192: Petty, petty, petty ...

Our cleaner gets £56 for four hours' work.

Usually I minimise the coins by providing £55 in notes and £1. And, week in week out, I am the one at home and get this done.

I have had this debate with my wife before where She, on the other hand, feels it necessary to exert some control by giving more coins and fewer notes!!

So, today, She is home and I see about ten £1 coins piled up. 'We should get rid of our change. If she won't use a bank account, I am under no obligation to provide her notes.'

I mean, this is just petty. The person being paid is a cleaner - she does not earn much. Do you have to be inconvenient and load her down with coins? Petty, petty, petty ...

She asks me the other day whether I am playing golf on Sunday. Yes. 'Well, I'll go to Canary Wharf for shopping.' I can feel and see that she is unhappy - presumably upset that we are not going Christmas shopping.

But we have also spent almost £7000 going to Costa Rica for the Christmas holidays and her 50th. And I have transferred the £600 that goes to our individual accounts from our joint one every December

Anyway, I cancel the golf and tell her we are going shopping. Mood visibly lifts. 

Child.

191: Petty - but drip, drip, drip ...

 A couple of friends of my family - one of whom is also related to my wife - were due to visit over the weekend; one on Saturday and one on Sunday. I had asked her permission for both knowing that she would want to be involved.

I had also resolved that I really could not be bothered to cook and would get food in. But suddenly she decides to cook and, of course, I don't say no. But I know the stress ahead - everything last minute, kitchen a mess and stress (taken out on me / us) everywhere.

And that is what happens. I go to pick up the guest at about 6:30 on Saturday evening and the cooking has not even started. I come back and there is spilt milk all over the cooker. The plan was to watch the World Cup football quarter final together, Had I been cooking, all would have been done and dusted and ready to eat. 

Now, I could feel guilty about her cooking away while I watch the football but I don't - it is poor time management again and being a hero. We finally eat at 9 which was not the plan but the food is good and all is fine.

The next morning, I clean up half the kitchen and go to the gym. I come back and I can feel the tension. She asks me to unpack a new toaster she has bought. I go to throw away the bag and am told she wants to keep it to send other stuff back. I start to fold the bag prior to putting it away and am told that I am not doing it correctly! And so it continues, one petty instruction after another.

In the meantime, the induction cooker hob now looks to be permanently marked thanks to her - I can imagine the reaction had that been me!!! But I say nothing.

Today is Monday and I had been to the corner of Oxford Street and Regent Street to give blood for NHS Blood Donation and was relating the story - so I was conversing! 'Where exactly on the corner?' I confess I get annoyed and say 'what does it matter - you don't know every shop.' 'There is no need to be rude,' she says. Which is true but this need for irrelevant detail is irritating.

However, what I don't say is that it is a bit rich for her to talk about rudeness when our son and I have to put up with much worse every single, fucking day. She truly does not realise the effect she has on people.

190: The Job

 About two years ago now, she started a job at a small school.

I had always considered that M. was more enamoured about the idea of a job and its benefits than putting in the hard yards. But the role is tough, the school is strange, and she has buckled down over the last two years or more. She has bought herself a new car with the first year's earnings.

But there has been a lot of complaining throughout - when there was a boss who was completely hands-off and now when there is a boss who is clearly a micro-manager. The last few months mostly what I have heard is how she should get more holidays out of term time and what are her rights and so on. 

I had always believed that you needed to be doing really good work before getting frustrated and give the organisation every chance to recover the situation. But, yes, there can be bad bosses. The conversation, however, has not been about how she did a really good job here and there and was not rewarded - it has been about 'I work through lunch and so I should have more holidays in lieu.' Justifiable actually but narrow.

Today, she has gone to resign and blame that partly on racism - ironic given how often she judges others on playing 'the race card.'

And, actually, from the entries linked, it is surprising that she does not get on with a micro-managing, non-trusting, bullying boss - because that describes her as well! I have generally got on with hands-off bosses as they gel with my character. 

Anyway, I am being supportive and listening and not giving advice. I know from experience that sometimes there is no recovering the situation and crap bosses are crap bosses and it is best to move out. 

I did think about suggesting to her that she should not resign but basically work the minimum effort and continue looking for another job while in a job. Noting that, as the main earner, I would never have had the luxury of walking away. And she clearly does not remember her friend who took a job when her husband was made redundant and took a good while to find another role. This friend complained bitterly about her environment but put her head down and worked and still does so.

But, firstly, perhaps I was just never brave enough in my life to leave and, secondly, I do not want to be accountable in any way for her decisions - I have never been in the past and never tried to influence but always support. Yes, if I can leave her, then it is easier if she is in a job, or everything gets a lot more difficult, I suppose. Precisely because of that, however, I felt that my motives would be conflicted if I advised her not to resign.

So, I stay silent and wonder.

(and I have written about amnesia. In searching for the older entries, I come across other entries - Confidant: 73 - Yet more challenges to my value (dear-confidant.blogspot.com) and Confidant: 161: Trying - just trying (dear-confidant.blogspot.com) that remind about the anger and unhappiness that has rained down on me over the years. I will stay only because of pity and or duty - but that is not what she would want, right?)

189: Bursting into tears - don't know why

The other day I was watching an old episode of the West Wing where CJ Cregg goes home to Idaho and sees her father suffering from Alzheimer's. Suddenly, and this has happened twice in the car as well, I burst into hacking tears. I don't know why. Today (December 2nd) is my mother's birthday and the 6th is my father's death anniversary. On the 20th I turn 54 and I will become older than my beloved cousin. 

I wrote to my cousin's husband that I feel a lack of love around me. Who can I melt into? Who can actually just hold me? We were not that close emotionally, but I could with my parents, and I could with my cousin - with no words necessarily being said. Now, there is no one. Yes, friends would give me that comfort, but I would not want to burden them - they have their own lives. 

And, in the end, what does it matter? We all travel alone.

A few incidents:

She organises a trip to Brussels with her friend and gets the wrong month for the train and hotel bookings. They luck out and do not have to pay extra and now it is a funny story - but. boy, if I had been the culprit! 

Obviously, I do all that needs to be done at home in terms of shopping and washing - tasks I am not trusted with when she is home!

One morning, she specifically says before going to work, 'don't run the dishwasher, there's plenty of space for dinner things.' There isn't, there's a bunch of stuff in the sink, but I don't argue. At the end of the day, she spends an hour and half re-arranging things and there are as many glasses and things left over in the sink as there were in the morning - and I have to hang around because I cannot clean the rest of the kitchen until she moves away from the sink! Annoying in a petty way and I point out that her hour and a half of delay made no difference whatsoever other than stressing both of us out. 'You don't know how to load the dishwasher,' was her response.

The following weekend she is laid up in bed with a virus. I do everything again - quite rightly - but, given that it is winter, I put some of the clothes into the tumble dryer. 'You should not have done that. If you are going to do that, you need to let me know. His sports clothes don't go into the dryer.' (They had not and there was nothing wrong with any of the clothes I had put in.)

And, yet, while I am upset at the tone and the anger, ten minutes later it is all sweetness and light. Is that real, can it be real?! How can you be so nasty to someone whom you are nice to less than a half hour later? I confess I cannot turn anger off and on like that.

Bollocks.