Bits and Pieces of my life

We had made it through 1999, and into 2000. That next summer we put up fencing to enlarge the pasture, we worked on establishing a lawn, we finished the shop (cement floor and siding) and seemed to be fighting all the time. We had a lot of good times too, but it seemed that we both had real short fuses, and ended up screaming at each other over little things. Then one day it hit me, I was the reason we were fighting so much. My husband has always had a hot temper, and always leaned toward complaining about things. I’m the optimistic one, always with an encouraging word or soft answer to help cool his anger. I had gotten tired of his complaining every time we had to do something, and I wasn’t tolerant any more. If he’d start complaining, I’d tell him he was a whiner, he’d yell back and we’d be off to the races. It seemed like no matter what we did together, it would end up in a screaming match.

I’ve never been much of a screamer. My kids learned early on that if you got Mom mad enough that she really hollered at you, you were in BIG trouble. My husband takes very little to set him off, but he’ll get hot and holler and cool down and get on with things. When I get worked up enough to loose my temper, I take a long time (maybe a day or so) to cool back down. So over the years I’ve learned to pretty much ignore my husband’s temper tantrums, and he’ll get over it quickly and we can get back to work.

But I wasn’t doing that anymore. As soon as he’d start complaining about something, I’d be all over him. One of his favorite complaints was a variation of the “I don’t have time to relax” or “We never do anything but work on this $#)%) place” and the madder he was, the more explicatives he’d use. I hate swearing, and if there is one thing about my husband I’ve always really disliked, it’s his swearing.

And we were working hard. We’d both get up early and go to work (we carpooled) then get home 12 hours later and try to do things on the house. It’s a ton of work trying to carve a home out of raw acreage. And my husband did want it all done now. He hated not having a nice yard, he hated not having his shop finished, he hated not having time to kill the poison ivy on the hill, he hated that we had to park our cars outside because we didn’t have the garage built. My husband likes to use the word “hate” and I was taught you only used that word for things you really, truly disliked. But I did grow to hate listening to my husband complain about the life we were living.

And one day we had a really big fight. He was just reiterating his usually litany about how much he hated all the work he had to do, and I really lost it. I told him if he couldn’t handle the hard work of living in the country and having land, he could take his #*&%)#& a$$ back to the city and live in his little suburban house and gripe about the neighbors, and the noise, and the traffic, and the stink, and he could do it all without me, because I wasn’t going back. Then I accused him of being a spoiled city puke, who couldn’t handle the hard work required if you wanted to own more than a nice suburban lot. And of course, my ace in the hole – “I never wanted to build anyway, you talked me into it, I KNEW it would be this much work, I TOLD you that and you didn’t believe me. Now I’m working just as hard as you, so SHUT THE F!!!! UP!!!”

Some may say, “Wow, I bet that made your husband stop and think” but you don’t know my husband, and I had just challenged him, he was not going to back down. I know better than that, because he won’t quit until he’s won. He learned from a master, someone who can fight nastier than anyone else, his mother. It’s amazing what hurtful things you can dredge up when you don’t care what you say, you just want to make the other person stop first. My husband use to get in screaming matches with our then teenage daughter, and I would tell him he should just stop, and not let it escalate until he had her in tears. He needed to just back down and not rise to the bait. He replied “but then she wins”. I told him I expected one of them to be the adult. If she didn’t like his decision, he didn’t have to argue the point with her, he could just walk away.

My husband and daughter don’t fight any more, she “grew up” and learned that she could sweet talk her daddy and get whatever she wants.

I guess the whole point is that I started arguing back. And my husband was not going to ever let me win a screaming match, so he’d pull out all the stops, and say some very hurtful things until he’d gone to far and I’d shut up. Which was all he wanted, for me to shut up. And then he’d walk away and cool down and half an hour later, he’d wonder why I was still mad at him. We hurt each other more during that time than we had when we were first married. Our dream of living out in the country was turning into a nightmare.

So one day I sat down and asked my husband if he knew why we were fighting so much, and he (probably assuming I would blame him anyway) said that he was under a lot of stress, and complaining a lot more. I told him “no, you’ve always complained like this, it’s that I don’t tolerate it any more”. That did take him back a bit. We got to talking and he came to the realization that even though I didn’t complain all the time, I wasn’t any happier about our situation than he was. And I told him he had a choice to make. He could walk away from it all, or he could choose to stay. He used the “and now I’m trapped” rational for his irrational behavior so often.

