Memories Cycle 2 - WINNER ANNOUNCED
http://i.imgur.com/ebrUXkK.png After being asked and feeling a bit nostalgic, I've decided to bring back a second cycle of this fabulously fun couples modeling competition! This competition is a...
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Mike stormed inside and slammed the door.
My stomach knotted up and I let out a deep sigh. “You’ve obviously had a great day at work again!” I said.
“They are so slack at that place,” he yelled. “Today I lost count of the amount of phone calls from the same companies saying we still haven’t paid for the goods we ordered! It's been months now and I’m expected to pick up the pieces...fix everything! I’m not even the owner, I’m just the office manager. They’re useless, they really are.”
“Why don’t you say something or leave,” I replied. “Can’t you look for something else? You are a qualified accountant.”
“Well I can’t exactly leave, can I?” Mike retorted. “You’re studying and the bills don’t stop, you know.”
“So what are you saying, I should leave my course and go back to work? It's these studies that will secure our future, but you can't see the sun for the clouds. You come home, upsetting this whole place and everyone's on edge for the rest of the evening. If you don’t go and walk or run it off you might come home to an empty place one night, because I can’t live like this!”
Being a constant thorn in our sides, this was the basis of many arguments between us, both before and after we had children. Everyday Mike would come home from a job he'd been in for 28 years that he absolutely hated. He studied straight from school to be a pharmacist, but soon dropped out and and his father had contacts and got him this job in a family business. Trouble is, Mike has never been a risk-taker so he took the job, and me, in my younger years had a history for not finishing things, so he doubted that I would get through uni. I knew it was right for me at the time, but he didn't, not at first, yet he could walk into any job once he qualified. The whole household became tense the minute he walked through the door making it uncomfortable for everyone.
I remember a huge argument we had once (before children) and I told him to find a way to deal with his frustrations or not to bother coming home. After that he did begin jogging, which helped. I also made a decision to include in the budget a small amount that allowed us to go away every few weeks to get out of the everyday environment of home and work. This continued after we had children with the difference being, that they came with us.
Attending university for four of those years and having children during some of that time also didn't help our situation. This increased the time we needed to live on one wage and added to the pressure for Mike to stay in the same job at that stage. It probably didn't help that I refused to go to work when bringing up the children. Coming from a home that both parents worked when my sisters and I were quite young, we missed out on some of that bonding, which is so imperative in those early years. I'd made up my mind not to work until our children were at least at an age they could attend kindergarten.
To begin with he would argue about going when we could be doing the things around home, but I insisted that they could wait for a day. Since I commuted between home and uni during the week, I could do some of the things he would normally do on weekends such as gardening and shopping. Housework we generally shared, but his ultra-efficiency often set things between us on a knive-edge also.
So our happy place became remote camp sites all over the countryside of Australia with its unique wild animals that often allowed us to feed them such as possums and kangaroos, sometimes an emu or two. Often they would follow us to our camping ground knowing we had food there. We would always go where few people ventured and this is when we did most of our talking. Even then Mike would start talking about working both at home and in his job, so we made a pact.
“…so we’re agreed then that discussion of home and work is banned while we are here?” I said, more as a question than a statement.
“Okay…okay, agreed.”
We went on hikes, rode our bikes, and occasionally we’d go out in a small dinghy that Mike had begun building when we still dated and fished. After a few hours he’d begin to relax. By the evening we’d watch the sunset, had a few bubbly’s, a good meal, often a barbeque, and the tranquil atmosphere did us both good.
“So glad you arranged this, Hun.” Mike lay back and relaxed.
“I knew it would help, we both needed this break.”
Those times helped us both get back in touch with each other and forget about the pressures of life, family and work even if just for a while. However, things did begin to look up for Mike a few years later.
