Pandemic #2 - Video Conferencing Woes

     I just wanted to get something off my chest.  So, I was out a job for six months, found a terrible one for a few months, tried again at a few places and secured a job where I could possibly work from home if needed, which was very fortuitous because here we are in the Corona Virus Pandemic and those places that are still open that aren't front line are working from home.  Thankfully, that includes yours truly, and I've been here for over a month now.  I almost feel like I've been working at home longer then I did in the office, although it'll be another month or so before that really happens.

      But in the meantime, things got set up to do video meetings at least once a day, if not three times a day, depending on how many manager one on ones and over conferencing I have to sit through.  It's bad enough that our jobs went from having a review once a week where no one really reviewed anything, to once a month where they reviewed one thing, to suddenly they're critiquing a bunch of things that I do, and I've failed at one already so now I'm stuck at home, anxious about the Pandemic and going outside...but also freaking the heck out about my reviews.  I feel like any moment I'm going to find myself in a conference call where they're going to say, "bring in your electronics, go get your stuff off your desk, you're done."

     Most likely I'm panicking a bit more than I should, but when the world is going to pot, your husband is complaining his job has slowed down so much everyone is fighting for work too, and one of you have to foot the bill at least to keep our lives the way they are...it's awfully stressful.

     And that's not even what I really came here to complain about!  My actual complaint is that I have one gal who hired in about week before me who has decided to become my direct competitor.  She started to have battles with who would get more phone calls in a day, and it wasn't really all that bad when we were in the office because we didn't really sit near one another and except for once a day I didn't even have to say anything to her.

     Now, because we're on the same "stand up meeting" every afternoon I have to listen to her EVERY DAY.  I didn't really like her all that much before, although the only thing I had to base that on was that she seemed kind of dumb.  I think she was feeling sorry for herself for having a baby out of wedlock and hadn't even wanted a kid.  She murmured that once during her first week when I said I didn't have kids which is probably the reason I looked younger then I am.  But from that day on, I think she turned it around to say she loved her baby sooo much and she wants another someday, and hopefully soon... trying to be my exact opposite it felt like.

      As I mentioned, after that point I really didn't have to talk to her too much but now she's on the video call and my coworkers ask about said baby over and over again.  The calls turn into long, drawn out conversations about her and the kid.  I mean, I understand most women are like that, but it's awkward and annoying to me.  I've never wanted children so when we talk about pets or cats instead I'm having a much better time since it's something I can relate to.

      Recently she's also started to show how much of a Trump supporter she is as well.  So, not only is she a breeder, she's a MAGA (sorry, it's probably rude terminology but I don't approve) and it's so frustrating because I don't really want to be anywhere near her now, either online or in the office.  I feel like she's going to become unbearable when she finally gets back into the office.

     So, that's what I've been grumbling about.  I like my job in essence, but it's become a lot lately for me.  I don't even know what to do but ignore her.  I miss when I didn't have someone who seems to be openly competing with me at every step of the way.  I just want to do my job as best I can and work my way up as I have in all of my other jobs, and I don't know how to push for that, but I'm worried that she's attempting to do that too and I don't want to compete with her... I just don't know how much I can do while I'm stuck at home.

Pandemic and Working from Home

     I keep thinking to myself that I need to document this time, especially since it's one that will most likely show up in all of the history books.  How we deal with a virus that has reached nearly every corner of the world (or at least the ones easily connected by airlines), it's amazing what can happen in just a few short months.
     I know it's a terrible thing that so many people are dying.  I know that so many more will still die before this whole thing is over.  People are panicking, buying up everything they can in case they are trapped inside for weeks or even months.  I had thought about that sort of thing in the back of my mind when it first started showing up in other parts of the world, although like many of the other pandemics that have occurred, the USA has been largely spared.
     Of course, no one thought it would reach as far as it did, and many of us were just thinking from time to time, what would we do?  But I don't think any of us took it seriously (except some random preppers anyway!)
     As for me, if anyone actually reads this, I was somewhat taking it seriously.  I've always tried to be prepared for a cold and the eventual quarantine inside of my home.  Heck, after I lost my job just one month shy of a year ago, I self-quarantined.  I didn't have money coming in and I got one bad cold after another.  Before long I'd dropped back on nearly all of my spending and had started a routine for myself.

