I can't wait for school to be out

Only 2 weeks left!  Liam is such a difficult homework doer.  Last night for example.  He had one page to do in his Math book and 3 worksheets to complete.  This took well over an hour for him to finish.  If I am not physically sitting next to him at the table then he sees this as an excuse to get up and play with the cat, play with his toys, run off with Jill and whatever else he can do to stall.  One of his worksheets was to number 4 sentences in the correct order of events then rewrite the sentences below.  Ugh.  He acts as if writing ONE sentence is just the worst thing that could happen to him.  Let alone rewriting 4.  Just the amount of whining over it wastes 15 min.  Anytime he has a writing activity I know it's going to be difficult, for ME!  I need a break.

This will be the first summer in many years where we will not be taking a family trip.  Sad :(  I have a week of vaca in Aug and I want to take a trip with them but not sure what to do yet.  I'll figure it out.

I worked out with my job where I will be working a split shift for the summer.  So basically, I work until about 2:45 at the office, pick the kids up by 3, then work the rest of the afternoon from home.  I did this last summer for the first time and it was GREAT!  It saves me money on summer camp picking them up early, I get a few extra hours at home to get stuff done (as long as it's not busy at work) and I get a few extra hours with the kids every day.  It's perfect.

As I was picking up Liam from school yesterday I was so excited.  I could just feel that the school year is winding down, summer is right around the corner and I just remembered how this is my FAVORITE time of the year.  I love summer.  (I know it's technically not summer yet but it might as well be here it's so dang hot already!)  I love the long days, going to the pool, no school, relaxed schedule.  It just makes me feel alive and happy.  The whole atmosphere of summer is my absolute favorite!

Also, Jill graduates from Pre-K next week.  My baby girl!  In just a few weeks I will officially have a 3rd grader and a Kindergartener.  WOW!  When did that happen?

Anyone have any good summer plans?

Snooping

Guys, if you're gonna snoop you better be prepared for what you might find.  I snooped.  I thought I was above this type of immature behavior but apparently I am not.  And I found an email I did not want to find.  The vindictive bitch inside of me wanted to scan the email and post it here.  But the sensible side of me knew that isn't a very nice thing to do.  So I'll just give you some highlights.  Joe was writing to a friend to tell him how he is "winning" at the cat and mouse chase he has going on with girl A at work.  Apparently, they were at odds for some reason so he had been "flirting with the two new hot girls" all week "in the face" of girl A to make her jealous.  At the end of this email, he mentions that he spent 2 hours on the phone with girl D and that she's "very cool".   Yeah....

Why does this make me so angry?  Well, the previous night I had gathered up all my strength to call my own husband on the phone and have a conversation with him.  He hasn't spoken to me since our last therapist appt which was 3 weeks ago.  I tell him that I don't like how he has been ignoring me for weeks.  That I feel over the last few months that he has really just been using me and making me look like a fool (he had no idea what he was doing to "make me look like a fool").  Once again, I ask him about him being with any other women, he denies it.  Again.  He still insists he "doesn't know" what he wants yet.  During this conversation I ask him to just be honest with me and tell me what's going on because if it's over I want to move on with my life.  He asks "well, how are you going to move on?"  I said, "well, I'll stop wondering if you still care about me.  I'll stop wondering if you miss me, miss our family.  I'll stop wondering where you are every moment and wondering who you're having sex with.  I'll stop waiting for you to come home".  And still, he doesn't fess up to anything.  I still have this fantasy that Joe is going to bust through the front door one day with flowers and tell me how much he loves me and how he can't live without me.  Because he's not telling me that he doesn't want to be with me, I still have hope.

