The way I see things...

Hello Stephen,

How was your Monday?  I don't know about you, but it seems to me that Mondays are always a bummer.  I don't know why that is, but I haven't had a really GOOD Monday in years.  In fact, I dread Mondays.  I mean, it wasn't a TERRIBLE day, but it was rather annoying.  Glad it's almost over now.  I'm tired.

Ya know what I hate?  I really really hate mixed messages...and they are everywhere.  "Let's celebrate LGBT day!" then "WHAT?! You're a LESBIAN? Well young lady, you are now EXPELLED FROM SCHOOL." (that was a headline, regarding a Connecticut "Christian" school who just had a special LGBT day, and then a top student, in her final year, announced that she is a lesbian, and they slapped her with an expulsion).  "Those people" can go be LGBT in OTHER communities, in OTHER schools, with OTHER kids, but not THEIRS apparently.  It's ludicrous.

Women have to be gorgeous all the time, sexy, skinny, with puffed out lips, big boobs, slender figure, long legs, extra long eyelashes, the right lipstick, the right hairdo, the fingernails perfect, the shoes and feet all pedicured...and yet, the men who marry women like that will tell them, "you don't need makeup, I love you for just who you are, plain and simple, without all that stuff."  But then, they go out and buy Playboy magazine.  And nearly every magazine for women has ONE or more articles about how to lose weight.  Along with lots of great RECIPES to COOK and EAT, of course...it's like going to a strip mall to discover that your new Weight Watchers location is right next door to an ice cream shop.

So tonight, when Pete gave me yet another double-standard mixed message, it irritated me a great deal.

The whole point of having both of our mom's live with us, is to give them both a better quality of life.  His mom is 90, and she won't have to live out her days sitting in a nursing home, lonely and lost.  My mom was lonely and lost for a long time after being divorced twice, and now she no longer has to live in a nasty unfinished basement in Michigan anymore.  She can start over, just like HIS mom is starting over, both to live a better existence---and neither of them ALONE---we're family, we're supposed to want to help each other grow, and expand our horizons together. That was the whole point of this little set-up, and frankly, when he gives me shit about it, well, I want to give him some shit right back.

"Heyyy, here's an idea, why don't you sign up for this school to learn Interior Design," he says, but then, when I go out and find nice furniture, or nice room decorations, or I want to paint or do something for my mother, well, that's another story.  "You buy too many decorative things, we have nowhere to put them,"(it doesn't dawn on him that we can STORE certain things and especially SEASONAL things, and RE-USE THEM every year)....or, "We don't need that piece of furniture," (even though it may be nicer than the piece we'd replace it with, and most likely free or very inexpensive), or "I don't want to paint anymore IN THE HOUSE, but the BARN is another story..." (our guest room, my office, his office, my mom's living space---HIS mom's living space----none of those rooms have been painted yet...but the BARN is more important apparently...even though NOBODY LIVES IN IT, and it's only used for STORAGE OF SEASONAL DECORATIVE ITEMS)!!

So WTF???  I'm not supposed to want to replace an old raggedy white couch that belonged once to his mother---that MY mother was BORROWING until she got her OWN furniture, but never SAT on the thing because it has a fowl odor from Pete's SON who used it for several months at the old house---which now has cat scratched arms, and no legs on the back----but HE can't seem to part with 2 very ugly hutches in the barn that are covered in dust and grime, not even being used.  It drives me up the friggin' wall, all the double standards and the selfish bullshit that I get dealt by him around here.

I found a brand new, matching, gorgeous couch and love seat at the Goodwill on Saturday....the couch was $25, the love seat $20----I mean it's PERFECT---I looked it over with a fine-toothed comb, no rips, no stains, no cat scratches, all the legs were there, every cushion was perfect, there were even decorative matching pillows!!  FOURTY FIVE BUCKS?!  SOLD!!!  My mom has wanted her own NICE furniture ever since my dad divorced her and took everything they had accumulated together for 24 years of marriage.  That was when I was 22 years old, by the way.  So, for 21 years of her life, she has wanted to own a nice living room set, a nice bedroom set, a nice dining room set....ya know?  She's been wanting to start her life over after her second divorce for over a decade, but has been living like a hermit in a messy basement with next to NOTHING nice of her own for 8 years of that decade.

I don't think it's too much to ask, to give my mom something NICE, when she is starting over with NOTHING, do you??  HIS mom has all of her Ethan Allen furniture and antique stuff with HER, but my mom has a crappy broken BORROWED couch and a chair that isn't hers either.  COME ON.  I even called Pete to ask him if I could buy this nice furniture for my mom FIRST, before I told my mom about it, and he said, "Go ahead and buy it."

So, I bought it, and we picked it up on Sunday. We had planned to put the furniture in my mom's basement living area (which is WAY better than where she used to live, because the basement in our house is FINISHED, not like my sister's), on Sunday evening after his play matinee ended.  But, he decided instead to go out to have some food with his friends.  So, okay, I'm flexible.  I asked him this morning if he would help me with my mom's furniture sometime today---he decided to work from home---and we were all here all day, until I left at 1:45 for an appointment.  He said, "Maybe later."

Well, of course he had to WORK, so we didn't get to it before then, and he had to take his mother to get her cast off her arm, but after that, we got home, I brought Chinese food for everybody, we ate, and then I said, "I'll go down and get the room cleared to bring in the new stuff for my mom."  He went upstairs, I helped move stuff around and cleared out a path (we still have lots of unpacked boxes), so that we could easily get the couch and love seat in.  I went upstairs to tell him I was ready for him to help, but he was on the phone.  So, I went back downstairs, and did some measuring, and a little while later, I went back upstairs again...he was still on the phone.  About a half hour later, he comes down, "Now, what did you want me to do?" ---as though he hadn't heard a word I had said about it at all.

