Last Monday of April in Book Four: Ichi-no-Tani 2017

From 8:30 to 11:08 am; I have been working relatively well. That is a grand total of 2 hours and 38 minutes (or 2.6 hours from Law Firm Perspective) and I’ve accumulated 1.7 hours of billable time. Closest “actual to billable” ratio I’ve had in a while.

The weekend was… what it was, I suppose.
Friday
Got home, decided that I wanted to get some stuff at the store; but waited for Wife to come home in case she needed me to pick anything up when I was at the store. Wife came home and was upset that I had waited since waiting just meant we got to see each other less on Friday night. I did not suggest that such a statement inherently ignores the fact that she could have come with me shopping but… whatevs. I was gone and back in less than 20 minutes. That evening we… didn’t do anything, actually, come to think of it.

Saturday
I wake up early and keep going back to sleep for about 60 minutes or so. So, from 5 am until an hour after Wife leaves for work at 10; I’m waking up, going back to sleep, waking up, going back to sleep. Wife had asked me to go clothes shopping, and I wanted to catch up on Prosebox, and I had a bunch of other stuff I wanted to do. INSTEAD… I cleaned my PS4, thus allowing me to play some games I had previously been unable to play. And “Let It Die” went live on PS4. And I was so tired from the previous week. So… mostly I stayed on the couch; varying between napping, masturbating, and playing video games. I did finish and fold all of the laundry in the house but… I suppose that isn’t considered too important. That evening, Wife came home and it was “BBC Time.” Never mind that Attack on Titan (which even Wife loves) had their new episode on… it is Saturday, so we have to watch British Television shows that date back to (anywhere from) 1974 to 1995. I like most of the shows (can’t STAND Keeping Up Appearances) but… it is what it is. Of course, after the shows finished late into the latest part of night… it is sleep time. But I was snoring, which infuriated Wife.

Sunday
I wake up early to make Wife breakfast. She loves Scrambled Eggs and, as I explained when I told her I’d make Breakfasts on Sundays… if I’m going to church and you’re going to work around the same time, it is no trouble to make breakfast. So, I made her scrambled eggs. And she asked me to put them in the microwave or oven because she wanted to shower and do other stuff first. So, after pre-informing her of eggs; making eggs; Wife leaves 5 minutes to eat and bolts out the door. Oh well, not an issue. Just trying to do something nice; but I understand about schedules. Then I went to Church and met my parents there. The service was a perfect one for Wife as she finds “emotional connection” to be too outside of her wheel house and much prefers discussions based on “rational and logical discussion.” And the whole service was about how “being a ‘blind faith’ Christian is hollow and lazy.” How it is okay to have doubts, investigate your faith, use your brain.... all that.

After Church, the Ames Contingent was going to meet the parents at the ranch because Easter was postponed. My niece had pneumonia on Easter so yesterday was going to be make up day for it. But with Wife working, she wasn’t going to be able to make it until 7:30 or 8 at which time the Ames Contingent was likely to leave soon thereafter to get the little one in bed. Plus… I still had errands and shopping I needed to do; so I let them know I’d be off doing that stuff and swing around back to the parent’s place around 3.

I got home… I grabbed the stuff for clothes shopping and realized… wait. Wife is the one going through my stuff, throwing it out, making the decisions on my clothes. She should be with me when I’m clothes shopping in an effort to make sure that doesn’t happen. So instead, I tried to fix some electronics stuff that hadn’t been behaving and played Let It Die. Or tried to. There were massive errors. So, instead, I looked into the error reports to see if there were known issues. Until suddenly: BOOM 3:00.

SO I grabbed a bunch of stuff Wife wanted me to bring to parents’ house and raced over there. It, uh, didn’t start out great. I entered the door with my arms entirely occupied. No hands free. As the door is closing, Mom begins to say “Don’t let the door slam” but by the time she says “slam” I can’t drop everything I’m carrying, turn around, and grab the door. SO it slams and Mom isn’t happy. The first hour goes okay, though. We’re all just hanging out watching Planet Earth and it is fine. Little One even wakes up and comes downstairs on her own (more evidence of how fast she is growing up) and so it is Egg Hunt Time. As an after thought, as Mom, Dad, Bro, SIL, and Niece are going outside… Mom asks me to hide Niece’s Easter Basket indoors; but not somewhere too difficult. So I grab the basket and put it in a corner behind a chair. Like… literally visible to anyone looking in that corner. Then I join everyone else outside. Bro is helping way too much. Like, if Niece walks by an egg… he crouches down and doesn’t follow after her… marking where the egg is by his presence until she comes back and finds it because it is next to daddy. Call me a monster but… when I was growing up, I had to compete with other kids during egg hunts and parents giving egg locations away was looked down on. But for Niece, we do a one person egg hunt and hand her all the locations? And they bitch at Millennials for “participation trophies?” Bah. Just me disliking the process. Let the girl look for a few minutes before rushing to make sure she found them. Then it is time to come indoors. Mom and Dad are trying to hint that the Easter Bunny may have left something inside the house for Niece. She isn’t quite getting it. She’s 3.5 and speaks pretty well but… maybes, ifs, and coy hints… some adults don’t understand that. She Bro finally just said, “Easter Bunny hides baskets inside houses. Can you find yours?” She kind of wanders around, and continues to look at her parents. And I’m thinking… yeah, see, this is what happens. You’ve taken a bright, intelligent little girl and enforced the idea that you’ll give her answers whenever she asks. But this time, it was Dad and Mom who ruined it. Mom gave Niece the room hint and Dad started dramatically pointing and gesturing. And I’m the bad guy because hiding a basket behind a chair was “too difficult for a 3 year old.”

