Routines Are Routines

I'll get to part two of our big changes in the next post. Today I'm just checking in, I felt like nattering on about nothing in particular. My brain hurts today so I don't think I can pull my thoughts together to post about anything substantial.

It's a routine morning so far. We get up between 5-5:30 every morning, and right now it's already super bright out by then. We have no trees at our new house, not a whisper of shade whatsoever, nothing to block even the slightest sunbeam. I bought black-out shades for the bedroom, but the windows face directly east and the material does little to nothing in the way of keeping the room dark for the mornings. I always make J's breakfast and hot tea while he gets ready for work. He quickly checks emails while he eats, then he's out the door for a long day. I'm alone in the house well before 7am. I usually have decent energy early in the day, then it falters throughout the afternoon until I'm barely functioning by the time J gets home. I'm usually a wilted flower with sadly drooping petals by then. My husband seems to only see me at my worst, when I first drag out of bed, and when I'm trying to hang on in the evenings. I'm thankful he doesn't mind, or at least he's just used to it, and he understands what I go through. He knows that more than likely I had a migraine, or a bout of anxiety that wore me down, or that my hip pain was unbearable that day and I spent a good part of my time on a heating pad. But I do have good moments, I just seem to be alone when they happen. And yes, I can function as an adult every once in a while. 

J had some major dental surgery the other day and for three days he had crippling headaches. He never has headaches, so when he says he has one, they are bad. He tells me he doesn't know how I manage with them, he had to stay in bed and sleep. Me, I'm so used to them I just roll along. I've had migraines since I was a teenager, I don't know what life would be like to NOT have them. My good days seem to be up and down, every other day. This past weekend we had a very nice time doing some work around the house. So Monday I was entirely wiped out and had a migraine that kept me down- I slept in late and was back in bed by 7pm that night- in between I simply sat limply in the living room wishing the clock would speed up and the day would be over sooner. Tuesday I felt good so I spent much of the morning running errands and doing some shopping, in an area an hour away that has all the stores I prefer to shop at. The little town we live in now is so small, my only choice for shopping is that big ugly nasty "W" store, and even that is 20 minutes away. But driving that much completely wore me out so that on Wednesday, I was useless and not moving much. Today on Thursday I'm somewhere in between, slightly recovered but not planning to overdo any one thing.

But this morning is typical for me on my better days. I didn't get great sleep last night, but I never do, and I do have a migraine that is getting worse by the hour. I will have to shut the computer down very soon I know. I took my blood sugar this morning- 190 because we had huge bowls of pasta for dinner last night. But it was in the 300's a few weeks ago, and my doctor said 190 is progress. I had my coffee this morning and watched a few minutes of local news- I never watch the national news, I don't want to start my morning off emotional, angry or sad at the world. Some days I catch up on shows waiting patiently on my DVR. Today I did not, I wanted the quiet. Laundry is going, load number one of two, clothes this morning and towels later on. My 30+ year old bread machine is humming along, creating a beautiful warm fragrant loaf of country white- all I had to do was dump stuff in the bucket and push an idiot proof button. It will be a nice compliment for the homemade cheddar broccoli soup we're having for dinner. I have some leftover red quinoa and feta green beans waiting for my lunch. And I have a can of chickpeas sitting out on the kitchen counter, waiting to be seasoned and roasted in the oven for a nice snack. We have several muddy nests of baby swallows around the house, under the eaves, and even inside I can hear the excited chirping and tweeting when mom and dad swoop in for a feeding. Birds make me happy, maybe happier than most things in my life.

