Nothing's Changed

Well, not really. Except maybe he's even more crazy/delusional than I thought.

Anyway, I just put those posts away so I didn't have to look at them constantly. I can still link to them if/when needed.

When everything went down last Monday, and I went off like Mount St. Helen's, he told me he "was done".
I quit talking to him, he quit talking to me, we avoided being in the same room with each other, didn't so much as look at the other.

The day before yesterday he was at the firehouse, and then the schedule said he was supposed to be on the ambulance yesterday, the clinic today, and the firehouse again tomorrow.
He texted R and said when he left the clinic, he was probably just going to spend the night at the firehouse.

Turned out he had gotten his days mixed up and wasn't scheduled to be on the ambulance yesterday after all, so he came home.

Started out the same as every other day over the past week and a half: neither of us acknowledged the other, and he went off into the livingroom to sit in the recliner and get on his laptop.

At one point I laid down on the bed for a nap (I'm not sleeping well at night), I was also coughing a little bit. Me and R both feel like we're getting a chest cold or something.  Anyway he came in here and put his hand on my hip and asked if I was sick.
I froze him out until he left the room with a huff.

He went back to the livingroom, and deactivated his Facebook account.

Later me and R went to the grocery store, where I bought about 5 family packages of chicken on sale.
I brought them in and started dividing them up into dinner size portions, putting them in freezer bags.
Out of the blue, J came in there and helped me with it.

I didn't tell him to eff off, but continued ignoring him, like he wasn't even there.

Later, while I fixed dinner, he hung around in the kitchen and cleaned off and straightened up his messy counter without me having to say anything about it.

Later, I was laying on the bed watching TLC and he comes in there and lays down on his side of the bed and watches tv with me. (I was watching stupid shows, and shows he don't like, flipping between HGTV and Toddlers & Tiaras. So obviously he wasn't there for the entertainment.)

He reached forward and touched my foot...I don't know what he was doing, I jerked it away and froze him out again.

But then a few minutes later he leans over near my back, like he's going to whisper in my ear or something.
I was like, What the hell are you doing? Get away from me!
He didn't, so I asked, "Don't you have a sky to look at and a whore to think about?"

He backed off then, but said, "I don't know what you're talking about."

That's the kind of crap he says that pisses me off ridiculously. SOB trying to make it out like I'm just making stuff up, twisting what he said.

But I didn't want the cops to show up at the door again, so I managed to refrain from saying anything else.

Then he said, "Well, I do, but I don't"..or maybe it was, "I don't, but I do". I can't exactly remember now.

I don't know what he meant by it, and I was afraid to ask, pretty sure his answer (excuses/lies) would infuriate me beyond limits.
But I have an idea that he's attempting to make an arguement for it being something from a long time ago, that I'm still just holding against him after all this time.

I was having a little chat with R the other day, trying to explain to him what had happened, and ease him into the idea that I'm leaving as soon as I can. He told me that when he asked his Dad what happened, he told him that I got mad for something he said to someone a long time ago.

Since July wasn't that long ago, less than a month at that time, it didn't make a lot of sense.
Thinking about it, though, I'm thinking he's going to try arguing that he was saying that was how he felt back then, but does not now.
Therefore, it's just me "taking things out of context", because, you know, I'm just "always looking for something to accuse him of" doing, because "the way I see it" he's guilty.

Only a couple things wrong with his logic, one being his use of word tense.
He said "I sit and look at the sky and wonder if you are as well."
Not, "I used to sit and look at the sky and wonder..."

But the most fatal flaw in his logic, the one that tore me so completely out of the frame, was that, back then, when he'd told me he'd been having an affair, he said it didn't mean anything. It was just sex. That he didn't care about her.
He quit his job to get away from her.
I didn't make him quit his job to get away from her. I didn't even know what was going on until it was already done.

So I spent all these years thinking it was just sex, and that I was still the only one he ever really loved, despite his tail-chasing.

Now, to find out they "had something special", "did a lot together", "shared a lot"...and that he still thinks so, and still thinks about her...

