Tuesday, October 17, 2017

BACK IN THE SADDLE!

Hello faithful blogpets!

I know I've been gone for a long time and so much has happened!  I got married in March of 2013 and my father was unable to attend because he wasn't feeling well.  We thought it was just a bad stomach flu but with his diabetes those can really do a number on him.  In June of 2013 he was diagnosed with stage 3C colon cancer and in August of that same year he passed away just 10 days before I was slated to leave for my honeymoon in Maui.

Major life experiences like that really show you what the person you're with is like.  They either shine or they turn very ugly very quickly but I don't think anyone could skip through as mediocre during a crisis of such epic proportions.  Snack Monkey turned very, very ugly.  Less than 24 hours after receiving news of the cancer diagnosis (while watching Robin Roberts give her ESPY speech, no less) he asked me how long I was going to let the news 'ruin our marriage'.  Apparently there is a time limit on finding out that your father has received a death sentence and it's less than one day - after that one must buck up and be perky and ready to go fishing or they're 'ruining their marriage' in his eyes.  Let me back up a bit.

Our marriage was shit before that and never should have happened in the first place.  Snack Monkey's friend had planted seeds of drama by lying about things she'd read on this blog and instead of actually reading the blog for the truth, he bought her lies hook, line, and sinker.  I'd tried to break up with him multiple times throughout our 6 year relationship before we got married and each time he'd refused to move out.  As everything was in my name and I was the only one paying any and all of the bills, I wasn't about to move out and support his ass so I was stuck with him.  His exact words were "if you want me out, you'll have to have me legally evicted" and when that didn't work he would start crying and saying he had nowhere else to go and begging me to give him a month to find a new place and then a month would turn into a year and he would still be living under my roof pretending everything was tits and roses between us.

In October of 2012 I broke up with him officially and made him move into the guest room.  In February of 2013 on Valentines Day he asked me to go to dinner with him and when I refused he promised it would just be as roommates.  We were over, I was already meeting new people and seeing a few casually.  I agreed if it was JUST as roommates.  It wasn't just as roommates though.  Once we got to the restaurant and got seated he started acting all couple-ish and I finally put the kaibash on it in the middle of the meal and walked out crying.

You see, the problem was that I did love him but he had so many horrible behaviors that I couldn't accept, not the least of which was his drug use and he was constantly lying and telling me he'd stopped but then I would find paraphernalia in the garage or under the mattress and the whole vicious cycle would start all over again.  Being solely financially responsible for him wasn't a picnic either.  He worked but he kept every penny that he made for drugs and then he would come to me asking for money to put gas in my car so he could drive it to work, if I couldn't afford to buy him the concert tickets he wanted he would become verbally abusive and call me names like "bitch" and "cunt" and say I was controlling him.  But when he wanted to be sweet and charming he really could do a good job of it and I would end up taking him back and believing his lies over and over again.

Valentines Day was just such an occasion - he followed me out of the restaurant and we talked until sun rise.  It involved mostly talking but also some yelling and some crying - in the end we put the wedding back on for the original date which gave us less than a month to plan something we'd thought for almost a year was never going to happen.  During that month he was sober, he contributed around the house, he contributed to the bills, he was cooperative, we went fishing and had fun ... but pretty much the instant that the vows had been said and the guests were gone, the same old bullshit started up again.  At my father's funeral he threw a fit because he was ready to leave and head back to Vegas but I wanted to stay for a few hours and visit with my family - two of my siblings were at the funeral that I hadn't seen since I was 5 years old (really big age gap ... like, my oldest sister is almost old enough to be my mother) but he wanted to come home so he could get high and I was standing in the way of that so he made a big mess of everything.

