Spiral depression

Uber productive yesterday, but even further behind on my reading.   When all I wanted to do was sit down and play a stupid game while consuming an entire box of crackers...  I sat down and watched my team lose, and worked on a craft project I desperately need to finish.  I made actual, real progress.  I slept well, I woke up well, my kid was a subtle shit and I called him on it...  I called him on the whole "Not doing chores" as well, informing him that he earned no allowance last week because he didn't do shit.
If you don't work you don't get paid.  Fact of life.
He's at daycare, we parted on a good note and I'm smoking a joint before work.
Responsible adult.

Speaking of work...
Lets just not.

Plans for the day consist of not sinking any deeper into this morass than I already have.
I spend four days at work getting more and more depressed with each moment that I'm there.  The evenings I can at least peek my head above the swamp and relax...  but then I wake up in the morning and the realization that I have to go to that place just drags me down.  Being there weighs me down.  Leaving there and I start to lighten up but I'm not able to pull myself completely out of it before I'm waking up the next morning starting the whole cycle over again.  The weekends-three days though they may be-are not long enough to fully pull myself out of the slump.  I know the solution is to find a new job and that is on the huge and incredibly long list of shit to do...  but it's there, and it will happen.  In the meantime I have all these responsibilities around the house and all these things that need to be done, that should be done, that have been half done for so long that actually finishing them may signify the end times...  and that weighs on me...  I need to quit my job and take a month off work...  but then there's no guarantee that I'll find something in a timely fashion...  and there's no guarantee that I won't have to spend the bulk of my time off looking for something.  Then I think about cutting my hours, and then I think about how hard it is to stretch that paycheck as it is...  and then I think about all the ways I waste money and how I could improve and then I get depressed and I overspend with "retail therapy" because that makes me feel better for a minute.

I know what I need to do.
I need to resist the dragon and not spend my money on frivolous crap because it makes me feel better.  I need to use that money to buy the things I need in order to do the things I need to do.  I need to work on the things that need to be done, because there is plenty that can be done without spending any money and I can let money build up.
I need to quit smoking cigarettes because I spend a fucking fortune on those.  If I quit smoking I'll have more money for groceries, if I have more money for groceries I'll be happier all the way around.  This is all easier said than done.

I'm a creature of habit - aren't we all?  The normalcy of my schedule is constantly being fucked with due to vacations and this "something happening every month from February through June" is really starting to get on my nerves.  I'm barely recovered from Disneyland when the spouse is absent for 2 weeks, now I'm starting to get back into the swing of things and next week we're leaving for 5 days...  again.  I'll barely recover from that before the convention starts and I'm driving all over the place, late nights, barely home, etc... etc...  and less than two weeks later I'll be on a damn plane to the other side of the country.

Once we return from that nonsense it will be the height of summer.  The house will be an oven and the in-laws will be in town demanding my time and criticizing my life.

I find myself already longing for fall...  which is something that usually doesn't happen until July.  I want all the trips behind me, the inlaws in Arizona where they belong and a steady schedule of spawn in school, everyone at work.  I want the spousal unit's insomnia issues cleared up so that he's up and out of the fucking house earlier every morning so I can maximize my time.

My dreams for August.
In the meantime, I want to call in sick to work and spend the day puttering around in the yard...  but it's fucking raining, and it's going to rain all day.  So I guess I'll go to work...  although it's probably going to be dead, and even though this means I can catch up on my reading it also means that I will be pissed due to the fact that I'm there when I have things I could be doing here at home...

Like sitting around playing stupid video games and eating that box of crackers...

overwhelming and depressive circle...

Got a lot of work done in the yard a couple of days ago.  Despite wanting to do more yesterday I decided to spend the day cleaning the house instead...  it needed to get done and I figured I'd get back outside today...  But there is water coming from the sky.  In my defense I checked the weather about four days ago before making plans for my weekend.  It was not supposed to rain today when I last checked...  but the fact is...  I'm going to have to be more diligent in checking the weather on my days off over the next couple of months.  Fucked up California "spring" means I could be outside sweating in the sun on Monday and wind up sequestered indoors with a hoody and fluffy blankets on Tuesday.

