Work... Jobs... Money... Responsibilities... Family

My parents always worked.  Even when they hated it.  My mom would come home and cry sometimes because she hated her job so bad, but she did it.  Why?  To support her family.  My dad did the same thing.  They both did things that deep down they enjoyed, but by the time I came along they were burnt out on it.  I've always worked - since I was 17.  I did have a break while I was student teaching, but I was student teaching.  That in itself is a full time job; it's essentially an unpaid internship.

Mom, Dad, and Chloe at the Nillie Bipper 2009

 Me during student teaching, October 2008







Which brings me to the current situation with my darling husband.  He got a job at steak n shake.  Fabulous!  He'd been without a job for over a year.  Granted, he did bring in some money doing Xbox modifications, but it wasn't steady.  He had the job for two weeks, and started complaining.  Now, he doesn't have the greatest work history.  The longest he's kept a job is 6 months. 

Now I feel it is an important time to backtrack a little bit.  My husband is an alcoholic, for those of you that don't know.  When we first met, I refused to date him because he was still drinking, and then after he had been in recovery for about 6 months (and sober for that long) I decided that I could date him.  He's always had a problem with anxiety.  He has a problem with what he thinks, she thinks, that guy thinks, and so on.  You get the picture.  I'm not going to delve into the depths of his psyche, but you get the picture.  It all leads to an inevitable big ball of stress when you go into a new work environment.  Not to mention the fast paced environment of a restaurant, people that are kind of hard to work with, and this new chest pain that has evolved since right before he began working there.

Well, a week into steak n shake, he missed half of his shift because he slept halfway through it.  This was bad, but they forgave him.  Hey, we all mess up the alarm clock every now and then, you know?  But this past Sunday, apparently he was supposed to go into work at 11:00, and he didn't think he was supposed to be there until 4.  He got a call around 1.  He decided it wasn't worth it, and he quit the job.

Now, he was making good money for being a server, about $50 bucks a night.  I have been very, very angry at him all week, and finally last night it all came out.  I told him exactly how I felt about it, and surprisingly I was very calm.  I told him he should have just put on his big boy underwear and dealt with it until he found another job.  That he needs to quit thinking about himself, and start thinking about us.  What would happen if I just up and decided that my job was too stressful and that I didn't want to do it anymore?  He needs to put his family first and himself second.  That I have been so angry at him I could spit on him.  That I think that he is being so incredibly selfish that it makes me sick.  He talks about all this "we" stuff, but when it comes to him helping financially, it turns into "his" decision, and that "he" isn't going to apologize for "his" decision.

Quite frankly, it embarrasses me.  I feel like it is just another hoop in his cycle of quitting before he has any chance of succeeding.  He did the same thing in the fall with school.  He just quit going, and before he knew it, he had so many absences, he had automatic Fs because he couldn't make up the class time.

On Sunday he found out about a job at Buffalo Wild Wings that is opening near our house, and he finally went and got an application yesterday, and is now procrastinating to take it back in.  It makes me feel like he just has absolutely no interest in taking care of his family at all and he just wants to be babied the rest of his life.

Now, let me give him some credit where credit is due.  Anytime I call him during the day to bring me something at school, he drops whatever he is doing (generally a computer game, granted) and does it.  He takes Chloe swimming.  He does the dishes, the cat litter, and laundry when I ask.  I just have to ask.  I know he's not a mind reader. 

But it is so frustrating when I come home from working, knowing he's been at home all day to laundry that can walk on it's own, the sink of dirty dishes has sea gulls hovering above it, the cat litter is so swampy that alligators have decided to buy property, and there are so many dust bunnies in the carpet that I cannot find my cats.  I mean, for goodness sake, find some motivation, figure out what needs to be done, and for goodness sakes, please do it.

So there is no misunderstanding, I love this man more than I ever thought was possible (I write this as I tell him to get off his butt and help Chloe with something :P), and I do not regret for a second ever marrying him.  I guess this is one of the reasons they say the first year is the hardest!!