Going to the Mattresses

A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money.

--Everett Dirksen


Going to the Mattresses

Prone.  On the new expensive handmade queen-sized mattress.  For an hour. Prone.  This morning a handmade McCroskey mattress was delivered.  Jenny has a childhood friend who married well and is incredibly lovely and gracious, trying to do whatever she can for Jenny.  This now includes having a lux mattress built for Jenny.  Instead of being happy about it, it is clear it underscored for Jenny that she can't have her cake and eat it too.  She had been sulking, and skulking around clearly upset.  I said something akin to "Come hither, and pray tellest thou woes unto me."  She did.  Both barrels.  I would

have preferred she stick with the theme and aimed a musket at me, but beggars can't . . . blah, blah, blah, and all that. She had offered a rejoinder to me earlier, when we went and tried out the bed by laying on it,  when I noted how lucky she was, she said that of course, that I could use it too.  I gray rocked the comment.  

She was quite clearly wanting me to ask what was wrong.  My old strategy, for many years, was to just wait for her to spit it out.  The problem is the wait could be for weeks or months, and as it festered, life just got worse for each of us.  I have taken, thusly, to asking (even though, generally, I'd rather not) her to tell me what is troubling her mind.  So, I followed that route today, and she unloaded on me, saying that I don't love her, that I don't appreciate she is dying, that I am not cuddling her, not comforting her, not in essence doing all the things I am certainly not doing, except on a PRN basis as determined by me.  That is, if she is sick and in agony, I comfort her.  But, as I pointed out today, again, she loves someone else.  I said, "Your fantasy is to be with Eric the pinché motherfucker.  I am intentionally distancing myself because you love someone else."
If you've been following along, those last two claims aren't surmise.  She, of course, outraged in response, told me that it is untrue that her fantasy is to be with him--pay no attention to what I have seen put in writing every week since September.  I disengaged, gray-rocked, and continued doing the morning chores (cleaning the kitchen, living room, folding laundry, taking out the recycling--all the things I do because I don't love her). She went to the bed and stayed prone there for the aforementioned hour and then some.
6:00 p.m. 
Jenny has been angry all day. Mad and grumpy.  She just left, again, just to leave. This comes after this morning suggesting that because I won't offer her the affection she thinks she deserves, one of us should move out.  I didn't rise to the bait.  Instead, I gray-rocked. 
Just about 30 minutes ago she actually said, "I don't want to do this anymore, I have nothing to live for.  I didn't gray-rock initially, but did get there. 
I suggested that she had her children to live for, and she rejected that answer out-of-hand.  "They are always in their room," she said to me.  Patently false, in fact. Leiney is more with Jenny than not.  Abby never leaves her room, except for bodily needs, visits to the coffee stand, and to meet acting obligations.  So, not directed at Jenny.  But, she certainly loves Jenny. She is just being 15.  Jenny then complained she is tired of people telling her she can't stop chemo.  Sooooo.  That's never happened.  I pointed that out.  I then  said, "I am telling you that you shouldn't decide to stop chemo because you have nothing to live for, because that is patently false."  'Fine, she said, if my scan is bad I am going to stop. I can't take the nausea any more."  I responded, "Okay."  Not the response she was seeking.  
She quickly got up, and silently walked and started putting on her shoes.  Standing, she worked her left foot into her already tied Nike, her back to me as I was sitting on the couch.  I asked her where she was going.  She said, "I just need to go out."  'Okay," I said, making myself into the image of granite.  She didn't like that response, grabbed her keys and left.  
This is at least the fifth time she has gone on such a frolic and detour since I discovered the affair.  In the past, I have called her worried.  No longer.  It's always a game.  And, as the wisest supercomputer around, W.O.P.R., reminds us, "The only way to win is not to play the game."
Last week I told Jenny I was taking today off and she had immediate objections. I made clear her objections weren't material.  She was flabbergasted, or so I thought.  Then, a couple days ago, she sent me a text:
So, I volunteered immediately to take Leiney.  I knew Leiney wouldn't want anyone to take her to her MRI, it was a picture, for crying out loud, not a result.  Jenny, had she been more carefully calculating, would have assigned me Abby's transport, but made a misstep.  

Really, she just wants to control me.  Then, today, her mattress came at 10.  This meant she still couldn't keep me around.  I was futzing around the house, getting ready to do whatever.  Jenny puts the old mattress on Buy Nothing, and gets a hit immediately. They will pick up between 1-2.  Then, she learns that Leiney doesn't want anyone to accompany her to Kaiser imaging.  Jenny soon thereafter comes out to the couch and says we have to make a decision.  Someone needs to take Abby and someone needs to do Easter shopping.  I volunteer to shop, writing off my day off until next Sunday because I will need to be here to get rid of the mattress.  Note, we already had agreed she would take Abby.  

So Jenny takes Abby. I Easter shop. When she got home, Jenny said that while she was there on Mercer Island waiting for Abby to finish acting class, she was so bored waiting and had so much time that she signed up for and went and did Door Dash delivery. 
Jenny loves Scrabble. 

Seriously.  

She said she didn't want to just sit there, so she signed up to deliver Door Dash meals.  Sooo, this begs the question, if you were bored, why not go shopping for Easter swag yourself?  There are grocery stores, a Met Market and 2 QFCs on Mercer Island, near Abby's acting school.  Also. there is at least one drug store.  It's a mystery why she wants to control me so much.

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