How much time?

Last week sucked.  I didn't really speak to my husband all week.  After our issues Monday night when I showed up at the park and found him with a beer in his hand. . . I was just too done to talk.  Sometimes you're just talked out.  At least with beating the same issues.   I met my brother in law Tuesday night and talked to him. . . trying to get some advice.  It was good to chat and also good to enlighten him on some things.   Hopefully he tells the family some of these issues (the lack of communication and lies) because as the in-law I'm the bad person.  

This weekend was homecoming in my town.  If you drink, this is the place to be.  How can you pass up buckets of beer?  Yes literally - they sell buckets and fill them up with beer.  If you have kids, this is the place to be.  There is a parade 2 out of 3 of the nights, along with rides, games, fair food, 4H projects/animals. . .    But if you are me. . . this is the place you avoid. Especially when it's your 20 year high school reunion.   But also when you know your husband can't have any fun when you are around.  So Friday night I did this:

Darn right!  I stayed in a hotel all by myself so that I wouldn't have to worry about when he came home, how much he had to drink and I could actually sleep.  Cause my brain won't stop listening for someone if I know they are coming home.  So I toss and turn. . . .  So Friday night I waited till about 5pm, after I knew he left for the homecoming/tractor pull and I went home, made a hotel reservation, packed a bag and high tailed it out of town.  My parents took care of giving my cat her 9pm meds.   I got decent sleep.  I suppose I was still kind of worried about his lousy ass.   I had pizza for dinner. . . 

A week or so ago I was talking to a coworker about how the personal pan pizzas from Pizza Hut are the best.  Perfect size, perfect ratio of everything.  Do you remember being in Book Club back in grade school.  I don't remember exactly how it worked, but I remember you read so many books and you earned a free personal pan pizza.  Ahh the memories!  I loved earning that dang pizza.  I was so excited to go get it.  This really threw me back to my childhood. 

So I turned my phone off, read my kindle and eventually went to sleep - sideways on the kind size bed!  Heaven!  I made myself stay in that bed past 7am. :)  Sleeping in is hard for me.  I turned on my phone. . . nothing - not a single text, no FB message. . . I logged into our Sprint account to see if there was an attempted call to my phone on my husband's line.  I figured it would have went to VM and would have atleast registered a 1 min call on his line.  Nope.  Nothing.  I went to the hotel gym, ran 3 miles, showered and then enjoyed the free breakfast that is Ah-mazing at the Drury.  Yes I stay at a Drury whenever I can.  I love those hotels. 

I packed up and drove back towards home - passing home and going to the barn to ride Eli.  Once I left there I went to Kohl's (oh I did go to Kohl's the night before in the town where I stayed.  Why not check out another Kohl's?  I love that place).  I got a Frosty at Wendy's.  Then I stopped by my parents for about a half hour.  Now it's 2;30 pm.  Who has called me?  Who has texted me?  Not my husband.  Nope.  I really thought about staying out another night.  Clearly he doesn't care.  But homecoming was still going on and I was concerned if my cat would get her meds.  If it wasn't for my Sophie girl I would not have went home.  So I get home just after 2:30 and the first thing I ask him is when was he ever going to check on me.  He claims 3:00 pm.  I call bullshit.   How much time would I have had to be gone before he'd call???  how much time would you have to be gone before your significant other would call you?  One of the workers at my barn asked me if I'd ever done this before?  Nope!  Never.  He's always known where I was.  So it was an out of the ordinary thing.  

Clearly we got issues.   Clearly I don't know what to do.   He's in therapy and I'm trying to be patient, but the patience is wearing thin.  It might be time to move on.  

Time flies. . .

Time flies even when you're not having fun.  To say that life has been stressful lately would be an understatement.  I haven't written anything since May.  I suppose because I'm not sure what to say.  I'm not happy with where life is at the moment.  If I break life down into segments: work, horse, marriage, etc. . . there isn't one part of it that makes me happy.  When you want to go to work to not be home I think that's a bad sign.

