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'.
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