Nabalogic

Nabal: I'm going to buy a house.

(I don't even bother to respond. Enough with the hairbrained schemes and conversations! He can't save 2 nickels.)

I'm going to buy a house because I feel you don't want me here anymore.

Me: Ok...

Nabal: If I but a house, you gonna come live there with me?

Me: No...

Nabal: I'm going to get you back. You wait and see. I know the way to get you back to being my wife, on my way...not yours. Wait and see.

Just creepy... Then he went upstairs and passed out. Small favors.

Money...

So Nabal bought an Amigo over a year ago. It was running, if nowhere but around the back yard.

Somewhere along the way he 'fixed' it into brokenness... Last week he spent $300 on such things as a fuel pump and other things that didn't make it go varoom. All to save the probable $200 he would have had to pay someone else to fix whatever it is that's wrong.

Nope, he hasn't figured it out yet! Maybe he'll sink in another $300 this coming week. Oh, and he works on it drunk...that's gotta help.

Wednesday

So...I've realized that I get indigestion every week when I come home. I have Nabal drunkenly asking can we go on a date. If he had me 'back' with him he would drink no more. He's going to make enough money for me to stay home and not work. He wants a hug, a kiss. Every last thing makes my stomach knot. For the thousandth time: Would you marry me again? Another twist.

When I'm away? Work is stressful, but no stomach problems!

Thursday

Back on the mountain and ready for work. I drive one and one half to two hours to get here. When I drive I think. Then I refuse to think. Talk to God a little, easy too little... Think again. Repeat.

My thoughts were sorrowful tonight. Thinking back over life and recognizing one pitiful thing after another. If we could just go back in time...but that's a moot point..isn't it? To be 19 again... But sorrow seems to follow like a personal rain cloud. So I would replace these sorrows for others.

Somehow my mind wandered to the early years with Nabal. Why did I just settle. I think back and realize he wasn't very much different than he is now. Things I thought would change never did. He did try to earn me...

What made me very sad was that in 20 years we have never celebrated our anniversary. Not even belatedly. If anything was celebrated every, it was me who planned and carried it out. Maybe that's just men's ways. Weekday do I know. Sadly nothing.

Tuesday

Drinking makes for wastefulness, not just money but resources. It just keeps hitting home. Today our daughter pointed out two large plates of cut salad with jalapenos and avocado sitting out on the kitchen counter, wilted and now garbage. There are only four of us and Nabal made enough for some 10 people! None of us were hungry. Then he passed out leaving it all out. Our daughter pointed out that this its why there is no food by mid week... Just a sad waste of food resources.

So one of the goats got lost briefly... I'd think the story was funny if it didn't show just how Nabal's mind is going, going, gone... The goat was found unharmed. Of course I had to wait to the end of his story to know that. Damn drunks!

So they find the goat is missing and start looking for it. Then Nabal gets the notion that I probably came home early and put the goat in the basement... Oh he has lost it...! Why the heck would I do that? Now I realize why he called so many times while I was at work. He just doesn't get that I don't have my phone on me... One day I get off early and now he always does that. Its part of his campaign to prove his love... When he finds a better victim I'm sure he will skip off down the road like his butt is on fire.

I finally ordered classes to further my credentials! Then I won't need to work at the crazy place I work. They don't have enough people on staff so they are working people until they hurt themselves. Three out on workmans compensation... The new manager is not a right fit. The place where I work is in a secluded area, at least a place where folks don't flock to live. Management hasn't hired any more people nor have the vigorously advertised throughout the country. Oh well. The dilemma once I get more certification is where to go... I'm just so tired of here, but where? Nabal is making years from now plans. Yes he's just ignoring me. Its one of his avoidance games. His divorce threats suddenly became unfun once I agreed that divorce was the right course of action.

I know I have a dim foxhole view of life right now, but I just don't see a way out still. No one cooperates. My kids are still at home. I'm pushing for them to get going with college and get to a place where they get into four year colleges, both are dragging their heels in and hating life. They don't have good tools, and that's my fault. Guess I'm just reaping a little from 20 years of bad existence... Then there's Nabal...he wants to keep status quo. Some days I almost get in the mindset to go along with him, he usually does whatever its opposite of whatever he thinks I want. The cost there is too great. He would be the triumphant stud that won me back, and that right there...bedroom time, I am not willing to do. Plus it probably wouldn't work. He'd have won and I can't act that long anymore.

So just found out from the kids that I will need to place the goats somewhere in a new home. Nabal amuses himself when he's drunk be tormenting the weaker goat... Put the poor thing in one of his broken down cars then when it stumbled when he let it jump out he just stood there laughing. My son wanted to do harm to Nabal. I wasn't home and he didn't, that is a triumph.

