I Know What John Denver Was Talking About Now

So my ten day trip to Virginia has turned into a 5 week stint. After less than a week, me and my buddy and I get asked if we would like to spend thirty days working at another facility in the area. We readily agreed. The job is ok, but the accommodations leave much to be desired. The room is small and spartan, and the worst part… no internet access. Now, good readers (both of you) know why I havent been able to update this silly thing.

The purpose of this trip is twofold… one, to see if I like the area and the job well enough to relocate; and two, to give the new bosses time to evaluate me to see if they want me here. So far, the answer to both is yes. It should just be a matter of time before I get some kind of offer, which I am inclined to accept. This causes a great deal of excitement and dread. I would finally be doing the things in my career that I really enjoy doing. I have spent too much time doing high level stuff to really enjoy the work that I have been doing. I get bored, I am not challenged. I really love the area. It reminds me of my “real” home. Every morning I step outside from my room I get flashbacks to camping. It isnt sweltering, the “oppressive heat” that the weatherman says is coming has highs that are the same as the lows in Texas. There are trees and hills, and mountains and rivers and streams and waterfalls and by god some great roads to ride the motorcycle on. The manager of the department has already stated that he wants me, so it is just a matter of getting the managers above him to approve and get paperwork done.

So, the only thing I have to worry about is having the money for the move, which I think I have all worked out, and leaving… alone. I am really not looking forward to that conversation. We already had the big fight when I told her she needed to shred the ATM card to the joint account because I closed it. That was fun. I told her the list of reasons that I had for doing it, first and foremost, when she got her settlement money she opened an account in her name only. She claims that she thought that was the way we had done it the first time, but I have a hard time believing that considering the huge argument we had about that one. I also told her that I was disgusted (yes, I used that word) about how she was spending the money now that she got it. I told her about how her attitude of “her money is her money and the money I make is our money” was really pissing me off, so now she has her money and I have my money. I told her how upset I was about the fact that since she got the money, she has bought a bunch of crap for her, which I can understand to a point. When you havent had any money for a long time, and now you have some, you feel the need to splurge a bit. I have done it, and I understand. But spending a couple of hundred dollars at Toys backwards R Us on Erector sets and Speed Racer lego’s is going a bit far. I explained that when she went to the pet store her mom works at and spent a bunch of money on cat toys, rawhide dog bones and toys for the dog, a bunch of crap for the birds, it upset me. You will understand why in a minute. I explained how much it hurt that when Fathers day rolled around, she got him a $100 gift card. I cant remember if I blogged about it, but a few months back, this is the same father she got into an argument with and he smacked her one. But he got a big ‘ol gift card. I went on to explain that nobody except for the paralegal working for the attorney has worked harder than me to get that money for her. I am the one that copied, collated, stapled, faxed and Fed-Ex’ed all the paperwork in order to get her the money she was spending like a sailor on shore leave after payday. Then I told her about how the only goddamn thing she had done for me with her money was buy me lunch. I explained how it wasnt about the money, but it was about the attitude she had towards me.

Oh, she tried to tell me that she has trouble buying things for me because she never knows what I want, or if I already have it. She told me that in the past when she bought something for me, I acted like I hated it. This would be the time she felt I was having a bad week, so she ordered a Vermont Teddy Bear for me, in a Tinkerbell costume because I like Tinkerbell. She tried to have it delivered to me at work. If she hadnt found the wrong address, I would still be getting shit about it. This is what she refers to when she says that she tries to do something for me and I dont appreciate it. I know what happened. She stumbled across the web site and wanted to play teddy-bear dress up, but was afraid of what I would say when it showed up, so she ordered the damn thing and said it was for me. She did the same thing with a goddamn kitten. She had rescued an abandoned kitten and didnt want to give it up, so it became my birthday present. I am allergic to cats. We now have about 9 running around inside and out of the house.

I kind of got off topic there, but the bottom line is that if I take the job, I have to go back home and pack up the few remaining things that are in the house and tell her that I am leaving, and she isnt going. I honestly dont know if I will be able to stay in that house, and I dont know how I will get my stuff out without telling her. So it will be ugly. I know it will be ugly because of the conversations we have had on the phone while I am away. She tells me that she misses me, then asks if I miss her. Her is the thing… I DO in fact miss her. There is still a part of me that loves her and cares about her, I just cant stand to be treated this way anymore. She wont understand why I am leaving, and she wont accept the explanations.