Let's start with the horse. . . Eli showed up lame in April.  I don't even know if I wrote about it and I'm too lazy to go back to see.   I left for Rolex (I do know I posted those pics!) and left him on stall rest.  I had my regular vet out a few times to see Eli.  But let's be real here.  My regular vet is in his 70's (just a guess) and he's fantastic and amazing.  He's smart, he's been there seen that.  But at this point I think he should be used for routine medicine as he simply doesn't have the equipment needed to diagnose major issues.  So in June we took Eli to the University of Missouri in Columbia MO (Mizzou for short).

After an evaluation, we decide to ultrasound Eli's left front leg.  In this photo, they are prepping for the ultrasound.  It shows up on the TV on the wall!  What did we find?  A tear of the superficial digital flexor tendon.  I won't go into details but we tried a treatment of injecting the tendon with his own plasma.  We then started "rehab".  We went back early July and had some improvement but not enough to make the vet happy.  We did another injection and I've increased the rehab workload after getting a hand smack by the vet.  We return on Aug 22nd.  I'm not optimistic and the vet will likely recommend surgery.  I'm not sure I'll go that route.   In the meantime I'm riding Eli (sort of - we are limited to walk both way and trotting only one direction) and I'm confused about riding a horse with a torn tendon.  But I'm doing what I'm told.  I was really stressing over this, but I've decided to just roll with it and whatever happens is fine.  If I have to retire Eli, then it's just time. I'm ok with that.

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I suppose it's not appropriate to go into my work issues online, but the culture in my office is changing.  People are a bit nervous about the future and I am too.  In April I will have been here 10 years and I guess I'm a bit uncomfortable about what might be happening.

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Then there's my home life.  Marriage is very very hard.  People say it's hard, but that doesn't relaly prepare you for just how hard.  I don't know what to do or where to turn.  My husband has "threatened" to kill himself the whole time I've known him.  I finally asked his mom and sister to intervene but it seems they don't take me seriously.  He also seems to be a chronic liar.  His go-to when talking to me is to lie.  And I guess he's an alcoholic.  Why do I say "guess"?   Well he doesn't drink every day.  Sometimes not even every week.  But when he does drink it affects our relationship.  He's an asshole.  He looks at me with hatred.  He yells at me.  He brings up all kinds of issues that he won't talk about when he's not drinking.  The bottom line is that the alcohol affects our marriage so I assume that qualifies as a drinking problem.  He is struggling with grief. . . his father died 2 weeks before we got married.  It was March 2011 (we were married 4/2/11).  His brother passed away suddenly in Jan 2013.  I'm not clear where the grief is really stemming from.  I'd say the two combined.  My husband farms.  And he's home all day by himself.  His mother no longer lives on the farm (his parents did when his dad was alive).  So he's alone all day with the voices in his head.  He's depressed.  He's on medication. He finally (*FINALLY*) started therapy yesterday.  But it just might be too late for us.  I haven't trusted him for the majority of our relationship.  We met 10 years ago this weekend (at the local homecoming).  I trust that he's not cheating on me.  But I don't trust him with the small things cause he tells little white lies all the time.  And he hides the beer and lies about it.  We had this big blow up fight July 14th.  He said he'd stop drinking. . . last night I went to the park where he was setting up for homecoming and he was standing there drinking.  "It's just one damn beer" he says.  I don't even know what to say.  He doesn't communicate with me.  We can sit and eat dinner without really talking.  We can be in the car together. .  . say driving to somewhere an hour away and literally not even speak.  We've talked about divorce.  I often think we make better friends than an actual couple.  But he's 44 years old. . . he makes really *bad* decisions about beer. . . he lies. . . it's like he wants to live the single life but be married.  He was married once before and I know that he doesn't want to get divorced again and that's basically the only reason he fights divorce.  It's not because he loves me so damn much.  In fact I think he hates me.  When he yells at me the hatred is palatable.  I have some tough decisions in my future, but I really think I'm delaying the inevitable.  He's a good guy deep down, but his issues run really deep (including childhood issues) and I just don't know that I can wait around for them to be fixed.  After 10 years of the same record playing over and over, I'm tired of waiting for the change.  I'm not perfect, even though he accuses me of that.  But there are so many issues that I cannot fix.  I can't do it for him.  I can't make him grow up.  I can't make him tell me the truth.  I could go on and on, but that's where I'm at in a nutshell that probably doesn't represent the whole issue.   Life is tough. Marriage is tough.  Being an in-law flat out sucks.  And I'm just so damn tired of it all.

