Updates
It’s looking like March is going to be the snowiest month of the entire season which is bizarre to me. It has felt like springtime all winter long until February and March but March is snowing most of all.
Luckily I guess for me I don’t have to go outside on it unless I want to, which sometimes I don’t and I just stay inside all day long. It’s nice to not have to drive in it, or go out in the cold to drive to work. I get to stay cozy and warm in my office with my heated office chair. I am very fortunate.
The work trip went well overall. I didn’t post about it but I sure did write about the whole experience in my journal, but it’s very rambly and stream of consciousness and full of anxiety and negative thoughts so I didn’t want to fill my blog with all that.
Long story short, travelling to the hotel was a pain (two flights and a rental car that I hardly knew how to drive it’s been so long since I’ve driven a modern vehicle), and I had to drive over a terrifying five mile bridge, but I made it. The field trip was a success and we made our boss very happy by going out there and having success with it. Resolved a lot of project issues.
I spent time with my co workers which was kind of blah, didn’t feel any sort of real connection with any of them and felt sort of awkward and weird the entire time (maybe they’re weird or I am or both). Felt like I wouldn’t be friends with any of these people but oh well. One of them I at least enjoy WORKING with and I have immense respect for.
Made it back home safe and had a strange day of being back and feeling weird mentally because I had just gone through such a frankly terrifying experience for an introvert who has social anxiety and mild agoraphobia.
Got through it though. Had a decent time just relaxing in my hotel room which might sound strange but it was the best part. I had no desire to venture out.
I’ve been getting very obsessed with Cristine on YouTube – Nailogical, or simply not logical. She makes nail polish called Holo Taco and she makes a lot of very long live streams and also a podcast with her partner. At first I thought she was somewhat annoying or over the top but somehow I’ve come to love her videos. Something about her talking the whole time is so soothing to me and I’ve been keeping her videos on almost to keep me company, like having a friend talking in the background. She does a new live stream twice a week, it’s amazing.
Sunday I might meet with my writing group although I haven’t been writing at all with my work taking up so much time. I also got sick on the trip back home. I have a chest/lung infection I think. I feel pretty awful but I might try to make the group still.
I feel so ambivalent about friendship once again. All my attempts feel fruitless. No one puts in effort. It just ends up feeling not worth it. I guess I can just be satisfied with acquaintances and group gatherings. No deep friendships seem possible as an adult. Besides my husband, at least I have him.
Anyway sleep calls me. Hoping sleep will help me get better quickly. I heated up some leftover frozen chicken soup and added four cups of broth to make it extra brothy, and also added some tiny pasta balls. It was so delicious and exactly what I needed.
Oh and we’ve decided not to buy a house right now. The realtor lady finally left us alone after I was very firm with her. She might feel like we wasted her time but she was honestly starting to get very pushy and it felt uncomfortable. We’re not going to be rushed with this stuff. We’re not going to buy a house in this type of atmosphere with this amount of risk. The stock market is tanking. So might the economy. We signed another year lease. I’m happy to stay in our rental house another year, I love it here and don’t even want to move.
In other news, I finished two books while on my trip. Now starting 3 new books. Not reading any of the books I purchased because I am silly and keep discovering different ones on Kindle.
My dad took a trip to visit his siblings in Florida and said he loved it there in the older folks community and it was like heavenly. Lots to do, and groups and golf and wood working and hobbies. He was raving about it and said it was honestly hard for him to leave and come back here. He said he’s going to keep an eye out for a place to rent for next winter season. He doesn’t want to live there year round but just for the winters. At least for now I guess. I encouraged him in that because I think it would be really good for him to be around his brother and a community of people his age, and maybe he could find friends and hobbies and just enjoy his life now that he’s retired. He made no mention of moving with Karen and I don’t blame him. I don’t ever ask about Karen because I just don’t even want to know. She’s got issues she has to deal with and my dad doesn’t need to be dragged down by yet another unhealthy relationship. I would be proud of him if he left on his own and moved on to Florida. We’ll see. I actually would be quite glad for many reasons if he moved to Florida.
To Buy or Not to Buy
Here I am cozy in bed, heating blanket ON, fan ON, underneath the heated blanket, and regular blanket layered on top. Glorious. Plenty of social stuff to go do in Rochester – for instance, tonight there is an open comedy open mic at one of my favorite venues, a local theatre – but I would actually rather stay at home and be in bed. Especially because I will be traveling all of Sunday for work which will be stupidly stressful for me. Trying to keep the stress down as much as possible for as long as possible.
Anyway, we’re supposed to get snow tonight and into tomorrow. It’s going to start snowing at 7 PM supposedly and then keep snowing up until 1 PM tomorrow…maybe…supposed to get 4-8 inches of snow in total between tonight and tomorrow. We shall see how much we really get. Not super convenient for it to snow so much right before I am supposed to take a flight out of here on Sunday but hopefully it won’t impact anything or make my flight be canceled or something.
We got fried fish earlier, it’s a tradition around here that many restaurants serve fried fish on Fridays. The place we went to wasn’t that good though. We’ve had better at other places but if it’s good it tends to be more expensive and smaller portions obviously. I made a whole list of places so we can try other ones over time.
We’re really struggling right now with the decision to buy a house or not. It’s interesting because before now, even for years, we were so all about buying a house, I was all about it, excited to buy a house. I wanted to buy a house ever since I met Seth four years ago – well, I guess that’s not true. I have been annoyed by his dislike for apartments and his basically refusing to rent an apartment versus wanting so badly to live in a house instead.
He only got to rent a house for a few months before breaking up with his ex, and then we were never able to find a house to rent until North Carolina and now here in NY. Between these two house-renting experiences, he is ironically rethinking his obsession with renting a house versus an apartment, and maybe even rethinking wanting or needing to buy a house
Now we’re starting to wonder if investing our money into stocks and our HSA would be better than putting all of it into a house. I guess here are the reasons we are rethinking buying a house:
- Right now the housing market fucking sucks and we have no clue if or when it will ever get better.
- Houses are limited, low stock, and overpriced, we have to outbid like 10 or more other people to win a house that we might not even love or want to pay that much for
- It feels really scary to put our life’s savings into something like this, when we might be overpaying, when it might not be a good deal for US, only a good deal for the seller
- If we looked into apartment renting (which Seth is FINALLY okay with doing after insisting he needs a garage and a house) then we could keep all our savings, maybe find a place with cheaper rent than this house, pay way lower utilities, get to live in a more modern place with an open floor concept, not have to mow the lawn or pick up apples from the tree, no fixing things
I guess the cons could be:
- We don’t own a place and can’t have it the way we want, change the appliances, etc.
- Not building equity over many years
- Maybe have to share a wall with neighbors who could be loud?
- No yard, no catio for Sedrick, no place for Seth’s smoker and wood and garage stuff, he would have to get rid of so much stuff
I’m just really not sure. I like the idea of getting rid of a lot of stuff. I like the idea of living in a more modern, nice apartment instead of old houses with shitty layouts (tiny rooms), that are cold and cost hundreds of dollars a month in electricity. I did really like our modern, new townhouse in Utah. I missed it when we left.
