Sunday, March 5, 2017

March 5, 2017

Well Nick is still quiet since the yell fest the other night. His daughter left the car in the driveway as I asked and I will have to see about selling it shortly. I think I will check with one of my close friends - I have about three - whose son is a used car salesman who could perhaps take it off my hands or at least give me some advice. I am not one for putting an ad on Kijiji for a vehicle, especially a 15 year-old one, in case something happens and the person feels I ripped them off or cheated them in some way. I don't care what I get for it - if it's $500 or $1000 or $100 - but I would like to get what it is worth because I truly can put the money to good use. I could ask Nick what the red book list price is but I don't want to discuss the car with him and I also know he scoffs at selling vehicles to used car lots. He believes you are always better off to sell it yourself and I don't want to argue with him about anything anymore.

I have got myself in gear to get out of this marriage as quickly as I can but also with all of my rights protected. When I left my first marriage my then husband talked me into an agreement between ourselves not involving the courts and I feel he got the good end of that stick financially. But the non-confrontational approach served us well and to our daughters and to outsiders the divorce seemed incredibly amicable. The truth was that both of chose to put the well-being of the kids before the hunger for revenge we all feel in these situations.
But this time I intend to see a lawyer. I am going to speak to my daughter about that although I do think it is a good idea to use the same one as Nick's ex-wife used. I will have my options all on the table and I won't have to wonder or worry about what ifs.

I have been thinking a lot the past few days of all the little ways that Nick makes life difficult for me.
Of course there are the ridiculous things that have gone on as a result of his jealousy - not interacting with any of the neighbours, not joining one of the local churches, not attending any get-togethers at the local community centres and actually living a rather isolated life out at the farm. He used to make me go with him when he drove his son back after he was here for few days. Usually Nick would go and get him when I was at work but if I was home at the time I had to go on the return leg. I hated driving in the car on my day off as that position of sitting really aggravates the stiffness and discomfort in my back. It takes an hour to drive each way, plus any extra time spent stopping along the way or chatting in the driveway. A lot of times I would take a pillow with me and just sleep the whole time. At least that way I was doing something beneficial, instead of aggravating an injury AND wasting a good chunk of the day.
I tried arguing my case to stay home but the time or two I did stay behind it absolutely wasn't worth the hassle I got from Nick after he got home. Of course he was convinced that I had been with the Chris person and would make up things that he said proved he right about my activities while he was gone. If I had been busy cleaning out the stalls then he would say I had help with the stalls in order to free up some 'personal' time while the opportunity was there. It's easy to incriminate someone when you just make up whatever you want.
Another thing he used to do and still does from time to time, is drive to my work, wait for me to finish for the day and then follow me home. And he would also give me the grand interrogation if he thought I hadn't arrived home on time after a days' work. I used to get upset and agitated if I had to stay late to finish something up because I knew what would happen when I get home but I have learned not to care anymore.

A lot of things Nick does - or should I say things he doesn't do - make more work for me. Extra work and needless work. He puts whatever he wants into the kitchen garbage such as glass bottles, tin cans, milk cartons or compostable items like chicken carcasses or potato peels. He says recycling in our area is a waste of time as mostly everything that is collected is not recycled anyway but goes eventually to a landfill site. We are required to put our household garbage in clear plastic bags for pick-up and as a consequence of Nick's laziness our bags are left at the side of the road because the rogue items are easily spotted by the guys responsible for collection. So I usually end up taking a bag or two to work with me once a week or so and putting it in the dumpster there. Not great for my trunk and rather unpleasant on the nose in the summer.
Another thing he does is toss the baling twine from the large bales of hay into the spare stall across from where we put the bale of hay we are currently using. I have placed empty feed bags there so the twine can be put directly into them and then just thrown out with the rest of the garbage. But he just tosses on the ground instead of in the bag and that room is a mess of string at the moment. I have tidied it up a number of times but it ends up looking just the same after a number of months so I have given up it.
He also will not put the garbage from the barn or the house into those large black garbage bags. I won't take anything to work unless it is in one of those bags just in case my boss objects to my dumping my garbage in his bin. He has told myself and other staff that he pays a flat fee for pick-up and that he is not keen on locking the dumpsters because that is inconvenient for us especially in the winter. But I don't feel I should just toss my white feed bags or kitchen garbage bags into the bin - it is very obvious whose garbage the feed bags are.
I often joke with customers at work that I spend most of my time off cleaning up after my animals. Shovelling the horses and the calves stalls and picking up dog poop around our yard. Nick never does this. Even when he has the dogs out on the leashes which have the poop bags dangling from them he won't pick up after them. Which leaves me to do it once a week or so.
Whenever Nick can't find something that he has used and left lying around somewhere he tells me that he tried to do this or tried to do that; or if I am home he insists that I stop whatever I am doing and look for the item he needs. He will always make the comment that it probably has been stolen by Chris. Most things I do manage to locate and if it is something he has looked for and not found he will claim that it was missing but then was returned and I knew where to find it because it had been returned to me to put away. Once he couldn't find the key to our truck and insisted that Chris had been seen driving the vehicle and so he still had the key. I combed the house and barn and garage for that key and couldn't find it anywhere. I will often find things where Nick has told me he has already searched but when I started to look for the key in the kitchen he told me he had scoured the kitchen so it was a complete waste of time to look in that room.
In the end we had the truck towed to the dealer who made a new key for us. Between the tow and the key I think it cost me around $400.00. And less than a week later I found the original key on the table under the lip of the decorative bowl we usually keep all the vehicle keys in. It was obvious to me that he had tossed the key on the table and it had slid toward the bowl, landing just out of view. He swears there is no way the key was where I found it and that it was returned to me by Chris.

All this thinking about extra jobs created by Nick is making me weary. I have a list of things to do tomorrow as I have the day off and I have to get busy with getting myself out of this marriage and getting on with my life. Stay tuned for an update on how much I get accomplished.