what are you doing right now?

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

Watching Wilbur meticulously try to get a single piece of kibble out from under the coffee table.

I got up and fished it out.

He has hundreds still in his bowl.🙄

[Pink Cashmere]

Nov 18, 2024 18:06:36 GMT -5 Works4me said:

Nov 18, 2024 17:17:43 GMT -5 Pink Cashmere said:

Mister drove his Mustang to go see his Aunt in rehab yesterday. Yes, she’s been back in the hospital and is currently in rehab again.

Anyway, Mister sent me a video of the dashboard on his car. It was a stream of error messages popping up one after the other. I called him and asked him wth. He got in it to leave from visiting his Aunt and all those errors started popping up and car wouldn’t even start. He was waiting for a tow truck.

About 20 minutes after we got off the phone and before the tow truck had arrived, he said he heard a click and decided to try it and it started, so he drove it on home.

Ford says they’d have to keep the car at least 3 weeks before they can even get to it to try to figure out what happened.

It’s a 2024 and he’s only had it 4 months. The fuck?!

That sounds like what the security system does in my car, especially the click 10 to 15 minutes later. I used to have the bad habit of trying to start my car as I was still closing the door, especially if I was in a hurry. One of the last times it happened, I was in the Campus Police Parking Lot and one of the cute young officers solved the problem for me. I also read about the details of the loss prevention system in my Owners' Manual whole waiting for it to clear.

Idk the details about the order of events, like whether he tried to start it before he closed the door, like what caused problems with your car.

But all of the new computers and stuff on new cars is one of the reasons I prefer my old vehicles, I am a worrywart, and in my mind, all of that technology is just more stuff to go potentially go haywire. 

The Tahoe is a 2010, just like my Jeep. But my Jeep is a base model that doesn’t even have power door locks or windows. The 2010 was the top of the line model for that year and has all the technology available at the time. It has a million buttons that I dare not touch. I don’t even know how to use the radio if it’s not already on a station when I get in it. I use the moonroof on my car all the time, but the buttons for the moonroof on the Tahoe are beside the ones that open the back, so if I don’t open the moonroof when I first get inside, I dare not try to open it while I’m driving, because idk which button is which lol. Mister says the back won’t open if I accidentally press the wrong button while I’m driving, but I don’t want to test it lol. I know how to roll the windows down, and that’s pretty much it.

The Mustang, if it were mine, I’d probably needed at least a week to figure out stuff. It even took Mister a few days to figure out how to turn the radio on. It has so many custom settings for everything from the color of the interior lights, to how the dashboard looks, with a lot of extra info or just the minimum, to different modes for how it drives and then how it sounds, that all of it is a LOT to me. It randomly updates itself while it sits in the garage.

I’m not use to all of that. I’m used to cars that are simply, you put a key in the ignition, it starts up, and gets you where you want to go, because of mechanical type stuff, not mechanical type stuff plus a bunch of technology that might get wonky as technology tends to do sometimes, like how the Mustang was wonky yesterday and wouldn’t start. 

I ain't got time for that. What if he was in a bad situation or somewhere he needed to get away from asap, or needed to get somewhere asap? It's one thing if there was a problem with the engine or starter, or some other thing like that, even though none of that would have been acceptable either on what is basically a brand new car. But because the technology on it went haywire? Just NO. 

[TheOtherMe]

TV will be installed on Wednesday.  Need to take down the pictures, but that isn't hard.  

The most time consuming thing has happened.  That was taking down all of the mini Christmas trees.  I thought two needed new lights, but one is fine.  It was unplugged.  

So take down the pictures and move the cat lounger.  I am not moving that until the day of because Maddow sleeps there a lot.  

At this point I have a window of 7 AM to 7 PM.  Lovely.  I also have to go pick up my food that day and I can't ask my nephew to do it because he is having parent teacher conferences from noon until the evening and is not available.  

Thursday, I can get my Christmas trees back up.

[cooper88]

Well, I made it through day one back to the living relatively unscathed.

[soupandstew]

I am never offended by anyone's comments or thoughts when I post here about my problems.  Nor do I expect solutions because sometimes there just isn't one, or at least not a feasible one.  

