Green Jean Granny

It’s been so wonderful having Steve with me. He was 5 hrs later than we’d talked about. I totally cried when I first saw him – but if you think I was happy, you should have seen the dogs. Rory has grinned ear to ear the whole time. Scotty raises up on his back legs for hugs, and Jackie waits till all is calm then jumps up and does the little “I’m gonna get you” game he and Steve played for all 3 yrs before we got any other dogs. They are so happy right now and I wish I had set up the phone to record when he came through the door.

We got all kinds of little projects done. The toilet is fixed. The sinks are “weaseled” The broken window is replaced. There is foam in the basement window. The clothesline is sunk properly. The wiper blades are replaced. The chimney is checked out. We have bed sheets and each dog has a floor blanket for their beds – like they laid in their own beds lol He brought the christmas ornaments, a new christmas pillow and my glass cube that all my precious things go in – He brought the lawnmower and will leave it with me and if all goes well, he’ll mow the yard and we’ll string Christmas lights at the front door. Then tonight G’s college orientation happens.

I’ve had to stop myself from keeping on about the mess – G and I take our shoes off at the door and hubby walks across this beige carpet with his mud and bits of doggy do0 from the outside projects. He’s messy. I married him messy and knew he was when I first started dating him back in 1994. I just had to take a minute to put it into perspective. 5 months without him has let me move into my compulsively neat brain hemisphere lol OF COURSE, WE ARE DIFFERENT. He brought me dirty clothes and old linens that we were going to donate and all the winter layering things we used for the newspaper routes. I now have all the jeans that were going to be donated too. Good thing since my 26’s and 24’s are falling off baggy. (I’m wearing a pair of 22’s this morning.) I’ve finished 6 loads of laundry and still have one in the washer, one in the dryer, and one to wash. I’ll be looking up craft projects from old jeans after he goes home. January’s bills will likely be a challenge.

Last night we played trivia in a fully packed restaurant and had to sit outside in the fog next to a patio gas heater to score seats. I knew that wouldn’t be good for me, I’m not used to it anymore. I’ve got the croupy cough happening this morning so I’m sipping my Braggs ACV, lemon juice, honey with ginger and cinnamon this morning. We played at 3rd all the way through the contest and would have won had we flipped our first and second answer choices on the final. The others were correct. People came over to tell us how well we’d done playing as a 2 man team – even though we ended up in 7th place. Once Steve is here, he’ll dominate at this place. It will become our weekly outing. It’s got good food too 🙂 He’d probably host for Team Trivia except if he did he’d have to stop playing and I don’t see that ever being possible 🙂

So we have today. A few more things he’ll want to do; another thing we BOTH want to do; and loving on the dogs and coaxing G out of his room are on the agenda. The plan is to get him here by mid-January. He’s finally going to rent that storage building and move our good things out of it and he will try to make a couple turn around trips with cats. I’m still going to try to rehome the outside males once they are here. We need a place with a barn for 5 – they can be split up. They are 8-10 yrs old and all fixed. No kittens. Ruby, Cindy, Patches, and Maybellene can live in one big bedroom for the most part – I won’t be the only person to ever have a cat room 🙂

I want to go wake him up so badly – but he’ll have that drive and have to go straight to work in the morning. He’s going to need all the sleep he can get so I will restrain myself  – This is a day that can creep very slowly by and make me very happy.

I’m impatient. I want him here with me and he’s busy loving me and trying to make me happy by fitting in all that he can into the car. He’s been delayed by packing my things into the car and I am screaming internally that they are THINGS and all I want is him.

He’s finally said the words that he’s moving forward with culling his belongings and he knows he’s going to have to let the house go. He is in too deep a hole to climb out of by himself. He said it’s a shame because it should have been more income for us as a rental or getting it sold, but he’s not seeing it happen and that’s had him hurting. I think that’s why I liked that meme I found “Don’t make a home in your pain.” We have a house, we have an income, we need to move forward.

And I need him on the road because I am a jealous wife. I am jealous of his sleep, his time spent on anything besides me right now. What a bitch I am in my head – I have made up my mind to love him in the very best way I can while he is here with me – I want him to KNOW beyond doubt that he is missed and needed and longed for, and necessary to our lives. We are suspended in time waiting for him and no one is living – not him, or me, while we are apart. I need my other half.