How he can have the balls to face me... to act like he's the wronged, innocent party here.... to make it seem like I'm some kind of deranged, jealous bitch....

Ahem.

I didn't ask what he meant by what he said, and continued to watch tv and ignoring him.

Then he jerked up off the bed, huffing "Oh, but I forgot. You don't give a shit about me anymore."

I'm serious! I couldn't make this kind of thing up!

The man is honest-to-goodness, completely deranged.

He went back to the livingroom, and re-activated his FB account.

I don't know what his thoughts were when he decided to deactivate his account.
I figured he blamed FB for his misdeeds. If I make him guilty, I'm sure FB made him talk with people he ought not have been talking to.

Or maybe he knew he was too weak of character to resist temptation, and thought deactivating it would save him from doing wrong again.
Nahh, that wouldn't be it. He's just fine with his character. He doesn't think he did anything wrong anyway.

Or, if he doesn't have a FB account, then there wouldn't be anything for me to "accuse" him of doing, nothing for me to "take out of context".

Apparently he thought it was in some way a good will gesture on his part, to help me be able to get back in his good graces yesterday.

I don't know. I think he's demented.

Drop Cloth Curtains

According my Stats, I get a lot of hits on the Drop Cloth Curtains post, which, of course, was a Project Fail.  My drop cloth panels were too short.

At the time, I hadn't gotten my sewing machine back out yet, and after over a dozen years of having not sewed anything with it, I wasn't/still am not really confidant in my ability to sew any kind of length onto the drop cloths to make them the right length. Nor did I have a clue what color material would match the weird color they'd turned out from half a dye job.

I considered dying them again to see if I could get the darker brown color I had been going for to start with, but there was still the problem of the panels being too short, so seemed like a waste of money. (The RIT dye is around $6.00 a bottle.)

So, while I meditated on the problem, I got my sewing machine out, cleaned it up, and attempted to brush up on my sewing skills by making a t-shirt blanket/ t-shirt blanket. (Oh yay, a post full of Project Fails today.)

Anyway, the point of mentioning that being, once I figured out to use the iron-on Fusible Webbing, the project started going along better.
(Even though I'm still too scared to cut up my other t-shirts yet.)

Along about this time, I came across a Pin on Pinterest, where a lady was wanting to change the look of her plain cream-colored curtain panels, without permanently altering them. So she cut strips of (black) fabric and used Fusible Webbing to attach them to the panels.
She also used Fusible Webbing to attach (black) ribbon over the rough edges of the (black) material.

It occurred to me that I could add big stripes of material to my drop cloth panels, with one at the bottom and/or top to extend the length of mine. Easy, no sewing involved, and it wouldn't look like a drop cloth with a piece of material sewed to the bottom.

I had plans to try this new project and post how it went, if was easy, if it was a success (or not).
But things are not going my way this summer, and it's not really looking good for this project to ever get done, so I thought I'd go ahead and post the idea for any of the visitors landing here looking for ideas about this.

BTW, you can also use printed oblong tablecloths the same way in place of curtain panels.

Plant Day Part Deux

I couldn't do this little project earlier because, all the crap I have in my house, I didn't have sponges.

So the truck battery died, so R was taking it to the auto parts place to get it tested, and it's in the same parking lot as the Dollar Tree, so while he was going anyway I rode along and got some sponges (and, yes, some other things: a new cookie sheet b/c my other one got rust, and some paint mini-roller-naps and brushes. They didn't have the mini-naps when I was looking for them before so I figured I'd better go ahead and get some while they had them.)

(We went to Walmart first - they like to get more than one opinion on auto stuff - and as far as sponges, they didn't have any cheap, generic kitchen sponges. Only name brand, or scrubbers, and all cost nearly $3.00 and up.)

The original plan calls for (4) sponges in four different colors, but blue and yellow is what Dollar Tree had, so that's what color mine is.

It also called for a large plastic food-storage container, which I do have one of, but for some crazy reason the top is missing. So, I used a cake container.

Cut up the sponges according to the directions.

Spray surfaces with water.

