Nov. 17/2016
Wow, sorry to be so long in writing but ALOT has happened in the past week or so.
As I said, I have finally accepted that my marriage cannot continue and I cannot keep the farm or the horses - not even two or three of them - and manage by myself. I have come to the painful conclusion that I will have to sell it all and move to a much smaller house with perhaps a large lot, but certainly not anything anymore than an acre or two. I could live another thirty years - my mother is eighty-two this year and still going strong - but I am not going to live forever, that is for sure, and I have to start thinking in practical terms what I am leaving behind for my daughters to deal with. I have a full life insurance policy that is all paid and that will provide them with a modest amount of inheritance, although not a fortune. The two of them are the only beneficiaries and that cannot and will not ever be changed.
But here is the scenario that will cause my daughters grief. If something happens to me while I am living on this or another farm with livestock - even one horse - my daughters will either have to come to the farm immediately to care for the animal(s) or arrange for someone else to, as twelve or fourteen hours, possibly twenty-four, would be the maximum they could be left alone, even in such an emergency as death or hospitalization. In addition, a farm normally takes longer to sell than a typical home. This would create a major disruption for my kids, and although one is a lawyer and both are fully capable of looking after the livestock, they have their own busy lives. One or both may have children of their own by then and one of my daughters I do not expect to be living on the same continent as I. She has applied to a PHD position in New Zealand and currently has a love interest in the UK. It is time for me to stop dreaming and to face reality.
I have wished and prayed, and hoped against all hope that somehow Nick will stop this delusional behavior and begin to see things as they really are, but I have now accepted that he is unable and incapable of doing this. Even if he realizes that he is ill, the crux of this malady is to believe the actions of others to be true and to be fact, and to convince him otherwise is just as impossible as convincing me that what HE believes is true. His perception of what is reasonable is not only flawed, it has ceased to exist at all.
Quite incredulously and prophetically, there have been several episodes on CBC radio in the past few months that have delved into and presented research by experts about how the brains of healthy and well-adjusted everyday people modify memories and truly believe that these new versions of events are the truth. In fact, apparently this is something that most of us do to some degree and it is something that is considered a 'normal' function of recall of past events. Up until recently, the phenomenon had been attributed to 'his version' or 'her perception' of an experience, with in many instances two people having different and/or conflicting memories of the same event where both were present. I believe that the repeated trauma of neglect and abandonment that Nick suffered as a young child and as a young adult combined with these normal 'tricks' of the mind where memories are warped has given him a false and persecuting perception of current day experiences. He truly believes he is the victim of theft and infidelity, and that he is the subject of constant joke and ridicule.
This condition of 'morbid jealousy' is apparently extremely difficult to treat and must begin with the individual realizing the existence of the delusions as well as the desire to deal with them and heal from the inside as a first step forward. I believe this could be possible for Nick, but in combination with his complete disregard for financial responsibility, his disinterest in maintaining and repairing our home, vehicles, or virtually any of our material possessions and his lack of ambition to do anything more than the absolute minimum in the care of the livestock, I feel I have no choice but to cut myself loose and salvage what I can if I am ever going to move forward with my own life. I actually don't care for myself but I feel deeply indebted to my daughters and my family to do everything in my power to take control of this situation I find myself in and to do whatever it takes to recover financially and recoup some semblance of stability.
Enough philosophy for now, as I type this I can hear the rats scurrying around in the attic above me. I must get up from my cozy spot and re-bait the traps and make a decision to either call an extermination expert for help or order on-line some of the rat poison that is not only extremely effective but is also available only to these pest control companies.
Today is Thursday, and on Monday evening I sat down with Nick and finally blurted out that the 'farm' was not working for me. We agreed it was not working for either of us and we conceded that we each felt divorce was the best option. He was surprising calm about this and in fact, seemed relieved and almost pleased with the discussion. The next morning he sent me a text message at work saying he wanted to continue our life at the farm as if nothing was happening and that he immediately would cease mentioning, in his own words, 'you know who'. He agreed to get busy at once to train and prepare the horses for sale and also asked me to make a list of things he needed to fix in order to ready the place for sale. We made plans and discussed which rooms needed a new coat of paint and what improvements we each thought would expedite the selling of the property. He also agreed that we should work together to maximize the potential price we could get on the current market and that I should be re-imbursed the amount of the down payment I provided on the purchase of the farm.
