November 1, 2007

  • I'm happy to report Zazu has come through the surgery. Today the vet apologised for not phoning me last night. She said she finished the surgery shortly after midnight and thought that if she called that late it might freak us out, thinking something bad had happened. Anyway, Zazu is now peeing unassisted for the first time in a week. He's on a pain patch and is stoned out of his gourd. He's wearing a collar and has bitter stuff on his stitches to keep him from licking it. When i visited this afternoon, Dr. Bonnie asked me to try to feed him, but it was no good. Anything I put in his mouth, he spat out. I'm hoping when he's a bit less stoned he'll start eating again. She said he was eating well until right before the surgery, so she expects he'll be alright. He's not out of the woods yet, but he's through surgery and that's a big step.

    Tonight Gilly and I got pizza from the place next door and ate it in the apartment building's lobby. I was dressed as Columbia from Rocky Horror Picture Show and Gilly was dressed as a bee. I grabbed a bag of silly hats and antlers and wigs and stuff from the Tickle Trunk and dressed up all the old people that were sitting in the lobby waiting for kids to come. We had a great time joking around, taking silly pictures, and eating candy. Somebody brought out dog cookies, which was good because we had more dogs than kids show up. Jeff, the superintendent, was determined not to dress up, but I chased him down the hallway in my 4-inch bitch boots and later snuck up on him and put a furry pimp hat on him. Theresa was ready and waiting with the camera, and all was well. When everyone decided to call it a night, I filled a bag with candy and will take it to Kim and Terry's Halloween party on Friday night.

    When we got upstairs Gilly and I decided to watch a scary movie. Nothing very good was on TV, so I said we should rent a Saw movie. Gilly had only seen the first one, and I had seen the first two. Gilly wanted me to go out on my own and get it, but I convinced her to run across the road with me to the convenience store to pick it up. We wore silly hats for this trip as we had already removed our costumes.

    We rented Saw 2, made tea and sat down to enjoy our movie. It was fun. It ended about midnight, and thus began our first major "spousal" argument since moving in together.

    We have not done dishes in nearly a week. Actually, I have not done dishes in nearly a week. Gilly hasn't done them in two weeks. Last week was so busy I ended up doing all the dishes by myself on Friday, along with packing for camp, cleaning the bathroom, changing the litter box, going to the vet, and doing laundry. When Gilly got home I said I wanted the dinner dishes washed and the garbage emptied before we left as it was full of raw meat scraps, but neither of those got done.

    On Sunday night we looked after the immediate post-camp needs and decided to leave unloading the car for another day. On Monday, Gilly had band, so I didn't do dishes as I was waiting for her to be available to help. On Tuesday I had choir. Today I had to take Teffy to the vet, visit Zazu and try to get him to eat, go to my anxiety management group, and go to the aesthetics school. Now, a morning at the spa sounds like just a pampering, but this was more like a medical treatment. My face has been covered in blackheads for a couple of weeks and I finally found the time to get them extracted and treated. My back was sore from camp and from lifting boxes of magazines for a guy that came to look for one in my dad's collection yesterday, so I got a massage as well. So yes, it was relaxing, but it was also very necessary and long overdue. I still have a list of things I need to get done tomorrow while Gilly's at work, that I didn't have time to do today.

    So it's been a busy week, and aside from doing some cleaning in the living room I haven't managed to accomplish much between my own doctors' appointments and taking both cats to the vet, and calling the bank and lawyer to try to figure out what the hell my mom is talking about this week. I haven't had a chance to start my appeal letter for CPP or follow up with the MPP's office about my ODSP questions. I got my quote for camera repairs in the mail two days ago, and yesterday I finally got it filled out and in the envelope for warranty application but have not yet found an opportunity to mail it.

    The garbage still hadn't been changed yesterday nor the cat box scooped, so I asked Gilly and she did those things. I took a load of recycling down yesterday. I spent a good chunk of yesterday trying to put things away in the living room. I had supper ready for Gilly when she came home from work.

    So tonight the movie ended at midnight and I said we needed to do some, but not necessarily all, of the dishes. Gilly moaned about it, saying she was too tired. The dish pile is at critical mass point, where the pile is threatening to fall off the counter and smash on the floor. It's covering all countertops, one side of the sink, and the top of the stove, plus a few dishes in the living room. I started running th water and said we'd do 10 minutes of washing before bed.

    Apparently this plan was unreasonable. Gilly flew into a rage, saying she just had to get to bed. When I pointed out that she goes to bed around 1AM every night anyway, she got ridiculously defensive and started hurling harpoons at me. Well, not literal harpoons, but she was doing her damndest to make me look evil. I felt like I was fighting with Mom.

