Ho Ho Ho

Christmas. What a heavy string of letters. For so many years it was a  nightmare for me. You tried to keep up the spirit of Christmas and show a happy face. Play with the kids, even though your head was killing you and you were so tired you could barely concentrate.

These days we've gotten into a routine that works well for us. We provide the meat and take on roles as cooks, the inlaws provide the house, vegetables and beverages. They are also cooks in charge of the greens, taters, etc. The rest of hubby's siblings have spouses and alternate spending the Eve with us, or his/her family. Time always varies, because it is for the families with the youngest children, to decide what suits them best.  It's relaxed and fairly informal, although everyone wears suits and dresses.The small children are happy and loud, running around everywhere.


 I have to admit, this year I really enjoyed Christmas Eve. Even though Runar decided that Christmas Eve 2013, was the Eve we celebrated that our children having become grownups.

 The dinner was a success. So was dessert. Runar pulled a Spanish one and told MIL I had already made the  rice pudding. , the day before. I hadn't, but they like mine better than MILs.  I made too little, well, I didn't, but I thought 1 big bowl of it would be more than enough and left one bowl at home, because Simen loves it so much. Boy, was I wrong! They friggin' licked the bowl. And it was a big bowl, too.  Simen didn't get any at all. He had snuck off to wrap some presents and we didn't notice he was gone. Poor, overlooked kid. He knew about the full bowl waiting for him at home and took it in stride, though. That kid is so happy in love these days, I believe he'd let us off for murder. They look awfully cute together, the young turtledoves. It's almost icky.

It was wonderful to have Helene home, which is such a cliché, but it was. and it was really nice to get to know her Runar better too(It is very confusing, having two Runars in the house). I like him. If we measure him by how well and happy Helene looks, he scores well high.

We got home fairly early and everyone being in good mood, we brought out the aquavit, the JD and the beer. We then proceeded getting our kids so drunk they puked and Simen even needed to be helped to bed.

(My) Runar was pleased. "Now the kids know us, they've seen us with our guards down and we have showed them we view them as grownups. We've let Runar know he is welcome -AND! (here he held his index finger up) We all went to bed happy. Well, some were perhaps a bit on the sick side, but still."

He is right in many ways, but I'm not so sure it is a good thing to get drunk with your kids. Maybe it is my upbringing. Maybe it is all the lecturing on this, everywhere. Maybe I just need a bit more time before I completely can accept that my children are no longer children. Besides. Alcohol is a scary monster and always plays a tricky game. It doesn't always work out that well. Sometimes it works out downright bad.  There is also an inner voice screaming at me that this can lead to bad things, that they'll end up as alcoholists, or worse.

I beat him down, that voice, yesterday. Because, I know that sometimes it works.

Runar parents got us puking drunk when we were young. We discussed difficult subjects and embarrassing subjects. We laughed and we cried.  We were drunk-honest and we over-shared. But we were still on good terms when we went to bed.

I loved his parents for it, then. I really got to know them well, that night and we've had a good relationship up through the years. They made me feel welcome and I still do.  It's easy to ask them for help and it's easy to go to them for advice.

I don't know if this will be the case with our kids and their chosen partners, but I do know that was hubby's goal.  And mine.

Regardless, it was a really nice evening until the puking started and by then it was waaay late and time to go to bed.

This morning I woke up to Marianne having pooped on the living room floor carpet and after I had taken her out, she came in and immediately started throwing up on the bedroom rug. I threw out the rug and immediately went back to bed. When I got up an hour later, Helene and Runar were already up. Helene greeted me with a grin, asking me how I was holding up and after seeing my hangover face, they both burst out laughing. I choose to take that as  a sign they had enjoyed themselves. I later overheard Simen and Helene discussing their elegant exits the previous night. Helene triumphantly declared herself winner, as he puked first. It's good to know some things never change.

It was the first year, celebrating Christmas Eve with grown up kids. It has been one of the best Eves in my life, if not the best.

I hope yours were  good ones, too. Merry Christmas.

Hubby took me completely by surprise today

It's Mother's day tomorrow, up here. Runar took Georg and told me he was heading for the farm and that he'll be gone all day, so that I'd have some time to myself and would be able to relax when my niece, Trine, visits with her 1.5 yrs old son, Jarand.
 Georg is a gentle giant without so much as a single aggressive cell in his body, but he IS a pup and he doesn't quite realize that his paws feels like a knockout hit when he - in his mind - discretely paws you for attention.  I was very pleased and surprised that he thought of it.