We've had two weeks of 100 degree weather with no rain, and the next two weeks is looking much the same. The cats have all been fed and are sleeping in their various hiding places. I've closed all the shades and curtains in the entire house against the blinding sun and heat, so we're in a comfortable dark cave, staying a relatively cool 73 even with the AC not running. Usually outside it's already 80 when we get up. I've taken all my prescriptions and supplements this morning. I had steel cut oatmeal for breakfast, loaded with things like flax seed and hemp hearts and chia seeds and coconut sugar and bee pollen, because I'm trying to eat healthier. My kitchen counter is covered with lovely green bell peppers that I picked from my container garden on the back patio. I don't know why I chose this veggie to grow- yes it's super easy but I hate bell peppers. J likes them, so I'll go ahead and chop them up, put them in the freezer for a quick grab and go addition to stir fries or tacos. I'm making out my grocery list for tomorrow- J's best friend is coming to town and they're having a guys night out at the casino on Saturday, but we're grilling out on Sunday. J has a dental checkup tomorrow afternoon and said he might come home afterwards instead of going back to work. The pest control guy is coming Monday for an inspection and treatment- I'm not letting him in the house though. They can say all they want that the stuff is "safe" for people and pets, but it's not worth bringing it inside. I don't really like them to spray outside the house either- I'm against any toxins and poisons- but J has overrode me on that decision.

In a bit I will go clean all the litter boxes, and change out the pee pads for my old boy who can't quite make it into the box these days. The garbage can is full, so that needs to go out. The dishwasher is full from yesterday- I didn't manage to get it emptied- and the sink is already full of dirties waiting their turn. I loathe the dishwasher, because of my back troubles it's still the number one chore I have the most problems with. Not just leaning over to put items in and out, but also putting the clean dishes away properly. My pots and pans cabinet is the aftermath of an earthquake, I just throw things in there and close the door quickly against the tumbling and clanking. Once the laundry is done, it may take me several days to put it all away. It goes into the clean basket and into the bedroom but sometimes I just "live" out of the basket instead of getting the clean socks and underwear into the dresser drawers. It's another thing that J is used to and doesn't complain about. It honestly makes no difference to him. I just bought another new journal, which I plan to start in July- I just can't start mid-month for some unknown reason- and I have a book where I will start a gratitude list as well. It's all placed neatly on my desk with new pens, waiting. It's been ages since I wrote in a journal, but I always seem to give it another go every so often, hopeful that this time it will stick. And help.

I'm very close to being unpacked from the move, but miles away from actually having things put away and properly organized. I don't have the same spaces as I did at our last house, and trying to put six square pegs into three round holes gets overwhelming, and I haven't been ready yet to get rid of any of my pegs. The stuff we need to carry on our day to day lives is somewhat set up. But the knickknacks are scattered about, no art is on the walls, and my craft supplies are in such shambles I don't know when I will get back to my pottery or art journal or jewelry making. My Etsy shop has been in vacation mode for so long now. Mostly I'm just struggling to get used to the new house and the new town. We've only been here two months. For the first time ever, we have a pool. J goes swimming every single night after dinner and before he sits on the front porch at dusk, having his nightly bourbon, watching the sunset and listening to the earth drift off to sleep. We are W-A-Y out in the country, it gets quiet here. Me? I sit in the house. I can't stand the heat, the humidity, the bugs. I've been in the pool only twice. When we first moved here it was much cooler, still spring, and I would sit outside with him in the evenings, but I've given that up until the temps drop back down to "not from Hell" numbers. I'm much lazier these days. Although I've almost always had issues with back pain and foot pain, for the first time I'm starting to have serious issues with my knees. Not just pain when I walk or use the stairs. But all the time, a deep throbbing and burning even when I'm simply sitting around, or in bed trying to get comfortable for sleep.

So that is still my life, after all these years on the blog. I've lived in different towns since I started writing on here a decade ago, but basically nothing has really changed for me personally, other than where we live. It makes me sad that I'm still the way I am, and getting worse physically. I understand that what takes me all day long to accomplish undoubtedly takes the average housewife- with kids!!- probably an hour or two. When I was in my 30's, I beat myself up about this all the time. Now that I'm well up into my 50's, I pretty much don't give a shit. That is not me, that will never be me. My "best" might be someone else's bare minimum, but I have stopped worrying about that or wishing for better. This is my life, no one ever comes to see me, I'm not on any clock to finish projects, and my hubby is content. I don't know that I really need/want to punch myself in the face anymore because I didn't get my nightstand cleaned off or I didn't water my plants or I didn't cook dinner from scratch. We both eat, we have clean clothes, the cats are comfortable. I will always take care of the grocery shopping and cooking, the laundry, making the bed, feeding the cats. None of us really wants for anything more. My brain just needs to learn to be happy with that and stop reaching for more, stop expecting myself to "grow" at this stage in my life. Sure I might need to clean the toilets more often, but if my lower back is growling at me that day, or the next, or the next- who cares?? Clean toilets just get grungy again in a few days anyhow.

