Anniversary Redux

So several weeks ago, hubs and I discussed the horrible anniversary and we both agreed to a do over.  We were going to pick another day and make pretend it was our anniversary and try again.

Believe it or not this one turned out WAY worse than the first one.

Me (a little over a week ago):  Well the kid is going away this weekend so Saturday would be a great day for our Anniversary Redux.  Let do dinner, possibly a movie but generally make a point of spending the day doing stuff together.

Hubs: (on Thursday night after I had an IV and was severely brain fogged): Hey, can I go out to the movies with my guy friend on Saturday night?

Me: Sure.  (I very rarely say no to these requests since it isn't fair to lock him up in the house just because I'm sick.)

Friday, Me: Hey!?!?!  We were supposed to go out for our anniversary on Saturday.

Hubs: Yeah, but I asked you about the movie with J. and you said okay.  I just figured we could go out on Sunday instead.

Me: But kid will be back then.

Hubs: He is old enough.  He can feed himself.  (We usually always have family dinners.)

Saturday comes and I'm fuming mad.  Hubs tells me that the sewer is backed up and that we have to get a repair guy in there to clear the line that goes from the house to the street.  This is 3pm.

I get on the town local's Facebook page and ask who should I call.  Turns out the town will come and fix it for free.  I tell hubs and he calls and gets an answering service.  4pm we get a call back.  Will be there in half an hour.  Sure enough he shows up about 4:30pm.  Hubs is out buying me a sub for dinner.  I show the guy the pit in the backyard that accesses the line to the street.  The pit is almost 3' deep but is full to the brim with brown water and smells disgusting.  He drags his gear over and asks me for an outlet for his gear.  I get the outdoor outlets working and plug his equipment in.  He starts work.

Hubs gets back hands me my sub; goes in the backyard and hands the guy the last of his cash (the service itself was free); comes back in and raids my wallet for his night out with his friend.  Oh and he is going to see the new science fiction movie in 3D that I would just love.  He leaves.

I eat my sub.  I keep checking on the worker.  Keep asking him if he needs anything.  He needs an extension cord so I run and go find that.  When he plugs in his gear, it pops the breaker.  I have to run into the garage, find the breaker and try to reset it.  (At this point I knew I was cooked.  I have severe CFS and here I am pretending that I'm a normal person.)  I run back out to the deck and still no power so I take the extension cord and run it from the kitchen out to the deck so that he has power and the cats can't get outside.  I go back to watching TV and the cat falls asleep on top of me.

About an hour later he knocks on the door and says he can't clear it so I go out into the yard with him for a chat.  I call hubs and ask him if the pit was full when he dug the shit out of it earlier.  "No."  So I tell the guy and we both decide that maybe the mainline in the road needs clearing out.  He leaves to get another guy to help him out.

By 6pm on the day of my anniversary redux, I'm staring at two town sewer trucks in the middle of my street flushing the main sewer line.  My entire house smells of sewage even though nothing actually backed up into the house itself.  I'm talking to the cat because I'm in the house all by myself.  Back to watching reruns of Elementary.

7pm and I'm on the deck watching the two guys trying to clear out the line from the house to the street.  They need a garden hose and running water.  Off I go to the shed.  Drag out the lawnmower so that I can get into the shed.  Drag out the hoses.  Untangle one and hope that it doesn't leak.  Drag it over to the faucet.  Get it hooked up and turned on.  Drag it over to the far side of the deck.  Untangle it three or four times so that water will actually go through it.  Place it away from the power strip so that the guys don't get electrocuted.  I collapse on one of the deck chairs.  One of the guys asks where hubs got to.  I told him he went off to the movies.  Stunned the guy asked me "You mean he left you here all by yourself to deal with this?" and he didn't even know how sick I am.  Then the whole thing struck me: this was supposed to be my anniversary redo and I'm here breathing in sewer stink helping the workers while able bodied hubs is off watching a new scifi movie with his friend.  What the F is wrong with this picture!?!?

In the irony of all ironies, I'm again eating a meatball sub on my "anniversary" and smelling sewage, just like a month ago.  Only this time I'm alone.  At least I'm not in a sports bar this time and the town sewer workers turned out to be really nice guys.  Hubs on the other hand....  What in f'n hell!?!

