10 Years Part 2

Living with my Mom and Dad was O.K. at first. Joe got a job with a small company in Irwindale running equipment, but they didn't offer health insurance and I found out I was pregnant with Katie. Once Joe got a job we started house shopping again and looked to the high desert once again. It took us a while to find what we were looking for, but we eventually did and we made a much better decision in price and had a really decent mortgage. We were at my parents for 6 months though and during this time, Joe decided that he didn't like my Dad. My parents were very gracious and generous to us, so I'll never quite figure out why he disliked my Dad so much, but he did. He would come home from work, not say a word to anyone, and go in our room with the door shut. It was the first of many times that he would embarrass me by his lack of common decency and it was the beginning of my apologies for his behavior. Nobody understood it, least of all me. One night Joe and I went out to dinner. I brought up his attitude and he explained that he didn't agree with my families political view and said that we were all a bunch of hypocrites and it was people like us that made him decide that he hated Christians and would never step foot in a church again. I had a good cry right there in the restaurant and told him that God and church and Christian relationships and my parents were all very important to me and to the way I wanted to raise our kids. He had know how I felt about this from the moment we met, and I couldn't understand how he could say such things, or really where he was coming from. The best explanation that he could give me was that he would just never fit in with those people. I could raise the kids to believe in God, he claimed to believe too, that he had Jesus in his heart, but I was not to ask or expect him to go to church anymore. The day we left my parents to move into our house, Joe left without a goodbye or a thanks to my parents. My Dad was deeply hurt, but what could I say as I didn't understand it myself. Joe got a job with the union and left his small company. Union pay was amazing and the benefits were outstanding. Our mortgage was affordable, overtime was plentiful and it was by fr our best year financially. Katie was born a few weeks after we had moved into our house and although I had made the adjustment to stay at home mom, 2 kids is twice as hard. Joe was working 12 hour days and hiss boss often asked him to go out after work. He was almost never home and I was left alone with my 19month old and infant. I got myself involved in a church and did my best to be happy. One night I had to run out to the store and I convinced Joe to let me go alone and leave the kids with him. When I got home Katie was in our room crying with the door shut. I asked Joe, "don't you hear Katie crying, why did you close her in there?" For the second time he reminded me, I don't do babies. She wouldn't shut up, so I stuck her in there. He was not asked to babysit again. Mean while, Joe had sold the sand rail for a speed boat that sat in the garage since we had two tiny kids, too little for use of a boat. We fought a lot that year although for the life of me I can't remember what we were fighting about. I can see clear as day Joe getting so angry that he threw an entire lasagna across the room at the wall, but I have no idea why. The only thing that we really had going for us at that time was our kids and Joes job. Joe decided to sell the boat and buy a motor home to stay in at the property where he worked so he wouldn't have to commute everyday. Unfortunately, the motor home required payments and I said no. The motor home showed up at the house anyway. We had this motor home for about a month when Joe quit his job. He told me that he hated his career and that we were going to sell the house, which had increased greatly in value in the one year that we owned it, take the motor home to Vegas and use the money to open a business. I sobbed and fought and sobbed some more. He told me that he was doing this weather I liked it or not and I could either come with him, or leave. I was so scared. I had a two year old and a 10 month old and I never wanted a life for them with divorced parents, so I went. We sold the house and made 30,000 dollars. We got in the motor home and drove to Vegas with no plan.