I'm grateful for: Baking; an easy jigsaw puzzle; a day of rest.

How long has it been? Days? Weeks? It seems like such a long time. I've been busy. I've been busy cooking (yeaaa!), baked a cheese cake using my grandmother's (my mother's ex-husband's mother's) recipe. That woman could certainly cook. I only have a very few recipes handed down from her, three or four I think, but they are all simply marvelous. I modify them because we don't use white sugar, and they are still marvelous. The cheese cake with honey instead of sugar was a teeny bit too sweet. It was still the most delicious cheese cake any of us had ever eaten.

Grandmother Elizabeth was a presence in my childhood, but not a strong one. We went up to visit her, my mother, my sister and I once every year or two or three. What I knew most about her was from other people - she cooked everything from scratch, everything. Her 'breadbox' was a large metal box with a funnel at the bottom into which was put a large (25lb. or 50lb.) bag of flour. The flour was drawn out of the funnel at the bottom for baking the bread, cakes, muffins, and so on.

When we were visiting I never really saw her cooking, and we never really talked. I don't think Elizabeth was much of a talker. My mother admired her tremendously and I think when she was younger wanted to be just like her. A strong, tough, small woman who could cuss with the best of them (and quite imaginatively), and ran a business out of her home (different businesses through the years, she organized the paperboys, had a pet shop, I don't know all), and still kept the wifely arts, cooking everything from scratch, keeping the house, canning jam from her own plum tree... That is the picture I've gotten of Elizabeth from my mother and our few visits to her home.

The picture I've gotten of her from some of her children is a bit different - an abusive harridan, for whom nothing was ever good enough, and who actively fostered the hatred between her two oldest sons, playing one against the other right up to the day of her death.

Funny how that can all be the same person.

But she sure could cook. Her recipes, that I have, are hand written on 3"x5" cards, in fading ink. I've been trying to copy them onto the computer - not such a hard task you would think given how few of them there are, but I really just haven't had the time. I've got her chocolate chip bit cookies copies, but not the cheesecake or the chocolate cake. I don't seem to have any recipes that aren't desserts, but I haven't finished looking, either. Maybe I'll find a treasure trove. Who knows?

What I do know is that if I don't have a copy of one of her recipes, it is gone. Everything from her house is gone, and when they were cleaning it out, it was so bad they had to go in with gas masks. She hadn't been a such a good housekeeper at the end, when all the kids were gone and her husband Lloyd was dead. As far as I can tell, my mother was the only one who had wanted (before Elizabeth died) to have some of her recipes for herself. It is sad.

I wonder what Elizabeth's story was? I know a lot of the other's in bits and pieces at least. All I know from her past is that she was a Richardson or a Schulz from eastern Iowa, and that she was most definitely not a beauty in her youth.

Weird spellchecker, complains about Schulz, but not Richardson. Go figure.

So, anyway, I've been cooking. Cleaning some. Doing laundry. Shopping. Thursday my disability money showed up at the bank, and I left the house around 10:30, and drove and shopped until we picked Havva up at 6:40. Long day. But we got lots of food in the house, as well as cooking ingredients, for the cheesecake and home made energy bars (I haven't had one yet, but made them yesterday). I made a soup Wednesday night which John has been playing silly buggers with. First he hid it in the fridge, with no way for anyone to figure out where it was or to be able to heat it up if we had found it. Then when I discovered it, he put it in a tupperware back in the fridge, too late for me to make a new soup for shabbos, and it couldn't be used for a shabbos soup like that either. Finally he put it in the crockpot (with a huge sigh at *my* unreasonableness) about an hour before sundown yesterday. So as of this morning, there is a soup I made three days ago, that no one has even tasted, that has been cooked, refrigerated, refrigerated again (I don't know when or how long between the first hiding and the tupperware), and thrown into the crockpot to stew for 24 hours. Gd send it's edible, as it's the only hot food in the house on this cold shabbos day.

The kids and I finished this jigsaw puzzle we started the first shabbos we were here. It was really difficult, much more difficult than could have been anticipated. It's just a typical photo of the western wall, but for reasons which elude me it was so hard it's taken us almost a month to finish it. And we were so ready for it to be finished and over with. Today we will start a very easy 1000 piece puzzle, I picked out specifically because it is guaranteed to be very, very easy. We need it.

