I’ve been mad at Noah for a bit. That’s hard. When I’m mad at Noah I don’t know how to deal with it. I don’t want to rant about him in unfinished ways in public. Everything I put on the internet is here forever. I have to be prepared to live with having said everything I say. It keeps me honest.

Sometimes it takes me a while to figure out what I am really mad about. I have to go through multiple layers of pissiness before I get to the bottom of things. I wish I were faster and able to do this process without uhm loudly bitching at him but I am where I am. The best part of being married to someone who is nearly incapable of reading body language and tone of voice is that I get away with sounding like an evil harpy if everything I am saying is true. I have to make god damn sure it is true. No one is fucking quicker to argue with me if I get a god damn detail wrong than Noah.

But sometimes I say true things. Sometimes the things that upset me really should make a person upset. I’m having trouble figuring out how that works.

Right now Noah doesn’t feel very successful or like he is good at life when he is with the kids and I. The three of us are an intense bunch of irrational non-vulcanlike-non-programmer freaks. How in the fuck can he talk to us? Everything that he has spent his life on is uhm weirdly irrelevant to the three of us… only he supports us. It’s kind of weird. As far as the kids are concerned he might as well sit at work and watch youtube all day. That is what computers are for–right? Sometimes when I walk into the garage on his work from home days I certainly wonder.

I feel horrible that I provide so little satisfaction to Noah. Being around me doesn’t seem to provide him with a lot of good feelings. Other than having sex he would rather be working. I know that a lot of it stems from the fact that he feels very pressured to make more money (he has multiple side gigs–he has been making more than $2k/month outside of his dayjob) because uhm… we spend a lot of money. I feel fairly sure that a lot of the spending the kids and I do would change if he was around more. I spend money in order to not sit in the house feeling alone and sad all day. The kids are a weird company/not-company. Uhm and we spend money when things happen like the washing machine flooding my garage and a deer jumping on the car. It’s not like our spending this year has been completely frivolous. And that’s right around $10,000 just with those two things.

I get that Noah feels a lot of pressure. I feel a lot of shame that I am no longer contributing at all to my own maintenance. In order to make money from sale of the book I would hve to a)get the cajones to get into print and then b)do a lot of marketing.

I don’t know about you but I’m having trouble coming up with a marketing angle for “Come read my tale of woe and tragedy. Don’t worry–it has a horrible ending so you can be sure to experience all the angst possible. No I haven’t written part two. You have no idea what happens next beyond, ‘Not dead yet.'” It just doesn’t have zing.

I feel like a burden. I feel like an impediment to success. But Noah wasn’t real motivated towards success until he got married. Not really. He did a lot of coasting.

Yesterday I went down and talk to my neighbor, Ed. We found out recently that Ed is in his 70’s. I would have said early 60’s. He’s an interesting fellow. I talk to him a lot because he spends a lot of time hanging out in his front yard. He likes to talk about his car. I’m not going to tell you about it because I don’t care. What I care about was yesterday I asked him, “How many hours did you work every week when your kids were little?” He said, “Oh I guess it probably came to about 60 hours per week. But there were a lot of weeks when he traveled

and right there is where I have to stop before I beat the shit out of someone. Out of time today. They won’t stop yanking on my arms.

come back later:
I don’t beat the shit out of anyone. I hiss through clenched teeth, “You need to stop touching me for a few minutes.” Then I stand in the corner of the room by myself until I calm down. I wish I didn’t get so angry when they are grabby. God it’s hard.