My office has been busy busy busy, which is good I guess. Richard got laid off, then found a job for two days and then was told there was no work. He has had a couple of interviews but no bites yet. After having him unemployed for two months now, we have literally no money left; we have had to increase credit cards just to pay bills. I never thought I would find myself in this position, but when you have a partner who like to live above their means, I guess that happens.

With the two day job, it put Richard back into a position of needing a 4×4 so we were out looking for vehicles and attempting to sell one of our current ones. In the process, Richard has wound up in two accidents; one left no damage but still got put through on his insurance bumping it up an outrageous $130 a month, the other was not his fault however it was a hit and run on his car, I doubt we’ll ever see the person responsible. We also decided to never go back to two car dealerships in the city ever again; one tried to sell us a horrible vehicle and the other started harassing us when we said no.

We got to hang out with my parents staff this past weekend (for their staff party), and it was a ton of fun! Just wish my own Christmas Party could have compared considering the expense my boss went to.

So, Christmas is less than a week away, and there is no snow.. to be honest it’s a bit depressing. Well, hopefully the Holiday season will go well, and quickly with no major hiccups. I guess we’ll find out.

Other than this there is really not much to report. In case I don’t get back online…

Happy Holidays Everyone!

I’ll give a quick rundown of the week:

Richard ended up getting fired from his job (which I expected) but has already found a new job and started with them yesterday. He has decided to stay in his current trade just do it differently.

We decided to put up an add on Kijiji to help us meet some new people. We did get a few e-mails from a few ‘weirdos’, however we seem to have found two people who are nice and very similar to ourselves (we meet them tomorrow).

We had my staff Christmas party in Banff on the weekend, and to be perfectly honest it was pretty awful. The food at the restaurant wasn’t that amazing (especially for the price, good thing we weren’t paying), and made both of us sick. We both had planned on going to the ‘after-party’, which would have been paid for but after feeling a bit better, we both ran into the same conclusion… we aren’t clubbers and that was basically the type of place everyone went to. So, we simply went to sleep.

The hotel experience was also horrible! Not only was the hotel decor completely off-putting but the noise was beyond ridiculous. Our room was sandwiched between two extremely loud rooms, and I was woken up around 4 in the morning and stayed awake until we left immediately at 8:30. It was probably the worst weekend (that was supposed to be good), that I have ever had!

Richard had his procedure yesterday and I spent the day being quite ill myself. The doctor actually came to a conclusion about Richard, so now we can at least treat the problem even though it will never fully go away; we also came to the realization that he has had it his entire life.

Did you know, it’s a side effect of Valium (what he had for anaesthesia) for there to be some memory loss? Well, apparently it is, he was told this by a nurse yesterday and so far today remembers nothing.. he even asked me when I was coming home to take him for the procedure. This isn’t the best thing in the world, as he had bad memory before, I can only hope it wears off.

I also found out something else yesterday. I had his phone, and maybe I shouldn’t have looked but I ended up looking at the texts between him and his boss. Richard had originally told me that his boss had given him two weeks off and told him there was no point coming in for only a few hours; I found out differently after reading the texts. Richard had actually acted as if he was someone else and told his boss that “Richard’s doctor said he cannot come into work until after the second operation because the anaesthetic takes too long to wear off with him”.. outright lie. I was absolutely fuming and still am.

I’ve been wondering where he has been going in the mornings when he says he’s gone to work. I kind of figured something was up when he was at home (according to his texts to me) pretty much exactly when I was into my work day. It’s like he doesn’t understand that you can’t just .. not go to work because you don’t like it. I don’t think I can list ten people who like their jobs! This just puts more and more strain, at first I thought he was faking being as sick as he ‘is’, which I’m positive is somewhat true, but then I find this out.

I think one of his biggest issues is that he is Bipolar I with Borderline Traits; so many times I see the traits coming out… exaggerating things, the ‘all about me’ syndrome.. things like that.

All I know, is.. if things don’t start to change pretty quick.. that’s probably it.

Why should the ‘sick’ person get whatever they want? Does anyone else find that your needs, your wants are neglected because of the sick person?

Calgary was hit with extremely high winds yesterday (about 130km/h), downtown was shut down due to things being smashed into the skyrises and breaking windows amongst other things. The highway was littered with pulled over cars due to the wind throwing them from side to side and semi trucks being tossed like they were no more than a small boy’s toy trucks. I can only imagine how the vehicles in the air (airplanes, helicopters etc) were faring.

