Whiny Selfish Lady

This is my crude drawing of the bookshelf we're planning to build in the space under the bathroom window. There's already a cut-out in the wall from where the previous owners moved up the window to accommodate their bathtub. The bookshelf will indent into the wall a few inches, and we're framing it out in 1x6 trim to match the window.



Darwin bought the materials for it earlier in the week, but still, I'm getting concerned again about our bathroom progress. All we got done last weekend was a little scraping and sanding. This weekend Darwin wants to hunt on Saturday (this is the last week of deer season, thank goodness) and may have to go to a "singin'" on Sunday.

He also wants to spend every spare moment working on his project truck, which has been in progress for the duration of our marriage (4.5 years). I think he feels about it the way I feel about the bathroom: it’s been so long, and we’re so close!

I know I should be understanding; these are his hobbies, and he allegedly enjoys them. All work and no play makes Darwin a dull boy.

Besides, he hasn't hunted that much - not nearly enough to justify the hunting club fee, but whatever - and he hasn't had many singing engagements lately - fall and winter are their slow seasons.

And I'm better about it now than I used to be. He has so many hobbies and so many people clamoring for his time that I felt a little neglected. Finally I just gave up the moping and developed a million hobbies of my own – dollmaking (since abandoned), collecting dolls (also abandoned except for the occasional moment of weakness), the dollhouse (on hiatus), scrapbooking, blogging, writing, selling clothes on eBay, designing and running my mom’s online costume store, ballroom dancing, and of course, shopping, shopping, shopping.

So now I’m busy, he’s busy, and our work schedules are at odds half the time. Even when we can spend weeknights together, it’s only for a couple of hours before he has to retire early. That means the weekends are all we’ve got; we have to cram in time together, time with friends, time with family, and work on the house.

That’s why I get a little peevish when something else interferes with the weekends, especially something unexpected.

Like when Darwin’s dad called to tell him about the singing on Sunday. It’s the worst kind, the dreaded “all day singing.” The name says it all. It requires Darwin to leave the house at 9 a.m., attend the morning service and sing a few songs, stay for lunch, then sing a few sets after lunch. Some churches are faster than others – it depends on how many of the church’s attendees want to get up and sing their own “specials” – but it will typically last until 3 p.m., after which Darwin has to help load up the group’s equipment and then drive an hour or more back home.

And there’s pretty much a zero percent chance he’ll eagerly shuck his church clothes, dive into old clothes and throw himself into working on the bathroom. It’ll be 4 p.m. or later; it will be getting dark outside. We’ll want dinner in a couple of hours. Then we’ll want TV time.

Another day, another weekend will pass with little to no progress, and the bathroom’s completion will move one more week later into the fuzzy future.

So such phone calls about singings leave us both in an awkward position. I want to say, “If you go to that singing, I will kill you with a waffle iron!” But I don’t want to be the nag; he should have the right to make his own decisions.

He knows how much I want him to say he can’t make it this weekend, but he knows, too, how much his dad wants him to say yes. Half the reason – maybe more than half – he is still in this group is because his dad wants him to be. His dad hasn’t yet recovered from him moving out of their house to marry me.

So poor Darwin is stuck. Either choice will make someone unhappy. I usually vote for making me happy, but I can see why it wouldn’t be so simple for him.

In this case, he didn’t respond at all. He didn’t say yes or no. He changed the subject to hunting, something he is already doing with his dad this weekend.

So I don’t know yet whether we’ll be working on the bathroom this weekend or if I’ll be sulking at home, priming by myself or trying to figure out how to build a bookshelf.