Nabal was so drunk the boy took the truck keys when he went down the street to visit his friend. Nabal called and cursed him out for taking the keys. Yet they all feel stick here...with him... I guess I do to. Life has become hell for everyone except Nabal. How does that happen? He seems oblivious drinking his life away. How does that happen?

Monday

Nabal just its not getting it. You can not bully forgiveness. Give me a kiss? You are my wife, you have to kiss me? Throwing in a few curse words. He was drunk, but he knows darn well what he's up to...

Friday

Oh no....Nabal remembered my number! So I got another beer soaked call. He started calling 2 hours before I got home. He got a big check today and wanted to tell me I could come home and work no more. Everything he had every done, he's done for me. The person who perpetrated all the nastiness? That was someone else... (his words) If I would just be nice. We need to stay together to do big things. Love you with all my heart. I've never been with another woman. (he laughs) Hard as I try I can't find anyone else, but I really want to be with you.

Anyone else see anything wrong with that declaration, or it's it just me?

I want to keep you. You are my little baby. We can't throw away what we have.

Of Nabal and his crazy declarations... Why it's all about money. Nabal's mother it's one money hungry greedy woman. But she won't work for it. She instead convinced her boys they had to support her fully since she was in her forties... Ergo, he thinks every woman is controlled and/or swayed by the almighty dollar.

Let me think back...he voiced the D word years ago. Divorce. It used to strike terror in my heart because I was trying so damn hard. Once I agreed with him...suddenly he became champion of our marriage and I was the quitter. Plainly that game had outlived it's usefulness to Nabal... Took him a while to test that out- that was when he would mind numbingly vasilate between the hero and wanting a divorce. He just had to figure out which bothered me more.

He has been looking for someone else. Well, I guess he's trying that out to see if it bothers me. Way too late.

Why he said someone else was that mean person talking? I may have said too much...I told him that when he has lots odd money...he goes out of his easy to be mean and nasty. And honestly, id he did it once it's only a matter of time till he's flush and does it again. There. Now he had ammunition in figuring me out.

With him, it all comes down to head games. He knows if I don't work-I'm definitely stuck, so stroke there first. He knows I was an abandoned child, so strike there second. He knows all these almost twenty years of making me nuts and emotionally confused wasn't wasted time. So go there last.

It's the little- Not letting you go. That scares me. I'm his possession... Point of the whole conversation...or has fear written that in for me.

He did ask if there was anyone else. Not a soul. He did hurriedly correct himself. Oh the history behind that loaded question. Years of me trying so dang hard only to be accused time and again. Just making up ridiculous crap. I would jump every time thinking I had done something to make him think that. I stopped looking around when we went out. There was the chance he would think I had looked at someone with lustful eyes. I look back and laugh, but I was trying to be so perfect and he would completely blow me out of the water. Id just become more reclusive.

I had a funny thought the other night and herein is the problem our issue. I don't really enjoy the company of other women. There have been a few really good close friends, but for the most part my friends have been males. Why? I prefer talking about guy stuff- carpentry, cars, sports, etc. I prefer the way men interact with friends. Want to drive me over the edge- talk all afternoon about girlie stuff. Yes I knit, I sew, I wear dresses and makeup sometimes, but I prefer guy talk mostly. Some other lose screw from my past probably, but there it is. This is a perfect reason for me to be married...to a guy. But Nabal is the type of guy that doesn't like talking to woman particularly, even about things he likes. He was brought up to only have male friends and women were for housework. Well and bedroom fun...any time he wants.

Hell I picked the wrong guy! And I knew it. People always say if you choose with your heart you will choose a foolish thing. Well, I'm here to say choosing with your head isn't doing me any favors either. Maybe even worse. Live it's a decision. I decided to overlook a lot for a long time, and so did he. But there has always been something missing, something I worked extra hard at that shouldn't have always needed to be work. Choosing solely with your head, I think, sucks just as bad or worse than with your heart.

Thursday

I work an extra day this week. Yay money! Nabal called tonight... He had to tell me he gave the goats the shots they were supposed to be given three days ago. He tells us yesterday that he needs to get food for them... He already had them 3 days! They are not used to foraging and they are weak. It's as if he can't manage anything. His ploy to suck us all in because he knows we won't stand by and see animals mistreated.

So he asks me if he can come up here and sleep with me... Of course he's juiced up! Then he wants to know if he makes enough money will I just stay home... He's purposely being obtuse! He has gotten in his mind that he did nothing wrong, whatever went wrong is my fault. The end.

