November 4, 1998
My livingroom is still CLEAN!
In spite of my husband and his little piles of stuff around the couch. When we were first married, I would leave these piles alone on the reasoning that he was an adult and would take care of it himself. Time has taught me a few things since then: 1) My husband has a higher mess tolerence than most people -and- 2) When he does get digusted enough to clean things up, he delibrately goes after something of mine. Doesn't matter that I have it in a box and out of the way--it wasn't organized. He has thrown away several of my things. He has packed up most of the kitchen a few times as if I was a naughty little child who had to be punished for my lack of actions. Meanwhile, his tools are everywhere and he can't walk across the room to put something of his in the trash.

Eep! I hadn't planned to get that bitter here.

Anyway, I've decided to swallow my pride on that front, because I feel so much better with a mostly cleaned livingroom and the pride of having it that way makes me feel good about myself. So there!

My husband prides himself on being the "stable" one at our house. If I start becoming healthier, he will lose this major support to his ego. He will do one of two things: 1) get his act together and become a better person -or- 2) get worse enough to justify my divorcing him and finding someone better. Either way, I have faith that as long as I become the healthy person I am meant to be, God will give me a husband worthy of that me.

Looking at a site this morning, I came across this about forgiveness:
I grew up in church (we were called Holy Rollers), and I firmly believe in forgiveness. I felt I was a worthless person for being angry at God for getting burned. I felt even lower because hard as I tried, I couldn't forgive my husband for abusing me when I was at my lowest. He would use my Christianity against me by saying "the Bible says you should be submissive" or if I said anything unlady like, "you're a real Christian aren't you?" As far as my husband and his mother felt, I deserved everything he did to me and I should turn the other cheek.

I was so confused spiritually and so depressed till a counseler told me something that made sense concerning the forgive and forget issue. If you reach to pet a dog and it bites you (like a friends pet or a dog protecting it's master's property), you don't necessarily hold a grudge against the dog or kill it, but you do remember for your own safety not to try and pet it again. When I heard that, it was like a heavy burden had been taken off my heart. I understood that it's FOOLISH and UNSAFE to forget some offenses, which makes it OK to remember. It was such a relief to let go of that. The counselers on the mental unit also taught me how to deal with problems without using suicide as a solution. They showed me that my problems could be overcome with the right problem solving skills. My life didn't seem hopeless anymore.

Pebble's Whole Story.

In other news . . .
Four of my poems from my "public" site are in the Survivors Art Foundation's Gallery. Even though I had them on my other site, I had planned to have them on SAF anonymously under the pseudonym "Lady Fribble". Apparently I confused them by just cutting and pasting my stuff into the email with my real name in the byline, because they have have me listed by my real name with "aka Lady Fribble" next to it.

Amazingly, I didn't go into a panic when I saw the mistake. So I've decided to leave it as it is. The only people in my family who would even look at such a site are my sisters and none of them would say anything to the rest of the family. Just to keep from tempting fate further, I've place the link back to SAF in this journal entry. Maybe later I'll feel brave enough to list it on my main page. Until then, if by chance, my mom does find out about it, then I'll just consider it God's way of telling me it's time to confront her about her actions.

November 6, 1998
The livingroom is still mostly clean. I need to vacuum it this morning. I told my husband two nights ago that I was going to keep it clean because it made me feel better. I was a bit depressed yesterday when I saw he left more of a mess, but he actually left less of a mess this morning--so, I guess it was just a fluke. He seems depressed this week, but he will never admit that is the problem. He just says that he's tired. But he was working harder last week and he was happier.

The kitchen is going very slowly. I lifted three 25 pound bags earlier this week to a shelf over my head and I have been having back spasms the past few days. But still I am making some progress.

I came across an early attempt at writing a journal while I was still in therapy. It was interesting to see how hard I was working back then for a clean house. I never gave up on cleaning, but it just never seemed to get better. It seems that whenever I got close to achieving my goal, something would happen that would throw my world upside down and I would lose control of the house.

When we entered marriage counselling, my husband actually said the only time the house was clean was when *he* did it by himself. I sat there in total shock. It was true that there was times that his help helped me get the house clean, but I have absolutely no memory of him totally cleaning the house. I mentioned this to two friends who I talked with on almost daily basis during that time. I was wondering if there was something I was forgetting. Turns out that they didn't remember him doing anything like that and one pointed out that he couldn't had at that time because he was working a lot of overtime and when he wasn't he was helping someone else with something.

