about a boy

So I know I had a 50/50 chance of being right, and being right (in this case) has nothing at all to do with my intelligence or psychic abilities, but still I was delighted to get the news. I found out (via Facebook and later text message) that I was right about BB's (bipolar brother's) bun in the oven - it IS a girl. I'm actually a little sad for him, as I know he was looking forward to having a son and a namesake. (Did I mention he is BB the 3rd? Yeah, so bun was set to be the 4th... gag.) I am relieved for his girls, however, as relieved as I can be for future strippers, that they won't be subjected to the whole first born penis thing that colored my childhood. Though my husband thinks that by naming it I am perpetuating it, this gender inferiority complex, I am ignoring him because he is on his manstrual cycle.

You say you haven't noticed that men have a cycle too? Think about it. Your husband gets moody, right? Maybe even a little sullen. Certainly irritable. Sometimes downright irrational. He needs to be catered to, fed the right foods. He's tense. He doesn't want to talk about it. And then one day the fog lifts. He's had a night out, a great hike, or maybe just a nice blow job - and suddenly he's himself again. Until next time... The man cycle is not as regular as its female counterpart, but it is no less real.

My hubby's been PMSing big time since closing on his house and it is driving me crazy. Today we had the most annoying breakfast date where I stared across at a stoned faced version of my loving husband, knowing he wasn't (necessarily) seething at me, but he was seething all the same. I was hungover so I didn't try very hard to make conversation. Mostly I concentrated on coating my stomach with calories. Besides, I knew my hubby's mood was a lost cause since he'd just gotten laid the night before. If he could be simultaneously post coital and that grumpy, he was beyond repair.

Funny enough, he came home from his day (spent at the new house, of course) in a cheerful mood. He was battered and bruised and scraped and sore from trimming his overgrown tree. I pointed out that getting scraped up doesn't usually improve my mood, but he smiled and insisted that he felt much better for bleeding. (Ahem - bleeding brings an end to PMS - where have I heard that before?) Apparently his blood loss interrupted his thought pattern. (Exactly how I use alcohol...) So, yeah. My hubby is back. For now. But at this rate he could be PMSing again when he comes home from work. I'm not holding my breath.

I'm trying to avoid being an emotional sponge, but it's rough. I do have the cats around to make me bleed and redirect my thoughts. That's nice enough. But it's not enough, especially as the cats just remind me how stressful this move is going to be on all of us. So instead I spent the day trying not to notice how much stuff I still had to pack. It was irritating. I would've drank (again), but hair of the dog has never been my thing. Anyway, it didn't help that I discovered some packing casualties (already). My hubby, brain all addled by hormones, had stacked a giant heavy box on top of a stack of tiny delicate boxes, crushing the contents of the top box (my dried roses). I guess, whatever, he gave me the roses so he can crush them if he wants, but still, this stack job was completely uncalled for and illogical.

I did just finally make a bit of progress with the packing. I just wish I were less scattered. I have emptied most of my closet, most of my armoire, most of my breakables, some of my desk. I have emptied all of nothing. Oh, but I have totally filled the staging area with boxes and crates. In fact, I'm starting to worry that the 22 foot truck and its 1200 cubic feet of space will not be enough. I just wonder where all this crap came from. We lived in a studio before moving in. Somehow, nine years later, I am surrounded by stuff. I guess this explains my equally suffocating credit card debt.

Ugh. I can't even think about my debt. That almost makes me want to get back to packing. Or bed.

doing the math

One of my favorite things about this pink apartment building we have here (besides the privacy, of course) is that we don't have to post all the time. This is my vacation home, my play house, my getaway, and so I don't have to apologize for not posting. Though I do wish I had been posting, since I intended to keep you informed about my weight loss and debt management and my sobriety. Have you done the math yet? No posting = no progress. In fact, no posting = more weight, more debt, and a few very notable hangovers. So, you're thinking, at least no posting = no more fighting with hubby? Wish that was true, but the year continued to be rocky. Now that it is more than half way over, I think our fighting is mostly over, too. He went ahead and bought the house but he kept his mitts off "my" money and I kept my name of his property. I know I won't have distance if it really blows up financially, but I feel distant, and that is all I could do. Trouble is, I really am distant now, as he's had the keys four whole days and has spent every single one of them over at his new house.

