Sunday, March 30, 2014

Sunday nonsense

It's another Sunday, so of course that means my wife would be stepping out of line again. It's the only day of the week I get to take a break from work, and she just has to find a way to cause trouble to make it as uncomfortable as possible for everyone else.

I took my son out for a five hour trip to the beach and a windmill, two of our favorite hotspots. My wife, of course, didn't want to come, like she never does. While out, she called me five times, but I didn't pick up because I was busy driving most of the time. So what did she want?

She recently took day work instead of the graveyard shift and has a lot more to do every day before she can go home. I've advised her to change her thoughts, multitask more, talk to her boss or quit her job and stop wasting money on luxuries to break even, but she's only followed through on suggestion 3, otherwise content to come home in a bad mood every night to spread her unhappiness as far and wide as possible. It's just unacceptable that she could proactively do something else to better her circumstances.

So when I got back with our son, I got a little whining about how she was worried something had happened to us, even though our son and I had been out for twice as long before and she had no problems then. Then she whined about a bad dream she had about her work, and after I repeated my advice in its entirety yet again, I got the silent treatment, for which I was thankful.

Then she got a call from her mom and my wife started yelling at her for several minutes, hung up on her and called her back later to yell some more, then complained to me yet again about my mother-in-law's behavior. I ignored her, because that's the only response that quiets her, and she never listens to me anyway. Later, she said that she should apologize to her mom, showing yet more ignored advice that I'd already given: not flying off the handle and dealing with your anger is easier than going ape, then apologizing later. But of course, she ignored me then too, so once she spoke to me again, I just said, "Yeah." Then I ignored her some more to play with my son.

Give her advice, be ignored. Lecture her, be insulted. Dismiss her, invite rage. Ignore her, achieve peace. Where is that girl I used to know?

Right. Marriage swallowed her.

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Rolling the boulder

September.
November.
January.

And now March. Every two months, almost on the nose, my wife seems to have a new s*** test to hand me. And today was no exception.

It really was a minor thing, but she should have known better. I just came home from eleven hours of work and commuting and made $125, $5 of which was going into my own pocket. I shed my clothes to prepare for a shower, and not three minutes from the time I entered the apartment, there my wife was standing behind me, holding a sock. She held it out to me and asked me to put it in a box that was two steps from me, three from her. I shook my head in derision at her, then turned away to get a bath towel.

If you don't see the problem with this, then you're obviously not a married man. I've discussed how I used to do these little jobs, chores and errands for my wife in the past, and how it led to her being a selfish, lazy, disrespectful, demanding shrew who had me maintain the entire house while she sat around and did nothing. The more I helped, the more contempt she handed me, and the more jobs she expected me to take care of. If I had taken that sock, the next s*** test would have arrived in a month, then the next in two weeks, and so on until we were back where we were three years ago.

You cannot stop s*** tests, as they are in a woman's nature; you may as well attempt to stop the sun from rising. But at least if you're an unmarried man, you can accept these tests as fair trade for whatever you're sharing or receiving in your relationship. Try to keep things that way; don't be an idiot like me and end up trading your dreams, your free time, 95% of your money and almost all choice in life in exchange for sex once a month and the non-step tests of marriage.

While I'm posting, I just noticed it's almost April. I can't believe that eleven months have passed since the last anniversary of this blog... so little of consequence has happened in this pitiful life of mine that almost an entire year has slipped by without my attention on it. Hopefully this will keep up for the next thirteen years, when I can finally escape this nonsense and go back to living.

Sunday, March 16, 2014

Games vs games

After I cancelled a pair of classes on Sunday and finally dropped a triple tutoring session that I had for over two years on Saturday night, I finally found myself with a night and an entire day to call my own, the first time in literal years. My son and I spent the entirety of yesterday in the bedroom roughhousing, or with us on the computer by me moving and aiming and him blasting, demons in Doom, splicers in BioShock 2 and radscorpions in Fallout 3, or both of us taking out Greebles in Skylanders... you name it. My wife, as usual, didn't want to join or watch, and was instead reading something or internet shopping the whole time.