Another friend (or maybe it was the same one) didn't believe a word of his claim that he could keep things clean even with the kids around. She and I went on a camping trip one weekend. She remembered how our place looked when she picked me up (it was still very cluttered). She says she'll never forget what it looked like when we returned. All I can remember is that I had to step over a lot of stuff to get my things back to the bedroom. She still seems in shock over it even now when she talks about it.

When the kids were littler and I left them at home with their dad, I would always find them banished to their rooms when I got home. This really bothered me and I finally told him that it didn't make him a better housekeeper than me if he only managed to keep things clean by putting the kids in their rooms and ignoring them.

Strange thing is that a lot that I had to clean up in the livingroom last week was his mess. Though I must admit that I had several boxes of stuff out and about. I need to go through them and find a place to put all the stuff. I've been thinking over my past as a messy vs. neat person. In college, I hardly ever had a messy place. My roommates were very neat people and I had no problem cleaning with them. Though my desk was usually stacked with stuff. When comes to paperwork, I believe in organized chaos. I can still find stuff. When I lived by myself I was pretty clean too, with the exception of keeping up with my dishes. Still, those got done at least once a week. My mother said that my place stayed cleaned only because I was hardly ever there. I believed her at the time, but looking back, I actually did spend a lot of time at my place doing homework and stuff. Then there was the time when I spent a whole lot of time in an apartment by myself in another city, looking for a job, and living hand to mouth. I actually kept things really clean there.

Could it be possible that as along as I don't let other people influence me, I am actually a clean person. One friend thinks so. She might be right. I'm pretty neat when camping for the most part. I'm not extreme about it, but I do try to keep things organized. During our family vacation this summer, it occurred to me that maybe we should spend more time camping to get used to living in an organized household. With the exception of paperwork, my "personal" area at work (way back when) was always tidy.

Well, there's a concept. I use to think I was a lazy person because my mom always told me I was. That was until I was berating myself in front of one of my roommates. She stopped me and said, "Are you crazy? You're one of the last people I would call lazy!" Then she went on to list everything I did. Finally she asked, "Where did you ever get the idea that you were even the slightest bit lazy?" "Well, Mom-" I said. "Your mother's wrong!" she said.

My personal assignment this week: Tell myself that I am a clean person.

November 7, 1998
The Laundry Monster has been vanquished! And my livingroom is still clean (and vacuumed even).

Yes, I got my laundry under control today. I spent almost the whole day folding clothes. After two or three baskets, I had to go and do something else for a little while to get the feeling back in my legs. All that is left at the moment, is one load in the dryer and a load of dirty clothes which can be easily taken care of Monday. I felt so good taking care of things today that I actually felt human. My muscles are sore from the repetitive motion, but a nice hot shower should take care of that. Heh! Today the Laundry Monster--next week the Dreaded Kitchen! I'm excited. I'm feeling neater already.

The only down notes--my husband is still sleeping a lot at home, even though he did seem a little happier today--and I haven't heard from one of my dear cyberfriends for weeks and I have no way to contact him directly without causing a major fight here at home about the phone bill. I'm going to send a letter by snail mail Monday to him. It will probably be weeks before it reaches him. *sigh!* I hope it's a computer problem and not a medical one.

November 10, 1998
Livingroom fine. Laundry fine. Still dreading the kitchen ;-)

Didn't need to send snail mail--my friend got his computer fixed and sent me word that he was okay on Sunday evening. I was relieved beyond words.

Was going to write this entry last night, but we were having gusting winds and there was sparks coming off the transformer behind our house. I'm just glad it was so unusually moist last week for us or we would have had a grass fire on our hands.

This morning, after I got my son up, I found my daughter had covered her face with a green marker. Don't ask me why she did this--she's old enough to know better and we have told her not to before. Luckily, it was a washable one or she would have had to take her school picture today with a green face. Oy!

I'm debating on whether or not I should go ahead and have a "gripe" entry on the other things my husband does that really bothers me. On one hand, I really don't want to make the poor guy out to be some monster, but on the other hand, maybe by venting it I can get over this resentment I am currently feeling towards him and begin to remember why I married him in the first place.