I'm done.  I give up.  I'm not planning anything.  I don't want to go out.  I don't give a crap.  If he wanted to take our anniversary redo seriously then he would have never gone out with his friend.  He managed to place the whole thing on my shoulders claiming that I gave him permission to blow it off.  Then me, the sicko, got to stay home with the sewer backup exerting way more energy than I have spoons for while he goes out.  I'm vacillating between being really angry and not giving a shit anymore.

Strangely we are getting along really well.  Probably because I didn't pop a cork and he got to do what he wanted.  In the meantime, I feel vaguely used and slightly depressed.  Oh and I found a gorgeous loft in Chelsea.

Christmas Card Blues

Christmas has never really been a great holiday for me.  My dad would often lock himself in the bedroom and stay drunk for the entire three days we spent celebrating.  My sister, mother and I combated this by trying really hard to support each other and make each other happy.  Since we emigrated from the UK to the US, we had no relatives near us to celebrate with.  Parcels and cards crossed the ocean but transatlantic phone calls were expensive and notoriously hard to connect (we would sit at the phone dialing and redailing the numbers until it would finally go through) so for the most part we were on our own.

Don't get me wrong, as long as dad was locked away for the duration, the holiday was quite nice.  We baked together, went caroling with our friends from school, went to a neighbor's party every year and bought each other the best presents we could afford.  I do have a lot of good memories from that time period.

Then marriages happened and this broke our little gang up.  We had to travel all over the state to visit all the different families.  Over the years this settled into Christmas eve with hub's family, Christmas day by ourselves and Boxing Day with my family.  It worked great until hub's family had a monumental blowout and everyone stopped talking to each other.  Then shit got weird.  And lonely.  Things deteriorated even more when I got in a fight with my mom and sister and they stopped talking to me for a few years.  

Due to hubs being a sound guy, he was inevitably working during the holiday season so he wasn't around to do anything.  My mom and sister moved far away so I couldn't see them anymore.  So no more going out to do Christmas stuff.  I wasn't near anyone and we were barely speaking so I didn't know what presents to get anyone.  I didn't get to go to parties.  No more wrapping presents with my sister and mom until the wee hours of the morning while drinking sherry.  I was really by myself for a while.  And I was really miserable around the holidays.  It got so bad I quit decorating the house.  I seemed to be the only one that cared about Christmas and hubs and kid wanted nothing to do with it so I quit.  I went on Christmas strike for many years.  

It got so bad I started putting up a metal lawn ornament Christmas tree instead of a real one.  I called it my minimalist tree.  It was painted white metal with small white lights.  I added sky blue balls and called it a day.  The only parties I went to were office ones.  We had never stayed in one place long enough for me to make real friends anywhere.  I moved on average every year for almost ten years running.  Hubs HATED Christmas music so I couldn't even play it in the house never mind go to a concert or go caroling.  I don't blame him.  He did two to three shows a day of Pop's Christmas shows for two to three months in a row for ten years.  I would hate the stuff too if I had to listen to that.  But I missed going out to do Christmas stuff.

However, one thing I did do was send out cards.  It made me feel loved to get all those cards back.  I hated sitting down to make them out, but man did I LOVE getting ones in the mail.  Because I did this every year I was still sending cards to people I worked with decades prior.  It was often the only contact I had with these old acquaintances.  

Since I've been sick, I haven't been able to send cards for a couple of years now.  I did manage to get out New Year's cards with short notes in them last year but I missed a couple of years prior to that.  I was just too sick to sit at a table for long enough to write out cards.  It is amazing how many people don't send one if you don't send them one.  I've been too sick to notice or care until this year.  This year I've been putting off writing cards. Cards are bothering me on several levels.    

Unlike Americans, I keep cards.  I'm from a traditional Victorian family and we save all of our correspondence.  It used to be the done thing.  I must say that it is a real pleasure to read over a letter that is ten or twenty years old or run across a letter from a deceased relative.  This is one of the few things I worry about with the invention of the internet and email.  That body of correspondence that brought personal pleasure and a source of historical information is gone in the ether.    But I digress...