     So, in a way, last year's joblessness was a preparation for this.

     One day I cleaned up my desk, made enough room to work on painting and posting items on my website (which I need to work on again during this time probably) and then scheduled a routine.  Get up, have breakfast, do a few chores, then go to "work" for about four or so hours a day, painting, doing other things and just overall making sure to keep "working".
     I also suffered from a lot of depression, a lot of anxiety and had a lot of moments of loneliness even when I knew I had people in my life who could come over and I could talk to.  But I did make it, and I pushed through.

     Now I'm working from home, quarantined from work until the end of March.  I set up my desk much like I did before (although now I have two computers, so painting is on hold for the time being).  But it's a lot like it was before.  Take a break from time to time, get lunch, read, and keep an eye on the queue and answering calls.
      A week ago they started murmurs about whether we would have to work from home.  I'd already started hearing talk about it so I started buying things for it in preparation.  Then they mentioned closing down schools...and by Friday we knew we'd have to set up to work.
     The weekend went by after that and the stores emptied out, people were emptying them out.  Toilet paper and towels were gone, food was gone, milk, eggs, bread and meats were gone.  Then the restaurants started shutting down all but take out and delivery.  People who worked for those restaurants got laid off.  Other stores started shutting down, not allowed to keep pushing forward, then the Governor started shutting down libraries, waterparks, museums, and anywhere else that a bunch of people could go to.  He stopped us from voting yesterday, pushing it off until June.
     A few smaller stores plug along, still open, not knowing what else to do.  People who vend at conventions are having online sales in hopes they can make ends meet.  Everything is shut down and the gas is cheap and the roads are empty.
   
     And even though, as I said, I know this is a terrible thing to be certain, it's also rather good in some ways.

     Pollution has gone waaaaay down.  Critters are returning to areas that have been chased out so long ago that people are surprised to see them there.  People are starting to do things for one another.  The government is actually thinking about doing stuff for the people instead of the businesses.  It's actually rather amazing.

     And yet, we still have to deal with being stuck inside our homes.  We have to worry about catching and spreading the virus.  I still worry about my Mom a whole lot because I'm not sure she's taking it very seriously since she doesn't like the news and has never been very up on world events.
     But, little bit by little bit, I think this might be a blessing for our planet.  I know, it's terrible who this virus might affect by the end, and sure, I could definitely be one of them by the time this is all over.

     I think, though, that I'm prepared.  Mentally I've always thought that I don't want to contribute to the world going up in flames.  I'd much rather not be part of the problem but the solution, even if I'm not entirely sure how I could be part of it.

     So, as I work from home waiting for that next phone call or that next email from someone who I more worried about things that aren't the worldwide pandemic, I'll sit here and be glad that the world is still moving on without us.  The trees are still getting ready to bloom, the rains are coming to make the grass green again, and the birds and other animals are enjoying their time outside where they haven't been able to be in decades.  And I'm actually okay with that.
     And if things get worse before they get better, then I'll continue keeping on because even with all of this because panicking never helped anyone.

Focus on Me - pt. 1 - Change of Plans

     There's a lot to unload here so I hope you'll be patient with me.  If you're reading this, then kudos to you, and good luck getting through it!

