Just a day after my explaining to Nan my need for order and things in their place, Ron and I got into an argument about it. It even started to get a bit ugly before we both tried to find a way to compromise, which was do it my way or take your messy shit out of my Pink Palace!
Ron lost his desk when James moved, and when James moved out he destroyed it. It might have been able to be shored up and fixed but James pronounced it dead and broke it apart. Before Ron or I could say anything. So Ron had an old book case / stand he did not want that held stuff including jars of rocks and books. They were in his way of getting other things done. So I offered a shelf or two in my Pink Palace. That is when trouble started.
He brought them in and dumped stuff on the two shelves. Some laying flat, some with the spine out and readable others not, some standing upright but all different heights. I told him we couldn’t do that and because he is frustrated at not getting his stuff done that he feels pressured to do but his bad leg is stopping him from doing such as the door construction and wall construction which need to be done before his sister arrives on the 2nd, he decided to fight me on it. I explained to him that he knew every book on my shelves in my other office was arranged by size / height, he knew that. Well he bitched what if it is too heavy for the one shelf, I replied you will brace it! Finally, at an impasse, I told him to take them out or I would dump them in his recliner for him to do what the hell he wanted, or he would help me arrange them as my desk was between the distance of the shelf and it would take two people.
He gave it some thought and now the shelf is nicely arranged. I figured out one more pink bracket would hold the books at one end, and by tilting them slightly and using the jars of rocks over the other brackets at the other end it held them nicely. All problem solved. Ron apologized and said he was just so frustrated he couldn’t do what he knew he needed or wanted to get done and I promised I would help him with it, but it was important not to further damage his leg. All is good in our home again. For now. Hugs. Scottie 
Scottie's Playtime 
Hmmm. That shelf appears to sag just a bit. In any case, glad you got it settled. I hate fighting.
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Hi Nan. Actually, I do also. It really upsets me, and after I tend to end up going off and crying. I have seen far too much of anger fighting and violence between adults and kids as a kid. But something’s like the shelves upset me so much I can stand them either. But Ron understands that, and to tell the truth his actions are being driven by his own fears and hurting right now. He has never been sidelined this long, been forced to rest and not do things. He has fought it all the way. He hates it with every part of his being. Yet when I remind him this has been my life for decades he dismisses it, because it was OK for me to be disabled but not him. It really has hit his self esteem. And I keep trying to explain that if he gives it time and will just talk to his doctor, and my own pain doctors have already agreed to take him as a patient, but he won’t budge! He won’t get medical help, and he fusses and fumes in pain. Last weekend we had a huge argument over it, and he said he would talk to his doctor, on Monday he again told me he would. Yet he has not and now he says well really he can’t do so until next Monday as it is a holiday weekend. Get the point. He is simply refusing to deal with his current situation which landed him in the ER! And Nan, I am not sure what to do. Do I push harder and make things more tense? Do I back off and just let him get worse? I am screaming inside and out over this. He won’t take care of his own health now but pours over every aspect of mine trying to micromanage it. That was fine when he was healthy and working. But now I can take care of my own health, but he refuses to take care of his. And it is interfering with our life. Hugs. Scottie
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Obviously, I’m not part of your family so I can only answer as an outsider. Having said that, this is my answer/comment to your questions.
Bottom line: No one can control another person’s life. We can suggest. We can push. We can urge. We can threaten. But in the end, the individual is the ONLY one who can decide the course of his/her life.
Ron WILL come around when his personal/health circumstances force him to do so. Yes, it’s difficult (nearly impossible) to stand by, but no amount of “nagging” is going to force him into something he doesn’t feel the need to do.
And you should know this, Scottie, because you have written of times when Ron wanted you to do certain things related to YOUR health … but you refused … for any number of reasons that you justified in your own mind.
It’s pretty obvious you two are going through a tough time. And there’s little doubt it’s going to take its toll. But after 34 years, I have confidence that things WILL come out OK in the end.
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Remember when we were geeks and a clean desk was a sign of an unhealthy mind?
Find order in chaos …
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Hi Ten Bears. Sorry no, chaos upsets me too much. My solution is to order my part that I can control, and do my best to over look the chaos he creates. And I can mostly, I pick up the kitchen I put stuff back, I put caps on the toothpaste without comment, I ask him to put his clothing in the hamper before I do the wash … But damn it, when I find his socks on the kitchen counter or trip over his shoes, or anyone of a dozen such things … my internal alarms go haywire. Yes I have to learn to deal with it, but he is nearly 70 years old, he is not a frat boy, he needs to pick up after himself. Every damn thing he takes out from under the sink he leaves on the counter when he is done, everything he uses is left right where he was done with it. When I confront him he says well see I was doing this and then that happened and so I forgot, or I was trying to do this and did not go back to finish that. It is like living with an 8 year old with attention deficit disorder. We are good at working it out after 33 plus years … but it gets on my nerves sometimes.
As for the clean desk. In the 1980s, I was in the Stuttgart at a sat system as an E4. The guy who ran the super secret computer system then which was huge disks and lots of strange stuff I have never seen, he was a former Captain in the US Navy. And he had longer hair than I had ever seen on the military base, it was almost over his shoulders. I would sit and listen to him for a long time each shift, but rarely understood what he said. But he did say something that stuck with me.
See his hair was the most he could make himself do to rebel against the system. He had gone to the Navy academy and rose through the ranks. He told me every night before going out of his office he cleared his desk. He did not want his desk cleared, he did not see it as important. But it was so ingrained in him that if he did not do that, sometimes he would come back and then do it. He said that was from nearly 26 plus years in the service / school that is what he had to do, what he had been taught, and even now he still did it. He warned me against being indoctrinated or having something imprinted on me.
But to tell you the truth most of what he said back then when over my head. I was a young stupid kid who just like that he paid attention to me and I sat / stood there and let him talk. I wonder if he ever realized I was not really hearing anything he said, just being happy he was paying me attention as he was important in our command. If he had asked me for sexual favors, I would have given it to him, but he did not do that.
It was only years later that I barely started to understand what he was trying to tell me. Maybe I will never understand it all as he spent hours talking to an army e4 on a sat site talking things that went way over my head, yet every time I had a break I went to his office if he was there. Anyway, that is my bit of history. Hugs. Scottie
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I hate fighting, too. Sometimes air must be cleared, though, I know. I’m glad that happened, and that all is well!
I know it’s difficult for people to accept (when it even occurs to one!) that our bodies don’t heal the way they used to, and that sometimes complete healing won’t happen, and we then have to adjust. It feels like our bodies let us down somehow, or that we did something wrong. Really it’s just how it goes. Until that occurs to a person, though, they’re going to be very frustrated, seemingly with any- and everything, not only their own injury. I have a friend who’s been 50+ for almost 4 years, and still hasn’t figured out that if she’s ill enough she needs to be in bed, she can’t go to work the next day, no matter how she feels after a shower and coffee, but she still gets mad at herself when she can’t go back to the office after lunch, even though she had to drag herself in her door for lunch. What do ya do? I just offer to take down some soup.
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