The behavior continued during the honeymoon as well.  Despite my best effort to not ruin the honeymoon by crying over the fact that I'd buried my dad just five days earlier, he found cause to complain about everything else.  Literally, everything including the free luxury suite in a 5-star resort in Maui, of all places, that my boss had given us as a wedding present.  It was a disaster.  In January of 2014 I told him that I was no longer allowing him to drive my car because I learned he'd used it to make a drug deal.  The car was in my name solely, I made all the payments solely, the insurance was in my name and he was using it to make drug deals.  I could have lost my car!  He flipped out!  He started screaming, calling me a bitch, saying I was controlling, asking how he was supposed to get to work and when I told him to take the bus he said "only losers take the bus".  No ... responsible people making an honest effort to get to work take the bus - losers mooch off of others and then freak out and act like a 2-year-old when they don't get what they want.  He left the room - I was at my desk working at the time - and came back an hour or so later to tell me how sorry he was and how much he loved me and how he didn't mean any of what he'd said.  I took it all with a grain of salt because I'd been down this road with him too many times and I was done.  I didn't care.  I nodded and said ok and when he believed I'd forgiven him he asked "were you serious about not letting me use your car?".  I said yes and he flipped out all over again, screaming, calling me names, saying he hated me - apparently his apologies had been really sincere (sarcasm).  He took off his wedding ring (metal) and threw it and it shattered.  I'm not sure how that happened as I've never seen metal shatter before but shatter it did and that was like a sign from my dad.  It was over.

I drew up the divorce papers and gave him pretty much whatever he wanted just to get him to sign them without a courtroom battle which meant he got Vladdy and according to the papers he was supposed to get Jazz but he decided later that he didn't want her and told me to take her to the pound.  I don't take animals to the pound ... ever.  When I take an animal into my life it is a commitment that I make and dumping it at the pound just isn't an option.  He also got away from paying off the new laptop that I'd bought him with my Best Buy card and his share of the Maui Honeymoon.  I paid it all just to get him the hell out of my life.  I boxed up all of his belongings, put them in the driveway, took a picture of the drug paraphernalia and texted it to his best friend with the message "you can either come get him and all his shit or I can call the police and ruin his life".  I should have done the latter but I don't care much for police.  I don't think they're all bad but it's a bit of a craps shoot and the shit was, after all, in my house.  Needless to say, his friend came and got him.

I took in a roommate, a friend that lived in Arkansas, to rent the guest bedroom and help with the bills.  He provided his first and last month's rent in the form of a giant wad of cash deposited on my desk after I'd gone to bed.  I woke up the next morning, found it, and immediately rushed down to the courthouse to file the divorce papers.  Snack Monkey was shocked.  He didn't think I'd go through with it.  He thought I would just need time for things to blow over and he'd be able to get me back.  Several months later my roommate and I started dating and a few months after that we got married.  We've been living under the same roof for nearly 4 years now and I still haven't found a single thing wrong with him ... I think he might be a pod person because he's too perfect.

In 2015 I changed jobs and in 2016 I spent most of the year on doctor ordered bed rest due to medical problems.  One of the side-effects was that I was losing weight at an astounding rate of nearly 50 lbs in 6 months and I wasn't doing anything to make it happen.  My diet was shit as I'd reverted back to fast food due to time constraints of the new job, I didn't exercise at all, I spent 16 hours or more of every day on a computer either working, writing, or gaming.  There was no healthy reason for me to be dropping the pounds but dropping them I was and I was almost back down to the lowest weight I'd managed during the course of this blog.  Sadly, once the doctors figured out what was wrong and fixed me - the weight loss stopped and I've been maintaining ever since.

But I'm not blogging about weight loss anymore - at least not for now.  I am blogging again though!  I have a new blog called The Constitutionalist's Daughter.  It's a memoir about my dad and the really unusual upbringing that I had which included being homeless and indigent for while, being sovereign citizens, being smeared as white supremacists in the newspaper (even though it wasn't even remotely true), and spending more time in a courtroom growing up than I did in a classroom.

If you'd like to read it - there are currently three chapters published and I publish a new chapter every 2 weeks!  Plus I include pictures whenever I have some that are relevant to the subject matter.  I'd love to see you all over there!