@Ed83,
There is something very calming about reading your posts so thank you for taking the time to read mine, but I'm not nearly as together as I sound.
You sound so together I don't really understand why you are here.
Maybe in that way you're like me.
I think it's one of the reasons that nobody ever believes I can't cope.
They think I'm more competent than I am.
I'm not that clever - I had a car accident when I was 17, part way through studying for my A levels. I couldn't walk for about 6 months so I had to stay at home (I'd been in boarding school on a scholarship before that so I only had to come home weekends. I had a weekend job so I could pay for my stuff, the only thing I got after I turned 16 was a roof over my head, £5 a week for school dinners & a postal address.)
As soon as I could walk again, I tried going back to school but she started turning up at the boarding house accusing me of having an affair with a lesbian student & school became a nightmare so I ran away in a polite way from home - told everyone I didn't want to do A levels anymore & left to get a job - because I couldn't take another 2 years of being in the same county.
She found me just before I turned 18 - I'd rented a room for a month from the aunt who worked in the bank when I'd first moved upcountry & I'd stupidly opened my first bank account at the bank she worked at.
When I moved out of there into my first bedsit because I was no longer welcome at my aunts (guess who'd had a chat) I hadn't given her my address but of course I hadn't thought about the fact that it was on my account.
My family had a lot of influence with the local church where my aunt lived, & because I only had 2 changes of clothes when I first left home apart from school uniform - I didn't even have bedding so I used the curtains in my bedsit room as a bedcover - they thought I was shaming the family turning up looking so scruffy at church so they basically told the parish priest to talk me out of going to church or they'd stop making substantial donations.
I didn't even have a decent coat because the arm got destroyed when I'd been knocked over and it had a hole in the elbow big enough to stick a leg through.
That conversation with my parish priest was the last time I went to church.
Ten minutes before he told me that, he'd accepted a £100 cheque from me as a donation - he cashed it as well.
What kind of church does that to a 17 year old girl?
As you can see from this, I'm not clever at all.
I should have stayed & got my A levels, I should have known enough to know I could have asked to be put into care, I should have been a better judge of character instead of always thinking people are good really.
As for my husband.
He's out during the day at the moment - he works for me.
I only do some of the site work nowadays - until a few months ago I had got together a small crew who did most of it for me so I could focus on design etc..
I used to specialise in horological case restoration with an emphasis on specialist finishes, so things like refinishing antique japanned work, replacing & repainting scenes on cracked painted lights, creating new casts of brass or plaster fitments on things or colour matching damaged panels etc..
It's kind of arty I suppose. Also did repro cases indistinguishable from antique pieces, but people were passing them off successfully as originals so I stopped building repros.
That's the business I shut down.
It's all hand eye coordination and I've lost that last bit you have when you do things that gives you the finest motor control. I can no longer draw an optically acceptable circle for instance.
More recently, I was running a small specialist building company, designing & building secret rooms, putting in new fitments that are indistinguishable from period pieces (built in wardrobes ala the Edwardians, Roof finials etc...) and some more general work like designing & installing custom kitchens & bathrooms, custom sandblasted glass replacement sheets for things you can't get anymore or oddments of one off furniture.
The skilled stuff you can't get from most builders basically - the difficult work.
I pretty much set it up to employ him because he doesn't do well with being paye & having to do what other people tell him but he is a hard worker & he's skilled.
I used to get a lot of repeat business, somehting I'd never expected but once people saw the standard of the work they'd get you in to do everything over time.
Despite what the news says about people fixing up their homes instead of moving, the phone has suddenly died. No enquiries at all since before October.
Currently I've let all my other staff go except him & he's finishing up one last site - the customer had booked the job to start after Christmas some months ago, it's the only job I've had in for the last four months.
There's only about £2,000 left to come in from that job and that won't catch me up on my mortgage never mind paying for the MOT (due last week) or the montly dir debs.
He can't handle money, he just gets it all wrong & got himself into a lot of debt spending any credit anyone would give him so I had to take over everything a couple of years back.
After I made the mistake of buying a house on a joint mortgage at the time when they were handing out credit cards like candy, he drew down £18,000 on the house (idiot me didn't realise you could get it just on a phone call & I hadn't realised how bad he truly was with money then, I thought he'd got past that as he'd messed up financially before and we'd sorted it out) and racked up a pile of bills elsewhere having a lovely time eating out, visiting friends & family - his family are scattered all over the world
We nearly lost everything then.
