Entry 15-01.02.03 in Book Two: The Fifteenth Year of the Third Millennium of the Common Era

ENTRY TABLE OF CONTENTS

(a) Greeting
(b) Last Night
(c) Work
(d) Flops and Fuckit
(e) Backup Plans To Hate

Greetings! May your life be filled with love, peace, and comfort… the three things that seem to be most lacking in the modern world, really.

Last night, I just went straight to bed after writing. The whole thing was making me depressed and I didn’t want to think about it anymore. Especially because what I was thinking about wouldn’t help. I thought about looking for a marriage counselor again but… it was hard enough getting my wife to agree to go in the first place… she won’t move work around trying to get an appointment… and I couldn’t get any therapists to call me back to schedule one anyway. So… that kind of let down isn’t what I’m looking for. I thought about contacting my brother and having a conversation with him… how I don’t want to get divorced but I don’t see this marriage exactly working… but he’d say “Get a counselor” or tell me that these are things I should have thought about before getting married. I thought about calling Molly and meeting for coffee… subtly telling her how difficult it is living with a woman that treats me as sexless. Ultimately… none of those thoughts are positive or productive. So, I’ll do what I always do in situations like this. Double down and see what I can make happen. Flat out tell my wife that this year… we work on us or we give up on us. Period. Full Stop. Starting with mandating a date night! Too many evenings have passed with neither of us spending time together… merely passing time together. One week I’ll plan, the next week she’ll plan and so on. And frankly… if she refuses or makes a big ol’ negative deal out of this idea or never does any of the planning… I’ll have a pretty huge answer as to how she really sees me and the marriage.

Work… my last day for a long while, at least it better be. Started off… humorously. I wanted to be in the office by 8 to make sure that if the paperwork wasn’t done for morning court, I could quick whip something up. Got to the office… office is locked. Nobody there. I don’t have a key. Crap. Waited for someone with a key to show up and then got straight to work. Packed everything up and went to the in-jail court room… where I was informed that morning court had been cancelled and everyone was going to go through in the afternoon. Really? Nobody saw fit to tell me? I get that my position is meaningless but seriously nobody wanted to let me know I didn’t have to come in this morning? Oh well, I suppose. Gives me a solid 3 hours to waste before doing any work.... but, of course, afternoon court was truly a grueling experience today… no surprise the crazies, drunks, and junkies were oozing out of the woodwork after New Years. But I got back to the office after court so that I could input the hundreds of statistics and deliver an arm load of paperwork to Special Projects… in my mail box? Interview forms! Wait… the only shift I wasn’t scheduled for was interviews today… are these… really? These are here because you just assumed I would step up and take care of it… since the person scheduled is still out of town. You didn’t want to… ask… or bribe… or take care of it yourself? Just… find the guy with an Honor Code and expect that he’ll take care of it. I felt bad about it but… I did just leave them. I wasn’t scheduled to do it and (more importantly) I’m not paid enough to volunteer 3 hours of my time. I had already been at work since 8 and staying that much later to cover the same jerk who screwed me on Monday just… didn’t fill me with joy.

Yeah… I don’t know if I had shitty timing or if I have a shitty wife. She came home and I asked her about her day. It was a busy one… lots of product needing to be put away, her feet hurt… but still… I am dedicated to trying to give our marriage a final try this year. So, I asked her about going to a romantic restaurant tonight. She was very against the idea. Okay, that tells me something… but then I was thinking “well, her feet hurt” so that could be okay. I tell her how important this is to me… how this year is make or break for us… how we need to work on us… how the one thing I need from her this year is involvement. In fact, we even have a conversation about it. I specifically call her out......... “When you’re angry, you have all this passion and become an active person. But when it comes to me, when it comes to our marriage… you’re very passive. I need you to be active about this. I need you to actively give a damn. I can’t just have a marriage where my partner doesn’t care. I need conversation, I need spending time together, a little romance.” At this point, I kid you not, she responded gruffly with “I hate romance, it’s such bullshit.” I didn’t just let the whole thing go… I specifically said that I needed an active wife. I can’t just have a passive wife anymore. This is a big deal for me.

So, my wife decidedly shut down the romantic restaurant idea and put a kaibosh on the date night (at least this week) but did want to run an errand… okay, sure, I’ll go run an errand with you. You don’t want to go on a date with me but what do you want to do? Spend two hours shopping for boots. Yeah. That is much better than a date with your husband. Much better than actively trying to work on your marriage. Buying boots. So… no date, gruffly swearing off romance… but shoe shopping, frozen pizza, and Friends on Netflix. Yeah… I was hoping for romance, working on our marriage, and maybe some physical affection… but none of those things, and two boringly grueling hours of shoe shopping, followed by watching (admittedly the show I picked out) television on separate sides of the room… yeah, that is just as good.

Considerably more worried about the possibilities of divorce now.