Last year my son and husband decided that we needed to decorate for Christmas.  Hubs brought home a tree from a tree farm.  My kid put up the decorations.  I sat and marveled at the whole thing.  We went for a drive to look at the Christmas lights our neighbors put up.  And Christmas turned out pretty good despite my trip to the ER later that night.

This year I'm well enough that I want to decorate and do cards.  However, trying to get hubs, kid and me to do something together at the same time is like herding cats.  It just doesn't go well.  The weekend I was looking forward to buying a tree, putting it up and decorating it with hubs and kid, I was well enough to participate.  I came out of the bedroom to find hubs had taken his work vehicle apart and was in the middle of installing a widget on it.  Kid was on the Xbox and didn't want any human contact because he had just finished finals.  When we finally got into a vehicle to get a tree, it was dark.  I was looking forward to going to a nice large place where we could wander around and look at a variety of trees and pick out something nice.  Hubs literally drove us around the corner to a small nursery where he heard they had cheap trees.  They only had a few out of their wrappings and they hadn't been standing upright so the limbs hadn't dropped and you couldn't tell their shape.  Since we were the only ones there, the kid running the stand was picking out trees for us to look at and it was about ten degrees outside.  I didn't want to be the picky female so I agreed to the second tree that the kid picked up that hubs liked.  I climbed into the car while hubs paid and kid strapped it to the roof for the half mile trip back home.  The entire process took about 20 minutes.  Hubs pulled into the gas station to take a family photo for me to post to Facebook of us getting our tree.  Insert rude noise here.  The pic is still on my kid's phone.

The poor tree spent the next three days upside the garage.  It got covered in snow and then ice.  Hubs finally brought it into the garage so it could melt before being brought into the house.  It took another week for hubs to get lights on to it.  On one of my good days where I wasn't doing something else, I managed to go through the Christmas ornaments and sort which ones we were keeping and which ones were getting pitched.  I haven't been well enough to do this for years.  This is my fourth Christmas with CFS.  Ugh.  Then a snowstorm hit which put me in bed.  Then a doctor's appointment.  Then another snow storm.  The tree still isn't decorated and I'm very sad about it.  I does look good with the lights on though.  I'm happy that we have a nice tree.  

I still haven't done cards though.  I'm putting it off.  While unpacking the ornaments I found a card from hub's mom.  It was from ten years ago and she said that she was looking forward to coming over for Christmas dinner and seeing us.  She passed away the year before I got sick.  I cried and cried.  I miss her.  I miss spending holidays with her.  

Yesterday, I saw a Facebook post that my friend from college was laid to rest on campus.  A small group of fellow students went there with the family to spread some of her ashes under the trees next to the lake.  I cried some more.  I will miss her too.

I miss so much.  I miss baking with my sister.  I miss wrapping presents with my mom and sister.  I miss having large family dinner with hubs mom and my family all crammed around my small dinner table eating off family heirloom fine china.  I miss going to huge family gatherings.  I miss going to Christmas parties.  I miss having so many people over that I have to set up a kids table.  I miss having the house festooned with decorations.  

I sat down to write cards today.  I went through my Rolodex.  It is sad how many people no longer contact me since I got sick.  People I had considered friends but have left to go on with their active lifestyles.  Family that has passed away.  Friends that have passed away.  This year is weird to me.  It is a season of loss but at the same time I'm also letting go of that Rockwell painting in my head.  That perfect family that doesn't exit.  It has never existed.  I can feel the holiday shifting beneath me.  I'm grieving my losses but at the same time celebrating my many small victories.  I'm doing so much better than last year at this time.  This whole year has been better for me from a health perspective.  My marriage is doing better and is slowly healing.  My relationship with my son is getting deeper and we find ourselves talking often about all sorts of subjects including very personal ones.  I have a great new car.  I'm walking short distances.  I have all sorts of cool internet friends.  All I need is a party to go to.  

I'm going to write some cards now.  I feel a bit better after writing this long missive.  I hadn't intended it to get this long but once I started, it all had to come out.  Looking at the bright side I only have a handful of cards to write.  This won't take long.  Peace out!

Isolation

I can NOT begin to express in words the isolation that comes with being this sick for this long.  People in the US are encouraged to hang out with others that are healthy, uplifting, upbeat, active, etc.  We are supposed to go out and DO things together.  We aren't supposed to hang out with people that are old and/or sick.  Those people are used up.  They have outlived their usefulness and couldn't possibly have anything to contribute to us as human beings.