Faced with the situation now, he'd just walk away from it - it's his reponse to problems.
eg. He has a site mobile, which is one of the contact nos in the Yellow pages & all the other places I advertise.
Because I owe one of my suppliers money & they are used to using that no because of site deliveries they phoned it.
First he accidentally 'broke' the phone, so I put that sim card in my personal mobile so I no longer have one.
Now he won't charge the phone, keeps 'forgetting' to bring it with him & turns it off now that I'm making sure he brings it fully charged as soon as he leaves the house.
He doesn't pick the messages up either.
Repeat customers always used to phone that mobile, they always want to speak to someone right this minute & he used to be good at sales.
He's a great believer in the fact that money doesn't exist & whilst I can accept that on an intellectual level that well may be true, in the real world if you don't pay the bills you end up on the street with no food.
Nowadays I just give him pocket money each week in cash as he has no banking facility & that's the only money he has to think about.
Every bill is in my name except the mortgage which is joint.
The OU will only accept you on the Masters program (he's studying Pure Maths) if you complete your degree within 6 years, he's currently averaging 97% across TMAs & end of year exams - it's his talent & his passion.
I have to admit, I think he'd pick Maths over me.
He's not the one paying for it exactly.
He works for me & I pay for it out of his wages, because if I gave the money to him he'd just spend it.
He doesn't do planning ahead, he'd just think the money would magically appear each December in time for him to be on the courses - which it would now his family will pay for it if I don't.
He does Maths & he drinks - the Maths to excess the alcohol I think to excess because he comes back from site, has a bath opens a beer & studies maths or watches tv whilst drinking until he goes to bed, but he doesn't. I can't keep spirits in the house because he just always feels like having some until there's none left
It replused me so much - I have bad associations with alcohol because of my mother - that I'm basically teetotal now.
Not that I don't drink, I just never feel like it from one end of a year to the next.
Under all of it however, he does actually mean well, he just can't do pressure.
All of this makes him sound much worse than he is by the way, he is a good man, just not the way I need him to be when the chips are down.
I also appear to have a fatal attraction to people with a strong Maths ability which is weird because I'm more of an Art & literature person.
I didn't realise it for the longest time, but every boy/man I ever dated except 2 has at least a BA or BSc in Maths (you can do a BA if it's pure maths) even though they didn't necessarily at the time & now one of the two exceptions is well on his way to getting his degree, how weird is that?
The other one is dead.
I never told my husband that now that I think of it.
His family think I work for him (he's a general builder by trade) & that me running the business is a clever 'scam' by him because basically his pride wouldn't allow him to let them know how dumb he is with finances. He doesn't like paperwork so he won't do any.
I never really cared what they thought if his pride needed to be bolstered like that, so I let him say what he wanted - now they think I've been living off him.
It's much too late & it would be to complicated to bother trying to set them straight if I cared to.
I am just so very terribly tired of picking myself up, sorting myself out and starting again because as far as I can see I'll just have to keep doing it forever and I really don't want to anymore.
I think I must be jinxed or something because if something stupidly bad is going to happen to someone, I'm the lightning rod that will draw the bad luck.
Fate can only smack you in the face so many times before it manages to break your teeth.
I asked him if he would kill me the other night because I wanted everything to just be over.
He wouldn't of course, he just went to bed after telling me if I didn't sort myself out he'd leave.
I really wish he had.
I've got to meet the mortgage guy on Tuesday & I have nothing to say to him.
I can anticipate no income at all in the future to pay for anything, I live in an area which has high unemployment at a time when businesses are folding practically daily and there aren't any jobs to be had.
I wanted to die before things got like this, I was struggling to find reasons to be alive when I had an income, an ISA and no overdue bills.
I used to use stupid things like that he needed me to keep things ticking over or that I had to get the attic sorted out.
Now I'm all tapped out on reasons.
@MdmFontaine
I did get your pm, I was going to reply but his alarm went off & he'd go nuts if he knew I was on this site.
I wasn't trying to be rude not answering.
It's taken me so long to type this I can hear him waking up now so I'm posting this quick so I can delete my internet history & turn the computer off before he comes downstairs.