Although there are many details to be decided upon, the atmosphere has changed from one of conflict to one of teamwork and positive outcomes. I am almost afraid to breath lest something will once again trigger another tide of apathy and abuse.
Thursday 17 November 2016
Monday 7 November 2016
Monday, November 7, 2016
Nov.7/ 2016
Well I made one last teary-eyed plea to save my marriage last night and Nick still insists that I am still getting together with this Chris person, that he has proof we were together last week on the day Nick went to his dentist's appointment. I don't know how he thinks I can get together with someone and shovel out the barn at the same time but apparently this is possible. Even though that is all Nick usually has to show for his day's work. I am now certain that there is no hope of a future for us.
He just came upstairs to tell me that Chris complained to Nick's 'source' that he had to move the turtle tank for me so I could clean it because Nick was too lazy to clean it himself. I did clean it myself about three months ago just to show Nick that saying he can't lift the tank himself doesn't cut it with me as an excuse not to clean it. He always says he needs my help to carry it over to the sink to dump it and rinse it out. So one day I was really fed up and I carried it over by myself and cleaned it and put it back on the table where it goes. If little 105-pound me can do it by myself then surely Nick can as well. To be honest, it takes all the strength I have on a good day to lift that thing but when you are pissed off and determined to prove someone wrong, you can move mountains.
He comes up with the wildest ideas. And they often have a thread of truth to them, or they are related to something currently needing to be done around here. Very weird. Like a couple of months ago Invictus' feet needed to be trimmed, his hooves that is. Nick is a farrier - that is what the people who do horse's feet are called. He took the course at the agriculture college back when he had horses before. Invictus is a very large horse and he is very easily spooked with new experiences. I think Nick has done his feet maybe once before, no more than twice. And his feet are huge. It is very difficult to hold onto a foot his size even if the horse is being cooperative and it is impossible to do otherwise. Both Nick and I knew his feet needed to be done - his hooves were chipped and broken.
So one day Nick accuses me of getting someone to come to the farm and trim this horse's feet. He says that they have been trimmed and filed, and that whoever did it did a really bad job and abused the horse while doing the work. Nick claimed that the horse had been 'ruined' and that now he would never be able to do his feet himself as a result. He pretended to be furious, and beside himself with grief because now he would have to sell his favorite horse as he was 'ruined'. I asked Nick if he really thought I had called someone and asked them to come and do Invictus' feet, and that they had snuck into the barn when Nick wasn't there and somehow gotten Invictus inside as well. This horse only trusts Nick and even I have to coax and bribe him to come along with me. Most farriers would have nothing to do with a horse that size and that temperament, and they would have to be paid a lot of money or have a lot of tranquilizer or maybe need both before they would work with him without the owner present. You can't tie a horse that large and powerful to any part of our barn - he can pull restraints right out of the walls and he can snap boards like matchsticks when he is panicked.
It is November now and it is difficult looking after the livestock in the winter. There is no grass in the pastures, their diets will consist of the hay we give them morning and night, supplemented with some sweet feed and oats twice a day. It costs around a hundred dollars a month to feed each horse, and probably a bit more in the winter because you want to give them enough so they put on and keep on a little extra weight, to keep them warm.
The water freezes on cold days. The ice has to be banged out of the buckets in each stall before they can be filled, which is done twice a day. The snow makes pushing the wheelbarrow full of manure from the stalls a lot more difficult than it is in the summer, and your hands and feet get cold no matter how warmly you are dressed. You are restricted to wearing gloves because you need your fingers to unlatch stall doors and maneuver halters onto heads.
Keeping the house warm is also a challenge. We have a wood furnace, as I have mentioned, and the wood needs to be brought inside and split before it can be put into the furnace, and it has to be kept burning by adding more every four to five hours at the very least which means getting up in the middle of night if the house is going to be comfortable when it's time to get up and get ready for work. We also have an oil furnace as well as electric baseboards in most rooms but we have no money to buy oil or to pay a large power bill. Nick does not have any wood in the basement at present, and has been bringing in what he needs for the night and the next morning during the afternoon or after the horses have been brought in for the day and have been fed their evening meal.