To be perfectly honest with you this gives me the opportunity to get to work on other things that desperately need to get done.  I'm overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things that I need to accomplish...  to the point where I want to cut my hours and have an extra day every week to deal with them.  I feel that without that extra day there's no point working on anything...  even the things I could easily finish over the course of a couple of baseball games, or a solid afternoon of focusing on them.

I literally have a "craft list" of things that need to get taken care of...  projects I began before my son was born that only need a good 8-12 hours of work put into them....  mind you...  the spawn is ten.  Half done things, things saved with intention...  things I've saved for when I get to a certain point in the house I can use them...  and yet I've done nothing.

Part of it is not knowing where to start, but I have a lists.  But then I think about the first thing and how nice it will be to cross that off the list, but the list is so long it overwhelms me and I just sit down and play Animal Crossing.  Or I realize that although this is the perfect time to get to work on something...  I'm so far behind on my reading I should just sit and do that for an hour.  Or I lay down on the couch and pass out....  or I get lost in Facebook for a few hours...  or I get high and get caught up in the daily minutia.  Even when all the things that need to be done on the daily to keep this family and our lives rolling forward are finished for the day I don't sit down and focus on something.  I don't roll out the poster I've been coloring for 20 years, I don't pick up the needlepoint I've been working on for 2 years, I just play Animal Crossing or go to bed early  to avoid it all...  When I have a day...  like today...  where nothing is planned or the plans fall through...  and I'm sitting here wasting my time and wanting to talk about how overwhelmed I am and how frustrated and depressed I am and all I'm really doing is wasting time so that when I finally do get up and get the chores done, and get the errands run...  I won't have the time to sit down and do anything productive, or actually cross anything off the list...

I'll postpone and postpone and get more and more depressed about it.  I'll make myself momentarily content by taking an entire day to break down a room and scrub it from floor to ceiling but then nothing is actually taken care of, completed...  it's just moved, re-packaged, added to a different list...

So I spend all this time beating myself up about all this undone shit.  Every opportunity I have to do even a small thing to check off a list or get myself closer to being willing to tackle the bigger stuff... and I don't do it.  I fuck around.  I go have a cigarette, I stare at a wall, I bug the shit out of my family, I kill time...

I know that if I just do the things I'll feel better.
I'll feel better if I do the things.
It's that fucking simple.
But I've even sat down to do the things, had the things arranged and was ready to go and then I just picked up the 3ds and pushed the things to the side, or got distracted by the dirty dishes, or the need to clean out the fridge, or watched a video with the spawn, or whatever and then...  there was no more time to do the thing so I put the thing away.

I know I'm not the only person who does this.
I know I'm behind on my reading, but during the baseball game this afternoon I'm determined to work on one of the things...  if I focus I might even finish it...  which would be amazeballs.

too much i can't keep up when i'm depressed

Depression is great.  When it's caused by your job it's even better.
Put May on the wall calendar... Starting to stress out about the fact that I have nothing to wear to this wedding we're going to and we leave in two weeks.
But nobody will leave me the fuck alone about the trip in June.
I still have to contact the pet sitter for our trip this month.  Which is April.
If the yard is mentioned to me one more time I'm going to cry.  I don't know how many times I can make my plans and opinions known to someone who hasn't lifted a finger save to call the gardeners...  I'm also getting incredibly frustrated with this constant bringing up of things I've told him are on my list.  I can't do all the things at once, and I can't do things when he gets the random bug up his ass...  I've told him I have other, smaller, things that I want to take care of before I tackle a big project.  I've also informed him that I'm not in any hurry.  After a year he's suddenly in a huge rush to get things done...  well...  maybe he should focus on his garage/man cave then, because whatever he does out there won't piss me off or get in my way...  furthermore...  he has so much going on right now and hasn't even done the taxes so the fact that he's flipping out about the yard right now is getting on my nerves.  If he starts something at this point in time - it will remain unfinished until I deal with it or after Memorial Day.  He is booked pretty solid until then and even once Memorial Day is passed we have this damn trip in June.  July his parents will be here eating up our free time while criticizing our lives and I know that part of him feels he has to have visible progress on things in order to keep them quiet, shut them up, make them happy...  I don't fucking care.  Thing is, we'll need to spend a Sunday painting or doing yardwork and they'll have a problem with it because they'll want to see us and spend time with us but they'll also freely, cruely, excessively criticize the weeds we're cultivating in the backyard.