Later:
Well we went out to get Chinese food at our favorite place, it was delicious as always. Seth started talking about the moving stuff again and finding an apartment and I just started to feel so uncomfortable and anxious. I decided okay, if I’m feeling this way I really need to just say something and be honest. I can’t keep doing what he wants to go or “going along to get along” like my dad does. Like I did when I changed jobs and left Utah even though I sort of liked our life there in a lot of ways and my job. I felt pressured.
I finally just said, I don’t want to move. I’m not saying I want to buy a house either. I like our rental house we have right now. I like the area we live in. I love the bike trail, the parks, the proximity to everything I love. I like the yard. I like having fires outside. I like the privacy. I just like our rental house as it is. I know the utilities are expensive. I know that MAYBE we could find a cheaper place to live that was more modern and stuff, with a better kitchen.
But none of that is so important to me that I want to go through the effort of moving right now and getting used to a whole new place. I have said so many times that I just want to feel settled. I’m glad we got married, and I mostly like my job most of the time, and I love where we live. Why should anything change if we are happy? Our landlord is not raising the rent.
Seth agreed and said that he’s happy to do whatever makes me happy and he wants to make sure we’re both listening to my feelings. I think he realizes that he isn’t the best with making decisions and he can go around in circles sometimes so it might be better to base things off my feelings and intuition which can sometimes actually be correct and lead to the right answer.
My gut keeps telling me that we keep moving in the hopes of solving some “problem” except it will never be solved, because there will always be another complaint to solve. We shouldn’t ignore our feelings if we’re truly unhappy obviously, but we also shouldn’t change things if we’re perfectly happy “just because” we think in some way it will be better. To work somewhere else or live somewhere else.
For someone as logical and factual as Seth is, sometimes I actually end up having to be the more logical one and talk him off the ledge. He will say: “well an apartment would probably let us out of a lease easier so it would be better to be in an apartment while looking to buy”
I said: “you’re just assuming that, we don’t know that is true, and I’m not going to make a huge decision like moving based on an assumption.”
Regardless, I feel very relieved that he is at least someone who LISTENS to me and can be made to see reason and logic. He agrees with my very sane arguments and can concede that I am right. He said if I want to stay where we’re at and sign another year lease here then that is what we will do, end of discussion. I feel very relieved and glad.
Everything in me says that is the correct decision at this time. In one year we have fallen in love with Rochester and the surrounding area, made so many memories. I feel like this next year we can figure out even more. Especially if we have a safe, comfortable home base. I really like things staying the same. I hate change. I think Seth likes change, craves novelty and also he still has a bit of “survival mode” from childhood trauma which makes it difficult for him to choose things but also gives this instinct to run.
I can have that too and I have to fight against it. Fight against finding the negatives and poking at it and wanting to fix everything and solve everything. There’s nothing to be solved anymore. I did it. I’ve made it. I solved it. I am okay. It’s like we made it to the promised land but we’re still scared we’re being hunted. Or it’s a trap. Or a dream we’re going to wake up from.
We found each other which was a feat in itself after all the failed relationships and wrong people we met. We found the place we want to live. We found remote jobs that are ideal for us. We’re good. Now all we have to do is enjoy our lives, do our hobbies, meet new friends.
That’s honestly all I want out of life anymore. To enjoy it. Experience all that I can. Relax. Enjoy nature as many days as I can. Read all the books. Write the stories I want to write. Paint things. Crochet. Be Sedrick’s mom. Explore all the parks and waterfalls and campsites. Bike all the paths. I could go on and on with all the things I’ve learned that I love in life ever since changing my life.
I also suffer from chronic pain. My lower back and pelvic my muscles have been bothering me honestly the past few days. That even more makes me want to take it easy. Not stress myself out.
Stuff
We went to the gym tonight and when we came out it was a whiteout, snowing so hard. Our first time this entire winter that we were unexpectedly caught in a snowstorm like that. I had completely forgotten how quickly the roads can get covered in snow when we get the snow squalls that drop so much snow all at once. It was fairly scary driving back home but I was so thankful Seth was driving us because it was super dark and snowy and the roads were getting just covered. I had almost gone to the gym myself, not remembering at all that it was supposed to snow and the roads were literally dry when we left. But Seth had luckily wanted to go too.
We’ve been doing more stuff together lately which has felt really nice. Tonight I was actually planning on going to a trivia night but it was at a different location than I thought so I decided to workout at the gym instead. Going to try and spend more time at the gym to destress.
Seems like snow is going to be in our lives more this week than it has this entire winter which is so funny. The last blast of winter. I’m ready for it. Blast me before we go back into warmer weather. Seth said he is excited for it to start getting warmer again. I feel somewhat ambivalent about it which is interesting. I have definitely hit moments this winter of feeling depressed, missing going to parks and walking on trails and just being outside more in general and also being able to go outside after work without it being dark obviously. But now I almost don’t care either way, I have enjoyed this winter in some ways too and I enjoy the cold air. I will miss the coziness of winter. But I am excited to start riding my bike again, going to the beach and parks again for hours, camping on the weekends.
Sedrick was being so cute last night with our friends over, he even head-butted them which shocked me since he is usually really shy with new people. He was hanging out with us the whole night, wanting to be in the same room and nearby. We’re hoping he will become friends with their dog if they bring her over.
We stayed up until past 2 AM and slept until 11 AM today which was pretty bad. Going to head to bed earlier tonight and hope to wake up much earlier. Going to also start trying to take a walk first thing when I wake up to get my day started right, and try to go out and walk more in general and get outside more in general.
I was re-reading my old journals from when I first moved to Portland, and getting outside and just out of the house was so huge for me and my mental health every time. When I started feeling bored and stuck and lonely, I just needed to get out of the house. This week feels like it’s going to be a bit easier at work so that will give me more time to get outside. Even though it’s been rather cold, I can bundle up.
Winter
Winter has returned with a vengeance after most of winter having bare grass with no snow. As if February suddenly realized, “oh shit I better get serious, it’s almost March.”
It’s rather fun having snow, it’s really coming down now, rather icy. 16 degrees with the wind chill. I want to be sipping hot tea and drinking hot chicken soup right now but Seth dragged us to the gym. I begrudgingly went, although I was too lazy to change into gym clothes or grab a hair tie or water bottle. I was fully unprepared and also just not feeling good mentally. I vented to Seth about work and he just kind of laid on the couch looking very uninterested and tired himself. Then I asked him to clean out Sedrick’s litter box today and he said “I’ll try” which is…my least favorite response from a partner when you ask them to please do a task to help the household.
So here I sit in the truck in the gym parking lot after half heartedly doing some arm exercises (barely) and then walking on the treadmill for maybe 15 minutes. I started getting uncomfortably thirsty, and also way too hot with my hair down and my thermal shirt on which I can’t take off with nothing underneath. God forbid I go buy a drink, with my social anxiety?! I could never.
