It is sad to me that the birth of my relationship with Bill is here on Xanga (sometimes I go back and read the crazy in love and sex-fueled posts and cry) and it is also the only place I feel safe writing about the death of it.

Sunday a friend and I went for a long, hard bike ride outside in the cold.  We finished up our twenty miles with a stop at a diner near our houses and had grilled cheese and martinis.

My son was in the hospital and Bill did nothing - didn't come to see him or me.  Didn't even offer emotional support.  His kids were at the house over the holiday weekend and it's like he doesn't see them.  I fed them, cleaned up after them and entertained them.  He took them to visit his parents and left shortly after dinner and went to a hotel by himself, leaving the kids with his parents and brother.  (I took the kids out for tacos on Saturday, for example, and asked him to come.  "No.  I don't like that taco place," he said.  "Ok, well then where would you like to go eat?" I asked.  He was quiet for a minute and then said, "I don't want to go anywhere."  There are many, many, many examples of things just like this.)  He sleeps and sleeps and sleeps.  He is not eating dinner anymore.  He is physically unable to do any more than he is doing.

"I know I should leave," I said as I finished my martini.

"Why do you stay?" my friend asked.

"I love him," I said.  "And I think he will kill himself if I leave."

He thinks about it every day.  Every single day he wishes he was dead.  ("It hurts my feelings to be with someone who wishes he was dead very day," I say.  "It's not about you," he says.)

And this is where well meaning people ask about medication and counseling.  All I know to say is that we have done that, he does that, and that he is not doing well.  ("Talk to his doctor."  Ok.  I do that and they ask questions and they up his uppers or give him Viagra or ask if he has a plan and he says "no."  We go to marriage counseling and he sees a psychologist (the best he's seen ever) and he gets angry or can't answer the questions that are asked)  I am really feeling like this can't be fixed.

This is the "for worse" part, right?  I have begun to think of this as a terminal illness.  If he had cancer that progressed to the point that he could not get out of bed or something I would not expect him to go out for tacos with me, right?

This morning was a colossal mess. I am sad and angry about the state of my marriage. I really feel bad whining about my marriage all the time. I worry that it is me. I wonder if my expectations are too high. But they seem low to me? We talked on the porch for a short while before he had to go and he observed, "This can't be solved in ten minutes." Long story short, my emotional neediness freaks him out and makes him distance himself from me which results in me getting sadder and him getting angrier. Anyway. They left.

My son was napping, the girls were happily listening to music/texting friends/planning shopping and the turkey was in the oven.  I leashed Stella and took her for a very long walk. I cried while we walked. I lay in the leaves in the park and she licked my face. We walked some more. My house smelled amazing when we got home. I finished up dinner prep and we had a beautiful dinner - just the four of us. It was quite different than any Thanksgiving dinner I have ever had and was pretty awesome, actually. We listened to pop music on M's iphone. We went around the table saying what we were grateful for about each other (you have awesome hair, you have good taste in music, etc.) and then had an airing of grievances (my favorite was M's grievance that I only make the corn casserole on Thanksgiving and "this shit is too good for once a year"). My son and I played Monopoly after dinner while the girls did all the dishes. My son is now napping, the girls are heading out shopping soon, and I am finishing off the beaujolais.

I feel reminded that my kids and I are my family. My husband is not a father to them and his kids are not siblings to them. My kids and I can love them but really when it comes down to it, it is me and my (shockingly similar to me) kids.

My mother is law is a little crazy and is over medicated.  She has fibromyalgia and takes narcotics that she mixes pretty freely with a whole variety of other medications.  I have known her for 12 years and I have watched her deteriorate.  She can't concentrate enough to drive a car or read a book.  Her social anxiety is worse all the time.  She has some paranoid ideas and it is difficult to talk to her sometimes because she doesn't remember things or misunderstands or mistakenly takes offense.

Despite all of this, I love her and enjoy spending time with her.  My husband does not.  He has his own social anxiety issues and does not want to spend the holidays (or any day) with his family.  I enjoy holidays at her house because it's emotionally easier for me in some ways.  They're not my parents. These aren't my siblings.  I love them all and think they're pretty cool, so it works out ok for me.  I have always helped with Thanksgiving dinner at her house and one year I even cooked the whole meal at her house because she was recovering from surgery.