So, after I find the email, I print it out and handed it to him when he came in the morning to drop off Jill.  I simply said "this answers all my questions".  He says nothing to me and we head out to start our days.  He then fires off an email to me reprimanding me about snooping and going through his personal email.  He goes on to tell me that I am an unhappy person and that when he thinks of our future together all he can think of is unhappiness.  He also said he was going to start dating.  Ouch.  Very big ouch.  He also recognizes that he is the cause of some of my unhappiness yet he can't be with me because I am so unhappy.  Oh, the irony.  (is that irony?)  That really hurt but at least it was his truth.  Finally.  He's felt this for a long time but he just wasn't telling me.  All I have asked him for was the truth all along.  Instead, he chose to string me along and continue to tell me untruths.  I told him I am utterly disappointed in him for choosing to treat me this way and choosing to end our relationship this way.  He apologized for all the pain he is causing me and said he realizes how keeping the whole truth from me for so long was def not the right way to handle the situation.

The crazy thing is I have also had thoughts that getting back with Joe would just be a lifetime of unhappiness.  But, I don't know, I just wasn't ready to let go.  He is the love of my life.  I still don't feel like I can just let go of that.

In one way I am so completely and utterly devastated.  More devastated than any other point in this separation.  I, honestly, never believed we would be in this situation.  My husband is going to be fucking other people.  The thought is just more than I can bare.  I honestly don't know how I am going to get through the next few weeks.  I just want to go to sleep and wake up in a year.  When all the heartache is gone.  When I can feel like a normal human being again.

And in one way I am so relieved that the truth is finally out.  I can finally stop waiting.  I can now start to heal and move on.  Wish me luck guys.  See you on the flip side...

(Trying to) Move on...

Hi everyone.  I apologize for my absence lately.  I've been in a bit of a funk.  It's been hard for me lately trying to put my thoughts and feelings down in an organized way.  I went to MN for a few days to visit my brother and his wife. My other brother and his wife drove up from IA for a few days as well.  It's such a rare thing that I get to see all my brothers in the same year, let alone, over a 1 month span.  So that was awesome.  We did some sight seeing stuff and had tons of fun doing some brewery tours and drinking lots of free beer.  Thanks Ged for being our DD!

I hadn't cried in a while and took that as a sign of "getting better" and "moving on".  But then, on the flight to MN I just started crying.  In my defense, I was listening to Sarah McLachlan on my iPod.  Her songs could make anyone cry during their happiest time.  That kind of set the tone for the rest of the trip.  It was a great trip and I really enjoyed the time with my brothers and sisters-in-law but I felt a little... distracted at times.

I go through stretches of time when I feel like I want to move on with my life already.  I'm tired of just sitting here, being ignored, waiting for Joe to make the final decision about our future(s).  This is bullshit the way he's treating me.  I feel as if  I'm being treated like some woman he just met a few months ago and if he just continues to ignore me I'll eventually go away.  Not like his fucking wife of 8 years and mother of his children who deserves the respect of being spoken to and "kept in the loop".  Why can't I just make the decision to end it?  I don't know, but I can't.  So I just sit here and wait.

Sometimes I practically hate him and just want him out of my life forever.  I can barely look him in the face.  I just literally want to punch him.  I want to make him hurt.  I hate what he is doing to me.  I wonder how I will ever get past this.  I wonder how I could ever forgive him.  I wonder how we could ever be together again.

Update on the chairs:  3 down 3 to go.  I have one chair w/ the flower pattern fabric done and I LOVE it!  I'll be honest, I don't think the green or the flower fabric matches the decor of the dining room (or the rest of the house probably) but I don't care, they look awesome!  This is why I am not an interior designer.

1 down, 5 to go

I started to reupholster my dining room chairs.  Old cushion fabric:

eewwwwwww.....

New cushion fabric:

 so nice...

The only issue is that the green of the fabric totally does not match the green of the dining room paint.  Ugh.  Oh well.  At least they look nice.  I also got this fabric to do 2 accent chairs in.

The first chair took me about an hour and 15 min total to do.  It took so long to get all those dang staples out.  My hand was killing me afterwards.

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all the fabulous hard working moms I know!  Have a wonderful day and do something just for yourself!

At a loss

I am at a loss.  I just don't know what to do from here.  There is SO MUCH that I go through with Joe that I don't tell you guys.  I don't write it because I don't want to seem like I'm bashing him.  I don't write it because the lines of "what my place is" in this separation are often quite blurry and I, honestly, don't always know when I'm in the wrong (or right?).  And most of all I don't write it because I feel like I've finally given up and everyone will blame me for breaking up my family.