Okay back at home now, Seth came into the truck just as I was writing that, I was so surprised he was already done too. I talked to him about the cat box thing and he understood and said he would do it, I just have to remind him.
We ate one of our pre-packaged meals we bought at Costco last night. We came to the realization that we don’t utilize pre-made meals enough – mostly because most TV dinner type meals are gross and not worth it. But Costco actually seems to have some decent stuff and yes it’s more expensive than cooking from scratch, but it’s also cheaper than going out to eat, and maybe a biiit healthier than getting fast food (and maybe even cheaper at this point too). It’s good to have that option when we are just stressed out and tired and feeling like we don’t have the energy to go grocery shopping or cook. Lately it has felt tough to do.
So we bought pre-made broccoli cheddar soups, chicken tikka masala, and chicken marsala to have with real mashed potatoes (I can probably manage that at least). Tonight it was tikka masala with some pre-made frozen rice I had in the freezer. That has also become a life hack/life saver: cooking a large pot of rice all at once, and then packaging serving sizes in individual baggies to be placed in the freezer. The rice stays perfectly moist that way (instead of drying out in the fridge) because the water crystals freeze on the rice instead of evaporating. It makes it so easy to just pull out a baggy of rice, heat it up for 3 minutes, and eat with whatever.
The tikka was very tasty actually and it felt nice to not have to cook. I do want to make chicken soup tomorrow though. It’s already 8:30 so too late for tonight. Last night I got in bed around 10 PM but didn’t end up sleeping until past 1 AM because I just could not sleep. Tonight I might have to take a sleeping pill.
Work anxiety has me in its grip again. I will have to buy plane tickets for two trips and get reimbursed: one is a pointless field trip I have to take to Kent Island, Maryland to go look at some wetlands with a Maryland agency. At least I will get to spend some time with my co-workers, including the other environmental scientist who I have never met in person, so that will be nice. But it’s still nerve wracking because I really hate travelling by myself, and it’s for work so it’s a lot of pressure for things to go right and things with travel never go right. At least this time I know not to give my damn credit card or information to the rental company, and if they ask for it to tell them straight up to call my company and not ask me for any personal things because I am not paying, and don’t need to be harassed about it when my company’s payment card declines (like last time).
The second trip will be to Washington D.C. for a company-wide meetup, which will be 3 entire days – well to be fair, more like 2 entire days and one evening. The travel for that one will be super easy, just a nonstop flight, one and a half hours. Easy Peasy. But the field trip will be annoying – two flights, and an hour driving a rental car outside of Baltimore.
Oh well. I have to do it. On top of that, my performance review is tomorrow morning and I am nervous about that, even though I can’t see how I can fail to look good next to some of the people I work with. But still, it’s so hard to know if I am even doing well when half the time I still don’t understand what I am meant to be doing or meant to know. I guess I am expected to be some kind of expert but I am not.
I also have another scary meeting tomorrow, not sure how scary, but I tried to prepare today. It’s tough. I feel like a failure 1/3 of the time at this job. The other 1/3 I feel like I do okay and I am able to be useful, and the other 1/3 I feel like, whatever, I’m getting paid, it’s a chill enough job most of the time, and flexible, and I’m making more money than I would with a government job. Even if the government job would be way less stressful, and way more structured, and I might actually know what I’m doing and only have to worry about one single permit rather than 500 permits and studies.
Anyway. I’ll get through. Just feels stressful at the moment. I should write down some positives so I can feel better about things:
- My review will probably go very well and I will get my promotion finally and a solid raise and bonus
- My work trips will be opportunities for me to spend some face time with my co-workers and get to know them more, and it will be fun to stay in a nice hotel, and get a break from my husband and furbaby for awhile, and order myself food and have an all expenses paid trip
- The meeting will go fine, and any questions I don’t know the answer to I can just say that and oh well if they think I am incompetent, are they going to fire me? Not bloody likely considering they haven’t fired anyone else for their incompetency.
I’m also suffering from a bit of boredom – maybe because the cold weather has returned and so it’s been rather unpleasant to be outside for more than just a walk around the block. Or maybe because Seth hasn’t wanted to go do anything. Well next weekend there is a chili cookoff going on in Ithaca, two hours away. We might go unless snow makes the roads too bad, which it might, it seems like it’s going to be snowing off and on for the next two weeks. This weekend I really have to take myself to some movies or museums or something or I will just be screaming with boredom from being stuck at the house.
I say stuck but it’s really myself who is keeping me stuck here, I could go any evening to a movie or museum or just for a damn drive if I wanted to, but I don’t for some reason. Well tonight it is very snowy and Seth wanted to go to the gym. As I said there might be snow on the roads any of these days since winter has come back. Oh well. Can’t I just watch movies at home?
The days sure do seem to drag and simultaneously go by too fast where before I know it it’s 9 PM and I think I should be considering taking a sleeping pill and going to bed.
Maybe I need to plan my days a bit better, it’s just difficult to have a schedule with this job which I like but also don’t like. It’s very freeing and flexible which is obviously nice but then I get into analysis paralysis, unsure what to do with myself half the time. I should structure my hours to be productive in any case, whether work related or writing or art or just something besides doom scrolling Instagram and Youtube and letting it rot my brain when I start feeling overwhelmed.
The overwhelmed feeling was huge today, especially when I got into the gym and there are 20 screens staring at me, all blaring the worst news imaginable, all bullshit, political, end of the world, catastrophic. No wonder a person would have anxiety. Maybe that is why camping feels so incredibly soothing to me or just being outside in general. I get to escape from the infernal human noise. It turns off with practically a click and I can just enjoy the peaceful silence, or at least the noises of nature, which are cheerful.
I started watercolor painting over the long weekend and I really want to continue doing it. It felt so soothing and meditative actually to find something simple to draw, and then outline it in pen, and then watercolor paint it. What I made actually came out quite good too. Seth loved it and told me he was proud of me for doing some art with my free time. I guess I stumbled upon a new hobby of sorts. Maybe I will try some of that tomorrow to soothe my nerves.
But for now, sleepytime tea and bed. Live to fight another day tomorrow.
Long weekend
Friday night:
Three day weekend, thank goodness. This week was pretty stressful at work and I really do need the extra day off.
Tonight with the wind chill it feels like 8 degrees, a huge change from the 60 degrees it got up to on Wednesday. We felt like it was spring for a second there but winter is back today. Luckily we didn’t have to leave our warm house except to go for a voluntary walk around the block, all bundled up. The next four days will be above freezing though, in the 40’s.