    Gilly accused me of forcing her to do chores at inappropriate times and of nagging her to get things done. I said she could do them whenever she wanted, but in the quarter of a year we have now lived together she has only once done dishes without me asking her to do so. Then the accusation turned to me always requiring her to do dishes with me, rather than letting her do them alone. Well, I always figured it was better to ask for assistance to do the dishes than it was to demand she do them all herself, but honestly I would be happy if she decided to take the initiative and do them when I'm not around. I've done that a few times, but stopped doing it when I started to feel like Gilly's maid. I mentioned that there's plenty of opportunity to do dishes without me around, or she could just tell me she wanted to do the dishes alone and I'd be just fine with that. Tonight, even if I'd wanted to I couldn't have done the dishes myself as I ripped half my thumbnail off in a freak potato peeler accident a couple of days ago and my thumb has to stay dry and bandaged for a while. I was employing my usual tactic of proposing we tackle a large task together, with her washing and me drying. I don't see why this had to turn into a huge argument.

    I will go away for several days, and upon returning the apartment looks the same or worse than it did when I left. The couch is still covered in random stuff, the carpet isn't vacuumed, the dishes are still piled up, pizza box on the counter, cat water fountain near empty and dirty, old krusty cat bowls on the counter, recycling and garbage full, bathroom not cleaned, laundry piled high. Tonight Gilly told me she got the housework done before I moved in with her, but every time I visited her kitchen was a disaster area, I filled the garbage can with the garbage I picked up from the living room, and the bathroom hadn't been cleaned. When Gilly left her old apartment she told me she had never cleaned her bathroom in the eleven months she'd lived there. Since I moved here three months ago I've done the bathroom four times, which I think is far below the number of times I would like to find time to clean it.

    So my problem is quality of living. I've come from years of living in my mother's filth, her shit and piss and garbage and old food and dirty laundry. I didn't try to clean up after her much because it was futile. Having moved out I would like to prevent living in a situation like that again, and the only way to do so is to keep up the housework on a regular basis. However, this apartment is inhabited by two adults who are equally able to do the housework and approximately equally busy. Gilly seems to think my days are spent sitting around picking my nose, but in reality I spend my days running around to appointments and trying to do as much as I can before I conk out. Yes, some days I can't get out of bed, but most days that's not the case. Regardless of this, Gilly still shot at me, "I'm at work all day and you're at home."

    Now, I don't mind being in charge of bathroom cleaning and doing a little more on the housework side because I do have slightly more time. I cook the meals when I have time and energy to do so, and I stay on top of grocery shopping and car maintenance and stuff. BUT, I am not Gilly's maid. When I first moved in here I was telling Ellen what I did all that week, and she pointed out that I was falling into the same pattern I was with my mother - just doing things for her instead of getting her to be responsible for her own shit. When I said I did laundry for both me and Gilly, she asked why I would do that when Gilly should be doing her own laundry. I told her about my telling Gilly I wanted the bathroom cleaned before each party, and Gilly pooh-poohing it, and Ellen later told Gilly straight-out that she thought it was important to clean the bathroom for guests coming, even if it never happened any other time. Every time I mention housework around Ellen, she reminds me to draw lines, and I get frustrated trying to figure out how to draw lines but still make sure I don't end up living in squalor again because Gilly has low standards of cleanliness. I'm trying to break the pattern I've been living in my whole life, but whenever i express this to Gilly, she just doesn't see her part in the pattern. It's like we need marriage counselling, but Gilly would rather just pretend I'm the whole problem. Ellen says it's learned behaviour, and as I write this I see it - My mom was always willing to go for counselling, even though she had issues with understanding things properly, and my dad just wanted to pretend their dysfunctional marriage was all Mom's fault and not bother even attempting communication with her.

    If Gilly steps up and does some housework without me asking, I won't be asking her to do housework so much. Pretty simple, isn't it? When I've previously tried to tell her this she tries to turn it around on me and say that if I stopped asking her to do housework she would do it, but when I repeatedly go away for days or even go out for a whole evening and Gilly's home alone, nothing at all is done. I start nagging at what I call "critical mass", when I can no longer tolerate the living conditions as they are. Unfortunately we seem to reach critical mass about three times monthly.
    That's not at all cool, and this needs to change.

    This entry is not a Gilly-bashing entry. It's getting things off my
    chest that I have been unable to tell Gilly in a way that she would
    hear me. I needed to go to bed over an hour ago, but before I could
    sleep I needed to get this stuff out of me because it's really
    bothering me. I really hope Gilly sees it for what it is, considers
    my point of view and meets me in the middle.