I lay all of this history out there because it is relevant to the funny and irritating result that my mother in law thinks that I don't want to come to her house for Thanksgiving.  She told my husband, my brother in law and my father in law that I don't like having Thanksgiving at her house.  She sends me carefully crafted emails in which she tip toes around and compliments me on my cooking or parenting or whatever and then says, "I know that you like having Thanksgiving at your house, but this year is different..."  Um.  What?  I mean, it's not like we have Thanksgiving at their house every year, but we do every other year and even some of the others.  And they have always been very pleasant in my experience.

My brother in law and I worked out the menu (she should not be allowed in the kitchen for reasons that should by now be obvious) and we both told her this and despite that she emailed us both and asked us to bring different things.

And then yesterday my son was home sick from school.  And then last night his abdominal pain was worse and was on the lower right side.  And the doctor at the ER confirmed appendicitis and the surgeon took out the funny thing.  Surgery is amazing these days.  He was home before Bill got home from work.  But it changes Thanksgiving plans for me.

I'm having Thanksgiving at my house.  So there!  Ha!

Sheesh.

I am not able to sleep in much anymore.  I made it to 8am today and that was nice.  It was a long day yesterday.  I drove a van of kids to a debate tournament and spent the day judging debate rounds.  We left at 6am and got back at 9:15pm.  Oof.  I came home, dropped my bag on the floor and lay on the lounge and watched tv while I ate swedish fish and drank wine.  I could not talk.  My bran was still running and I needed to shut it down before I could sleep.

I expected to sleep in this morning, but I got up, took care of animals and read the paper.  My to do list is sitting here next to me (I did not put "blog" on the list, but I am doing it anyway).

(I am at that point in my blog drafting where I am realizing that I am going to go in a different direction than I intended when I sat down.  That happens to you, too, right?)

I judged all day yesterday.  I didn't get a single round off.  It was exhausting.  I have been out of debate for over twenty years and while it is the same in many ways it has also changed.  My beloved Lincoln Douglas debate has gotten more "policy debate" like with kids running crazy arguments and speed talking.  I prefer a more genteel and persuasive style.  I like the arguments to be logical.  I felt a little crabby about it at first and I worried that my ballots would cause problems for my team (sometimes judges get reputations and can even be vetted by a school if there is a reason to do so).  My daughter's coach laughed when I brought this up and told me that everyone loves my ballots and that I just need to judge my way and it's ok.  I was on two panels yesterday (quarter finals, semi finals and finals are judged by three judge panels) with new style judges (all college kids, who, frankly, intimidate me with their intelligence) and both decisions were 3-0 decisions, meaning that we all picked the same winner.  We gave an oral critique that definitely showed our differences in judging, but really we all made a decision based on the same things.  That was interesting and reassuring to me.

I got some time to visit with my old coach about stuff - Obamacare and retirement and how fun it is to hang out with debate kids all weekend.  He's thinking about an early retirement and working in a less time consuming way with debate - maybe at the middle school level.  He had little kids when he was my debate coach and I think back now and realize that he and his wife worked all week and then he was gone all day Saturday and sometimes more if we traveled overnight.  I am grateful that I had him and others like him.  I am aware that my daughter's team looks up to me and now I have kids from other teams who recognize me and chat with me outside of rounds.

I have a day of to do list tasks - housework, pay bills and spinning class this afternoon.  None of these will exhaust me as much as sitting on my ass and listening to smart teenagers argue.

My son won't put his bike away.  He rides home from school around 3:30 and parks his bike at the end of the driveway in front of the garage door.  I come home at 5:30 and can't pull all the way in because the bike is there, and really, I should be grateful that the bike is there and not stolen, because it could easily be stolen.  I ask and ask and ask.  The bike is there every night.

I used to drop my bike in the front yard when I got done with my paper route.  My dad got tired of asking me to put my bike away, so one day he "stole" it.  He hid it from me and I had to walk everywhere for a week or so until the neighbor living behind us asked me why my bike was parked behind the garage.

I thought about stealing my own son's bike.

I suggested another plan.

"Do you know what valet parking is?" I asked him when I walked in yesterday.

"Sure.  That's where you have guys in tuxedos park your car and put the keys on a little board so that when you come back they can run out and get your car for you."