Everything else is fine, just work was draining. Hopefully this long weekend will revive me. Tomorrow we had it on the calendar to go to a Meetup with the discord people we met when we first moved here, they are all getting together for a super rare Meetup event. Seth doesn’t want to go now that he’s done with the group and has decided they aren’t really worth being friends with. I have to admit they do seem very clique and give off this vibe like it’s a group of misfits but if you’re not in the “popular handful” of misfits then you’re just not in, and yeah that can feel shitty and not worth it and they have basically just become yet more “acquaintances” who we don’t feel close to and it doesn’t seem like we’ll be able to get close to because no one wants to take the friendships “offline”. Or not very often at least.
It feels difficult to know what to do or what I should do when it comes to making friends. Especially now being married and not needing friends quite as much but yet I still do. But I don’t want to just have quantity over quality. I don’t know. Why does it have to be so complicated? I feel like it is for me because I have dysfunctional parents. They didn’t teach me how to be a normal human with normal relationships.
Sunday:
Today and tomorrow left of my glorious long weekend. Yesterday was spent mostly relaxing. We went to a brunch spot I wanted to go to, Petite Poutine where you can get specialty poutines with pulled pork, sloppy joes, breakfast stuff, just gravy and cheese curds. Makes sense since Canada is just across the pond (in our case the pond being Lake Ontario). Had a delicious brunch, and then stopped into a place where they sell house plants and it also doubles as a hipster/zoomer vintage store pop-up. It’s always funny to me what zoomers seem to think is “vintage” to me, it just looks like weird shit that may or may not be all that old, and it’s usually stuff that is definitely not useful, but is likely mostly for looks. Not really my thing. I like old stuff, and I even like antique or vintage stuff, but I only like stuff in general if it has a use. If it has a use AND looks nice, even better.
I ended up buying a ZZ plant, which I feel happy about. Every plant I have purchased thus far in my life, I have killed. A succulent I tried to replant ended up dying for whatever reason, the community garden didn’t work out because I never bothered to get seedlings in time and planting from seeds worked with low success, the home garden had some stuff in it that seemed like it was dying – probably didn’t water enough and also apparently to grow things you need fertilizer and special soil you buy at a store? There goes my idealistic dreams about just dropping seeds into bare ground and nature using magic to make things grow. Nope apparently it’s not that simple and work is actually required to make things grow – I guess that makes sense, nature is so random, and things grow where they grow because of pure random chance, it makes sense that not all soil is going to be good for all plants and you will have to do something extra to make nature do what YOU want it to do AKA grow vegetables or herbs or certain flowers.
This time though I am determined to keep this plant alive and help it thrive, my first indoor plant that I will keep alive. The main issue is that we don’t have a good place to put plants, especially since we have a very active and curious cat. Right now I am keeping it safe on top of the fridge, but I know it will need sunlight. I would love to buy a tall table specifically for it that I could put by the window in my office, and hopefully it would get enough sunlight. It only needs watering once a month, and needs to be in a pot with good drainage. I will also want to give it a bit of liquid fertilizer to help it out (a mistake I think with other plants I have killed, not giving any sort of added nutrients and trusting the soil to be enough). Now I see why we have these toxic algae blooms and environmental issues with farming…if we simply cannot grow things without all this added nutrients to the soil, and then rain is obviously going to wash the excess into our streams and ponds. But how else can we grow food? I suppose native americans did and they had good methods, but not enough for 8 billion people.
Anyway after the plant store we went to a new walking trail I wanted to check out, in a nature reserve north of us, about 25 minutes away. It was very beautiful and not too difficult of a walk, on a dirt path through some woods and past a giant field. I read that in the summer the field is very beautiful with all kinds of wildflowers and birds. In winter it was still beautiful but in a stark, brown dead kind of way.
Then we went to a bunch of different stores (my least favorite thing to do) Costco, Aldi, then finally Wegmans when the other two did not have what we wanted. We made Bahn Mi sandwiches for dinner with the leftover pork we had. They turned out okay. The pickled vegetables I got didn’t turn out to be as tasty as a really authentic bahn mi. I do honestly really miss the Asian food options I had out West. It just is not the same on the East coast. Especially Thai, Vietnamese, and ramen options are just not available and never as good as I’ve had in Portland. It sucks but I am trying to learn to make some of my favorite dishes at home. Some have come out pretty similar, but some are just impossible to recreate it seems.
After dinner I spent some time doing my nails while watching a Youtube video – Youtube has become my preferred TV at this point because:
1. It’s FREE
2. There’s unlimited content, literally anything you could dream of learning or watching exists on there
3. In some ways it’s like reality TV which I highly prefer to scripted TV – something about scripted TV just makes me feel bored or annoyed (maybe it’s because I’m a writer so if the writing isn’t very good it takes me out of it and I feel like I can’t pretend to believe what’s going on in the show). The Bachelor has basically become scripted TV at this point so I can’t stand to watch it anymore. They all say the exact same shit.
4. I’ve said this before but, I really don’t watch enough TV to ever justify spending money on it. There is not a single show that I want to watch badly enough to pay the stupid subscription prices. I’d rather just watch free videos on the rare occasion I want to watch something or have something on in the background
Then I decided to play some video games on the Switch. It’s been a very long time since I have wanted to play a video game, but something in me really wanted to play something. It’s a nice way to relax sometimes, especially the cozy games I got where it’s not too stressful and not scary at all, just cute and fun and relaxing. I got one game where you are a bear walking around smashing up human stuff with an axe and it turns the world back to pretty nature, like you are cleaning up the environment. Then we got another game called “cat cafe” that I had pretty much abandoned and never played again because I got stuck on the part where you have to build the cafe from scratch.
Well after playing the bear game for awhile, I opened up the cat cafe game on a whim, just because I really wanted it to work and wanted to be able to play it, and Seth was able to figure out the part that was confusing me. After that we got the cafe going and played for quite a bit, adopting kitties and taking care of them, and serving customers in the cafe and meeting villagers. It was actually really fun and I found myself feeling really happy and enjoying spending time together playing a nice, cute, fun game. It makes me happy in a way that Seth is perfectly okay with watching what I want to watch on the TV, or playing whatever game I want to play, and he’s not into playing all kinds of scary or violent video games by himself. If he ever plays a video game, it’s usually because I put one up that I want to play and he just joins in, or he watches what I want to watch. I’ve never really had that in a partner, and I know it might sound silly but it’s nice to be able to choose the media we consume. He does occasionally watch his own shows that I don’t care to watch, but he usually agrees with me that scripted shows have really gone downhill and they just usually suck.
All in all it was a very relaxing and nice day. We wanted to go look at a house too but realized we really need to get a realtor first. We’re going tomorrow to try and find one.
Today I’m going to meet up with Barbara and go to an artisan event, the type of thing that Seth really doesn’t like going to but I myself like – it’s more of a woman type thing anyway, mostly handmade jewelry and soaps and hair braiding, and I can get why Seth wouldn’t be much into it. I am though and I think it’s fun to look at the stuff people made, and it’s cool having a female friend to go with now.
Seth is going to be cooking us ribs in the smoker in the meantime while I’m gone, so I will have a nice fire to come home to and sit next to and do some reading. I want to do more writing of my stories too but I just haven’t gotten the chance or motivation to yet.