*********addendum**********

Okay....I'm going to do it. One of my friends reminded me that if I was still in therapy, my therapist would be raking me over the coals for holding back. I guess I'm still wanting to protect him.

For starters, he has been acting more helpless since I got the laundry under control. Last night, my eyes were burning from the dust outside when I went to check where those sparks were coming from. After I got back in and called the electrical company, I got him to decide which picture package we should get of the kids' school pictures - I'm tired of getting the disapproving you're-spending-too-much look. He's probably the only person in the universe who thinks I'm impulsive. Then when I went to make out the checks, I found that I couldn't see what I was doing. I handed him the checkbook and asked him to please make out the checks because my eyes were burning. As he laid on the couch, watching TV with no apparent discomfort, he stated that his eyes were burning too. I ended up writing out the checks while continually wiping tears from my eyes.

He always does that. No matter what physical problem I have--he has it too. Yet, I'm suppose to still keep everything done, while he huddles on the couch and hibernates. And, of course, he won't go to the doctors--not unless I drag him there. A few years back, I had a case of brochitis that lasted for almost two months. Since I was only coughing and sneezing out clear stuff, I assumed it was just allergies, but I got so weak that I needed to get something stronger than over-the-counter meds. Our family nurse must be pretty good at reading people, because she ordered me to tell my husband that he had to take over the cooking and cleaning, and let me get one week of complete bed rest, or she would personally put me in the hospital herself. It worked. You want my husband to pay serious attention to you--threaten his wallet. The only time I have seen him truly happy is when he has gotten a great bargain on something. He also thinks that dentists charge too much, which is why my mouth is a total mess. He doesn't believe in crowns and I should have gotten several a few years ago. Interesting note: whenever *his* teeth are bothering him, we get them taken care of.

I didn't fix him anything before the kids and I went to church Sunday. I wasn't being spiteful or mean. I was just running out of time and I figured it was more important to fix something easy that I knew the kids would eat, than to fix something he would eat too, only to have it still setting on the stove when I came back because he decided he would rather eat something else. He told me he wasn't a picky eater when we were engaged, but, frankly, he's one of the pickiest eaters I have ever had to cook for. Don't bother trying to widen his palatte, he's not interested. He gave me a slight pout when I left with the kids. I've been trying to think of another way to descibe the look, but I must admit it was definitely a pout.

When we got back, he was still laying on the couch. Only now, he insisted he wasn't feeling good. He insisted the same thing last weekend, but my son and I were the only ones with the fevers and diarrhea. Another interesting note: 80% of the time he says he is sick, he doesn't have a fever. Conversely, 80% of the time I say I'm sick, I do. He says I use the thermometer too much. So, anyway, I fixed chicken noodle soup just for him, which he ate up completely and asked for another full can of. Unfortunately, I was doing something with the kids and forgot about the second pan of soup. When I remembered, he had taken it off the burner and declared it burned. Because of the nurmerous surgeries he had to have to correct his cleft palette as a child, he has practically no sense of smell. I thought it was strange that I didn't smell the stuff burning, since I have a very sensitive sense of smell when it comes to burning things, so I checked it out. It had most of the liquid boiled away, but it didn't smell or taste burnt. Just some more water would have made it fine, but when I tried to explain this, that pout came back and I knew it was a lost cause.

Anyway, I handed him the phone and reminded him to call his mother. Her birthday is this week and since he did the grocery shopping instead of me, we didn't get a card for her. After she talked to everyone else, she asked to talk to me. I really didn't want to talk to her at that moment. Don't get me wrong--I'm probably her most favorite daughter in-law. At least, she compliments me more and gripes about me less than she does the other in-laws. I told her how I was keeping things clean by picking up after her son and she made her oft repeated comment that if you want something to stay clean, you have to clean it all yourself, or something along those lines. She saw my actions as a comfirmation of her attitudes, not realizing that I wanted to strangle her for raising her son to think that this was how housework was suppose to be done.