Broken record much?

He’s coming. He’s better, over being angry. I can’t wait. I want to drag him into bed and keep him there and we have obligations OUT of bed! I love this man so much and he can’t stay yet. I hope I don’t spend the whole time crying.

Hubby is coming Sunday night and leaving on Wednesday morning. I had to talk to his boss so there was enough notice given. He’s bitching a hundred miles a minute. I am so afraid he will back out on the trip and claim lack of funds. Of course there is lack of funds! When you are 5 months back on house payments and have a title loan on a broke down truck, and have to rent a car, OF COURSE there is lack of funds and the 3 days off work will hurt BAD. But things have come together for the trip to happen. He is complaining how he can’t lay the seats down to bring the cats. He’ll miss them too bad. I’ve forgotten what’s left behind besides my guitar, sweaters, christmas ornaments and picture remnants and can’t even make a list of what I want him to bring. My herb books are with him, some yarn, I could use the axe and my gardening tools – the lawn mower…but bringing those things in a car aren’t feasible. So guitar, ornaments and winter clothes. If he doesn’t make the sacrifice and come, I’m not going to hold my breath anymore. I will cry a lot – a WHOLE lot, but it’s his lack of drive – I am going to short me and G half our grocery money for December to give him gas money. I want to be EXCITED! Happy! and instead, I feel like I’m the only one excited because he is angry, complaining, and depressed and couldn’t even talk to me on Thanksgiving through his attitude. That hurt. I’m sorry he had to work too late to have a dinner with his brother. I’m sorry they eat at noon. I’m sorry he was so tired. But nothing has changed. He’s always thrown newspapers and that job has fucked up every holiday, EVERY holiday and EVERY plan we ever made for 24 yrs. Where was the surprise? He could have asked them to keep a plate on hold for him and run over this morning to get it and given hugs before going home. It’s what I would have done if a TG plate was important…but I’m not Steve. I’d have said fuck that house and left it and begged and borrowed to get here with people who love and want me. If you think you are begging anyway, get it over with and DO something! So here I am, projecting based on his attitude. Please GOD, prove me wrong this time! Put a fire under him and make him come!

Seems the way out of discussing this situation is to give me two-minute check ins once a day. He’s sick and doesn’t feel like talking. I have lump in the throat-itis myself. I hate that I can’t stop this momentary crying bullshit. Then add Paris, Japan, Beirut, Africa; crap I am so raw emotionally. I am trying to take care of myself. I left the house for conversation and to hang in Joyce’s shop yesterday. A baby was there who was sick and vomiting. Sigh… I do not need sick on top of everything else. Crossing my fingers and drinking herby stuff for prevention. All I can do is keep pumping my head with “I can do its.”

Nurse Joyce used her anatomy skills yesterday to touch my neck where the vertebrae control my shoulder, arm, neck and jaw muscles-nerves. Just as I was afraid it would be, my degeneration is involved. Pain’s not going anywhere. Another shit added to the list.

The dogs are attentive. G’s being sweet. I’m really trying and I think that’s the problem. I don’t feel like trying. I’m freaking angry and I’m hurt. Where is the fight for us and our life? Stuck in the house sick.

No matter. I’m fighting. I’ll have gas money for the guys who agreed to help with our cats and personal stuff, after the next check comes. G’s paperwork is sent to the college and we can ask for financial aide now. Even though things feel like baby steps, there have been a hundred of them! I got emotional over a pic my daughter shared showing an 800+ dollar dinner tab in Vegas and I fought being angry over that, too. I make do and they have so much and I fight being jealous – they deserve their good life.  I don’t want anything less for them. I just want MORE for me. I’m such a selfish bitch.

end note: after posting this, an email hit my box… If you don’t want the Bible verse, click off now…

Philippians 4:19. And my God will supply all your needs according to his riches in glory in Jesus Christ. Timing these days is amazing. Reminders are everywhere. I have so much to be thankful for, SO VERY MUCH.

I told Steve to stop putting things off this morning. Stop complaining about HOW people help him and be thankful they are helping him.  Things are improving and he can’t see past the rain. I hate saying things are on him to fix, but they are. If he had asked for help at any point, he’d of not gone through most of the things that have hurt him so badly since we’ve been apart. He screamed at me and hung up on me. It’s silent treatment time again. So I wrote him an email.

