Fuzzy Wuzzy

I have discovered the key to being happy at work — I have to be busy.  When I have a “paperwork day,” I end up goofing around and not getting anything done.  When I have inmates scheduled all day, I’m all over it and get everything on my “to-do” list done.  That overwhelmed feeling that happens when I have a bunch of paperwork to do and also a lot of inmates to see will happen and I just have to accept that.  I have to accept that I don’t do well with unstructured time — especially not an entire eight hours of unstructured time.  It may be somewhat stressful some days to do all of my paperwork AND see inmates all day, but it usually means that I feel good at the end of the day, like I have been productive, and it’s totally do-able.  I have found that if I see people every half hour, that leaves me about ten minutes at the end of every appointment to do the note and post it, and I can get my other paperwork done when the inmates are on lockdown.  I wish it hadn’t taken this long to figure it out, but I’m glad that I did.  Giving myself an entire day to just to paperwork = extreme laziness and goofing off.  Duh.  😀

Dr. Love has been in MB since Monday night and I am soooo ready for him to come home!  We went there this past weekend (as I posted before), and his dad was telling me on Saturday morning that he was going to give Dr. Love a bunch of money.  I suggested to him that he do it as a loan and not just give it to Dr. Love, as this causes Dr. Love to feel bad, having money thrown at him instead of giving him real help.  I suggested that Dr. Love’s self-esteem would be well-served if he wasn’t getting money for nothing, that he should know he is expected to pay it back.  Well, that went way over his dad’s head — he said there was no way he could ever “loan” money, that it was his “responsibility” to be sure that Dr. Love is taken care of.  I didn’t get into it with him like I would have liked to, but I made it clear that this type of situation doesn’t make Dr. Love feel better, it makes him feel worse.  Long story short, the next day his dad told Dr. Love that he had some work that needed to be done around the house and he would like for Matt to come up for a few days each week and get it done. 

Okay, not exactly what I had hoped for, Dr. Love being in MB for a three-day stretch, doing chores at his parents’ house when there is plenty to be done around here, but I suppose that I can begrudgingly admit that this solves the problem, at least somewhat, of his parents just throwing money at him with nothing expected in return.  To be selfish, I would like Dr. Love to stick around here and just pay his parents back, so that he’s not away and I have to miss him.  However, absence does make the heart grow fonder, and I believe that has happened on both sides. 

It has also given me some reassurance that I can survive “on my own,” which I was unsure of.  Granted, it has only been a few days, but I have really come to depend on Dr. Love for a lot of things, especially emotional support.  It is perfectly normal to not want someone to be away that you really care about and to worry about what you will do without them.  I have spent a lot of time “on my own” for years, months, weeks at a time and have done just fine.  But I am so used to having Dr. Love around that I think I needed to be reminded that I can still take care of business if left to my own devices.  Of course, I am much happier when he is around, but at least I know I can make it without losing my sanity when he is not around. 

I have noticed myself slipping into some bad habits to numb myself, to slip away from reality while still appearing to be engaged in reality.  When I go for long periods without eating, or go for long periods without sleeping, or wait until late at night to take my meds, my head gets pretty fuzzy.  To me, it’s a pleasant sensation, one that I seek out.  I can just hide out inside my head and not be connected to what is going on around me — I can be totally oblivious.  This is not healthy for me mentally or physically, I realize.  With the not eating, I walk a fine line around my eating habits become more disordered than they already are.  With the not sleeping, I take a gamble on my mental health, and when I don’t take my meds until late, I mess up my schedule.  I am working at being engaged in the moment as an opposite-to-emotion practice.  In fact, I have been doing a lot of opposite-to-emotion, when I am not busy being willful. 

Over the past little bit that Dr. Love has been gone, I have filled up my time with things that I used to do all of the time that I enjoy — blogging, reading my favorite blogs, surfing the Internet, spending time with QoB and the Big Dog, meditating — it’s something I’d like to keep up with when Dr. Love returns.  It’s one thing to want to spend time together, but, as Dr. Love is always quick to point out, we don’t have to spend every single moment together.  I think I have realized that more since he has been gone, and am going to go back to doing things that I like to do, things that we can’t necessarily do together.  It’s always good to have “me” time, and I have been neglecting to do that, especially because it is hard to do when we are always at home at the same time. 

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Learning to Fly

Doing it My Way

I am in MB this weekend with Dr. Love, visiting his parents.  It is something I looked forward to and dreaded.  I’m here because Dr. Love wants me to be, and that is enough. 

I look forward to coming here because it is a great break — no cooking, cleaning, chores to do…I can just relax.  If I can get around the fact that his mother hates me.

Of course, Dr. Love has always said that she doesn’t.  “They like everyone!”  No one likes “everyone.”  Not anyone that I’ve ever met, and especially no mother that treats her 27 and 24 year old sons like 3 year olds. 

I have a hard time liking the Queen of Enmeshment from day one, seeing how she treats Dr. Love.  And I’ve had an especially hard time since their visit two times ago. 