I thought I had some to terms with this.  I thought I was okay with staying at home and being on my own.  But, I'm learning slowly, as this drags on, that I'm not.  I'm not okay with spending months in the house only seeing my son, my husband, my son's girlfriend, my doctors and the vendors at the farmer's market.  I'm not okay with my chiropractor knowing me better than my own brother.  I'm not okay with knowing more about the trip the IV nurse just went on than the trip my sister took.  I'm not okay with seeing my doctor more often than my friends.

The last time family was here was three months ago.  The last time a friend was here was last summer.  The last time I watched a movie with a friend in my OWN house was several years ago.  I haven't seen one with a friend outside the house since before being sick.  The only time I saw friends on a regular basis last year was when I commandeered them to drive me to doctor appointments.  This was the only time I had contact with them.  Within three years I have had exactly six visits from friends that were purely for social reasons.  The count might double if you include people stopping by to pick something up and staying for a chat.  Normally I'm okay with it.  Being extremely introverted helps.  Being extremely sick helps.

But today.  Today.  I'm in tears.  I was recently reminded that my skating buddies have moved on without me.  I just read an article about the abandonment of the old in retirement communities.  I just wrote a Facebook post about dealing with the changes in my life since getting sick.  And then I saw this video:

And I'm in tears.  To think that people would do this for us.  To think that people that don't know us, that were never our friends would do this for us.  I am astonished.  And in tears.  It doesn't take much to help those of us that are housebound.  Just call once in a while.  Stop in once in a while.  Bring over a coffee or tea.   Or take us for a virtual walk.  I would LOVE that!  I miss being outside so much.  I miss being active.  I miss being with people.  The internet helps but it isn't the same as real human contact.  As human beings, we need it to thrive.  The biggest loss for me being sick is the loss of human contact.

Trust & Betrayal Part 2

And....I'm Back

Had a great visit with my sister and Mom.  They got me out of the house almost every single day they were here.  I got to do girl stuff with them.  We went around Bed and Bath, Kohls and Lane Bryant to name a few.  I went on a wonderful shopping spree.  We came home everyday with the car packed with goodies.  They helped with making dinner, dishes, laundry.  My sister even washed the rug in my bathroom.  How awesome is that!?!  I now have new cooking pots and dishes, new clothes and a squishy pad for my bed.

Most importantly though we sat and talked until we all cried.  I now know that I am loved and whole even if I am sick.  I have people that love and care for me and who will take care of me no matter what.  I can't tell you what a difference that has made to me.  I can't possibly describe how much better I feel knowing this.  I am so very very lucky to have a family like this.

Mr & Mrs Perfect

I am a perfectionist at heart.  It is buried so deep into my soul I've tried (and failed) for many years to eradicate it.  I use the Buddhist idea of everything is perfect as it is and there is always room to strive for perfection.  I think the wisdom comes in knowing when to back off.

I remember years ago going to visit Mr & Mrs Perfect.  They were old family friends of my husband.  They were rich and had a big fancy house.  I come from a blue collar background so this was one of my first social visits to someone from a higher class than me.  I had come with a hostess gift of a plant out of my garden that I had grown myself.  She said she loved it and then asked my why plants just suddenly die for no reason that she could fathom.  I looked at my plant and knew that my gift was doomed.

We went to sit out by the pool which apparently was more for show than use since it was a bit dirty.  Not that I care.  While I'm a perfectionist myself I do understand that things take time and keeping a pool spotless isn't on the top of most people's list of things to do.  So we sat in the poolside chairs with our drinks and expected Mrs Perfect to sit down and join us for a chat.  Instead she must have noticed that things weren't perfect out here.  She jumped up and turned the pool cleaner on.  Then grabbed some rubber gloves from out of nowhere and the garden hose and stretched it across the pool and commenced scrubbing the poolside bar which we weren't using.  The dirt must have embarrassed her.  She got so engrossed in her cleaning tirade that she didn't notice that the hose had stretched across our laps and the two of us were forced to defend ourselves against its onslaught.  She must have felt the hose bouncing around since she just as abruptly stopped cleaning and apologized profusely. 

