Notes

1 Aug 2020

After biking 16 km the evening before, my knees were hurting the next morning. I was feeling extremely low, as it was already August 1st and during the whole summer, there has been no activity we have done together without the dog. Everything has to be for the dog: walking in the dunes, where it is only sand and no fresh sea air because the beach is “too crowded and horrible” and when we went there once our dog was vomiting in the car and peed at home on the entrance rug, so “you see how horrible the beach trip is”, while the beach was probably one of the very few places I felt happy to go to with the dog.

When I finally got downstairs around noon, he was cooking breakfast. 3 sausages. For himself only. Blaming me that I am lazy and fat (75 kg now, the maximum weight gain in the recent year, as “how can u leave the dog for more than 3 hours” and “of course you can do bodyweight exercises without any tools, I even bought the tiles for the attic room for you to exercise and be 55 kg like you were on your photos when you were 20 years old, the year I’ve been feeling myself the most miserable, even compared to my work in Dubai, when I started my day at 10 am and finished after midnight, mostly on calls and with occasional visits to a factory in 50C heat with no AC, at least I was getting a fixed salary and I had one weekend day, as Sunday was a working day in Dubai, and my project was with the States, where Friday is a working day and the time zone is very different), my pain from biking is caused by me being unfit. With my expressed concern why would he just not throw extra sausages for me, he started screaming that I am grumpy and aggressive (I washed my hands while the plate he prepared for his sausages was near the sink, some water sprayed into his food). He roughly grabbed the strap of my bra and my hair, of course, I screamed it was painful, which it was, his view on this was that I am trying to make a performance for the neighbors, of course grabbing my ponytail was not at all painful, why would I scream. I yet another time expressed how miserable I feel, being locked here, when the last non-home-cooked meal was on March 8th, since that evening there was quarantined from his work. And even though in the Netherlands roughly everything is open, not only does he not want to go with me even to eat out, he is starting a hysteria even when I am saying I am going for a walk with our neighbor. He claims “of course you can go wherever you want, you have a card (visa, which has an fx rate fee, which he complains about, which is not accepted in certain places here, where they use only maestro cards, which he occasionally blocks, a year ago he left me for an extended weekend, leaving me 50€ cash (with an expectation i will prepare him food when he comes back from his trip to Brno) and a blocked card, I told him I am meeting a friend in a cafe, but he blocked the card still, leaving me in an extremely frustrating situation when I could not pay for my coffee and cinnamon bun while seeing a friend who visited Amsterdam).

After a huge argument, he stormed out in his home slippers, he was not home for about 2 hours, was not answering the phone calls, he blocked me on the phone and in WhatsApp, asked a friend to call him, she claimed he did not answer.

2 Aug 2020

Again talking about the divorce. He wants to make a postnuptial where he will state a final non-changeable sum for me to get when we divorce.

In the morning he said: “Why are you so grumpy, I even let you hug me in the morning!”

I came downstairs in the morning, offering to make breakfast, he came downstairs with a Rittersport, saying he wanted to eat it on the walk with our dog.

I am unable to function when someone shows this much of unappreciation.

He came from a walk with our dog, I am typing this text. Asked where is the breakfast, why again there is no breakfast, opened the chocolate in front of me, grumped about the fact that “he is not allowed to make breakfast for himself” and went upstairs to do stuff on his computer.

During the day we went to nature with the dog. He usually likes going to the dunes, landlocked place without water, not too many people, as it is hot, a lot of sand, some trees. Difficult for me to walk with damaged ankle cartilage and damaged meniscuses in both knees. He says that I just always complain about something when I feel pain, the dog gets happy run there, so I should shut up with my complains that the dunes are boring, difficult to walk, lots of sand afterward in the shoes and 45-min drive from home, half of the time on the roundabouts. When I say that even with the miserable experience afterward, the beach was great, as the power of the sea is inspiring, he said this is bullshit, the beach is crowded and it is a pain to keep the dog on a leash to not let him run to others.

Evening food: made his favorite pasta with salmon, he was driving his simulator car upstairs, called him saying “[how he names himself in the game], your next stop is food!”, he angrily screamed “fuuuuuccckk”, saying that I have interrupted him while he was making a difficult turn. Eventually, came downstairs, started eating. The pasta has lemon in it, I usually squeeze lemon on the top of the pasta, he wants it to be squeezed into a cup and then poured out. We do not have a lemon squeezer and he thinks it is a “useless thing anyway”. So, he got anxious by finding a lemon stone in his pasta. Started screaming why I am unable to make the pasta without lemon stones and he has to taste it. He went to grab another plate and one by one took tagliatelle pasta and salmon pieces, claiming he found “7 stones plus one that he has on a napkin”. Came back, grumping why does he have to suffer so much and have the disgusting taste of the lemon stones, I tried to ignore his grumpiness, joking that’s the way to get tannins taste. His reaction was to go upstairs to continue playing his racing simulator.

