I didn't get much done over the weekend. I was busy swimming and attending soccer games and such.

So yesterday, I told Beloved that I would go to the library for the entire afternoon, and that he should arrange for the kids to get home (they can walk on their own now, which is VERY nice), and that I would come home when dinner was ready, and please make dinner ready between 6:30 and 7, or actually, just plain old 7, thank you very much.

Then I got home, and I was a bitch. Not really to him ... but to the girls, and I came in and totally changed the atmosphere of the house - from him cooking peacefully and the girls peacefully hanging out in their room (getting along, even), and made the girls surly and it wasn't very nice.

I apologized to the kidlets, but not really to Beloved. (I didn't bitch at him.)

So then we sit down to dinner, and Beloved says "I haven't planned dinner for tomorrow night."

Now, it has been an intermittent rule in this house that on days he works until 6:30 (Tues. and Fri), I cook. Very intermittent. But I was afraid the rule was being invoked, and so I said:

"I can't do that. I'm not doing it tomorrow. I just can't handle doing dinner on top of all of this."

Yeah, nice of me.

We finished dinner at around 8 p.m. (maybe a little earlier), and I was just BEAT. The glass of wine I had probably contributed to that exhaustion (and I made a note of that fact), and I just .... sat. I thought about doing MORE work, since I'm still at least 6 hours behind the "paced program" that the all-knowing bar review company has us on, but I just ... couldn't. I thought about doing laundry, but that thought made me want to die. I was overwhelmed b/c the dishwasher hadn't been run and the sink and counters were covered with dinner and Beloved's lunch, and that morning's breakfast ....

I loaded the dishwasher, and sat on the couch with a mindless computer game. In between those two tasks, I went into the bedroom where Beloved was finishing up his latest writing project, and I said something about "fucking" and something about the kitchen and something about exhaustion, and I certainly didn't mean it would be fun to have sex on the table until exhausted. Actually, bar exam DOES NOT = sex.

5 minutes later, while I was sitting on the couch, Beloved came out of our bedroom (also known as "his office") and said, "sweetie, if you're really that tired, you go on to bed, and I'll take care of the kitchen."

I thought perhaps it would be wrong of me to take him up on it. After all, he cooked. And he's cleaned up the kitchen when it's actually MY job (he who cooks does not clean), but, I rationalized, he went back to bed this morning after the girls left, and I didn't. I went to class. Then I went to the library (after taking literally 8 minutes at home to wolf down some protein), and I worked for 5 hours straight.

So I went to bed. But he seemed grouchy with me --- he really wasn't grouchy when he came in and said he'd clean up. I don't know what happened in between. Perhaps the offer was actually a test. Perhaps it was because he was looking at hotels in Paris and Amsterdam, and was mad that I hadn't already taken care of it (although he's been to both cities, and I've been to neither, and the one time I thought I found a cool Paris hotel, he said it was in a bad area, too far from the center, and so I feel like I can't do it without him, and we're never together - either I'm working or he's writing).

I asked him if he was grouchy, and he said yes. I asked him why, and he said I shouldn't ask that kind of question ... or something.

Then he said he was upset b/c the bar exam makes me self-centered and makes me put everything off. Or something like that. I think the point was: all you talk about is law; all you want to do is study; you never do the laundry; the living room is a mess; and you are BORING."

So I went to sleep.

But then this a.m., I texted him, and said that I WOULD take care of dinner. But his phone was on the kitchen counter, and he was at work.

Tonight, though, I'm doing laundry. My 3rd and 4th loads are in the washer RIGHT NOW.

Labels: bar exam, beloved, housework, marriage, stress

posted by Zuska @ 7:17 PM

4 Comments:

At Wednesday, June 20, 2007 7:53:00 AM, E. McPan said…

You'll find your pace eventually, and you won't be going crazy about staying on the program so much. Bar time IS hard and stressful. Which is why I moved into a hotel for a month and lived alone.
At Wednesday, June 20, 2007 8:17:00 PM, Anonymous said…

point of clarification: you asked me what you could do to stop being such a terrible wife. that's when i said you could stop acting so self-centered all the time.

there was no "test" involved, i made a sincere offer.
At Wednesday, June 20, 2007 8:23:00 PM, Zuska said…

Woo hoo! Bickering on the blog!

I said "what can I do to be better" -- that was my Q.

And - if your offer was sincere, then I don't understand why the snottiness ensued. That's what made it seem a test.

Whatever. I'm trying harder now.

b/c I larve you.
At Saturday, June 23, 2007 11:25:00 PM, E. McPan said…

Awwww