpful by cooking for himself, but for Pete's sake we're married and we can take turns cooking for each other. It's no more work for me to cook for both of us than it is for me to cook for just me.

[ratunderpaper]

I don't know how it came to be that I cook the most and bake exclusively. When I wanted a pot-and-pan pegboard on the kitchen wall, like Julia's, I was initially met with resistance. Then a neighbour came over and said, almost indignantly, Oh, come ON. This is her kitchen. Face facts. You're standing here in front of a plate of home-made s'mores made with home-made graham wafers and home-made marshmallows. Are you crazy? and that was sort of it.

The sous chef bakes if and when he's got free time, and always makes my birthday cake.

We all eat different things and at different times, for the most part.

The pegboard is the best part of the kitchen (as is the apothecary wall of jars), and I'll never understand why I had to insist on it.

[gottawonder]

I've had to insist on having several things.

At one point, getting a Samsung Smart phone, as my husband thought my Nokia was "good enough for me" as I was "not interested in technology".

Yeah, that became instantly no fun for my husband, who already had a Smart phone.

Sure, at one time, I was not interested in texting and so on, but there came a point where I recognized that the world had changed, and I had better change with it.

I also insisted that we leave the beautifully quaint original pantry THE FUCK alone. When we first bought this house, and my husband was swelling with testosterone and ambition, he thought we should tear the pantry out to make the kitchen larger, for no good reason at all, because it would only have created a strange L shape, that we couldn't have used for anything BUT a pantry.

Never mind that it would have meant him ripping apart the main room of the house, and likely taking YEARS to do anything to remedy it. I had to have some part of my life functioning the way it was supposed to, and that started with having an intact kitchen.

Men are really something, aren't they.

[ratunderpaper]

Pantries are beautiful, and you are lucky to have one. It would have been a bloody crying shame if it had been destroyed in a fit of manosphere "I can tear things to pieces if I want" pique.

They do these things and then say they only did it because we wanted them. Is that not akin to gaslighting? (Asking for a friend.)

[gottawonder]

Our pantry is a very cute, very serviceable room. It even has a window that used to look outside, but now looks into our mudroom (we forgot we wanted to line up the outside window with it, and it's now offset, though it still lets natural light into the pantry).

It is one of those iconic things about the house that I loved when we looked at it.

I raised unholy Hell on my husband when he even THOUGHT about tearing it out, and you know what? I think he would never for a moment want to do so now.

When we lived in Wyoming, the lovely little house we owned there had a cute kitchen nook. Not as perfectly iconic as the pantry, but almost. The only way we could get a bath tub with a shower in it upstairs was to take it out and build it to tie in with the existing bathroom (a mere closet of a room).

It gutted me to get rid of it, because is was charming.

I said to my husband that we bought this house for all it's charm, and I'd be damned if all we did was "modernize" it.

[ratunderpaper]

You are very lucky that spouse listened to you.

Pantries and sculleries are "in" right now. I can't imagine building a kitchen without one. I wonder if this old house originally had one; it had been (badly) renovated several times before we moved in. I went with a very simple design, but the kitchen as it is would not accommodate a pantry unless an adjoining room were blocked off, and that would be a cost I'm not willing to bear. I've restored enough stuff and can only do things that don't require hiring professionals.

[gottawonder]

It's a charming and useful room. I shudder to think of him tearing it out.

I don't care much about whether or not it's "in", a pantry always was and always will be useful.

We had a little pantry in the trailer before we tore the trailer down, and it was the smartest thing about that kitchen. It was built in by someone, not original to the layout.

[ratunderpaper]

I say they are "in" right now, as in "people who are constructing kitchens anew are adding them as a feature". They are useful, unlike, say, over-the-stove pot fillers.

I am working on a pantry in the basement, and have been for years. I had rudimentary kitchen cabinets from the old house put in, but the walls were not finished, and the countertop became a repository for... guess what.

Fast forward to today: I moved out all the power tools, wires and dross, cleaned everything up so that I can fix up the wall, and will move away the sheets of radiator grating, planks of wood, tabletop and legs. There are still bins of auto parts, stove parts, electronic parts, and parts of parts, but their spread is narrowing.

[gottawonder]

How frustrating that so much of your space is encroached upon by things that are better suited to a work shop.

I know we've talked about this before, is there any way to designate one specific part of the basement to things like tools and parts? Maybe you could just keep taking everything from other parts of the house and putting it there, so he knows where to find it?

I know it's going to be quite a day here when there will no longer be any plausible reason for any tools or lumber to be in the house, I'm hoping that day will come in a year or two, as long as we can keep paying Dan to keep things moving.

What makes that easier, is that my husband has a very large garage, and when the work on the house is back to just being small maintenance jobs, whenever the tools linger too long I could just walk them back out to where they belong.

I'm also thinking a set of shelves in our utility room could be where tools go while they are needed in the house, but not actively in use.

[ratunderpaper]

There is no workshop, and there is no separate pantry, or separate laundry room or boiler room. In this house, they are part of one large area that should be divided up into rooms, but it's difficult.
There is a larger space adjoining that would be called a "rec room" back in the day. It was cleaned of its boxes and hooey when it became a piano studio. A few things crept back in, but it's still a relatively clean space. I rescued a chaise longue a couple of years back and thought I'd learn to upholster it in there, but that hasn't yet happened. Maybe it should go in the cleaned-out box room?

Yes, your suggestion to designate one area to tools and hometime work is a good one, and that's what I aim for. Condensing stuff into separate areas is the goal. I remember when there used to be a circular saw sitting right in front of the dryer, and it was used there until I ventured downstairs to look around. Holy cow!

[gottawonder]

Maybe something could be created without walls that still defines the area, like using tarps as hanging walls that at least screen off the clutter and give a clear message about where things belong. It could have some shelves in it, or just a place to keep stacking boxes or tubs, and that way anything that strays from that area can just be taken back there if anyone wonders where it got to.

[ratunderpaper]

My idea is to fix up the pantry wall and environment and continue "nicening" the laundrette area. I hope the horrible tool and hometime heaps will look embarrassingly bad contrasting with the niceness, and will be tidied.

[gottawonder]

Men don't see those piles. You will need to move them to the newly designated "tool area" if you want them out of your pantry and laundrette areas.

[ratunderpaper]

The tool and workshop-esque area is spread out and spills occasionally to the small armoire where I fold laundry.

There's a small room that was once going to be a wine cellar (for me), but that will never be built. I am moving boxes of parts and oddments there.

[gottawonder]

That sounds like a decent solution. At least he will know where to look for things, if they are all in one spot.