Went upstairs trying to bring him back. He came downstairs, finished his first bowl of pasta and got another one, with the same picking pasta one-by-one, found only one lemon stone, after finishing the food gave me the empty bowl, saying the lemon stone on the leftover plate is for the portion for me to enjoy the food.

3 Aug 2020

Both of us slept pretty badly tonight. During the night he woke up and closed the door to another room where we have a sink, that stinks badly, I keep telling we need to buy a de-clogger or some kind of bleach to clean the sink, while he claims de-cloggers are horrible for pipes, they destroy pipes, so better do nothing (we already had this situation in the kitchen, when the landlord called a plumber who cleaned the pipes with a wire, collecting a lot of hair, probably dog hair, as even our dishwasher filter has dog hair in it, but no, we still cannot use de-clogger on the pipes). After closing the door in the room with the stinky sink, he went to his room, switched off his computer, and was blindly staring at the window. Came to him and talked to him to come back to bed.

The morning started with him refolding his underwear on the floor. He did it on the dusty floor when there are my vanity cabinet and a chair.

For breakfast he refused eggs or toasted, instead asked for apples and pears, cut in pieces. And even in the cut in pieces apples and pears, he was able to spit out “some mess”.

The whole morning he was whining how much he wants to live in a house in a middle on nowhere in the Czech Republic, with a huge garden space, so that 5 dogs can run around, he could have apricot trees and some berry bushes and sustain the production of food with the garden. This should also be near a river and on a hill, to get good space for dogs. Also, should have no neighbors around, as people around are horrible, they create noise and smells and there is no way to relax with people around. He is the only person I know who enjoys this surreal 2020 with the quarantines around the world and says he’d love to continue this as long as possible.

Yesterday he claimed he does not want to go restaurants anymore, they are so horrible even without COVID (before his mom died, he used to love eating out, finding the fanciest places, refusing kebabs in Istanbul, going instead to an overpriced, but a fancy looking cafe in a 5* hotel), home-cooked simple food is so much better. Yet, today for lunch he wanted me to make a potato gratin, which is not only unhealthy, but also roughly 3 hours of preparation, half of that being actual work of slicing potato on a grater, where I tend to cut my hands or cut them with a knife, but in this case, he complains the pieces are too thick. Tomorrow he wants a lasagna, which also can hardly go under the “simple food” option.

I did the gratin for lunch. My neighbor loved my gratin so I was preparing a small box for her. About a ¼ of the portion, he just ate. He saw it and started whining I am giving our dinner away (about ⅙ of the gratin was left, enough for a refill of lunch, but surely not enough for dinner, especially when he wants everything to be warmed up on a pan or in the oven which takes more than 10 min to warm up to 200C, microwave is “very bad for health makes disgusting food”). Left the plate he had and went upstairs. Later brought him the plate upstairs, he finished food and brought the place downstairs.

In the evening I wanted to take a bike ride, eventually did 22.2 km. When I was almost home, on a roundabout close to us, some woman on a bike hit me from a side trying to overtake me. She hit my hand on the grip and that led to being imbalanced and close to falling, but i was slow enough to be able to handle that. I am trying to be slow on roundabouts, as my bike was hit by a car in October (and 4 days later a pedestrian walked into me and those 2 injuries in one week resulted in my damaged ankle cartilage on my right leg and even more damaged meniscus on both knees). It took me more than a month to recover from that mentally (in addition to pain which I still feel occasionally, but already got used to), I could not take bike even for a short grocery trip. He was on a business trip for 3 weeks. My bike stories happened in the first week and those 2 days we were not calling each other. So, I decided to tell this to him when he comes home. When he got home and I told him I have hard time walking as I fell from a bike twice, once being hit by a car at night on the unexpected road works part, he said that this is all because I am clumsy and unfit. I am now 30 and I learned riding a bike on December 27th, 2013, while visiting Google office in the Valley. Since that time I took bike trips maybe a couple of hours per each year and constant biking only happened since May 2019, when we moved to Amsterdam.

