Travel Notes: Part 2 in Book Two: The Fifteenth Year of the Third Millennium of the Common Era

14 Days of Trips, Vacations, What have you… And with that, the travels come to a close! Managed to drive a full 1809.7 miles… definitely a bit tired!

What follows are notes I took while on the trip to put up here. After writing them all, going back and condensing them all, and numbering them all… it became clear that just dumping all of it into one entry might be cruel.

So… HERE is the other portion of it if you have only read one!
PS- most of what follows is emotional stuff because that is what always seems most important to me. Yes, the wedding was nice. The rehearsal was at the Adler Planetarium. While in Wisconsin, I did a ZiplLine tour and went horseback riding. That is all the non-emotion stuff from the trip. Now continuing with the heavy stuff…

11) Frak, frell, gorram, shazbot, poodoo, smeg, farathoom, smurfing mother smurfing smurfed smurfer. Despite the emotional issues, complexity and weirdness in my marriage… I’m faithful. And I was rather looking forward to “Good Luck Sex” on Saturday night. I had a big plan (that I will be sharing in my Explicit Book) and was looking forward to maybe hopefully trying something that Wife might like and open her up a bit more. BUT Wife has been clear that “Good Luck Sex” would definitely not be happening. And as blow jobs, hand jobs, and anything else sexual is never and has never been on the table… looks like another “fun” masturbation session coming up. 12 Days of Travel, over 1400 miles of driving.... a job interview that I desperately want to nail. Don’t get me wrong… I’m not a monster. I don’t expect my wife to simply open her legs whenever I want her to. And I do acknowledge we’ve had a lot more sex this year than ever before in our marriage… but with our emotional issues, our connection issues, and everything else. I mean… I can’t reconcile it. I’m starting to wonder if that Marriage Counselor I didn’t like was trying to warn me of something… I mean… I still think it is bullshit to tell your marriage counseling clients to consider divorce after only TWO sessions but… I can’t help but feel that it shouldn’t be so much work to get my wife to want to say I love you… or if not say it, then show it in some way.

12) Last night before going to bed, I could feel my sinuses freaking out. That meant only one thing, and I felt it appropriate to inform my wife… with my sinuses going wonky, I’m going to snore and (likely) loudly. True to my word, I snored. After waking me up three or four times in an attempt to get me to stop snoring; wife simply slept in another room. I’m never sure how to feel about this especially if I have warned her ahead of time. I get it. Some people can’t sleep when their partner snores. But… if I’ve given warning… that should create an opportunity for Problem Solving Before the Problem Presents Itself. And then… I thoroughly appreciate Wife sleeping in another room instead of continuing to wake me up and/or demanding that I sleep in another room… but then there is a part of me that thinks “why did you have to wake me so many times when you knew I worked in the morning? Why not just go into the other room to begin with since you don’t have to return to work until Saturday?”

13) Of course the one day I’m back in Omaha this whole time… guh! Had to come back to Omaha quickly to do some shifts at work since my interview on Monday means I can’t work the 4 shifts I was originally scheduled to work… and TODAY… none of my personal computing devices work and (far far worse)… HEAT INDEX OF 110 DEGREES FAHRENHEIT! (That is 43.33 for our Celsius friends). So… here I am… at the very tail end of lots of driving… running around outside from courthouse to jail to office… in pants, long sleeved shirt, and suit coat… in 110 degree weather! I’ll admit… my life has left me feeling like Karma, Cosmic Justice, and the Imperceptible Hand of Fate are less and less fair… but… after everything? I really hope I get this Dallas County job, man. D’oh! That thought led me to a darker place because it reminded me of the conversation with Wife last night. I’m fretting over this job interview… literally going over possible questions over and over because I want this job so much. And my wife, to her credit, was trying to be supportive. She said “You deserve this job.” Of course… as I’m going over questions in my head… I ask her “Why do I deserve this job?” because that sure as hell is a question that will be asked. She… honestly hadn’t a clue. She couldn’t come up with a single reason why I deserve the job. That… was surprisingly hurtful. She really doesn’t know what I do all day? Or… what I’ve done for the past 4 years? Has my entire existence in this marriage really been so insignificant that she can’t even throw out something as generic as “You’re hard working.”?