My point is that I need Nick in order to survive out here until spring. And I need his help to re-home or sell the horses. If the new owners could come here and transport the horses to their farms that would be ideal but to be able to deliver them ourselves is a good selling point and also allows us to check out their new homes. There is a lot of peace of mind that comes with knowing where your animals have ended up and knowing they are being well-cared for.
I have come to the realization that I cannot live here with Nick for any longer than it takes to find new homes for the horses and fix up the place for sale. And for now I have to wait for warmer weather. I have no idea how all of this is going to play out. I just know my dream of growing old on a farm with these wonderful beasts will be nothing but a wistful memory when all is said and done.
Well I made one last teary-eyed plea to save my marriage last night and Nick still insists that I am still getting together with this Chris person, that he has proof we were together last week on the day Nick went to his dentist's appointment. I don't know how he thinks I can get together with someone and shovel out the barn at the same time but apparently this is possible. Even though that is all Nick usually has to show for his day's work. I am now certain that there is no hope of a future for us.
He just came upstairs to tell me that Chris complained to Nick's 'source' that he had to move the turtle tank for me so I could clean it because Nick was too lazy to clean it himself. I did clean it myself about three months ago just to show Nick that saying he can't lift the tank himself doesn't cut it with me as an excuse not to clean it. He always says he needs my help to carry it over to the sink to dump it and rinse it out. So one day I was really fed up and I carried it over by myself and cleaned it and put it back on the table where it goes. If little 105-pound me can do it by myself then surely Nick can as well. To be honest, it takes all the strength I have on a good day to lift that thing but when you are pissed off and determined to prove someone wrong, you can move mountains.
He comes up with the wildest ideas. And they often have a thread of truth to them, or they are related to something currently needing to be done around here. Very weird. Like a couple of months ago Invictus' feet needed to be trimmed, his hooves that is. Nick is a farrier - that is what the people who do horse's feet are called. He took the course at the agriculture college back when he had horses before. Invictus is a very large horse and he is very easily spooked with new experiences. I think Nick has done his feet maybe once before, no more than twice. And his feet are huge. It is very difficult to hold onto a foot his size even if the horse is being cooperative and it is impossible to do otherwise. Both Nick and I knew his feet needed to be done - his hooves were chipped and broken.
So one day Nick accuses me of getting someone to come to the farm and trim this horse's feet. He says that they have been trimmed and filed, and that whoever did it did a really bad job and abused the horse while doing the work. Nick claimed that the horse had been 'ruined' and that now he would never be able to do his feet himself as a result. He pretended to be furious, and beside himself with grief because now he would have to sell his favorite horse as he was 'ruined'. I asked Nick if he really thought I had called someone and asked them to come and do Invictus' feet, and that they had snuck into the barn when Nick wasn't there and somehow gotten Invictus inside as well. This horse only trusts Nick and even I have to coax and bribe him to come along with me. Most farriers would have nothing to do with a horse that size and that temperament, and they would have to be paid a lot of money or have a lot of tranquilizer or maybe need both before they would work with him without the owner present. You can't tie a horse that large and powerful to any part of our barn - he can pull restraints right out of the walls and he can snap boards like matchsticks when he is panicked.
It is November now and it is difficult looking after the livestock in the winter. There is no grass in the pastures, their diets will consist of the hay we give them morning and night, supplemented with some sweet feed and oats twice a day. It costs around a hundred dollars a month to feed each horse, and probably a bit more in the winter because you want to give them enough so they put on and keep on a little extra weight, to keep them warm.
The water freezes on cold days. The ice has to be banged out of the buckets in each stall before they can be filled, which is done twice a day. The snow makes pushing the wheelbarrow full of manure from the stalls a lot more difficult than it is in the summer, and your hands and feet get cold no matter how warmly you are dressed. You are restricted to wearing gloves because you need your fingers to unlatch stall doors and maneuver halters onto heads.