We then went up to the deck for the BBQ dinner.  Now my family doesn't eat cows or hotdogs and here we had beef hotdogs with peppers and onions.  So as polite guests we each ate one and vowed to stop in at a diner on the way home.  My son who loved hotdogs ate several which I knew was a bad idea since he was used to eating pork ones not beef.  But it is difficult to explain this under your breath to a six year old.

After we finished dinner she took us on a tour of the house which was lovely.  She made great presentation of the antique and art items in the house.  She was very proud of them and they were very neat.  I felt so out of place there.  Everything was perfect.  Everything was clean and in its place.  They even had a gorgeous very expensive piano that no one knew how to play.  I started to wonder how much of this stuff was to show how perfect they were.  Did they do anything?  Did they themselves paint?  Or just purchase art?  Did they garden?  Or just hire someone?  Why do they have a top of the line piano if no one in the house plays?  The more time I spent there the more it seemed to me that they had purchased their perfect life.   We had nothing in common with them.  We had no places where our lives intersected that allowed us to carry on a conversation.  It was such an odd experience I'm still baffled by it and morbidly fascinated with it. 

And of course the crowning glory of the day was when my son threw up all over the Italian leather couch from eating all those beef hotdogs.  Mr Perfect nearly jumped out of his skin.  He had no idea what to do.  He had no idea how to handle things.  He looked at my son like he had grown three heads.  I dare say he never took care of his own kids when they were ill.  Needless to say we left shortly after that incident and we've never visited with them again. 

On the ride home both my husband and I were saying that we would never become like that.  But to this day I wonder what it was that I disliked so much?  What made me so uncomfortable there?  The house was lovely.  They were nice people but something was off.  Lack of connection to this planet?  Everything being purchased for show?  The requirement that everything be perfect?  That little kids don't throw up?  That you have to understand plants to take care of them? 

While I have a perfectionist streak running through me down to the bone, I don't want to be that perfect.  I don't want my house to look like something out of Architectural Digest.  I want it to look lived in.  Slightly messy.  I want to not care when someone is ill in my house.  I want them to know that it is okay and I care more about them than our furniture. 

Of course being chronically ill I have had to take imperfectionism one step further.  I have to not care that the dishes aren't done when someone comes over to visit.  I have to not care that I'm still in my pjs and not showered when hubby comes in the door with a friend he wants me to meet.  I am ill.  Take me as I am.  While I might be a perfectionist, I'm not perfect.

There's No Place Like Home

Today is one of my grumpy days.  I have days like this.  More often than not they start with a really bad nights sleep.  Couple that with higher than average joint aches (another storm is coming and my joints always hurt worse during bad weather) and the fact that my stomach has been upset since I ate yogurt at 2pm and a cranky teenage kid and I'm not to happy about my life right about now.

Of course seeing my therapist today probably has something to do with it also.  I'm pretty much stuffing my emotions regarding my new diagnosis. I'm trying not to think about it too much.  I don't like this one because it can't be fixed. 

Then there is the multifaceted problem of my kid moving out.  He will either be going to boot camp in June or away to college in September.  Either way he is moving out.  This will have huge ramifications on my relationship with my husband. 

My son, while cantankerous, helps out around the house and in a total role reversal has become my taxi driver.  He takes me to all my appointments.  Asking my husband to drive me anywhere is one of his hissy fit triggers.  I usually save this favor for the trips into Boston since I figure my kid will get lost trying to find his way around or get hit or both.  Boston is brutal to drive around. 

However, my asking hubby for a ride usually triggers a rant that goes on for at least 15 minutes.  He also can't hear anything I say after the rant starts.  I've proved this.  I got a date wrong and corrected myself but he was too busy being angry to hear the correction.  So I'm going to miss my kid. 

It isn't just the rides and the housework though we have become closer since I've been stuck at home.  He isn't the most verbose kid to start with so he is really difficult to get to know.  The mere fact that we are bumping around the house together has made us interact more often and we seem to like each other's company even if we don't talk that much.  I like having him around and I am going to miss him tremendously when he leaves.

So I'm sad today and a bit weepy and sore and have an icky tummy and cranky myself.  And I've eaten my way through quite a bit of ice cream.  But, as my mother says "This too shall pass."