When I came home he was upstairs, it was the end of his working day, he clearly could hear me coming home, but did not say hello to me for about 15 minutes, so I decided to take the dog for a walk while he does his closing (even though now he starts working at 10 am sharp and finished 10 pm, he does spend a lot of time downstairs, but before the work from home he rarely left home before 10:30 am and by 9 pm was usually home, with few exceptions). The dog was leashed, there was some roaring unleashed dog in a public park, where the dogs have to be leashed. It was already dark, my eyesight is pretty poor even during the daylight, I could hardly see who was there in the dark. Asked a couple of times who was this dog, no answer. The unleashed dog approached our dog, started roaring, so I let the leash out, to avoid leash aggression. I asked the owner to leash his dog, as I do not feel safe letting our black dog run free in the darkness with an unknown dog, the guy ignored me, the dogs seemed to run ok, even though they were roaring, a couple of minutes later that dog tried to bite my dog. So I asked once more the guy to leash his dog and he ignored that again, i took both dogs on the collars in different hands, that proved the guy was not deaf or mute, he started screaming that he will call the police if I do not let his dog free. So i threw the dog to him, the dog got scared and finally left.

Came home, he was again playing his racing simulator. Went upstairs, asked if he wanted to ask me how was the evening. He answered in an angry tone “why would I ask if you ask me that grumpy”, told him that I was hit on a bike, he said “whatever, you are clumsy, don’t ride the bike” told the dog got into a fight in the park. He immediately ran downstairs to check on the dog. Was hugging him and saying he loves him very much. And then I told him the full story about the dog, he first got sad about it and then started questioning if this was a big deal at all because the dog looks ok (as much as the dog looked ok on Saturday when the next day I found a huge scar on him which was not there on Friday). He started grumping at me I am probably overreacting and said “there is a fine line between an aggressive roar and playful roar. Are u sure the dog was trying to attack our dog? Didn’t you just say that it was dark and you could hardly see anything?”

In the morning he did not feed the dog, so it was me giving him the food, as well as during the day. In the evening he said “why is there so much left? Have you even fed the dog today, why is there so much?”. When we just came from a walk and i wanted to talk about the events of the evening, but instead got blamed for everything.

It was about 11 pm, I asked if he wanted any dinner. He grumpily answered “of course not, it is already too late to eat, we should eat earlier”. But earlier I was on my bike ride (which he keeps saying I should do more as I am fat). And later was walking the dog and not letting him to be beaten.

He went upstairs and continued to play his racing simulator.

Some deliveries were supposed to come today. He asked me if the parcel with shoes arrived, told him i only got one parcel with shampoos. Started checking, there was a parcel during the time I was away, a note from the courier that no one was home. He started grumping at me that the doorbell does not ring (it does, but very silently, I adjusted it myself after multiple attempts to ask him to do something with the doorbell, as earlier this year I was suffering from extreme kids bullying, they were ringing the door and running away, started with leaving Christmas trees on the front porch, had about 5 trees in January 2020, in March, when the quarantine has just started, for about 2 weeks they continued to ring my doorbell at least twice a day, he was saying „whatever, just ignore“, but how can I ignore, when there are deliveries and sometimes neighbors with something nice, one day they were doing it nine times and they threw a bottle of piss on our front porch, left some other trash at the doorstep, which made me be scared of any child’s voice i hear near the house, while he kept saying that I am crazy and probably have nothing to do if I react so much on the stupid kids). I said ok, if you want to scare me and the dog every time the doorbell rings, I can put it back. Did not work very well, he started saying I broke it and we will probably have to pay a few hundred euros to fix it when we decide to move out. He tried to fix it himself, of course, the same failure. Tried to convince me I lost some part as the doorbell used to be very loud before the kids’ stories. Said we need some part from a hardware store, but he did not want to order it online and he freaks out even when i mention an option to go to a brick-and-mortar store because it’s him who is going to die from covid, but even if i get it, in my case it surely will be asymptomatic.

Later we were sitting on a sofa with the dog. The dog licked him. He said he wanted to go to the shower. Earlier I told him i wanted to change the bedsheets, he said he would not shower in the evening. So one more night we slept on stinky bedsheets and he showered. Told him about my plan to change the bed sheets the next morning, he said it is too much for him to shower 3 days in a row, as he showered the day before and wanted to shower after the dog lick.

4 Aug 2020

Changed the bedsheets, his reaction “too bad i showered yesterday and the day before, don’t expect i will do it today as well”. For some reason, he makes a huge deal from his shower and showers the best-case twice a week. He claims I spend too much time in the shower (washing my hair every day or every other day and having a shower in the morning and in the evening is “excessive showering”). He did ask to help me with the bedsheets, but last time he tore the blanket, “helping me”.