Keeping the house warm is also a challenge. We have a wood furnace, as I have mentioned, and the wood needs to be brought inside and split before it can be put into the furnace, and it has to be kept burning by adding more every four to five hours at the very least which means getting up in the middle of night if the house is going to be comfortable when it's time to get up and get ready for work. We also have an oil furnace as well as electric baseboards in most rooms but we have no money to buy oil or to pay a large power bill. Nick does not have any wood in the basement at present, and has been bringing in what he needs for the night and the next morning during the afternoon or after the horses have been brought in for the day and have been fed their evening meal.
My point is that I need Nick in order to survive out here until spring. And I need his help to re-home or sell the horses. If the new owners could come here and transport the horses to their farms that would be ideal but to be able to deliver them ourselves is a good selling point and also allows us to check out their new homes. There is a lot of peace of mind that comes with knowing where your animals have ended up and knowing they are being well-cared for.
I have come to the realization that I cannot live here with Nick for any longer than it takes to find new homes for the horses and fix up the place for sale. And for now I have to wait for warmer weather. I have no idea how all of this is going to play out. I just know my dream of growing old on a farm with these wonderful beasts will be nothing but a wistful memory when all is said and done.
Saturday 5 November 2016
Thursday, November 3, 2016
Nov.3/2016
Yes Nick was on the dating website on Monday night. I stood in the hallway outside the downstairs bedroom where the computer is and watched him typing away while the picture woman in the red dress was smiling back at him on the screen. I didn't say anything, actually only because I couldn't think of anything to say. I have been trying to come up with a way to take a photo of him doing this without the click of the cell phone camera and I since I cannot figure out how to turn the sound off I have decided to record this on video instead. I can start the video out of his earshot and walk up to the doorway and stand there for as long as I want. He never seems to hear me, I have done this four or five times now. Then I can speak or cough as I enter the room, switching it off at the same moment or I can simply leave and switch it off where he can't hear it. I almost did this last night, but I was too lazy to get out of bed and go downstairs after I had settled into bed with the heating pad at my back and my laptop in front of me.
I woke up around 6am today and finally convinced myself to turn on the light and get out my computer around 7:30. I am going to try to wake up earlier in the mornings to write in my diary, it's the only way this is going to get done. I have been so stressed and depressed for the last two and a half years since the accusations started that I have been functioning at the minimal level, just getting myself to work and not doing much of anything else. But I am starting to feel better and I am starting to have an interest in accomplishing other things and pursuing some new projects, like this one. As I mentioned before I feel writing this diary is helping.
I have pain in my back most of the time and I have come to believe that it is not a tissue injury causing the pain, but tight and 'knotted' muscles as a result of stress. Pain medication helps somewhat but muscle relaxants seem to work better - and I take these to the max dose each day. I take over-the-counter ones because the stronger ones that need a prescription make me too drowsy to drive, even the next day. I know reiki (a pain relieving technique based on positive and negative energy flow) helps but it is not covered by insurance and I did have one session nearly a year ago. It was where I get my hair cut and I was embarrassed to death when Nick asked if he could join the practioner and myself and watch the session. The guy was very gracious and explained it was the kind of thing you required as few distractions as possible to do successfully. Afterwards he told me he had felt a lot of negative energy and energy blockages that in his experience were caused by conflict with a significant male in my life. I lied to him and said I had struggled with conflicts with my father, who is now passed away. I wasn't sure if patient confidentiality extended to reiki and I wasn't sure how much of my personal life I wanted discussed at the hair salon. We live in a very small rural community and Nick has told me that everyone for miles 'knows that I am running around with this Chris person' as well as with a few other guys, whose identities are suspected but not confirmed.
Massage is covered by my insurance and my daughters also gave me gift certificates for massages for Christmas last year but the massage therapist at the spa is only there on Fridays and Saturdays, and I work every Friday as well as three out of four Saturdays. When my Saturday off does roll around I usually have plans. I traded in one of the massages a couple of weeks ago for a pedicure.
Heat helps and I have a heating pad between my back and the pillow at this very moment. A hot shower goes a long way to loosen me up on work mornings and I have been getting up a few minutes earlier in order to enjoy the moist heat a little longer when I can.
