Barrybran - A Year On

[Barrybran]

Hot is good. Living so far inland it'll be nice to have beach weather for the duration to take the kids. The downside will be the wedding also being on the beach and everyone being dressed to the nines and NOT being able to go for a swim. I'm not sure how well thought out the location was but we'll roll with it and the ensuing kid-complaints haha.

[Ggrass]

Perhaps they might get to swim.

Say hello to kings park for me! I loved that place. If I make it back to Perth I want to go back. No question.

[Barrybran]

I'm keen to go to a lot of places. Perth barely changed for two decades and as soon as I move to the east coast a bunch of stuff changes. My home town, though... not so different to when I lived there.

[Barrybran]

So, my boss threw a spanner in the works today. I had been planning on moving to my wife's town at Easter however money is so tight that any financial surprise would mean not having enough money in time, having to stay put and dealing with a potential fallout. Today, my boss informed me that she has a surgery booked for mid-May and she needs to train someone to look after the store while she's gone.

No biggie as I should be gone by then. Or so I thought. After about twenty minutes I had a light bulb moment. My boss said that she would have to give more hours to the person she trains up and, being the most expensive staffer other than her, I would lose hours. I understand this. It's business and my boss has a job to do. My light bulb moment was that if I lose hours, I won't be able to save enough money for the move and I'd be stuck here anyway.

So that was an unpleasant thought. It appears as though I need to plan to stay until mid-year, help my boss out, build up my finances and then move or sacrifice hours, lose income and not afford to be able to move anyway. I'm pretty comfortable with the work side of things but I do want to get the kids to where my wife is ASAP and this makes things harder. I'm OK with it all feelings-wise but I do have a little anxiety about how I'm going to scrape together enough money in time or worse, negotiate with my wife to make the move mid-year instead. Fun times!

[Barrybran]

Another couple of weeks since the last update. Things must be settling down a bit. I'm on the way home from a visit with my wife, or more accurately, my kids visit with her. My wife wasn't able to make it home this weekend so I met her at a town half way. She asked if there was anything I could do while she spent time with the kids so I took the hint, left them with her and went and did my own thing.

I enjoyed wandering around by myself. I didn't enjoy the drop off so much. My son and eldest daughter broke down again and my son was inconsolable for about fifteen minutes. I hate seeing them like that. It's about six weeks now until school breaks up so hopefully I can find a place, get up there and the kids will be happier. Hopefully my wife jumps off the hate train too but I'm not expecting that :-)

On a positive note, my holiday is in three days and I'm getting excited now. I need to see my family as well as have some proper down time and fun with the kids. There's a lot of potential awkwardness to negotiate with my wife's side of the family but I think I'll be alright. I'm just looking forward to getting over there and getting away from life for a bit. When I come back it'll be a week and a half until D4's birthday and her party will be the weekend after that. Then it's on to the move.

In other news, I got my latest round of uni results back and they were excellent. This trimester was the first whole trimester without my wife around as well as having Christmas, school holidays and back to school. I'm very happy to have been able to negotiate those events and come out with the results I have. I'm one mark shy of averaging a high distinction (perfect GPA in GPA land) so I have a new goal to improve that average.

For now though, roll on Wednesday.

[gogofo]

Barry, wish I had some advice for you or some valid input but I don't. Just wanted to say it is very commendable that you are doing so well juggling work, DBing and school and doing well at it to boot. Hope your vacation goes well. I understand your apprehension about the in-laws, but I am sure once you get over the initial meeting every thing will fall into place.

Good luck and have fun.

[Barrybran]

It's all good. I can handle the in-laws. Its the wife that I'm not sure about. She called just now and wasn't going to speak to the kids and risk them breaking down again. As much as it svcks to see, the kids are always fine after 15 minutes. They talk about their Mum a lot but the only time they cry like that is when they part and its all over quickly. It's the last thing my wife sees though so I can only imagine that she feels the situation with the kids is different to what it really is, which I can't blame her for. I did explain this as briefly as I could just now. I don't think its right to say "they're fine" but at the same time, they are. What she sees is just a snippet. In six weeks, I should have a new house and in eight weeks, the kids will be spending half their nights with my wife and hopefully, fingers crossed, all will be back to (a new) normal.

