Saturday night and another ailment or two..........

Mr H "suffers with his digestion" in his words; in my words he eats rubbish and drinks too much and reaps the rewards. This is a man who will whack down a fried breakfast every morning, have at least 1 bag of crisps a day, and 3 or 4 chocolate bars a week. Not to mention the amount of red wine he consumes. He is constantly looking for an answer to his "digestive problems", but is not prepared to accept that his lifestyle might be contributing. He has had various medical investigations with no significant result, so thinks that his GP is rubbish, blaming the GP rather than himself.  His latest fad is that he has decided he cannot drink coffee any more; despite being 56 years old and having been a coffee drinker for about 40 years, he has realised that coffee is the cause of all his problems, and is almost evangelical in this revelation. Every morning for the past 2 weeks he has had a cup of tea in the morning and told me with great gusto that he feels wonderful, and how fantastic it is that he has discovered the cause of all his problems. I say "yes dear" but I have heard it all before, before coffee it was bananas, before that it was cucumber, before that it was peppers. Funnily enough it's never bacon, sausages, butter or red wine!
 It is all so tedious, and makes cooking a nightmare because an ingredient can move to the banned list in a day.
Today we went out for lunch, and for tea had mushroom risotto (his choice) but he has wittered all evening about his stomach being "off" and has now gone to bed at 8.30pm telling me he "feels dreadful". I promise I didn't poison him (although it is a tempting thought sometimes!!) but I  will sleep in the spare room I think because I don't want to be in the same room as someone who feels "dreadful", and I know that he will thrash about and moan and groan - the spare room is my haven! I am not a betting woman but am willing to wager that tomorrow morning he will be back on the coffee, having decided that either mushrooms or rice are the root cause. Not the red wine then.
I find the melodramatics of his "ailments" so very tedious. But hey ho, it's Saturday night and me and the dog are watching rubbish on TV with a glass of wine (me, not the dog)
What I find so incredible is his lack of self awareness, he talks about a friend of his and also his sist
 being "hypochondriacs" but doesn't see it in himself .

Time to hit the spare room

Hannah x

Another weekend away.....

Mr H and I have been away for a couple of nights, and it occurs to me that we get on much better when we are away than when we are at home. We didn't go anywhere exciting, just a city in the north of England,  but we both wanted to visit this city and we had a lovely time, looking round museums, looking at architecture, eating out and (best of all) shopping. I realised during the trip that Mr H was less controlling, I'm not sure why, maybe it was because he was relaxed, but also maybe because he wasn't on his home territory.
Back home, and it's back to normal. On our way home yesterday we stopped at the supermarket and bought a couple of ready meals ( a fairly rare event) but because I wasnt hungry and wanted mine later than his "normal" time of 6.30 it threw him into a panic and said I was being difficult. I'm not sure how cooking 2 microwave meals at different times is difficult be there we go. Today we had decided to go to a local pub for Sunday lunch, we go quite often, the food's good and not expensive. We had already lightheartedly discussed what we might eat, but, as so easily happens with Mr H, once we got there everything went pear shaped.
Him "what do you want to eat?"
Me " I'm not sure, either roast pork or fish and chips probably"
Him " you can't have fish and chips for Sunday dinner"
Me " well I can if I want, it's on the menu"
Him "well it seems wrong. I'm having pork"
Me " think I'll have roast beef"
Him "  I thought you wanted pork"
Me "well I changed my mind"
Him " you are being deliberately awkward"
No comment from me

We ate our meal in silence, came home and I have been doing stuff in the garden while he communes with his one great love, the TV.
He astounds me sometimes, well often actually, he cannot see that his behaviour is odd or controlling,  yet when his sister tries to organise for us to spend a weekend together, he complains that she is being controlling! Talk about lack of self awareness.

Hannah x

PS  there are some more "ailments of the week" to tell you about but I'll save for my next post

The need to control me........

Mr H needs to feel that he is in total control of every aspect of his life, and that need extends to trying to control my life too. I don't think that this need is malicious, but it is very very annoying. He likes to have every last detail planned in advance, and can't cope with change, he likes to plan meals a week ahead, and even plans silly things like which route to walk the dog, or whether to fill up his car with petrol on the way to work or way home. Does it really matter?
I have an old friend coming to stay for a couple of nights next week, Mr H will be away with work, but feels, for some reason, that he should be organising what she and I do, eat, etc. I have already decided what to cook, and have bought or planned to buy the ingredients, and have told him this,  but he has to interfere and keeps making suggestions. When I say that it is already planned he takes offence and sulks, because he thinks that his idea is better (it's not!), and although I have told him several times that while she is here we have planned to visit another old friend, he insists on telling me what he thinks I should do. He usually starts off by saying "you need to........" and my heart sinks . I would not dream of suggesting what he should eat when he is away, or when he is home alone, to be honest I am not interested, it is for him to decide. Normally I can keep quiet and ignore his interference, but sometimes, like today, I just can't.