Sprinkle on grass seed.
This was the hardest part. The first time I did it, grass seed went everywhere! I had to disassemble and gather all the seed and start over. I left the roof off first and sprinkled seed on the "hedges" on the sides, holding the seed close to the target so it wouldn't bounce off.
The roof was harder on account of the slopes. I still got some loose seed on the tray, but oh well, if it sprouts I can pick it out.
Spray with water again - not too close, or you'll spray your seeds off.

Cover, but don't seal closed to prevent to mold. Keep warm and moist and hopefully we'll have sprouting in a week or two.

When I originally saw the idea to do this grass house, I wanted to make it for Kitty. Kitty lives inside, but apparently sometimes cats need to eat grass, Idk. We tried to grow a tray of grass earlier in the Spring, but it didn't do too well.
Anyway, this sponge house is just propped together, not really sturdy, so I don't think it would hold up to Kitty farming from it.

Plant Day

was actually supposed to be yesterday, until I went to visit our compost bins looking for potting soil. Without throwing a big, huge rant, I'll just say, they weren't good.
I got the boys out there and we shoveled (and pulled plastic bags out) and watered. Hopefully we can get them back on track again.

The main thing I wanted to do was start sprouting some Cabbage seeds. I want to try to raise Cabbage again this (Fall) - last year I think we planted too late, after Harvest of the Spring/Summer garden. I read yesterday that I should have already been sprouting these in mid-late July and planting in late August.

I tried making a mini greenhouse out of 2-ltr plastic bottles, and that didn't work out at all. So I just put some garden soil in one of these plastic plant trays and dropped in the seeds, watered and covered with plastic wrap. Hopefully they'll sprout pretty quickly.

Otherwise, my Aloe plant had some "pups" that needed to get out on their own.

This Aloe plant is actually a child of an Aloe plant my DIL gave me a couple of years ago. When they grow "pups", alls you do is pluck them out and stick in dirt in another pot. I can't remember how many "pups" I harvested last year, more than 20, IIRC.  I took them to my Mom's at Thanksgiving and gave everyone a plant (or several).

Today I got 6 "pups" relocated to their own homes. There are still 4-5 more with the "Mom" that I think need to grow a little more before I pluck them out. One of the ones I replanted today was really small, but it had pulled loose when I pulled one of the bigger "pups" out, so I didn't want to waste it.

Back in May, I had cut some pink miniature roses from the ancient cemetery across the road to attempt to propagate. I read online where some people just stuck theirs into the ground and left them alone, others stuck them into the ground and covered with a glass mason jar.

I stuck mine into dirt in a pot, and hope that's close enough. I don't expect to see results until next Spring, but I think it might be a good sign that both the stems (stalks?) of the rose clippings are still green, and I don't know if you can see it in this picture, but there are some green leaves growing up out of the soil from the uncovered rose.

I also wanted to try growing one like my Grannie used to do it, which she did nothing more than clip a flower and stick it in a glass/jar of water.
I stuck it in the water and more or less forgot about it. I mean, I could see it sitting there, and considered a couple of times maybe I should change the water, but usually lost interest before I got around to it. I did add some water once when it got low, but that was it.

Despite my kind of care, it sprouted some mighty fine roots.

I went ahead and planted it in a pot of soil.

The real test will be if I can keep them alive through the winter.  Plants and gardening aren't a whole lot on my mind when it's cold and nasty outside.

I also replanted my Rosemary plant into a larger pot. I know some plants grow by the size of the pot they're in, how much room they have, or something like that.  It didn't seem to have grown any since I bought it, so I thought I'd try a bigger pot and see if that's what it needs.

I still find it kinda amazing that I've been able to work with plants.  I used to have such a black-thumb, plants would see me coming and go ahead and die to save us both the trouble.
I'll never be a Master Gardener, or anything even near, but this little bit I've been able to do is such an accomplishment for me.
Especially keeping that Aloe plant alive. I mean, I killed a Cactus and Air Plant. No joke, I did. An Air Plant. You know what an Air Plant needs? Air. Yeah. So I have no idea how I managed that one.