About 20 minutes after he had left he came back with this cute little chocolate cake and a huge bouquet of flowers, gave me a quick kiss, told me "Happy Mother's Day" and ran off again.

I'm not his mother and he shouldn't have given ME this, but I don't really care. My heart is flowing over in giddy happiness. This is the man that forgot our wedding anniversary 15 times out of 21. Suddenly, out of the blue, he does this.  He'll be able to get away with murder now. =D

A trip down memory lane

We’ve been watching Coupling lately and some episodes are about pregnancy and birth and all the little shocks you go through during your first time pregnancy. It brought me down the memory lane. 

We were quite young and ignorant of most things concerning pregnancies in general and births in particular. We were students and couldn’t afford any prenatal classes. We lived far away from most of our family and could therefore continue our blissfully ignorant existence too, until hard earned experience killed our naïve ignorance…

5 weeks into the pregnancy I went through an emergency surgery as one of my ovary tubes exploded into smithereens. (This is a story of its own for another time). Obviously I survived and I didn’t lose the baby either. Otherwise I was in my opinion quite fit and had a healthy pregnancy. Except from an annoying heartburn, I didn’t suffer from any of the usual pregnancy ailments.

The doctors didn’t quite agree. I had twice as many appointments as other pregnant women and at the end of the pregnancy I wondered if I should perhaps just change my address to my doctor’s office. They were worried about all kinds of things due to the surgery, among other things they worried that the surgery scar would tear open. It didn’t. 

Hubby was terrified they’d accidentally cut off limbs during the surgery. I tried to tell him that at the time of the surgery the little microscopic pea that was to become our daughter didn’t have any arms or legs to be cut off, but to no avail. Even after we’d had seen the ultrasound pictures on the screen where our daughter quite clearly had all limbs intact, he was convinced she’d be born with half an arm or leg missing. She didn’t.

6 weeks before term I started bleeding during intercourse. In our blissful ignorance it never dawned on us that having sex while pregnant could be a potential problem late in the pregnancy. We were young with a healthy sex drive and had humped away as usual up until this point – having a lot of creative fun making room for a growing tummy. The fun stopped abruptly, that’s for sure. I experienced no pain, so I wasn’t too worried that something terrible had happened and I argued vigilantly for us to do nothing, but just wait and see. I didn't particularly feel like explaining myself to strangers about the whats and whys and hows...

Hubby disagreed just as vigilantly, of course, he was now convinced he was going to lose both his wife and unborn child. I have to admit that I was more terrified of having to explain what had happened and more to the point, how it had happened, than of anything being wrong with the baby and I downright refused to go to the ER unless he agreed to come with me and do all the talking. We argued back and forth and in the end he agreed to come with me and help me explain. 

Then came the problem with transportation. We didn’t have a car and we didn’t really have the extra money for a cab. After another round of arguing, we decided to call on our friend, Axel whose girlfriend had a pimped up hot pink bubble convertible. It took a lot of stuttering, shifting of legs, kicking at invisible dust and a lot of blushing, giggling and mentally dying to explain our need and then a lot of promising that, no, I wasn’t bleeding that much and wouldn’t mess out the car. And no, I wasn’t going to give birth in the car either, etc and so on. 

Finally we arrived at the hospital. I had completely made up my mind about not needing to see any doctor at all by now, but Axel and Runar unceremoniously picked me up and hauled me inside and told the receptionist that I was bleeding and needed immediate medical treatment as I was 6 weeks from term.  I was secretly planning on sneaking out of there, but hubby knows me too well, or my plans were written all over my face, because they placed me between them on the waiting bench and kept a firm hold of me until it was my turn. 

Some nurse came to get me and Hubby; the dastardly Judas, promptly proclaimed that he would just sit there on the bench and wait with Axel and before I knew it I stood there in the examination room alone, with 4 nurses and a doctor wanting to know what had made me start bleeding and how.

Oh, how I wanted to crawl into myself and just disappear. All my telltale signs made it pretty obvious, I think. Regardless they had me tell it in details and before I was done every single person there – somehow, even more medical personnel came in and insisted on taking part of ‘examining’ me while I was agonizingly stumbling through my explanation – was giggling and/or laughing uncontrollably and quite frankly showed little to no professionalism.

My embarrassment had by now mostly turned to indignation and when I stomped my foot and shouted: “It’s not funny!” the doctor shooed most of the extra people out while working hard at controlling her own mirth. 

