04/02/06

Tired. But for the first time today, other than when in the toilet, I have a little time to myself. My parents got here yesterday. By last night I was feeling vaguely angry at Gary, because something seems strange about him whenever my parents are here: he gets really passive, and somehow I end up feeling like I’m doing all the work. He went in to work Thurs, and worked very late. Then he got sick in the night last night, so stayed in bed today and again, like last week, I took up all the slack. Worse, it looks like Connor might be getting sick again, too. He’s been flirting with a fever all day, even though he wanted very much to go to the movie this afternoon, and also to dinner tonight. Gary didn’t go; we went to the Rock Creek Tavern not too far away from here and met his mom there. I can’t say this is very high-road of me, but I was glad that Gary insisted that we go without him; and I was glad that Connor insisted he wanted to go too, as opposed to rescheduling for another night. It just felt better to me to do it tonight, get it over with and not have to think about it for later in the week; also it was going to be shortened since tomorrow’s a school day for Connor. It seems a little less complicated to see her and Gary not be there. So now that’s done and I’m glad it’s over.

But I have a feeling Connor will be home again tomorrow. I’m just so tired of this staggered schedule of sickness in the family and me having to be the one who takes up the slack and feeling like the prolonged discomfort it’s causing me just isn’t seen. Gary did give me a hug tonight and said he was sorry, and suggested I stay up a while and take a little break. So it might not be fair to say he doesn’t get it. Truly, though, I’ve been pulling up slack for a long time. It’s a good thing I had that 55 hours that Gary and the boys were gone (it WOULD have been 72!) just a week ago because it ended up being a little island of sanity following a stretched period and now it proves to be it preceded a stretched period, too.

Mom asked me about Darlene today and how it was living close to her again. I said that I don’t seek her out; that I’d intended when I moved back here to give her the benefit of the doubt and try to form a friendship with her, but that I’d lost interest after Christmas of 2004 and so now just do the bare minimum needed to be polite.

Mom then wanted to talk about HER problems with HER in-laws—my Dad’s mom, and sister. Then there was a new twist on it; T apparently insulted her too. That was the first I’d heard of that, where she said that T “gave me a hard time” about “not doing anything”. She again told the story of how after she’d broken her arm and was in bad pain that F told her it “didn’t hurt”. She feels victimized by them, and hearing her story just after having told a bit of mine, I felt strange. Wondered if I was being just like her—that the ways she was getting into having been victimized, if I was doing the same thing.

04/03/06

Mom and Dad took Scott bowling, and then to his speech class. Connor woke me last night with a high fever, so he didn’t go to school. Scott is such a bundle of energy and if not channeled manifests as misbehavior.

Anyway, I’m in the thrall of familiar anxiety: how to use this remaining time before they get home with him.

First, I need to acknowledge that this is huge that they took him somewhere. I think I can forgive dishes piling up in the sink and crumbs on the counter, because this is REAL, substantial help, getting a preschooler out of my hair for a time. So, I would be wrong to say that their presence on this trip has been a drain on my energy.

Part of the way I spent this time was to finally get caught up and up-to-date on getting my computer diaries printed into hard copies. Although, this writing I’m doing now is rendering it no longer up-to-date! I think I have everything, and so the only thing left is to get the hard diaries that are handwritten scanned so I can then insert them into my computer pages—gee, I don’t know about printing them and interpolating them into the printed copies of these journals. It’s going to be enough of a project just to get them scanned and inserted. Still, I feel good about doing this to preserve what I’ve written.

Last night’s visit with Darlene at the Rock Creek Tavern went ok. I had a thought as I was drifting off to sleep last night that I was sure I’d remember, and now I can’t really. It had to do with being reasonably cordial in her presence, and then defaulting to aversion when we’re apart. Basically, it’s an imposed force, not natural forces of liking and attraction, that generate contact. Once the aversion feeling is overcome in order to do the right thing and see her, and we’re actually in contact, it goes ok.

