Yep, this (even though I known you for only 6 years).
That’s a huge amount of yardwork. There must be someone you can pay to do this. One of the few things I hire out when I can afford it is yardwork, and I’ve never been sorry about it. I take care of a lot of it, but the bigger jobs I happily farm out.
I don’t know, I just don’t see where I’m doing too much stuff for other people. I mean my kid, obviously, but my husband has his share of responsibilities and I can’t dump everything back on him. At work I only do grants stuff. It’s just a fuck load of work.
I think if there’s anything that’s tanking me it’s probably perfectionism about everything that is on my plate, and guilt over what’s not done. If I could let go of those two things I think it would really help.
Today, for example, I’m feeling guilty I didn’t clean more, but objectively I had a dentist appointment and did at least an hour of yard work and that’s not nothing.
And just remembered I forgot to make a phone call. I missed my appointment with my sleep doctor because I thought “Sleep doctor 8am” meant my son’s sleep doctor, which I thought my husband was handling. But no, it was my sleep doctor and I definitely no showed.
Story of my life.
Your post just reminded me I need to make a phone call: thank you.
More seriously, between shopping / cooking / cleaning / working, I don’t have time to do ANYTHING. And I don’t have a child in the mix. I think it’s just being an adult in a small household where you can’t share the work among as many hands as you could in the old days, but it still needs to be done.
Same here. I did yardwork for a living for a while, and really disliked it. Now that I can afford to pay others for it, I do that, rather than go out and do it myself. I feel like I’m back doing the job I hated but now for free.
We have two trees (not large trees, they’re almost like tall bushes) and they are dying. I spent a considerable amount of time figuring out the best way I could do it, then I realized, there are people who are actually experts who can come out and take care of them quickly and properly.
I haven’t had a chance to get that done (too much else has been going on this summer) but when I do, I’ll let the professionals handle it.
Shit’s getting real, man. Even as the house starts getting prepped for sale, the LXW has found some nice apartments near her neighbourhood, in a quiet treed area, recently renovated and modern appliances. Medium-rise 9-storey building. An apartment will represent major downsizing on a life-changing level! Gonna be hitting the rum and Caesars pretty hard over the next month or two.
Oh, honey. Bless your sweet lil’ heart.
There’s gotta be a country song based on this remark!
Adventures in DoorDashing.
Some DoorDash orders are cash collection. They charge the customer for the order and attach their fee and you collect that much money, and then you just have the cash in your pocket so they hold that back from what they ultimately pay you (you keep your portion of the fee, though (which is usually about $2 per order)). Yesterday I got a cash order for which I was due to collect $31.97. This mothertrucker - with a Dodge Challenger in the yard - gave me $32 and told me to have a good day. A three cent tip from this asshole. Three cents! I was going to go back and leave three pennies on his doorstep but it would’ve been a wasted gesture on that zero.
That is awful ! I know a Door Dash driver whose entire source of income consists of delivery fees. To deny a tip would mean a serious loss. Growl!
nm
If I had a guitar and some talent I could have written this:
I gotta say that to all indications, your LXW is a real class act. Seriously.
Yeah, you’re gonna get bossed around a bunch until this transition is over, but it really sounds like you’ll be in a much better situation going forward after she’s done rehashing your life. Just don’t get so worked up over it that you give yourself a stroke. That’d be bad.
My GF is sorta dealing with similar from the other end: both of her long-divorced and very aged parents. Both of them simply want her to subsidize them with no say in how they spend her money. In one case that’s mostly going down the rathole of maintenance on a much too big and long-neglected house.
You have no idea. She was here just this afternoon to take me grocery shopping, carry heavy items into the house, and drop off a prescription that I’d been neglecting, and will be back next week with the real estate agent to help me assess renovation options.
I hope this new place works out for you. It may be an adjustment but downsizing has its advantages.
The guy who has has built or repaired 4 fences/gates and 2 garage door jambs for me got picked up by ICE in a Home Depot parking lot and deported. His last job for me was 2 months ago. I hope he at least gets sent back to Mexico and not some hellhole someplace.
Domestic terrorism at its finest = most evil.
One of the members of our writers group died last Thanksgiving and everyone seems to have given up. Things started falling apart during COVID. We got busy. I had a kid. I’ll own my part in this. But then one of us died and I’m not sure we’re ever going to be put back together. Only one of us is still writing, unless you also count me, if you can call it writing what I’m doing right now. We’ve been trying to get together not even for writing shit but just “hey are you still alive?” shit and nobody is available at the same time for anything. The last time we saw each other was May for our friend’s memorial. We used to meet up every two weeks.
These were my best friends for ten years and now it’s over and I hate it. And I hate my part in it because so many days have gone by where writing was the last thing on my mind. The only time I have the bandwidth to write these days is just before bed. But even if none of us is writing at all we should still be getting together more regularly.
It fucking sucks. It’s the only community I had, so instead of losing just one friend, I lost eight. I don’t have many left.
This is some bullshit.
I understand. I had a group of friends who met in an online game but became friends outside of it. Really though, there was one guy who was our leader, the glue who kept us together. He had his problems and literally drank himself to death (Cirrhosis) and it not just killed him but our group.
I still sometimes hear from one of them but barely ever.