14) Yeah, living with someone that doesn’t think about or care about other people certainly creates communication issues! Wife is trying to fix computer stuff and I, not for the first time suggest, that she look into computer classes since fixing stuff is clearly a passion for her. She starts getting combative and I attempt to explain that I am simply trying to help find things that might make her happy because her happiness matters to me. Without a response, she goes back to the computer. Moving on… I tell her we should hit the store soon so I can make dinner and then maybe watch the Netflix DVD that has been sitting around our house for 15 days? She responds with “I’m googling that right now.” What? “Hon, what do you mean you are googling that?” Rage-filled shout back, “I am googling what I want to buy at the store!”
How… what.. huh? How did the situation spiral into rage and yelling so quickly? Don’t worry, I asked her to try to findout. But like I assumed… the rage stems from her being mad at herself when she doesn’t communicate clearly, rage at me for not intuitively knowing what she means and rage at herself again for being so angry all the time.

15) So “good luck sex” did happen, but as expected it was entirely on her terms. When we had discussed it, I had wanted it on Saturday Night. We could take our time, I could try some things… there was an understanding to it. The answer was a gigantic no. Instead, Sunday morning. I hadn’t had a thing to eat in 13 hours and my body was super tight from a rough sleep (and my arm recovering from ZipLine) but Wife curls up next to me and starts kissing me. After an hour she had finished once and I wound up with a very sore right arm. Glad to have had sex twice this month, glad to have brought my wife to orgasm… a bit frustrating that I didn’t get there and I still don’t like how it is always on her terms.

16) Here is the story all about how I discovered that my interview was changed. While finishing dinner at my parents’ my dad started making a horrendous noise in the kitchen. Mom was having trouble having a conversation so she told Dad to knock it off. Dad flipped her the bird. I was shocked, offended, and bewildered by that response… so I went to get my phone in order to text my Wife about it. When I got my phone I saw that I had a missed call. Call came in at 5pm… so I missed it by about 90 minutes. Listened to the message, called the guy back. Interview changed to Wednesday at 1 pm. That will add another 100+ miles to my trip… and another 2 days. After all of this… I damn well hope I get this job! I need a steady income, a good job… and I cannot stress enough the value of this location!............. just realized, with the extra 100+ miles… my total trip would be like driving from Omaha to Boston.

17) I was almost entirely unable to sleep Sunday night. Sleeping at my parents when there was now no interview just felt like such a waste… especially considering how little I’ve slept in “my own” bed this month. It DID give me the opportunity to catch up on PB reading but… frankly, I would have much preferred sleep.

18) Acknowledging the numerous problems (from miniscule to massive) that my marriage currently is having… the stress of so much driving, so much travel, and all of the job hunting stuff… I just want to go home, get in bed, and cuddle/hold my wife for a good long while. I know it isn’t her cup of tea… too gentile, too much touching, all of that. But… maybe?

19) GOODNESS! I drove considerably more than I was expecting! Official count?

2 Weeks, 4 States and 1809.7 Miles!

For enthusiasts… Land’s End to John o’ Groats is the traversal of the whole length of the island of Great Britain between two extremities; in the southwest and northeast. The traditional distance by road is 874 miles. Therefore, accumulating all of my travel over the last two weeks… I could have done that trip twice.

20) Interview: Oh how terribly this went! From Parents to Interview takes 25 minutes. I left at Noon for a 1:00 interview because… if I had trouble finding parking, if there was a lot of traffic, whatever… I wanted to have enough time to make sure I made it. NOPE! Semi Truck flipped over on 80. So my 25 minute drive took 75 minutes! I was 15 minutes late to the interview! And things went downhill from there. Two things became quickly apparent to the interviewer. First, I have no formal experience in Collections… as this job would start me mostly in a position of calling people for money owed. Second, I am a real-life Harvey Two Face. Part of the interview was a “conversation about justice applied.” And… to almost every answer, I was of two minds. For instance… hypothetical… “individual convicted of misdemeanor Disorderly Conduct is assessed a $5000 fine. He lives on a fixed income, has two children, and a minimum wage job.” That was the hypo. OF COURSE I’m of two minds! Half of me says, “He committed a crime, had a trial, and was sentenced. He must be held responsible.” The other half of me says, “There has to be something we can do to help that individual.” So… yeah. There were a lot of times where the interviewer asked me questions where he wanted me to either say “Enforce the judgment” or “Can’t we be nice?” And instead I said, “I don’t mind being considered the bad guy, but that can’t be the only way to do things.” Guh.

So… I guess… more prayer? More sacrifices? More positive vibes? After leaving the interview, I’m fairly confident that I did not get the job but… if a miracle can happen… it would be really nice if this job came through for me.