There was something else, and I’m not sure where this came from, but it has to do with pulling back from a situation a bit in order to gain a broader understanding and not be mired in the details. Pulling back a bit, I can feel some compassion, of a sort, for Darlene about her not wanting Lew at her house. My intuition tells me that it’s not so much discomfort because they “bought the place together”, as she’s embarrassed at the piles of stuff that she could never motivate herself to clean up in time to have it look ok. My guess is she feels he will have judgment about it if he sees it as it is. Also, I think cooking for everyone would be a huge stress for her, since she doesn’t cook any more and is unable to organize herself to get stuff ready at a certain time so we’re usually waiting an hour after the time she’s asked us to arrive. I could have understood that, if in a heartfelt way she said, “Debora, I know this is putting you in a real bind, and that it’s really too much for you to have to do Christmas after moving 2400 miles with children, and then hosting Thanksgiving, but I just can’t face having Lew at my house and seeing how I’ve got stuff all over the place—and I just can’t face trying to get it cleaned up before Christmas. I hope you can forgive me, and I’m willing to do whatever I can to help you out.” She didn’t, and that’s been part of my issue with her, that she was unable to take that high ground and face me directly with her acknowledgment and even face me directly about defaulting on Christmas. And take responsibility for herself in that. That, and then that flash of anger at the dance recital when I told her that that wasn’t the place to discuss it. (I suppose that might constitute for her facing me about her backing out.) And then not following up on it and leaving it to me to bring it up to her. But I suppose I can pull back even from that—that the operative word is UNABLE. She’s one of those people who can’t admit to any wrongdoing in her behavior without feeling like a completely worthless human being. It’s too painful for her to acknowledge that something she did caused a lot of grief, or any grief, for somebody else. This is a character limitation of hers.

1/20/06

Awwwwww, Shiiiiiiit. Gary just mentioned in passing that he’s going to “call my mom” to “remind” her of Connor’s basketball game tomorrow. It’s his first game…it’s right over near her house, so I suppose there’s no way to not ask her. I just experience the thought of seeing her tomorrow with a feeling of aversion, like a dark cloud. And we’ve got weeks of this, since the season’s going on through March, I think. I hope she goes to the beach a whole lot.

This is how I experience the prospect of seeing her. A gynecological exam—although the exam is more pleasant. At least I like the dr.

1/21/06

Back from the game. As often happens it was a bit easier actually to be there and talking to her than the sense of dread beforehand implies. There were a couple of discomforts for me, though. One is that it’s very difficult to watch a game and watch Scott. So I’m not sure I’m ever going to get to see a game all the way through, because eventually Scott has to go outside, or needs me to be bouncing a ball for him. It also sort of bothered me when we left when Gary and his mother got way ahead of me and Scott, because Scott is just so slow and can’t be hurried. So I’m going to ask Gary if its possible that he and I switch off with managing Scott at these games, and to please wait for Scott and me.

The real blow was that Gary wanted to take the boys to a hamburger stand, and she said she wasn’t going to come. Gary & I had come in separate cars, so I followed him there—only to find her car there, too. SHIT! I’d been feeling the relief that I often feel after a visit with her is done, and there she was. She said she “wanted a coke”. It was a moderately uncomfortable time, too, with the boys fighting over the video machines. I simply told Connor that I didn’t have any money, and I wasn’t going to let them play, but then she took that prerogative away by saying she had money. I think at the time I thought that if she wanted to pay for it it was ok with me, but now it occurs to me that she didn’t ask me if it was ok for them to play, if she paid for it. She just assumed that she had the prerogative in that situation…I also noticed that she stepped in with being directive with them about things like when they would eat and when they could play, as if I wasn’t there. As if SHE were the mom, or the primary caregiver in that moment. Then, as Connor was playing a car racing game, she was standing really close to him and TALKING to him, and telling him he was in the wrong lane!!! He kept saying, nearly shouting really, “So! SOOOO!!!!! She really was annoying. She didn’t register that he’d just been quite disrespectful to her; neither did she get the message that this wasn’t the best time to be talking to him either. It seemed very weird to me that he could talk to her this way, with his annoyance and tone escalating, and she just kept at it, as if he weren’t talking to her that way. She’s usually so sensitive to any hints of criticism—makes me wonder if HIS opinion of her doesn’t matter to her, because he’s a child? I don’t know how she could have missed his tone. I spoke with him later about it in the car. I couldn’t bring myself to call him on it right then and there; for one thing, she WAS being annoying and was persistent in it, for another it seemed like just adding more strife to a stressful situation, where he’s trying to play a game, his way, and people are yammering at him.

