And another weekend bites the dust

I’m a rebel patient this week. I should have gotten my beta draw on Sunday. But I get my draws in the lab in the town where I work, rather than the town where I live. So I decided to postpone until today…when I’m back at work. 'Cause why waste the gas? So no news there until tomorrow.

I had a boring weekend. I always feel a little guilty when that happens. Don’t get me wrong, all appearances would suggest that it was quite productive. I got caught up on gardening and housework, worked out every day, took the dogs out a lot, introduced the new fur baby to the dog park, watched movies with DH, things like that.

But I feel like I didn’t do the three-day weekend justice. Like I should have gone somewhere. Done something. Like it doesn’t count if you don’t have a story to tell when you get back to work the next week.

Unfortunately, the weekend ended with me and DH in a fight. It was pretty bad. The kind where we end up sleeping in different rooms. And, for the record, that NEVER happens. In fact, I can’t even remember it happening once during our 7 yr relationship, though it’s been threatened a couple times. I was being a dog-training na.zi and he was being distant and depressed all weekend about work (in fact, he was gone for half of the weekend, which may be why we didn’t make any real plans) and our frustrated worlds just collided. He let the new puppy in when she barked, which is exactly what you don’t want to do in these early stages if you have any hope of teaching them that barking won’t get them anywhere. So I told him not to do that and reiterated how important it is to be consistent and he said he didn’t have time this time, he'll be consistent tomorrow, and I refused to be ok with that because let's think about the meaning of 'consistency' for a minute. Plus, this is one of those situations where an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, it's a little inconvenient now but my god it's so worth it in the long run to have a well-behaved dog. He freaking blew up. He was running up and down the house slamming doors and yelling at me not to f—with him. I have never seen him quite like this. I was a little scared, for the first time ever. Even the poor dogs were cowering in a corner. I went looking for them ‘cause I was on my way to bed and I found them, after a concerted search (I have never ever had to search for these ‘velcro’ dogs) huddled together behind the couch – I had never seen them like this. They were so affected by the yelling and our hostile behavior, they were scared. I took them to bed with me and they both fell asleep in my arms. I felt so protective, I almost locked DH out of the bedroom. He came in later and tried to put his hand on mine. I didn’t let him and he left to sleep in the guest room. This is monumental for us. Not sleeping together is like the telltale sign that things are not right. Like I said, it has never actually happened. And when it's gotten close, I usually am beside myself with grief, crying and the whole bit. Last night I didn't have any urge to cry. I was just mad. How dare he.

He came in again this morning. He seemed apologetic, we seem to be fine again, I think we both know that we both overreacted…but he never apologized. And I certainly didn't feel any need to.

The reason I recount this in such detail is because it was not lost on me the parallels one could probably draw between this incident and life with kids. The different attitudes towards discipline, the way kids will be affected by fights between their parents, the feeling I had as I went to bed last night that the dogs were my priority, screw DH – he can sleep wherever he wants. Hopefully we will find a way to work through this kind of thing (and maybe avoid it altogether) before we do have kids. I think the dogs will recover a lot quicker than kids will. And it was no picnic for me either.

In any case, I get to work this morning, late, and first thing, my due date buddy g-chats me to tell me she had her first of, count 'em, four baby showers this weekend. Awesome! And she’s telling me all about the plans for next weekend’s shower and I could have just reach through the screen and punched her in the eye. Instead, when she told me her DH is getting a taco truck to do the catering at the next shower I actually typed “careful, there’s nothing like listeria to ruin a baby shower.” And then I actually hit 'enter.' One more example of how easy it is to lose it when you’re typing instead of talking.

The very next thing that happened is that I got an email from a co-worker on maternity leave with, count-'em again, three pictures of her 8-week-old. She was asking if I and another new-mom co-worker wanted to join her for lunch this week - she warned us that the baby would probably be awake the whole time 'cause he hasn't mastered sleeping in the stroller. Yeah, sign me up. I can't freaking wait.