     At the beginning of October, I had the opportunity to get a job again.  There were so many red flags to this though.  First off, I'd applied to this job months before and had forgotten mostly about it because they closed the job listing and hadn't responded to me.  Then I get a poorly written email wanting me to come in after hearing my passion for art restoration.  This was a job with a listing that was for art restoration, digital restoration, needing an art degree, and even though I didn't have an art degree I'd been around art for years and wrote this letter detailing how excited I was to learn the craft.
     I thought it was a craft.  I went in with these super high expectations and my interview was the general manager talking about her life, her ambitions and barely asked me about me.  I should have just said I'll think about it and left.  But I'd been searching for a job for six months and this was the first decent bite I'd received in a while.  So I took it, started my job the next week, and immediately regretted the decision.
     Nothing was organized, nothing was clear to what I should be doing and no one was informed about what my job actually entailed.  By the end of the week, I was being sent out on jobs to talk to people, driving in a large truck for hours at a time to all corners of Ohio and even down into Kentucky.  I wasn't told that this was part of the job, and at first, I thought it would be a once-weekly thing, for jobs that would be high-end art where they didn't know how to talk to these customers.  I thought, okay, I can handle this.
     But then it started to be just basic jobs, go by myself for hours and hours, trudging through these poor people's homes that had burned or had small fires and pulling artwork out, packaging it up and then driving hours again.  This was not in the job description.  Then it became twice a week, and I thought maybe I could handle it, but I started working 9, 10, even 12 hour days.
     My allergies started acting up because of these places, the smoke, the soot, the dust, the smell.  I'd come home and take a shower, change clothes and take allergy meds, hoping not to get sick.  I had a few fevers and then there were the chemicals we used when we were actually cleaning some of these things.  I enjoyed the few hours a week of doing that work, but I was sure it wasn't good for me.
     I trudged on because the others were trudging on.  But I was starting to get those anxiety attacks on the way into work again.  I didn't want to go.  I'd wake up and want to call in sick.  I didn't, but then I started realizing that my co-workers were ALL suffering from the same thing and they were starting to call off.  That left ME doing all of THEIR work.
     And none of this work was what was on the job description!  I was doing pack-outs and driving big box trucks (a skill I didn't know I had until a week ago, and I haven't tried backing them up yet but I could drive straight pretty well.)  But that wasn't what I was told the job was.
     Everyone who worked there was miserable.  The general manager spent 60-80 hours a week and kept saying 'I can't imagine not being here for everyone all the time.' I sat next to her briefly and I just squirmed and felt uncomfortable.  I wanted to be out of there, I realized that no one was happy, and even though most of them were there because they needed the hours, I didn't want the hours I was getting... in fact, I was being forced to work these hours suddenly and if I had been given full-time I'm not sure I would have lasted so long to begin with.

     So after getting through a 12-hour day, getting home over 13 hours after I'd left home that morning, listening to yet another co-worker complain about where we were working (and I had never heard a positive thing about this place in all of these weeks) I was done.  I went home and told my husband I was quitting the next day.
     Now, maybe if I had been able to make a final delivery, seen the happy looks on someone's face once their items were all back to new again and happy...maybe it would have been bearable.  But I never got to do those runs, never got to see anyone pleased.
     No, I got to be called a 'douche' by another pack-out company two days ago.  I pulled the Transit into the driveway of this nice little old lady's house and asked the people inside where she was.  "Don't know, she left ten minutes ago.  Who are you?"  I'm the art person.  I've come for the art.  The what?  I pointed at the paintings, those.  Oh.  The group of five women all sorta looked annoyed that I was invading their space.
     I finally met the homeowner and went upstairs to work out of the way of these other women.  I started to over-hear them complaining about my truck being in the way, that they wanted to go to lunch.  I finally spoke up and said, let me know and I can move to let you out.  So they finally did and I moved my vehicle into the driveway where I could more easily pack up.  But then they got back and were eating, no one said anything about me moving.  I kept working on the main floor now, they knew where I was.  I took some paintings out and I hear over the last remaining vehicle in the driveway on speaker "That douche won't move her truck.  She's blocking the whole drive and we can't get in again."  There was more but by that time I was so surprised that she would be talking on the SPEAKER where I could hear her clearly OUTSIDE of the truck... I hear, "Oh she's outside finally" (I'd been on the first floor in plain sight of everyone while they were eating) and the lady comes out, "Are you going to move?"
     "Sure, I was just getting wrapped up," I said, then as she glared at me and another truck pulled in saying "Because we can't park on the lawn" and then glaring at me from the truck, I finally stopped and said, "And by the way I can HEAR EVERYTHING YOU ARE SAYING."  And I walked in and took my time packing up the rest of everything before moving out of the drive.
     There's nothing like being glared at for doing my job and never being spoken to but behind my back.  The owner said she was next door, so I pulled into that driveway (where I'm sure the other workers could have pulled in this whole time) and went in to talk to her.  The lady was as sweet as could be and her neighbor had given her the run of the house while her house was being worked on.  I felt bad that such disagreeable people were in her house pawing through her things.  I just left.  I had more things I could have packed up and I found out later that the other guy who had come to get the electronics picked up the rest and I was to check all of those things in...