“If you hate it so much here, you can walk away”

“No I can’t, I’m trapped, this place is sucking the life out of me”

“No, you CAN walk away, you can get in your car right now and leave. I won’t stop you.”

“But we’ve put so much into this place; we’ll never get the money back”

“I didn’t say anything about selling, I said you could leave.”

He considered that for a bit and said
”If you won’t come with me, then you’re trapping me here”

“No I’m not. I’ve made up my mind, I’m not moving back into the city. I was raised on a farm; I knew it would be a lot of work having land. You said you wanted to live in the country and raise livestock and grow hay. It’s a lot of work, and if you can’t cut it, go back to the city without me.”
“But I never have time to relax, to sit around and not do anything anymore”

“Welcome to country life, if you can’t cut it, give it up. Go back to your suburban yard that only takes you 2 hours a week to take care of, and then you can spend the rest of your time watching TV, complaining about your neighbors and how much you hate living in the city. But if you decided to stay, accept that it’s your CHOICE and stop complaining all the time, because I can’t take it any more”

And I walked away, leaving him to think it over.

My husband didn’t leave, and though we still had our moments, the constant complaining and fighting stopped. He wanted the country life we’d planned, and he wanted that life with me in it. I tried harder to ignore his moments of temper, when something went wrong or he injured himself when a tool slipped or he hit the wrong nail with his hammer. Aiming for a roofing nail and hitting a thumb nail can make anyone swear a blue streak.

I spent a lot of time during that summer and fall trying to come to terms with my feelings toward my husband. There were days I asked myself if I still loved him.

We were both having problems on the employment side too. My husband had hated his job for some time. He loved the work he did, but hated the environment he worked in. And that I couldn’t fault him for, he really did have an awful situation to work in. Most people think we are making things up when we talk about the situation, but if you’ve ever worked for a psychotic boss, you would understand.

My work wasn’t so bad; I only worked for a boss whose main concern was figuring out how he could finance his next vacation. The company made a habit of paying at least 60 days late. Part of my job was deciding which vendors would get paid, and dealing with a constant stream of collection calls. And no matter how hard I worked at it, if they got past me and talked to the boss, he’d promise they’d get the money and I’d be left trying to figure out where it was going to come from. The boss also didn’t want the rest of the employees to think the company was not doing great, so when other departments would get raises or equipment, he’d always ask me “but can we really afford it” when it came for anything dealing with the Accounting department. Both my husband and I wanted to find new jobs, but finding a new job is a lot of work, and we were both so busy with working on the home, it was just another thing to do some time in the future.

We were heading into the fall of 2001. During that time, I’d sold some horses and bought more. I now had a yearling gelding and a weanling filly, along with my husband’s quarter horse that we’d brought with us from Minnesota. As much as I had dreamed of owning horses like this, they were turning into just another drag on my time. Everything seemed to be a chore. I kept telling myself it would get better once we got done with our building. We still had the garage to build, but the shop, barn and pasture were done. We had also got the hay field established, and our yard had finally stopped heading toward the barn every time it rained. I’d given up on having a vegetable garden the summer before, and my flower bed was mostly weeds. But things were turning up. We had plans to buy a tractor that fall, and the company I worked for was starting to climb out of the hole they were in. And then 9/11 happened. My boss had been counting on introducing a new product at a trade show the middle of September, and the show was cancelled. He sold to other businesses, and many of his customers decided to cut back and wait things out. That winter everyone had their hours and pay cut 15%. The cutback in hours didn’t affect me all that much, I was salary. But I still got the pay cut. With the company still struggling to make payroll, the boss asked me what his options were, and I recommended he cut some upper management positions, one of which was mine. That may seem strange to some, but this company didn’t need me. I’d trained my assistant in the day to day operations, and she could handle that fine. She could ask the CPA firm if she had any questions if something arose she wasn’t sure how to handle. She was starting a family, and wanted to stay working there, I’d wanted to leave for a while. In March of 2002, my boss took me up on the offer. I had the choice of staying until I found something new, or taking a severance package of 5 weeks pay. I chose the severance package, and was finally out of there.