Moving on

After all the stress and depression of the last couple of weeks, I’m ready to shake it off like an itchy prom dress. I’ve told everyone who needs to know about my shitty numbers - including the H, who, naturally, was annoyed I hadn’t mentioned it. I realize I do hide things from him, mainly because I don’t like the way he reacts when I do tell him. So we had a tough discussion about how I don’t like whenever I share a complaint about how my business is going, he starts lecturing me about all the things I should be doing instead of trusting me to know what the fuck I’m doing. It’s a guy thing, that fix it mentality. It’s super annoying. But I realized taking the tactic of just hiding information from him doesn’t work, either, because when he finds out, he’s doubly agitated. I hide things a lot, from a lot of people (again, trauma response). Mostly I think it works in my favor, but this isn’t the first time he’s been angry that I withheld something from him, so I need to stop doing that. And instead be very clear as far as my expectations when I do tell him things - ie, you’re not allowed to give me advice, full stop. I don’t know if he’ll ever get this, but I need to stop avoiding conflict and just tackle this head on. 

Telling people - especially my life partner - about my bleak financial future, has been oddly freeing. Here we are, not where we thought we’d be, but we need to adjust accordingly. It’s already had the positive effect of getting the H to stop running the AC like the house is a meat packing factory. So, hooray for that. 

Today we *finally* got the bivalent shots for the boys, with resultant frozen yogurt. One messed up thing happened, though - the nurse said Theo was due for three other shots, and he said he’d be into it, and then I heard her say one of them was the HPV shot which I knew was for 11-year-olds, so when she returned with the shots I asked if maybe she was talking about the wrong kid, and she said yes, as she was getting the shots together she realized she misspoke. So then poor Bobby had to get four shots he wasn’t ready for. He handled it like a champ but did use it as leverage to use the VR first. I recounted the story of how I got all my first vaccines right after pushing his GIANT HEAD out of my body and I had just gone through so much pain that the shots didn’t even barely register. Bobby said he was glad he would never have to give birth. I said amen. 

Today I got Theo a kid’s watch just like B’s because I feel like their new school is a lot bigger and Bobby may not always know where Theo is when it comes time for pickups, etc. Having one kid completely out of touch is not such a great thing. We’ve also been talking about putting a better schedule together as far as monitoring their evening time after school - ie, cutting down screen time - and one tool I think I can use is to take one day a week to go to the library across the street from their school and have them pick out books to read. With library late fees no longer a thing in LA, and Theo never having taken to reading the way B did, I feel like this could be a good way to get more books into their lives (without me having to buy them). I always feel guilty about how much time these kids spend in front of screens, so I’m hoping this switch to a new school will be our impetus to make other changes as well.

I handed off my treasurer duties to the new person. I had written up a map of when/how to do things, and assured her I’d be available for any help or questions (and her kids are and will be at eagle rock jr/sr high so odds are she’ll be in my life in the future). Ah, what a weight off my shoulders. All I can say is, I did my best (but I guess my best wasn’t good enough). In the future I will be happy to volunteer and help out with school stuff, but I will never be treasurer again. You really need more accounting skills than a non-accountant to do stuff like that. 

We ended up having a surprisingly fun 4th - we just went to a local high school (who knew this was a thing - not people that grew up in nyc, that’s for sure) and honestly the fireworks show was pretty great and not overly loud like I was anticipating. I actually had fun on the 4th for the first time ever.