Brave Little Gerda Faces the Cutting Winds

[Rita]

DnJ, I will not answer your other post right now because the car situation reared its head AGAIN. I don't know if I was a good student of your and Job's posts on that, just went back to my last thread to read that. I was planning to use the car this weekend and H told me he wasn't working at his job Thurs-Mon so I was planning to go somewhere today.But with my son it's always touch and go so I don't like to have to tell my H anything about plans. Wanted to go to our cabin but I always have to wait to see if S will agree to go on the day we are leaving and often he doesn't want to. Or it will be horrible weather, like today, and I can't face the drive and the cold by myself. (Fun with an H or with friends, alone rather lonely and difficult.)

But if I get into conditional use of car, I get those horrifying e-mails.

Rock and hard place.

Trying to follow your advice from the car posts you made seems like it will set me up for mean e-mails when/if I have to change the plans.

I haven't been able to use the car to go grocery shopping since he started this job. So I have to hang four bags of groceries on my bike and fill a heavy backpack to get groceries for the kids.

I used to sometimes on the spur of the moment decide to take the car to IKEA or to somewhere else that is far.

So I just don't want to ask him in advance for anything. I just want a schedule.

But your School of Gerda's Car Usage says that I can't do this.

And I know that the D will decide all this anyway soon enough.

But I want to stand up for myself because I need the car sometimes! And if I don't have the car to use, I am not paying for the insurance and repairs -- and I just noticed that he is using $10 of tolls every time he goes to work and it's all on my card. That's like 50 bucks a week! He sees my cards as the "family" card and believes that the family should pay for such things since I refuse to sell the house and thus it is my fault that he has no money.

I am not complaining but just giving an example of why it is hard to get free of this tar baby situation.

Just as example -- He is still thinking that this is his house and we are a family when it comes to using things in the household and paying for nothing. He also tends to eat all the eggs I buy, or if I bake, he will eat half of the cornbread though he doesn't eat carbs, will say to me, "Do we have any olive oil?" Or "We are out of butter."

And if you read the grocery acquisition line above, you can see that it's all annoying because it's so hard to get the groceries here! I alternate between getting mad about it and saying, "Well, he is my H and I said it was unconditional for me, and even with my enemy, I am to share all that I have." And I feel more peaceful with myself if I say nothing about the eggs and if I even offer him something of what I am making when I can muster the energy from my "being dark/dim."



So what do you think about the car? I have been trying to write an e-mail about it for the last half hour and to only make it two lines but nothing works for both the DnJ/Job school of car usage and for the actual ability to use the car and avoid getting a horrible e-mail about it.