     The thing you have to understand was this job is a number of things.  Dealing with the multiple insurance companies, pack-out companies, cleaning and renovation places, and the poor homeowner who is just trying to get their house back to normal.  The place might have had a small fire that smoked up the entire place and now everything smells.  Putting out the fire might have caused water damage which, if not taken care of properly, might turn into mold and mildew.  The house is covered in soot and water, drywall, insulation, and then there are all of these people who come in to take it all out to clear the house out and start over.
     Basically, the job they gave me was to drive wherever, pack up anything art related, bring it back to catalog it, and then when the insurance companies gave the go-ahead, we would clean it, pack it up, and send it back again.  The houses were filled with soot, dust, insulation, dry-wall and who knows what else and all I was given was a paper face mask and some rubber gloves.
     I came home smelling of smoke, and not just from the job site but from every single employee who smoked cigarettes at every free moment.  My allergies from all of these things were acting up every single day and on Friday when I would be home, I'd just sit around feeling miserable all day.

     After a long, sleepless night, my throat hurting, my sinuses draining, nose running, no sleep and just plain exhausted after a 12-hour day, I got up and went to work.  I took all of the shirts they gave me in a bag, wrote up a couple of letters, and set it on the pile of paperwork with the key on the pile in the GM's office and just left.
     They'd recently cut a bunch of hours but were saying I'd still get all the hours.  Oh, and we'll get you a raise once we get going too... I think it was all this matter of "don't leave us, we have no idea what we're doing."  And I'm thinking this whole time that I should have been trained.  I should have gotten to watch videos on how to do things.  I should have been getting jobs from museums and art centers and spending time working on items in the office.
     I knew if I spent any time telling them I was leaving rather then this method, I'd be guilted into staying...we'll give you anything...  No, well, here's the thing, you got rid of two people who had been working here for over a year, not the person who was here for a month.  You gave me all of their jobs to do.  This was not in the description.  This place is a mess and I don't see any changes happening any time soon.  I'm sorry, my body can't handle doing EVERYTHING.
     Those feelings of anxiety I had when I saw the piles of stock at my other job just building up and my old manager not letting me work on any of it because she knew better and she wanted me doing this nonsense instead... it was all flooding right back to me again.

     I'm headed out here in another hour or so to go do a walk-in-interview somewhere else.  Maybe they won't want me (I've tried applying twice here already) but I'm going to try again.  I just want to work in a clean environment that's organized, where I get training, where people are glad I'm there and I am glad to be there.
     I realized this morning as I drove to work that never once did I celebrate getting this job.  From the very first moment, I didn't want to be there.  Everything inside of my head said, "you can't stay here."  And that's not the job for me.  Even though I could have handled it, I didn't want to put myself through that anymore.

     My husband has been supportive.  I know he's kind of freaking out inside that here we're going into the holiday season and he's feeling a bit more secure in his job but he still doesn't feel completely comfortable there yet.  I'm sure thinking about money is hard and I know that it is troubling, but if I wear myself out I won't be able to get another job.  And at this point...it's not worth it.  I need to have the motivation to do something new and find the excitement again.

     So, change of plans... onwards to a better future!

Focus on My Career - pt. 2 - Getting Nowhere Fast

     Going to be a fairly short update today as I don't have a lot of stuff to share.  I think I've said that before though and then went off on some tangent; so you really never know now, do you?