MISS GEE

The Big Changes: J's Job Part One

So most of our big life changes are always due to J's career. We'd already moved twice before for his job, when we bought our "dream house" in 2016. (I thought we'd already bought what for me was our "dream house" back in 2007 but that only lasted three years because we moved for a promotion.) This new house seemed even more perfect as it was in his hometown, one he'd been gone from for almost 30 years. His parents and other family members still lived there, and they were extremely happy to have us living so close.

When we moved into the house finally in 2017, J had been working on the road and traveling full time for the company for two years. I've already posted a lot about that. He would leave super early Monday mornings- sometimes Sunday nights- and get home late on Fridays or maybe Saturday mornings. Every week. There was no working from home, his job was a physical one that required him to be at different locations all over the US in person. He started the travel in early 2015, about two years after I had "retired" from the same company due to health reasons. It was a wonderful opportunity and a substantial raise, both in salary and bonus and even stock options. I won't rehash all of the early days of it, I spent many posts talking about the issues of suddenly being home alone for days on end, not enjoying or using my free time wisely and productively. So when we moved four hours north into that new little house up on top of a hill, we thought life didn't get much better than that. We'd had a huge estate sale to downsize and sold our old home within a few months, so the transition was uneventful. We now had 8 gorgeously landscaped private acres with a sweeping view, halfway up a hill so steep, sometimes my SUV couldn't get up the driveway. The house was immaculate in every way, inside and out, and they'd just put in an absolutely breathtaking addition of a magnificent sun room. I mean, completely stunning, I can't find enough adjectives to describe it. I couldn't believe they would want to leave it, but they were moving out of state to a mountain cabin for their retirement. Both owners were engineers and the husband's hobby was plants and trees, and he had loaded up every space around the house and yard with everything flowery and colorful. It was all quite dazzling to the eye, but if you've ever read my previous posts, you know that gardening has always been a challenge for me physically. Even though I love the idea of it! The maintenance of these beautiful gardens and flower beds quickly became overwhelming and I couldn't keep up at all. It fell to J of course, and because he had such a very limited time at home, it wasn't maintained the way it needed to be. Even though this was a much smaller house and easier for me to keep clean inside, the weeds unfailingly glared at us both, mocking. It would only get worse over time.

Because of the grueling travel schedule, when J was home he was always exhausted and in an ill mood. He tried to keep up his energy to do and go on the weekends because he knew that I wanted to, after being cooped up alone in the house all week. We would go out to eat, or the movies, estate sales, shopping, on long country drives. He also had to try and keep up with yard work and just normal chores around the house during his few moments at home each week. Plus he was still doing his online shop and making signs in the workshop there. With the move his travels now took even longer- before we had lived near one of the largest airports in the country and he always had direct flights. Now his travels always included one or two connecting flights with layovers, making his departures even earlier, his returns home even later. So he was becoming more and more worn out from it and home even less, and was undeniably burned out from the job. Yes we had crazy amazing magical perks from his travel rewards. Flying first class from coast to coast with his Diamond status, free hotel rooms with his Ambassador Elite level- even a lush room at the Ritz-Carlton overlooking Central Park one NYC visit- and always free luxury rental cars like BMW's and Audi's. Things we would/could never never ever actually "pay" for out of pocket. Dreamy stuff that most of our friends and family could only see on TV shows. We never felt guilty or ashamed for savoring these experiences, these rewards and points were simply growing quietly in the background as he did his job every day, every week. Why shouldn't we use them to enjoy "our" time together?? He was eating- and drinking- at nice restaurants with the company paying. On his extremely rare off times at work he would be able to sometimes do fun things like take in a ballgame or go to a museum in whatever city he was working in. He was accumulating rewards points for us faster than we could use them on our personal trips. Even as I write this, years later, we still have almost 700,000 points for a major hotel chain. Every week he would bring home a gift for me, sometimes just a cute find from a local downtown gift store, sometimes extravagant items from the duty free shops at airports. Other than the fact that he was never home, it was all very glamorous. Until it wasn't. I enjoyed the perks by doing nothing, except trying to survive without my husband for most of the time. It was becoming a steep price and J's health was starting to suffer both physically and mentally. It was nice to think of those rewards and experiences as "freebies" but really, they weren't free at all. J was grinding away his whole entire being for it, I was depressed and lonely while he was earning it.

