Sky High Expectations

Along the lines of the last post, Lover Boy and I had a disagreement last night. Every once in awhile I begin to feel like a self-imposed martyr.

I feel as if you get up in the morning, and go to work. It doesn't matter if you are sick (to a point), or you didn't get enough sleep the night before, or if you slept wrong and your arm hurts. You go to work, baring not being able to stop throwing up long enough to get to work.

Even throwing up sometimes means you still go into work. I had a job where I was the only one on shift, the store needed to be opened, and the manager refused to answer his phone. So, I left the bathroom opened, and helped customers in between running to the bathroom and throwing up.

You get home, and you start cleaning up after yourself/others. You make dinner, you eat it, you wash the dishes. You go through the mail and pay the bills and clean the bathroom and take out the garbage and do all those little things you put off.

I usually try to get things done before I do something fun like clear out the DVR. I'm not saying that always happens. I have days when I literally can't do it, and I eat a spoonful of peanut butter while watching "The Real World: DC." until about 8pm, when I climb into bed and read until 10 and then go to sleep.

This would be the perfect way to live, if I was living alone. Maybe, if I was living alone, I would actually slack off more. But, I feel I owe it to Lover Boy to keep the place relatively clean. After all, he works 12 hours a day to my 8 1/2, and I have the afternoon to do my things as apposed to his mornings before he has to go to work.

It's still a new house, though. We've lived there since late December, and we still have boxes. We still have things to hang up. Chandeliers that need to be re-placed, and light bulbs.

I guess these are things that I could do on my own, but the 50's housewife in me thinks the "man of the house" should do these things. He SAYS he'll do these things. Then, they don't get done. It was a joke about one of these things that lead to our fight last night.

I harbor all these emotions about how I have to do everything, and how it's SOOOO unfair. But, the truth is, I built these expectations. Just because I can go home and be a powerhouse about my stuff doesn't mean that he will be about his. It doesn't help that I ask him to do something, and then don't see him. We work opposite shifts, and our only day off together is Sunday.

He will do things in his own time, but I don't want to be a fishwife in the meantime. I don't want to have to nag for things to get done within the week. I'm tired of working so hard.

But I'm the only one pushing me.