DH never had friends or much connection to his family, only some work pals during those long-ago years; he is a highly paranoid and unfriendly person.  The burden of friendships and activities has always been mine, and it's been challenging as he views everyone and everything with a very suspicious eye, aka "why are you spending time with them, what do they want, they aren't good" etc.  He says repeatedly that "you are a fool for volunteering, everyone is always out to get something from you."  Yet he couples that with statements about how proud he is of me for my civic engagement-envy

Is there an element of dementia?  Quite possibly.  What I see at this point is an increase in his paranoid dislike/distrust of people, coupled with oddly specific memory and comprehension loss.  He read a 300-page owners manual for his new car, dealing with highly technical subjects, and remembers every word.  But he can't or won't remember anything of significance in our daily life.  He says he can't physically hear stuff, but he hears a TV commentator while claiming not to hear my voice.  The audiologist said that is not uncommon, it's selective mental hearing, not anything to do with physical hearing. 

I'm not in physical danger for the most part as I'm very careful to stay as far away from him in the bed as he sometimes strikes out in the night with his hands or feet.  This has been a problem in the past and I do believe he is truthful in denying any memory of it.  Sadly, that reinforces his belief that I am lying overall.

Why don't I just take an Uber and go to events I want to attend?  Because #1 I am not comfortable taking an Uber alone as many bad things have happened here with that, #2 I don't know a good way to explain to a host why DH is not with me, #3 That's a LOT of $$ to spend, and #4 I am not prepared for what I might find when I came home.  If I push back much on anything he leaves, sometimes on foot and sometimes in his car, or tells me he's having heart issues. 

I'm not able physically at the age of 77 to do the hard physical labor involved in many volunteer jobs that I used to do like food drives, neighborhood cleanups, tree planting etc.  

Bottom line, he's 85 years old and here we are.  My life sort of sucks some of the time and that's partly on me because I'm not willing to take the steps to change it.  If I left, I would feel like a sack of shite for abandoning him, and I know all too well what living in poverty is like.  Back in '73 when we married, I doubt either of us saw what today would be.  

 

[azucena]

Left a message with oral surgeon. Will prob go ahead and ask Teen to set up an online hospital chart to see if there's anything in there about the referral other than the paper we were given. I could have set it up but didn't have her soc sec number, and I'd prefer not to have it just to cover myself. Plus I keep trying to be mindful of teaching her every adulting thing that I can in the limited time I have with her before college.

CPS called and they're having a big pow wow tomorrow at 2 pm to decide where to place all of the children including Teen. When I asked if Teen living with me would really be disrupted at this point, she said the purpose of the meeting is for Teen to have a voice and they are also interested in hearing what she would say about potential family placements for the younger children. With the system having such limited resources and limited family placement options and our pretty successful track record since March, I can't let myself believe that they would remove Teen.

I already had a text in with her dad to continue to catch him up on a few more things (like TFW using older bro for info about Teen bc that's the only way she could have found out about Teen's ER visit, bro has the same dad.) I don't blame bro bc he's prob just trying to keep the peace and is also prob actually worried about Teen but he's only 19 and needs to just stay out of the drama with TFW.

Teen had a rotten just overall off mood day so adding this CPS call and mtg to it only made everything worse. She's been super stressed about auditions for Addam's family this week. She desperately wants the part of Morticia. Now she has to miss the first day to go to this mtg. Wish she could just get a solid week of being a regular teen. Theater director easily offered her an extension. At dinner she said, can we just go to the beach now already. I wish.

[Pink Cashmere]

So since I’ve been thinking about how the way people are raised affects who they are as adults, something that happened tonight that reminded me of something that happened last week.

Last week, I ordered some food from a Mexican restaurant to be delivered. I’d asked Mister he wanted anything before I made the order, he said no. When the food was delivered, it just sat on the counter for a couple of hours, until I was ready to eat. When I finally opened the bag and containers, it was not what I’d ordered ad looked so nasty that I never would’ve ordered it anyway.

One container had what looked like burnt tater tot’s in it, with some cheese, and maybe some kind of meat buried underneath.

Mister was curious and tasted it, and told me, “that’s good, you should sell that to me”. I was like “what?! SELL it to you? Why would I do that and not just give it to you if you want it?”

That has bugged me ever since. I know where it came from, but it was and still is crazy to me. My family and I did not and do not “sell” food and other necessities to members of our household, or even family outside of the household. We gave/give things like that to each other. Why would you sell somebody in your own household some food that is extra, or you don’t even want?! 