Errrrr....no wonder he hardly goes to church anymore. He was raised in a different faith and converted to mine in his early twenties. In my faith, husbands and wives are suppose to work together. My dad helped out a lot whenever he was home, even if he was at work most of the time. The only time in the past several years that my husband has attended church on a regular basis, was when we were in counselling, but he stopped as soon as we stopped going to counselling. His reason for not wanting to attend was he didn't like lying to people that everything was fine at home. Our marriage counsellor was of the same faith, though he attended a different congregation, so he was very curious who was asking about our home life. So was I. Especially, since it was the ladies at church who pointed out my depression to me and would come by every so often to help me from becoming too overwhelmed. In other words, they already knew the truth of my "lack of keeping up with things". Of course, most of them were (and maybe still are) annoyed with how little he did to help me recover. When the counsellor questioned my husband more about this, he muttered something extremely vague. He also said I was a hypocrite, but wouldn't give any specifics. I admitted I wasn't perfect and I never claimed to be. He still just said I wasn't as good as I should be.

*snort!* Well, he's one to talk. One of the main things I loved about him before we got married was his spirituality. Even though I was raised in our faith and studied it to combat my mother's views--not to mention taking several religion classes--I never felt that I was superior to him in that aspect. Several times lately, though, he has patronized me about church doctrine as if his knowledge is greater than mine, even though I've been the one attending church. Luckily, we have a definitive book on church doctrine and I have on those occasions been able to refer to it to see if I was mistaken. As you may guess, I wasn't and I would show him the entry in the most nonthreating way possible. Remember, I used to have these arguments with my mother and if I had shown any sign of smugness or patronizing, I would have paid for it painfully--so I am quite positive I did this as kindly as I could.

I think he's trying to do one of my mother's favorite tactics--accusing another of having the faults he can't stand in himself and I'm the scapegoat.

Last week depression...this week childishness. Lord forgive me, but I am truly dreading to see what he comes up with next week.

November 12, 1998
Received this today. It really hit a chord with me.

November 17, 1998
A.B. Normal is moving into her apartment tonight. She's said she might write a summary of what she's gone through this weekend for me to put up here. I'm impressed, she handled herself really well.

As for me, I hope to never relive this weekend, though I'm glad A.B. was here. My fibromyalgia really acted up. No surprise after helping A.B. move her stuff here and planning a very important event for my son. It was very frustating because I had no experience with doing this and my husband had, but he did almost nothing to help me. I told him Saturday that I felt that I was really over my head since I had never done this before and gave him a very pointed look. He took the hint and stopped needling me about what I had or hadn't checked up on.

Of course, my parents were here to participate. Before the event, while I was helping A.B. with something, my mother picked up my son's writing tablet in which he had written that his maternal grandmother was a fruitcake. She brought it to my attention just as I returned with A.B. behind me. I pretended that I had no clue about it, but I doubt she believed me. Heaven knows if A.B. hadn't been there, she would have hit the roof. She called me sounding upset yesterday--probably planning take me to task over it, but I was on the other line listening to someone else tell me some of the ups and downs of her life and told Mom I didn't have time to talk to her.

I was in a lot of pain Sunday and by Monday afternoon I had come down with this awful stomach virus. Between that and the fibromyalgia, I think I experienced less pain being in labor. Heaven knows labor didn't last as long. My livingroom is messy and I hope to feel well enough to clean it before it gets really bad. The couch seems to be the focus point of the messiness.

On the other hand, I've been too miserable to beat myself up with my other worries and frets.

*******Addendum*******

A.B. is not moving into her apartment tonight. There is a leak that has to be fixed. Of course, her mother didn't mention this when I called to say that my husband was coming over to help move. As a matter of fact she hung up quite abruptly on me. She didn't want A.B. to tell us just to bring her clothes. Her mother has blamed me for the whole thing and I am no longer allowed in their house. Little does she realize that she's just proving all the "lies" her daughter has been telling about her. A.B. will have an apartment warming party with her family Saturday after which, she is coming over to my house for a real party with her friends.

I would be lying if I said this didn't bother me. All my life, I have been considered a good person and to have this vindictive bitch treat me like the Devil, himself, bugs the hell out of me. I still can't believe she changed the locks after A.B. left. It's not as if A.B. was going to take something that wasn't hers to begin with. But that's the point - I am helping A.B. to get out from under her control. I wonder how nice her house is going to look now without her daughter there to do most of the cleaning. And she's gotten her mother and aunt to chew A.B. out for moving. A.B. supposedly has no "right" to move out on her own. Sheesh! The woman's over a quarter of a century old. What really stinks is one of her other "friends" told her the same thing, but then he can't use her parents' washer and dryer unless she's there. Can we say "ULTERIOR MOTIVE"?

