Today’s entry was supposed to be about the love between DH and me. Yes, it is pathetic that I think with some forethought about what I intend to post at this sight during odd moments in real life. Sadly, when something big happens I think, “Oh, I gotta get online and tell everyone!”

Pathetic but true.

Anyway, I was going to get on here and talk about the abundance of laughter in our house. If I’m honest, there’s a bit of competitive edge to it, but it is all in good fun. He calls me BINCS (bull in a china shop) or ballerina. I refer to him as the Wookie because he is a hairy guy. We’re both smart a**es with a love for irony. We have good fun in a self-deprecatory way. Our Friday night “raves” with the kids entail lots of air guitars and bad dancing. I’m sure if someone saw us they’d think, “Oh, look, the WASPs are attempting to dance…Put in that ‘Play that funky music white boy’ song…”

Our sense of humor has saved our marriage during residency. It is a skill to find something to laugh about when life isn’t real funny.

Unfortunately, however, I find that I’m unable to gush too much because DH decided to visit surgery la-la land last night (a term I picked up from this website from another kindred spouse). Currently, he has a worthless junior intern who he refers to as Anna Cant-a (as in, I can’t do that because of my hours…). Additionally, some attendings in the program just screwed him by not allowing him to miss a night of call for an interview. This is coupled with a whole host of other stresses which exceeds the scope of this entry. I’ll cut to the chase and just say that he is in “high surgery resident mode”.

On his way home from work, we were talking about how his fellowship interviews were going over budget so far. Since I am in charge of finances, I explained our current financial situation including our savings, our impending tax refunds, etc. After hearing the amount in our savings account, he demanded multiple times, “Where did the moonlighting money go?”

Um, what? Are you flippin’ kidding me? My inner smart ass replied, “Well, there’s the chalet in St. Moritz, my weekly trips to the spa…” I laid into him. You don’t get the benefit of having it all, buddy: a wife that brings home the bacon, raises the kids, runs the entire household and every facet of our lives, and then get to criticize and second guess how I do it. You are more than welcome to go through the records, but since you have adamantly avoided doing so, you loose. If I say so myself, I’m doing a bang-up job, thank you very much. I told him to get on line and look at the credit card and bank accounts. Then I said that I don’t mind working my ass off, but he needs to be appreciative. He responded that he was working his ass off and that I just didn’t understand. At this point, this conversation degenerated into one of our top five all time favorite fights, “You just don’t appreciate what I do!”

Yes, we’ve been married long enough to know that we fight about the same few things over and over. Hell, I don’t even know what exactly what we fight about. We just get so passionate and bent out of shape. We really mean it. Damn it. Even if we don’t know what we’re even arguing about, we mean it. It is sort of like this website. When the occasional sparring does occur, we don’t even know how we got there but we know that we mean what we mean. Whatever that is.

I have heard that there are mythical marriages that go through residency wherein the parties only blame the system or the circumstances but not each other. Our marriage counselor suggested this to us. This tactic works when employed, but it is hard to do all the time. Sometimes, assessing blame feels so good, even if it is wrong and fleeting.

Anyway, I was hot. We didn’t talk the rest of the evening. When I tried to broach the subject later he was still huffy. Today called me en route to Alabama where he lamely explained that he is under so much pressure that sometimes he takes it out on those he loves. I politely and sweetly changed the subject. That doesn’t count as an apology in my book. Nonetheless, I’m sure that its as good as it gets for awhile until he has one of his epiphanies that he’s misplaced some frustration and he apologizes for real. These typically come when he’s on vacation away or away from the hospital. In the meantime, things will be back to normal almost like it never happened at all. You’d think we’ve done this a few thousand times or something.