There is something very calming about reading your posts so thank you for taking the time to read mine, but I'm not nearly as together as I sound.
You sound so together I don't really understand why you are here.
Maybe in that way you're like me.
I think it's one of the reasons that nobody ever believes I can't cope.
They think I'm more competent than I am.
I'm not that clever - I had a car accident when I was 17, part way through studying for my A levels. I couldn't walk for about 6 months so I had to stay at home (I'd been in boarding school on a scholarship before that so I only had to come home weekends. I had a weekend job so I could pay for my stuff, the only thing I got after I turned 16 was a roof over my head, £5 a week for school dinners & a postal address.)
As soon as I could walk again, I tried going back to school but she started turning up at the boarding house accusing me of having an affair with a lesbian student & school became a nightmare so I ran away in a polite way from home - told everyone I didn't want to do A levels anymore & left to get a job - because I couldn't take another 2 years of being in the same county.
She found me just before I turned 18 - I'd rented a room for a month from the aunt who worked in the bank when I'd first moved upcountry & I'd stupidly opened my first bank account at the bank she worked at.
When I moved out of there into my first bedsit because I was no longer welcome at my aunts (guess who'd had a chat) I hadn't given her my address but of course I hadn't thought about the fact that it was on my account.
My family had a lot of influence with the local church where my aunt lived, & because I only had 2 changes of clothes when I first left home apart from school uniform - I didn't even have bedding so I used the curtains in my bedsit room as a bedcover - they thought I was shaming the family turning up looking so scruffy at church so they basically told the parish priest to talk me out of going to church or they'd stop making substantial donations.
I didn't even have a decent coat because the arm got destroyed when I'd been knocked over and it had a hole in the elbow big enough to stick a leg through.
That conversation with my parish priest was the last time I went to church.
Ten minutes before he told me that, he'd accepted a £100 cheque from me as a donation - he cashed it as well.
What kind of church does that to a 17 year old girl?
As you can see from this, I'm not clever at all.
I should have stayed & got my A levels, I should have known enough to know I could have asked to be put into care, I should have been a better judge of character instead of always thinking people are good really.
As for my husband.
He's out during the day at the moment - he works for me.
I only do some of the site work nowadays - until a few months ago I had got together a small crew who did most of it for me so I could focus on design etc..
I used to specialise in horological case restoration with an emphasis on specialist finishes, so things like refinishing antique japanned work, replacing & repainting scenes on cracked painted lights, creating new casts of brass or plaster fitments on things or colour matching damaged panels etc..
It's kind of arty I suppose. Also did repro cases indistinguishable from antique pieces, but people were passing them off successfully as originals so I stopped building repros.
That's the business I shut down.
It's all hand eye coordination and I've lost that last bit you have when you do things that gives you the finest motor control. I can no longer draw an optically acceptable circle for instance.
More recently, I was running a small specialist building company, designing & building secret rooms, putting in new fitments that are indistinguishable from period pieces (built in wardrobes ala the Edwardians, Roof finials etc...) and some more general work like designing & installing custom kitchens & bathrooms, custom sandblasted glass replacement sheets for things you can't get anymore or oddments of one off furniture.
The skilled stuff you can't get from most builders basically - the difficult work.
I pretty much set it up to employ him because he doesn't do well with being paye & having to do what other people tell him but he is a hard worker & he's skilled.
I used to get a lot of repeat business, somehting I'd never expected but once people saw the standard of the work they'd get you in to do everything over time.
Despite what the news says about people fixing up their homes instead of moving, the phone has suddenly died. No enquiries at all since before October.
Currently I've let all my other staff go except him & he's finishing up one last site - the customer had booked the job to start after Christmas some months ago, it's the only job I've had in for the last four months.
There's only about £2,000 left to come in from that job and that won't catch me up on my mortgage never mind paying for the MOT (due last week) or the montly dir debs.
He can't handle money, he just gets it all wrong & got himself into a lot of debt spending any credit anyone would give him so I had to take over everything a couple of years back.
After I made the mistake of buying a house on a joint mortgage at the time when they were handing out credit cards like candy, he drew down £18,000 on the house (idiot me didn't realise you could get it just on a phone call & I hadn't realised how bad he truly was with money then, I thought he'd got past that as he'd messed up financially before and we'd sorted it out) and racked up a pile of bills elsewhere having a lovely time eating out, visiting friends & family - his family are scattered all over the world
We nearly lost everything then.
