Life is just complicated right now, and he’s been in a bad situation for several years. He had aspirations to grow his practice and what actually happened is he’s been behind on work for six years and I don’t believe he’s had a full case load since the birth of our son. I somewhat blamed him for this for a long time, which I’ve been trying to attone for as I realize what an impossible situation he’s been in. I was talking to a friend today about work frustrations she was having, and we both noted the real pull of our jobs: they are incredibly flexible and parent friendly. Likewise my husband’s job allows him some flexibility.
I said to her, “If I had to be somewhere 9-5pm five days a week, I would not have a job.” I’m grateful to have that but it also makes me feel stuck. I really wanted to work for the Division of Victim Services. I don’t see that remotely possible for at least another ten years.
We’re trying to navigate all this and I asked him, “Do we need couple’s counseling?”
He said, “Well, let’s start with me getting counseling.”
So I’m just waiting for that to happen. Now that things have settled down with our kid I think there’s hope of that. But it has to be on his terms on his own time.
When I bought a house with him I really got a window into how differently our brains work. It used to be about how similar we are (which we are in many ways. When we’re in the flow of a good conversation, it’s transcendent.) It just feels increasingly more like we’re focusing on our differences.
And the bitch of it is, I don’t know whether to talk to him about this or just try to be supportive so we don’t have to dedicate every moment of our lives to such heavy shit.
I was speaking with the manager at Costco the other day. It sounds like a lot of stores put out the Christmas stuff early because they have no place to stock it until after Thanksgiving.
Somewhere in this vast thread – or it may have been the September one – @LSLGuy mentioned something about the difficulty in living in a house that is for sale.
Never has that fact struck me harder than today as the invasion of my home continues – and it’s not even over yet. By now my beloved couches are in the dump, cutesy new couches, tables and lamps are in place, and today major pieces of artwork were brought in. By which I mean dozens of huge framed pictures and a few dozen canvases, including a canvas in the front living/dining area that must be at least 6 ft wide and 5 ft high. Everything is spotless, and illuminated with well-placed lights.
I’m no longer living in my beloved wolfpup den – the mess that I feel so comfortable in. I feel like I’m living in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The stress level just keeps rising.
You’re supposed to infer that they’re courting the inbred vote.
We don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in our house. Ever since our older family members moved out-of-state so that we no longer were forced to fix “traditional” bullshit we don’t want to eat just to please a few people, my wife and I made up “No Fucks Giving”. You pick everything you want to eat, regardless of what it is, and then have that. It can be pizza or steak or pasta or egg rolls or clam chowder or whatever. Anything and everything. Just get what you enjoy and we make it all and pig out. It turned it from the most stressful holiday of the year to the most relaxed. I look forward to it every year.
We start putting up Christmas stuff the day after.
You can augment that idea with No Fucks-mas and avoid all the fiddling w XMas decorations too.
Skip the stressful feast, skip the tiresome family, and especially skip unwanted gifts both given and received. Depending on your spirituality, do or don’t do the supposedly obligatory stuff in that department too.
Do the thing(s) that feel special to you. Not to a humongous marketing & sales machine, whether commercial or religious.
Of course the actual message is “Mom is tough. And a gun person. Here’s the proof. The apple falls not far from the tree and I am tough and a gun person. If you’re a gun person, and fancy yourself a tough guy/gal, I’m the one you want.”
Even if (especially if) you mostly fantasize about using your guns on people who are doing things you don’t like whether those things are illegal or not. Such as breathing while brown.
That’s the message. And the relevant audience hears it loud and clear.
My daughter-in-law absolutely loves decorating for Xmas, and traditionally does it on November 1st (and takes it down Dec 26). However, their 2nd child is scheduled for Oct 22, so we’ll see how that goes. Plus you could see her twitching just a little over the then 2.5 y/o helping with the tree last year (and then subtly fixing it). This year, the child pretty much knows where everything in the house is, so I think mom trying to move things on the tree is going to be a bit fraught.
Back when I lived where it snowed that was a huge factor in my decisions. I also pretty much only hung lights outdoors; nothing more elaborate outside. Easy enough to place them all in early Nov and other than testing, leave them off until Dec 1 or later.
My wife loves decorating for Christmas. We do the whole thing. That isn’t going to change.
It was only Thanksgiving that sucked, which seemed to only exist to serve certain foods we don’t like to stop certain people from complaining endlessly.
(We have a daughter who is almost a teenager so we get enough of that already the rest of the year.)
I’m the curmudgeon that put my foot down on decorating for Christmas. I told my wife that a tree belongs outside. To cut it down and bring it in the house is just odd as hell when you think about it. And then to put a ton of shiny plastic crap on it is absurd.
I don’t like Christmas and all the commercialization of it that occurs for basically one-sixth of the year. I don’t enjoy winter at all until mid January. I think it would be better if Christmas was like the Olympics - held once every four years.
As a religious celebration it’s fine. As for all the other stuff associated with it, just no.
Doesn’t care. I mentioned Epiphany to her once, and she was just confused. Obviously not from a religious background. Of course, all 3 of my sons were confirmed in the Catholic Church, but I’d wager none of them could make a decent guess as to when Epiphany is (or what it represents). I myself have devolved from a CEO Catholic to a “celebrate sacraments” one.
This is extremely petty and mini, so perfect for this thread.
I saw this post on Bluesky today and it really resonated with me. Relevant part quoted in case the link doesn’t work:
Our perpetual youth culture telling 40 & 50 yo that they are so young! Bc we haven’t been allowed to grow up, bc letting us grow up would mean the elders have to admit how old they really are.
I’m seeing more and more places where people are claiming that folks in their 60s and 70s aren’t old, even on this site. I saw a comment on a story about Pope Leo’s cancer diagnosis that “he’s so young!” My sibling in Christ, Pope Leo is 71 years old, one year over the Biblical three score and ten. He’s fuckin’ old by any definition of the word. (I mean, if he were a tortoise he’d be but a youth, but he isn’t and he isn’t.)
Please stop projecting your fear of aging onto the world at large. I’m happily middle aged at 46. I was an idiot when I was young and I’m glad to be finally garnering some wisdom and the age to wield it.
Also Millennials are either in their 40s or pushing 40 and I’d like the media to remember that.
Also Christmas decorations go up the day after Thanksgiving. So it is written, so it is done.
I planned to work from home today and everything fell off the rails. First I made the mistake of working on my new novel before starting work. Well I made real progress on this project for the first time in a while, and when I have the writing bug it’s hard to shake. I wrote until 2pm. Couldn’t stop, couldn’t eat. But then I felt guilty and I was so upset because my task list at home and work is endless and I can’t ever forget that even for a day. I had a bit of a meltdown and moped in the bath and didn’t eat anything until 4pm.
Writing again was glorious and it’s probably helping me cope in some ways, yet the price is apparently feeling like a failure.
It’s a romance between a clone slave and a shapeshifter trapped in human form. He uses chemical to blunt the side effects of being human, such as strong emotions, because it’s a confusing nightmare for him. In order to open himself up to love he has to open up to everything else that terrifies him about the human experience, including mortality.
I haven’t really figured out her deal yet. But she’s the wielder of the McGuffin, she has the knowledge of how to get him and his alien team unstuck. Problem is she doesn’t remember what’s locked in her own head.
It’s great to be doing this, you know. And also terrible.
