Saturday, March 6
The home front
Wednesday
My first discovery of the day is that somebody has come into the bedroom and swiped the last $20 bill out of my wallet. It's Sparx I know. I'm not real happy about that.The_Rose and I are out doing lunch, and doing some shopping. We get some new sheets and a new curtain rod from Sears. The_Rose gets a sports bra (no wires to poke her in the incision).
We get home to find out that Garfield is now in the ER. I get there, and it turns out that he's torn a rotor cup muscle. So now he's off work.
I felt absolutely horrid that night. A friend calls from Columbus just before 11PM, acting like he's selling me Time magazine, and I tell him off and hang up. He calls again, and I tell him I'll call him later. I still haven't called. Sigh.
Thursday
I get up rather early, still feeling incredibly bad. I take our Boarder in to work that morning (since Garfield is now unavailable to take him to work, since he's now working out every workday with his recruiting officer) and get home.The_Rose gets up and sends me off to bed. I get up in the afternoon, feeling a little better. The_Rose is planning a nice dinner, London Broil, onions and peppers and mushrooms, brown and serve rolls and mashed potatoes. She runs into her stamina wall, and goes off to bed. I'm feeling much better, so I take up where she left off and I get everything going. Garfield has decided to cook the London Broil. Well, I think I've got everything going, in the right order, and on time. After 35 minutes, I'm assuming the meat was done. Wrong assumption. The meat isn't even rare, is raw. It's a bad cut of London Broil to boot, which really makes most of it inedible. I have it out with Garfield. There is no reason for the meat to be inedible. I trim the meat some more, getting a piece that should be big enough for everybody else that hasn't eaten the raw meat. I didn't even do a good job, as I should have trimmed all the membrane that was on the piece, but I was too angry, too hungry, and way too fucking short of time to even care at the moment.
I find that the grill, is barely warm to my touch. Which means Garfield browned the meat, and then decided to slow cook it, but obviously the damn grill went out when he set it. He didn't bother checking it again until he took it off the grill. Nice dinner? Not even close. I'm cooking in the dark (again). I'm finally eating 45 minutes after I planned on eating. Garfield either is stupid, lazy, or just out to sabotage the dinner.
I'm feeling no better by the end of the night than I was the night before. Not a good sign.
Friday
The morning starts off with phone calls start at 6:30AM. Garfield is calling collect because he's working out with his recruiting officer, but the recruiting officer was evidently running late. I was supposed to call a number for him, and he'd call back (collect!) to see if I got anything. Of course, all I got was voice mail. Then the recruting officer calls shortly after that (I didn't answer) to say that he was running late. No fucking duh!The_Rose and I get up and have lunch with one of her friends. On the way out the door, I take my medication, thinking that I'll be eating soon enough. Wrong. We have to wait another 10 minutes after we get there for a seat, and by the time the first food gets there (a salad for me), the medication has turned my stomach against me. I get the rest of the order, and I hed off to the bathroom to see if I'm going to through up, or crap, both or neither. I do get a crap out, which has me feeling a little better, but not much. I feel better a little better, but it comes and goes in waves, and it has nothing to do with any kind of smells or anything.
Before we left for lunch, Garfield was left instructions to get the yard cleaned up. When we get home, he is finishing that chore. He comes in and starts bitching to The_Rose about me. Nothing new there. I don't do cleaning, I don't do this, I don't pay for this or that. Complaining that I've told him that this is my house (which I have told him, because it is true, something that he can't or won't understand). Complaining that he's cleaning up messes that he doesn't make (Garfield that mess out in the front yard is your fucking mess, don't even think about denying it). Do I do my chores around the house? You bet. Because they aren't the chores that Garfield thinks I should be doing, according to him, I'm doing nothing.
Then we have "dinner". The_Rose wanted to try these Thai noodle casseroles that we had bought. Again, Garfield is in charge of cooking. I walk into the TV room at 6:45. Nobody's watching dinner, it's already starting to smell burned, and I decide I'm not going to lift a finger to help. I'm not the one that is supposed to be looking after the cooking. I get out of the TV room around 7PM, and at 7:05PM, Garfield finally gets back to the kitchen and calls dinner. It would probably have been good cooked correctly, but having been cooked to death I found it pathetically inadequate. Garfield is trying to explain to everybody that it was supposed to be cooked for 5 minutes on high heat, and it wasn't his fault. I say that it was his fault for letting it go for at least 15 minutes longer than it should have. The_Rose told me that they were talking about girl friends and such. Fine. I went out and got a 2/3 lb hamburger from Hardee's. Mistake or not, after the previous night's dinner, I was very unimpressed.
Then Garfield goes out stalking Sparx that night. Sparx comes home with Garfield on his tail. I blew up. I've had it with Garfield's behavior. Especially when he's ranting about Sparx's behavior that is absolutely no different that his own! The_Rose decides at that time to tell me that Sparx needs to move out. I'm just pissed in general. Garfield planned this whole thing about getting Sparx to move back in. Now he's doing his damnedest to shove him back out in under a week. Somebody's acting very foolishly and stupidly here, and I don't think it is me.
Garfield is obviously jealous of me. I've taken over the alpha male spot in this house, and he still (after 3 years, if not really longer) doesn't get it. The two little ones are not his to raise, and I already know how much he disapproves of how we are raising them. I have to point out to him that beating up on them really is not a good parenting technique, I don't care who you talk to, except for probably his dad. And that's exactly where he's learned that. Why he thinks that is so good is beyond me. I would think that he should actually know better, but maybe he just doesn't have the perspective yet. He knows that I've told him that this is my house. He still doesn't understand that yet either.
As far as I'm concerned, if he thinks it is so bad here, he needs to move out. If he wants to continue living here, fine. He needs to do what he's told (no bitching about what anybody else does or doesn't do) and he needs to drop the attitude that he keeps coming up with.
I don't know what the short term solution is. Kick all three 18 yos out the door? In less than 45 days, two of the three are leaving for boot camp, in which case do I just keep sucking it up till they're gone? Should I have a chat with the recruiting officer and get him to work on Garfield about chain of command?
If Garfield has such problems with me, what's going to happen when he does get into boot camp and he finds out that he can't pee without getting permission first? With his current attitude, he's not going to last two weeks in boot camp, and my money is still on only two days. And if this pisses Garfield off, then all I can say is prove me wrong. I would love to be proved wrong in this matter. Because if I'm wrong, then things should get better between the two of us. If I'm right, that's when things are liable to go downhill between us very quickly. That is sad to say. But that's also the INTP in me speaking out.
Saturday
It's almost 1PM, and The_Rose still hasn't gotten out of bed yet. I don't know when she actually fell asleep. We cuddled, cried and talked a bit last night. I'm stressed out over Garfield, lack of real rest and dealing with getting The_Rose healed, she's stressed out from trying to recover from the surgery, and now me being stressed out over Garfield.Time to get some sustenance I guess. Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 3/06/2004 01:06:00 PM
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