You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘housecleaning’ tag.
I have been having water dreams lately. Lots and lots of water dreams for weeks, I think. Water dreams are strange things for me. They have always been portents of huge and significant changes. And generally not good changes. They are always similar in character. I am by the ocean and the waves are huge, engulfing everything, and I am trying to survive, to push through them, to stave them off. Doesn’t take a Jungian dream analyst to figure that one out, does it? What I know for sure is that they are certain predictors of something big happening. Generally, how I am able to survive in the dream indicates the level of intimacy with which the change will affect me, but not always. Sometimes, there are people I know with me in the dream, and they are usually impacted in real life whenever the change comes.
So, another water dream last night, coming on the heels of yesterday. Yesterday sucked. I won’t really go into why yesterday sucked. Suffice it to say that it did. BIG TIME. I am hoping today will be better. Hope springs eternal.
Ex-Pat has endocarditis and septicemia. He will be in hospital at least until Friday. According to my readings on the Internet, this is scary stuff. Really scary stuff.
The Internet can be your trusted friend or that devious individual on the street corner hissing to you that the world will end soon and he will take care of your pets when the rapture comes. When too much information on one topic is available, it is easy and hard at the same time to pick what you are going to believe. I read that septicemia is the same as sepsis, and that the odds of survival are about even. I read that it wasn’t, and that the survival odds are about 90 percent. I read that endocarditis can cause strokes, and that he’d have about six months to live even after recovery. I didn’t read anywhere that he would pop out of his hospital bed on Friday and start romping with the lambs. And what I heard him say last night, when I pointed out to him that without getting treatment he would have died and pretty darn quick at that, was that maybe that would have been better, as his daughter is the only thing he has to live for. (Which to me is a huge reason to keep living.) But he’s lost his will. He’s in too much pain to walk, and they don’t know why. Things are looking bleak, to say the least.
I think I will try to talk to his doctor to get the full scoop, as he is too doped up to tell me much. Then at least I can share what is real with Kelsea, who comes home today.
On the other hand, I am still at his house, and it is filthy. Filthy. Just disgusting. Even though I said it is not my job to clean this place, and I know it isn’t, I am going to do so, enlisting Kelsea to help, so she can see what clean is, and how to make things that way. I can’t let her live in a place that is like this. In clearing off the kitchen table, I found receipts from 2009. And that was probably the most pleasant of my finds. I remember he was always mad at me because of all the paperwork in the house that I never went through. Now that he’s having to deal with his own mail, and receipts, and crap, I suspect he understands, but he would never own up to it.
I may even tear up all the rugs and try to find replacements at ReStore. They will never be clean, ever, no matter what I do. I will get the handyman to come in and get the holes in the walls patched. I will try to rebuild my own sense of love and trust. I will do two jobs and manage two houses. And then I will sprout wings and a horn out of my head and become a human unicorn.
I’m being realistic.
Aren’t I?
Image from http://spiritofhorseblog.com
Pat is in China. He needed to go to get the theoretical business moving – again. So I am staying at his house – my former home – sleeping in our former bed, taking care of the dogs, the cats, Kelsea, and my two jobs, and making sure my own house stays in order. I know that there are women out there who deal with this kind of challenge every single day – they do it and they do it with grace. At least my situation is temporary. After all, Pat will come back. But I have a new admiration for single mothers. It is not easy.
Strange how you never hear about men who are raising their children on their own, taking care of a house, working two jobs, etc. I wonder why that is?
What is hitting me so hard is how he’s let everything go. The house is a mess. It was bad before, because I never had time to clean. And Pat seemed to have convinced both of us that he couldn’t clean because the house was too cluttered with my stuff. Well, I’ve been out of the house for, as I said in previous post, almost 11 months. He can’t use that excuse anymore. When I find junk mail that’s been sitting on the kitchen table since July, spills on the kitchen floor that have been there since January, the vacuum cleaner sitting in the living room, which looks like it hasn’t been vacuumed in years, I can see that the mess wasn’t entirely my fault. I was ready to go out and buy a new living room carpet today, just so Kelsea can have a passably respectable place to live. But after vacuuming for 20 minutes, then shampooing the rug, then vacuuming again, it looks somewhat better. I figure I’m staying here for 8 days, and there are 8 rooms in this house. I can probably have it whipped into shape that meets my standards (which admittedly are not as high as most people’s) so that he has no excuse other than his own sloth for not keeping it livable going forward.
In a way, I feel like I’m doing the wrong thing by cleaning his house. But I just can’t think too hard about that. I’m angry, I’m hurt, I’m confused, I’m sad. I’m paying for this place any way you look at it. And so I’m cleaning. Better than crying.
Kelsea and I made a start on her room, which, as she is living by example, is a disaster area. Of course, one can expect that of a teenager anyway, but there’s a limit.
She can see the pain that I am feeling. Perhaps I shouldn’t show it to her, but that’s not me. I need her to know that I really did try. I really did keep our house – in fact, both of our houses at one point when she was a baby – clean and in good working order, until I had to work so much. Makes me wonder where it all fell apart. Was it through my neglect? No. There was only so much I could do. I know I wasn’t blameless, but once we got out of balance, it seems we could never regain that equilibrium we used to have when we would share responsibilities – one of us would give the baby a bath while the other one tidied up the house. One would cook, the other would clean up afterwards. That was when he was working in the casino – a unbeknownst to me, running up gambling debts that it took me nine years to pay off after he lost his job.
I don’t want to bash him. That’s not who I am – though I guess I’ve been doing quite a lot of it in my writing here. This is my space to express my feelings to the universe, so I can say what I want. Unfortunately, I have yet to find the words to convey all my emotions in one tidy package – love, anger, bitterness, hurt, guilt, resentment, loneliness, wistfulness, failure, freedom, hope….so many more.
Time to feed the animals. And sweep away some more cobwebs.