Mister is his own person and an adult capable of making his own decisions, but there are a lot of things that I know helped shaped the person he is today, and even though he has worked through some of it and realized it was crazy, there is still so much more, that he’s never had reason to even consider that maybe it’s weird, because it’s all he knows. 

But maybe I’m the weird one, for thinking some things are weird. I know families and the dynamics of how they operate are different, and “different” doesn’t automatically mean weird. But in this particular instance, am I the oddball in thinking that is weird, to expect your partner or child to pay you for some food that you aren’t going to eat anyway? Or some food period that’s in your kitchen? 

Years ago, I had an unopened bag of ChexMix at Mister’s home. OD ate it while I was at my own house for a couple of days. She told Mister to tell me she would pay me for it. I don’t really like people to eat or drink ALL of the extra stuff I buy, even though I don’t care if they eat or drink some of it. I appreciated her acknowledging that she ate it all before I even went back over there, but it was odd to me that she said she’d pay me for it, instead of just saying something like “I know she buys it for herself, but I tried it and liked it so much that I ate all of it”. Then I would’ve known to just buy extra bags of it, to have enough that she could eat it too, without concern about eating up “my” stuff.  But I knew where that came from too at the time, so I didn’t make a big deal out of it.

[azucena]

FWIW I get to attend and speak at least part of the mtg.

Really, really tired of worrisome sleep.

[Pink Cashmere]

Nov 18, 2024 19:37:47 GMT -5 soupandstew said:

I am never offended by anyone's comments or thoughts when I post here about my problems.  Nor do I expect solutions because sometimes there just isn't one, or at least not a feasible one.  

DH never had friends or much connection to his family, only some work pals during those long-ago years; he is a highly paranoid and unfriendly person.  The burden of friendships and activities has always been mine, and it's been challenging as he views everyone and everything with a very suspicious eye, aka "why are you spending time with them, what do they want, they aren't good" etc.  He says repeatedly that "you are a fool for volunteering, everyone is always out to get something from you."  Yet he couples that with statements about how proud he is of me for my civic engagement-envy

Is there an element of dementia?  Quite possibly.  What I see at this point is an increase in his paranoid dislike/distrust of people, coupled with oddly specific memory and comprehension loss.  He read a 300-page owners manual for his new car, dealing with highly technical subjects, and remembers every word.  But he can't or won't remember anything of significance in our daily life.  He says he can't physically hear stuff, but he hears a TV commentator while claiming not to hear my voice.  The audiologist said that is not uncommon, it's selective mental hearing, not anything to do with physical hearing. 

I'm not in physical danger for the most part as I'm very careful to stay as far away from him in the bed as he sometimes strikes out in the night with his hands or feet.  This has been a problem in the past and I do believe he is truthful in denying any memory of it.  Sadly, that reinforces his belief that I am lying overall.

Why don't I just take an Uber and go to events I want to attend?  Because #1 I am not comfortable taking an Uber alone as many bad things have happened here with that, #2 I don't know a good way to explain to a host why DH is not with me, #3 That's a LOT of $$ to spend, and #4 I am not prepared for what I might find when I came home.  If I push back much on anything he leaves, sometimes on foot and sometimes in his car, or tells me he's having heart issues. 

I'm not able physically at the age of 77 to do the hard physical labor involved in many volunteer jobs that I used to do like food drives, neighborhood cleanups, tree planting etc.  

Bottom line, he's 85 years old and here we are.  My life sort of sucks some of the time and that's partly on me because I'm not willing to take the steps to change it.  If I left, I would feel like a sack of shite for abandoning him, and I know all too well what living in poverty is like.  Back in '73 when we married, I doubt either of us saw what today would be.  

 

All I’m going to say is that if you do go somewhere by yourself, you don’t owe the host or anyone else an explanation regarding why you came alone. If you feel like you have to answer those kinds of questions, there are a lot of non answers you can give, that range from being polite to being politely rude if the person asking is just being a nosey busybody. 

Well, I lied, because I do have one more thing to say. Idk why you would feel like a sack of shit if you and him parted ways, since he doesn’t seem to feel like a sack of shit for not being kind and loving toward you. 

