Celebrating 37 years of Marriage

If you’re not happy as a single person, you won’t be happy as a married person. Marriage was not invented as a means of solving all your personal issues. 

I just came across an article that had these lines in it. They are soooooo true. It's funny because in 7th and 8th grade I swore I wanted to be a nun. I was really angry at my parents for not allowing me to enter the noviate for high school. I dated exactly 2 guys in high school. One was clearly in love with another person but was younger than she was. I am glad they finally decided to get together after high school. They had a very happy life together. The other guy I got engaged to. That is until I got the "Dear Jane" letter my senior year 2 weeks before prom. So instead of running away with him and eloping, I went to college. I dated on and off during college but instead of finding the love of my life, I found a lot of friends, some of which were platonic friends for 7 years! 

I was never worried though about meeting the man of my dreams. I was busy. I was going to college full time days graduating with 2 Bachelor degrees and 2 minors while working full time nights at a nursing home, working another nursing home on weekends, worked in the college's cafeteria daily, and cleaned model homes in my spare time. My transition from college to grad school didn't change much except now I was attending grad school in the morning, worked the PM shift as a nurse, and added waitressing on weekends along with getting in grad school working at their hospital too. 

I was a bad date. I would go out with a guy and if he asked for another date, my usual answer was I might be free in a month. No guy wants to hear that and honestly, I didn't care if I saw that guy again or not. I had 3 guys I was super close to as friends (I remember kissing one of them and both of us pulling away saying "YUCK" because it felt like I was kissing my brother). 

I worked in the CCU/ICU unit. One night I called a code and this resident showed up. He stood there like a deer in headlights. I asked him if he could write. I think he said yes. I said good then record what is going on as I am saying it. He asked for paper. I rolled my eyes and said, "See that long strip coming out of the monitor? Write on that at the time I tell you to." I paid him no more attention. I was busy. The doctor finally showed up and I gave him a list of what I had already done and he decided to call the code saying "Time of death 9:08pm". I looked over to the resident who was still standing there with his mouth open. I rolled my eyes and asked him if he recorded everything. He nodded. I said good and he could leave. He actually chose to stay.

We talked after as I was preparing the body for family. He stayed through my writing everything that happened down. I was ready for report so he left. I never got his name but the other 10 residents who would hang out in the unit would stop by and say how much I intimidated him and finally gave me his name. They all thought we would make a good couple. I said I didn't have time and basically he had not left a good impression on me. He started coming to the unit when he was on duty overnight and if I had time, I taught him how all about the monitors, medications, protocols, etc. We had a comfortable mutual respect for each other and our intellect. It was the first time I had met someone I felt was on my level.

3 months later he asked me out. I had just switched hospitals because I had to put in more hours for grad school working specific areas and was working days. I agreed to go to a movie and dinner. I asked him to meet me at my apartment at 5pm. Well, I got there at 5 - there had been 3 codes that day shift and I had done 4 admissions into the ICU. I had been puked on and had blood all over me and basically looked like crap and figured he had long left. I wasn't worried because frankly I was looking forward to taking a shower and going to bed since I had to be back at the hospital in 12 hours. Nope, he was there waiting on me. He took one look at me and said bad day? I said yep. I said I need to take a shower but you can come on up to my apartment. He did. I didn't even stop to think I had 2 cats or know if he was a cat person because my cats were not always friendly. But he got along with them fine. We made the movie but never made dinner. Frankly I fell asleep during the movie (James Bond "The Spy Who Loved Me"). That was September. Our next date was December. Our next date was for the Auto Show in Chicago. We managed to see each other at least 1-2 days a week after and that Christmas, he proposed. 2 years and 2 months from the date we met, we were married.

Overcontrolling Adult Children

We have all heard about parents who over control their children. But rarely have we heard about children who try to control their parents. This post will be about those children.

In my case, everyone already knows I had an alcoholic, emotionally abusing, and emotionally abusing father with a passive agressive mother who passed away in 2010. Basically my father has moved on - new wife - and only accepting 4 of his 6 children into their lives. My baby sister and I were the 2 not chosen but it is something that is not new to either of us. We have lived our whole lives like that. We escaped a controlling father by refusing to be a part of his manipulations.

As we age, we look forward to getting married, having children, having grandchildren. We went out of our way to try and not control our children. We encouraged them to have goals and reach for their goals. We didn't care what they did in life just that they did something. We put no pressure on them. Now I am wondering if that is the wrong approach.

My husband and I are going through a financial crisis right now but that is nothing new in healthcare. He is 65 and I am 62. We both chose being in the medical field and pursued the education to allow us to be in that field. In my husband's case, that meant 4 years of medical school after college, then internship, then residency. We married a year after his residency. The ups and downs of never knowing what your income will be day to day, week to week, month to month is well known in this field unless you are in it for the wrong reasons. We are in it because both of us love being able to help others. We may not run it as much as a business as we should but we are happy.

Son-in-law who never finished college and keeps drifting every few years from job to job but staying in the IT area, just does not understand this mind set. His parents had very steady incomes (father is an accountant and although drifted from job to job, had an income that could be counted on at any time. His mother was a physical therapy aide who never finished college either because she got pregnant with her first child). So son-in-law is child #2 or the first child from that marriage. They had another girl then 10 years later had a change of life boy. That boy was a drug addict and dealer. He ran away at 19 and ended up deceased in a cornfield. There wasn't enough left of him to have answers to any questions if this was accidental or a homicide. They will never know. This boy ran away from home because he was being told what to do and what to be and his last fight was with our son-in-law who pushed his brother to take flight. I think he thought he was taking control of his brother where the child had no control at all from his parents. But it backfired.

Now son-in-law has turned to us and has turned our daughter against us. We paid for daughter's college and 40 thousand dollar wedding. We did it by my taking on billing for a psychotic doctor who I had the pleasure of dumping after I knew all bills had been paid. Husband and I paid for their wedding and college although we strongly feel now like changing our will to deduct what we paid from any inheritance they get and thus giving more to our son who is going out of his way to help. They are also withholding contact with our only grandchild.

Both my husband and I politely talked to daughter and son-in-law and stated they had no right to interfere in our lives just as we have no right to interfere in their lives. It is called mutual respect. But there was to be no more telling us what we should do or not do or how they think our lives should be. That would be no different than us doing it to them. We never have and we do not plan on starting now. But if they ever decide to 'talk' to us again in the same manner, they should expect us to politely hang up the phone as we will not tolerate it at all.

I think we allowed our daughter to have too much control and now the moment she gets upset over anything, it is being picked up by her husband that he has to interfere. All I have to say is good luck.