I had an insight the other day when I was writing about the difficulty of my position with Gary—me having the skills needed for emotional intimacy, as well as conflict-negotiation in relationship, and he not. Thinking about the things required in general to be successful in communication and in relationship gave me an idea. What about in the specific, as well as in the general? What if I were to name what is needed in a situation where there’s a rift with Gary—what if I were to NAME what is required to negotiate it successfully—that is where we have understanding, and therefore head off a negative spiral of increasing conflict. It gave me a solid feeling inside, to think about that. What brought me to it was thinking about being “stuck”. That it’s unrealistic to want or expect him to change, but also unrealistic to expect me to just absorb the maladaptive things he does as a result of not having basic skills. At the time it seemed either/or—either he needed to somehow see what he does and develop the self-awareness to change it so he can communicate functionally—or I needed to be a perfect absorber of the weird things that happen when people have no self-awareness and poor boundaries. Either he needs to quit doing the things he does, or I have to quit being bothered by it, was what it seemed to boil down to. One doesn’t seem realistic, the other doesn’t seem remotely palatable. But an idea crept in of another way: what if, in these conflicts, I were able to say, “You know what this situation needs in order to not descend into warfare is xyz”—and name it. Like this morning when I got home from the store Gary said that he’d talked with Leva, and that she was going to be in town from the 21st through the 30th. At the time my head was in the refrigerator and the motor was running, and I didn’t hear him. I thought he said the 21st through the 30th, so I asked, “She’ll be here about a week?” And he said, with just a hint of an edge: “From the 21st to the 30th.” He meant to show me he was annoyed, and I felt that annoyance as a barb. I experienced it that way, and there’s no getting around that. I can’t just not feel stung, when someone means to sting. But it occurred to me to say what was needed, and I said, “You could have just said yes. It (the way he’d said it) wasn’t necessary.” Something similar had happened just before where he said something that had a sting to it, when just the answer “yes” was sufficient. At that time I also said, “You know, you could have answered the question just by saying yes”(or maybe no) “and that would have been sufficient.”

So, I named what was needed in that situation. If it had deteriorated, I could have gone on naming what the situation needed—a respectful acknowledgment of what I said, maybe an acknowledgement that he had been feeling annoyed and communicating that through his tone.

12/28/05

Gary took the boys to a Blazer game. So I’ve had a few hours to myself, even if some of that was with the power out. Candlelight was really nice; I’d drawn myself a bath with the hot water left in the tank (assuming that power was needed to heat more), listened to the news on the battery powered radio, and planned to write in here on battery power, but then the power came back on. It was off about an hour.

I’ve been beating my brains out with a series of books of popular science, or of popularizing science. Explanations of chaos theory, extra dimensions.

12/30/05

So last night’s dinner at Darlene’s was completely predictable. Arrive at 5:15, not eating til 6:30. She’s just incapable of having anything ready before we get there. So there’s an hour to try to entertain the boys while we wait and wait. It doesn’t bring out the best in them, particularly Connor who clearly didn’t want to be there anyway. Then she messed up the meal anyway; screwed up the fondue so the cheese was a huge clump.

Connor was ingracious about the gift she gave him; he was disappointed in it. Scott misbehaved, hitting Gary and telling him he hated him and calling him a baby. I’m sure Darlene had lots to say about that. Just remembering when she visited us in St. Louis, that she couldn’t go inside the airport and check in by herself; she had to have Gary hold her hand through the process. During that time she felt free to give her opinion on Connor’s behavior.