I understand spouses all over the world have jobs that require them to be gone for long periods of time. Military obviously. Doctors, pilots, power crews, forest firefighters, guys on fishing boats and cargo ships and oil rigs, long haul truck drivers, hell even rock stars or athletes on the road. J was just doing the same, working for the corporate office as a consultant or "fixer" as it were. His job required him to go into divisions across the country that were struggling, to find out why and try to help them, or temporarily fill in for their vacant upper management positions if needed. Mostly he was seen (and treated) as an outsider and interloper, by people who worked for the same company as he did, doing the same jobs he'd done for many years and knew like the back of his hand. It became a heavy burden to be so openly unwanted by colleagues and during those years on the road he made very few friends or lasting contacts. People dreaded him coming, and were happy to see him go. He did grow one or two relationships from that job, but not many. He felt very alone in his work world and mostly unappreciated, when all he wanted to do was help out the company he was so dedicated to. He received little thanks (even from his boss), and a lot of resentment, and it started to weigh him down emotionally. That and being away from home of course, despite staying in comfortable suites (not our messy house) and eating great food (not my terrible cooking). We bought our little house on the hill with all the acres and big front porch, with the idea that we would stay there a long long time, maybe even forever. But J realized that in order to keep it, he had to continue to work on the road full time. Forever. We had a house that we loved, only he wasn't really living there. And I was sitting around alone not enjoying it, just waiting for the weekends, desperate for him to come home when I would basically bombard him with all my to-do lists. Two quick days where he would be so tired he would fall asleep in the living room and sometimes sleep away Saturday afternoons, while I tiptoed around, sad and still lonely even though he was right there in front of me. Keeping that lovely perfect house was destroying our life and our relationship.

2017 was a particularly crazy year, the first year we lived there. Right after we moved into the house, like literally, a promotion came open. The one he/we had always wanted and hoped for and dreamed of, for well over a decade. The one that would take us back to the town where we had originally met and started our life together, where he had lived for almost 18 years and I had lived for 15. The town where we lived when we were married and worked together and bought our first "dream" home. The town where both our best friends still lived, the town we always wanted to return to and live in one day again. Here, finally, was the lifetime opportunity we'd been waiting on for so long. And here we sat thinking about it, in our gorgeous barely lived in new home in another state. We were gutted at this horrendous timing and the decision in front of us- we had always wanted to permanently "go back" there again one day, yet we didn't want to give up this amazing property we were just settling into. We talked about how we could pull it off, with J maybe taking an apartment there and coming home every other weekend or so. And how long would that last? He'd be gone from home even more than with the travel job. Of course at that time one of our cats had major cancer and was on all sorts of pills and chemo that had to be given every day, several times a day (I'll post about that one day). I could in no way travel to stay with him for visits. Financially what would happen, trying to pay for two households? How would he help with necessary chores and yard work at the house, things I couldn't do myself, if he was gone for 2-3 weeks at a time? Hiring someone was just more of our money going out that could be going into our retirement funds, stretching out his remaining working years even longer. How could we balance the scales to even out the dream job versus the dream house, and having them both?? The job would be 250 miles away, not an incredible distance yet it felt completely like foreign shores when we tried to see the logistics of him going back and forth a reasonable amount. We wanted to take the new job. We wanted to keep the new house.

