Happy Hour

A few weeks ago, the husband went to happy hour with a bunch of his coworkers. I in turn, went to the local art museum cause it was the first Thursday of the month. I wrote about it here.

A friend of mine, Baby Shark and Chevy joined cause it’s free and you get two for one, wine or beer. But it’s ok, cause when you’re at a museum it’s classy. We did everything we normally do and had a nice time. But I got home before the husband. The kid was ready for bed and I was about to text the husband this:

‘How much longer do you think you have?’

But I didn’t. Had I texted that, he wouldn’t have enjoyed the rest of the evening, thinking about me. The text wasn’t going to make him come home faster, cause as I later learn, he had scheduled the last hour to just drinking water to be able to drive home, and he can’t rush that. And third, it wasn’t going to help me get the kid to bed faster or better. So I put the phone down.

I told that story to the writer and she said

“you’re such a good wife…”

“No I’m not! This is three years of couples’ therapy! We needed to pay for professional help!” I said, and we both cracked up.

Everything that I have learned in therapy, I tried to apply it as much as possible to every other part of my life. Because it is helping me, it is making me a better person. Also, it’s expensive! So I need to get my money’s worth. Here’s as example:

In one session, our Dr said to me:

“Susie, this is your exercise until next time: when the husband does something that you don’t agree with, before you say or think anything else, ask yourself why could he have done this? If you can’t come up with the answer, than you need to ask him. It’s a game of why.

“Husband, whenever Susie asks you why, you need to have an answer.” She finished.

During that exercise I learned that the husband wasn’t trying to destroy me. It worked.

Last week, code enforcement got us on two things. And the husband was mad. Our house is very well kept, but we are still hippies. We refuse to put any chemicals on the lawn, we refuse to over water and it’s dry season, and we keep planting plants, not grass. So we went to the neighborhood general meeting cause he wanted to as our CE why?

At one point I had to go outside to talk to the Athletics Director of the local HS, but when I came back in, the husband was questioning our CE. Sternly. He finally said

“I’m going to call you tomorrow because I want you to come over, and you’re going to point out what is wrong with my yard, cause if you had done thins two weeks from now, everything would be fine.”

The meeting ended. I’m going to talk about that on a different post.

We went home, and I said to the husband, “I’m going to call her, I will set the appointment, and you will not be here.”

“Ok.” He said.

His was mad because out of all the neighborhoods she could have chosen, she chose ours. And on top of that, she chose the most economically challenged corner of the neighborhood, because our neighborhood has both multi-million dollar homes and government assisted housing. He kept wondering why not pick on the other side where the more affluent residents live.

CE came the next day, and before she said anything I said

“Before you say anything, please let me apologize for what ever my husband said. He’s mad at the association and mad at a lot of the members. He’s very supportive of you, and always defends you when the neighbors get all rallied up about something!”

“Oh! Don’t worry about that! He wasn’t mean or anything. He was being cute about it.” She said.

We went through the things and she explained some stuff to me and it’s fine. I can fix the stuff myself. But at the end she said,

“The only reason we picked this side, is because for years, it has been neglected and we wanted the rental properties to get fixed and upgraded! We weren’t trying to ‘catch you’ guys.”

You see, there are several ‘slum-lords’ in our neighborhood and we’re trying to get them to class up their joints. Which makes sense! Without me asking, she told me her why. And no. She is also not trying to destroy us.