     So last week came and went and I completely re-vamped my resume and started to get pumped about submitting it for another job.  About once a week I get really excited and that usually lasts until the moment I go to submit the resume or application.  Then my anxiety gets the better of me, and if the whole process is short, then I usually get through it, but if it takes too long, I sometimes chicken out, doubt myself, and back out of the whole process.  Unfortunately, that's happened a few times and at least once last week.
     I had that resume all written up beautifully, put the cover letter together, and finally hit that "send" button and then held my breath as the webpage reset and I got the email reply.  'Okay,' I think, 'Here goes nothing.'
     It's been not quite a week now, and I'm pretty sure I was right... nothing.
   
     After a few days of waiting for anything besides a generic email to come back, I started to look for jobs again and found a couple more I thought about applying for, but by the time I got through the ridiculously long application process, I gave up because I realized I wasn't sure how to approach the straight-forward question of, "if you were fired, why?"
     I turned to Reddit for an answer and received just one reply: "don't tell them the truth, just say you parted ways with the company."
     Great, that's so helpful.

     The weekend came and went and I couldn't look at the job postings again.  I concentrated instead on having a good weekend because most likely I wasn't going to hear anything form anyone during a weekend anyway, and I was correct.  It was phone/email/radio silence (so to speak).  I almost started wondering if I should check to see if my email wasn't blocked off completely out there because no one seems to be sending me anything except for junk mail from the various job websites where I've applied.

     Of course, my days seem to be filled with working on things for the family 'business' - or rather, 'our baby' - which is the anime convention Tsubasacon.  It's basically a child we've been raising for 16 years and it still hasn't graduated and moved out on its own yet.  Maybe another year or two?
     Since I haven't had a paying job, this has been my life for the past few months and since we only have a month or two left to "go time" I've been working on graphics and social media and all of that other fun stuff... Well, fun isn't exactly the word I'd call it, but I don't want to be crude either.  I don't mind doing convention stuff, but I think I would have been so much more excited about it had I just quit my previous job to do it rather than having it shoved at me by my husband since I have yet to find another actual job.  Sorta like - if you're not working - here's a bunch of work.

     (On another note, he also makes me do almost all of the housework and cooking and all now that I'm off so I hardly have time to submit applications and try to get things done for my craft table as I'm constantly working on all of this convention stuff and household stuff all the time.)

     Then, there's my friends.  I am really attempting to pull myself out of this funk, but each time they post a picture of their desks at their new jobs, every time they talk about some great thing they did at this company they hired on at, each time they talk about their Monday-Friday schedules...I just want to cry.
     I never wanted that sort of lifestyle but it's all I can think about now.  I want to feel needed.  I want to feel like I'm of use to someone.  I hate this feeling of rejection and feeling stupid.  I guess it's my fault for internally always feeling high and mighty for being so smart...I'm not smart.  I'm an idiot who didn't follow the right path for schooling and now those friends who may be in debt at least have jobs in which to pay it off, whereas me with no debt have been ignored because no one gives a crap about some retail chick who got fired because who wants to hire someone who's only been in crappy jobs for the last 20 years?
     I know my friends are showing me these things because they are excited and happy for themselves and they're trying to get me to come work with them.  But when those places aren't even looking at my resumes or treating my interviews with any amount of interest...and all I get are "sorry" responses...I just don't know what to do.

     I know that I should feel happy because all of those 20 years I spent working I wished that I could not be working.  But I wanted it to be my choice.  This was not my choice.  This is me wishing I could be doing something else about now.  Or at the very least having my chosen profession being my crafting hobby and getting something out of that... nope.
     And I pray over and over that I'll hear something and I feel more and more left behind by my friends and useless and I really don't want to feel like this because I'm sure I'm not all that fun to be around when I'm whining so much.  But I just don't want to settle for some retail or service job again because I'll be even more miserable with everyone happily hanging out at their desks while I still don't have a desk (besides the one I'm typing at here at home right now) because I'm too stupid to get an actual job.

     So...that's it.  There's not much else to report.  I'm plugging along with various things and trying to fit time in between all of these design tasks I keep being given (for no pay mind you) to submit resumes and then getting nothing back for my trouble.  I just don't know what I'm doing wrong.