I will hush now. Just know that I do realize that it’s easier for me to try to figure out other people’s problems than my own. And that I only wrote what I did in these posts, because even though we are just strangers that met on the internet, I do genuinely care about you. You have been a great friend to me, as much as someone can, given the way we met each other, and I have always appreciated the moral support you have offered. 

[msventoux]

Nov 18, 2024 20:12:26 GMT -5 Pink Cashmere said:

So since I’ve been thinking about how the way people are raised affects who they are as adults, something that happened tonight that reminded me of something that happened last week.

Last week, I ordered some food from a Mexican restaurant to be delivered. I’d asked Mister he wanted anything before I made the order, he said no. When the food was delivered, it just sat on the counter for a couple of hours, until I was ready to eat. When I finally opened the bag and containers, it was not what I’d ordered ad looked so nasty that I never would’ve ordered it anyway.

One container had what looked like burnt tater tot’s in it, with some cheese, and maybe some kind of meat buried underneath.

Mister was curious and tasted it, and told me, “that’s good, you should sell that to me”. I was like “what?! SELL it to you? Why would I do that and not just give it to you if you want it?”

That has bugged me ever since. I know where it came from, but it was and still is crazy to me. My family and I did not and do not “sell” food and other necessities to members of our household, or even family outside of the household. We gave/give things like that to each other. Why would you sell somebody in your own household some food that is extra, or you don’t even want?! 

Mister is his own person and an adult capable of making his own decisions, but there are a lot of things that I know helped shaped the person he is today, and even though he has worked through some of it and realized it was crazy, there is still so much more, that he’s never had reason to even consider that maybe it’s weird, because it’s all he knows. 

But maybe I’m the weird one, for thinking some things are weird. I know families and the dynamics of how they operate are different, and “different” doesn’t automatically mean weird. But in this particular instance, am I the oddball in thinking that is weird, to expect your partner or child to pay you for some food that you aren’t going to eat anyway? Or some food period that’s in your kitchen? 

Years ago, I had an unopened bag of ChexMix at Mister’s home. OD ate it while I was at my own house for a couple of days. She told Mister to tell me she would pay me for it. I don’t really like people to eat or drink ALL of the extra stuff I buy, even though I don’t care if they eat or drink some of it. I appreciated her acknowledging that she ate it all before I even went back over there, but it was odd to me that she said she’d pay me for it, instead of just saying something like “I know she buys it for herself, but I tried it and liked it so much that I ate all of it”. Then I would’ve known to just buy extra bags of it, to have enough that she could eat it too, without concern about eating up “my” stuff.  But I knew where that came from too at the time, so I didn’t make a big deal out of it.

I agree with you but can kind of see where they’re coming from also.  In their minds it could be that they’re thinking you were “robbed” of something you wanted and paying you for it is a way to acknowledge that and bring you closer to whole rather than them being entitled and just taking whatever they want with no regard to you.  It could be an attempt to be considerate, but given all the other signs of blatant disregard towards you it’s an odd attempt.  

I’ve noticed food issues often go way back and present in odd ways.  My family was basically a pack of wild animals. Food/treats were devoured completely,  immediately, to the point of making themselves sick.  I didn’t like that so would take my share of treats and hide them to savor later.  While I no longer hide food, I do basically have a grocery store in my house that has whatever I might ever need, and always either have some chocolate stash or ingredients to make an acceptable treat. Someone else I know had a family that left food out to be spoiled, had an overflowing fridge with expired items, etc.  That person keeps very little food in their house and if you give them handmade treats they will graciously accept and enjoy them right then, then immediately throw out anything leftover.  Another person had a mother that didn’t like kids underfoot and fed them breakfast and threw them out of the house for the rest of the day until dinner.  That person always has snacks or protein bars on hand.  So I think there’s a number of us that are weird about food in particular.  

[wvugurl26]

I know all families are different but on my dad's side of the family, you feed whoever is there. It's just what I saw growing up and they were very serious about it, especially my grandpa.

I didn't know it until years after he had passed away but my grandpa didn't eat at school when he was in high school so there was enough money for the younger siblings to eat lunch. He was one of ten. Not the oldest but one of the older ones.

