Noise and aggro!

 Husband is doing my head in at the minute - well, he has been for the past couple of weeks.  I know there are people who think I should be grateful for the fact that I still have a husband who's alive - I know this because I've had comments on my blog (not published) and even a couple of emails saying so.  Rude!  But the realities of day to day life with someone whose health problems, especially the cognitive decline, are very challenging make things very difficult.  Nobody knows the inside details of what each of us have to deal with, so nobody else is qualified to voice their opinion.

This morning was one giant headache - at around 9 am I was just coming out of the bathroom and heard Betty barking out in the carport, along with voices and husband shouting, so I rushed out to see what was going on.  It was a guy from our Housing Association who was calling (without an appointment, he just turned up out of the blue) to discuss matters to do with our new kitchen.  Betty gets very excited when we have visitors, she barks with excitement and tries to jump up at them - husband is incapable of dealing with her properly and certainly isn't able to calm her down.  In fact, he makes it worse - he simply shouts at her continually, which just fuels her general excitement, he doesn't give her calm, clear instructions either so she doesn't understand what it is she's supposed to do.  And the H/A guy, who apparently has dogs of his own, was laughing and dancing around her, which also added to her excitement.  It was just a cacophony of noise, I felt like yelling "Will you all please just shut up!!". 

The way I deal with a visitor is to not open the door with Betty there for a start, I shut her in another room at first - she whines and barks, but soon calms down, and then she can be let in to greet the visitor, if appropriate - when it's anybody official then I don't, there's no need.

We finally got Betty shut out in the carport and the H/A guy in the kitchen - and then husband proceeded to talk the guy's ears off, laugh and joke and keep butting in when the guy was trying to tell us things.  This is why I continually ask husband to let me deal with important stuff - he just won't shut up for a start, he doesn't let them get a word in, he gets fixated on minor details and keeps on about things which aren't relevant or important.  He confuses them - the guy had come about 2 things, he finished talking about the first thing and then went on to the next, but husband hadn't cottoned on to that and was interrupting with comments about the first thing, confusing the guy totally.  I had to ask husband to let me sort it out.....whereupon he gets in a huff.  Anyway, to cut a long story short, it finally got sorted - but not before I was tearing my hair out.  Once again I've asked husband to leave me to deal with things, to which he agrees....until the next time, when he will have forgotten!  Aaarrrgh!

The upshot of all this is.....the fitters are coming to start installing the new kitchen on Tues 27 August, bank holiday week.  Husband said he would take me to the caravan the day before and leave me and the dog there, and he'd come back here to stay and oversee things.  Tempting as that sounds for me to have a few days in the caravan by myself with the dog (peace!!), there's no way I'll agree to that - he'll just get in their way, talk at them constantly, interfere and possibly change decisions - or try to anyway - (about placement of units etc) without asking me.  He tried to change something this morning, telling the H/A guy he wants the electrics fuse box thingy (which they're coming to change to a more updated one in a couple of weeks) moved to a different location.  Firstly, I don't suppose it's possible without extra works and I doubt they would agree to that, and secondly, where he wanted it put would mean shelves would have to be moved too!  And he just announced this without thinking it through or even asking me.  It's not happening, I vetoed that, it's fine where it is. 😒

So this afternoon, once I've done all my jobs, I shall just sit in my bedroom with the door closed....there are a few things I want to check out on the internet, and I want to do some drawing....it's very calming.