So what’s Gary do tonight? He calls her to “apologize” for the boys’ behavior last night. They talked a long time, too. SHIT. I’m really unhappy about this, them bonding around discussing this issue of our boys’ misbehavior around her. Hell, they misbehave routinely around Gary because he is completely ineffective as a parent. They don’t respect him because he doesn’t command their respect. He wants it just by virtue of being their father—doesn’t want to have to work for it by being consistent, by listening to their cues and knowing them.

There was a piece on the radio by a woman who has written a book about being raised in a fundamentalist school. Her mother was “faith-healed” at one of the services and threw away her glasses, saying she wouldn’t need them any more. On the way home she’s exhorting the girls to “praise Jesus” with her and all the while they’re noticing that she’s weaving into oncoming lanes, sideswiping the guard rail. The author concluded: “She couldn’t see. But she believed she could.”

That’s it in a nutshell. That’s Gary, that’s his mom, that’s my parents too. They substitute believing for doing.

So I’m unhappy that he talked to his mom about last night. Is that really any different from me apologizing for my boys to my parents for their behavior? It just really disturbs me and I can’t quite put my finger on it. I guess part of it is that this was a really lengthy conversation. I hate the thought that she got to assume her “wise mother” role with Gary. I hate the thought that he made her feel important by doing this. I suppose that’s totally an assumption on my part, though it does seem consistent with what I’ve seen of her…

He didn’t say much about their conversation.

I just went down and talked to him about it. It was a fairly productive discussion without either of us getting mad. I got the feeling that the talk wasn’t so much like one of those discussions where they talk and worry and worry and talk about Greg and Sue and wring their hands and basically bond over it. It sounds like it may have been more along the lines of my apologizing to my parents for their behavior. So I feel a little better. I just don’t like to think of them having a discussion along the lines of the ones they have about Greg and Sue about my/our kids.

12/31/05

Classic gift horse in the mouth kind of thing…Darlene’s gift to Gary and me was gift cards to Trader Joe’s and to Crate & Barrel. But we have to do it her way. She’s engineered for us to do what she “wants” which is to spend a day at Bridgeport Shopping Center. She wants us to pick a time where she will take the boys all day so Gary and I can go.

Sigh. It sounds ungrateful, I know. But there’s this feeling that we have to do the whole package, or her feelings will be hurt. There’s a mandatoriness to this gift that I’m reacting to. She even told us where to park. Same with Trader Joe’s. It’s got to be HER store. In fact she says we’ll need another day for that, and she’ll take the boys for then too. It’s the mandatory feel; that it’s not an option to go to a Trader Joe’s that I might choose. Similarly, it’s not an option to use the crate and barrel card online. I sense in this the boundary stuff I’ve talked about before and that I also see in Gary—benevolent as this is, there’s still an aspect of controlling that bothers me. As if she can’t tell someone else’s pleasure from her own, and if she wants something than someone else has to want it too. She even said it in her note explaining the gift and where to park and all: “This is the store I’ve been WANTING you to go to so you can see what a fine store this is” (Referring to the Trader Joe’s).

In fairness to her, not ALL gifts of hers seem to involve a procedure we’re supposed to follow. I guess it’s just that I’d rather do something else with my time than go to a shopping center if she’s going to be babysitting, and she’s made that choice for us.

Gary said last night that she said she’s going to have the boys over “much more often”. Which is fine with me; getting to know her might help them like her better, particularly Connor. And they deserve to have positive experiences with grandparents. It strikes me as curious, though, the lack of times she’s initiated seeing the boys or having them over to her house. In the year we’ve been home it’s just been a fraction of times. She can see them whenever she wants, all she has to do is ask.

Gary said she’s also planning on making her place more “kid-friendly”. Well, I hope so—there really isn’t much place for them to play there, since her house is completely crowded with stuff. Both spare bedrooms are unusable because of the sacks of magazines and knick-knacks put in haphazardly (that’s my theory of why she won’t have Lew over, because she doesn’t want him to see it).

