I am so tired of getting several paragraphs into an entry, and having the whole thing disappear....I'm going to create my journal in Word, then copy/paste:

Busy day but an uncritical one (meaning no crises). Did laundry, watered plants, visited Norm at the VA, did various errands at the hardware store and pharmacy, and got a hair cut. Hubby and I just came to a decision that I will accept the situation, I will help where I can, and he will decide what he wants to do and how he wants it done (or not) and there's no sense in our arguing about it any more.

The Sprinkler Doctor asked what shape the system is in. I told him that my husband, a mental genius who is all thumbs, had taken the controller off the wall and it now lay in several pieces on the picnic table bench. I have no idea what shape the pipes and valves are in, because I can't turn the system on. He said, no problem, he would hotwire it and check it out (he didn't say 'hot wire' but I think that's what he meant).

Gosh, it's nice to have people work on stuff when they are experts, after 20 years of Mr. All Thumbs making jury-rigged repairs (cut twice, then measure). For example, our house numbers are attached to the garage by big paper clips. The toilet paper holder in the bathroom was installed at a slant. The tarps protecting the outside storage area are held up with flimsy bathroom curtain hangers. He installed the washing machine by leveling it with a piece of cardboard, folded, instead of using the screw-out leveling feet.

It is easier, now, that he has lost so much manual dexterity; I can have some work done by professionals. He still wants to do it himself and forbids me to call a carpenter, or a plumber, or whatever. I was finally forced to tell him that #1 it's my house; and #2 I'm earning the money. I hate to have to do that, but he's into the old-fashioned pater familias role, and would forbid me to do anything independent if I didn't stand up for myself (including think for myself--as if he could stop me).

It's been a good lesson for me in setting boundaries and learning to be assertive, after I got over the shock of learning that someone I cared for demanded control and primacy. It is foreign to the way I want to relate to friends and lovers and I just didn't get it at first, what was going on.

He tells me that it's my problem; that I just don't know how to be a team player, because I don't serve and obey.

I wonder if this was the lesson I was set to learn in this lifetime, that all of this pushing for control and jostling for position is ephemeral, a result of ego attachment to outcomes. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna (who is agonizing over what to do, being in a morally difficult spot), to do the task that he finds before him in the best way he knows how, and let the outcomes be whatever they will be.

So let me try once more to be compassionate and not ego attached, doing the best I can, wherever I find myself. And the outcomes will be as they will be. Then I deal with those, and their outcomes.

Sounds so easy, doesn't it?