I was examined, tests were taken and the doctor told me that the bleeding was due to a burst vessel and that nothing was wrong with the baby. She continued with telling me that while it was healthy and good to have sex during a pregnancy and that I should consider myself lucky that my partner and I had such a good relationship blah, blah, blah, she as a medical expert sadly had to absolutely forbid me to have sex for the next two weeks as having sex late in the pregnancy could start the birth prematurely. And that I wouldn’t want that, but that when I only had 3 weeks left to my term and I could fuck(I swear she used this word) all I liked. Then she laughed, hugged me and sent me out. 

I stomped out of the hospital as fast as I could get my overgrown stomach to move with hubby and Axel trailing after me while laughingly trying to make me repeat what I told the doctors and what they told me. I seem to recall some gruesome threats of horrible deaths that would happen to them if they didn't shut the f@$k up!

As if this wasn’t enough, a report of this …incident was sent to my regular doctor – who happened to be an older highly religious and righteous man -  and I had to not only explain myself one more time, I had to sit and listen to him lecturing me about proper and healthy behavior while pregnant. I had 4 weeks left of it. I’d say he was a bit late in trying to get me to change my sinful, evil ways… 

So to all you pregnant people out there, sex during pregnancy is safe and apparently good for you, but not during the last(second last?) part of the pregnancy, so unless you enjoy having to explain yourself to doctors and nurses while dying of mortal shame, just refrain from having intercourse during that time. 

Have a wonderful weekend

Okay, sort of an update

Things are still a bit 'bob-bob'. There are no catastrophes happening, it's just really hard keeping my head above water, being the strong, positive force giving support and energy to everybody around me when all I want is to go into hibernation until things get better, or easier.

I can't really bring it all up here as my blog isn't private and I have to keep that in mind

Money issues are a bitch even on the best of days. I am the one in this household who manages the bills, loans, insurance, etc. The first 3-4 months of the year are always tough, because that is when the big nasty bills regarding electricity, municipal taxes and national road taxes are due on top of the regular nasty bills. This year has been worse, because all our savings are gone. (confirmation party for son, driver's license for daughter and a wedding abroad all in the same year, have a funny way of eating up savings).

Hubby is more than grumpy about our finances and is looking for a scapegoat. Since he refuses to have anything to do with planning and dealing with our finances, it's my job to try figure out how to make money last. Sadly I lack any magic abilities to create money from nothing. Hubby thinks that's the least I could do as he thinks it's my fault we're in this mess as I'm the one whose health didn't keep up.... and things are still at a stand still with my disablement and my insurance, which sux beyond sucking. I'm making calls, I'm checking up on caseworkers, doctors, etc, but....yeah...no decisions have been made yet, no payments are ready yet. Hubby and I are having these wonderful and fulfilling [Yes, I am being sarcastic] discussions about who's more to blame these days.

I'm aware that I'm not the breadwinner, particularly the last 5 years with 40% cut off from my already low paid wages. Which are low, mind you, because I had to pick a job where I could leave at 4 pm to pick up the kids at daycare/school(because you claimed that was a woman's responsibility) and those jobs don't grow on trees and neither are they well paid.

I understand that it sux to work full time and never having any extra for personal spending, but hey, that's the norm for most of us, right? It's not like I have ever had that luxury. Well, yes, I HAVE purchased books, but that is money I have taken from the clothes budget, besides, if we compare hobbies, I'd say my 5 books a year is far cheaper than your guns and ammo. Yes, I am aware that you hunt and OCCASIONALLY, bring home dinner, 4 ducks in two years and a rabbit if you take credit for your son's kill as well as your own, HALLELUJAH! [Yes, still dripping sarcasm]

Latest issue on the who-is-to-blame-the-most-for-all-our-misery contest is smoking. Aye, that's one I'm guilty of charge at. I smoke tobacco. I shouldn't smoke at all, I know. Even though I smoke half of what hubby does, it doesn't really matter. I have health issues that doesn't get better with me smoking. Will they get better when I quit smoking completely? I really doubt it, but I do know my general health and well being will benefit from quitting.

Thing is, quitting smoking is a personal thing for me. I don't want to do it when somebody else says so, or the way somebody else tells me to. I want to quit when I want to quit, how I want to do it and I don't want to be responsible for anybody else quitting or not. period. Hubby wants me to quit first and he wants to control the when and how....yeah....it's stupid.  Am I using him as an excuse to keep on smoking. Probably. I know I need to just block out his words and actions and just do it, but dawg gone it, I'm a mere morta just as he is. He wants to be proud of me, he says.....he should have married superwoman or a mutant.

