Bitchin'

 

I have a terrible confession to make. Today was not my finest day. 

I was a bitch. 

The day started out okay. I made a nice pasta bake for supper, and made a batch of yogurt. Cleaned the kitchen, figured out how to change the time on our smart watches. Short answer, had to do it through our phones instead of doing the change on the watch itself. It wasn't all that hard. I guess you just have to be smarter than the watch. My book came in the mail. It was a beautiful day, hitting 60 degrees.

I putzed around doing little things, and it was nice.

Tim wanted to prime the walls over at the rehab. He wanted to fix the front porch while I was doing that. He has an agenda. He's always got an agenda. 

I got the walls primed. Going up and down the ladder with the paint tray really wreaked havoc on my knee, and at the end, I found myself in a precarious situation, paint tray with roller and brush in one hand, the other hand on the ladder, and being unable to finish getting down because I needed the opposite hand, but being in the middle of the ladder, couldn't let go to switch the paint tray to my other hand, because my knee doesn't allow me to shift weight safely. It sounds stupid, and it was stupid, because I couldn't even figure out what I did to get myself in that predicament. I had to yell for Tim. He came in from the porch and took the tray, and I was able to climb down the ladder. 

And I gotta tell you. 

I was bitter and I was mad, and I tried to keep it to myself. 

The fact is, I. Did. Not. Want. To. Buy. This. House. 

He had argued and argued and argued, and I admit it. I gave in. "Just do what you're going to do, but for pete's sake, stop talking to me about it." It's a predictable pattern, one that has led to previous houses bought that I did not want to buy, so following that pattern, he bought the house.

(I should note that all the other houses did work out extremely well for us. He's got a good eye. This one didn't, and it was me who tried to argue that we were just too old to start another major rehab. My exact phrasing had been, "Tim, when will it ever be enough for you?")

And here it is five years later. Work stopped once because he got sick for several weeks. That led to his stroke. And then everything came together to build the new house, so we stopped the rehab and did the new house. And then there was cancer. And now we're back at it, flitting from one house to the other, working, working, working. 

And the more, I thought about it, the bitchier I felt. 

And I tried to keep it to myself, because really, it's not his fault. 

But then I remembered that just a couple months ago, we had a fight because he found a house he wanted, and I said no. I meant no. He tried to explain to me why we needed this house. I got a little louder in my 'no'. He got mad. I got mad, and I did not follow that predictable pattern. I stuck to my guns. He was still mad about it a couple weeks later when the house sold and it was my fault because I could not see why this was such an important purchase for us. 

So, in a way, this is his fault. 

And the longer I worked, the more resentful and bitter I felt, mostly because this is not my dream, it is his dream. I feel like we've worked hard for a lot of years. I want my chance to enjoy myself, work at my own dreams. 

Bottom line: I just do not want to do this anymore. 

There was this internal struggle going on, because I really was trying to keep it to myself, but I failed. Tonight, it burst out of me. I told him I was resentful. I told him why I was resentful. I told him I am tired of being his step and fetch it girl, that I was done. That we were NOT going to buy any more houses, that I would not agree to it ever, ever again, and that if he pushed to have his way, we would fight about it, because I was pushing back. I said all I had to say in a big rush of mad.

And he said, "Okay."