Progress
2008-08-20, 4:32 p.m.

Day 1459

Think I mentioned my dreading the bike ride home Monday night. Boy, was I right to be afraid. I got lucky and left with a bunch (3) of other guys. We share a common path for maybe the first 4 of my 8.4 mile trip. A couple of the guys are very strong riders and don�t mind taking the lead. The rest of us fall in line behind them and try to keep up.

That worked pretty well for those first 4 miles. Then we all split off on our separate paths. Friends, let me tell you. A 30 mph headwind is a terrible thing. Normally, I can cruise along on flat ground at 18 � 20 mph. It�s working pretty hard (for me), but I can maintain that pretty well for 5 � 8 miles at a whack.

Monday evening, on a very slight uphill, directly into the wind, I thought I was gonna die trying to maintain 12 mph. My quickie little trip that normally takes around 29 minutes? Ballooned to nearly 36. Buddy of mine rides even farther. 66 minutes in to work, over 84 minutes home. The last 15 miles were directly into that 30mph breeze.

I didn�t ride in Tuesday or Wednesday. Gun shy.

Having the kids over for dinner Monday evening was fruitful. Managed to get the pond liner more or less into place. It still isn�t fully installed. Need to fold & tuck the liner to compensate for bends, depth differences, all sorts of stuff. It�s like trying to wrap the inside of a box. Sort of. Anyhow, I need special tape to secure the folds. Helps keep the fish from getting trapped and makes things look neater. I didn�t ride in to work Tuesday because I needed to stop at the landscaping place and get that tape along with plumbing fittings. The plumbing stuff I need after the liner is secure.

Things being what they are, the landscape place had all the plumbing parts I needed but no tape. So? No pond work got done last night. Tonight the tape should be back in stock. Originally, I thought I�d get about 25 feet of tape and make sure that liner was fitting very snug. Then I was it was $4.10 A FOOT. I�m going to try and make do with only 12 feet of tape. That�s (4) 3 foot seams. Hope it all works out.

Here�s a shot of the pond with the liner just getting settled into place. Eric is doing his level best to keep the 30mph breeze from blowing it away:

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Then, Eric got a little tired of all the hard work keeping that liner flat, so I had to pitch in:

Sorry � no boots on the nice new liner.

Rained like hell here Monday night, there�s actually about 2 inches of water in the pond. Hopefully, later tonight we�ll get that up to about 2 feet. Then I can think about getting the skimmer dug in and installed.

Cindy surprised me last night. A couple of times. First, while I was at the landscapers place getting the parts I didn�t need till later, she called me about heading out for dinner. She�d taken her dad to the dentist for a routine cleaning and wanted to grab a bite to eat before running him back to his swinging bachelor pad. The surprise (to me) was that she appeared sober � even while dealing with her dad. The second surprise was that when I got home from my normal Tuesday evening meeting, she STILL appeared sober. Granted, it was getting a little late (after 9:30pm IS TOO late!!) and we didn�t have a really rousing conversation, but she at least seemed up to speed.

It was surprising to me because my Tuesday & Thursday meetings seem to be a green light for her to �get loose�. Don�t know why � just an observation. I also need to give myself a small pat on the back for not rifling through the kitchen cupboards to take inventory of her latest stash. She�s really been moving it around. First it was in a spare dresser upstairs for a couple months. Then it got moved into a semi secluded corner of our closet. (Those two I really dug for) After that, it moved to some cupboards in the kitchen where we keep rarely used china. I was looking for a serving platter and ran across her stash (unbeknownst to her). After that, it seemed to have moved to yet another cabinet in the kitchen, behind some spare rolls of paper towels. A rarely opened bottle of scotch (Dewars � for The Bob) and a pint bottle of tequila (for a tequila lime recipe I did � REALLY!) are also in that cupboard.

Maybe I should be afraid that she�s slowly trying to integrate her stash back into the kitchen. I can�t be afraid though. I am internally debating whether my not letting her know I�ve stumbled across her stashes is enabling (by letting her think she�s getting away with it) or detaching (by keeping my nose out of her business). Kind of a fine line. Either way, I think it�s (her continued drinking) in violation of the agreement we made last year regarding working towards repairing our relationship.

I clearly remember we each had a short list of necessary conditions. One of hers was that I stop seeing Ms. CL. Which I�ve done except for the occasional contact from her, letting me know of her �available� status. My necessary condition was that Cindy stop drinking. Cindy maintains that the agreement was that she not drink �as much as she had before�, i.e. �control� her drinking. Annette, my (our) therapist, who brokered the deal, remembered it as quitting drinking, not controlling. One of the first thing all 12 steppers learn is that we have no control over alcohol. Knowing that, I submit that Cindy has a pretty weak program.

Bottom line � I have to decide how bothered I am by all this. Does it violate my boundaries? For now, as long as she isn�t going ass over tea kettle down the stairs once a month, I think I can almost deal with it. But that isn�t the whole deal. There�s the mood swings (menopause induced?), shitty attitudes from time to time, and also the way the kids react to her. Zach is already considering forbidding her to drink at his wedding next year. Lordy, that�s gonna be fun. Mar? We�ll let you know how that goes. Not that it�ll help your situation any, but if you can learn from our mistakes, it won�t be a total loss. I�ve been trying to assure the poor kid that I�d take care of secluding his mom in the event of a melt down, but if she does that, the damage will have already been done. Got a whole 10 months to sweat that one out.

Gotta hit the pond place. Maybe I�ll be able to get some water in the puddle tonight. Skinny dipping this weekend!!

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