Money Well Spent
It’s been an exhausting week. Socializing has gone completely out the window, same with leaving the house. All I have the energy for lately is hiding under my blankets in bed with a book and trying my hardest to escape into whatever book I am reading.
Work has just been a real pain in the butt, nothing but putting out fires and dealing with problems and talking to people and stress. I know I shouldn’t stress. It’s not my company, or my money on the line, or even my projects. We have project developers to worry about that stuff. All I have to do is find out information and give information.
Anyway, it’s been stressful especially this week. I have felt brain-dead and entirely burnt out after work, or even during work where I seriously cannot get my brain to work or do anything more, it just goes offline, from having to think about so many different things at once.
Needless to say, my house became a wreck and the thought of cleaning literally anything felt impossible. I could barely keep up with doing the dishes and vacuuming, had new sheets to put on the sitting there for days, maybe a week because I just could not get myself to put them on, laundry to do. Felt like drowning honestly. I don’t know how people keep up with life sometimes when they have kids and full time jobs, and other things to worry about.
I found a different house cleaner, one who is a local person with her own cleaning company, not a big corporation business who is going to hire people and pay them the lowest they possibly can, this is someone who is conceivably getting to keep most of the money her business makes from cleaning and therefore she is more likely to be motivated to do a good job. She arrived early even, and was super nice and let me walk her through the house and explain what I wanted done. She got right to work and it took maybe about an hour and a half, just her cleaning, and oh my god what a difference she made in our house. When she politely knocked on my office door to say she was finished I walked out to my house smelling so nice and clean, the floors looked sparkling, the vacuum perfectly vacuumed, the bathroom cleaner than I have ever seen it, the kitchen cleaner than ever. She had even folded the towels in the bathroom and the blankets in our living room and tidied up a bit to make the rooms look neater. I was so shocked and thrilled. It felt amazing to have a clean house, and to get help in that way. At that point I was ready to pay any price for it. Her price for a regular cleaning was so reasonable too that Seth and I gave her a huge tip. I absolutely will be asking her to do regular cleanings for us. Once a month might be good for now. Just to know we have clean floors and rugs and a clean bathroom and kitchen…amazing.
I also ordered doordash for dinner, so look at me going against my own eating at home more rule. That has also somewhat gone out the window. Mostly because I have no appetite for anything we have in the house, and anything that I have a mind to cook, I don’t feel like cooking after I get done with work and my brain feels like mush in my head. Really hoping that next week or the next couple of weeks feel less stressful at work. It sucks to have stressful weeks, especially when it comes to work where it then messes up the rest of your day, because then it’s not just work, it’s like impacting my entire life.
It’s the catch-22 of getting a job that makes more money – yep I have more money now, but I also have a way more stressful job that sometimes makes it difficult for me to do anything else. I haven’t been writing my stories, haven’t had the time or energy. I have no desire to see other people after I’ve been dealing with people all day. It’s rough.
Now I also have Christy asking me very seriously if I will consider making the website for her non-profit that she started in memory of my brother. It feels like a lot of pressure. Feels like it might just be more on my plate for me to do. But at the same time, I don’t want to say no because I feel like I should be helping. I mean, she’s the one who did all the work taking care of my brother as he was dying and after he died, and then she did the work to create this non-profit and tournament that they run every year…she did all that, shouldn’t I be helping with it? In memory of my brother also? It’s not like they need me to run the site indefinitely or something, they just need it made, and none of them have any clue how to make a website. Honestly I don’t really either, but I guess I know enough to give it a shot and then Seth with his artist’s eye can make sure it doesn’t end up looking like total garbage.
I do want to help her, and anyway haven’t I been looking for somewhere to volunteer and use some of my extra time? Why not use my extra time to help Christy with this worthy cause – raising money for the brain tumor society in memory of my brother who died from that?
I think it just feels especially this week like I don’t have enough time or energy, but that’s not always the case. Just this week in particular. I have a three day weekend thank goodness, I really need it.
I have gotten a lot of reading done at least, since that seems to be the only thing I am capable of lately in order to calm my brain down.
Randomly was looking through old emails earlier today (trying to figure out if my sister was blocked from email or why it might be that she has never answered my email after pretty much harassing me using multiple phone numbers) and I came across the last email I received from my mother from 2018 where she is going on the most rambling rant I have ever seen. If I were to ever show in court any type of evidence for her being mentally unstable, I would show this email. She added several random people who I don’t know to the email, including a lawyer and someone who appears to have a government email address, and rambles for several paragraphs about her hostile living situation with a roommate (oh the drama, always), her physical ailments (fair enough, she can’t control that, but again…why is she talking about her personal health issues to random ass people via email, her lawyer of all people), and then ranting about the woman she worked for at the time, dissecting her entire character and personal flaws as she saw them. Eek.
Seeing the email again was like a slap in the face, or like a reality check I guess. Confirmation that I am correct in not wanting this crazy person in my life anymore, and anyone who decides to shame or berate me for that (the rest of my family who ignores her craziness), is also fucked up in the head and can fuck off.
Bushcraft
Playing with fire has become a serious joy. Even chopping the wood into smaller pieces with the chopping axe out back is fun. I had a bit of a hard time getting the fire going at first – it’s the hardest part getting it going well to begin with. Once you have it going well, maintaining the fire is really no problem, just stirring the wood pieces occasionally to get more air flow and adding another log on, making sure the fire is hot enough before adding larger wood pieces otherwise the fire will not have enough strength and get smothered. I’ve been learning a lot about it by doing and practicing and getting tips from Seth.
He was trying to do our combined taxes as married couple today but unfortunately my work must have screwed up my W2 and of course it doesn’t help that we lived in two different states in the year 2022 so it’s confusing. Next year’s taxes will be easier. Yet another reason to not move to a different state every year. I’ll have to just ask them to fix it tomorrow. We’re hoping that my taxes will greatly reduce the amount that Seth has to pay as an independent contractor. We’ll see.
My weather app says it feels like it’s 33 degrees out with the wind chill. It’s funny on the East Coast (at least up North) how the temperatures in winter feel colder than they actually are (because of wind chill) and then the heat in summer feels hotter than the actual temperature (because of humidity). Two extremes. Just checked Portland temperature and I guess it’s similar. Our temperatures for the next week look almost exactly like Portland. Mild and rainy a couple days but nothing below freezing.
We had been looking forward to all the winter activities (skating, sledding, skiing, ice fishing) but I guess winter doesn’t exist here anymore, at least not this year. Oh well, I’ll take it. Who’s to say that next winter might not be more severe anyway.
We went for a bike ride today…in February. I just can’t get over how crazy that is. I was remembering months of being trapped inside because of the painful cold. Lately, I can sit outside or walk outside comfortably all day. The only time I ever felt “stuck inside” was in high summer when it was way too hot. But luckily most of our summer isn’t like that, maybe just a month of it. I need to take those days and swim more this time around. Or kayak.