Rant: On Being Married to Someone Who Tidies but Doesn't Clean

Good afternoon everyone!  Time to start a new series (or rather, at least a new category or something) on my blog about marriage and ranting about life with another person.  Oh sure, there's plenty of those out there, and I'm probably going to throw out some wild accusations and ridiculously blatant "everyone does this" statement, so I want to preface this entire blog by saying -

These things happen in my life and I've heard a lot of the same things happen to other people too, but if this doesn't actually apply to you - ignore it - and be glad that you aren't one of those people my blanket statements are referring to!  Kudos!  You have fought the preconceived notions and have won!  Huzzah!

Meanwhile...I've been noticing some things about my own marriage and as I creep ever so closer to the ten year mark (and thankfully have overcome that dreaded "seven-year-itch" thing that our parents used to talk about) some of them have started to bother me more than others.  And not too long ago I read a short blog about women oftentimes drawing the short end of the stick on things.  I've had this discussion before and have had arguments about it and frustratingly brief moments where I've had to trash my entire rant because I've needed to re-word it.  This time I'm not going to talk about jobs and women in the workplace, but rather women and their lives at home.

First off - I don't have kids.  I think I've established that already, it's a choice my husband and I have made over the years through dating and marriage, and even though neither of us would stop a child from coming into this world, neither of us have encouraged it either.  That said, we do have four cats, and before you parents out there go - that's NOT the same! - I will beg you to remember that there are a lot of similarities even if there is a point where those similarities diverge and I won't even begin to argue that point.

I will say, however, that having cats is similar enough in some respects to having kids that I'm going to tell you about a story that has been happening over the last few months.  If you have kids, I'm sure you've had a moment or two like this yourselves.  Cats, much like children, are sensitive creatures, and if you throw something at them that is much too different for their little brains to comprehend, they're going to really throw you for a loop.

In this case, my "middle" child, Tenchi decided that he didn't like the scented litter that we started buying.  That's the long and short of it, but in reality we decided the house started to smell because some cat was peeing at the backdoor, presumably because of the outdoor cats that were peeing on the outside of said door.  So...bring up a litter box, and the peeing stopped happening except for in the box.  Huzzah - problem solved!  Oh, but the smell... so we changed litters thinking that it would be at least a bit nicer for our house guests not to have to smell cat pee every time they came into our home - and for awhile, everything seemed to go okay.  But then the pee started appearing again... EVERYWHERE.  Pee in the kitchen, pee in the living room, pee in the laundry room, pee on the COUNTERS...  And every day I'd spend an hour of my time tracking down the pee and cleaning it on hands and knees, and then finding MORE a few hours later somewhere else and it happened day after day after day, until one day I found myself sobbing inconsolably in the bathroom just not knowing what to do.  Long story short - we did solve the problem was the litter...but then the cat wanted MORE boxes with that litter, and in different places around the house...and we're still dealing with that annoyance, but at least it's not in the living room and on the counters!

Okay...so, what does this story have to do with marriage?

My husband, and I love him, I really do.... didn't clean up ANY OF THIS PEE.

He'll pick up the random hairball.  He'll even pick up random food pukes.  But he won't CLEAN any of it.

What do I mean by CLEAN?

I read a very interesting blog (as I stated earlier) that husbands typically will "tidy" but they won't "clean."  So when a man says "I cleaned" what he means is he's put two or three dishes in the dishwasher, but there's still those three pans on the stove still, or that crockpot soaking in the sink.  To him, "cleaning" means the minimum amount that needs to be done to, say, have counter space available again.  He won't see those three other pans or the fact that there are coffee stains all over the counter top.

Now...remember what I said before, men can and have bypassed this little quirk, and on the flipside, there are many women who do exactly as I explained about "tidying" rather than "cleaning".  So, please do not come after me with pitch forks and toilet bowl brushes...I'm rather speaking of my own personal encounters with my husband.

So, when I find hairballs around the house, I get down on my hands and knees with the Resolve carpet cleaner, I peel up the hairball, discard that, and then start scrubbing with paper towels at the stain that's now also on the carpet.  When I find pee - I get down on my hands and knees with the Nature's Miracle until I can't smell the pee anymore.  When I find a line of puke on the wood floors, I take out my soap and water (or Bona hardwood cleaner) and scrub until the spot is gone.