<<<

I sent it and have fought all day going into his email and deleting it because he hasn’t read it. I know he knows it’s there. because he opened a baseball stats email.I know he’s not talking to me AGAIN. I’ll take whatever he throws on me if he will just get it out and start DOING something. I’m going to release this though and I won’t be calling him. He will have to reach out to me. I want him to, but if he doesn’t, I’ll live with it. It will be hard, but I WILL LIVE – I’ve spent 22 yrs waiting on him – he doesn’t realize how his inaction affects us all.

Got everything I needed to accomplish today, handled.

The $1,600 utility bill The city sent me, was knocked down to $297. (I just had to keep my cool. There was no way it was even possible for the bill to be that high…even with ALL the services under one account) The Food Stamps were switched to my SS# so we could use them. I am totally thankful for every person I talked to today. Ms. C at Social Services, young Ms Mandy at the City offices – bless you both for having the ability to get things done! G and I are fine as we wait for this months FSs to kick in.

Next month will be so much better.

Steve called at about 5:30 to give me bad news. He was stranded again. The truck had given out for the 14th time I think. I listened to him tell me where he was, how lucky he’d been to have recognized what was happening, and how he’d gotten onto a side street before the power gave out completely. He was just letting me know before he called the tow truck. I told him how sorry I was AGAIN, how I wished I could help, and asked him to let me know when he was home and safe.

An hour later he called me. The tow truck driver had let him off on a cross street and he’d walked home. He’s getting to be very friendly with this young man who comes so often. I listened to hubby complain about how incompetent the mechanic has become and how he doesn’t understand why he can’t fix the truck completely. He then moved on to how depressed and alone he is and how he just wants to get it all over with and die. I almost screamed at him I got so mad. I’m so tired of hearing how he wants to die. He scared me a bit ago with that talk and then almost 3 days of ignoring my calls – I called his brother to check on him because I didn’t know if he was ok or not. I told him to stop it. He had a full night sleep ahead which his body needed – a new morning was coming with new chances of things going right and a new slate to do his best on. If he died G and I would still need to situate the cats and get the household items and worry with settling things in GA AND we’d have the sad example of a suicide for yet another generation of Paschal’s. I told him I’m sick of hearing how he wants to die. Honestly I understand. But if he doesn’t start PUSHING forward instead of waiting while things happen to him, I don’t know how he’ll ever get here.

I KNOW this hasn’t worked out how we planned but it’s no one’s fault. It’s just time and chance. We could have chosen several things to do with the disability money and we decided to move from an increasingly bad area – to buy a house and rid ourselves of house payments. We thought we could rent the GA house for income to add to my disability and his pension, and have enough to make it. We also chose North Carolina; even Rocky Mount. We chose it together whether he likes to admit it or not. I really want to shake him. Maybe he won’t get the best deal on a car since he’s choosing one while stranded in the living room – but his brother has said he’ll help him get another. Problem is, it’s gonna take time and he’s stranded AGAIN. Don will probably help him catch the house payments up too which Steve will wait till the last second to ask for. His pride is a tiring burden for me to help him bear. I  need him to lay it down. He’s either got to lay it down, or he will loose everything.

Sometimes I wonder if he’s going to give up and not come here. His new “understanding” is that it will be in the new year before he can get here. Well it’s not MY understanding. I’m going to figure out how to rent a van and get what I can and at least my inside kitties. I need a lawn mower and hedge trimmer and my big glazed pots and my boxes of books and my kitchen chairs. I want my husband here. How many ways can I say it? His stress is not just his. I am trying my best not to complain. If he doesn’t ask for help, he’ll have to come here with nothing. I can live with that. I hope he can too. I WANT him to get through this. I want us to be important enough to him that he will do whatever it takes to succeed.

And there’s the gramma voice – want in one hand, spit in the other and see which gets filled the fastest. Yep, it’s another day.

I called him this morning to check in and he fought crying. He’s in such a bad place, shame on me for getting mad at him. He’s stuck – literally. He doesn’t have a car. He doesn’t have a physical ride to any place. He’s 60 f-ing yrs old and hurting. He’s not got a fridge. He can’t work without the car and he’s flat broke. And here I am wanting to include him in our lives when his own is all he can manage. Just shit. Smile on, right? It will get better, right? I fucking miss him and he can’t even talk to me.