ANYWAY, in the midst of all of my anger, I kept thinking “Man, I really want a divorce. Like tomorrow.” Can’t list all the reasons, because then I’ll get mad again. But mainly they were because my husband is not really taking care of stuff, which is forcing me to take care of way, way too much stuff. I am working from 9am to 9pm myself right now, having a baby in 6 weeks, have a 7 year old at home from school, taking him and his brother to lessons for stuff, plus husband still working from 9am to 2am each day…I really need my husband to pull his own weight. And he can’t seem to….plus he was getting an attitude when I get testy due to all of this. Sometimes he’s just so out of touch…

So I was really down and feeling quite angry. Then suddenly I made a horrible mistake. AND THIS WAS A STROKE OF LUCK THAT HAPPENED RIGHT IN TIME. We got my husband’s car registration stickers in the mail, but I forgot to give them to him.

So, he got a parking ticket for not having the registration. But not just any ticket. A ticket that requires him to go to DMV or a police station, get a signature from an official, and only THEN can he send the fine. Oh my. And this is all because there aren’t stickers on his license plate (the stickers I had on my desk for um…days? or maybe weeks???).

I apologized to him. His response: no response. As in, he acted totally normal and calm and nice. How could a person act calm and nice after getting that kind of ticket? I don’t know–perhaps we should all ask my husband.

Also, we had a little chat. Before the parking ticket, about his attitude at my testiness over him not pulling his own weight. I told him he needs to get back in touch with reality and cut me some slack. There’s NO WAY I have the energy to try to keep my tone nice and dainty as I remind him of crap for the millionth time right now. In addition, I explained, I need HELP, so he needs to start acting like I’m almost 9 months pregnant and STOP acting like I’m Hulk Hogan or something.

Low and behold, I think he understood. We went to the park with the boys and my husband OPENED MY CAR DOOR FOR ME. I almost fainted. And then felt really super relieved. It’s sooooo good when things seem bad, but suddenly your spouse listens and understands and responds. Wow. I am having such a nice day because of that.

Sunday we had much to do. And I had told my husband this on Saturday night. We have to get things arranged for the baby–he’s due in 6 weeks. As many people know, but apparently my husband does NOT know, women who are 8.5 months pregnant are not supposed to climb on high ladders, lift heavy things, or mow in 105 degree weather.

Hm. I just posted a whole long story about why I had to mow yesterday while my husband sat inside. It wasn’t interesting, and despite that my husband is a wonderful man, that story would convince you otherwise. Therefore, I’m going to let you know up front: He wanted to mow for ONCE but insisted on doing it at 6pm.

But see , I’m 8.5 months pregnant and had a trillion things I needed my husband’s help with yesterday, namely going to Costco by 6pm (when it closes)–with husband, per mucho heavy lifting. So, it’s not in any way going to work out to start mowing at 6pm–not even in a parallel universe. It’s not even going to work to mow at 3pm. And as we all know, MY HUSBAND CAN’T DO A DARN THING BEFORE 3PM.

So I got REALLY pissed off, and mowed at 12. I can’t even talk about it any further without breaking something really expensive that my husband owns. I almost divorced him on Sunday over this. I am not sure how I thought that’d work out with the baby due in 6 weeks, but somehow I felt it would be fine.

ANYWAY, my husband now claims that I didn’t explain the Costco 6pm,  million errands I needed his help with thing (though I clearly remember explaining it about 5 times before I mowed in a REALLY loud voice–even all of our neighbors heard it, that’s how loud my voice was, and I was yelling about it as I mowed. So I’m not sure how my husband missed that. After all, he was sitting on the couch in the living room, which is divided from the yard only by a screen door, which is very easy to hear through.)

But in his defense, he did BELIEVE he intended to mow at 6pm and he does BELIEVE I failed to explain why that wasn’t going to work out.

Whatever. The lawn is now mowed. We are not divorced. That is a miracle, but it is true. I am still kind of fantasizing about moving to my Granny’s house and having a homestead with a big garden, cows, pigs, chickens, and never seeing my jerk husband again. And marrying a really hot country guy who ALWAYS mows and NEVER wears a shirt and who …

Sorry, gotta stop. I now need to write one additional post, which will include a somewhat hideous photo (in my opinion), and which unfortunately also relates to the lawn.

I have a friend who is a wonderful person–I’m talking near saint. But she was married to a narcissist. The word “narcissist” is simply a label for a certain personality type that is mean and controlling–but in specific ways. This isn’t name calling. This is just a personality type that is real and very difficult to deal with, whether in friendship, marriage, work, or any other situation. This post may be helpful to other people who are in close contact with a narcissist.

I have run into narcissists from time to time, but rarely, thank goodness. You have most likely met at least one or two in your life. They are usually very smart, funny, and seem GREAT at first. HOWEVER, the key trait of this personality type is that they leave nice people feeling mean, confused, and constantly questioning themselves even when they have done no wrong (but have been wronged).