Example of my husband from yesterday:  "Looks like the cats spit up here on the floor."  He points at the spot I've been watching the last few days to see if he'll actually clean it up.

It's still there, two days later.

He picked up a hairball the other day.  Took me three days to finally decide I'd get down on my hands and knees and scrub up the rest that he didn't touch.

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This scenario plays out time and time again in our household.  A toilet will only get swirled with the toilet brush - but the bowl doesn't get wiped down, nor does the seat, the handle, or the back of the tank.  (And this usually only happens if we have guests come over and NEVER happens to our own toilet unless I've specifically asked him to do it.)

The dishes don't get completely cleaned and put away - there's always a pot left out, a spoon holder left dirty, a stove that needs wiped or counters with coffee stains, or some random clean dish left out - or a small bottle cap left a foot away from the garbage can.

Speaking of garbage, the whole house will only get taken out IF I ask, and there'll always be papers or other random things laying around the house that could have been thrown away too, but they'll still be left un-tossed after the garbage man has come and gone.

Litter will be cleaned out, and maybe the floor swept - but not behind the box, and no one's checked to see if there's pee on the wall behind the box or on the mat that needs to be cleaned up too.

If the lawn needs mowed, it'll be mowed - but maybe the backyard will be left for a few days or even a week.  But the trees will still need trimmed, the driveway swept, or large chunks left to grow longer than the rest.

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So, to my husband, he feels as if these jobs are "done" and I complain that they are not.  Because he has TIDIED and I wanted them CLEANED.  And oftentimes I'll hear, "well, you don't like how I do it."  Well...I asked you to CLEAN, I didn't ask you to "tidy up".  (although sometimes I will ask that when guests are coming over and at least they're tidy enough for company since I so thoroughly clean most of the time.)

And then he wonders why he finds me sobbing uncontrollably on the toilet after spending hours cleaning up cat pee.  "We'll solve it."  It's got nothing (or rather just a little) to physically do with the cat pee, but rather the hours he's spent playing on his computer game or watching TV or reading while I'm down on my hands and knees making sure the house doesn't smell like cat pee for the next game night.  Mind you, he did solve the cat pee problem mostly with buying the new litter and getting candles...but that was at most an hour or so of his time.

So...here's what I'm getting at - and let me know what you think because I'd really like to know what the answer is - how do I solve this issue of cleaning versus tidying?

       Should I just bear it with a grin and an eye twice as the stress slowly overcomes me until my anxiety suddenly over-runs my life and I have a nervous breakdown?

       Should I talk to him about it and just HOPE that he'll change his ways?

       Should I make a list of how to clean with all of the steps and hope he follows them?  Maybe my expectations are too high?  No...I'm not going to compromise on how well we clean the house or it'll degrade too quickly I just know it.

        Should I just stop cleaning and see if anything comes of it?  (HELL NO.... you should see the state of our toilet before I couldn't stand it any more today!!!  And the shower...EWWWWW)


So...how do I train him to see cleaning like I do?  Sure, I don't like it either.  Heck - if I could spend just half the time he does just wasting time when I'm home I'm pretty sure I'd be a lot happier of a person and I wouldn't have this facial twitch or so much anxiety that I literally can't move some afternoons because I just can't face the house looking like it does....  I can't stand the clutter, the mess, and I'm just happier when I'm not around it...but will that encourage him to help more?  But do so in a way that doesn't make me stress out more?  Can I teach him, but also be lenient enough to shrug it off sometimes if it's really not all that important?  A trash can left full for a week isn't a big deal... but cat puke stains all over the house is pretty embarrassing...  Maybe?

Well, that's what I have to say about that for now.  Maybe it'll make me feel better to get it out at least, even if no one reads it.  I just wish I could change him to see what I see... without him feeling that I'm being nagging and a grumpy wife who can't be pleased by anything.  I really do try to suffer in silence, but after 8+ years, with a terrible boss at work, all I want to do is come home and relax sometimes and not have to feel like I have to spend every day off cleaning the house that he's helped to destroy.... is that too much to ask?