No, we're not getting divorced. When you've been married for 20+ years the idea of actually divorcing your spouse seems more work than just riding the storm till it ends....because it will end. It always does. At least it has done so for us....I can't really speak for others

And we can even make temporarily truces, like we did on Saturday. We decided to put everything aside for the day and took the dog and went hiking in the woods. Did us worlds of good and we had a nice evening too. 'Nudge, nudge, know what I mean?'  and all that jazz.  I'll get some pictures up when I get around to uploading them to the computer.  We haven't worked it all out, but at present we're not fighting either....

Changing our evil ways

It snowed again last night. I want to kill something. I had actually started to hope we would get rid of all the snow and ice. Early yesterday the sun was shining and it almost felt like spring. Ole Man Winter's sense of humour is rather mean if you ask me.

Runar has next week off. He's quitting smoking. I thought I would too, but Runar is convinced we'll kill each other dead if both of us quit at once...maybe he's right, I've wanted to kill him often lately They're having audit at work this week, he's been working crazy hours. I've been in bad shape aching bad and my psoriasis has been worse. Sleep deprivation hasn't made things better.

The other night I slept in the guest room. Runar changes into the Snoring Monster of Huge Moans most nights, He will quit breathing all toghether if he's sleeping on his back and I have to wake him or make him turn over. It's actually quite frightening to be honest and I've tried to suggest him seeing a doctor about it, but to no use. It's all in my head, says he. I'm exaggerating and making things up...I have about as much success in this as I have at keeping his feet off my half of the bed, or keeping his one pointy hard elbow out of my back. Too bad I don't bruise easily, or I'd have evidence to show him in the form of a black eye. Crashing into an elbow eye first is not a pleasant way to wake up.

Anyways, the other night he had alternated quitting breathing and gasping loudly for air. I was unable to fall asleep, aching, tired, annoyed and getting worse. My attempts at getting him to turn over had only resulted in him inching further over to my side of the bed. When he lay spread-eagle in the middle of the bed pushing my feet off the edge on MY side of the bed and with a satisfied sigh landed his hand in the middle of my face I'd had enough and

"AAAHHRRGGHHED"

He sniffed offended, but crawled back to his side and lay on his side. This was around 2:30 am and I hadn't fallen asleep yet. Because of the aching joints and muscles I had problems finding a position where the pain didn't get unbearable, so naturally I tossed a bit. Side, back, other side, back. Whereupon that arse I'm married to sat up yelling at me for keeping him up all night. WTFH!?! I wanted to keelhaul him, skin him alive, wring him inside out and make him into a maggot. I didn't. I think it seemed like too much work at the time... Instead, I bit my tongue, got up and went to sleep in the guest room. I fell asleep quickly too. He apparently had barely slept at all. I'm afraid I did not feel particularly sorry for him...
and now we're quitting smoking. Should be fun :P

Eitherwho we're heading for the cabin today. We'll be drinking and smoking ourselves silly and sick, becoming the best of friends with abundance of love for each other, before we change our evil ways and start hating each other worse than ever...and hopefully become healthier and better persons in the long run.

... This song  is playing in my head "One of these days I'm gonna change my evil ways" Bon Scott is singing ..I think that day is here for the hubby and I

Yess!

Friday is here. Huzzah. It's been one of those weeks, I'm glad it is over.

I had an argument with my son this morning I never thought I was going to have, ever. He's been home from school with fever and sore throat since Wednesday and I wanted him to stay at home today as well, because I could tell he still had a fever. He desperately wanted to go to school. I mean, WTH?!? I knew something was up and sure enough. Turns out he was going to be introduced to his buddy's girlfriend BFF today. What can I say, he's 15, it's not that I can't understand his motivation...I let him go to school.

Hubby and I are heading up to the cabin in a couple of hours. I can't wait. We need some happy time alone. I have a new audio book ready, I have my knitting(House, if you read this; I am working on your socks, but my fingers are being meanies and it's taking me much longer than normal to finish them. But they will be!)

It is ridiculously cold, but sunny - should make fior a perfect night for admiring the night sky with  the myriads of star constellations. I saw a shooting star yesterday. huge, bright and awesome!

Have a fantabulous weekend, guys!

Past 10 years

Courtney and Countess, you did the year by year thing, but I just can't do that, because they were so crazy that most of them are in a hazy blur and NOT because of drug or alcohol. This will be more of a warning post of  "not to do"

10 years ago I was just finished with taking my last two exams: 'finance analysis' and 'statistics' My kids were 5 and 10 and I had 3 jobs (teaching English and social studies at the local high school, cleaning the local newspaper building and working half time at the accountancy firm). I also had a hubby going psycho from severe chemical exposure. We were in debt to our ears and all I really remember is driving or sitting on the bus with a paper bag in my lap because I kept throwing up from stress.