So try as we might to reach for the stars and have everything we ever wanted, we couldn't see how to make this work based on reality and not emotions, so he passed on the opportunity. Even though his boss at the time encouraged him to put in for the promotion, convinced he would absolutely get it. In the meantime, his travel job had him stuck in the NYC area for the entirety of the 2017 calendar year, flying home and back every weekend, dealing with the traffic and shenanigans up there. And worse than that he was mostly having to work nights yet come home and try to exist on a daytime weekend schedule with me, which proved to be nearly impossible. He was utterly miserable, and it was a very soul-crushing assignment with colleagues who actively were working against him because they didn't want him there helping (which meant sometimes making indifferent people do their jobs instead of drifting along pointlessly). Normally his assignments would be a few weeks, then he'd move on to new place for another few weeks, or sometimes return to places for a short second round. If it was an assignment he hated, he knew there was an end in sight very soon, and he could hang on just a little bit longer knowing that he'd be gone shortly. This time NYC was going on and on and on and ON with no end date and he felt hopeless, at a breaking point. So hopeless in fact that in the fall, when we took our always much loved yearly vacation to the coast to our happy place, he was so on edge and unhappy and full of angst that he didn't want to do anything but sit and watch TV and mope. And hate life. He was completely shut down. And in fact we (he) suddenly checked out two days early (!!!) and we came home. Cutting a beloved vacation short? We'd never ever done that before. I was clearly livid, but all he could do was think about how work was making him so low and so despondent that it ruined our time at the beach. When we got home he made it clear to his boss that he'd had enough- not of the job, but of the NYC assignment. It had been over ten months there and he felt that he had to get out of that place. His boss asked him to stay through until the end of the year, and then he promised he would get J into a new assignment.

The new assignments finally came, and rotated so that he wasn't stuck in one place for too long. And his boss was so appreciative- and quite very apologetic- that J got a substantially "extra" extra bonus for putting up with NYC for an entire year. And even though the new assignments weren't as painful as NYC, he was still away from home. And still working an always shifting schedule of days for a few weeks, then nights for a few weeks, then days again. Sometimes he would even be going to different time zones each week, needing his body to adjust at home on the weekends before heading back to it. Always traveling, always being gone, barely having 48 hours at home every week. 48 hours that he pretty much slept through because his body was so so so exhausted and getting worse, his mental gas tank was so dry. His desire to do anything was nonexistent, his ability to find any joy in finally being home was gone. All he could do was try to stay awake and watch the clock tick down until his next flight out, barely going though the motions for the few of our Saturday escapades he could manage to find the energy for. I was left on the sidelines to just basically put up with it, to accept it as our current and likely future life now. He'd passed on the fantasy promotion so we could live in this home, and the irony of us never being together there was not lost. He powered through 2018, flying off here and there, touching down briefly at his home base with time enough for me to do his laundry and get him packed up again. Because our previous home had been paid off when we sold it, this house was now also paid off, as was my car so our financial burdens were a little lighter at this point. We both knew as hard as this job was, it had allowed us to attain that achievement of not having a mortgage- twice. And those years we were gobbling up the perks of the travel rewards, taking extravagant vacations and cruises and casino jaunts, enjoying the most enticing and addictive fringe benefits of the job. It was always amazing but that certainly wasn't enough to make up for our empty real life, and was it really worth it to pretend to live that fabulous high life for a few weeks out of the year? By 2019 he felt so bereft that he was simply an empty shell visiting me, sitting then quickly napping in the recliner in "my" house on the weekends. At least that's how it felt to me. That house was becoming his albatross.

Then came the summer of 2019....and on to Part Two....