[Barrybran]

When it rains, it pours. I just got the strangest call from my wife. She called to say that her sister and our babysitter have been badmouthing my wife to other people, allegedly saying she's a bad mother and that she's a slvt. I didn't know how to respond because that doesn't sound like things my babysitter would say. My SIL, oddly, would say things like that. There are reasons behind it but my wife isn't either of those things.

My babysitter was due to look after my kids tomorrow night. I can't afford to give up shifts just because my wife doesn't want our kids around certain people but I also have to respect my wife's wishes. That puts me in a bad spot because I have to find other people to look after the kids and I have to cut my babysitter loose, and take away her income, until we get to the bottom of things. I don't feel that it's fair on my babysitter but there will be hell to pay if I continue with her in the short term.

Two months. Two whole months and I'd be in the new town and only have my wife to deal with. I don't even have to be involved in a story for it to affect me these days. Roll on Wednesday!

[Barrybran]

My wife wound up calling back to say that she would speak to our babysitter tomorrow, and to keep her on for now. She also said some other things about people around us that are rather concerning as well as having to speak to me another day about things I've said. I tried to validate but what she was saying was way out of left field and pretty complicated stuff, particularly as it doesn't directly affect my wife, myself or our kids.

To make matters more complicated, my wife suggested that she may move back here in April instead of me moving there. That doesn't really solve anything and I reiterated that I was moving there unless something changed in the next two weeks, which of course, it won't.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to stay as I've started to find my groove here, meet some people and I wouldn't have to move house. At the same time, these dramas will keep following us if we stay in town and job prospects are terrible, which is why my wife moved out of town to begin with.

All in all, a pretty complicated day that will roll into the next couple of days. Somehow I'm in the middle even though I have no idea exactly who has said what or why. My wife's answer when things come up is to "take the kids" away, which of course, will create more problems.

Roll on Wednesday and roll on Easter... and roll on 20[insert a year other than 2015 or 2016 here].

People. Sheesh.

[Barrybran]

Yesterday's bag of crazy was followed up with another bag today. Everyone settled down, other family stepped in and everything went back to normal. Long story short, my SIL and her friend, both in their mid-30s had another of their usual high school drama fights and this time, decided to drag everyone they knew into it. My wife overreacted to the situation threatening our babysitter's job and in turn, my ability to work. My wife hasn't spoken to me today but all I know is that I have a babysitter and all is back to normal.

Todays bag of crazy... a customer came into work and was quite difficult to serve, chopping and changing between things. I stayed as patient as I could, finished her order and off she went. A short time later, she comes back and complains about her order blaming ME. This caught me off guard. I'm very good at my job, very attentive and have a high attention to detail. I ask relevant questions every step of the way and the order was made as requested. To have my work questioned was offensive and it took every ounce of strength not to tell her to call her out on her behaviour.

I really didn't know how to handle it. I was the only person in the store, I had followed the customer's instructions and I had to somehow finely balance between satisfying an upset customer, not giving away free food and standing up for myself. I wound up calling my boss because, as I said to her, I wanted to tell the customer to F-off.

Thankfully, I stopped short of being rude to her. I did have to take a lot of deep breaths. I paused for a very long time and I wound up shaking. I just had no idea how to handle the situation. I'm very proud of my work and I'm frequently complimented on it. This was the first time in 13 months that I had a customer complain and it wasn't even my error.

I reflected quite a lot later on. Both last night and today's incidents reinforced that patience was something that I had come a long way in developing but still needed to work on. I wasn't impatient but it reminded me that I need to keep plugging away at it. It also highlighted that I travel along in life with a fairly narrow view of things. Two wild incidents occurred and I had no idea how to handle them. Both people were upset, both were aggressively telling me how to handle things and both were in the wrong and I had no idea how to handle them.

In hindsight, I still don't know what I could have done differently in each situation. Both my wife and the customer were out of line and for some reason, I felt torn between doing the right thing and doing what will diffuse the situation quickest. The customer isn't so much an issue; I can palm her off on to the boss. My wife, however, I have to work with. She's riding the hate train lately and nothing I say is getting through; which is completely expected but makes life very difficult as there are things in each of our lives that affect the other and we do have to work as a team to solve those problems. Unfortunately, her attitude at the moment makes me not want to work with her. I am thankful for family stepping in and calming my wife down. At some point, my wife needs to come to the party and work with me though.

Have I said roll on Wednesday already?