If that wasn’t bad enough, an Alberta alert interrupted our tv watching to inform us that there was an out of control wildfire near Lethbridge and people were being evacuated reminding us all of what happened to Slave Lake earlier this year.  

Good times, good times.

Richard is starting to get  a bit down, I think mainly due to the operation coming up tomorrow and all the worries that come with that.

Other than that, there actually isn’t too much to say today, so I’ll leave it for now.

Last night we went to the walk-in counselling clinic to discuss my in-laws/his parents.

What they have been doing is ripping our already tattered marriage apart. As far as I see it, they don’t agree with our marriage (for an unknown reason) and therefore do not see me as a part of their family. The are always ignoring me when I’m around, or talking down about me when I’m not around. Bad in-laws make a difficult marriage that much harder and we’ve both had enough of it.

We actually managed to get alot of things out, we both discussed different ways in which his parents are not being nice and I think just discussing it while having someone else there to keep the conversation going was very helpful. We came out of the meeting with slightly higher hopes, that we might actually be able to do something about the problem and that we would actually be united in doing so.

Well, today is going well so far. Richard has yet another interview (3rd one now) and he is now trying to stay in the same trade just going back to what he originally hated. So far he is keeping his hopes up but I’m not overly sure how long that is going to last.

Another four hours of work and then we leave for our ‘mini vacation’ at my parents’ house, hopefully it will be worth it.

Yesterday I was going over some of the finances, you know just doing the usual, making sure all the bills were paid and everything made sense (we do everything online). I came across something that I was completely confused by, I thought someone had gotten ahold of one of our credit cards.

I immediately started trying to phone Richard and text him, but as usual (even though he’s home) his phone was on silent. I started panicking, trying to imagine how bad this credit card thief might be. Eventually Richard texted back.

Apparently, the day he was supposed to be at work, he went for a drive to a different city two hours away. Not only did he drive there, but he decided to buy tools while he was there; the only excuse I got from him was that he was manic. This to me, is not a good excuse; we couldn’t afford the tools he bought let alone the drive he took to buy them (when he could have bought them within ten minutes driven distance from our house).

Also, as I was dealing with all this credit card mess (and paying it before we got hit by the interest) I noticed he had just spent $20 at a dollar store when all he was supposed to do was buy a birthday card. His response was that he bought stuff for the house; I came home to find what he called ‘artwork’ all over our apartment. Personally, I think the place looked better without all this garbage (that’s what it looks like). So of course, I yelled at him (via text before I got home) and as expected he was on the couch sulking when I got home, because I had yelled at him. I told him that it’s ridiculous to be acting completely depressed because of being yelled at for doing something stupid (I mean really, we have less than $200 in our bank account and our big bills are coming out without his paycheck coming in because he’s been off work for a month).

We needed to go look at suits (for the Christmas party), so we went over to Value Village and managed to find a suit, shirt and tie for less than $50; I think that’s pretty good. We are still trying to figure out what to do with our dog that weekend, but something will pop up I’m sure.

This weekend we have decided that we are going to ‘vacation’ at my parents’ home while they aren’t there, even though my brother will be. We are going to go to the pool and then maybe bowling and have a cheap weekend that I’m sure we are going to enjoy.

Sorry I haven’t written anything in about a week, it’s been a hectic few days around here.

Richard has now been off work completely for two weeks, so not only are we stressed about normal every day things but also very stressed about the financial situation in the next month.

Richard finally has had some news regarding his physical illness and has an operation scheduled for Tuesday afternoon. It is a pretty basic operation and so far he hasn’t shown that he’s worried about it in any way. At least some things are starting to get worked out; I mean, if we know what’s wrong then it can be treated.

So far, everything is still relatively normal; we still have the Christmas season on our minds and we are trying to find any ways we can to just try to find some form of relaxation. My parents are leaving for the weekend and needed someone to look after their dog, we thought that would be the perfect opportunity for us, but unfortunately they have already invited my brother over to watch the dog. Maybe we’ll still be able to make use of the space, even though we will have to share it.

We also have been constantly searching for jobs for Richard and thinking about my company’s Christmas Party which we need new clothes for; luckily Value Village isn’t too far away.

I think that’s about it for now, I know it seems like things are ‘boring’/going well right now, but in a second it can change, especially when things are so unstable for us right at the moment.