I need to step up the search for a new job by getting my cover letter polished and sending out a few resumes.  If I half-assedly look for a job over the next month or so I can feel like I'm actually doing something, instead of waiting for the new job to come to me...  because although that has happened, it's not a very good way to deal with the current situation.

I am lazy.

Once the April trip is over I can step it up but...  if I'm not gainfully re-employed by Memorial Day I may have to quit anyway.  I'm killing myself and have too much sense of responsibility to quit when I need the money... so I can get things done around the house... so my husband will back the fuck off...  it's so frustrating to know that I'm the only one who has done anything for a year, and then we hit that magic mark and he suddenly cares, gets obsessive and starts doing things...  at least he's finally doing things, but why can't he take the project and finish it before he flips out and moves on to something else...  that's what I'll tell him to do when he finishes the taxes...  that he hasn't started and are due in 9 days...

Don't worry about anything else until you've patched all the spots the electrician cut out the drywall.  I'm tired of looking at these squares and screws.  Get to work.

So begins 2 weeks alone...

Today is the day the spousal unit leaves for two weeks.
I'm not sure how I feel about this.
On one hand I'm a bit excited about two weeks "to myself."
On the other hand I'm nervous about two weeks as a single parent.

But it will be over too soon, and I'll find myself wishing I'd spent the time differently and gotten more things done that are difficult to get done when everyone is home.

Work is not going well.
There's just too much to talk about there, too much to say...  but when the boss doesn't care that the Office Manager is creating a hostile work environment...  what are you gonna do?  When one has been told to "not complain about anything or anyone" how is anything going to be fixed?

The answer to both of those questions is "find a new job."  Once the spousal unit returns from his sojourn to the future I'll be stepping up the search and firing off my resume like I'm unemployed.  I've reserved the right to quit - on the spot - with our without a new job, if things get too bad.

That two hour long panic attack I had last week resulted in rumors about my having troubles at home.  No one has asked me, no one has confirmed this, the assumption is being made, someone started the rumor, and it's made its way around the clinic.  The best part?  The only reason I'm even aware of this heinous defamation is because the one person who has been forbidden to speak to me told me.

So many labor board violations it's not even funny.

The spawn and I have many plans for the two weeks that it will be just the two of us.  We'll camp out on the air mattress in the living room and watch movies before bed.  He's going to be very sick on Monday and unable to go to school.  We're going to the movies, out to dinner and even have the pleasure of attending a baseball game.  He'll get to spend time with two close family friends and both of my parents as well.

Today I have a list of things to do, and a small stack of other things to do on top of the list...  it's kind of sad when your list has be found by completing the stack of tasks first.  But it's honestly the only way I can make sure all the things get done.  Stack them on top of the list and dig for it.

All the fucking great things

You know what's fucking great?

I'll tell you.

Getting sick as fuck the day after you get home from vacation.
When your spouse doesn't care that you're sick... until you flat refuse to do a god damned thing and then they're only mad because they have to do dishes.
When your boss allows favoritism, sexism and who the fuck knows what else kill morale... and employees start leaving like fleas on a drowning rat.
When someone you used to respect commits a felony - on camera.
Coughing.
Coughing is fucking awesome.
Being sick for so long post vacation that you've been without weed for so long that all your joints are starting to non-function due to pain and the nerves are firing off at random times more and more frequently and more and more intensely every day and every attempt to medicate leaves you coughing and crying because you HURT TOO BADLY TO CURL INTO A FETAL POSITION.
Have I mentioned how fucking awesome coughing is?
Coughing is the BEST!!!
Waiting 2 weeks to get the food you're craving - that's fucking great.


So I've been great.
Just fucking great.
But I think I've almost beat this cold and although it was pretty grim for a couple days I never did lose my voice.  An over-abundance of caution and extra dose of FUCK THIS GOD DAMNED PAIN I SWEAR TO GOD AFTER 20 YEARS YOU'D THINK I'D BE USED TO THIS SHIT means I've not developed a URI or pneumonia so that's amazing.
I need to pluck my eyebrows, shave the AMAZING amount of hair off my upper lip...  or give in and to into public in drag - can I pass?  Can I pass?

The answer to that question is YES.  YES I CAN PASS WITHOUT EVEN REALLY TRYING AND IT FREAKS PEOPLE THE FUCK OUT.