A huge amount of stress evaporated the day I went on the internet at work and typed 'extremely jealous husband'. I dared not search this on my home computer for fear Nick was checking the history on my laptop while I was at work. This is the day I finally had an answer to the question burning up my life - why in the world was Nick acting the way he was? I read descriptions of morbid jealousy which described exactly what was happening in my life. I stared at disbelief at the screen as the words of Wiki and others melded and fused together into the image of the faceless person Nick had become to me. I had found the final piece of the puzzle and the relief this provided was immediate, and evaporated the emotional anguish of the unknown and the misunderstood that had clung to me like a cloak.
You know how it is said that the things you imagine when you don't know the truth are usually much worse than the actual truth and how it is said that the truth is often stranger than fiction - well it is like both of these statements apply at the same time, if that is even possible. Before I had a label for Nick's behavior I would sometimes wonder if he was having an affair himself and that was why he was accusing me and fabricating false evidence to back up his claims. I wondered if this was all part of a master scheme he was orchestrating - convincing me to buy a farm with all the trimmings while he contributed nothing (financially or otherwise) and then forcing a split where he would walk away with half of everything. Between the down payment on the property and the money I spent to set us up with the stuff we would need - five of the horses, twenty percent up front on the tractor, another 3K for extra attachments for it, a horse trailer and a trailer for hay and a truck to pull them, a sawmill, a generator, lumber to start the addition to the barn, firewood and hay for the first winter (and I have ended up paying for the winter hay all four years), new queen size beds for two of the bedrooms and a king for us, I have invested over half of my life savings into this farm - an amount of just over 200K. I am also now paying for all of our insurance (house and auto - five vehicles in total), our property taxes, the power bill, oats and sweet feed and food for the hens. We have sort of split the cable and internet and phone bills, but we recently cancelled the cable TV because it was nothing but a waste of time. Nick would go in to watch TV while he ate his breakfast of oatmeal and in addition to spilling coffee on the couch and leaving coffee rings on the coffee table and (I suspect) oatmeal on the carpet, he would spend an hour or two doing this every day instead of getting stuff done outside that was in desperate need of doing.
He had lied to me about how much he would receive each month as his pension from work, he said he was told the incorrect amount by the government retirement planning people because they forgot to take into account the fact that he had been married twice before, once for 15 or 16 years and again for 10 or 12, which reduced the amount that was his each month to less than half of the amount he had quoted me when I had asked for an estimate in the very beginning of the planning phase to sell our two houses in the city and purchase and move to a farm. The intension was to retiring there and live there as long as we were able to. I find it impossible to comprehend how he could not have known this himself. He knows everything else about divorce having been through two messy ones. When we worked out some figures on how much money we would have left to work with after the sale of our homes, I will admit we ended up with about 50K less between the two of us as the real estate market took a dip in prices and was sluggish that year, and so we also had to spend more in upgrades than we had expected in order to sell, but he was left with less than a thousand dollars after commissions, mortgage penalties and his line of credit had been paid. I actually even paid his credit card bill of 15K so we could start fresh and clear in our new life together. That was about three years ago now that my house sold and I received what wasn't going to the bank as the down payment on the farm.
Two weeks ago I finally got the courage to ask Nick how much he owed on his credit card as he had been complaining for awhile that he had maxed it out and couldn't afford anything until he got his cheque at the end of the month. In three years he has run his credit card up to 27K. Of course he says it is so high because he has had to replace the stuff stolen from him. I know something else is being done with that money, I know things can add up quickly, but give me a break. Now I will have to pay for absolutely everything - Nick was paying for the dog food and cat food and a few staples from Costco, and most of the stuff he bought there was olive oil, coconut oil, honey, protein powder, etc., that he used huge quantities of as part of his nutrition and supplement regimen. Lately he has been purchasing protein powder on line and he has always purchased stuff like books and other supplements on line - a parcel is waiting for him at the post office at least once a week and sometimes twice in the same week. Between this credit slam and the lady in red I feel I cannot salvage anything and should be running for my life at this point.
