Hanging In There

This morning I had to forgo a trip to Seattle with my spouse.  I wanted to go, not only to support him with the cryopreservation of his gametes for our next donor egg cycle but to enjoy a bit of vacation with him and go to the Seattle Underground Tour as well.  Alas I'm in one of those cycles.

I'm not sleeping well.  I'm in pain.  When I lift more than 10 pounds, it is really hard to not lift more than 10 pounds, I bleed.  My chest is aching with intermittent pains; it is not the heart as I know only too well what that feels like.  One would think that at cycle day 20 my bleeding and torture would have stopped.  No!

J and I talked last night.  He is going to try to change his passive aggressive ways and I'll try to not go off the handle when he slips up and take it so personal.

Today he is in the kitchen learning just what it means to clean a kitchen.  He thought I meant just steam mop the floor.  If only it was that easy.  He often wonders why I'm so tired after "only" cleaning the kitchen.  It means moving object, cleaning them off, under where any object might have rested, dusting, sweeping, scouring, using harsh chemicals, soaking things and when all is cleaned you then have to sweep up the floor and steam mop it.  I do the thorough cleaning just once a month and spot cleaning daily.

Proof that he is cleaning the kitchen today...

I purchased a groupon for a car museum and printed it out.  Hopefully J and I can go there this week.  He deserves a little treat for his hard work.

Household Chores

Its Monday again.  How can I tell?  Well the mountains of laundry in my utility room confirm the day is truly here again.  Sorry but I need to vent a bit today.

My husband is still training, after 6 years of marriage, on household duties.  He actually did two loads of his own laundry yesterday.   I have one load of my personal stuff of which I mixed with the three loads I still have to do of the household laundry.

Oh I still have all of my husband's socks to wash.  That he didn't do yesterday because they are whites and well he figured I would do them for him.  Hmmm...he could have volunteered to just do the whole load of whites for me right?  Wrong.

After 6 years we are still working on who has to do what for household tasks.  I think we will never quite agree on the chores.

He believes its a man's job to empty the trash.  For the past two weeks I've been emptying the trash and taking it to the road.  So does this make me a man?  Need I remind him that I was quite capable of doing it for the year he was deployed and I didn't have to grow a set of testicles to do that job.

I refuse to believe that all the housework should fall upon the shoulders of just one person.  I don't think like my parents or even his parents.  I don't fall prey to J's tactics that if he screws up the task I'll not ask him to do it again.  His father told me yesterday that he does just that so that J's mom will take it over for him.  Not me, I just make J re-do the task until he gets it right.  We learn from our mistakes.

Late last night J told me he has CQ duty on 1 January.  He thought he told me two weeks ago.  Two weeks ago I had told him that if he has any CQ duty coming up he needs to put it on the calendars.  We do have one for next year and its right next to the present one, J even put it right there himself.   I walk into the kitchen with him following me and he said I was right that he didn't put it on the calendar and probably did forget to tell me.  The reason why the CQ duty even came up was that I reminded him that there would be no holiday drinking this year because he has to start the antibiotics on the 1st of January.  He said, "I guess I'll be taking them to CQ with me then.".  That is how I found out.

So I'm practicing my mindfulness of late.  I'm not breaking things or going mad.  I diffuse my own anger and take control of my emotions.  But I still can't lower my blood pressure enough.  This weekend I had a wicked headache and my blood pressure went up to 146 on top.  Good thing my Circle + Bloom set arrived on Saturday.  I think I'll take some time to meditate and listen to it today.  I need to relieve some stress before this next IVF hits the shot part.