Why I Don't Write Much

I suppose everything I wrote last time is already an answer in itself.  But, it's a complicated place, my little world.

I switched my farm share pick up to Saturdays, hoping that makes my work week a little easier.  Today will be my first Saturday pick up.  I'm pretty sure they have some local fisherman selling through their farmstand on Saturdays too, which is a cool bonus.  I'm the only fish eater in the house, but honestly, I'm the only food  eater in the house.  This is the list  (to the best of my recollection) of what my daughter's father won't eat: seafood, steak, hamburgers, pork, any chicken not breaded and fried, onions, garlic, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, most leafy greens, random fruits, like peaches, nectarines, and plums....  In short, I do all that cooking and running around to feed myself and the baby, then get to go to the store for his organic junk food (we  have this uneven split, where when he began to carry our health insurance when mine lapsed while I took a leave to be home with the baby, I took on our entire food budget-- generally somewhere between 6 and 800/month: insurance costs just under 500, and is of course, from his pre-tax income.  He does not acknowledge this inequity... but it's just one of many, like how I cough up 150 extra per month for my "half" of the rent and utilities.  And, given my thriftiness in relying on that farm share, most of the food budget is to satisfy his stunted palate).  He loves pizza, mac and cheese, toaster pastries, granola bars, and peanut butter.  You can get him to eat apples, and an occasional salad (if you want to call lettuce with cucumbers a salad).

Yep, this is a time when I need to vent about the man I've spent the last ten years with.  I've spent that decade becoming a better and better cook, at least according to me, and everyone of our friends and family I've fed, and I've spent that same ten years swallowing my frustration over his digust at just about everything I make. 

I  swallow disgust over a lot.  The biggest issue is his lack of ability to set goals or try to improve his life-- and since his life is tied to mine, this means the only one of us who is really trying to advance our family, healthwise, financially, whatever, has been me. 

During our relationship, I  managed to earn first one graduate degree, land a teaching job, then land another graduate degree, in the name of increasing my salary.  I managed to get us health benefits for the first time since we'd been cut off from being on our parents' policies.  Even now, I'm contemplating taking on the challenge of becoming National Board Ceritified-- again, to increase my salary (and also my option: National certification would mean being able to teach in any state, not just MA).  During all this time, I've had the same disproportionate commute, and I've had to put up with being treated to contempt every summer because he's jealous that after a year of 60+ hour weeks, I get nine weeks off to try to put my brain back together so I can start over again every late August.  I've had to put up with him whining about how he's more tired because his job is "physical." In short, I get to bear his misplaced frustrations with himself.

I don't know how to fix this.  He works for a college, and until about a year ago, when something changed due to tax  laws, he could  have taken any damn class he wanted for free.  He could  have  had a bachelor's degree, easily, in those six years before the change.  I repeatedly offered to do something very unscrupulous,  and write all his papers  for him, because,  and I'm not trying to be mean here, he fails  tests a lot, mostly through anxiety, and, I believe he may be functionally illiterate.  I get that those are huge impediments, and it must be hard to overcome that crap.  But to not even try?

I'm not sure where I stand these days.  After all this swallowing of my pride and the things that frustrate me, I'm in a place where I live with a person who points out every flaw with viscious severity.  Last night's blow-out was about the fact that I hadn't checked in to make sure my Netflix  account hadn't started charging me more.  It's coming, it's true: Netflix is trying to get out of the DVD business and go to all streaming, and the way they'll manage that is by progressively charging so much for DVD subscriptions that they either alienate their DVD clientele, or cajole them into switching to streaming only plans.  It's a valid thing to expect me to be on top of my monthly bills, but he can be  so patriarchal,  acting like without him, I'd fall off some deep end.  I pointed out to him, as  well as I  could with my laryngitis strangled voice, that they send me emails.  All changes in billing are something they give a one month warning on.  I don't need to check: they update me.  And, he'd made me testy by  the fact that his greeting, after coming home at 7, after coming home at 8 the night before, was to harrass me about how his Father's Day gift, a blue ray box set of the six Star Wars movies wasn't here yet, even though it's in the stores finally.  I bought my own Mother's Day gift--something I already mentioned here--  and I'm still waiting to be given the money I was promised, and which I  already spent, on my birthday present, and I'm supposed to part the Red Sea to make sure he gets his present from me?

It's stupid, but it's a symptom of my relationship, which I'm coming to believe is irreperably broken.  He's an emotional infant, and yet I get to be patronized daily, despite the fact that I've  accomplished so much  in our time together, grown so much, and let's face it,  am by  far the more fiscally responsible.  I'm beginning to wonder if one of the obstacles to becoming debt free is the very person who bullies me about ever spending  on myself.