Come to terms with it.
Genderqueer and here to stay but don't, oh dear gods don't tell my husband because he'll deny it and get offended and THEN HE'LL GET PISSED OFF!!!!  Oh what the fuck did I marry?

My ten year old spawn literally asked me today why I didn't divorce his dad?
I had to tell him that I do love the fucking asshole, but it's mostly financial.  I don't want to spend my life working my ass off... and that may be selfish but I enjoy spending time with my kid and have no desire to turn him into a latchkey, move hundreds of miles away from my entire family so I can afford to live... cause where we at right now it wouldn't happen and we'd be living in the car...  the car I wouldn't be able to pay insurance on so I couldn't drive and...  yes.  I do love my husband but sometimes I wonder myself...

WHY AM I HERE?

He ignored me while I was sick.
I asked for things and he never got them for me EVEN THOUGH I WAS SICK...

The best, or worst really depending on your point of view...  the best was that on Tuesday I asked for 2 things for the spawn's lunch.  I ASKED FOR TWO THINGS FOR OUR CHILD'S LUNCH.  Not for me, for our kid....  and he didn't get them.  He forgot.  He forgot even though he went to two other places after he came home.  He forgot even though he could have gone out and gotten them at any point...  he forgot on Wednesday too...  and Thursday he forgot and by Friday it was a fucking moot point because the spawn and I were making due and it was all good but the whole fucking point is that if you tell me to ask you for something when I need it...  and I ASK FOR SOMETHING FOR OUR CHILD and you fucking ignore me...  THEN WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK DUDE???  Saturday he asked if I still needed him to pick those things up... those things for the child's SCHOOL LUNCH THAT I ASKED FOR ON TUESDAY.

No.
No I didn't need them.
By this point I'd gotten paid, and would be going grocery shopping the next day.
So no.
I got them myself.
Thanks.
But no.

WHY AM I HERE?
I didn't want to have a kid.
I'm a parent.
I didn't want to get married.
I'm a spouse.
I didn't want to buy a house.
My name is on a fucking mortgage.

I'm living someone else's dream...
...and they wonder why I'm depressed.

habitually developing a spousal complaint issue

There's this annoying pattern I'm facing and I keep trying to break out of it...  but I never really seem to be able to.  Part of why I decided to create and make effort to maintain this blog is to help me break these habits that I don't want anymore...  accountability, tracking, etc...  also, sometimes articulating them makes them more real, increasing the reality makes beating them that much easier.  Personal demons and all that.

Every week I spend my days off getting done ALL THE THINGS and when I go back to work on Wednesday I have this great sense of accomplishment.  I'm going to keep up with all the things and do the minor daily maintenance so I don't fall behind.  When my days off come around I'll only have to worry about the housework and some laundry-instead of all the laundry.  I can spend some much needed time out in the yard and start getting the big things done, the little things that lead to the big things, I can pull this house together and start taking the images in my head and making them reality.

But then I spend the week getting further and further behind.  With the eight hour work day and the being gone 11 hours a day for three days and then 9 hours on another day.  The unhelpful husband who literally spends an entire day sitting around to the point of having a sore back...  despite the glaringly sedentary life he already leads and the constant lamentation about his weight gain and the difficulties he's facing in trying to get the weight off.

It's Monday morning and the spawn is at school and I'm sitting here with my second cup of coffee.  I've been up for 2 hours and have plans to get much accomplished today in the hopes that I can spend a significant portion of tomorrow working on (and perhaps hopefully finishing) one of the ongoing craft projects.

However I'm rather limited on how much I can accomplish before the spousal unit arises.  His alarm is set to go off in about nine minutes, but I'm sure he'll hit that snooze button repeatedly and wake up much closer to ten...  then bitch about how he needs to get up earlier.

He loves to give me advice on how to deal with emotional and hormonal things he has never experienced...  but when I try to give him advice on how to re-set his clock he blows me off.  It's more than willpower - I've worked weird hour shifts for years at a time.  I've had to re-set my clock three or four times (not counting college) and all the years we've been together he's had erratic sleep patterns...  and I keep trying to explain to him that focusing on better sleep habits may be a better answer to his insomnia than this addiction to anti-depressants...

But what the fuck do I know?\

That aside I've learned from experience that if I get up and start making noise, turn up the music and get to work cleaning he'll wake up sooner than ten because the noise won't let him sleep.