"Do you know how much that costs?"

"No."

"It's expensive.  It costs more to use valet parking than to park your own car because you have someone else doing the work.  Does that make sense?"

"Yeah."

"Well, if I have to put your bike away every day I am going to start charging you.  It's going to cost you 50 cents for me to valet park your bike."

He studied my face to see if I was serious.  And then he went and put his bike away.

Giant Civil Liberties Union (yes.  them!) attorney is meeting with me about filing an amicus brief to support my appeal.

Last week I ordered red heels to go with my navy blue suit, which I think will look really good for oral arguments.

Plus I'll be sitting next to a fancy pants nonprofit attorney (as opposed to a private practice fancy pants attorney) who argues in front of federal appellate courts.

This is getting very interesting.

I should figure out what I am going to say at some point, huh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rb4lgOiHBZo

I have been obsessed with this OK Go video for months now.  It all culminated with (finally) quitting bellydance (my final performance was in August) and meeting a table of tangueros who dance in a coffee shop on Friday nights.  Tango is both completely simple (walking) and potentially very complicated.  It reminds me of the tribal style bellydance that I did for so many years - there is a leader, and as a follower you notice the changes in weight and anticipate the next step - steps which have a base and then a variation.

I dance at the coffee shop every Friday and on Mondays I take actual lessons.  It might seem weird that I am doing this without a partner, but there are actually more leads than follows in our tango community.  And because it is a social dance everyone changes partners anyway.  Practicing by myself is a challenge.  Last night I practiced a step called an "ocho" which is the woman's feet making an eight on the floor.  I put the laptop on the top bunk bed and gently balanced myself with the railing as I mimicked the feet on the screen.  A basic and then variation after variation - lifting the foot on the pivot, dragging the foot on the pivot, pausing with a lifted knee on the pivot.  Argentine Tango is an opportunity for two people to have a conversation in music.  It is much more flexible than the ballroom dance I did years ago.

It's also much more intimate.

My husband knows I am dancing Argentine Tango and I think he's not so sure what to make of that.  I have invited him to come and he won't.  I am very aware that while it is not sexual it IS intimate and that is part of what I like so much about it.  Bellydance was less threatening because although people think it is sexy and provocative, it really isn't.  And bellydancers are more into bellydance than men are.

I can't get over how easy it is to find a subculture when you find a new interest.  I have new friends who have welcomed me and included me in "The Tango Scene."  I didn't even know Lincoln had a tango scene!

"You want to dance with other men?" he asked.

"I want to dance with you," I said.

Mostly I dance with the bunk bed railing.

German Immigrant food is seriously fucking cheap.  A head of cabbage was 44 cents!  I also got three pounds of ground beef, a bag of onions, and a bag of potatoes.

Today is my Veteran's Day (observed) which means that I have the day off from work.  The kids were supposed to be at school, but one has the stomach flu and he is on the couch playing video games and the other had a headache and got a late start (I did get her to school).  So. Armistice Day.  And a recipe.  Runza is actually a restaurant here in Nebraska.  They sell these sandwiches and people who have lived here and had them pretty much love them.  My mom gets frozen ones to take to Oklahoma with her.  My high school friend who now lives in Michigan always wants a Runza when she visits.  They are incredibly simple food.  I couldn't believe there were so few ingredients.  But these taste just like a Runza Restaurant runza.  Technically a runza is just a German peasant food that the German homesteaders made when they came to Nebraska.  It's an empenada or calzone.  But it's German.  Here's the recipe:

2 lb ground beef

1 large onion, chopped

salt and pepper

1 medium head of cabbage, chopped

2 batches of bread dough

Saute the onion in oil.  Add hamburger and saute.  Season with salt and pepper.  Drain the grease.  Cover the meat with the chopped cabbage and cook for 45 minutes.

Roll the dough into small rectangles and put the filling in it and roll like a burrito from Chipotle (tuck in sides and fold lengthwise).

Bake 20-25 minutes.

Then go plow a field or make a house out of sod.

Happy Armistice Day!

Yesterday I was sitting in the sun in a tshirt and bare feet and today I am bundled up and making chili.  Crazy weather, this.

I have the day off tomorrow and my family will be gone - kids at school and my husband at work.  My favorite kind of holiday.