The closer you get to a narcissist, the more you begin to walk on eggshells around the person. He or she starts telling you what to do and how to do it, and when you try to express your own opinion, this person not only can’t register your (or anyone else’s) opinion, but tries to make you feel stupid for having an opinion. They are impossible to argue with because they are controlled by the need to be right rather than by logic. They tend to use lies as “evidence” and get confused while arguing. They can NOT agree to disagree and will argue about the same stuff for years no matter how clear it is that they are wrong. (Normal people also do this, but not nearly to the degree a narcissist does.)

Should you work with, be friends with, or HEAVEN FORBID be married to a narcissist, this post may be handy: How to Deal With Impossible People. It’s SO funny, though dealing with this personality type is anything but funny.

There are two important morning routines in our home: 1) My husband NEVER wakes up earlier than 8:00 am, though he needs to wake up by 7:30 am. 2) If I wake up early to take a shower, so as to free the bathroom up early, my husband miraculously WAKES up, DARTS out of bed, and NEEDS to get in the shower IMMEDIATELY. 3) In either and all other scenarios, my husband is going to be late to work, and this is “my fault.” This infuriates me and causes HUGE arguments in a usually peaceful home.

This morning, I got in the shower at 7:15 am–there’s NO WAY my husband’s getting up at that time. He sets the alarm at 7:30 am, and sleeps WAY beyond that.

But no matter to me. I’m up early, in the shower, today my son’s getting to school on TIME, baby! Yeah. 7:30 am. I’m enjoying my freshly cleaned, flower-scented hair, taking my time in my relaxing, warm shower….then suddenly BOOM BOOM BOOM.

Hu? Someone’s up? But that can’t be. It’s only 7:30 am. No one else in the house will be up until at least 8:30 am, maybe 8:00 am, but definitely not NOW!

I open the door, and my husband’s looking at me AALLLLLLL irritated. He says, “I need to take a SHOWER. I have to be at work at 9:00 am. Now I’m going to be LATE.”

My response in a very unkind voice: “DEAR, it’s 7:30 am. You haven’t been up this early in SEVERAL YEARS. Yet suddenly you’re going to be LATE because I’m in the SHOWER? DOESN’T MAKE SENSE.”

See, if he HAD a morning schedule, we, as in the other THREE people in this house, would be happy to accomodate him. After all, his getting to work by a reasonable time does allow us many fun and necessary things in life–we recognize that (but then so does MY money). The problem is, there is no morning schedule. It’s what he wants to do whenever he’s finally able to get his behind out of bed. And if it happens to be early for the first time in years, oh my, well I guess we ALL needed to work harder to ANTICIPATE THAT.

While I usually get over my husband’s lapses in judgement pretty quickly, I’m still highly annoyed at him for his buggy eyes blaming me for his tardiness this morning. I have my own tardiness to worry about. I’m tardy to take my son to school at least once a week. Do I look buggy eyed at my husband and ask him why he’s in the shower? NO, I don’t think I do. I think it’s time he cut out the morning blame routine and planning his morning schedule like an adult.

Then I met my husband. At first, he acted all okay with my smoking. See, this guy’s a sneaky one. From day one he knew he was going to force me to stop smoking. I only learned about this three years later.

The first wise move was not hinting about the issue until AFTER marriage–you know, when I was already totally trapped. At that time, the lectures started. By the way, my husband NEVER raises his voice. But he has this almost evil way of being brutally persistent and thoroughly unbothered by negative responses to his persistence.

SO, I’d begin to smoke, and he’d start rolling his eyes, fanning the air and groaning aloud. I’d run out to the balcony and start chain smoking due to the stress his antics caused me. He’d follow me out to the balcony (see his traps, and how I fell into them? marriage, balcony, and so on), and continue the lectures. Lectures about lung cancer, lectures about heart disease, lectures about smelling like smoke…

I would yell at him to stop, but I was on a balcony so, not comfortable to do so too loudly or too long. Finally, I’d go back in. Usually by this point, I had smoked at least 5 cigarettes due to stress his antics caused me. But the magical effect was that it was TOTALLY UNSATISFYING due to the lectures. (See, smokers smoke to get a break from reality. That effect is squashed when someone is annoying you and won’t go away.)

That wasn’t all. He also did very controlling things, such as steal my cigarettes out of my purse. So I’d go for a smoke break at work. No cigarettes. Pretty much, someone’s going to die when stuff like this starts happening. But he’s stronger than me, plus he didn’t care about my threats. As I said, his persistence approaches evilness. Later, he caught on when I’d check that my cigarettes were in the purse BEFORE leaving for work.

He started taking the cigarettes out of the box and replacing them with random objects. My very, very favorite was a hotdog. That’s right. I opened my Marlboro Lights all ready for my grand smoke break, the great calm-me-downer, and there are no cigarettes in the box, but there is a hot dog in the box. Folded in half, so as to fit in the box. Yes, that’s very scary. I almost called the police.

But police or no police, these little tricks had a very important effect: cigarettes became an unreliable source of pleasure. I could no longer count on them to be there for me. I was aware this was my husband’s fault, and there were many ways that I outsmarted him and his little tricks. But all in all, he made smoking unpleasurable and unreliable.

That is the true story of why I was able to stop smoking.