A Decent Meal

I just finished a turkey sandwich.  Not an ordinary from the deli sliced turkey sandwich but the real left over turkey dinner kind with cranberry sauce.  Last night I had my first decent homemade meal in months.  A full out turkey dinner with everything; mashed potatoes, green beans, gravy, and stuffing.  Am I better you ask?  Am I cured?  Hell no.  My sister and mother drove six hours to visit me and I am LOVING it.  My husband swears he is going to not let her go home. 

My sister has turned into a domestic goddess since becoming a mom.  The first thing she did when she got here was clean out my fridge and take inventory.  My son then drove her to the market where she and my mom got busy buying groceries.  Since I haven't been shopping during the three weeks of my crash there is very little food in my house that hasn't degenerated into a bio experiment.  She then came home and we put together a simple grilled chicken dinner with salad.  (I'll post the recipe on Fast Foodie soon).  Then after dinner she did all of the dishes.  I could  kiss her.  My husband was over the moon happy.  The next day she made the turkey dinner.  It was AWESOME!  Tonight is roast pork.  I can hardly wait.

I dearly wish I lived closer to both of them.  I can not describe how awesome it is when someone shows up to help me.  I'm such a horrible introvert that I don't know people very well even though I've been in the same house for ten years now.  No one pops round with a casserole or to pick up some groceries for me.  In the last six months I've only had three people pop round for a quick hello.  If I wasn't an introvert the isolation alone would drive me bonkers.  Having company and some help is just such a gift.  I'm not sure how I can thank them enough.

Are You Better Yet?

So goes the eternal cry of the cranky husband.  He is trying to be funny, but not really.  He is trying to be cute, but not really.  I haven't quite figured out what it is code for.  When he says it though, it just irritates the hell out of me. 

I spent Friday getting ready to attend a wedding.  I was very fortunate that this week was one of my good ones.  Friday I caught up on shaving off extraneous body hair that I have come to neglect since I rarely go out in public anymore.  I tried on different outfits since I've gained weight and that gorgeous new white dress with huge red flowers on it that I bought this spring has no chance in hell of fitting anymore.  I laid out the third outfit that I tried on.  I dug my dress shoes out of the back of the closet, dusted them off and put those out.  Saturday I slept as much as I could.  Ate.  Showered.  Threw on my clothes and then it started.  Husband wanted to take the loud fancy '55 Bel Aire that he so lovingly restored to race track condition.  He loves driving this car.  I hate riding in it.  I knew I was pushing my luck attending this wedding in the first place and here he wanted me to ride in a loud uncomfortable car for two hours.  Napping in this car is NOT an option.  He got really angry that we had to take the VW diesel.  I think I managed to nod off during the trip there despite the angry waves oozing off my husband in the driver's seat.

I did tremendously well.  I was out of the house for 9 hours total.  This is the longest I've been out since I became ill back in May.  I sat the entire time.  I got the shakes at one point but I just sat still and tried not spill coffee on myself.  I kept quiet.  I watched everyone and listened to them talk.  My husband spent over an hour talking with someone he knew but hadn't seen in months.  I sat there quiet.  I felt abandoned.  His back was turned to me the entire time.  I watched the couples on either side of me talking to each other.  Paying attention to each other.  I looked at my husband's back and wondered how we were going to weather my illness as a couple.

But I was out of the house.  I could see Mt Monadnock from my seat at the dinner table.  I couldn't dance but I got to eat really good food.  I spoke a little bit to the groom and the groom's mother.  It was nice.

Of course I crashed today.  But I managed to clean the kitchen island first.  I mean scrub it down and wash everything.  A good thorough going over which hadn't been done for weeks.  After laying down for an hour I went out to dinner with hubby.  He was excited that it was cheddar broccoli soup day at the Cheesecake Factory.  We talked a little.  I brought up the fact that he was so angry.  Just my acknowledging it seemed to mollify him a little.  He started to talk some more.  I brought up the fact that I felt abandoned and it was like I just asked him to pull out a tooth and hand it to me.  He feels like he is being put upon.  He has to do everything.  And he does.  I don't deny this.  However, I don't have the energy left in me to debate my abandonment comment or even to explain things or have them make sense to myself never mind him.  I change the subject.  Brain fog is starting to set in.

