caerula's Diaryland Diary

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a little better, and some ramblings

Things aren't suddenly wonderful, but they aren't quite as bleak as they seemed yesterday. There is an actually possibility that my marriage is not over, that we won't be separated for as long as I was resigning myself to yesterday. When I arrived yesterday at my mom's after leaving work early, heaving sobs, because of course I was listening to the saddest music I had available in the car, my dad decided he had to go talk to Blue. I tried to talk him out of it; really don't want the rest of the family involved in my marital problems any more than necessary. But, couldn't talk him out of it. And apparently it was a good thing; I don't know exactly what happened, but Dad has been through very similar experiences, his stemming from clinical depression, and apparently Blue found it easier to talk to another guy about it rather then wanting to seem weak to me. Silly, of course, but very much the guy mentality. It all ended up Dad helping Blue make some phone calls. Blue's former counselor won't see him, which would have been nice to let him know two weeks ago when we started leaving phone messages for him. The counselor says he doesn't think he could help Blue, that Blue was untruthful with him and missed too many appointments and didn't want to listen, which is all quite possibly the truth. So he has some phone calls in other places, and Dad apparently talked to a couple of people he knows with connections, and the upshot is that Blue is supposed to be able to get in to see someone sometime next week. It's not as much as I hoped for, but it's a start.

I'm still staying mostly at my mom's until he goes at least once, and I did offer to go with him, if he thinks that will help. He doesn't quite understand why now that he's trying everything isn't just okay, but until I know that he's getting help, meds if he needs them, whatever, there is always the chance that something could set him off again, and I'm not going to risk that.

As for YMB, tonight I may take him to the movies. Tomorrow night is the spring carnival at school, and we'll go to that; Blue can choose if he would like to join us or not. Saturday I have plans to sew all day with my mom � we both still have to finish and bind our quilts for the show. And Sunday, I may do something with Cyn, besides whining about annoying catalogers who are probably dead now anyway. We'll see. How much I need to get out of the house just is going to depend on how much Blue really decides to try and deal with this issue, and how much he just falls back into usual patterns.

Let me just say this, for those of you I know are worried about me: he didn't hit me, he didn't hit YMB. If that were ever the case, I would be out of there with no looking back. That's not the issue, so don't worry about our safety there. But the rest of it is Blue's business, and since he doesn't even want to talk about it with me, I really don't feel I can talk about it here. He's not a bad guy; most of the time he is truly awesome � I don't want anyone to come away thinking that he's not every bit as caring and sensitive and funny as I have described him over the past year. It's been a very stressful year for us, and so was last year. And Blue has some problems dealing with that stress. Being raised as a typical guy, whose father reacts to things in much the same way Blue does, he doesn't want to ask for help, or think that something might be wrong not physically, but in his emotional or mental wiring. I think the fact that MIL never blew up or corrected or threatened to leave FIL is also part of the problem � he knows I'm trying to help, but something in him sees it as nagging, and rebels at ultimatums. Because he's a guy, and guys have their pride. They don't give in to ultimatums, you know. That would be failing, admitting (heaven forbid) that there are things wrong and you do need help.

Thank you to everyone who signed my guestbook and emailed me yesterday. It really did help. I'm too tired to put in all the links, but those are all in the gbook if you really want to know. Natalieeee and Swoop were there for me, as they have been since I've known them. And dichroic and mechaieh and genibee, whom I've known almost as long � thanks for the hugs, virtual or not. And more recent friends � mercurial (you are NOT a complete stranger, dahling, not when I read your life every day!), Ellie, herworship, Baf, and of course Cyn. Thank you all for the support. It feels ineffectual to write words of wisdom and virtual hugs in a gbook, I know, but trust me, every message of support and hope is dearly appreciated.

I suppose every marriage goes through bad patches, and you either work them through or you give up. I'm not giving up yet.