He asked me to make eggs with onion and bell peppers. When he got to the food, he whined “it’s too many peppers and onions”, so he picked one by one onion to a small plate and left the peppers on a plate.

Wrote this to my mom. She said i should be more attentive to what i am cooking for him. It’s his choice to eat or not eat the food i am making for him.

When I was finishing changing the bedsheets he came to me and hugged, thanking for hiding some rittersports for him. Not sure if he found the bag or he wanted to find out from me if i have some extra chocolates.

Went to vet to check the dog’s scar, I went inside with the dog, as only one human per animal is allowed. He was rather quiet during the ride.

Made lasagna, about 2 hours of work (speaking of his “i like simple food, why go to restaurants”), plus when the lasagna was in the oven for one more hour i vacuumed the house and mopped the ground floor as there were too many flies around the dog food and it felt disgusting. I also threw out the trash and brought back the trash containers, which are heavy and difficult to carry as they always roll and fall, but it is either our neighbor or me who deals with the recycle containers, he has done it roughly several times in the whole year and he makes a huge deal out of him dealing with the containers. I strained something in my shoulder while carrying the containers, when i came home the lasagna was already done but i was completely drained, so i opened the oven and went to the sofa. He came downstairs, kind of nicely saying hello to me and the dog, told him i can’t move, go get your food in the oven, he said no i want you to go with me, eat with me and give me the food, told him i need my time, he went away and came back in a few minutes to get the food. Asked him to pour me a glass of coke, he said he would if i went to eat with him. He did give me a glass of coke when I eventually got up from the sofa. Started eating, asked him if he liked the food. He mumbled, “yes, it’s hot”. When there is an extra lemon stone in his pasta, he starts a whining opera about how horrible I am at cooking, but when there is nothing to complain about he says nothing and takes it for granted.

In the evening I went to our neighbor for a glass of wine, which turned into a small block party. He even came later, as the family is czech and he feels some national connection. He was generally silent, but when we were about to leave I took the glasses inside, the cat ran out, was caught quickly, but i still got a comment “see, you made everything worse, just as usual”.

We came home and of course, he did not take any shower for the newly changed bedsheets. He said he will only go to shower if i give him 3 rittersports. I knew there must be 3 as I was hiding them earlier so that he does not overeat them, as he can eat 5 of them in one day and complains that the food i make he is not good enough. Turned out, he did find my chocolate hiding spots, took all the chocolates, and laughed when I still was able to bring one. Still, went to bed without a shower. In the morning he said his effort to go to shower is a much bigger effort than mine changing the bedsheets, it is only 2 blankets 105x95 inches and the sheet and pillow covers, so 3 cycles of washer+dryer run, plus each blanket has to be loaded to the washer separately, than it takes about 3 interactions into the drying process, as they roll into knots and the changing itself is “just a regular thing”.

5 Aug 2020

Grumpy in the morning, as usual. Made breakfast at 10:30, called him several times and he pretended to not hear me. 11:55 he came. Ate the breakfast, said that he had a work call all that time. Complained the blackberries were not sweet enough.

Last June i found a cheap dutch store where there are optical glasses and sunglasses for about 50 EUR per frame plus lenses. The whole last summer I’ve been hearing this is too expensive, let’s see them in a showroom and order later. A weekend before we got the dog we went to the city by bike, he was complaining it is too hot, complained they could not check him on the spot, then they took his old glasses and measured something wrong, so he was whining that the store is horrible and why get anything there. Eventually, in October last year I got optical and sunglasses from them, they are comfy and it is such a pleasure to have sunglasses with optical lenses so that I feel comfy in the sun and still see the world. My eyesight is not too bad to not survive without glasses, but i can;t watch movies or read street signs without opticals. The sunglasses are very light tint, so I keep saying I need gradient sunglasses from the same brand to better protect me from the sun. The whole this summer I’ve been saying I need sunglasses - “no, you have enough non-optical and you already have one optical”. Today yet another time I came to his asking to get me the glasses (as my card does not work in that store and he refuses to make a dutch card for me). He said that “we haven’t even ordered dog food and i will certainly not buy the gaming chair if we get the glasses for you”. The dog food he tried to order in the morning, no idea what went wrong, the gaming chair is several hundred euros, the glasses are 160 for 3 pairs and extra accessories. I asked if he wants me to choose between me and him and he said “of course you will never choose me, you are too selfish for that”, closed the door in front of me and said he has to go back to work.