My Facebook should be permanently deleted in two weeks and I am so incredibly ecstatic. I might literally just never use Facebook again, that’s a possibility. But I’m already thinking of fun aliases I could use if I ever wanted to create a Facebook again and just keep it locked the fuck down, super private, never accept friend requests, and never post a single thing, give all fake names and fake location, fake job, everything. Or just give nothing. A profile picture of some old dude from history and a fake name. The end. Just for my own anonymous Internet usage. Oh how free it will feel.
Funnily enough, looking through my Instagram messages, my sister and my cousin had both known of my Instagram before but they have never chosen to stalk me on there like they have on Facebook. Maybe because they forgot Instagram exists and they only use Facebook. My dad recently sent me a screenshot of a post my sister made on FB (about her son turning 19) and I thought…great now I have to see this dumb bitch’s FB involuntary. But anyway it lets me know she’s still on that social media.
Just for good measure I went ahead and blocked all family members from my Instagram, which was only 3 anyway who ever ended up finding me on there, I did a double check of my followers too and removed anyone suspicious. My username on there is something strange, my photo is not me, and I don’t have my real name on there so it’s very unlikely anyone personal from my past could find me. Planning on essentially doing the same for any new Facebook I create and then using it exactly like I use Instagram, minus the posting I do on Instagram. Using it just for joining groups, finding out local stuff, seeing whatever I want to see and not seeing anything I don’t (family and people from my shitty past).
I actually love looking through all my old Instagram posts because it’s all fantastic memories of the last four years of my life and how wonderful it’s been.
My Facebook on the other hand is a depressing relic of my dead life from 2009 onward and I’m glad it will be forever erased.
The other day was our 4 year anniversary of meeting each other. We met in a British tavern in Portland four years ago, how crazy is that? I’m so glad and thankful. I know I got into a phase of complaining and judging my husband a lot, but holy shit am I glad to have met this man and to have him as my husband. I’m thankful and grateful and relieved to have found my life partner in him. Thankful that he accepts me for who I am – even 60 pounds heavier than when we first met good God.
Thankful that he’s so smart and capable and just a terrific partner to have as a teammate in this life.
I’m glad I took the time to get myself out and meeting more people and doing more things on my own, because it truly helped me realize what I have. Sure I could be alone, or worse, navigating the awful dating world as a bigger sized woman, but when I went out and essentially pretended I was single – meaning I just did things on my own, without worrying what Seth was doing – I discovered that I couldn’t wait to get home to tell him all about my adventures and the people I met. I never once felt a feeling of dread about coming home to him, it always felt happy and joyful like I couldn’t wait to see him and share my day with him.
Which tells me, our relationship is healthy and good, I just needed to get myself out of the damn house more and make some friends of my own and get my own hobbies going by myself, not rely on him so much to entertain or occupy me. He likes to be on his computer a whole lot. Oh well. If I ever want him to do something with me, he gladly does. We have amazing conversations every day. He answers my texts and calls when we’re apart. It’s a good marriage. He loves me and shows me he loves me. He cooks me things, shows affection, wants to cuddle, helps me with things, suggests fun things for us to do, goes to things I want to. He loves when I teach him things and I love when he teaches me things.
I love him so much. Sometimes I just need to appreciate what I have more, and honestly in a funny way going out into the world more does help me appreciate my husband more. Where else in the world do I have someone who loves me so completely and is there for me?
We of course are going to celebrate only our wedding anniversary from now on, but it was still nice to remember it together. Four years is a long time to be together, and I’m very proud of it and happy. I have no doubts that we will make it the rest of our lives together and be better for it. Our wedding anniversary is coming up soon anyway…May 27th… that’s only three months away!!! It’s insane. We will have gotten through our first year of marriage. I’ve heard it’s the hardest so I’m actually pretty relieved to get through this stage and I feel good that the difficult times have been gotten through.
It can be an intense feeling of anxiety wondering if you made the right choice, if you really want to deal with this person’s flaws and quirks for your whole entire life. It’s scary. But ultimately maybe it’s more about finding the balance between making yourself happy in your own life again first, and then also accepting the person for who they are and appreciating them (so long as no abuse is happening or blatant lack of respect or awful stuff).
It’s worth it to me. I have someone at home who is so reliable and steady and constant and loving. The rest of my life is up to me though. I’m starting to build one I love more and more. Finding little joys I never knew of.
I have so many books to read, it’s exciting and daunting but feels great. TV is a non-existent thing to me.
Work tomorrow. Bleh. Hopefully I can get stuff done and then make time for my own personal writing. Also going to an environmental volunteer thing tomorrow, just to at least see if I’m interested. Meet some other environmental folks. I need to start making the gym a priority again. It’s fallen behind because of my endless search for friends.
But this week I can make Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday all gym days if I wanted to and I probably should. I need to keep working out and at least trying to lose weight although it really doesn’t seem to be happening.
Social Life
Feeling really great about things right now.
I went to a comedy show last night by myself because I didn’t tell Seth about it in time and the tickets sold out. I was supposed to go with a Meetup group but when I got there it was super awkward and I couldn’t find the group and had to sit awkwardly in the front by myself. The comedians were really not that good and in general it feels like comedy is just weird nowadays…everything is politically charged and just weird. Not as funny. It was also so damn loud and bright and a sensory overload that I got a stabby migraine that has lasted 24 hours at this point. That’s not what I feel great about haha BUT I’m still glad that I went and that I am continuing to try things. That particular traveling comedy show I’m not really into, but it’s good to try things nonetheless.
What I feel great about is continuing my friendship with Barbara, building friendships with my writing group and the women I have met through that writing class, and going to this environmental volunteer group on Monday to maybe meet even more friends with similar interests. I met up with Barbara today after meeting with my writer friends on Thursday. We met up and went to check out three different used bookshops around the city as well as a hot chocolate bar that I heard about on Instagram at a local chocolate shop I wanted to check out as well.
It felt really nice to check out places I have had on my list to check out, and with a female friend who is also really into books and reading. Seth isn’t as into that kind of stuff so it’s nice to have someone else to do that with.
Just realizing I totally forgot to explain the whole friend situation. So the Monday after they cancelled on us, Barbara texted me and explained what had happened. Her and her husband had gotten into an argument that day and it was just bad timing. I felt so relieved that it was just that and not because they didn’t like us for whatever reason.
I got more information about it today when we hung out and she said that her husband was basically talking about moving to Seattle because his friend lives there and works for Google and keeps telling him that he could totally get a job there. She doesn’t want to move again so soon after moving to Rochester and anyway she said she really loves it here and they talk about how much they love it together too, so why move away so soon? She also knows nothing about Seattle and doesn’t know anyone there, doesn’t want to live in a big busy city again, is just finally making friends here, etc.