Yes Nick was on the dating website on Monday night. I stood in the hallway outside the downstairs bedroom where the computer is and watched him typing away while the picture woman in the red dress was smiling back at him on the screen. I didn't say anything, actually only because I couldn't think of anything to say. I have been trying to come up with a way to take a photo of him doing this without the click of the cell phone camera and I since I cannot figure out how to turn the sound off I have decided to record this on video instead. I can start the video out of his earshot and walk up to the doorway and stand there for as long as I want. He never seems to hear me, I have done this four or five times now. Then I can speak or cough as I enter the room, switching it off at the same moment or I can simply leave and switch it off where he can't hear it. I almost did this last night, but I was too lazy to get out of bed and go downstairs after I had settled into bed with the heating pad at my back and my laptop in front of me.
I woke up around 6am today and finally convinced myself to turn on the light and get out my computer around 7:30. I am going to try to wake up earlier in the mornings to write in my diary, it's the only way this is going to get done. I have been so stressed and depressed for the last two and a half years since the accusations started that I have been functioning at the minimal level, just getting myself to work and not doing much of anything else. But I am starting to feel better and I am starting to have an interest in accomplishing other things and pursuing some new projects, like this one. As I mentioned before I feel writing this diary is helping.
I have pain in my back most of the time and I have come to believe that it is not a tissue injury causing the pain, but tight and 'knotted' muscles as a result of stress. Pain medication helps somewhat but muscle relaxants seem to work better - and I take these to the max dose each day. I take over-the-counter ones because the stronger ones that need a prescription make me too drowsy to drive, even the next day. I know reiki (a pain relieving technique based on positive and negative energy flow) helps but it is not covered by insurance and I did have one session nearly a year ago. It was where I get my hair cut and I was embarrassed to death when Nick asked if he could join the practioner and myself and watch the session. The guy was very gracious and explained it was the kind of thing you required as few distractions as possible to do successfully. Afterwards he told me he had felt a lot of negative energy and energy blockages that in his experience were caused by conflict with a significant male in my life. I lied to him and said I had struggled with conflicts with my father, who is now passed away. I wasn't sure if patient confidentiality extended to reiki and I wasn't sure how much of my personal life I wanted discussed at the hair salon. We live in a very small rural community and Nick has told me that everyone for miles 'knows that I am running around with this Chris person' as well as with a few other guys, whose identities are suspected but not confirmed.
Massage is covered by my insurance and my daughters also gave me gift certificates for massages for Christmas last year but the massage therapist at the spa is only there on Fridays and Saturdays, and I work every Friday as well as three out of four Saturdays. When my Saturday off does roll around I usually have plans. I traded in one of the massages a couple of weeks ago for a pedicure.
Heat helps and I have a heating pad between my back and the pillow at this very moment. A hot shower goes a long way to loosen me up on work mornings and I have been getting up a few minutes earlier in order to enjoy the moist heat a little longer when I can.
A huge amount of stress evaporated the day I went on the internet at work and typed 'extremely jealous husband'. I dared not search this on my home computer for fear Nick was checking the history on my laptop while I was at work. This is the day I finally had an answer to the question burning up my life - why in the world was Nick acting the way he was? I read descriptions of morbid jealousy which described exactly what was happening in my life. I stared at disbelief at the screen as the words of Wiki and others melded and fused together into the image of the faceless person Nick had become to me. I had found the final piece of the puzzle and the relief this provided was immediate, and evaporated the emotional anguish of the unknown and the misunderstood that had clung to me like a cloak.
You know how it is said that the things you imagine when you don't know the truth are usually much worse than the actual truth and how it is said that the truth is often stranger than fiction - well it is like both of these statements apply at the same time, if that is even possible. Before I had a label for Nick's behavior I would sometimes wonder if he was having an affair himself and that was why he was accusing me and fabricating false evidence to back up his claims. I wondered if this was all part of a master scheme he was orchestrating - convincing me to buy a farm with all the trimmings while he contributed nothing (financially or otherwise) and then forcing a split where he would walk away with half of everything. Between the down payment on the property and the money I spent to set us up with the stuff we would need - five of the horses, twenty percent up front on the tractor, another 3K for extra attachments for it, a horse trailer and a trailer for hay and a truck to pull them, a sawmill, a generator, lumber to start the addition to the barn, firewood and hay for the first winter (and I have ended up paying for the winter hay all four years), new queen size beds for two of the bedrooms and a king for us, I have invested over half of my life savings into this farm - an amount of just over 200K. I am also now paying for all of our insurance (house and auto - five vehicles in total), our property taxes, the power bill, oats and sweet feed and food for the hens. We have sort of split the cable and internet and phone bills, but we recently cancelled the cable TV because it was nothing but a waste of time. Nick would go in to watch TV while he ate his breakfast of oatmeal and in addition to spilling coffee on the couch and leaving coffee rings on the coffee table and (I suspect) oatmeal on the carpet, he would spend an hour or two doing this every day instead of getting stuff done outside that was in desperate need of doing.
