Anniversary

I told the kids over Carl’s Jr burgers in the car in Pomona on the way to the desert. I framed it as, guess what, the school that wanted Bobby for the gifted program now wants Theo, too! And unsurprisingly they were delighted by this - Bobby was a little annoyed he’d have to tell all his friends again that he’s leaving, but not much. They don’t need to know that they’re actually in different programs - gifted vs highly gifted - or that Theo was a bargaining chip because they really really wanted Bobby to flesh out that tiny 6th grade (and I still think they bent the rules a bit and expanded the definition of “highly gifted” to admit him). But whatever - we’ll take it. I’m going to drive them by the school today after I pick them up so we can all get a look at it and see how it feels. This is more for me than them, of course. They’re super adaptable. Me, not so much. I’m gutted this is their last year at MWE - and more so that I can’t even be there for their last two days since I’ll be in Boston. I have three more drop offs and pick ups and that’s it. 

In other news, we finally got to stay in a cabin that had significant progress - I took hardly any pictures, but here’s a couple:

We did things we’d been talking about for years - went to the newly refurbished Luckie Park pool (it was freezing - hopefully it’ll warm up over the summer), went to the Glass Outhouse, a wonderful wacky art gallery near us (and I wanted to buy all the things), and finally got all of the hammocks set up with proper hooks and rope and had a little camp fire and stayed out there at night under the full moon, which was one of the most magical things I’ve ever done. Both boys fell asleep, and just as we were all settling in, the bar down the road was having an outdoor concert and started playing “Heroes” which was our wedding song. Couldn’t have been more appropriate. 

I’m sorry to say our anniversary weekend was marred by a really awful fight on Saturday morning - our first in several years - that I’m still smarting from. I was trying to get him to look at paint colors with me from samples I’d gotten, and he got frustrated that I wasn’t fanning them out the way he wanted me to so he could see them all at once, and when I tried to hand them to him so he could do it the way he wanted (because suddenly this was so important), he snapped and snatched them out of my hand and shoved them into my purse and said forget it, which to me was way out of line and a total overreaction. I told him he gets frustrated so easily and he needs to give me a fucking break, and he snapped back, and walked away. It was horrible. We literally went from zero to sixty in less than five seconds and I still don’t even really know what happened, but I do feel like it was 100% his fault, and if you asked him I’m sure he’d say the same about me. He can be very impatient and demanding, and I hate that, especially when he would never meet his own standards. Thankfully these incidents are extremely rare - the last time we had a fight of this caliber was probably three years ago - but that’s also because I rarely push back and choose to let things roll off my back rather than live in constant conflict. But I’m starting to think our relationship may need a little calibration - if something like this happens again, or he makes some comment that makes me feel shitty, I need to tell him he needs to think about how he talks to me sometimes and how it makes me feel. It’s little things, like “well, obviously you weren’t listening” or one time I was praising him for taking the kids to a Marvel movie I didn’t want to go to, and he said, “well, somebody has to take these kids to the movies…” Just shitty unnecessary stuff like that that I don’t think he even thinks about, but he should. 

To his credit, he immediately apologized and said he didn’t want to fight over stupid shit and gave me a big hug. So there is that. He’s always the first to apologize, which is good. But I couldn’t shake it, to be honest. I think it’s because stuff like that makes you feel unsafe - especially when it’s a situation where a person snaps and you don’t even know why; it makes you feel like you’re walking on egg shells. What random thing is going to set them off next time? 

We got all dressed up and took pictures at our wedding site, and that all went well, but honestly I had this cloud over me the whole time. I think between that awful work fiasco where I barely saw him for nearly three months and now this, I’m just not feeling great. I’m glad to get to go to Boston this week to get away on my own and be in the bosom of my family of origin right now; I need a break.