Lulav, I think you and I are in exactly the same situation. I am also disabled, which is why I don't have a job myself. I do the best I can around the house, but there are some times he has to come home and do a chore I couldn't do. Also, having supper waiting for him isn't as simple as it sounds, because he works from afternoons to late night, and he doesn't want to have a big meal when he comes home. Best I can do is cook a good lunch for him before he goes in.
Earlier this month, when my car started to show her age, hubby bought me a brand new one. It's taking some getting used to. Everything is in a different place, and it's got a baffling amount of bells and whistles on it that are now standard, but I'm managing it. If it weren't for my husband, I wouldn't be driving in the first place. He's the one who stuck with me and made sure I learned. Where some people may subconsciously set out to keep a disabled family member helpless, because being the caretaker makes them feel needed and important, my husband encourages me to be as independent as I can. I'm not well enough to hold a job, but I can go out and do things, and he makes it possible. He doesn't keep me trapped at home, reasoning as my first husband did that if I get too confident in myself, I may leave him.
Yes, little things. I'd like the place a little more organized than it is. Because searching for things is so exhausting, I'd like to know that when I need something, it will still be in the same spot where I put it last. Unfortunately, many people don't understand. Not just my husband, but my daughter and nephew (both adults) live here too. When I talk about the pantry not being organized, they think I mean that everything isn't lined up all nice and neat on the shelves, looking pretty. Which leads to the question, what difference does it make what it looks like? Who besides us is ever going to look inside the pantry? That's not what I'm talking about. By organized, I mean everything has a specific place where it goes, and it's always put back there. This isn't going to happen, because I am not physically strong enough to organize the pantry myself, and nobody else wants to. When they're coming home from grocery shopping, they're tired. They don't feel like asking themselves, "What is this item and where does this go?" They want to get it done and over with. So instead of sorting through the cans, boxes, and bags to find out what's what, they are just going to slide everything over and make a hole wherever there's room, and stick whatever they just bought up on the shelf next to it. Which means that the next time I need something, I'm going to have to search through dozens of other miscellaneous items before I find it. This has also led to wasting money, because the person doing the grocery shopping thinks we're out of something, and buys more. We weren't out of it. We had three or four jars of it, all buried in different places in the pantry.
I can't get this communicated. And I don't feel right making any complaint at all when, after all, he just bought me a new car!