Because of a number of reasons from the way I was brought up to extreme stubbornness, instead of putting my foot down and ask for help, like getting hubby to agree to treatment, etc, I just plowed on. WARNING Not a smart thing to do. In fact it is beyond stupid and highly arrogant to think that you can cope with a spouse on a mental roller coaster race to the dark realms of madness. The price really is too high to pay.

During the next years there were various smaller and larger disasters like both kids and dog getting Lymes from tics which took the kids more than a year to get fully recovered from. The dog never did recover fully, as she got cancer and died shortly after.

My iron storage hit an all time low and I was rushed to hospital and underwent one hellish hour of pure torture treatment involving an electric rod, with the result of my womb getting torched black. Literally. I bled black sot for a week afterwards. I believe I'll have nightmares from this experience for as long as I live!

I got laid off work for a few months, then was more or less forced to work a bunch for free in order to get my job back, not to mention that I was unwillingly drawn into my boss' affair with a married man, having to lie to his wife at the time. My boss and this man later got married and had two children. He is a drunk and a cheat and Man, do they deserve each other!

My daughter had a nervous breakdown at school when she was 12 due to hubby's madness() and there were councilors and meetings and whatnot for a while.  Actually, from then on the 'war' between daughter and father has been going on and is still going on. She had a couple of panic attacks during Christmas, but they also had one long sit-down-chat that hopefully did them both some good. I guess time will show.

Hubby has changed jobs multiple times due to him falling out with colleagues and/or bosses during these 10 years, he was too sick to work in periods, then started studying and got his logistics degree, then changed a few more jobs. He has finally acknowledged that he needs to work at least 4 years in the same job before changing to a new one, but as he is still constantly checking out new jobs, I'm not sure that him acknowledging is the same as him fully understanding it...

There has been tons of family drama ranging from my kid sister nearly dying from drug abuse and lack of food to Grandma Crazy going on a hate spree and not only disinheriting us all, she actually claimed we didn't exist. This was quite funny in all it's madness, but that is probably because it's hubby's grandma and not mine :P Oh, and she has since changed her mind and loves us all to pieces and has thus forgiven us! for all the things she did. I'm not sure how she managed to turn it all upside down, but reality has never really applied to this lady, ever. Thankfully the doctors took away her driving license last winter, because as with reality,  law, order and traffic rules didn't apply to her either...

My health has deteriorated and is on a downward spiral still, sadly. Hubby, on the other hand is doing a lot better and I think that the effect from his exposure has more or less worn off and most important of all, he is now aware of his issues and can take steps to lessen the effects on the rest of us around him.

Because of my stupid touch pad that I haven't yet figured out how to lock permanently I accidentally deleted the paragraph about getting to meet Sue from TBF and her hubby in 2009. That was two weeks of funness :)
(sorry Sue, you were not forgotten!)

We survived

Christmas dinner was a success. Huzzah! Actually people stuffed themselves so bad, we had to wait more than an hour before we had the rice pudding dessert. There were minor disasters, but those are part of the fun. The dining table, for instance. It has been stored in the shed for a year and it being very old and solid oak, it had reacted to the moist and cold,  naturally it was no longer straight, but had morphed into a little ski-jump in one end. It's now been thrown on the hanger heading for the dumpster, poor thing has long outlived it's purpose, I'm sure it's happy to finally be put to permanent rest. Hubby surprised me with an extra present for us(read himself) a 40 inch flat-screen TV that can be hooked up to the computer etc. We only had 3 old fashion ones -  that all worked nicely thankee verra much -  already, but they were NOT flat-screens. I'm told there is a HY-UUUUGE difference... actually, I watched one of the HP movies and I have to admit, it was kinda awesome watching it on the new set.

There's been some drama... my daughter got a panic attack after her brother and father got into a shouting match, but I think it ended fairly okay. Instead of ending in full blown war, my daughter did something very grown-up and mature, she  came up and told her father why she panicked. I left them alone and they had a long talk. Even though hubby still thinks she needs to grow up, he managed to bite his tongue and just let her get it all out of her system. Hopefully this will help her move on and let go of the past.

Eitherwho I'm taking da hubby up to the cabin tonight. He's got two days off work and it'll be best for all parties if I go into hiding with him for a night or two.

Have a fantabulous New Year's Eve folks *cheers*

Patterns

How do you avoid falling into old behaviour patterns? I am still working on that one... Why is it so easy to fall into the same old patterns, even if you know they'll do you no good?!? Sometimes I want to grab myself by the ears and shake me until my bones rattle.