Obviously it's been a bit since my last post--things are "fine." Who am I kidding--I'm furious.

 My relationship with my husband has faced three major crisis in 20ish years that we have known each other. The first one was when he decided to cheat on me at 15 years old with a girl who was staying in the same dorm complex while he was at a sports camp. The second one is why all of you know me--it played out in a very public way and by the available last count, has over a million views on various social media platforms. We are living through the third as I type this. I can't stand the sight of him and I can't stand the sound of his voice. 

Now, I don't want to scare anyone--we are not getting divorced. I normally wouldn't even mention that because normally the thought would be so far from my mind. Having said that, since almost everyone who reads this blog came to know us when we were technically separated, I don't want anyone to think that is where this is heading. I love him with my whole heart but at the moment, I am incredibly frustrated with some of the choices he has made--choices that have a major impact on me. 

Part of the problem is we are exhausted. We have a newborn which in itself is exhausting and as much as we both instantly fell in love with little Ashely, she went from being an excellent little eater and sleeper to being very challenging in the last week or so. Bubs also got some news from work in that if the current financial situation doesn't become clear, there will be layoffs at his company. He has been assured that he is too good of a performer to be in the layoff pool--but it's on his mind for sure. The third thing that we have been dealing with is that we as a couple decided to go against medical advice and get his vasectomy done so soon after I gave birth.  I think our reasoning around the timing was sound--but this is where his choices come into play. 

Before I get into the specifics, it's also been a particularly tough week because we have really come to rely on Evie and she won't be back at least until Saturday. She has finals this week and she had a lot more success with finding a qualified proctor to do her remote tests on the military base in Yuma than she did here in Tucson. Also Bubs parents had to leave--when Bubs overdid it last week, they offered to stay but it just so happened that one of their dogs is very sick back home and they didn't want to burden Bub's sister with making some very tough choices. My mother-in-law offered to stay but I could tell that she really wanted to be there for the dog--which I completely respect. They upended their entire spring season for us (for me really) and Bubs and I got ourselves into this mess--we need to get ourselves out. 

So I wrote last week about Bubs deciding to go for a run and me needing to rescue him--well as it turns out, the medical community is not lying that the human testicles can swell to the size of softballs. He was in nearly unbearable pain when I got him home last week and by the next day (sorry for the lack of any subtlety here) his balls were huge. To his credit, he did take it very easy for the next couple of days and things started sort of go back to normal (key phrase being sort of) but he was still super uncomfortable. I absolutely forbid him from getting out of bed so as we said goodbye to my in-laws, it fell upon me to get food, school, shopping, etc... all while I'm very sleep deprived, very grouchy and knowing that every time I leave the house with my infant daughter in the care of my husband, we are risking him be out of commission for extra days. 

It had been a very long time since we had an appointment with our marriage counselor--after the incident last week, I called her and asked her if she might be able to fit us in because we were having some challenges and we needed some strategies and ideas to help us out. She said she didn't have anything but if there was a cancellation we would be the first on her list. 

On Tuesday evening, our 7 year old hit us with every parent's after dinner nightmare--"Mom, I forgot, I have a poster on the water cycle due tomorrow." 

"Buddy, did you just say tomorrow? How long have you known about this?"

"Just today-I swear mom." It was the "I swear mom" that made me really suspicious so I logged onto his teacher's classroom management page and of course he's known about this for three weeks with near  daily reminders to be working on it. I tried to keep my composure because as a teacher, I'm sure I've caused my share of these type of dinner table crisis. 

"TJ, do you see here on her daily folders--all of these reminders? Why didn't you tell Evie or Nana about this?"

"Mom I swear I'm not allowed to log into Schoology."

Now I was pissed because he was lying to me. I tried to keep my composure but we were in crisis mode so he and I looked at the assignment because our options were: 1. let him get away with lying and say he could take the zero. Option 2 was to make him spend the evening doing the best job he could--in my opinion kids his age understand feedback on a poorly done assignment far more than they understand the implications of a zero in the gradebook. 

I got Ashely set up with Bubs with Abby set up in the room do her homework to help as best she could. TJ's task was to go around the house and yard to try and whip up some stuff to glue on his poster in a vain attempt to show the water cycle. My job was to go to Walgreens and get a posterboard. Thankfully it's relatively close and I even got a call from our marriage counselor's appointment service that she had a last minute cancellation and could get us in the next day. Things were looking up. 

I drove up to our new front yard and I should see TJ frantically running around grabbing supplies to start his project. Nope. I should see my husband in bed keeping an eye on our infant daughter Nope. What I do see is my husband tossing baseballs to TJ and his little neighbor friend so they could bat them into the net on the side of our driveway. Ashley was in her carrier at his side. I was speechless. At least TJ was man enough to speak for both of them "Mom we thought you'd be gone longer." I picked up Ashley's carrier without saying a word and went inside. If nothing else, I have my girls because Abby told me she wasn't sure what to do because she knew Dad had to stay in bed. I told her it wasn't even close to her responsibility and I'm so impressed at how mature she is. I told her to please go outside and get TJ and tell him to come in. 

I don't know the last time I've been this mad at Bubs--it takes a lot for me to be speechless. I felt so utterly undercut in so many ways. First of all, I'm killing myself so he can recover and twice now he's repaid me by ignoring his doctors. Second he completely undercut me with TJ. He knew TJ had a task to complete while I was gone. He knew that anything TJ didn't do while I was gone would just cut into the time that I had to work with him before I inevitably had to turn my attention to Ashley. 

Just as expected, TJ's project turned out to be a total disaster and he was deservedly embarrassed that he was going to turn in something so poorly done but I'm happy I stuck to my guns and made him follow through. I even sent his teacher an email to let her know the poster was coming  the next day so TJ didn't magically "lose" it between the drop off line and the classroom. 

Bubs had snuck himself back into the bedroom and as soon as I came into feed Ashley and try to put her down, he started in on me with "look, I am so sorry. It's just that TJ finally wanted to hit..." I told him the only thing I was going to say to him was that we had an appointment with Lydia at 1pm. For maybe the second time in our entire relationship he wanted to talk it out and I wanted time to process what I had just encountered. I can say that I did learn something that night--it can be really irritating when you are in the middle of a fight and you need quiet to process while your "opponent" in the fight wants to keep talking. Who knew? 

This blog has gone on way too long and I'm needed by my amazing daughters and the frustrating BOYS in my life. I won't leave you all hanging and will talk about our therapy appointment when I get some time on Friday or over the weekend. Again--we aren't getting divorced but the therapist did tell us "you know sometimes it's ok for a spouse to have a few days to process their emotions when they feel like their partner isn't acting like much of a partner..."

I'm processing my emotions...I love you Bubs but the fact that I love you so much is one of the reasons I am so mad at you--and will be so mad at you for a while.