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On to other things � I can't keep dwelling on it, it's not healthy, so here's where the randomosity of my days come in � which I know you all wait breathlessly for. If you want a pretty good idea of what I do all day, go see Cyn here. She describes it pretty well, being new to this fiasco, where as I am so tired of it I can't bear the thought of even writing about it � except for the occasional classic Parliamentary Act entitled things like "An act for suppressing the detestable sins of incest, adultery and fornication." I wonder just who got to decide what constituted fornication. Mostly the men had to go to gaol for a month, or be in the stocks for a week, while women were were pretty much hung or beheaded. Unfair! And it's riddled with inconsistencies, too. � if you were a woman who committed adultery, and there was proof �and interestingly, your husband couldn�t be the one to offer that proof, so maybe this is where all the spouses not having to testify against each other comes in, since I know that was from English common law � anyway, if you committed adultery and it was proven (by who, some random peeping Tom? Who knows), you were sentenced to death, along with the person you committed adultery with. Unless, of course, that person didn't know you were married. Can't you see all these 17th century farmboys � "I knew it not! I swear!" and getting away with it. But, if you were the woman, you got off if it was rape (gee, that's generous), or if your husband had been gone for more than three years in a row and you had no reason to think he was alive. That didn't count. But, and herein lies the inconsistency, there's also a law that no man can "lie with" a woman other than his wife, including virgins, old maids, and widows. So if your husband has been gone for three years, you can apparently go around seducing whoever you want, but then the guy gets in trouble and has to go to the stocks and get tomatoes thrown at him (or whatever they threw then). No wonder everyone got married so young. Note to self: if time travel becomes common, never, ever travel back to 17th century England.

There was also a long list of all the people you can't have sex with; the expected ones, mother, father, aunt, uncle, brother, sister, grandmother, grandfather (ugh), daughter, son, grandchild, etc. etc. But there were also things like daughter's husband, son's wife, father's 2nd wife even if not your mother, mother's 2nd husband, long lists of various cousins, anyone who had ever been married to any member of your family, etc. In some villages there must have been NO ONE to get married to. I have to wonder how strongly this was all enforced.

So, in the 17th century, it was indeed good to be king, until they chop your head off and make all freaky new laws and 500 years later someone cataloged them, apparently by alternate universe cataloging rules, and 20 years later fresh-faced young idealistic catalogers are tortured with said mistakes. Yup, that about sums it up. And if Cyn thinks I'm bothered by her other-side-of-the-cube mutterings, it's okay, dear, they're drowned out by mine.

Although things may get better by the end of the summer � I may get to get to head up the American Periodicals project after all, good bc a) it would be original cataloging, not correcting psycho-catalogers mistakes, and 2) it would be different, and it would be American history. Yay.

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Also, if Blue and I get things worked out, we leave for vacation in 15 days. Not counting today, of course, because today never counts. And just get a load of this itinerary. Fri the 21st, , after I get home about for, we leave and start the long long drive through Ohio to Pennsylvania. We assume around 10 or 11 that night, we will be somewhere in PA, and we will stop for the night. Early as possible next morning, we will get up and resume our drive, approximately 10 more hours, and hope to get to Swwoop's by dinner-time or thereabouts. If we don't manage to get there Sat. night, we will miss out on meeting Mr. Swwoop, and I'm sure he would be disappointed, since my familial exploits amuse him so very much.

So. Spend the night at Swwoop's, and hang out there the next day, deciding if there is anything in the area we must go see, or perhaps we will just sit on the porch and talk all day and I will admire her flowers, and YMB will be off developing a huge crush on Herself, since he appreciates intelligence and has a thing for "older women." And cute helps too, of course. I do have to mention, as well, that if we pull this off, Swwoop and I will be the only ones of the original Mod Quad who have met every other member. And if nothing else, all the original Evil Triplets will finally have met face-to-face.