It was at about the middle-end of our session when my son and I came to Jedi Academy. We had just finished the ship crash, and came to the part where we had to cut the tree down to make a bridge to help our friend Rosh down from the hill. If this sounds familiar, then you've probably been reading this blog for a while now.

So as my son and I came to the part where my wife had once watched me play, and had before spent almost an hour with complete focus doing so, she flipped the ever-loving hell out.

"God, I hate my job!! People always tell me what to do. Bosses, bad customers, I just wanna say f*** you!!"
"Then quit and find a new one."
"I shouldn't have to find another one! I'm college educated! I'm not working at a food place!"
"Talk to your bosses."
"What good would that do?!"
"They'll change your hours or give you an assistant."
"No they won't!"
"Change your mind and think positive. Don't let the bad customers get you."
"That doesn't work!! They're in my face! How am I supposed to think happily then?!"

Have we been here before? Yes: I give her a handful of good suggestions, she makes excuses or lies to receive pity (being positive always worked before, I never said she had to work at a food place so that's a strawman, etc...), and we keep going until she gets tired. After the last disrespectful sentence, I ignored her and went back to Jedi Academy with my son. He then asked her why she was changing the channel so much.

"Because I haven't found something to watch yet."
"Oh."
(A few seconds later)
"Are you done switching?"
"Fine! I'm done switching! Are you happy?!"

Having cultivated a more powerful presence, which married men in western countries have little to no ability to do, I simply said:

"All right, that's enough."
"FINE! I'M DONE WITH THE TV!!"

She turned it off, stomped off into the bedroom, then locked the door. She came out a few minutes later to use the bathroom, then left the house with no mention of where she was going. I guess she thought she was punishing everyone, but I was glad when she left the room, even gladder when she locked the door into the bedroom, and the happiest when she left the house. I was hoping she would stay out for a few hours, but unfortunately, she was back in only one. She didn't apologize, but she bought a toy for our son and an apple for me, which is a typical way that families try to get back into good graces with the other family members they've wronged without saying sorry.

Still want to marry? The happy times I had today were with my son, not my wife; surrogacy or adoption will help you, unmarried or childless reader, to have the child that will enrich your life. Getting married will only poison your short time on this earth.

As for me, I again point to the fact that my wife always does this on Sunday. Just as Jedi Academy served as a dual reminder of how she acted before and how she acts now, I remember when Sunday was the day we used to hole up in my apartment to spend time together or have sex. Instead, she now has nothing but refusals for the former and excuses for the latter; she's only here to soak up resources and cause problems, and I can't leave as long as we have a child together.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Deja vu

I came home from a long train ride to a city about 40 miles away where I work on Wednesdays. It's the only day where I come home at my son's bedtime, and he and I can't play video games for the night. He's still a young boy, so every time I explain to him that he has to go directly to bed when I get home on Wednesdays, he gets a bit huffy. Yesterday was no different: I told him we had to sleep and he got miffed, but at that moment, I had a sudden and strange feeling that I had done exactly this just the day before. Of course it had been an entire week since, but at that moment, it felt like a simple 24 hours.

I used to keep a feature on this blog called "Daily Life," which detailed in boring list format the day that I had just lived as a married man. Eventually, I recognized that my Then and Now posts were more than enough to show that routine boredom that I and millions of other married schlubs slog through every day, and that the Daily Life posts were just cluttering things up. But the point remains solid: married life is mostly a series of the same list of required chores and activities that seldom deviates from the established script of wake up, go to work, go home, chores, family time and sleep.

Yesterday's deja vu was simply a reminder of how inconsequential most of my married life is. So little of import had happened between yesterday and the Wednesday before that an entire week had slipped by before I realized I was still alive.