What’s also not kid-friendly is how long we have to WAIT to do whatever it is we came over for, which is usually dinner. In the entire time I’ve known her, she’ll invite us over for dinner, be nowhere near ready when we arrive at the appointed time, and we have to wait at least an hour. That’s tough on the kids when it’s night, or raining so they can’t go outside.

1/04/06

It dawns on me that this is my first entry of the new year; and I think the first time I’ve written “2006”.

I’ve had…some bright moments today where I’ve been feeling alert, and curious, and INTERESTED in stuff. And the thought of doing something like taking the boys up skiing, seems possible, and easy.

In concert with this is this feeling of painful tenderness for Scott; and I think it’s because of regret that I haven’t been a better mother to him, especially in this time of his being 3 and 4. There’s a lot that’s special about this age, but for me, it’s been an ordeal of exquisite irritation with him. I had a couple of images of him today that feel poignant and emphasize that regretful tenderness. One is his avid assembly of some wonderful shapes (he calls them “robots”, and “men” and “boats” and “guns” with lego duplos. I’m looking at a few of them as I write. There is another Scott image, though, that I had earlier that even more epitomized these feelings; now I can’t remember it. A look in his eye, or something. Oh, there it is; Scott in the tub, alone, with a washcloth twisted into a rope that he’s chewing at. It caught me off guard, that feeling, when I went to run some water for my bath and found 2 twisted-up washcloths in the bottom of the tub. I’d seen him chewing it, when he didn’t know I was there. I’ve been kind of a nazi about not drinking tub water, and so he wasn’t supposed to be doing that…but it seemed to be satisfying some need in him…I think that’s what touched my heart and felt bitter-sweet and sad.

I wonder if this brighter feel has to do with having gone to Blaine’s slide show last night and having beer with them afterward. And looking ahead to going up to the cabin for the first time since Connor was 11mo old, I think—bought some new boots today (2 yr old used, in good shape, and with a discount; cheaper than it would have been to replace the liners in my scarpas). Maybe it IS the intimation that there is a bit of a life outside of kids and that I can rejoin it some. Perhaps it’s just that Christmas season is FINALLY over—all that remains is to take down the tree—and the kids FINALLY back in school.

Though there’s not really a break for me in sight. I have company; Rick here working: pounding, machines whining. And once he’s done with the room down there, it remains for me to paint it and set it up as Scott’s room. No break today, certainly; errands over by Scott’s school (to try on the boots and make a decision) and a long-planned trip to Stark’s Vacuum cleaners to get some parts long needed for ours.

I’m reading a book by Louise Erdrich, and there’s something in her main character, a man who does the things he needs to do, and gets the sustanence he needs, from a stillness in himself. That is a concept that resonates with me, and causes me to feel the stillness inside of me. That’s in concert with a FWD Joyce sent me on the Internet: the Dali Lama’s “rules” for living.

11/25/05

One month til Christmas; yuck. At least it won’t be here, and we won’t be hosting it. About the only way I could get Gary to leave here was to go to my folks’. I’d really rather go to Mexico or something, but it’s not to be. He’s too much of a traditionalist to “abandon” family at Christmas.

Got “familied” out yesterday, way too big a dose. Gary was the host; I did nothing yesterday except try to keep the kids amused (and the clean-up. I did all of that.). Problem is, a meal that was to have been ready at about 3 wasn’t on the table til about 6:30. Which really drew the day out, way too long. So with Darlene coming over at 1:30, and neither she nor Lew being particularly good with the kids, it meant enough time for them to get restless in. Me, too. I’d started a movie with the boys, and Gary wanted us to come upstairs, interrupting the movie. But it’s not like there would have been much to do upstairs with Gary working in the kitchen and both his parents coaching him and not having much to converse with the boys about. So I stayed downstairs with them, but feeling uneasy that it was being rude. Like I said, there was w-a-a-a-ay too much time on our hands. And I didn’t have much to say to Lew or Darlene either. I figured she was probably in 7th heaven being able to “help” Gary. She’s a “helper”. Makes her feel important.