The only other thing is I have been working over-time to have no contact with Neil and John. With Neil, it is working, but with John it is harder, as we are still sleeping in the same room. I was tempted last night to ask him to sleep in the salon, and maybe I will tonight. I don't want to sleep next to someone who has to be reminded that I exist. I just don't.

I walk into a room and Neil is there, I don't look at him, I don't address him. He tosses a 'hi' at me, or calls out "I'm back" I don't respond. I do that with John as much as possible, also, but with him there are things we just have to talk about - like the kids, and the bloody soup, and so on. I'm not actively hostile, that is, I try not to be.

What I know is that any energy I spend worrying about them, fighting with them, trying to have any sort of relationship with either of them, is energy that is taken out of my life and away from my kids. I guess I've known that for years, but I am finally able to act appropriately on it. Neil wants to pretend I (and the rest of us) don't exist, fine. I don't need to waste my time on him. He breaks house rules (as he does almost daily) I talk to him about it - yesterday through his closed door, he couldn't or wouldn't be bothered to face me.

I'm working on not letting any of that slide any more either. I have always been kind of afraid to confront him about his disregarding the house rules, don't know why. Afraid or not, he doesn't put his dishes away, he's going to hear about it. He leaves his chair in the salon, he's going to hear about it. This is too small a house for his games, and everyone, even Eliyahu, make at least a good try at following the rules. Except Neil. No longer.

I've disengaged from his finances. I may ask to buy some dollars from him now and again, but other than that I hope/expect to have no more traffic with him regarding money at all. If he is still living here in a few months, we'll need to talk about rent/room and board. That's all.

It's his choice. He's the one who runs through the house with his head down in order to not make eye contact with anyone, and avoiding doing anything at all that would include him in the family. He wants more, he's going to have to make the effort. So far he hasn't. Hell, for the last fifteen years he hasn't made the effort. It's been virtually all me. No more.

John, is harder. As earlier mentioned. It will get easier, I believe, when he can move out to the cottage. I won't live in the same house with him, I won't. I've been fooled by him too many times. He is *not* changing, things are not getting better, and he is the same asshole he has been for the last twenty-five years, absent the abuse. Okay, it's better that there is no more abuse, but you know what? That's not him changing, that was me. I've learned, learned to know when he's going that way before it gets bad. Learned that he started exhibiting certain behaviours that, if I tolerate them at all, eventually (or quickly) turn into abuse. So I don't tolerate those behaviours. It helps that he hasn't *quite* enough self-deceit to convince himself that he's the innocent victim while hitting a crippled woman who can't fight back. Since he has to be the innocent victim in the stories he tells himself about his life.

But, okay, no more abuse. That is not the definition of a decent relationship. I don't ever want to be whining here again about how evil and rotten he is and how badly he treats me, and the only way I know to do that is not to live with him. Luckily, there is the smaller house right next door, that we were fixing up for someone to live in, anyway. I'm not thinking divorce, or breaking up the family. Our marriage works, such as it is, and we have so many of the same goals and desires that couldn't be fulfilled if we were completely separated. But, I don't have to live in the same house with him.

As long as he is not here, I am not having my nose rubbed in the fact that to him, I don't even exist. I am a puppet in the stories he tells himself, constantly getting my lines wrong. I don't have to notice that when I am crying, he turns and walks the other way, and comes back later to pretend nothing happened, I don't ask him for help to watch him simply leave, leaving me in whatever situation I needed help with. We actually have a pretty decent relationship as long as he's at work. I'm ready to try for one in which I can be in this house without him, without him needing to be at work to be rid of him.

I know those sentences suck. I just can't be bothered.

I'm going to stop. Call the kids to join me in starting the new puzzle. Enjoy my shabbos, when I can rest my sore back, stay in bed, and recover before starting a new week of cooking, cleaning, shopping, and rearing my children. Which, really, is all that I want to do at this juncture of my life. I am so very happy and grateful that I can finally do it. I'm still crippled, but I am managing to do it. Thank you Hashem.

Be well, all, and Gd bless.

I'm listening to Simcha and Eliyahu chattering excitedly outside my door

:: Yesterdays : Tomorrows ::

~~~Last Five Entries~~~
Hi and goodbye - 2010-10-15
I'll be moving on - 2010-10-10
Gold membership and stuff - 2010-10-10
Decisions, decisions - 2010-10-07
Days to go - 2010-10-06