Certainly I am more than welcome to hang out at his new house but I am busy packing for my own move which takes place in 3 short weeks. 3 weeks. So clearly this is why I am inspired to update my blogs. Procrastination is so my style. Anyway, hubby swears he'll be joining me at my new place soon enough, but we'll see. In the meanwhile, he's sharing his house with his brother / tenant, his brother's girlfriend, their two dogs, their one cat, and their assorted reptilian / amphibian pets. Already he is perturbed - by their early move in (he thought they'd wait until the painting was done), by their hamburger eating dog (self explanatory?), by the girlfriend's crazy ideas about renovations (with the brother encouraging him to play along for the sake of peace, assuring him he will rein in the ideas before they happen), and even by their desire to have a gas stove (electric sucks, I know, but beggars can't be choosers and they were begging to live in his house...). And me, I say bring it on, boyfriend. (I do actually call my husband "boyfriend" cuz he was my boyfriend for like 12 years before he became my husband. It confuses people, though, who know I am married when I talk about my boyfriend cuz they think I am having an affair...) Anyway, I am not wishing for this house situation to blow up on him completely (as in financially), but I am loving that the roommate thing is already strained. Cuz the less he wants to live here the more he will do to earn the money he should have before he got a mortgage and the sooner he will want to live with me in the snow.

So, yeah, I was finally rejected from my "reach" school - the same day we got the house keys, come to think of it. I saw it coming, of course, (delusion and reassurance can only take a girl so far), and, actually, I am totally fine cuz I personally think the situation I ended up with is even better (I swear, no sour grapes involved). I am at a slightly lesser (still fabulous) school with a super gigantic (as in full) scholarship. This news, the scholarship, helped me cope with the impending mortgage, in fact, cuz one of my fears was that both my husband and I were about to take on six figure debt at the same time. (And six figures + six figures = twelve figures, obviously...) I'm still taking out loans, but just for living expenses. I'm also getting help from the parents, which kills me cuz I wouldn't need it as much (if at all) if not for this house thing, but whatever. In my family money = love and it's my turn for some love.

Which brings me to the other thing I'll probly post alot about here - my bipolar brother who sponges off the parents on the regular. This alone does not disturb me much, but his at-least-as-crazy-but-half-as-diagnosed wife is a piece of work and you just know they've done some breeding. Their girls are actually turning out pretty cute, despite their best efforts to turn them into drug addicts and strippers. But now there is another bipolar bun in the oven and rumor has it is a boy. I'm not playing along until I see the penis on the ultrasound but they are so EXCITED cuz it's a BOY and the pee test they got from Walgreen's says so. Anyway, I know I am just bothered by all this boy business because:

• a) they have no business having another kid when they can't afford the ones they have.
• b) they have no business having another kid when they should be getting a divorce instead to end their domestic violence cycle before my brother ends up in jail for good (or before he kills himself or his wife or his wife and himself...).
• c) they are just over stimulating and annoying in general.
• d) I have a lot of residual gender issues due to my dad's obvious favoritism towards our family's first born penis (the bipolar brother).

But that's enough about the brother for now. Thinking about him makes me sad - for him, for me, for his kids, for his wife, for my parents, for my siblings... Bipolar is bad enough but BB (bipolar brother) also suffered some bad parenting (sorry Mom and Dad). I often wonder who he might've been if my parents weren't total codependent enablers. How different we all might be if my dad had addressed his violence, had gotten him treatment, had ever said even once that it is not okay to hit girls and it is not okay to talk to your mother that way. But now is not the time to get into all of that...

What I will not be blogging about here is cats and cat pee, cuz that seems to be the theme of my regular blog. Riveting, I know. So now you have another clue about the real me. I am a crazy cat lady, apparently. Not really sure how that happened. It kind of sneaks up on you, I guess.

Oh, but since I brought it up last time (in my only other post), I will say this about cat pee. Thanks to my newest cat's peeing preferences, our bedside rug has been banished to the landfill, never to return again. As a result, my husband has finally been forced to find a disposable method to dispose of the product of his self loving. I think, actually, that he would prefer to keep using the floor as a target but he has reconsidered ever since I pointed out that this practice was ruining the wood floors that we as tenants do not own. (Of course he vehemently denied he was the source of the "water damage" but I watch enough CSI to know the splatter pattern isn't consistent with rain coming in off the door...) Gross, I know, and TMI, but that's what being a Constance is all about. And it's not like I told you how I discovered his man juice disposal system when we kept the bed in the other (carpeted) room. Um, yeah, that was when I followed a trail of ants to find them feasting off of it.

I guess somebody's got to swallow, right?

Or have I said too much?