Well, if anything, this blatant disregard for her well-being has made A.B. even more determine to get out on her own more.

November 18, 1998
First, I would like to thank my LOTH sisters for their encouraging remarks on the message board last night. I don't go there very often because it's too busy for me to keep up with, but I really needed it last night. I'm going to try to get on there a little more often. I also would like to thank one of my ICQ buddies for being there for me and one IM buddy who cares deeply for A.B. It's good to have friends.

Today, I finally figured out why A.B. Normal's mother has never liked me. I disprove the statement: "You can't always count on your friends, but your family will always be there for you." Not very hard to do since her mother breaks her promises on a routine basis. My mother used to make the same innane statement. Strange, but the families I know who are really there for each other rarely say this, and if they do they leave out the first half about not trusting friends. Instead, they encourage their children to make friends with people who can be trusted.

Of course, her mother doesn't like my religion either, but then recently she stopped going to church herself, because everyone was just a bunch of jerks. They probably didn't support her views on how to treat adult children.

A.B. did send me a short update today. She's still too upset to write about her parents.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Hello Lady Fribble,
I wanted to let you know that I'm moving. I found some nice apartments and am supposed to move in Thursday I hope. I'm having problems with one of my friends right now. He wants to know about my finances and he doesn't want to pick up the dog from my parents house to bring to my apartment. Also he has volenteered my place as a gaming room-- he didn't ask me, he told me. I wonder if I'm doing the right thing. I will be glad to keep you and your readers updated on my adventures.

Later,
A.B. Normal

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Well, I've never considered this person to be a true friend to her. He's too much like his mother - a user of people - only helping out enough to use that help as a leverage to get what he wants. As a matter of fact, he's the same jerk who doesn't want her to move out because he does his laundry over there.

On a brighter note, my son made brownies from a mix tonight without any help. He was very careful and did a good job. I just wished he had asked my permission first. He's not even ten yet. I was helping his sister with her homework, and didn't know what he was doing until they came out of the oven.

November 19, 1998
The jerks of the Universe united this week.

That was my conclusion by mid morning. That and the Universe had a grudge against me.

I woke up early to drop my husband off at work so I could have the truck to help A.B. finally move into her apartment. Her parents had decided that she had to let them move her so it would be a family "bonding experience". Some bonding experience--her mother has already told her that she is not going to put anything along one wall (A.B. - "Yeah, right.") and that she will be calling every night to make sure A.B. has her place clean. If it isn't, then her mother is going to make sure she cleans it before going to bed. The woman is ignoring the main reason A.B. is moving out. According to her mom, it's not because she wants to live her own life, it's because she wants to hurt her family. Sheesh! Will someone handout kleenexes to the violin section, pleeease!!!

Anyway, A.B. told them last night that she was going to move some of the smaller stuff over herself today. Then she called me (she told her parents that she was calling someone else less dependable) and asked if I could help her. After I talked to A.B., another friend called with very bad news dealing with some other jerks. Frustrating news to sleep with.

So this morning, I dropped my husband off and went straight home to find that the toilet had over-flowed in my absence. Instructing the kids to eat breakfast and get ready for school, I preceeded to correct the situation. Taking a break now and then to make sure that breakfast was nutritious and one later to get the kids out the door and to the bus stop. By 9:00, I had things pretty much under control, but I was a mess. A.B. called and we agreed that I should shower and get there at 10:00. At 9:40, she called back to tell me that her dad had a dentist appointment that morning that she hadn't known about and was going to get out of work an hour early to help her move stuff. How convient! So, she told me to wait until after he went to his appointment.

But when he did, he left her at the apartment to unpack stuff and left her locked out of the house. (BTW, they have asked for a key to her apartment, but she's holding out until she gets one to the house again.) So, when I arrived with another friend, there was no way to get things out to move for her. We looked around the apartment, asked what she planned to do to it. Then we talked about a way for her to get in and out of her apartment in such a way that her parents couldn't get in even with a key. I wasn't all that enthusiastic a first, but by that time I had had an anxiety overload and was pretty much feeling stupified from the inaneness of it all. In the middle of our discusion, I suddenly found Nirvana and blurted out happily, "Let's do it! It will be fun!" (Of course, I could have still been feverish.) My friend and A.B. looked at me in shock and then started laughing. "After all," I continued, "they're the ones who declared war on me. I might as well enjoy myself." Then my friend and I came up with a pretty good design, which should be pretty simple for us to build. Heck! If it works well enough, I'll send A.B.'s parents a thank you note when I make my first million. *wink!*