In the evening I went out for a bike ride (seeing the urban landscapes made me feel better, seeing people in the cafes and in the parks made me extremely jealous), was away for a couple of hours, came home, walked the dog, came home and wanted to take a breath, he came downstairs, was unhappy about the fact he had to take the already warmed-up lasagna, sat near me and convinced me to eat one spoon of the lasagna, saying that i will be complaining i had no food (i rarely say that, if ever, except for the days when i am busy cooking something he likes and nothing i can actually eat or when there is one portion left and if we share he will be saying the next day he did not get enough, i’d better be hungry that listen to that whining). After that we were ordering groceries (as going outside to the store is a horrible thing and he’s going to die, even though very few people are or have been at all in such hardcore isolation as he wants us to be) i added ice cream (as it is going to be 32C in the upcoming days), he said that ice cream is bad and leads to being fat, deleted it from the basket. Asked to get the peanuts, he also said fried and salted peanuts are a horrible thing to eat (while his marzipan rittersports are completely healthy snacks which create lean muscles). Asked once more about the glasses, he started whining that my prescription is old and i need a new one, but this one works and i see it in significantly better than without the glasses and i do not have a headache that i have after wearing newer prescriptions for an extended time, also i need prisms and this will be a huge pain to start the process, as it was explained to me, there are some stickers on each glass and there is distortion, so it will take time to find the right ones and get used to them. So again, glasses were not ordered.

He saw me posting an instagram story, shot while riding. Said that i would surely be fined, as someone would find this photo, identify me, get the metadata of the video that it was shot with a phone in one hand and this is a 95€ fine. Said I shouldn’t have posted it as this is not just a horrible video, but also a subject to get a fine.

I was sitting on a chair and asked him to close the door, it is broken and it is difficult to close it, especially on hot days like today, he refuses to fix it himself, screams at me when i ask him to give me a screwdriver to fix it myself (i even bought the glue which should solve the issue), refuses to call our handyman neighbor who could fix it. After he was done scratching the dog and telling him how wonderful the dog is and how he is happy to have the dog (he walks him in the morning and comes to scratch him every now and then, while i do all the rest with the dog and pretty much have my whole social life fucked because of this dog), he said in an annoyed voice why i have not closed the door yet, “you just want to sit on your ass and do nothing”. While my ass does hurt after biking 27 km and taking the dog for a walk when he was crazily pulling to meet other dogs and later catching the dog when he ran away with his friend labrador. He went outside, grumpily said something, kicked the chair that i use for holding the doors from being smashed by wind, grumpily went upstairs to “do something i was deprived of yesterday”, as it was such a horrible evening to drink wine in the garden with neighbors, instead he could be playing his racing simulator. When i was loading the dishwasher he said he had glasses upstairs, brought them half the way, and left them on the stairs. This is a huge deal for him, as he tends to ask for water upstairs, always with syrup, he does not drink plain water, and then it is me again to bring the glasses back. Asked him to go to shower at least today, as yesterday i changed the bedsheets and he did not go to the shower, he said he’s better go to play the game, the shower is a stupid and unnecessary thing (of course, clean bedsheets are no big deal, he sweats like hell during the day, the dog licks him and there is no need to shower more than twice a week for a normal person, according to him).

5 Aug 2020

After biking 27 km yesterday all the body was sore, i wanted to stay in bed for a bit longer. There was no internet, asked him to restart the router, he screamed „as if i haven’t done it 15 times already“. I asked him to take a day off as he needs stable wifi which is not working, he said he will just use our mobile data. Asked him who he was calling, he said „divorce lawyers“ in a joking tone. I asked what if he uses all the data package, i will not be able to go outside and have my music and maps, he said „this would be great, you would stay inside or enjoy the outside without phone“.

I came downstairs about 11:20 and there was a bowl of yoghurt with raspberries, covered with a napkin. Asked him is a very nice tone, what was that, he answered „that’s leftovers from my breakfast, you can have it“. I expected him saying something like „i made it for you so you have breakfast too“. So, if this is just the „leftovers“, i still count myself as a person, so i gave the yoghurt to the dog and ate the berries. He immediately came downstairs and started screaming i do not appreciate his efforts, that i just throw out food that he has prepared for me with so much effort, not only he has to make me food (once in forever and saying this is „leftovers“), but he has to beg me to eat it. He claimed that I „asked in a grumpy tone“ about the plate and he is „sick and tired of this, let’s go to a divorce lawyer“. He claimed he already found out the cost if we agree is quite low, otherwise we will have to train tens of thousands on lawyers fees in NL and US, they will give some amount, so he offered me a sum of money in the middle of that low end range.

So i went outside and immediately he called me saying why i am going away as if nothing happened, said „don’t do anything stupid“.