I know it is going to be an extremely difficult breakup.

When All Roads Converge, There is Gonna be a Wreck

All the things I have been waiting for all happened at once. If you have been reading this thing, you may have gotten the impression that I am not particularly happy in my relationship. I have been waiting for may different things to happen before I do anything about it. I have a strange sense of responsibility. I still care enough about my wife that I don’t want to make things any more difficult on her than they will already be.

We were in a car wreck about 6 or 7 years ago, it gets kinda fuzzy about how long its been. If I use relative time, meaning how long it seems like it has been, it happened about 1932. The important part is that X2B got her back injured in the wreck. This, probably more than anything is the basis for most of my woes in this relationship. As time wore on, the number of things she was “unable” to do increased. Now, a can see the progression as I look back on it. We were living in a house with a basement at the time, and the washer and dryer were down there. It was pretty obvious that someone who was having difficulty walking wasn’t going to be able to carry loads of laundry down the stairs. So I did the laundry. This has continued through two more houses, with the washer and dryer increasingly closer. This is only one example of how it come to where we are today, I do everything, because she cant because of her back. This includes cleaning, cooking, hobbies that do not involve sitting around, sex, or getting a job. So, every part of what it takes to make a marriage work, the sharing of responsibilities, has all fallen on me and I cant do it anymore. So, wanting to make sure that a breakup would go as smoothly as possible, I waited for several things to happen before I could make the separation.

First, there is the matter of stuff. We both have a lot of stuff, and most of it has been combined over the course of three moves into combined boxes. I wanted to separate my stuff from her stuff before breaking the news. I have pretty much done that already. The second thing was that there was still a lot of stuff of ours in my parents basement, 1500 miles away. I didn’t want to have to deal with going and getting it and taking it to her after a breakup, because I am 99% sure that she isn’t going to take it well. I moved all that stuff from my folks basement when I came back from seeing my middle son graduate high school a couple of weeks ago. The next thing I was waiting on was a settlement from the insurance company. This has been in the works a long time, and I had two reasons to wait for this. First, a friend of mine had loaned us a considerable amount of money when things were tough, with the understanding that he would be paid back when the settlement came in. The first settlement came in and she blew all of it without paying my friend. I was going to make sure that he got paid before I left, or he probably wouldn’t get paid. The second reason I wanted to wait for this settlement was so that she would have money to get her by until she could get on her feet. I did not want to leave her financially destitute when I left. I got word from the attorney while in Idaho that the settlement had been obtained and they had a check. Road three has now converged with the road of separating the stuff and the road of getting the out of state stuff. The final road is getting a place to move my stuff into. My intent is that the whole process of telling her I am leaving and being moved out doesnt take more than a day. Tell her in the morning, get my stuff out and be gone by evening. Over.

A surprise road met up with the other while I was in Idaho. My boss called me up and asked if I was interested in relocating to Virginia. I told him that I really didnt have time to do the research on the area to give him an answer, but I was interested. I knew that we were sending a couple of people to the site in a couple of weeks, and I asked if he was sending me. He had already submitted my name to go, so I told him that I would give him an answer after I had been there, seen the area and met with the people that I would be working for/with. It looked pretty good for that, so not only would I be able to make a one day departure, but it would be a long ways away. I have a few concerns about the safety of my stuff, the wife has a bit of a vindictive temper sometimes.

But, now we get to the part that gave me the subject for this post. The VA thing seems to have hit a snag. I was really starting to look forward to moving there. I am a bit of a gypsy, and will move anywhere I haven’t already lived as long as I have a job there. But, I work for the government, and sometimes funding gets pulled. This has just happened. When I get back, I have to make the decision between waiting to see if the VA thing straightens out, or move closer to where I work no and commit to staying there a year. Either way, I am running out of time, because the wife is spending her settlement like she just won the lottery.