Faced with the situation now, he'd just walk away from it - it's his reponse to problems.
eg. He has a site mobile, which is one of the contact nos in the Yellow pages & all the other places I advertise.
Because I owe one of my suppliers money & they are used to using that no because of site deliveries they phoned it.
First he accidentally 'broke' the phone, so I put that sim card in my personal mobile so I no longer have one.
Now he won't charge the phone, keeps 'forgetting' to bring it with him & turns it off now that I'm making sure he brings it fully charged as soon as he leaves the house.
He doesn't pick the messages up either.
Repeat customers always used to phone that mobile, they always want to speak to someone right this minute & he used to be good at sales.
He's a great believer in the fact that money doesn't exist & whilst I can accept that on an intellectual level that well may be true, in the real world if you don't pay the bills you end up on the street with no food.
Nowadays I just give him pocket money each week in cash as he has no banking facility & that's the only money he has to think about.
Every bill is in my name except the mortgage which is joint.
The OU will only accept you on the Masters program (he's studying Pure Maths) if you complete your degree within 6 years, he's currently averaging 97% across TMAs & end of year exams - it's his talent & his passion.
I have to admit, I think he'd pick Maths over me.
He's not the one paying for it exactly.
He works for me & I pay for it out of his wages, because if I gave the money to him he'd just spend it.
He doesn't do planning ahead, he'd just think the money would magically appear each December in time for him to be on the courses - which it would now his family will pay for it if I don't.
He does Maths & he drinks - the Maths to excess the alcohol I think to excess because he comes back from site, has a bath opens a beer & studies maths or watches tv whilst drinking until he goes to bed, but he doesn't. I can't keep spirits in the house because he just always feels like having some until there's none left
It replused me so much - I have bad associations with alcohol because of my mother - that I'm basically teetotal now.
Not that I don't drink, I just never feel like it from one end of a year to the next.
Under all of it however, he does actually mean well, he just can't do pressure.
All of this makes him sound much worse than he is by the way, he is a good man, just not the way I need him to be when the chips are down.
I also appear to have a fatal attraction to people with a strong Maths ability which is weird because I'm more of an Art & literature person.
I didn't realise it for the longest time, but every boy/man I ever dated except 2 has at least a BA or BSc in Maths (you can do a BA if it's pure maths) even though they didn't necessarily at the time & now one of the two exceptions is well on his way to getting his degree, how weird is that?
The other one is dead.
I never told my husband that now that I think of it.
His family think I work for him (he's a general builder by trade) & that me running the business is a clever 'scam' by him because basically his pride wouldn't allow him to let them know how dumb he is with finances. He doesn't like paperwork so he won't do any.
I never really cared what they thought if his pride needed to be bolstered like that, so I let him say what he wanted - now they think I've been living off him.
It's much too late & it would be to complicated to bother trying to set them straight if I cared to.
I am just so very terribly tired of picking myself up, sorting myself out and starting again because as far as I can see I'll just have to keep doing it forever and I really don't want to anymore.
I think I must be jinxed or something because if something stupidly bad is going to happen to someone, I'm the lightning rod that will draw the bad luck.
Fate can only smack you in the face so many times before it manages to break your teeth.
I asked him if he would kill me the other night because I wanted everything to just be over.
He wouldn't of course, he just went to bed after telling me if I didn't sort myself out he'd leave.
I really wish he had.
I've got to meet the mortgage guy on Tuesday & I have nothing to say to him.
I can anticipate no income at all in the future to pay for anything, I live in an area which has high unemployment at a time when businesses are folding practically daily and there aren't any jobs to be had.
I wanted to die before things got like this, I was struggling to find reasons to be alive when I had an income, an ISA and no overdue bills.
I used to use stupid things like that he needed me to keep things ticking over or that I had to get the attic sorted out.
Now I'm all tapped out on reasons.
@MdmFontaine
I did get your pm, I was going to reply but his alarm went off & he'd go nuts if he knew I was on this site.
I wasn't trying to be rude not answering.
It's taken me so long to type this I can hear him waking up now so I'm posting this quick so I can delete my internet history & turn the computer off before he comes downstairs.