H texted me this morning asking to meet at Starbucks to give D her medicine. We meet and he says he is interested in getting some boots he has been looking at from bar. So I offer to go there with him to get them with my employee discount (as my spouse, he gets the discount too).
He hurt his foot while walking around in NY...seems he may have a stress fracture (from walking??) so he's limping and hobbling.
A little history: H is never minority injured. When he's in pain or sick it's always at 11 and he needs pain killers and to see a doctor. I don't know whether he is just physically fragile or whether he has no pain threshold but whatever.
On the drive to the mall he was calculating when he could take his next pain pill out loud, very attention seeking if you ask me.
I don't want to belittle his pain, which I was known to do in our marriage young it is hard to believe he is in excruciating pain all the time, you know. Headaches, foot pain, hip pain, back pain, neck pain... All at 11 on a pain scale so it's hard not to mentally roll my eyes about it all. Plus he's very verbal about it, which just isn't my style. If my foot hurts and I can't walk around the mall, I'll say, "my foot really hurts, I think I should stay off it". He wants to be seen as the fighting hero, but dude, it's boots at the mall, you're not saving the world here by hobbling on your foot but it's not a battle I want to fight with him so I said nothing.
We talked about the upcoming week's schedule. D is off on Monday and Tuesday but I work both days. Something he has never had to face in her whole life. Whenever D has had a day off school he has NEVER had to rearrange his schedule. Things are different now that I have a job outside of the house.
He said his mom could watch her. I told him I was uncomfortable with that given that in the past, d has been found IN THE ROOF while in their care. They can't drive her around and aren't diligent enough to keep her safe. His father is infirm and his mom can't keep up and gets tired easily. Not a good babysitting situation for a very active and adventurous 7-year old.
He didn't like me putting my foot down but eventually agreed. No arguing or even harsh words. Just me calmly stating that her safety is paramount and it's not when she is with his parents.
He seemed super stressed out by the situation and my instinct has always been to "fix" it and make it easier on him. Instead, I decided to sit mindfully in the moment trusting that a good solution would come about and that stressing about it would only cloud my head.
Low and behold, H said he'd take those two days off if I could manage the rest of the week so he could work longer hours those days. No problem!!
Wow. What an amazing thing to witness. We both handled the situation well, but I chose not to let his stress make me react, give too much of myself so I become resentful and hurry through the discomfort to fix the problem.
I'm so impressed with myself. Hahaha!
Also, I came home from work last night and two of our three stools under the counter were gone. H asked if he could use them at his apartment over a month ago. He decided to take them while I was out of the house yesterday and not mention it.
I approached him about it this morning very casually and I could tell he got defensive at first but I could also see he tried to understand. He said he'd let me know next time he came into the house when I wasn't home.
I feel like that's a common sense boundary and for the sake of avoiding confrontation I'd have said nothing but harbored a lot of hurt and resentment about it until I just exploded.
I feel like it's a tiny bit of cake eating. Yes, your name is on Title of the house but you no longer live here so you don't get to just come and go as you please just as I don't enter without permission into his apartment (not that I've been invited to even see it). And to not even mention it, like in a text. "Hey, is it ok if I take those stools, I noticed you're not home but I'm available to get them now". That would have been just fine!
Anyway, I think I did a good job of handling that.
Photo session tonight with a difficult client. She just emailed me yesterday saying her 7-year old broke his arm but they still want to go forward with the session. Ouch! Poor little guy.