Into The Wilds of Idaho

Well, the road trip proceeded. We managed to get out the door only 30 minutes late rather than the couple of hours I was expecting. There was a disappointing moment when I found out my road trip buddies wouldnt be coming along, in spite of the fact they had driven 4 hours the day before to be ready. Wonderful. Two days of no one but me and X2B. Hopefully, she would sleep the entire trip. Got down the road about an hour and the coffee finished its rapid route through my system. Luckily, the route I chose had a lot of rest areas along the way. And cool enough, they all have free wi-fi. I could have blogged from any of the Texas rest areas, if I wasn’t so antsy about getting down the road. Paraphrasing Jerry Reed, I had a long ways to go, and a short time to get there. Unfortunately, in my case the song would have continued “West bound and down, look at ol’ X2B go to the bathroom again.” So anyway, X2B is reading the first book of some series she has and asks if we can stop at the next rest area to use the wifi to see if the third book in the series is out. I whip out the Kindle, with an air of smugness, I tell her to look it up. “But there isnt any wifi out here.” She protests. I scoff. “You dont need wifi, this uses the Sprint cellular data network. If there is a cell phone signal, it should be able to browse the internet. It’s slow, but it works.”

I show her how to use the Kindle to surf Amazon and she does an amazing thing. She goes from “Oh my God this is the coolest thing ever!” to “Oh, you stupid piece of shit!” in about 5 miles. The cell signal just happened to keep dropping, and the data rate is slow in the best of circumstances. This would be the point at where I started losing patience with the negative attitude and bitching that would continue the rest of the trip. We get close to Amarillo, and A&W call. They decided to come after all and wanted to know what route I was taking. Hooray! Now some people I like will be along. We keep talking on the phone back and forth and finally meet up in Colorado Springs, where we get a room for the night. Crash hard.

The next morning, get X2B up and get all the shit packed up and in the truck. Go with A&W to IHOP for breakfast where they inform me that they are not going to be continuing on with us. Bummer. X2B had been up pretty much all night, so I knew that she would be sleeping most of the way. Apparantly this was not her plan, finally deciding to “get her days and nights straight.” Riiiight. I was able to invent a new road trip game. It isnt as action packed as road trip Bingo, but it interesting. I call it “What will she drop next?” The back seat of the truck was full of her various “projects” to do on the way. These include: books to read, knitting to do, crocheting to do, needlepoint to do, magazines to read, Playstation Portable to play, Nintendo DS to play… you get the idea. So, we start off with the book. Here is how the game plays out. She reads the book while I listen to music and drive. Then, I hear the deep inhalation of breath that signifies sleep. Now, I have to decide if she will drop the book or not. She does, then picks it up off the floor and starts to read. Lather, rinse, repeat. Now comes phase two of the game. How many times will she be awakened by the falling book before she switches to something else. Usually, four. Then she puts the book away, and gets out the PSP. Now the game gets even more interesting. See, I bought her the PSP for Christmas, and I KNOW she is going to drop it. So, now I have to listen for the breath, but that isnt always the best indicator, so I have to keep an eye out. I have to watch the road and her, waiting to reach over and grab the PSP before it hits the ground. As an added level of difficulty, the PSP cannot be taken away as she is nodding off, as she will deny that she was falling asleep. You can only take it away after catching it on its way to the ground in order for her to admit she had fallen asleep. After the PSP has been caught, the crochet comes out. This one is more fun for me, since I dont try to catch the crochet needles, and they invariably roll under her seat. This is a built in time limit.

So, we continue on and I finally reach the last leg of the trip, getting off the divided interstate and onto a 110 mile stretch of Wyoming road before going over a steep mountain pass. Should be about three hours. Except for one tiny little detail. It started to snow. In May. I call and talk to my Dad when we get about an hour and a half away, and he tells me weather info. We decide that it may be safer to take an alternate route rather than going over the steep mountain pass. It snows the whole way, and I almost hit a deer. Slamming on the brakes didnt wake up X2B, though. Finally get to the folks’ house and unload the crap. My suitcase, my laptop backpack, and the dizzying array of crap that accompanies X2B whenever we travel. Huge duffel bag of clothes, huge bag of toiletries, the “entertainment” collection previously mentioned, and three pillows, one memory foam pillow that weighs as much as I do, one regular pillow, and one body pillow. Finally, we have arrived and I visit with the folks for about an hour and go to bed.