Anyhow, we left before her dad came back to take her to lunch, and went to lunch ourselves. After we went back to our own homes, I found out that A.B. was given the day off from work and we managed to move a few things before I had to get back home for my children. We couldn't move much because all the already packed stuff had been moved earlier, but this was more of a symbolic act anyway. Not that her parents will be told. I'm beginning to get the feeling that after this lease is up, A.B.'s going to move to another city many hours away.

So, I got home, greeted the kids, took care of something important on the Internet, and answered a phone call from my husband just as I hung up the modem. He told me to pick him up immediately. He gets on my case constantly about tying up the phone, so I was sure I was going to be griped out. When I got there, I expected him to waiting outside for me, but instead I had to go into the office after fifteen minutes and ask for him to be paged. I was a bit annoyed, but instead of telling him that, I told him why I was on the 'net. It was for a good reason and he didn't gripe, but he has been more or less ignoring me this evening. He won't give me suggestions on what he'll eat for dinner, and this evening he again ignored what I made. He'll probably fix himself a sandwich later. I really don't know why I bother to second guess his appetite.

I went ahead a played a computer game to relax. After everything I did today, my body is very tired and sore. At first, I was still experiancing the goofiness I had most of the day, then for some reason I began to examine what had been happening at the time our marriage began to turn sour. At the time it happened, I was clueless. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn't figure out what it was and I couldn't get my husband to tell me. In counselling, he said it was because I didn't want to discuss the problems at home. I don't remember us having any discussions. I remember being told that I was doing an awful job at this and that, and that I should be doing things his way, which took in no account of caring for small children or my weakened state of health. I also remember that whenever I tried to explain this, he would get disgusted with me. What made it harder--he would always wait until I was about to fall asleep to talk to me. He would never want to talk about things earlier when I brought them up. I thought for awhile that it was because I talk too fast, so I worked real hard to give him plenty of opportunity to speak his mind. Usually I would wait there for a few minutes, only to find out that he had totally ignored the whole question. Maybe if I had tried harder to be more alert that late, things would have been different. I don't know.

Perhaps I shouldn't have been so determined to make him understand my reason for doing the things the way I did them. I can't accept that. After all, I was the person who had to do them, I have the right to do these things my own way. He's not as logical as he likes to think he is.

Which brings up another possibility--one a sister of mine commented on when she was still married to her first husband. I knew she was right in some instances, but I wanted to believe that my own circumstances were one of the exceptions. She said that no man wanted a wife that was smarter than him and that the worst thing you could do was prove it to him. At the time, I told her that it wasn't true for all men. She said that they may believe that they have no problem being married to a smart woman, but in reality, it hurts their egos too much. I still know of men who honestly don't have a problem with this, but I must admit they are a minority.

You see, at the same time my husband began shutting me out, we had an argument on, of all things, perpetual motion. Now, I was studying engineering when we were engaged, and at one time I could give you the mathmatical proofs of why perpetual motion is impossible. Basicly, you can't get something for nothing. But my husband was convinced that an arrangement, using a water syphon would work. Unable to leave a fallacy alone, I tried to explained that once the water level evened out, all motion would stop because there would no longer be any unequal pressure to drive things. I also added that there would be internal friction to contend with, even if it could keep going. He basicly said that my "book learning" didn't mean much in the real world, and I pointed out that the "book learning" I was using was formulated from the real world and that my lab group in 8th grade tried to get a syphon to act the way he described during a river simulation lab to save ourselves some labor and we were never able to keep things going. Then I showed him in a technical book where it stated the height beyond which a syphon will not work. Physics books he scoffs at, but he'll rarely argue with a technical manual. I believe I held my tongue on the fact that I knew the equation which could predict that height based on the gravity constant of the planet involve, but I can't say for sure.

I hope to God my sister was wrong about this, because if she's right, there's no hope for my marriage. I mean, communication skills I can work on, but how can I reverse the fact I was right in that argument? Am I suppose to keep quiet and let my husband be the "authority" on all things intellectual? *shudder!* The man's not an idiot, but he's not Einstein either. My sister and I use to argue about things like these all the time when we were growing up. While other kids and their siblings argued over whose day it was to take out the trash and what to watch on TV, she and I would be digging through encyclopedias to prove our points.