I 10000% could relate and I told her as much. We have similar husbands it sounds like, who have these wild ideas and speak out loud every idea they have, regardless of how serious or not serious they are about it. Half the time Seth is just saying things out loud like, “yeah maybe you could work for the Army Corps in Portland or California” or, “maybe I could build a pottery studio attached to our house when we buy one” and “Well, now would be the time to move somewhere else if you weren’t sure about your job…now would be the time to switch to the Army Corp…it’s going to be a lot harder to move once we buy a house…now would be the time to…”
All stuff that gives me anxiety just like it does for her because as I’ve said many times before, I’m sick of moving at this point. We moved to Utah and I expected to be there for some time, at least three years I was planning on living there, and I liked it well enough besides Seth’s complaining and sure it was a desert and I knew it wasn’t where I dreamed of living. But then we got the silly idea to move to North Carolina without ever visiting first and I think that’s what really did me in. Moving from Portland to Utah was hard enough, then moving again after less than two years across the country, and then moving AGAIN after 4 months…lordy it was too much on me. Losing friends also when we left Portland, then Utah, then NC. Losing doctors and therapists and whatever else.
I can totally relate to Barbara and the desire – maybe it’s a female thing – to be settled and to build a “nest” and to be stable, at least for awhile. Not saying we can’t ever move again, ever and we’re stuck here for life, but damn at least let us build our lives a bit and get the benefits of staying in one place for awhile. Some people stay in the same damn place their entire lives, they are born and die in the same exact place. We at least have moved around quite a bit and have experienced many different parts of the country. We have a good idea now of what we like and don’t like. This feels great, so why move again in the hopes of “something better”?
I told Barbara of our experiences in the PNW and how we loved it and everything but there are downsides to living in any big city, and especially Seattle and Portland have housing shortages and homeless issues to deal with. Also everything is super expensive, I mean I really just cannot fathom how expensive the food must be out there now when it blew my mind five years ago when I moved there. Rochester has everything we loved there, minus the negatives. The only way I could see myself moving out there again would be: 1. If Seth died and I no longer felt safe being this close to my family without him. 2. If either of us lost our jobs and it just felt impossible to find one here or find another remote/freelance job or 3. If somehow Rochester began to feel bad for some reason, or dangerous or boring which I doubt will ever happen, if anything I see this city getting better and better as more people move here because of climate change and gentrify the area.
The winters here are basically nonexistent now, which I never ever thought I would see in my lifetime. It’s just literally a non-issue anymore. We have no snow on the ground and honestly we’ve only had snow on the ground a handful of days the entire winter and it looks like the rest of February will go by with no snow and above freezing temperatures. It’s wild and I love it and the winter has felt like one long Spring. I’ll take it. Feels like Portland anyway so why move back there?
Anyway I could relate and sympathize with her having a spouse who seems to just have wanderlust and have ideas that she has to kind of pull down to earth a bit. I don’t want them to move either so I am biased of course but, yeah I get not wanting to move again when they just got here in August. Luckily for me Seth has pretty much stopped the moving talk and he really only does it in terms of if I wanted to, like if I hated my job so much I couldn’t stand it and wanted something else, he’s just saying he would be willing to move anywhere with me so I could find a job I love again and he promises he won’t complain this time. Which is sweet. It’s not that HE wants to move again, but he means if I wanted to we totally could.
I don’t want to though. I am happy here and I want to spend years here. YEARS plural. How many years? Not sure, but years. I want to find a doctor I like and a therapist and psychiatrist I like. I want to buy and own a house. I want to garden more this Spring/Summer. Swim more, camp more, bike more. See more plays. Concerts. All the things in Rochester. Build friendships with people I can actually see in person and talk to in person and do things with. Collect books.
We had a great time at the used bookshops and I got so many books for my bookshelf. I haven’t bought books in so long, and I’ve avoided it because of the whole moving a lot thing. I remember back when I had to move out of my parents house so long ago, over a decade ago, and I realized I had about three boxes full of books I didn’t want to haul around with me so I donated them all to the local library. Now at 33 I am collecting books again, so confident that they will stay put for a long time and even when we do have to finally move again (hopefully to a house we buy) I will be hiring movers and taking my sweet time.
Speaking of hiring, I found another cleaning company, local I think, and I have scheduled a cleaning for this coming Friday. I want to find a good cleaner so I can get the house cleaned at the very least monthly and not have to worry about it or feel guilty for not cleaning the damn house myself. I just hate cleaning, and there are so many things I would rather be doing, and we both make good money, with no kids, so why shouldn’t I pay someone else to clean for me? It’s honestly a struggle between the two of us to just keep up on daily/weekly tasks like dishes, cleaning Sedrick’s litter box, vacuuming, laundry let alone anything else that needs to get done like washing countertops and floors and bathroom and microwave, etc. I can’t keep up on anything extra that it takes to keep a house clean, I really can’t. I know I need help with it and so hopefully we can find people we like and who do a good job that I can pay. Having help just with the damn vacuuming would be nice let alone everything else they could do.
Spent way too much time painting my nails earlier – yes I could have been cleaning instead – painted them a purple with red shimmer and they look nice. Been keeping them shorter and also not buying any more nail polish, haven’t for months now. Going to just use what I have and enjoy them.
I think part of the problem too is that I was never taught how to clean, I really wasn’t. My mother is a mentally ill woman who never cleaned much to my knowledge except when I was a very small child. Not sure if it was the brain surgery or after she had her weird breakthrough when I was a kid and she started treating my dad like shit but either way, I can remember the basement being filled with dirty clothes all the time, from them just shoving the clothes down there but no one doing laundry. I was never taught, I never saw anyone ever clean the bathroom or clean anything in the house besides dishes. Maybe Seth’s family was the same. I genuinely feel at a loss for how a person is supposed to clean a house. I watch Youtube videos and I see them using spray and some kind of rag or towel but I have no idea what one is supposed to do with the towel after it gets dirty? What kind of towel am I supposed to use? And spray? It probably sounds pathetic, but it’s true. I didn’t even start vacuuming my floors regularly until I was in my 30’s.
I’m keeping the socializing – hopefully – to a minimum next week…because I have been getting a bit burnt out and not having enough “me” time or alone time. I guess in a way it’s good, it means I’m not lonely or bored anymore when Seth is busy by himself, but also it can feel exhausting and I do want to take more time to read and write by myself.
I’ve been getting more into writing, although haven’t worked on my stories in awhile, I’m planning on writing for awhile tomorrow. I submitted 3 stories to a local magazine, we’ll see if they accept any of them. I don’t have huge hopes but hoping maybe they don’t get that many submissions so mine stands out. I have to make a list of the magazines and journals accepting stories and just start writing basically. Get it going. It feels nice to have returned to my old passion, to have my job/science career just be the “day job” and put more focus into my creative passion instead. It feels right, and natural, like getting back to who I really am or something.