I guess it’s true that I don’t have a good attitude. I don’t know if a “good” attitude would have made yesterday seem any better. There just isn’t a chemistry that makes it a pleasure to be with either of them, that would make it a truly convivial affair. We don’t produce that with each other, and I don’t think it’s my attitude alone that’s the factor in that.

So all in all, it took nearly 7 hours to produce yesterday’s meal, at least an hour’s clean-up, and for about 1/2 hour at the table. The boys were there about 10 minutes.

I don’t really “get” the subtext about Thanksgiving anyway, which is to stuff yourself to the gills with food that’s ok, not really great—the only thing that can really be said in its favor is that it’s traditional. But really, that’s sort of the national story about Thanksgiving—get way too stuffed; uncomfortably. Eat too much. There’s no pleasure in that for me.

Kind of an interesting sub-twist on x.

Later on the above. I just needed to give voice to the doubt that I’m not really a very nice person. Quake in my boots at the thought of a week home with the kids not in school. See this whole last sixth of the year as an ordeal to plod through. Not be able to be beyond courteous to Gary’s parents.

Hooray, though. His niece and her fiancé got sensible and decided to wait on getting married…a joint trip to Alaska with Gary’s mom was something looming over my head and feeling very yucky. So it appears that may be off the horizon for now; it was to be in August.

See? Not a very nice person.

11/26/05 4:10 a.m.

A month from today Christmas will be over. Something to look forward to—keep the eyes on the prize.

Some thoughts about Gary:

Basically, though I know that in general it is suspect to think that the responsibility for something going wrong lies entirely with someone else, I really think that the bulk of the responsibility for the state of our relationship does lie with him. I think this because of the objective fact that he is dysfunctional in the way that he communicates. He does not state clearly and respectfully what he wants, yet he’s surly and disrespectful when he then doesn’t get what he wants. He expects me to read his mind, and to be able to see things from his point of view—for example if he is facing one way, he’ll tell me to turn, say, right, from HIS orientation, even through “right” to me, from MY orientation may be different. And I don’t know if he means from MY orientation or from his, and so if I ask him he gets annoyed. And shows it. It is not reasonable. When he is angry he doesn’t deal with it with me in an adult way; instead he later gets revenge on me because he WAS angry; his goal is to WIN, not to resolve. His communication is dysfunctional because it alienates, and he won’t see the effects and consequences of that way of communicating—instead he BLAMES ME when I object to that way of communicating with me. And he won’t see it, and so he has no motivation to become a more functional communicator—that is, one who can resolve conflict instead of create more of it.

He is also unrealistic in what he wants. He wanted me to have the boys upstairs to be with his parents in this unrealistic vision of the boys upstairs being angels and his parents having grandparently interactions with them. What he failed to see is that the grandparents have very little basis to be able to have a comfortable and unstilted interaction with them—it wouldn’t have worked because the boys wanted to be somewhere else; it wouldn’t have worked because Darlene and Lew don’t have much to say to them; it wouldn’t have worked because they were busy “helping” Gary in the kitchen anyway and there really wasn’t room for them to be up there in the kitchen too with all that going on. He wanted Norman Rockwell. Well, his parents aren’t Norman Rockwell people. In fact, I think they’re both very self-centered and that keeps them from being the kind of grandparents that kids want to be around.

Now, going to try to get back to bed.

Here’s what I want: my wish for the new year:

I want to find a suitable person to have an affair with. Perhaps a long running, over years affair. Maybe I’ll change my mind later and want more than one sexual partner, but for now I’d be happy with just one, and long running. Not marriage, just sex. By suitable I mean someone who won’t be betraying another commitment and being dishonorable in order to have sex with me…and someone I like a lot and laugh with and the chemistry is good. Sort of the equivalent of a “mistress”; I don’t think there is any male equivalent to that in our culture or language.