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I'll leave you with one more photo. . . . on Amazon Prime Day I caved and finally bought the pressure cooker that I wanted.  I got an Instant Pot.  Along with many many many other people that day.  I am still learning the thing, but so far it's love. . .   last weekend I made a cheesecake. . . in a pressure cooker. . . and it was YUMMY!

Facebook

I'm pondering giving up Facebook in the new year.   I don't know that giving it up is the *right* answer, but there has to be some solution.   I'm on it too much I think.  But I have many friends on FB that I enjoy keeping in touch with.  Some of them I've never met in real life, some I've only met a few times but I think I'd be sad if I lost touch with them.  For example there's one friend who I chat with multiple times a week, sometimes daily.   However I think FB alienates you from real life to some extent.  I have very few friends that I do anything with in real life.  That depresses me.  FB isn't the reason for that, but it doesn't help.   IMO the biggest reason is that I'm 35, married and have no kids.  I do not "fit" in with the majority of people my age.  I have no kids to go to school functions with.  I have no play groups to go to.  Etc. Etc. Etc.   But back to facebook.  I do think facebook is a bit too "happy".   I've said it on facebook before but it's kind of  a highlight reel of life.  Does that make sense?  People post about the good things that happen to them.  Heaven forbid you post something "real".   It's taboo for me to post that I fought with my husband last night.  OMG.  The waves that would cause in my real life!!!   I once posted something like "I hate to see a generous person get taken advantage of".    Now my sister in law doesn't speak to me.  Oh wait!  She did on Christmas because her step dad wanted something from my family.  Now isn't that sweet?  *eye roll* Oh and if anyone saw this blog I'm sure I'd be disowned.   Did I say that FB post was about her?   Nope.  Did I say who it was about?  Nope.  Did it point fingers at anyone specific? Nope.  I say if someone has a guilty conscious then maybe they should look at themselves instead of complaining about me posting something that could apply to any number of people.   That caused some waves in the family.   Oh my gosh!   So. . . what is the answer to FB?   To just look at everyone's happy go lucky life and feel badly about mine?   To just keep posting my own highlight reel?   (if you are FB friends with me, I imagine my life looks pretty happy eh?)   I don't know what the answer is, but too much FB time isn't healthy I don't think.  Maybe I should remove FB from my phone.  That might be one solution? 

Now about that fight. . . . my husband and I have issues.  I don't think either one of us is at fault.  I think we both are.  I think it takes two to be at fault in a relationship most of the time.  In our case, I just don't know what to do.  We "tried" therapy.  Ha!  We had 2 session.  What a freaking joke.  I expected many sessions over the course of many months.  I'm very disappointed by that.   Marriage is not easy.  Anyone who says so is flat out lying.  I guess I can't really go into detail here because again, if anyone saw this there would be hell to pay on my part.  I will say this. . . back to that no friends thing. . . it sure does depress me that I had no one to call last night to stay the night with.  If I had left I'd have had to pay for a night in a hotel.  How freaking pathetic is that?  

Yesterday I took advantage of the after Christmas sales. 

I'm addicted to Santa hats.  I have quite a few.  Now I have another! :)  It has sparkly things on the white fur.  I love it! :)