A Proper Temper Tantrum

August 5, 2015 by Ruth 55 Comments

[Warning:  Gratuitous swearing and whining]

So, yeah, I threw a proper temper tantrum last night. I wasn’t mad at anybody in particular.  I was pretty much pissed right off at everything.

Why, you might ask?

Because the push mower wouldn’t start.

Oh, no.  That wasn’t the first of it.  That was just the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back.

You see, TheBrit’s family is coming on the 12th for a nearly three week visit.  They’ve never been to America.  In fact, his parents have never been on an airplane.    I’m really excited about it.  His mother, father, sister, brother-in-law, and his niece will all be residents at our abode.

In preparation for their coming, though, I had planned all sorts of things.  The house needed pressure washing.  The house needs cleaning.  The yards need doing.  We have sleeping arrangements to prepare, linens to buy(because with just the two of us we really just operate on enough for us), and accomodations to make for his aged father.

We’ve known about this for months.

Every single time I think I’ll have some extra funds to do any of that with something else sucks it up like a giant black hole.

First my surgery in February.  Even with good insurance it cost us almost $5,000 out-of-pocket.

Then in May TheBrit hurt his back.  He was out of work for five weeks.  Without pay.  That hit hard enough, but he had to have exrays, MRI’s, steroid epidural injections and before we knew it, we’d met his out-of-pocket as well.  Another five grand.

Then, with his family to arrive in just a couple of weeks, our swimming pool which they are looking forward to dipping into since it’s so.damn.hot. sprung a leak.  So we’ve had to empty the pool, scrape out the caulking and are waiting on the super duper fast cure marine caulk to arrive. With less than exactly one week to go before they arrive the cement pond is bone ass dry.

Then my modem breaks.  That’s another hundred bucks.

Then, and yes this is our(probably MY) fault, Dottie ate the expensive ass remote control.

We both work full time jobs so all these little(and big) odd jobs have to be done in the afternoon and on weekends.  And he’s not even fully recovered from his back injury.  He works out in the heat all day.  When he comes home the last thing he wants to be bothered with is pressure washing and pool painting and yard work.  Not to mention the fact that he’s had blood work done and is having a sleep study scheduled because he is suffering from some extreme fatigue that has jumped on him like white on rice.

I hired the pressure washing done.

Then my brother-in-law who is an amateur carpenter at best – but because they bought a house and he’s doing most of the repair work himself thinks he knows everything – came over the other day for a family dinner and walked around our house looking at things.  We didn’t even ask for this.  He’s annoying as hell and even if I could afford to do any work right now I would be hiring it out to someone…professional.  He finds the ONE window sill that needs repainting and starts flaking the paint off.  “You’re going to have to take this whole window out and replace the sill.  It’s soft.”

I knew that it was soft.  A little soft.  The top layer of wood maybe six or eight inches long.  I already had a plan to have it fixed but as I wasn’t quite ready to do that was going to leave it until after our guests had left(so, yes, Roughseas, I’ll be sending those pictures very soon).  Now it looks really bad because, well, paint flaked off half of the window sill!  I didn’t effing ask you to do that!  He was so perplexed by my less than jovial expression.

I was going to do some of the outside stuff just because I know TheBrit doesn’t have all the time in the world and could use a little help.  I asked him if he’d get the push mower out for me.  “I can do that much.  I’ll just mow up close to the house,” I said.  Nothing would do him, though, but to do it himself because he thinks I already do too much.  I really like to push mow, though.  Still, nothing would do but for him to do it, even though he was tired and he isn’t the one who wants it done.

He gets the mower out and it won’t crank.  He tries a few mechanicy things he knows to try.  He tries for a good forty-five minutes.  It still won’t crank.  He calls me outside for some help.  “I need you to pull the cord while I hold the choke.”  I pull and pull.  It’s probably flooded now, but I don’t mention that.

I give up and go back inside to finish cooking dinner because by this time I’m proper pissed.

He keeps trying to no avail.  He pushes it back into the shed and comes inside.  “I couldn’t get it to crank, babe.  We’ll have to take it to the repair shop.”

So after just shy of three years of marriage TheBrit got to see me throw a hissy fit.

“Okay, I’m not mad at you, but if another fucking thing at this fucking house breaks I’m going to lose my fucking mind!”  Then I pout for another hour.  I may or may not have slammed cabinets and drawers.

Then I take a deep breath(actually lots of them, I thought I was going to pass out) and decide whatever will be will be.  If this place is ready when they get here it’s ready.  If it ain’t, it ain’t.