So we get home and I am completely spent.  He notices my shuffling gait as I walk towards the house.  I no longer have the energy to pick my feet up as I walk.  I collapse on the couch to watch hours upon hours of Stargate.  He is playing kill the zombies on the Xbox in another room.  I'm freezing cold and covered in blankets.  He does some laundry.  My only movement is to advance Netflix to the next episode.  Then the kid calls for a ride and now hubby is in full cranky pants mode.  He is angry that he has to do everything.  That I can't pick up the kid.  That I am broken.  That I can't help him.  The clean kitchen and dinner has already been forgotten.  He always gets like this when I am too tired to do anything about it.  I am too tired to do anything but give him a blank stare.  I feel hurt.  I did my best.  I did better this weekend than I have in months but it is not enough to mollify him.  He has his cranky pants on again.  All I can do is ignore him.  I don't have the energy to cope.  I feel like my husband has morphed into a two year old child who is now throwing a tantrum in the middle of the living room.  All I can do is stare at him.  I'm just too tired to dance this dance.  He leaves and I go back to watching TV.  Too tired to even think about him.

I worry about us.  I can barely take care of myself and I certainly can't fix him.  He seems to want me to do something.  I don't know what.  I did my best this weekend.  I went to the wedding.  He wanted my company there.  I cleaned up the house a little and even offered to make dinner.  But all I know is that what I did do, what I can do is not enough.  This makes me sad.  And I worry about us.

Why?

This post isn't about what you expect.  It isn't asking the question why am I sick?  It is asking the question why do people behave the way they do?  I'm not a people person.  I'm a registered, off the scale, Myers-Briggs official extreme introvert so people often do things that baffle me.  I just don't get it.

I am starting to reach the breaking point of one of the few friendships I have managed to maintain.  This is what happened.  She emailed me wondering if we could get together for movie night this Saturday or next.  This is something I've done with lots of success with other friends.  It is low key.  I don't have to talk much or do much.  We sit and watch a movie together on my big screen TV and then chat over coffee afterwards.  It is an easy and fun way of entertaining.  So I email her back that this Saturday at 8pm would be perfect.  I also put in a cautionary note that if I'm not feeling well I might have to cancel at the last minute since I don't know on a day to day basis if I'm going to be okay or not.  Days later I get this email back that she is now going canoeing that day and doesn't know if she'll be back by 8pm to come over my house for the movie.  Can we get together the following weekend?  That's a no.  If I'm doing ok I'm attempting to go to a wedding.  Of course the following two or more weeks aren't good for her since she has other plans.  I tell her to contact me when she gets back from traveling so I don't expect to hear from her for months if ever again.

Here is a bit of background.  She loves talking.  She knows best.  She eats dinner at 8 or 9pm.  She doesn't have kids.  She stays up late at night and gets up late in the morning.  She is afraid of aging and hates hanging around "old" people even though she is already in her 50's.  She is busy busy busy and fills her days up with lots of stuff to do.  In order to get together in the past I've had to book it literally months in advance.  We had booked a movie night months ago but I had to cancel after a TB test made me crash hard and I was bedridden with a fever.  I couldn't even talk because my throat hurt so much.  Hubby had to call her to cancel.  I got an email the next day from her that she had managed to rescue her plans and found something else to do.  She never asked me how I was doing.  Thanks for caring.

I keep running over this week's events in my head.  Why ask someone to get together and then say it is inconvenient for you?  Why ask someone who is major league ill to hang out and then dictate the time and place to them because you eat dinner at 8pm even though the rest of the local universe eats around 6pm?  Why get all snitty with someone who is very ill had to cancel on you?  Why would you go months without asking how they are even though we are supposed to be friends?  What is wrong with this woman?  Can't deal with aging?  Can't deal with people getting sick?  Is she trying to avoid her own mortality?  She certainly has hamfisted control over her little world she has created for herself.  She runs her own business and has a milquetoast for a husband (whom I love dearly BTW he is such a nice person).  Every thing is tightly under her control.  I think I'm done with her.  I'm going to set the rules from now on.  I'm the one who is ill and needs to set the timetable and location and the content of our get togethers.  If she doesn't like it tough noogies.  Go find someone else to boss around.  I'm very angry about being treated this way.