I googled it. Someone did figure out that elders need fewer, bigger buttons. Thanks, Luna, for discovering that.

I have not been making great use of all the time I have available. I spend too much time cruising cyberspace . . . just escaping what needs doing, like straightening up this apartment.

I did go to dinner with my friend yesterday. That was enjoyable. Today my bf has a pass to leave the nursing home for 4 hours. I requested this so I could take him out for Easter Brunch. By now I should be showered and dressed and heading over to get him shaved and dressed. Instead I've just blazed around feeling apathetic and indifferent. I'm letting my life get worse. I ask myself: What is wrong with me? I have to snap out if this. I dread him coming home and saying: "What the heck have you been doing? What did you do for the past week? Why is this apartment still a mess? When are you going to attend to those piles of unopened mail?" I dread him telling me what a failure I am. The funny thing is that, if he would just stop putting me down, I probably would feel like doing a lot more. Maybe I'm kidding myself . . . blaming him for my own laziness.

I've told him that I can't take it anymore . . . that I won't. I've said: "You're going to be disappointed. You're going to be mad I haven't accomplished more at home. You're going to make me wish I'ld left you in the nursing home." He says that, no, he's not going to criticize anything. But that's so I'll take him home this week. He'll promise anything just to get out of that place. But his promises are worth nothing. He's been doing this to me since right after we started living together way long ago. He'ld say: "Why aren't you more this way? Why aren't you more that way?" He'ld say: "You don't have any push. You'll never get anywhere." Meanwhile he was no prize himself. He let me down a lot. He got an awful lot from me for what little he gave. People who know us have told me that he wasn't worth it. Even his immediate family - his own kids - have advised me not to let him ruin my life. But I keep hoping . . . hoping things will be better . . . hoping I'll be better able to cope make the best of things. I guess deep inside I don't believe anything will change in how we get along. No amount of threatening him works. I try that, and then I feel like I'm an abuser for threatening a sick, disabled man.

I better get in the shower. Time to stop this ruminating that gets me nowhere.

He says "depression" us a bunch if baloney . . . that I make myself depressed. I ask him to help me . . . to stop the negative appraisals of me . . . to encourage me instead.

The staff are wanting to keep him there till May 1rst. I was thinking of taking him home on Tues. But I'm afraid I'll regret it. He'll criticize me and I'll wish to God I had left him there. I need more time. I'm not going to take him home Tuesday. I need more time to pull myself together . . . to clean the house, open the mail etc. I can't expose myself to that negativity just yet. It all became too much, and I was coming unglued just before his recent hispitalization.

I know being in the nursing home is miserable for him - at times. The care is not what it should be. I'm so sorry he has to go through being there. But he does not even try to understand what I need. Maybe he's not capable.

Enough. I better shower and dress.