Fireside Chats
Had a lovely fire in the smoker firebox again tonight, not quite as long of a fire because Seth suggested we go out to eat and I was very onboard with that. We’ve been working through our freezer leftovers and made a serious dent in them, and I’ve gotten somewhat burnt out from leftovers and cooking really. I need to get groceries to make a few things I want to cook. I felt like we had earned a nice meal out together – we haven’t been going out to eat nearly as much, somewhat helped by the fact that many nights now we eat separately or I go out and do my own thing. It felt really nice actually to go out to dinner together. We went to a Mexican restaurant that has been on our “want to go” list and it turned out really great, I would totally go again. The beans and rice were soooo good and so was the enchilada and chips and salsa.
I got a bit of fire time before we went though. I felt very proud of myself because I was able to get it going completely without Seth’s help. I got the cover off the smoker, dragged the smoke stack out and lifted it onto the smoker, found the hidden screws and screwed it on, and then started a fire in the firebox. I am embarrassed by how many fire starters I had to use to get the damn thing going, but Seth came out and taught me how you really don’t want too much space between the logs. You want enough space for airflow but not too much space because the fire still needs enough heat to get he other logs going. Fire lesson learned. I’m hoping to be good enough to go solo camping on my own once the state parks open up in May.
Earlier today I had lunch with my dad. He drove all the way out here to meet me at a sandwich shop 8 minutes away from my house so that I could sneak out of work easily and spend an hour with him. I felt like it was really kind of him to drive all the way to see me (almost 90 minutes for him one way). I mean, sure he’s retired now and so I would somewhat hope he would make more of the effort to come out my way, but still. In my family that’s pretty huge for someone to put that much effort in to see me. Case in point, when I asked him why my aunt hadn’t come after all (he specifically asked me the other day if my aunt could come too) he told me that when he had called her around 10:00 AM, ready to head out, she had been just waking up and said never mind, she wasn’t awake enough or ready. He said that she probably didn’t quite realize that to drive to me in Rochester it was about an hour and a half drive. That’s kind of why I feel just as safe here as I did all the way in Portland, across the country. It may as well be Portland for as insular as my family is. They aren’t going to drive over an hour anyplace, let alone to come bother with me.
I was honestly very relieved and glad she didn’t come. She’s never been particularly kind to me or caring, and in fact she has been rather rude and mean to me many times in my life. She’s a coarse kind of backwoods type of woman who smokes and drinks like the majority of my family, and is rather loud and obnoxious and self-centered, wholly uninterested in me, again like most of my family.
Anyway the lunch with just my dad was really nice. We loved the sandwich shop and we walked across the street to another cute shop. He marveled at the nice neighborhood it was in, and asked if I lived close to that neighborhood and if it was a college town or something. I talked a bit about my work, and then I asked him how it was living with Karen now. He sort of griped and complained about her a lot which was unfortunate. Compared her to my mom saying, “Well you know she’s like your mother, she just has so much stuff.” which I listened to even though it sucks to feel like he’s always complaining about the woman he’s with but yet…doesn’t do anything about it and just kind of lives with it like a codependent martyr or something.
I guess her son just has so many issues now, with drug addiction, in and out of rehab, and a daughter who he never takes care of and Karen pretty much treats like her own daughter and like it’s her responsibility. Whereas my dad is left feeling like he just wants to enjoy his retirement with his partner, but yet they can’t enjoy their retirement and go do things he wants to do because she has this huge baggage attached to her side. She always has to take care of her grown adult son and granddaughter in some way. Almost like they are the family, husband, wife, and daughter, instead of the way those relationships should be in a healthy family system. I told my dad that it sounds like they are codependent in an unhealthy way and my dad 100% agreed and repeated what I said, that yes, they are indeed codependent and it’s unhealthy.
He knows that at some point he will have to give her an ultimatum or end the relationship if it doesn’t stop or get resolved. I really hope it does get figured out, for his sake, because I hate to see him get sucked into yet another unhealthy, drama-filled relationship that could cause more unhappiness than happiness. Although it does seem like they have a lot of times when they are happy together so I don’t know. I can only hope for him and not get myself too wrapped up in it or involved. Have to watch out for my own codependency issues with my dad. He mentioned that my sister had already agreed to watch his house and dog for him when he goes on his next trip, hopefully a cruise soon, and he said quote, “she likes the money.” I never know what to say to that every time he says it because I’m just glad she’s finally being asked to do favors for our parents instead of ME and if she needs the money, she can have it.
On a random note, while he was getting my birthday present out of his truck – a mug that says “finger lakes” on it – I noticed him on his phone and I saw the name “Katie J” or something like that on it, which is my mom’s name. Not sure if it was an email or a text or what but he stood there for a moment reading whatever my mom had said to him. I didn’t mention it, and neither did he. But it made me feel annoyed/irritated/disgusted/exasperated. I wish he would cut her off like I did. But oh well, as long as she doesn’t come around and he doesn’t ever speak about her to me (except to say Karen is like her in ways).
Besides my dad complaining about Karen though I felt like it was a nice time. It was nice to just walk around together, and it was so damn warm today, in the 40’s and sunny. Felt like a Spring day. We had sweaters on and that’s it. We talked about the architecture of the houses and how interesting they looked. I was sad when we got back to the cars and he said I should get back to work. I wanted to hang out with him more and talk some more. He said, “let’s not let this much time go by again without seeing each other, especially with you living so close now.” since we hadn’t seen each other since Thanksgiving, a little over two months ago. I understood what he meant and I do want to see him more too but I wanted to argue, “You hardly ever answer my texts anymore or call me!”
Case in point, when I got back home I texted him that it had been great to see him and I got no reply. I mean I get it, Seth’s parents don’t answer half the time because they are so busy and have each other, but my dad’s comment about not seeing each other often enough made me feel defensive I guess.
I suppose I could always try to call him more instead of texting, and I could ask him to hang out more. Maybe I should. Once the weather starts warming up we can go to more parks together and stuff and it will be easier to drive all over.
Work has been going well this week, much more relaxed and slow again. It’s a relief. I need some slow weeks to prevent burnout. It’s also just genuinely a lot of information I have to learn and know and so it helps to have days when I have the time to just do research and teach myself stuff and the freedom to do so.
I have plans tomorrow night, Friday night, and maybe Saturday with Barbara. Glad I took the rest of the week as just chill days to have by myself/with Seth. He’s been more affectionate lately, wanting to snuggle more and be around me a lot more. I tell you, it just goes in cycles, where he gets in modes where he’s very robotic, not very affectionate, talking to me in monotone, as if we’re strangers or at best just roommates/friends, and then he goes back to loving mode where he wants to be in the same room, and smiles at me, and talks sweetly and is just in general acting more like a loving husband. It’s weird and I have no clue what causes it or what to do when it happens, and he seems to not be aware of it whatsoever when I try to bring it up so I don’t know. We might have to go to therapy for it at some point, but I guess for now it seems okay. I’m also able to stop paying so much attention to what he’s doing or not doing and pay more attention to myself and what I want in any given moment on any given day.
mydysfunctionallifeblog 