He had lied to me about how much he would receive each month as his pension from work, he said he was told the incorrect amount by the government retirement planning people because they forgot to take into account the fact that he had been married twice before, once for 15 or 16 years and again for 10 or 12, which reduced the amount that was his each month to less than half of the amount he had quoted me when I had asked for an estimate in the very beginning of the planning phase to sell our two houses in the city and purchase and move to a farm. The intension was to retiring there and live there as long as we were able to. I find it impossible to comprehend how he could not have known this himself. He knows everything else about divorce having been through two messy ones. When we worked out some figures on how much money we would have left to work with after the sale of our homes, I will admit we ended up with about 50K less between the two of us as the real estate market took a dip in prices and was sluggish that year, and so we also had to spend more in upgrades than we had expected in order to sell, but he was left with less than a thousand dollars after commissions, mortgage penalties and his line of credit had been paid. I actually even paid his credit card bill of 15K so we could start fresh and clear in our new life together. That was about three years ago now that my house sold and I received what wasn't going to the bank as the down payment on the farm.
Two weeks ago I finally got the courage to ask Nick how much he owed on his credit card as he had been complaining for awhile that he had maxed it out and couldn't afford anything until he got his cheque at the end of the month. In three years he has run his credit card up to 27K. Of course he says it is so high because he has had to replace the stuff stolen from him. I know something else is being done with that money, I know things can add up quickly, but give me a break. Now I will have to pay for absolutely everything - Nick was paying for the dog food and cat food and a few staples from Costco, and most of the stuff he bought there was olive oil, coconut oil, honey, protein powder, etc., that he used huge quantities of as part of his nutrition and supplement regimen. Lately he has been purchasing protein powder on line and he has always purchased stuff like books and other supplements on line - a parcel is waiting for him at the post office at least once a week and sometimes twice in the same week. Between this credit slam and the lady in red I feel I cannot salvage anything and should be running for my life at this point.
Tuesday 1 November 2016
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Nov.1/2016
Yes Nick was on that dating site again last night. Tonight he is banging things around everywhere. When I got home from work around 9:30pm he was still in the barn but he came inside around 10 after bringing some wood in for the night to heat the house. He was swearing and the wood and using the f-word a lot. And now he is making a snack and getting out his vitamins and slamming whatever he can.
I would love to be able to stay here on the farm. Some days I convince myself that I can....that I could manage to look after and easily afford two horses, and I could trade in the big tractor we have for a much smaller one that I could operate myself to clear snow, move manure and haul logs in with. But over the past two to three months I have begun to realize that in the long run it will be more practical to sell the farm and move myself to a smaller house closer to where I work as well as closer to where my daughters live. If the lot is a fair size I can have the flower and vegetable gardens I so enjoy and it will be a home I can hopefully make my last. Something modestly priced so I can pay off the mortgage and leave my girls a bit more than just a life insurance policy. I also have to consider how difficult it will be to liquidate the farm and find homes for any remaining livestock. Someone would have to live here until new homes are found for the animals. It could also take a year or two or three for the rural property to sell whereas a place more suburban will suit a wider variety of buyers.
One day I decide I will do the practical thing and the next day, usually after spending the day in the barn around the horses, I decide I will do the 'land and nature' thing.