No news is good news I guess you could say.

I’m glad the weekend starts in about 6 hours, I’m not sure what we will be doing however. Maybe we’ll stay inside and do those ‘winter activities’ like watching movies and just spending time with each other.

Last night went pretty smoothly actually, I got home to find that Richard had cleaned up the fridge quite nicely. He also said that he would start at one end of the apartment and work towards the other, hoping to get a good three quarters of the place clean; that would be amazing!

Christmas has been on both of our minds lately, I think mainly due to the financial and family situations this year. We have dealt with the ‘family’ gifts and now we are struggling to come up with gifts for ourselves. At one point we had decided that we just wouldn’t do Christmas this year, but now we are trying to squeeze in a few gifts for each other.

 Who else out there finds Christmas difficult in one way or another?

Last night was a bit different. Richard was home most of the day, again due to being physically sick.

He has randomly decided that he no longer wants to continue in his trade (which he would be a third year after school in February), and he has begun looking for jobs in a different trade. I’m not entirely sure what to think about this, he was so happy with his current career choice and in the last couple of months it’s completely different. Now he is on this kick that he wants this other trade under his belt, and I can’t see it being easy to find a position in this career if we ever try to move out of the city (which I guess means we are now going to be stuck living in a city I never wanted to live in to begin with).

He is home again today (and again, all day), so I made him pay bills, and then I sent him about 20 different job postings to apply to (see I’m trying to be supportive). I also told him to get a bunch of our stuff posted on Kijiji in hopes that we can get a bit of money and get rid of stuff that is just taking up space.

Because he has missed so much work, I have contemplated getting a second job, so that we can actually continue to pay our bills and still have spending money. Instead of getting a second job, I have decided that I am simply going to start offering music lessons again; I am hoping to have at least two or three students a week, if possible.

Other than the career change, things went fairly well yesterday and continue to be doing okay today. Like I thought, his down only lasted for a day and now (thank goodness) he is in a normal mood. It’s been a long time since he’s been anywhere near normal, so it’s nice (even though there are a few ‘up bursts’).

He has an appointment on Monday night with a specialist who will hopefully be able to get him feeling better physically. His psychiatrist appointment is on the 28th, so we will see how that goes; all I know is we desperately need a new psychiatrist because this one admits she doesn’t know what she’s doing when it comes to bipolar.

Hope all is well with everyone!

It’s been a few days since I’ve been able to make a post. This will be my first ‘real’ post now that everyone knows the back story.

So far this week (including the weekend) has been pretty tough. Richard went 120% manic and started getting a bit psychotic which always starts to bring him down. He’s now down.

Last night, we had a bit of a chat and I was actually able to get him to tell me a few things. He apparently had a knife hidden outside so that he could kill himself in the morning if he felt like it, he apparently almost did one morning; this knife he says is now back in the house. He also let me know he has thought about crashing his car a few times this week, we attempted to discuss all the reasons behind these thoughts.

He has come to the conclusion that the thoughts started after he stopped taking the prozac, which he didn’t even take for very long, this does happen to be a side affect of prozac (which I knew, and is why I didn’t want him taking it to begin with). We also discussed his fears (which weighs heavily on his mood often) about his job, our financial situation, our family situation and everything in between. I gave him details for each fear of how he got to worrying about it, and gave him every way in which it shouldn’t be a concern. He seemed to feel a bit better after the chat.

I think the most worrying time with bipolar, for both the person with the illness and the ‘care-givers’ is when they are in some form of mixed episode. When they are in the mixed state, they have all the horrible feelings and thoughts that come with depression and they also have the energy to do what they want with those thoughts and feelings. I can pretty much put money on the fact that when people with bipolar commit suicide, they are most likely in a mixed state of some form (whether that’s going between episodes/going out of an episode or an actual mixed episode).

Right now, he’s also struggling with a physical illness, which is never helpful to a depressed mind; he has missed alot of work with the two illness put together and we are beginning to struggle financially because of it.

It’s times like these that are the most difficult for me to take in and handle. You become more like a therapist and it takes alot to not say something that you probably shouldn’t. When your spouse has been in an episode for a long time, it really makes you treasure the actual ‘normal’ moments in the relationship.

When they are depressed, you’re a   therapist.

When they are manic, you’re a parent. 

When they are normal.. cherish every moment, because it might not last long.