I got into it with DH a month or so ago over this. It was more of a what is wrong with your family type of thing. One sibling invited us to dinner and he talked to his mom five minutes later and she made a snide comment about inviting ourselves to dinner. The dinner in question was being held at the sibling's house.

My family didn't have a lot of money when I growing up but there was always food and none of us kids went hungry. We will always feed whoever is there. My grandpa and his siblings did go hungry at times so they felt very strongly about it and sat the example they did for their children and grandchildren.

[giramomma]

Nov 18, 2024 17:17:43 GMT -5 Pink Cashmere said:

Mister drove his Mustang to go see his Aunt in rehab yesterday. Yes, she’s been back in the hospital and is currently in rehab again.

Anyway, Mister sent me a video of the dashboard on his car. It was a stream of error messages popping up one after the other. I called him and asked him wth. He got in it to leave from visiting his Aunt and all those errors started popping up and car wouldn’t even start. He was waiting for a tow truck.

About 20 minutes after we got off the phone and before the tow truck had arrived, he said he heard a click and decided to try it and it started, so he drove it on home.

Ford says they’d have to keep the car at least 3 weeks before they can even get to it to try to figure out what happened.

It’s a 2024 and he’s only had it 4 months. The fuck?!

DS told me that at one of the dealerships near his workplace (the same people own a bunch of.different car brands) just expects.cars to come back within a few.months of purchase. Replacement parts are.on backorder for months. And good luck finding mechanics. 

It's why i got a 2020. It doesnt.chastise me if I yawn.

[Pink Cashmere]

Nov 18, 2024 20:06:02 GMT -5 azucena said:

Left a message with oral surgeon. Will prob go ahead and ask Teen to set up an online hospital chart to see if there's anything in there about the referral other than the paper we were given. I could have set it up but didn't have her soc sec number, and I'd prefer not to have it just to cover myself. Plus I keep trying to be mindful of teaching her every adulting thing that I can in the limited time I have with her before college.

CPS called and they're having a big pow wow tomorrow at 2 pm to decide where to place all of the children including Teen. When I asked if Teen living with me would really be disrupted at this point, she said the purpose of the meeting is for Teen to have a voice and they are also interested in hearing what she would say about potential family placements for the younger children. With the system having such limited resources and limited family placement options and our pretty successful track record since March, I can't let myself believe that they would remove Teen.

I already had a text in with her dad to continue to catch him up on a few more things (like TFW using older bro for info about Teen bc that's the only way she could have found out about Teen's ER visit, bro has the same dad.) I don't blame bro bc he's prob just trying to keep the peace and is also prob actually worried about Teen but he's only 19 and needs to just stay out of the drama with TFW.

Teen had a rotten just overall off mood day so adding this CPS call and mtg to it only made everything worse. She's been super stressed about auditions for Addam's family this week. She desperately wants the part of Morticia. Now she has to miss the first day to go to this mtg. Wish she could just get a solid week of being a regular teen. Theater director easily offered her an extension. At dinner she said, can we just go to the beach now already. I wish.

That is a lot of pressure on Teen, and I would probably be in a bad mood too. Because why can’t she just be a “normal” 17yo and not have to deal with the person that gave birth to her being crazy and trifling, deal with CPS, social workers and legal aid, have to worry about her younger siblings and their well being, while struggling with pain from a bad tooth that can’t get fixed because she is a minor child, and even though someone that is trying to do right by her is willing to pay OOP for. Even if you couldn’t afford to pay OOP to deal with that tooth, I am pretty sure that some people in this little community would help pay for it. My money is so funny that it’s not a joke and not really funny, but even I would contribute money to help pay for it, even if it meant I had to eat bologna and crackers for a week or 2. 

I know you can’t really tell her this without admitting that you talk about the situation here, but it is FACT that people you and she have never even met IRL are rooting for her, and supporting what you and your family are doing for her. And at least some of those random people you talk to here are willing to put their money where their mouth is, if it’s ever needed. I don’t believe that I am the only one of those “random” people that would do that. 

So we are your secret weapon that Teen doesn’t know about, and it’s okay that she doesn’t. We can only do so much because we aren’t there IRL, but we have your back, and hers, in whatever practical way we can, for whatever that’s worth. 

[Pink Cashmere]

Nov 18, 2024 20:38:48 GMT -5 msventoux said:

Nov 18, 2024 20:12:26 GMT -5 Pink Cashmere said:

So since I’ve been thinking about how the way people are raised affects who they are as adults, something that happened tonight that reminded me of something that happened last week.

