The past few days, I've been battling vertigo on and off. We had a birthday party and sleep-over for one of the kids (ie. no sleep), and I had an important meeting with a potential client. Oh, and then there's the PPMS issues (I don't have problems with PMS, it's what comes after it... I'd refer to it as MS, but that label's already been claimed by Multiple Sclerosis, so I just call it Post-PMS): headaches, dizziness, weakened immune system (ie. catching all the bugs the kids bring with them to the party), and increased sensitivity to moodiness (not just my own).
In the midst of this, I let the dishes pile up. Time, energy, and motivation to bully my charges into doing their jobs was low, and since my son who was supposed to load the dishwasher has been suffering a bad spell with his asthma and his brother was celebrating his birthday, and sisters studying for finals, I let it go, figuring I'd work on catching up tomorrow.
Today. A day of rest--what a novel concept!
Tomorrow. Tomorrow will have enough troubles of its own without me fretting about it now. All would wait graciously to be resolved tomorrow if I were a single parent, but alas Todd's timing doesn't allow for tomorrow (unless it's something HE wants to put off until tomorrow--like transferring funds to cover an automatic payment [yep, he let it slide again, wasting another $34 in overdraft charges], finishing a half-done home-improvement project, returning calls to line up the next self-unemployment job...) So, he's in there now, clanging around the dishes, certainly chipping them, and emitting such attitude that I don't dare go in there ("It's too late") even to get a bite of food--not with the headache already there, hovering just under the surface, awaiting the slightest trigger.
Our daughter wants a ride to a friend's house. No one can help Todd now, once he's in this state, so why not let her go? But she needs a ride. Todd is trying hard to pretend not to be in a bad mood, so he's put on a facade of being approachable. Yesterday, when the birthday party boys needed transportation, he said no. I could do it. So I took a carload of boys to their Lego store outing. And I didn't complain, not until the overuse of florescent lightbulbs in that store began to trigger my latent Epileptic tendencies. That may be part of why I'm so dizzy today. Not to keep track of mileage, but I thought it not at all unreasonable to ask Todd to take a few minutes to drive his daughter to a local friend's house after I made the hour and a half plus round-trip with the boys yesterday. I might have even gone in and worked on the kitchen while he drove her... I'd feel much safer operating a dishwasher in my condition than a moving vehicle with one of my precious children on board.
Todd is not about working together on things, though. So, I drove across town on surface streets, taking it easy and informing our daughter that she might need to take control of the wheel if I passed out. The way back without her? No problem. It would just be me in the car then so it really wouldn't matter. I made it back safely, though I almost wish I hadn't. I don't want to be here. The kitchen is clean, for now, but the distance between Todd and I is even greater. I do wonder what it would be like to work as a team. Tomorrow is our anniversary. He cleaned the kitchen. If he decides to get himself flowers, they should look nice on the counter (the half-finished counter in our half-finished kitchen make-over, that is).
I'm not complaining. It was, after all, just a promise. When we were house-hunting years ago and I said the only thing I didn't like about this house was the kitchen, he said that would be "easy to fix," and he promised to do so . . . . Tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, or the day after the day after . . . .
All I'm asking for is the occasional mercy of being permitted a tomorrow of my own without being forced to tread eggshell flooring
(that, was never part of the redesign plan).
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