Dr. Love is still out of work and his parents decided a little over a month ago to come visit and help Dr. Love get some work around the house done.  I was thinking — ‘Awesome!  Maybe they’ll finish the porch or put in that extra outlet in the bedroom.’

No.

They came into my house and ripped out my bathroom wall where the tiles were falling down.  Not what I had planned.  Huge mess, huge disaster.  Not only did it take two days and one over-night visit, it looks like shit.

Granted, it needed to be fixed at some point — the tiles on the shower wall had fallen — an itty-bitty two by two foot section.  By the time Matt’s dad, Mr. I-Can’t-Fix-It came around and was there for a couple hours, it turned into 3/4 of one wall of the shower.  Argh.  What a mess!

I still have to admit that it needed to be done, but why now?  Why not work on one of the things higher on my priority list?  Why not wait to re-tile the bathroom when the bathroom gets renovated like I want it?  Why fix something to tear it down six months later?  I’m sure there are reasons — mold, mildew, walls falling down. 

I think I am just pissed that it turned out looking like shit.  For one, they didn’t put the same tiles up that had come down.  The new ones are a good half-inch wider and taller.  They don’t match color-wise.  It just looks crappy.  I was always brought up that if you’re going to do something, do it the right way.  Don’t do anything half-assed.  And that’s what happened in my absence.  This all took place while I was at work.

Long story short, I came home after they had been there working on it all day the day before and all of the present day — and it still wasn’t close to being done.  My bathroom was a disaster, there was tile dust everywhere, Mr. I-Can’t-Fix-It had been back and forth to the hardware store over five times.  To make matters worse, Dr. Love’s parents had convinced him that he was ill and had him lying on the couch the whole time.

Argh.

So I come home, see the bathroom after a very long day’s work and no sleep the night before, freak out, and escape to QoB and Big Dog’s.  I said thank you before I left, that I was appreciative of all they were doing, I apologized for leaving, and then I high-tailed it out of there. 

And I felt bad about it, but damn.  There’s only so much I can tolerate and I’d had my fill.  Especially since Dr. Love’s mom had been nothing but critical of me the entire time they had been there — criticizing the food in the fridge and wondering how much money we spend on groceries (far too much in her opinion), too much pre-cooked, pre-prepared stuff in the freezer; oh MY how much did you spend on all of this expensive makeup? and your closet is SO FULL!  

So I felt like shit, needless to say.  I went to QoB and Big Dog’s to vent and then felt better.  I returned around 9:00 p.m. and his parents had left just 15 minutes before, thank God.  I  have never felt so relieved.  I simply couldn’t take another night of people in my house, sleeping on my floor, people that criticized me and drove me crazy and treated my MAN like a child. 

I felt bad, but Dr. Love assured me there were no hard feelings.  WRONG!  His parents haven’t acted the same way toward me since.  I knew something was up and it was confirmed last night. 

I told Dr. Love on the way up here that I needed some sort of confirmation as to his idea that his parents were not irritated with me.  I went to bed almost right after dinner last night because we didn’t get here until late and it was almost 10:00 p.m. when we ate.  Dr. Love came up later and was tossing and turning, almost crying.  I asked him what was wrong.  Dr. Love said that the Queen of Enmeshment had hurt his feelings by saying something bad about me.

Apparently, I am “very unappreciative and ungrateful.”  I am also “rude.”  Hmmm.  I told him not to worry about it, that I wasn’t worried about it, and really, I’m not.  It doesn’t surprise me that those words came from his mother’s mouth. 

I talked to his dad this morning, whom I find slightly less obnoxious, and explained my stress level.  I didn’t tell him that I was pissed that he fucked up my bathroom — I told him that I was appreciative of all the help he had given us and was very generic about it.  I mentioned what Queen of Enmeshment had said and he laughed and said “just let that go in one ear and out the other.” 

Which I am doing, especially after talking to my Dad, who gave me an excellent pep talk about letting other people violate my BOUNDARIES.  😀

The next hurdle is the kitchen renovation that Dr. Love and I are going to do.  It’s going to look awesome and I’m finally going to have a dishwasher and more electrical outlets.  However, Mr. I-Can’t-Fix-It has his mind set that he and Dr. Love will be installing the dishwasher and extra outlets themselves. 

Uh-uh.  Not going to happen.  Over my dead body.  Q0B agrees that a professional needs to do it, as I’m sure the Big Dog would.  Since they’re on the deed, that’s a 3-3 vote over Matt and his parents, with us winning since, um, wait, IT’S OUR HOUSE.  Grrr.

So now there is tension over that.  Let there be tension.  I don’t really fracking care at this point.  I’m just going to take Dad’s advice and lay low for this weekend and go on with our plan to renovate the kitchen MY way — with the assistance of professionals. 

I would put up a YouTube that screams bloody hell about pushy and intrusive parenting styles, but I am on a dial-up connection way the hell out in the middle of nowhere in MB.  That’s right.  Dial-up.  As if it couldn’t get any worse.  🙂