July 16, 2009

A bad one tonight. I start a job next week, and the kids are going to be here with their grandparents all day during the week. Not the best situation, but they will at least be safe and I need to take the job so there really isn’t much choice. My wife is drunk and working herself into a state about this. She keeps telling me what a problem it is, and I ask her what she wants me to do? We are running out of money, we need to save money so we can get out of her parents’ basement. I have to take this job, so what does she want me to do? Apparently, all she wanted was to piss and moan over and over about the situation. I tried several tacks with her, sympathizing, pointing out we don’t really have a choice, pointing out that at least the kids would be safe, if not as active as we would like, and that is going to have to be good enough for right now, but no matter what I said, she was drunk and just kept getting more upset or angry. Drunk and alternating between maudlin, anxious and angry is not fun to listen to or deal with so I eventually stopped trying.

Then she got mad at her parents and her aunt. Her aunt is going through her grandmother’s things. The woman is in a rehab facility and soon to be a permanent resident, although she does not realize that yet. So the stuff in her apartment has to be gone through and sorted out. My wife’s aunt is taking on that task. Now my wife is mad at her aunt (who is kind of an overbearing bitch) for stepping up and doing this. My wife kept saying that she should be doing it. I didn’t point out that nothing was stopping her from stepping up, but as drunk as she was, that would just have led to another pointless drunken argument, so I just let her rant, instead.

Then our power went out, we were hit by some powerful thunderstorms. The electric light show was pretty impressive as the lightning flashed around us and the thunder was crashing down right over our heads. This, of course, meant that the clocks lost time and then went on that blinking mode. Twice, after the power came back on, my wife would suddenly look at her blinking clock and yell at me that the power had gone out. Like it was something she didn’t remember. Then she would get mad because I hadn’t reset her clock. Then she kept asking me what would happen if the power went out and the kids were here without me being there. (Her parents would be here.)

The final act of the evening opened when she had to go upstairs to change her tampon. Menstruation and vodka are a potent mix. She is convinced that she is starting menopause. Maybe. But she is tired of monthly periods and, when she gets drunk enough, insists that she should have a hysterectomy.  We have had this discussion before and I know better then to argue with her. First she accuses me of not knowing what she is going through. Well, I am not physically equipped to know it first hand, but I try to be sympathetic and as understanding as a poor male can be. That just pisses her right the fuck off. So I encouraged her to look into it. She gets mad because she doesn’t have time to take off from work to have surgery performed. Then she gets maudlin because she wouldn’t be able to have babies any more. Then she gets mad because that makes her feel old. If act at all in sympathy with her, her anger turns towards me. If I argue with, obviously she gets mad at me. If I agree with her, she will suddenly take the opposite side of the argument, even if it directly contradicts what she just said, and gets mad at me.  She cycles through this emotional roller coaster a few times, yelling at me most of it like I made her have a menstrual cycle, and I finally get tired of it and tell her to just shut up and go to sleep.  She asks me what is that supposed to mean. I said it means stop talking, shut the fuck up and go to sleep. She muttered at me for a little while under her breath, but frankly that was better then getting yelled at and she finally did go to sleep