Last week, I ordered some food from a Mexican restaurant to be delivered. I’d asked Mister he wanted anything before I made the order, he said no. When the food was delivered, it just sat on the counter for a couple of hours, until I was ready to eat. When I finally opened the bag and containers, it was not what I’d ordered ad looked so nasty that I never would’ve ordered it anyway.

One container had what looked like burnt tater tot’s in it, with some cheese, and maybe some kind of meat buried underneath.

Mister was curious and tasted it, and told me, “that’s good, you should sell that to me”. I was like “what?! SELL it to you? Why would I do that and not just give it to you if you want it?”

That has bugged me ever since. I know where it came from, but it was and still is crazy to me. My family and I did not and do not “sell” food and other necessities to members of our household, or even family outside of the household. We gave/give things like that to each other. Why would you sell somebody in your own household some food that is extra, or you don’t even want?! 

Mister is his own person and an adult capable of making his own decisions, but there are a lot of things that I know helped shaped the person he is today, and even though he has worked through some of it and realized it was crazy, there is still so much more, that he’s never had reason to even consider that maybe it’s weird, because it’s all he knows. 

But maybe I’m the weird one, for thinking some things are weird. I know families and the dynamics of how they operate are different, and “different” doesn’t automatically mean weird. But in this particular instance, am I the oddball in thinking that is weird, to expect your partner or child to pay you for some food that you aren’t going to eat anyway? Or some food period that’s in your kitchen? 

Years ago, I had an unopened bag of ChexMix at Mister’s home. OD ate it while I was at my own house for a couple of days. She told Mister to tell me she would pay me for it. I don’t really like people to eat or drink ALL of the extra stuff I buy, even though I don’t care if they eat or drink some of it. I appreciated her acknowledging that she ate it all before I even went back over there, but it was odd to me that she said she’d pay me for it, instead of just saying something like “I know she buys it for herself, but I tried it and liked it so much that I ate all of it”. Then I would’ve known to just buy extra bags of it, to have enough that she could eat it too, without concern about eating up “my” stuff.  But I knew where that came from too at the time, so I didn’t make a big deal out of it.

I agree with you but can kind of see where they’re coming from also.  In their minds it could be that they’re thinking you were “robbed” of something you wanted and paying you for it is a way to acknowledge that and bring you closer to whole rather than them being entitled and just taking whatever they want with no regard to you.  It could be an attempt to be considerate, but given all the other signs of blatant disregard towards you it’s an odd attempt.  

I’ve noticed food issues often go way back and present in odd ways.  My family was basically a pack of wild animals. Food/treats were devoured completely,  immediately, to the point of making themselves sick.  I didn’t like that so would take my share of treats and hide them to savor later.  While I no longer hide food, I do basically have a grocery store in my house that has whatever I might ever need, and always either have some chocolate stash or ingredients to make an acceptable treat. Someone else I know had a family that left food out to be spoiled, had an overflowing fridge with expired items, etc.  That person keeps very little food in their house and if you give them handmade treats they will graciously accept and enjoy them right then, then immediately throw out anything leftover.  Another person had a mother that didn’t like kids underfoot and fed them breakfast and threw them out of the house for the rest of the day until dinner.  That person always has snacks or protein bars on hand.  So I think there’s a number of us that are weird about food in particular.  

When I was raising my children, when I went grocery shopping, I’d buy stuff they liked that I didn’t, and also buy stuff that was just for me. Like cereal, I only liked one kind of cereal. I’d buy boxes of the cereal they liked, and expected them not to eat all of the box of cereal that I liked, especially since it wasn’t even their favorite. They could eat some of it, but not all of it. So in my mind, it was okay that I didn’t like them eating all of my cereal, when I’d bought them boxes of the different kinds they preferred. And I went grocery shopping every week, so it’s not like I wasn’t constantly providing what they liked, to keep them out of “my” stuff.

But Mister grew up in a household where, for example, they had to pay to drink sodas his Mom had bought for her. Idk if she bought sodas for the rest of her household and they ran through them and started drinking hers. I’m not trying to judge her, I’m just saying that that is different from what I’m used to, requiring payment for things like that. I’d just get upset and fuss if my children ate or drank all of my stuff after they ran through what I’d bought for them, but it never occurred to me to expect them to actually pay me money for  eating or drinking “my” stuff.

