This Is Me Maria

I had a good weekend despite a day worth of dark thoughts. This is mostly because Chris was here for all but an hour or two of it. He put me to work to keep me busy. It was a nice distraction to be working along side him on the house all weekend. I am quite pleased with the results.

Of course this is the root of all my problems. I can’t be alone or complete when he is not here. This is what we talk about in therapy. I define myself as his wife. I feel as though I am part of him. I feel incomplete without him. I feel like a better person because I am married to him. Not better like good (quite the opposite actually) but better than you. And then when he is away or he is unhappy my reality comes crumbling down around me.

I am still trying to figure out why. I guess I’ll find out eventually. In the mean time, everything that happens while I am awake is a risk. I can’t stay in bed and hide out though. It seems that getting out bed and keeping busy is the best thing to do for now.

• My front yard. Half of the weed barrier I laid down is some how gone. So this whole section is over run with weeds.
• My “carport” what is also known as the entry way to my house. The previous owners attempted to enclose the carport. They did the shittiest job EVER.
• Everything about the upstairs which includes my kitchen and the upstairs bathroom. The walls, the floor, the cabinets. Ev-er-y-THING.
• My deck - 320 square feet of pain in my ass.
• My gigantic back yard - there are no words.
• I have resigned to pretending that the windows and siding don’t even exist because I doubt I’ll ever see them get replaced.

I know, I know got myself into this giant mess. In my defense though I said I wanted to move to this city. I did not say I wanted to move to this house. Mr. Maria picked out the house. I said we should wait for something else.

I really want to have a better POV on this. Like oh I’m so lucky that the only problems in my life are my house and my yard. And I should be happy for each day. And oh it could be so much worse.

I can’t though. Everyday that I have to come home to this house I am angry. I can’t handle this. This is why I ran away from home all the time when I was a teenager. We lived in my grandmother’s depressing unfinished house! I hated being there so much.

I would rather stay at work (where stupid angry people call me all day long) than go home at the end of each day. I only come home because I miss my family and they are the only things in the world that make me happy right now. I wish that was enough, but it isn’t. The rest of this is just too much.

The thing that makes me angrier than any of this is everyone who says, it will get done eventually, it will happen in time… and all the stupid shit they get to say because they don’t have to put up with this. BULL.SHIT. It took 2 years to get here. Like we’ve finally made it up to -1.

How am I ever going to make it to the end of this?

It is so hard for me to find a happy medium, ever. After stating my goals, I did get into a slightly better cleaning mode than I had been in. Cross your fingers for me that I will continue to improve. The next day I also rode my bike to work. Go me.

More of my awesome bike gear arrived at the Issaquah REI for me to pick up and now my bike is all decked out and ready for some serious riding. Except for my water bottle holder, I can’t freaking find it. Oh well though because I have a step over frame and there is no where to put it.

Getting out of bed more seems to be helping my mood. I’ve also been avoiding bad news and conflict as much as possible while I am in such a fragile state. I am not watching the news. Talus (my former golden retriever) is going to a new home again. I can barely type that. I so cannot deal with that right now. I don’t even have the energy to state what I really think about the situation.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how stressful our lives are. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want to move far away to a sleepy town and drive my kids to school in my pj’s in my van and then eat crackers and color with the other children I’d like to have.

That so is not ever going to happen.  So of course I can’t just exist in the mediocre state that I am. It isn’t good enough. I have to strive to attain something bigger and better. Telling me to settle down is like telling the world to stop spinning. It isn’t going to happen.

I read somewhere that we should share our dreams even though we fear public failure because it helps us be accountable and because we can often find support this way. I didn’t find this to be true when we moved from Kent to Bellevue but whatever. Maybe my new Bellevue friends will be more supportive.

My dream is to buy a small piece of land on the island and build a smallish (1200 sq. ft) modern, really environmentally friendly house tucked behind some tall old trees. I don’t care about a view of the lake, I would consider myself fortunate to live on that island at all.

My last dream was to move to this city (which of course may be my demise) but after all of the talking and planning, we made it here. Pretty good for two kids from White Center neither of which has finished college (so far). Despite the unbearable stress this house has caused, the downstairs is just a little bit of paint around the edges, away from being done.

I find the chaos of all of the toys, in a perfectly imperfect new playroom quite peaceful.

I have probably mentioned in the past that we are remodeling our 50+ year old house. It is a suburban style home.

Background: the house was a rental home for 25 years before we acquired it. During those 25 years more than one owner attempted to fix or remodel the home in some way. The work was very poor and nearly everything that is not original to the house has to be removed.

This is our first single family home. Even though we owned a condo before living here, we did not come into this home with a lot of money. We can’t afford costly materials for this remodel. Unfortunately nothing we have purchased other than compact fluorescent light bulbs are things that one might consider eco-friendly (even those are made with mercury and I have issue that).

We are just about finished with the daylight basement and ready to start on the upstairs which includes the kitchen and 1 full bath. I am trying to redeem us and (purge some guilt) by looking for some kind of eco friendly cabinet option.

So far I haven’t found anything that is not expensive. Even reclaimed wood some how fetches a fantastic price. Don’t even get me started on those eco friendly counter tops that look like resin but have like recycled glass embedded. They to are far too expensive for our very modest budget. We certainly do not have the time to try and build cabinets ourselves out of reclaimed wood. We are remodeling our entire home and yard so think like Ikea cheap for the kitchen.

What is a green gal who is stretched for time and money, to do?

Well if we are lucky enough to be able to keep our house as long as we would like to then we will go with the cheap kitchen option for now to make living here less dreadful and hopefully be able to upgrade to a really awesome kitchen one day in the future. If nothing else, potential future buyers hopefully won’t throw up when they walk in.