I don't write how Joe refuses to speak to me outside of the 4 walls of our therapist's office.  How he says things in therapy that are so dumbfounding that they render me speechless after he completely throws me under the bus.  After all, Joe is the one that pushed for therapy, right?  He is the one that insisted we continue going even after he moved out.  I'm the one that complains about it, right?  It would seem, to all of you out there, that Joe is trying really hard to keep things together, right?  Not so much.  Have you ever tried to work out an issue with someone who won't speak to you?  Needless to say, it's impossible.

I don't write about how the girl he "went on a date with" texted him for two weeks afterwards telling him how much she loved him and missed him and how she thought there was such a connection between them.  How she still texts him to tell him this.  How Joe and I sat in the garage before our therapy appointment the other night when he was telling me how she recently texted him and he was laughing his head off because he just thinks it's so hysterical that she won't leave him alone.   "after one date she thinks she loves me, ha ha ha" he says to me.  Like I'm one of his buddies.  Not his wife who is talking to him about his stalker.  Yeah, hysterical.

I don't write about how I helped him apartment hunt and packed toiletries and food and housewares from the house to help get him started.  That was not easy for me.  But I was concerned about the kids AND him.  And I just couldn't NOT do it.  Yet, no acknowledgment or thanks from him that I, once again, put him before me. Maybe he just assumed I would do that stuff, and I did.  I guess I'm the sucker there.

I don't write about how Joe has made every single rule of this separation.  How he has called every single shot.  And I've just gone along for the ride.  People would ask me, "well, is this what you want?"  And I would just say "I guess so."  I thought that I was giving Joe what he needed and that he would eventually come around.  Now I just feel strung along.

I don't write about how he seemed more concerned about how the cat was going to take him moving out than how I would.  He said he wanted to wait at least one month to take Marley because "he's gonna freak out" being in a new place.  Wow, thanks for being so thoughtful about that.  You're right, the cat is really going to freak out.  But don't stress yourself about me, I'll be OK.

Joe makes it painfully clear every day that he just doesn't care.  I'm very, very slowly starting to accept this.  I'm not mad that he feels the way he feels.  He can't help it.  It's not necessarily his fault.  These things happen.  He also makes it very clear that he totally adores his children and not being with them is not an option. Which makes me happy.

So, an update on where we stand.  We do not speak to each other unless it's about the weather or how to cook spinach or something about the kids.  We spend zero time alone.  But we do spend time as a "family".  I told Joe I do not want to go to counseling anymore since we are making zero progress.  Joe does not believe in communicating and I do not see this belief of his changing anytime soon.  So, essentially, we are in the same place where we were 4 mos ago.  In the middle of nowhere.

Mowing the lawn

OMG, I mowed my lawn last night for the 2nd time ever.  I swear, you would've thought I had just run a marathon.  It was so dang hot out I was sweating like a pig.  The front lawn wasn't so bad.  But then I had the genius idea to tackle the side and back yard.  After an hour and 15 min, I hadn't even gotten to the back yet.  I decided to leave that for Joe.

I was so pooped afterwards I barely got off the couch for the rest of the night.  It did help me sleep good though I have to say.  The vibration going through the bar that you hold onto, to me, was the most uncomfortable part.  My hands are actually sore today.  It hurts just to type this.  Just kidding, it doesn't.

I think I can safely say I am never doing that again.  Or I'm buying a ride on.

"debbiness"

Have you guys ever wondered what the word debbiness means?  Where it came from?  Well, here's the story.

I was friends with a guy named Willie many years ago.  He had a crush on me.  I was not interested.  One day we were sitting around feeling a little touchy feely from something we had taken.  Don't judge, we had our clothes on.  So anyway, we were touching each others hair and stroking arms and faces and he just blurts out "I love your debbiness."  I just burst out laughing.  So it's basically the essence of me.  I thought it was so funny and it just always stuck with me.

So when I was thinking of a name for my blog, complete debbiness, just made sense.  Go ahead, add "ness" to the end of your name.  Doesn't it feel good??