Spirited Partners: More than you wanted to know...

So, me, I have this all-or-nothing tendency-type personality. Tell me something new, you say, but really, it's true. When I have stuff going on in my life, good or bad, you will probably know about it one way or the other. The problem with PEOPLE, however, is that they tend to embrace the good and not the bad. So all the funny, comical, witty, interesting or happy statuses on Facebook, for instance, get all kinds of happy comments and likes. Yay, life is so good. Happiness, flowers and sunshine everywhere. However, God help you the day you post something even slightly close to the edge of negative, oh, how everyone just loves to be oh-so critical. I'm more than sure that everyone out there has had their shares of bad days, but it's on the day that YOU decide to go ahead and let it be known that everyone decides to be holier-than-thou. What's up with you people, you know who you are, that pretend to be mr. or mrs. perfect in the public light? I know you're not. And I still accept you, yes, gasp! Ever heard of this thing called sympathy? Yes, it really does exist, you should try it sometime!

So, you know the last few days, going back to the all-or-nothing bit, my life has been just slightly above crap and so had I blogged, you definitely would have gotten more than you bargained for. You can thank me for that later, haha. Actually, when my life is going up in flames, it's not my usual protocol to mince words, make small talk, or bat around the subject. No, I'm the grab the bull by the horns type and face things head-on. But now that the smoke has cleared somewhat, and I'm not so emotionally charged, I can talk about it with a little less venom!

James and I had a wingdinger of a fight, for starters. And I'm the kind of person that believes most things are worth going to war over. So whatever started it, I can't even remember exactly what it was now, but lord have mercy it was brutal, and as it escalated, it became even more so. James and I promised each other at the beginning of our marriage that we would never go to sleep without resolving a conflict or at least mutually committing that the conflict would be resolved at a later set date. (That addendum came at a time where we had so many fights and conflicts going on that we wouldn't have been able to have slept for three straight days... and the more sleep-deprived we got, the more we would fight... you get the drift) Well, my husband is the kind of person that believes that there are not many things at all worth going to war over, so what may erupt as a conflict between the two of us could amount to as little as a hill of beans to him. Bless his heart. And so, he has gone to bed several times in our marriage without resolving conflicts. Well, this past weekend I had had waaay more than I could take, so when he went to bed and I was 99% sure he was asleep, fully well knowing we were in the middle of a full-blown conflict, I went into the room with a cup of ice water and threw it on him. And then I simply said, quite calmly but with the gravity of a nuclear bomb, "I'll go all night with this." So yes, he stayed up long enough for us to get back on track with some things.

Oh, I know what it was that started it all. We were talking, yes, talking, about what we needed to get accomplished and how we were going to get it all done and he went into this gripe-session about how we have too much to do and how even if we worked 24/7/365 at it, we would never get it all done. Another thing you should know about James and I, is that James is not an over-achiever my any means, and I am. Hence, we don't see "work" the same. He complained about the horses, the chores, the chickens... and other things that conveniently were all MY things. The arguing started, which started the interrupting each other, which brought up old fights and issues, which brought up the laundry list of character defects in each other, which brought up the diabolical difference in how we handle fights: I declare war, and he gives it up.

James called later the next day and we tried to talk about the night prior, but again it heated too quickly and ended with him hanging up the phone on me, which was the last straw.

I put an ad up on craigslist that said something to this affect; "I am about to go out and chop the heads off of two dozen lovely, less than one year old purebred White Leghorn hens that we paid a lot of money for and have raised since chicks. I am beyond sick of my husband complaining about having to take care of them. Come and get them."

Within three hours I had NINE people calling me, practically fighting over them. It was so perfect. I had the guy out there by the coop with me, caging up all these hens when James walked out, just getting home from work, seeing what was going on and getting quite upset, and asked me if we could talk before anything further happened.

Without even a look, I said, "Sorry, hon, but I can't talk until I've caught all the Leghorns."

He had his chance to talk and resolve it, he chose to hang up the phone that both communicated to me that one, it wasn't worth his time or effort to try and two, it was going to revolve around his timeline. So, the chickens getting sold and me not stopping what I was doing to talk to him was going to be my timeline. Petty? Maybe. But clearly communicated, yes.

So while I may be the workaholic of the two, and therefore it's not an imposition to work very hard and do more than what might be my "fair share" of household chores, I'll be darned if I do them ALL and on top of it listen to my husband gripe about having more work than he can handle. Nope, not going to happen.

These are the times in my life when I wonder how in the world men and women were meant to cohabitate. And this thing called marriage, only God could have seen ahead enough to know that it needed to be a covenant of forever-ness, because these are the times when I think my marriage is not going to, and feel like I don't WANT it to, last forever. Yes, I said it. But even when things get so bad that you have to revive your husbands' corpse out of bed with a cup of ice water for breaking a promise to you, I have to remember that even though every fiber in my being is screaming over the injustice and rebelling against the pain that is surging in my heart, that the fight is worth staying in. It is worth fighting for, it IS worth the cost.

So, you ask, did it get resolved? Yes, it did. At least for now. Oh, it will come back, wearing a new outfit, disguised as a new problem, but it will still be the same old thing. And it will be worth fighting for then, too. And lest you think that James is a lazy, non-motivated individual whom I had committed my life to waging war to, let me assure you that is not the case. What you are seeing is a glimpse into my life from my perspective at a very heated moment, and not the complete picture. Some things have been omitted on purpose. And I love James with all my heart; he is very good for me in so many ways. Yes, he does drive me to the brink of insanity because of our differences, but that is life. That is married life. We deal with it and move on.

Recently we took some furniture my dad made, that I had asked to keep and later decided I didn't want to, over to my sisters'. JJ had a lot of toys stored in some of it, so once it was gone, his room was just simply a disaster. ALL his stuff was on the floor, in heaps and piles. There weren't even any paths through the junk, I just had to wade through it every time I needed to get something out of his closet. It was fun, while it lasted, as we could just walk down the hallway and chunk his stuff through the door, not caring where or how it landed because nothing was in its place, anyhow. You should know how rarely, if ever, that happens around here, but even I have to admit, it was kinda fun. But finally on Tuesday night I had enough of it, so I stayed up til 2am going through every last toy and giving his room a complete overhaul. It was a great time, of cleaning and organizing, and listening to music with no boys around.

A couple of years ago we bought JJ this huge set of Duplos, I found on craigslist. Duplos are the very large blocks made by Lego, specficially for young kids because the pieces are large and non-swallowable. It was a huge box, simply huge. They were all pieced together in long rows, and when I brought them home I took them all apart and threw them in my bathtub filled with hot water and bleach. There were so many, it overflowed the tub. So then I took them out to the front porch to lay on towels to dry in the sun, and I ran out of room on the front porch. The whole operation was a disaster and it took me practically all day to pull apart, clean, dry, and piece back together these stinking blocks. On top of that, little did I know that the majority of the blocks were actually "Mega-Bloks", which are a counterfeit and cheaper version of the Lego Duplo. I, could have cared less. But James, in his ever high-quality and precisionistic way was greatly disappointed that we had bought these things thinking they were Duplos, and turned out to be mostly Mega-Bloks instead.

JJ has hardly ever played with them, and now he is playing with real Legos, and all the little pieces making cool cars and things that you can't do with these Duplos. I decided to re-sell the blocks and I had to go through them all again, piece by piece, to pull out the Duplos and leave the Mega-Bloks. And since now I have been educated by James as to which is which, it was easy for me to see the difference, even though it took for-EVER. But it is done, and his room is amazing. I couldn't stop looking at it because it was so organized and I was so proud of myself!

My life in pictures: