It appeared that I would be sitting up last evening operating our Android TV Box and watching some T.V. with my younger brother who had arrived home from his daily 'socializing' around 9:20 p.m.
Well, fool me!
We began watching an episode of Versailles, and I opened a can of strong (8% alcohol) malt, a product that I reserve for such latter evening television entertainment.
After a few minutes I heard my brother erupt into some hoarse choking, and then he took a swig of his beer. It then dawned upon me that the specific choking noises he had made were those that always attend the choking that results when he has passed out in his chair and starts having his slobber and drool enter his trachea, so I decided to monitor him.
Sure enough, even in the darkened living room I could see that there was no activity involving his eyelids ─ they were drawn closed. I watched awhile longer to be fully certain, and then saw his head begin to sink forward and I could hear the sounds of snoring.
That was enough. I shut off the Android TV Box and switched the T.V. over to its basic cable option, and then headed on upstairs here to my computer / bedroom. I had wasted a beer, opening it for nothing ─ I should have just gone to bed.
But my brother had seemed in reasonable condition when he came into the house.
Granted, as I was leaving to come upstairs, he was newly alert, having become aware that the T.V. show had gone silent. However, he knew better than to speak out and question me and my motivation for departing the living room.
As lamentable as it was having opened a precious beer for no reason, this was the best outcome in view of the fact that I had an early a.m. five-mile walk intended, and now I would be able to get to bed early enough that I would acquire sufficient sleep to make the enterprise less disagreeable ─ I set my cellphone alarm for 3 a.m. in order to leave as early as possible for my foot tour of parts of Whalley.
My wife had been home all this while, not having worked that day. So I bade her good-night, explaining that I was retiring due to having an early walk in mind.
She and I earlier had some unusually deep conversation relating to her weekend folly in which she engaged her gambling recidivism that resulted in some monstrous financial loss that I cannot imagine, but one which left her feeling practically ill the past couple of days.
She begged me to not let her sons know, although she had gotten the eldest lad to loan her $1,000 that she was going to have to repay today after she gets paid (if that happens as she was expecting, for she had to work a full day today at the Thai restaurant where she has part-time employment).
Evidently he made the loan grudgingly. And I suspect that because of it, he feels himself to be off the hook where contributing towards the monthly mortgage is concerned ─ it is due to be debited from my chequing account tomorrow.
My wife owes the account a minimum of $1,100, for it only ever contains my pension income, and whatever mortgage contributions I get from her sons ─ she keeps her paycheques to herself, usually using an account in a different financial institution.
This month I benefited from a supplementary pension payment (from a RRIF) that ─ added to the Net of my usual last monthly pension payment totalled $2,800 or even $2,900. Yet once the mortgage is taken from the account tomorrow, I will not have even $15 in the balance.
Each month I am left paying around $500 to meet three credit card payments that my wife is responsible for having racked up; and I also have to pay nearly $210 for a life insurance plan that she got set up on me.
And so when the mortgage strikes, I tend to have little left to me. Yet this month was supposed to be better ─ and it was, until my wife plundered $2,400 from it.
Sure, she may feel sick over what she has done, throwing away so much money in a fashion unimaginable to me. But this was MY money ─ not hers! She had already spent her money.
So once again, she is professing that she is done with this sickness of compulsion, and I know that she does mean it. But I have heard it before. Months go by, and then she has a relapse.
And I don't know what the hell to do. Nothing can get me out from under the actual monstrous credit debt I am buried with, for she once gambled away the last $50,000 or so remaining to a line of credit on our residence.
I honestly do not know what my full credit debt is ─ around $175,000? I just do not know. It may be more, for the line of credit is intricately tied into the mortgage and I do not happen to have the details of how it breaks down.
I am 72 years old ─ I will never live to see this paid off. The only way
would be to sell our heavily mortgaged home / property.
When my wife has these gambling relapses from out of the blue, I am left even sicker than she is, for I don't think she fathoms the hopelessness that overcomes me. She is better than two decades younger than I am, for one thing. Already, I have nothing much to live for ─ I do not drive, and thus I am essentially under house arrest, unable to afford to go anywhere nor socialize with people. I have not had a friend visit me since maybe 2010, and he has since died.
Since I never really have money to spend, I cannot travel, and no one I might care to visit lives anywhere near here. I can't even afford to go to a pub once a week ─ probably not even once a month. If I indulged in such a thing, then I would not be able to do any kind of shopping.
And so I see my life trickling out, and with no one to even share my woes with. My brother is not someone I have that sort of relationship with. I have long ago recognized that if we were not brothers, we would have parted ways years and years back. We have nothing in common but our blood. Otherwise, there would never have been anything like a lasting friendship ─ we do not have that.
One ─ maybe the primary? ─ thing keeping me from bringing an end to this pathetic life of mine is a powerful sense of responsibility to my wife. Without my pension income, her own life would be far bleaker. And it would only grow worse with time. If I died, I don't know if she would even be entitled to a monthly widow's pension of as much as $700. She has nothing of her own to look forward to in her old age ─ just the broke Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security at age 65. But she's not yet even 50 years old.
She has never contributed to her own pension plan, nor has she ever had employment with an employer who offered one.
I further suspect that the life insurance policy she has on me would not pay out if I was deemed to have been responsible for my own demise.
It is so weird feeling obligated to live because of a sense of strong responsibility to a foolish wife whose own life would be far more limited than she is able to imagine if I was not in the picture.
I don't want to say anything more.
I will close by reporting that I did have that early walk, for I was to bed last evening before 10:30 p.m. And I was awake and up before my 3 a.m. alarm sounded. I actually left on my five-mile walk less than five minutes past the hour of 3 p.m.
Incidentally, I feel confident in declaring that the five miles are a minimum, for I believe that I slightly exceed that distance. And unlike on my early walk on Tuesday, my walk this a.m. found me with a good lift to my step; and I was able to perform some single pull-ups into the early part of my walk at the elementary school playground that has the gymnastics-style rings ─ last Tuesday I could not even come close to pulling myself up.
But that's how it is when one probably weighs at least 200 pounds while fully garbed (I weighed 194 or 195 pounds late this morning while stripped down to my skin before having eaten a thing today).
All else I shall mention is that I finally published the post of very long standing that I have been working on at one of my two hosted websites ─ the post is Iceland Travel Map.
Big deal, right?
I do believe that my younger brother has show up ─ I heard him come in around 7:30 p.m. or soon after. The only reason I can think of for him to be here this early is because he is already plastered. So I now have his besotted company in store.
Yes, life is good ─ NOT.
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