Living In The Lonely World

Last night we sent the kids to bed early and the wife stayed up way past her bedtime and we talked for three hours last night. Cleared the air about a lot of the stuff that's been going on. I don't even recall the last time we had five minutes alone to chat let alone three hours. I'm not sure that anything got resolved but it was made well known that I hadn't given up yet. She must have believed that much because the discussion ended with some hot monkey sex in the living room.

The obvious remedy to the lack of time together is to have the grandparents come over and watch the kids while we go out. That's infinitely more complicated that you might think. First, as previously mentioned the house is a wreck. It's messy and even minor repairs have been put off for the past six months. I ran out of string on my string trimmer in June and have never replaced it. So we have tall cross is all the nooks and crannies of our yard. At least winter is coming to kill it off.

Second problem, we go out and then what? We have no money to go to a movie, or dinner, or anything else. Escaping the bleakness of poverty requires money, in some way shape or form.

Finally there's where we live. When we went looking for a house we wanted to be between our two sets of parents so we could see them equally. We wound up an hour from her parents and an hour and half from mine, so we wind up seeing neither of them. Going to see them or them going to see is is an all day or all weekend event with the kids. There's never been a come watch them for a few hours. Watch the kids for two hours and spend three hours in the car?

I wanted to live in a small town. One like the one I remember growing up in and we pretty much do. We now live in a village with the population of 1,400. Correction we live just outside a village with a population of 1,400. The nearest city is a twenty-five minute drive away. If we want fast food it's twenty five minutes. If we want to go to the movie it's twenty five minutes. Any real socialization? Twenty five minutes. Everything is far away. It never bothered me because I grew up used to that. My wife however grew up withing walking distance of a mall in a major metropolitan area. Drives her batty, and now with two kids, I'm starting to see why.

I love the land. I see stars every night outside in my own yard. Not some stars, hundreds, thousand. There's almost zero light pollution. It's so fucking amazing that I have my private window on the universe that most people miss. Even growing up on a farm, I didn't see this many. The only thing that's even come close was a family vacation to Yellowstone in High School.

The house however has problems. It's a 1960's catalog home. Somehow both of us missed the painted wood paneling in all the rooms when we looked at the house. I think we were both just in love with the idea of having a house before our daughter was born, and this house fit the bill. The worst thing about the house is the water. We have well water, city water's not even an option. It's full of sulfur. We replaced the water softener almost as soon as we moved in . But it just eats at everything. The softener, the septic (replaced), the hot water heater (replaced the week before I was let go), the well pump (replaced 2 days before I was let go), drains, sinks, anything metal turns black just from the humidity, the wallpaper it the bathroom is coroding, and I think it may have taken out the washing machine the other day.

I went to start the machine and nothing happened. The machine is practically new. I just wanted to cry. Anytime something breaks around the house my wife blames me. 75% of the time she's right. I'm a clumsy fat oaf with ADHD. I knew this time she had used it last. But I also knew that wouldn't matter. I checked everything I could think to fix it. Checked the water lines, checked the fuses, the outlet, it was definitely the machine. So I carefully put everything back the way I found it in hopes she'd discover it on her own and the maybe not blame me. Two days passed and I finally decided to tell her about it. I'm trying to turn over a new leaf. Yeah, she blamed me but it was thirty second tirade rather than a thirty minute tirade so I'll consider that a moral victory. She called her dad to see if he knew how to fix it. He had some ideas of course, but still I think I lost some man points for when she called her dad right away. Not fixed yet, but hey there's a laundromat twenty five minutes away.  That's not a big deal with two kids right? Or we can buy a new one! I have also sorts of extra money just lying around ...

So as I started to look for jobs, relocation was a possibility. My wife would be happy in a new house. But as it turns out, the house is a chain around our necks. We bought it with a loan based on two incomes, which then dropped to one three months later when my daughter was born. That was the plan, to live skimpily until the kids were in school then the wife would go back to work. Then a year later the housing market totally collapsed and we lost 1/3 of the houses total value. We can't sell it, because if we got what it was worth, we can't afford to live anywhere else because we'd still owe in the neighborhood around 1/3 of what we originally paid for it.

The nearest city twenty five miles away, is still a micropolitan and there's not endless industry. I think I applied for every job in my field in the first week and made cold calls to everyone else by the second week. Odds are when I get a job it's going to be an hour away. And not an hour city drive either. I'm talking 65+ mph highway driving. Maybe further. And with two small kids whose bedtimes are around eight pm. That means I'd only get the see them for like an hour and a half a day. This is the relief from my current situation I have to look forward too? Sometimes I wonder why I try so hard. I know, because even if I don't get to see them, they need clothes and food and as much as I hate to say it they need this house.

For the time being though I can spend every minute of every day with them.. That's pretty wonderful. But at the same time I need to keep working hard at finding a job, so I can start missing them terribly again. Fuck me.

This is my life now.