So the whole time, he's bellyaching and griping and whining about replacing a couch "which is unnecessary," while we have "so many OTHER important projects around here to get done..." (making me feel as though my mother is not important...but if it was HIS mother, ohhhh he'd be busting his ass to make it happen lickety-split).  I finally said to him, "Pete, what exactly did you have planned for this evening? What is so important that you can't help me for a half hour to do this?"  He stammered and said, "I haven't been able to WORK very much today, I still have a JOB you know..."

By the way, he's currently down in the t.v. room, watching cartoons.

Yeah.

Anyway, the point is, my mom DESERVES to have nice stuff to call her OWN, JUST LIKE HIS MOTHER DOES---nice new things that NO MAN will ever take away from her like the 2 others that she married did.  She DESERVES to start her life over, and dammit it makes me very upset that he gripes and whines and complains the entire time, (while my mother is sitting RIGHT THERE in her bedroom, hearing every word of it, feeling like shit), and it was all I could do to keep my tongue civil---I was about ready to yell my head off at him----but, for the sake of my mom, who already feels like a total burden and in the way, and not exactly welcome all the time, well, it would not have helped the situation one bit, so I kept quiet.

But we busted our asses first thing this morning to take HIS mother to the AAA office to get our names put on her car title, removing hers, as a "gift" so that she won't have to pay car insurance anymore on a car that she can no longer drive herself.  (We're trading that stupid Mercedes in, to get something nicer and newer, and bigger).  But he made sure that was #1 top priority today---HIS mother.  Not mine.  We wait until the end of the evening, after dinner, when there's a lull around the house, to help MY mom.  And still he bitches and moans about it the entire time.

We ran into a snag---which is why Pete was being such a woose about it---because HIS mother's stupid ugly old broken down couch is super HEAVY, and 85 inches long, and won't FIT out the stupid doorways to the garage with all my mom's stuff "in the way."  Hello??? She is LIVING down there!! He picks up boxes, and slams them down, not caring if he just broke something of hers, because he's getting all flustered and "it's almost 9:30, you know that don't you? It's late, I'm tired...whine whine whine."

All I tried to do, with HIS agreement AND my mother's, was to give her something NICE, to make her basement apartment a very DECENT place to live.  I'm TRYING to be an Interior Designer too.  The best place to start, it says in all the handouts, books, brochures, etc., is in your OWN HOME.

His "we have so many OTHER projects to do around here that are more important," makes me so mad I could spit nails.  IT ALL HAS TO GET DONE, is the way I see things.  He is selfish, and he doesn't EVER want to do anything that I want to do, when I want to do it, and frankly that pisses me off.  It's like he wants me to just be a witness to HIS life, with HIS friends, going to places that HE chooses, doing the things HE wants---he just wants to be married to a cheerleader, or a trophy wife, not somebody who has a brain and stands on her own two feet.

He's never known anyone like me before, so he is clueless.  Absolutely clueless.

He finally decided that we are not moving the couch.  So I had to clear a wall of boxes away to make room for the ugly ass broken couch, just to store it a few weeks "until his kids get here" and he can have THEM help move it---but that made my mom say to me, "Well that's just great, isn't it MUCH BETTER NOW?"  And that's when I said, "Ya know what? I am going to shoot myself in the face with a bazooka."  At those moments, I feel like I can't please ANYBODY, and that makes ME feel that I can't please MYSELF EITHER, and at that point, I just want to jump off the nearest bridge and get it over with.

I get so fed up with trying to make people happy, who can't seem to BE happy.  Ever.  I feel like I'm a stupid hamster wheel, going round and round, trying to make everybody happy, doing everything around here like a house-slave all day, trying to make sure Florence's bathroom is clean, the laundry is done, the dishes are clean, the kitchen is nice and clean, the floors are vacuumed----and the decorative aspects of our home are NICE, tasteful, and decent.  All I want, is to be HAPPY in this house, but I have YET to feel that.  We've been here 5 months, and we've had nothing but stress, annoyances, irritation, aggravation, and miserable feelings from both mom's, AND me.  This is NOT what I had in mind.

It makes me feel like shit, knowing that even though he OKAY'D this whole thing, he just had to RUIN it for me and my mom at the same time.  He sabotages things just like his mom does.  I don't like that one goddamned bit.  I won't tolerate it.

The whole point of getting into Interior Design is so I can make a house a HOME, with nice things, decorative things, pretty things, as inexpensively as I possibly can.  So do I take the class, or forget about it, do I learn this shit, or do I toss it all into the garbage, do I find nice things to replace my old, worn out stuff---I've had my couch and love seat for nearly 15 years now, I'm so sick of it I could puke----or do I just let it fall apart like his mother's stupid ugly broken couch?  If it's so goddamned WONDERFUL, then let's put it in HIS mother's living space and let HER use it.  (You KNOW that wouldn't happen).

So, the double standards, the selfishness, the "I've got more important things to do than you," "I've got a JOB you know...unlike YOU...." (that's what I hear at the end of that sentence, even though it is unspoken), "My mom is more important than YOUR mom..."  it just gets me so upset, I could scream.

...........I hate double-standards, I hate mixes messages, and I hate selfish people.

Why the HELL I ended up marrying one of them, I'll never know.  I wonder sometimes just how long we will be together.  If it continues like this, I can guarantee I won't stick around much longer.  I deserve better than that.  If he can't recognize that, well, that's his problem, and it will be his loss.

Thanks for letting me vent.  Being married sucks sometimes.

Bye for now.

Love, Rebecca