Its just so frustrating... He rewrites history and I struggle to keep sanity... People just don't realize how hard it is not top fall back into a mind set. Not to just go with the flow. Not to knuckle under the crazy making. The mind games. I just feel so dang weak at times. Like the elephant who's chain has been loosed but he won't venture far still. Just not having the conscious knowledge that he is free of bonds. Some days its the wrong he's done to the kids that matter more than me. Its because of the ever changing truth... It just wears me down. He has a rationalization for every argument. The thing its, none of that should master to me! I have everything in writing why does it matter what he concocts? Lies flow from him like Niagara, yet I try to defend with logic. He finds a lie to shut me down every time. Why do I care? Because I'm broken. Something went wrong a long ago that makes me have to have reasons for everything, and others have to concur or I become afraid. Not normal at all... I'm starting to feel like I've waited too long and I'm stuck, but that's not true at all. Why does some part of me buy into his whole- that was the past, and wrongly remembered, but now its the present and he's decided I need to forget everything (I imagined?) and get back with the program. Simply put he's decided its easier to stay so I have to agree. Just how it feels...

Now he's the shining hero that put up with me all these years. The ever loving husbands (albeit misunderstood and rough around the edges) who has put up with my bad behavior! Such a twisted existence... Why do I pause? Am I really that weak? By appearances, I would have to say yes.

The other night we took the nephew and the children out to eat. He'd come from church so had Pablito with him. That man looks bad now too. He really needs to go into treatment, but with Nabal around... So its the only night Nabal didn't get drunk. He had to leave early because he felt sick...

I can sit here and wait for Nabal to kick the bucket, or find another willing woman. Or I can get the therapy I need and get strong. Got a lot of thinking to do. I've gotten to the point I don't care about anything but the kids and work. Sadly other people mean nothing to me art this point. Why? They can't help. They would rather not know. It's all on me.

And just tonight an ex-school teacher killed his wife who was divorcing him and his girlfriend. Killed some kids also. The girlfriend's mother commented that he was controlling and she had advised her daughter against getting mixed up with him.

This is my number one pause. Now Nabal has rewritten history he will use it in his own mind for retaliation. Fear...again.

Monday (My Friday!)

Today my little one turned 17! I got home at 11pm to a drunk and goats. (and we were dumb enough to think Nabal was just talking again...)

Night before last my girl calls me up where I work. It was birthday eve eve. (yes eve eve. Yesterday was birthday eve) She'd just gotten off work. Her brother was to have picked her up and when he wasn't there she tried calling Nabal but got no answer. Nabal had gotten drunk with 5 other guys and took the truck. Her brother said he was really drunk and not to ride with him. She called her boyfriend and he turned around to go pick her up. While she and I were talking she thought she saw Nabal's truck. She hung up because get brother was calling again.

She called back hot mad. Nabal's nephew, who is visiting told her Nabal was coming to pick her up. When she told him Nabal was there and drunk so she wasn't driving with him and that she had a ride on the way. The nephew told get she should get in the truck with her drunk father. He has worked with Nabal for two weeks and listened to his 'poor me the lovable victim' crap while he was sober. Kid doesn't realize naval is so fast in the bottle he doesn't make much sense at any time.

Ok, what is it about this family of Nabal's that they overlook drunken dangerous behavior? They overlook any bad behavior and make excuses for it from his mother on down!

Today, Nabal called me all day at work. I don't have my phone on at work. Not that kind of job. I got off at 6, got to the parking lot at 6:30. He through I was getting off early so 'we' could take the birthday girl out to dinner. Both kids knew when I get off work... Oh! But now I am his convenient excuse for him not doing anything yet again for a birthday... Geez! He had just taken her and her best friend to a nice restaurant...and dropped them off.

By the time I got home she was coming home from the movies with her beau. Her brother was just getting home. We went in to beer bottles lined up everywhere! Nabal and his young (though 21) nephew had been drinking. Does that man have no limit? The boy's father is a drinker... He, Nabal, had done absolutely nothing for the child's birthday... No cake, no present, no nothing. Just drunk-his first and only love.

She's an easy person to buy for. I'd picked up some things last week for her and she really really loves bouquets of flowers so I went and got her flowers. I did drop the ball...I meant to have them sent to get this morning.

The odd thing its Nabal had to run behind me to see everything and make comment. (not always the nicest. He's always got to pick.. He thinks he's pretty funny.) He kept saying under his breath, "are you going to sleep with me tonight?" Call me crazy...but Umm,no!

I heard him talking to the nephew. Giving him advice. I had to laugh, we have heard all his nutty ramblings for so many years, but this poor kid was looking for a family member from that side who cared...all he got was Nabal and his paranoid drunk talk...

I was talking to our boy. Nabal comes drunk stepping in and says, "You like him so much." WTH? He has always been jealous of the kids, even when I talked to him. I can only guess he wanted to do to them what wad done to him. His drunken mom would choose her boyfriends over the boys and treat them poorly...yeah, not me.

Next time the story of why he told his son he had killed someone in a fight. Really? And he curses talking to the kids like he's talking to his drinking buddy friends. Yeah...he's still one of the deacons...