I have decided I want to live where my home stays neat and tidy and there is no one going around every day leaving whatever they use lying around wherever they used it last and never cleaning up after anything they do. Living here with Nick toilets are left unflushed (something about the pump lasting longer), shoes and boots are left in the hallway or kicked off into the closet, clothes are hanging over chairs in the bedroom and kitchen, dishes are set in the sink instead of the dishwasher, and nothing is ever put away after shopping. Books never find their way back to the bookshelf and DVDs land in stacks in front of the TV. Beds are never made. The yard always has junk lying around and no one cares if the grass is cut. I was naïve when we first moved here but now I know there are a lot of things that you have to do when you have horses that Nick doesn't bother with. Like checking and repairing fences before they actually need it, putting new topsoil in the pastures and re-seeding them every few years and keeping the horses off them until early summer so the grass will grow, and little things like putting a horse's halter on when it goes outside and taking it off when it comes in at night. It has taken me several years to learn some of the things that should be done but are neglected around here. Mostly I have found out by looking at other farms and watching what happens on them on my way back and forth from work each day.
I have also wished and prayed and gotten sad and then angry and then blamed myself for falling for this whole farm and horses fantasy - hoping against hope that some miracle will happen and my marriage will be filled with love and laughter once again and my life will return to the bliss it was in the beginning. But I have gotten over the idea that it can ever be salvaged. Nick will not acknowledge that there is anything flawed in his reasoning or understanding of the facts. He is absolutely unconditionally convinced that he is correct in his assumptions. The way he believes in what he thinks he has discovered or uncovered is just bone-chilling and gut-wrenching and your brain keeps saying 'this is crazy, this is insane'.
Yes Nick was on that dating site again last night. Tonight he is banging things around everywhere. When I got home from work around 9:30pm he was still in the barn but he came inside around 10 after bringing some wood in for the night to heat the house. He was swearing and the wood and using the f-word a lot. And now he is making a snack and getting out his vitamins and slamming whatever he can.
I would love to be able to stay here on the farm. Some days I convince myself that I can....that I could manage to look after and easily afford two horses, and I could trade in the big tractor we have for a much smaller one that I could operate myself to clear snow, move manure and haul logs in with. But over the past two to three months I have begun to realize that in the long run it will be more practical to sell the farm and move myself to a smaller house closer to where I work as well as closer to where my daughters live. If the lot is a fair size I can have the flower and vegetable gardens I so enjoy and it will be a home I can hopefully make my last. Something modestly priced so I can pay off the mortgage and leave my girls a bit more than just a life insurance policy. I also have to consider how difficult it will be to liquidate the farm and find homes for any remaining livestock. Someone would have to live here until new homes are found for the animals. It could also take a year or two or three for the rural property to sell whereas a place more suburban will suit a wider variety of buyers.
One day I decide I will do the practical thing and the next day, usually after spending the day in the barn around the horses, I decide I will do the 'land and nature' thing.
I have decided I want to live where my home stays neat and tidy and there is no one going around every day leaving whatever they use lying around wherever they used it last and never cleaning up after anything they do. Living here with Nick toilets are left unflushed (something about the pump lasting longer), shoes and boots are left in the hallway or kicked off into the closet, clothes are hanging over chairs in the bedroom and kitchen, dishes are set in the sink instead of the dishwasher, and nothing is ever put away after shopping. Books never find their way back to the bookshelf and DVDs land in stacks in front of the TV. Beds are never made. The yard always has junk lying around and no one cares if the grass is cut. I was naïve when we first moved here but now I know there are a lot of things that you have to do when you have horses that Nick doesn't bother with. Like checking and repairing fences before they actually need it, putting new topsoil in the pastures and re-seeding them every few years and keeping the horses off them until early summer so the grass will grow, and little things like putting a horse's halter on when it goes outside and taking it off when it comes in at night. It has taken me several years to learn some of the things that should be done but are neglected around here. Mostly I have found out by looking at other farms and watching what happens on them on my way back and forth from work each day.
I have also wished and prayed and gotten sad and then angry and then blamed myself for falling for this whole farm and horses fantasy - hoping against hope that some miracle will happen and my marriage will be filled with love and laughter once again and my life will return to the bliss it was in the beginning. But I have gotten over the idea that it can ever be salvaged. Nick will not acknowledge that there is anything flawed in his reasoning or understanding of the facts. He is absolutely unconditionally convinced that he is correct in his assumptions. The way he believes in what he thinks he has discovered or uncovered is just bone-chilling and gut-wrenching and your brain keeps saying 'this is crazy, this is insane'.
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