Making the Hot Dogs

I didn't cry today until driving home. Imagine that...compared to the last few days it's a miracle.



Tomorrow I have to get up at 6:00am (on a Saturday and I am so not a morning person!), get ready and take my daughter to volunteer at a dog show. She does it all day so after I drop her off I'm going in to work to make some extra money. 42 hours this week so far. Tomorrow I'll make it 50 and it will really help with the bills.



My husband has been working like a dog and has asked to work seven days next week. Whew...and he's on split shifts.



Have we fought today? Yes, once. I've seen him for about an hour and a half. At least we didn't fight for an hour and a half. I'm grateful for that. Tonight he leaves at 10:30pm to go to work all night. I feel really bad for him.

Do you know why I feel bad for him? This is why:

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  He's super intelligent, has a Master's Degree in Fine Art from Morocco (it translates to a Bachelor's in Fine Art with another year of college added on in America).


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  He speaks five languages fluently.


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  He is highly talented and creative.


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  His art is amazing.


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  His art has been exhibited in Morocco, France, Amsterdam, and Rome, Italy.


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  He's been interviewed in magazines, newspapers, radio, and TV in Morocco and France.


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  He was named "Morocco's Young Premiere Fine Artist".


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  He was selected and represented his country in the Biennale in Rome (there is currently a Biennale in Venice, Italy that he would love to be in. He knows artists from Morocco that are in it this year and he is sickened. He said, "To think they are in the Biennale and I am getting ready to go to work at a hotel to work all night. I don't want to know about it because it makes me sick. I should have never moved to America. Someone else should be here, not me."


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  He's just very talented and I feel he is resentful and probably wishes he never married me and became stuck here. I feel like I am the reason why he is so unhappy. Maybe when he visits Morocco next month he won't come back.

Other than his fine art, he has done some crafty-type things. We call them "making the hot dogs", which means he made something to sell in order to try and make money. Below is a "hot dog" he made. It's a sink called "Divas Don't Wash Dishes" and it wasn't supposed to be a hot dog in the beginning. He has an art studio and needed a sink. He went to Home Depot to purchase a sink and thought they were too expensive. He decided to make his own. He had an antique porcelain sink in the attic and decided to build something to hold it. Of course he couldn't make just any sink. He made this one:

After making it everyone told him that he needed to put it for sale. He exhibited it in several places and no one purchased it. It is now sitting in our living room and we use it to store our toilet paper in the bottom cabinet.

You may ask why we didn't install it in his studio. We had a plumber come in to do it last year, however where he was going to put it wouldn't work with how the plumbing of the house is configured and wouldn't pass state regulation codes.

(On a side note, you may notice the stain in the sink. I always wanted him to remove it, but he said that it made it more special and gave it more character.)

Truly, this sink is NOTHING compared to other hot dogs he has made or his fine art. He amazes and astounds me all the time with his creativity and skill.

It is a waste that he is here and I wouldn't blame him if he left.

Background Information

I never see my husband anymore. He just started a job where he works second and third shifts during the week. Sometimes I spend nights on my own while he is on the job and sometimes when I do see him at home he is either sleeping or doing other things he needs to do. I feel like a single mom again and it has been very difficult for me.

Prior to his job, he has not worked a "regular job" for the past five years. He is an artist and we agreed that he would start a business doing what he loved. He is highly talented and it just made sense. I worked a "regular job" and was the breadwinner for the family while he worked on his business. He worked really, REALLY hard for five years and I feel very badly that he was not able to make it a success. He deserves so much more than he received during this time and it just makes me sad.

Last year my depression got worse and worse. It just wouldn't go away and then it became debilitating. I couldn't function anymore and I ended up in an outpatient program at a hospital. Being in this hospital helped me a lot and I feel saved my life due to the therapy and treatments I received while there. They taught a lot of skills to help me deal with depression and I am grateful.

The unfortunate side of this story is that I was in the hospital for six weeks and during that time I had to take FMLA from work. FMLA is a federal law that allows you to take a specific amount of time off from work if you or a family member is sick and is not able to work. Basically, it protects your job. When I went into the hospital, I thought everything would be fine because I always have paid into my short-term disability and AD&D insurance at work. Well, I wasn't fine. I saw an Oprah show a while back where she said that most Americans are a paycheck or two away from bankruptcy. She hit the nail on the head because being in the hospital cost me a lot financially. My short-term disability insurance didn't kick in until the 21st BUSINESS DAY of being in the hospital and it WAS NOT RETROACTIVE!

Isn't that crazy?

Here I am the breadwinner and I missed so much time from work prior to being in the hospital because I was sick in bed and couldn't get up and then six more weeks while in the hospital trying to get the will to live again. That was last summer and I am still reeling financially from the income loss. Hence my husband working. Hence me never seeing him. Hence his sleepless nights and my sadness.

Now that he isn't home a lot of things that he was able to do previously he can't do now and I feel a lot of responsibility on me to get things done. I hope that this is just a transition stage for us both and it gets better.

Now that I have given some background, let me get to the point of this posting.

The point is that I never see my husband anymore and today when I got home from work and finally saw him before he vamoosed to work, he was in a horrible mood and said, "I hate my life" while trying to change light bulbs. I said to him, "Well, I hope that really you just hate your schedule and not your life". He said, "I don't really know and I don't want to talk about it".

Great...fabulous.

Did I mention he is from Morocco? He hasn't been home in seven years and is catching a flight home on Halloween. He'll be gone for a month. I wonder if he'll come back. I feel that he must ask himself the same question.

I hope that while he is gone he will be able to slow down for a while and just contemplate his life. I hope that during this contemplation he will realize how hard I have tried to make a good life with him. I hope that he will realize his life isn't so bad. I hope that he will find compassion in his heart for me because he has already said several times, "I feel no compassion for you and your depression...I don't understand it and I can't support you during it."

Once again...great...fabulous.

I hope that he appreciates me more and I hope that he will just calm down a bit.

It will be good for the both of us if he does.