It's retribution for all the mornings I can't get back to sleep because of his snoring.  When you partially awaken to roll from one side to the other (four cats in bed-don't mess with them) it can be a bitch to slide back into deep sleep when your spouse is snoring right in your ear.

Enough bitching about the spouse, that could go on for hours and hours and hours but I love the son of a bitch so that's that.

The point I'm trying to make here is this:  I'm going to bust my ass today doing all the things, and tomorrow I will hopefully have adequate time to devote to the next big thing on the big list and perhaps even take care of the secondary project list which is 5-15 minute tasks.  I'd like to get these balls rolling... and not let them roll back down the hill every week when I go to work.

I've started doing the chores in the morning - but that really increases my morning crankiness.  I fucking hate it.  But I hate coming home after work, exhausted and hungry, just to spend another hour busting my ass before I can eat or even sit down.  I keep reminding myself of this - and it's making the morning tasks easier.  But I'm still not being consistent.

Laundry.  I try to get it all done before I go to work so I can time and do loads during the week without letting it all build up again.  But no.  Even if I do the laundry it just sits in the dryer until I need the dryer and then I have a backlog of shit to fold and people are running out of things because I'm not putting laundry away.  I know a lot of it is habit development...  and I'm working on it.

One of my biggest peeves is that the boys will take a lazy day...  and yet when I want a lazy day it's incredibly difficult unless my husband is occupied with friends or meetings.  He has his lazy Saturday and then wants to do things on Sunday...  spoiling my lazy day.  Sunday is literally the only day that I don't have to wake up at six, and that's only provided I don't have anything going on.  Superbowl parties, rounds at work, sometimes I get one Sunday a month - and I want to do NOTHING which he manages a couple times a fucking week...  but I can't.  I can barely take a nap that lasts longer than 45 minutes without being rudely awoken and then scolded for being pissed off about it.

I may use the vacuum this morning for more solid retribution.
Yesterday was fucking ridiculous.

spousal unit bitch fest

There are a lot of things I hate talking to my husband about.
Generalized statements, or examples cannot be used.
You have to be specific and you can not use absolutes.

If you say, "You never put your shoes away."  He looks at you, raises his eyebrow, and in an incredibly defensive tone says, "NEVER?"  You literally have to come to him with fucking numbers...  "Okay honey, in the last 58 days you have only put your shoes away twice...  so it appears as though we have a shoe putting away problem that I'd like to address"

He thinks he knows what I'm going to say, and therefore does not wholly listen to me.
He will interrupt me to ask someone else a question and carry on a mini-conversation while I'm talking...  and this is often done when I'm relaying important information or answering a question that he just asked.
Comparative analogy is completely lost on him.  It's like he doesn't have a BA in English... or write for a living.
He interrupts me - constantly - yet is deeply offended when I interrupt him...  even when he is taking an obscenely long pause in between his sentences.  I am not the only person who notices his long pauses, many of his friends have commented on them as well.  The problem I face is that he interrupted me and I'm going to forget what I wanted to say so as soon as I get an opening I shove it in there.  When he gets mad and says he wasn't done, I tell him I wasn't done either and he should have let me finish before he started...

Deeply apologetic.
Which would mean a whole lot more if the disrespect weren't constant and completely unnoticed.

You'd think, all these years together and all these times I've called him out that he'd at least be putting some effort in, or that he'd have made some improvement...  but nope.  Not at all.
I, however, am growing less and less tolerant of it every day...
...and somehow this is starting to be a problem.

So he's in a work meeting in the dining room...  even though he has an office in his man cave with a big fancy desk he bought that he never uses...  and because he has to talk loud and our house is small...  he may as well be here in the room with me.  Gods forbid I get those dishes done...  but yesterday he worked from home and when I came home from my late shift at work and stood there doing all the dishes he was super apologetic for not doing them...  and tonight, when I was pissed off about something he had the gall to ask me if there was anything he could do to help...  while I was standing in front of a sink full to the fucking brim with dirty dishes.

So yeah.
I'm just ready to have him not be in my presence for a couple of days while I work through the lovely perimenopausal PMDD symptoms and rampaging murderer and happy girl child.  But he wants to get "frisky" tonight...  like I'm a fucking puppy.