Heading on in to delivery. I wound up crashing about sixty miles out. You'd think I'd be getting more sleep than I have been, given that I've been running shorter trips this week. But it just hasn't worked out that way. I was text messaging with Mara until 01:00. I mentioned that I was thinking of hiring a housekeeper to come in once a week to help keep the house in shape. This led to an argument. Mara thought I was just trying to make a point. But I'm serious. Mama is unable to keep up with the house. Mara is unwilling. I'm not home enough. So what else do we do?

The argument covered a lot of ground. Mara still blames me for the bankruptcy and doesn't see that while the four weeks I was out of work tipped the scales, we were already in a world of hurt at the time. We wouldn't have been if she had been willing to get back on the truck until we could recover financially from the mess that her being out of work for eight weeks put us in.

She spins all this to mean that I resent her having her hand surgery. I do not. I was all for it. I knew her time off while she was healing would be a strain. What I resent is that as much as she likes to talk about doing what needs to be done (meaning me driving, usually), when she had healed enough to get back on the truck at least long enough to dig our way out of the hole we were in, she adamantly refused, bills be damned.

The end result was someone telling me to hold the line while they retreated, and then calling me a coward when I had to fall back myself. I've let Mara have the upper hand in this relationship for far too long. She seized it when she had her almost-affair with Bobby and I didn't bounce her out on her ass. When she suffered no repercussions from that, I believe she stopped respecting me (if she ever did). She started acting like there was a new sheriff in town. I was so hurt and confused at the time that I let her.

Well, she hasn't done much with the position. Christ. Mara thinks like a kid. She thought she could file bankruptcy without me finding out about it? And she only told me about it when she saw “that wasn't going to be feasible”?

We need a new direction. We'll start by me taking over the bills. I can't trust Mara anymore. She lies to me too much. I'll ask her about a certain bill and she'll tell me it's been paid when it hasn't. I wouldn't care so much if things were being paid. But Mara forgets stuff. Recently our cable and cellphones were turned off for non-payment while we had $3,000 in the bank.

Bills aren't the only thing I need to take care of. I need to stop feeling sorry for myself for having to be on the and doing nothing on the weekends but lick my wounds. There are things that need to be done, and I am the only one willing and capable to attend to them. I don't mean home repairs and improvement. I mean day to day things. The van has needed an oil change for ages. Mara could take it on any given Saturday and have that done. But she won't. Someone has to.

So I think it's about time I stopped acting like a whipped dog and stepped up. Not for anyone or for the household, but for me. I need this.