Then Sunday night it's down to Boston, to hang with QueenV for a couple of day. She has a one bedroom, and has kindly offered us the futon, but we will probably stay at a hotel at least the first night so as not to overwhelm her and Princess Beatrice, her feline only child. Somewhere in there I hope to meet Mr. Third Date, and assess his worthiness ("What are your intentions toward my best friend, hmmm?" QueenV would be petrified). Monday and Tuesday we will do Boston things like the Science Museum, the aquarium (these may be things we send to boys off to do while we do more museumy things), and of course the swan boats and Fanueil Hall and a few of the historical sites. Then Wednesday morning we get up ungodly early and drive all the way back here, probably at least a 12 hour drive. YMB desperately wants to take a side trip to Gettysburg, since "we are going to be in Pennsylvania after all"; we'll just have to see how we're doing on time. I wouldn't mind going myself, since I've never seen it, and Blue is a huge history buff, so I'm betting somehow we will find the time, even if it means getting back at 3 am. Then Thursday I will (theoretically) get up and go to work, and spend my lunch hour at the ortho doctor doing final x-rays and scheduling my very scary bore-through-bone and reattach-tendons ankle surgery. Friday I will work, and from there we will move on to YMB's ninth bday party at Parenting Hell, o/w known as Chuck E. Cheese. Saturday the 29th is his actually birthday, and we'll have family and presents and stuff that day, as well as, I hope, a cake by Minnie, my pastry-chef sister. Then Sunday morning the Dementors pick up YMB for his three weeks with them, and we will collapse and sleep for maybe 24 or 36 hours straight. No, damn it, I'll have to go to work on Monday. But THAT week is Fourth of July week, and my company has been kind enough to give us both the 4th and the 5th off, so it will only be a 3 day week. Bliss.

And as I've said before, much as I hate the thought of YMB spending three whole weeks with those people and what a monster he will be when he comes back, and how much I will miss him in the meantime, that first week, with three workdays and then four days off in a row, will be sheer peace-and-quiet bliss. Ahhhhh. (My spell-checker, btw, tells me that that was an unacceptably long sentence. Too bad.)

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Okay, this story itself is not that entertaining, but check out the headline. Hey, it's funny okay, because somewhere inside us all is an 11 year old boy. And I just cataloged a bunch of Parliamentary rulings about "sea-men." I found myself giggling at those, too. So sue me

This morning on the way to work I found myself driving a very complicated back way to work, because both major expressways that are my options were backed up the wazoo. And I passed a gas station place that must get frequent visitors from north of the border, or something, because they have in front a big sign that say "GAS AND GROCIERIES!" and right underneath, in slightly smaller letters, just in case we might have misunderstood or perhaps be fresh from England, it says "PETROL AND PANTRY."

You know, a little redundancy goes a long way.

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Just talked to my mom, and it turns out tonight I will be there from 7 to 10 or so. So I'll go home after work, make sure YMB gets his homework done and see if Blue has accomplished what he said he would today, and assess his mood, and then I'll have YMB help me plant the rest of my dahlias (thanks, Herworship for identifying those so I could go get some more, and my heart is breaking for your hedges, by the way), and the few other random things I got the other day to fill in some bare spots, like where all my snapdragons inexplicably died. I have moss roses and dahlias and a huge daisy bush-type thing, and some gorgeous deep-red petunias, and something else -- some tall thing with light purple blooms, can't remember. Then I'll head over to my mom's, deciding whether or not to take YMB with me upon further assessing Blue's state of mind. I have an awesome pattern for a patchwork skirt, and the fabric, so maybe she will help me work on it. Quilts I can do. Clothes I'm not so confident about yet.

And shout out to Natalieeee for her awesome patchwork pillow. She is sliding down the slippery slope � she owns a rotary cutter (aka Wheel of Death) and a cutting mat, and a ruler with one of those slidy things. Baf and I will get her quilting before the year is out [EG]. Speaking of which, I still have to get my damn quilt finished and bound before the end of July. But that's two months away, you say? Uh-huh. My mom is still working on my grad-school graduation quilt. It's been over five years. The blocks are pieced and the center is sewn together. Although I sew more quickly than Mom � mostly because I pay less attention to the rules � quilters (and stupid spellchecker gives me "quitters" for that, which is sooo not appropriate -- why the hell doesn't Word know quilters? Stupid Microsoft) anyway, while not quitters, in general we are not known for our Speedy Gonzales-like nature. As a species, we are much more tortoise-like.

And on that lovely image, I will leave you and get some more work done. Damn English parliament. Damn English Civil Way. Damn insane catalogers from the 1960s. Grr.

11:46 a.m. - June 06, 2002

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