MISS GEE

(The incredible front porch view from our 2017 dream house)

Holy Crap I'm Back

Wow I've been wanting to get back on the blog and here I am. My only concern is J finding it, but I'll have to be sneaky. In the past I used a web browser that wasn't our default, so he didn't even know it was there and had no way to get on my secret blog here. I can't find my way back to that now, it's been so many years, and I didn't want to download something new that might alert him. But honestly he almost never gets on this old clunky desktop anymore. He has two laptops, one for work and one for his personal stuff like playing games. So he's only on here when he needs to find an old scanned document that's saved on the hard drive. I on the other hand, still have no laptop and I'm okay with that. Phone yes, but with my old eyes and gnarled fingers, I can't really "write" on it for any length other than a text. I will make sure I go behind myself and clean the history. This isn't a crime documentary, he's not going to run programs to find my deleted browsing history. He's actually been wanting to get me a laptop, but I'm okay with our super old computer. It makes me sit down in the office, at the desk, and concentrate on what I want to say.

I'll keep this post shortish. Since the last time I posted- besides the nightmare of Covid- so many things have changed for us. My last post was in the fall of 2018. In the interim, I lost my cat who was sick with cancer back then, but he made it almost two years and for that we were grateful and a little astonished because he made it longer than the oncologist predicted. And I lost another cat to a swift and incurable cancer, my sweet soul kitty girl who I had 17 years, since she was a teeny kitten. That about destroyed me. We got a new cat, a fat sassy little thing who has her own Instagram page with almost 7000 followers. I only have a scant over 400! Cats are so popular online, and she doesn't even do anything but sit there and look cute. So we're "down" to just three kitties these days. One is our senior kitty who we got in 2006 right after we got married. The other two are younger and each came from the last two cities we lived in.

We've also moved TWO more times. Yes, we had barely settled into our house in 2017, and in 2019 we moved again. And again just last month. The first move in 2019- to a beautiful older house right smack in the mountains that I absolutely loved- was due to J's job. He finally, after almost 5 years of constant travel, decided to come off the road. We could no longer live wherever we wanted, so he had to put in for a real job at an actual office. It was a promotion, so there was some give and take, but we landed in the gorgeous and peaceful river valley of a mountain area, and started to enjoy small town living surrounded by stunning views. When we got there, J said he could see us living there for a very long time. But we thought that about the previous house as well. To this day I still regret that decision, but that's for another post. And barely two years of living in the mountains, the unthinkable happened. After 25 years with the company, J was let go. Yes I know it happened to millions during Covid. This however, wasn't Covid related. J's company never shut down during Covid, he never missed a single day and had a job that of course couldn't be done from home. They weathered Covid very well, and that's for another post. He lost his job for political reasons, and four other of his same-position colleagues from across the region were also let go. And then three more quit. So we had to move again.

 

As for me, my mental health is about the same. The depression comes in waves. This is a bad week so perhaps that's what drew me back to the blog. The anxiety is always there, no matter what. I'm now on meds for all sorts of old people ailments- HIGH blood pressure/sugar and cholesterol. My asthma meds were increased since the area we live in now has extremely bad allergy numbers- I'm now on four different things to help control the symptoms. Physically I'm no better than when I started this blog other than a considerable weight loss. But the weight loss hasn't helped with energy or mood or body pains or my overall health. I still have day-wasting malaise and numbing migraines. I still have a shitty diet of quick grabs like popcorn and crackers, and I definitely don't exercise even though we keep dragging along my treadmill with every move.

I'm currently surrounded by packing boxes still, we've been here about a month now. I kept telling myself I needed another outlet besides daytime TV and putting away craft supplies. So I decided to get back on here. I know I know, no one reads this blog, they never have and I'm still okay with it. I was trying to keep a journal but of course it just turned into a "what I did today" kind of diary and that doesn't help much when I need to vomit out all the bad festering stuff inside of me. So today it was just getting back on and updating the password and such. I may go back and read some of my other posts to see where my head was at. But I'll be back on here to catch up the past 3 1/2 years!

MISS GEE

 

(The beautiful mountain view from our previous house- SO sad to no longer have this.)