The basket had lots of games and fun stuff, so the family went outside to play with it all. Niece started walking around saying she was Darth Vader and that I was Yoda and she wanted to play. Which was cool. Then dinner time. Dinner time was mostly all right. But after dinner was the mandatory argument. This time it was between Brother and I.
I suggested that visual effects are not enough to make a movie substantive. That spectacular effects over crappy story makes movies that sell well and mean little. My brother is a 3D Animator; so instead of having a discussion on how visuals and story affect one another… he does The Brother thing and simply disagrees with me entirely. Trying to argue that Avatar was a bad script but spectacular visual effects; and that was enough to make it substantive. This would have been a meaningless argument about the merits of art and story; but my brother likes to pull non-sequitur because for him, any argument with me has to be about my own mortal soul. So we started the argument discussing art, story, and substance. The argument ends with Bro twisting the entire discussion into this ephemeral bit about finding joy in everything. Yeah, I don’t know how we got there either. He claims it is because his view is that if you find a movie bad, but find joy in the visuals; that movie is a good film. But that isn’t what he was saying. He was doing, as he often does, the “double speak” of “I’m not saying I’m talking about you; but I’m talking about you.” Like… we were discussing what the purpose of a film is. If the film is about telling a story; and you’ve failed to tell the story… that is a failure. And he twists it to no longer be specific but saying, “So you’re saying you can’t find joy in failure?” And it’s like… who argues like this? Why does a central point of an intellectual argument have to warp into a personal argument about whether joy can be found in all things? Ultimately, Bro pulled his “Argument Over Because I Won” statement of “In someone’s darkest time, they can find joy. That’s how it is.” TO which I said, “And if someone is going through extreme darkness and starts acting happy; that usually indicates I should watch out for suicide.” This, of course, gave Brother a feather in his cap. As he summarized the last 4 seconds saying “You see, I’m talking about joy and you’re talking about suicide.” I should have let it go because… I know him, there is no rational debate because it isn’t about exchanging ideas… it is about winning.... but I didn’t just let it go. I followed up with, “Trust me. If you do the research and have friends who kill themselves; if someone suddenly gets really happy after being depressed for a long time… it is an external indicator that such a person may be suicidal.” The whole thing was just… bah.

And then… for added measure, Brother and Sister started arguing with me about Wife. Not, y’know, is Wife good for you.... but “Are you doing enough for Wife?” Here’s how it went… I mentioned that “joy in darkness” is a personal issue as I am worried about Wife in her capacity to find joy. In her capacity to be happy in her life. In her capacity to not hate herself. And I was told that I needed to tell Wife that I don’t want kids. I was… aghast. I do want kids; or at least I’m open to the idea. And they said that since Wife so often brings up her Mother’s Post-Partum Depression and since Wife mentions that she is 35 and getting too old for a baby… that maybe what Wife is saying is that she doesn’t want a baby. So it is my job to tell Wife that I don’t want a baby so she doesn’t keep thinking about babies. That was… frustrating. I didn’t follow up the argument but… it is yet another time where Brother and Sister try to tell me what to do with a total disregard for my own wants and needs.

Like… Brother constantly saying that I need to just be happier. Really? Douche? Because you were gone when I was being sexually/emotionally/physically abused for 8 months. Because you dismissed my ‘fibromyalgia’ as not being real. Because while you created a company due to specialized niche talents, I was struggling to find work… and you acted like struggling to find work meant I was doing something wrong. Because, the year after your company earned its first million… I’m making an average of 2 billable hours per day… and you’re telling me it is important to find joy in poverty. Douche.

But really? When you start talking about my relationship? When my Wife was so miserable in Omaha that we didn’t have sex for 3 years… and I asked for help/advice.... and I was told to “tolerate, put up with, and get over” forced celibacy because I needed to put her needs first? When we moved to a place we hated and complained about it… I was told to shut up and find something to love about the place; but also I was told to find a way to get Wife out of there. And now that we’re here… I’m told to tell Wife that I don’t want kids because it might make her happy?

Pardon me for being a selfish ass for a minute but… when do my wants and needs become a part of this relationship? When does my desire for affection or sex or children… when does that become part of the discussion?

And that ladies and gentleman… probably explains so much to you, I imagine. lol. When I was miserable in my abusive relationship… why didn’t I leave? Because I’m not supposed to think about my wants and needs. When I was miserable in the first three years of my marriage; genuinely wondering if I should get a divorce because my wife didn’t say I love you, didn’t engage physically, and only criticized? Because I’m not supposed to think about my wants and needs.
And now… when I’ve done everything I was asked to do. I got us back to DM. I got us reconnected to family and friends. I’m trying to work my ass off in a private firm so that I can provide for us financially. And I’m being told, whether I want a kid or not, to tell my wife that I don’t because it might be better for her wants and needs?

Yeah. That is where my family is and how (though I love them) my family has helped build some of these issues you’ve been witness to.

So… yeah. When Wife woke me up last night to tell me I was sleeping wrong… not that I was snoring but that I was sleeping “too high up in the bed” whatever that means.... yeah. In a marriage with a woman that doesn’t say I love you; criticizes me quite often, and still finds vanilla sex once a month (if that) to be a chore requiring a solid 3 hours of hard drinking.... that is why I soldier on. Because it isn’t about what I may want or need. Thinking about that would make me selfish.