Should I swallow my pride on that front and stop being so obsessed with being correct? But it is this same need for truthfulness that is now driving my efforts to heal myself and I have tempered the way I correct fallacies during these last several years.

If I must lie, then what is the point of becoming well?

*sigh!*

Now I have just given myself another can of worms to deal with.

November 21, 1998
A.B.'s IM buddy turned out to be a phony leveler, and after I raked him over the coals, he thinks I'm a mean bitch. I have no intentions of correcting this impression. I protect what I love. I also had a talk with one of her other buddies, deemed him relatively safe, and gave him the duty of watching out for her when I can't during the next couple of weeks. Of course, we will back off when A.B. tells us to. She just needs one less thing to worry about.

We ended up having A.B.'s house warming party at her place after all, as a lunch thing, because she had to work. It was just a small thing between her and her two closest friends - me, the corruptor of adult children, and another friend, a male of a "dangerous" age. Yep, just A.B. and the Forces of Darkness, though she calls us "her emotional watchdog" and "remover of knives in her back", respectively. Of course, her mother has told her that she doesn't want either one of us at A.B.'s apartment. So much for that. Tomorrow will be the family party.

I mentioned earlier that I was curious how her mom was going to keep the house nice without her daughter doing the work--well, I now know the answer. A.B.'s parents are going to pay her $100 a month to keep doing her chores at home, even though she no longer lives there. A.B.'s trying to find another part-time job starting next week.

As for my place, it's not as clean as last week, but I have still been running a fever. I promised another friend that I wouldn't push myself yet. I did do some stuff today, so I don't feel too depressed about it.

November 25, 1998
Laundry's back under control. As for the livingroom, the kids say it's clean, but I beg to differ. I'm still feeling yucky, but it may be from all the stress I've been going through lately. Who knows?

I've been feeling really depressed lately, but I was able to shake some of it today. I treated myself to a game of Civilization. It's amazing how empowered one can feel after grinding three other civilizations into the dust. I took a break from the game and got the laundry caught up and some work done in the kitchen. After dinner, I did in two other civilations, and now I only have two more to conquer. Well, if I can't strangle the jerks I've been dealing with lately, virtual world domination is the next best thing . . .

Need to get to bed now, so I can get up and start Thanksgiving dinner in the morning.

November 26, 1998
Dinner went great. I was able to keep the mess down enough, that I can start working on making Christmas gifts without too much guilt. I was able to lend and ear to A.B. Normal and one of my in-laws tonight, as they vented about their families. I also asked a friend to be more careful when he talks about my religion - for the past year he has been a bit vicious in his side remarks. Actually, I don't think he had even realize what he's been doing - so I'm sure he's upset with me now and thinks I'm being overly sensitive. I've have felt rather hurt by his comments for awhile now, but put it down to circumstances before. This week, however, I was just getting too much flack from too many directions and I needed to lessen it somewhere.

Frankly, though I have been showing some success in getting my life in order, I'm not doing that great. I've begun to scratch my arms and scalp constantly. The last time I had this psychosomatic reaction, the docs had to quadruple my medication. I've been trying to keep myself from scratching, but it's not working very well. I have another friend who's been trying to get me back into therapy for almost a year now and though I love her, she's practically driving me to that point herself. Sometimes, it's as if she's trying to induce the same problems in my life that she has in hers, so she can have some idea how to deal with it. She'll see this as proof of her recommendations, when in reality I'm about to strangle her, because she keeps intimating that she and I are in the same boat, when we're not. I think she's letting her pride get in the way, because she doesn't want her family to claim that they are right about something. I agree they were wrong and I'm positive that they would use the current situation as proof of their point (she obviously inherited this tendency), but sticking to her guns just to prove them wrong isn't going to help anyone.

Of course, she could just turn around and accuse me of the same thing, but my decision to stay in my current state is based on me keeping the vows I've made and the welfare of my children. If I had proof that those vows had been broken, then I wouldn't have a problem leaving. It doesn't matter to me what my family would say about it, or really anyone else for that matter. I made that decision long before I was ever married and my reasoning still stands. It may not be an easy thing to do, but it's the only way I can face myself.

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