We have just had a night away in a town a couple of hours drive away, really enjoyable wandering round lovely old buildings, eating out and generally having a good time. On the way home we stopped to look at a cathedral and (bonus!) we found a waitrose so bought a couple of curries for tea tonight. Food, and the planning of,  is of enormous importance to Mr H, whereas I just see it as fuel and will shovel down whatever I fancy, and I know that he was getting twitchy because we didn't have anything planned. Anyway when it came to it, neither of us fancied curry so we froze it, and at this point it all went horribly wrong because Mr H decided he wanted a bacon butty but I didn't. Now it shouldn't be a problem, he could have his bacon butty and I could have cheese on toast, but no, he insists we have to have the same (why?) so then he sulks because I won't back down and eat something I don't want.

So we have had cheese on toast, he didn't eat all of his because he was still sulking, I am sitting in the conservatory typing this while he immerses himself in the TV.
Happy days!
Hannah x

The inability to find things

Oh this drives me insane, Mr H really cannot see beyond the end of his nose. It is, I think, that he has a picture in his head of where an object should be, and if it isn't in that exact spot, if it is just to the left or right, or above or below, he cannot see it, and he reverts to panic mode, and then there has to be blame. A  week ago he went into the garage looking for his staple gun, and couldn't find it; came back into the house ranting that our builder had stolen it. I pointed out that our lovely builder had brought his own professional quality staple gun when he had made a cage for our septic tank, and that our little cheapo B&Q number would be of little interest. I went into the garage and located said item within seconds, took it to show him and got the expected response; " well I couldn't see it, it's not my fault, it's my eyes" my eyes? This is a man who drives around the motorway network on a weekly basis, if he can't see a piece of equipment on a shelf in a garage, how in heavens name can he see where he is driving?( I hasten to add that he has regular eye tests and is perfectly fit to drive!). This is about not looking. He often asks me where something is, (usually adding " I don't expect you to look") I go and look, I find, I show him, he forgets instantly. It drives me mad!!!
It goes on and on, this evening at tea time he was looking for tomato ketchup, I have told him till I am tomato coloured that spares are in the blue basket in the utility room. Difficult? Apparently so, he went into a panic that the tom sauce was almost empty and that he had looked everywhere but there wasn't a spare.
Me "where have you looked?"
Him  " I have looked everywhere"
Me ( with bottle of Tom sauce from blue basket ) " there's one here, in blue basket where I told you"
Him " well I forgot"

A little bit of me wants to kill him ( possibly with his staple gun) or let him do without tomato sauce because he can't be arsed to look for it.

I am utterly fed up of being his mother rather than his lover.

Sorry for the rant
Hannah x

Techno fun

Mr H loves technology, and will gladly spend several hundreds of pounds on the latest "must-have" gadget, which, of course is vitally essential to the smooth running of our lives, while telling me that we can't afford a new hoover  or washing machine just yet. One of our latest "must-haves" is a wifi hotspot so that we can access the internet in the garden; funnily enough I suggested this last year but he wasn't particularly keen, however now he has realised the benefits to him (such as being able to sit in the garden when working at home) it has, of course, become essential.

He also loves (adores even) the television, and is incapable of sitting in the living room without the TV on; he watches stuff but has no idea of what he has watched, and will happily re watch films time and time again. In fact a couple of months ago we had a power cut one evening that lasted a couple of hours, not unusual in this rural area, and he was beside himself. I got candles, a book to read and some knitting, he paced around the house checking the time every 10 minutes and saying " I wopnder how long this is going to last, it's ridiculous!"
 When we moved to this house 2 years ago, he spent a whole day looking for a particular cable, opening and searching through boxes, then the next day setting up the TV, DVD player and broad band etc, while I plumbed in the washer and dryer and emptied a million boxes. I lost the plot with him and called him a selfish lazy a**ed sod; he looked at me as if I was insane and went back to fiddling with wires, he really believed I think that setting up the TV was the most important thing to do.

Today I have been in the garden most of the day so far, he has pottered, read papers and made some bread. I went into the house a few minutes ago and found him sitting in the living room, staring at the TV which was on but muted.
Me " what are you watching?"
Him " nothing"
Me  " well it looks like you're watching something even if it's just to brush up on your lip reading skills"
Him " I'm waiting to watch a film but it's not on for 25 minutes"
Heaven help me, I want to shake him sometimes, but at least he's quiet!

I'm back in the garden now, enjoying the peace and quiet and typing this courtesy of the hotspot thingy.

Hannah x