I'm grateful for: Linda and baby apparently all right; friends MW and BC and their new baby; I may not be perky but I'm a darn sight better than I might be.

I'm so tired of typing with this broken keyboard. It takes way more time to do anything, and I had loads of spare time just waiting to be filled, you know

It's hard to be perky and upbeat when it is so much work to type, and I want to be perky and upbeat. No, really.

Linda has had her baby, barukh Hashem. Over four pounds, which given that she is a 7.5 month baby, and that Linda traditionally has very small babies, is nothing short of a miracle. I have no other news, because much telephone tag and obstruction (RS trying to be helpful) kept me from being able to talk to D1 AT ALL today. *sigh*

Still, good news is good news. In other good news I was able to talk to D1, extremely briefly when she called about the baby, and tell her that she could actually come to Israel, get citizenship here, and still return to the U.S. It wouldn't affect her U.S. citizenship status. So, that was good. She is calmer and more positive with that information. I'm slow, it didn't occur to me she needed to be told before. *sigh*

I had a very good talk with FB today. I phoned him after too many phone calls. RS is driving me out of my tree, and D2 is just having extraordinary bad luck reaching me at all sorts of bad times. We talked about problems we have and problem people we've known. Problem people is defined, in this instance, as people who've said or done *really* unhelpful things - like telling me if I REALLy wanted to I could just get up and function like everyone else manages to do - and whose unhelpful words continue to live on in my or his head, giving us ongoing grief despite the passage of time.

I also found myself telling him that he could give himself permission to NOT do something that EVERyONE says he absolutely must do. A brilliant example is all the people who told me that I absolutely HAD to leave my abusive husband, that it was actually somehow a duty and I was failing if I stayed with him and continued to try to work things out. I didn't have the words then to say it, but it was still a fact that despite the apparent reasonableness and wisdom of their advice (commands), it didn't seem that Hashem wanted me to leave, or him to leave. Hashem was working overtime to keep us together.

Now I'm not going to sing a paean to the wonders of my beautiful marriage - that would be silly. But I really do think I am better off now, with a mostly not abusive husband, who is actually working on changing, and things getting better regularly (in a two steps forward, one and a half steps back kind of way) than I would have been starting over on my own, at any given time in the past fifteen years. And I did try to get away. Like I said, Hashem just seemed to want us together.

So just because simply EVERyONE is saying one must do a thing, it is okay, perhaps even wise, to give it another think or three, and see if their advice actually does fit the needs of your own unique situation.

Anyway, I said all of that or something just like it to FB, in many less words since we've known each other too long not to have developed a kind of personal shorthand. He'd been making himself crazy trying to do something that he agreed with 'everyone' he HAD to do, but really wasn't up to. It's okay to accept your limitations and go home sometimes. Some of us actually do push ourselves too hard and need to learn to back off and take it easier, rather than the other way 'round.

I went grocery shopping with TH, D3 and S2. Wheel chair absolutely necessary, which made it interesting loading the groceries into the car, but I was glad to be able to do it, and with the least possible pain. I even left TH to check out at one store, and 'walked' with S2 and D3 to a nearby kenyone (mall) to get a watch battery for my watch, and we ended up buying a couple of jigsaw puzzles as well. The timing worked out perfectly, as TH drove over to the kenyone just as we were leaving. No problem.

I didn't eat well today at all. If I wasn't really overweight and sedentary it might look like anorexia rearing it's ugly head again. I am being careful not to be deliberately starving myself, but the whole thing just wasn't working today. I did manage a proper breakfast and at least another whole meal, albeit in pieces. I am perfectly willing to eat less if it happens naturally, but I have to be very careful of intent to lose weight. I may have become obese, which is in some ways a success story for someone who was most successful in starving herself for years, years ago - but the stuff between the ears isn't necessarily any more sane and I have no better control of that insanity.

I had a good time with the kids today, and we also had a great time trading silly news stories this evening. Further telephone nonsense ensued with four - count them FOUR - phone calls from RS, which she seemed to think were about facilitating communication between D1 and I, but merely ended up exhausting and exasperating us both. Ah, well.

Added to that a fair bit of flashing back to time spent with my uncle, each time I have to come back to the present and feel again the sadness that he is gone. And a highly charged conversation with TH about our sex life - non-existant it is these days. Every time I bring it up he says he does want to work on it and he will think about it and get back to me - and then that is the end of that.

By Jewish law he is required to satisfy me. Nice to have the law on your side, but it doesn't do me a bit of good. I asked him if part of his problem is that I don't equate sex with romance. I don't, never did. It didn't bother him a whit before we were married. Then, literally on our wedding night, he started hissing like a snake. I'm not being figurative here, or using a colourful turn of phrase. I think he thought he was being seductive. Truthfully I was somewhat repelled. I was, and still am, perfectly willing to have sex. I'm willing to play sex games and can handle quite a variety of different sorts of - well, things - I mean, with my past, acting like a shy virgin would be pretty much out. But I also can't have sex with someone for half a year as almost an entirely physical act, and then suddenly pretend it's fraught with meaning, because we happen to have had a wedding ceremony.

I dunno. So, I asked. He gave me his now standard he really wants to and he has to think about it speech. I am not holding my breath. I think it would be a sad thing if I never had sex again in my whole life - but that is still better than playing sick games with him making it all into some sort of twisted power putsch.

Well, that was possibly TMI for some people. I am sorry I ever pretended I was mealy-mouthed for people who pretended that they were friends is all.

I'm done in, and it's time to let the flashbacks roll. The only way out is through.

I'm listening to Todd Snider: Alright Guy

:: 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