[raeoflyte]

Nov 18, 2024 20:28:34 GMT -5 Pink Cashmere said:

Nov 18, 2024 19:37:47 GMT -5 soupandstew said:

I am never offended by anyone's comments or thoughts when I post here about my problems.  Nor do I expect solutions because sometimes there just isn't one, or at least not a feasible one.  

DH never had friends or much connection to his family, only some work pals during those long-ago years; he is a highly paranoid and unfriendly person.  The burden of friendships and activities has always been mine, and it's been challenging as he views everyone and everything with a very suspicious eye, aka "why are you spending time with them, what do they want, they aren't good" etc.  He says repeatedly that "you are a fool for volunteering, everyone is always out to get something from you."  Yet he couples that with statements about how proud he is of me for my civic engagement-envy

Is there an element of dementia?  Quite possibly.  What I see at this point is an increase in his paranoid dislike/distrust of people, coupled with oddly specific memory and comprehension loss.  He read a 300-page owners manual for his new car, dealing with highly technical subjects, and remembers every word.  But he can't or won't remember anything of significance in our daily life.  He says he can't physically hear stuff, but he hears a TV commentator while claiming not to hear my voice.  The audiologist said that is not uncommon, it's selective mental hearing, not anything to do with physical hearing. 

I'm not in physical danger for the most part as I'm very careful to stay as far away from him in the bed as he sometimes strikes out in the night with his hands or feet.  This has been a problem in the past and I do believe he is truthful in denying any memory of it.  Sadly, that reinforces his belief that I am lying overall.

Why don't I just take an Uber and go to events I want to attend?  Because #1 I am not comfortable taking an Uber alone as many bad things have happened here with that, #2 I don't know a good way to explain to a host why DH is not with me, #3 That's a LOT of $$ to spend, and #4 I am not prepared for what I might find when I came home.  If I push back much on anything he leaves, sometimes on foot and sometimes in his car, or tells me he's having heart issues. 

I'm not able physically at the age of 77 to do the hard physical labor involved in many volunteer jobs that I used to do like food drives, neighborhood cleanups, tree planting etc.  

Bottom line, he's 85 years old and here we are.  My life sort of sucks some of the time and that's partly on me because I'm not willing to take the steps to change it.  If I left, I would feel like a sack of shite for abandoning him, and I know all too well what living in poverty is like.  Back in '73 when we married, I doubt either of us saw what today would be.  

 

All I’m going to say is that if you do go somewhere by yourself, you don’t owe the host or anyone else an explanation regarding why you came alone. If you feel like you have to answer those kinds of questions, there are a lot of non answers you can give, that range from being polite to being politely rude if the person asking is just being a nosey busybody. 

Well, I lied, because I do have one more thing to say. Idk why you would feel like a sack of shit if you and him parted ways, since he doesn’t seem to feel like a sack of shit for not being kind and loving toward you. 

I will hush now. Just know that I do realize that it’s easier for me to try to figure out other people’s problems than my own. And that I only wrote what I did in these posts, because even though we are just strangers that met on the internet, I do genuinely care about you. You have been a great friend to me, as much as someone can, given the way we met each other, and I have always appreciated the moral support you have offered. 

Just want to back this up. Other people's problems are way easier to deal with than mine so full disclosure this comes from a glass house.

But... please get a separate bed, and sleep on the couch until then. I do not accept that he doesn’t remember but regardless your safety should be top priority. Claim back issues, temperature issues, anything.

Do not make excuses for him. If he doesn't show up, if he's being anti- social. For any reason. You are not his keeper. Lean in to those friendships. They know you, and they know him.

Above all stay safe but if at all possible ask for rides from friends if you can. Go for walks, Schedule doctors appointments or join a women's crafting, book, anything group. Our library does coffee and conversation groups. Anything to get you some time away. If he goes out while you're gone, let him. If he has heart issues, call him an ambulance. Temper tantrums regardless of age are just that.

My last question is rhetorical but it's one my therapist threw at me recently that I cant shake.

If someone you cared about deeply asked for advice and described similar relationship struggles what would you tell them to do?