It�s No Accident
2007-08-27, 5:05 p.m.

Day 1100

Nope. It�s no accident that the most meaningful conversations between Cindy & I happen during the evenings following one of my head shrinking sessions. Or therapy sessions if you prefer.

Friday night, Cindy�s own silent treatment got to even her. Two weeks ago I asked her the standard middle school relationship question: �Do you have any desire to work on the issues that crippling our relationship. Circle one: YES NO�

Other than her typed response to my own (private, NOT for her eyes) list of �what makes me angry� done for my therapist � I�ve had no response. Everything in her typed response indicated she thought things were not fixable.

I brought this up to Anne (The shrink. She really needs a name. This pseudonym will suffice) She asked if she could see what Cindy typed � more to get a sense of what was in Cindy�s head at the time. I also told Anne that I left a copy of an Al Anon thing in response � to give Cindy a better idea of what Al Anon is trying to do. Or what we are trying to get out of it. Either way works.

Anyhow. Anne agreed with my own conclusion that Cindy appeared to be reluctant to commit to anything at best. So Anne & I worked on what was next. It came down to this: I need to make a decision. Cindy can have input to that decision, or not.

So Friday night, when the Princess of the Cold Shoulder broke down and said we had to talk, I instantly had an agenda. (Patience was rewarded) We spent about 2 hours back on the patio, talking until well into mosquito time out there. It�s unfortunate that Cindy was of somewhat �diminished capacity� � but at least she was willing to admit that she�d had a few drinks earlier that evening. Not so for the times the kids saw her going to the bootlegger flask she was keeping in her purse. Eric saw her sneaking the bottle in & out of her purse. When she was outside, hiding, consuming her brew, he went to her purse and verified that yes, there was a 200ml flask of whiskey in her purse. This has happened a bunch. Eric, of course, tells me all of this. Jill has seen the same �trick� performed, but I purposely left her out of all this. Cindy claims to have 25 days sober. I challenged her on that point and brought up the family reunion and all the occasions Eric had reported. Personally, I think she�s lucky to have accumulated 5 straight days sober at any stretch in the past 25 days.

Anyhow. She of course denies all of it. She accused me of training the kids to spy on her. In truth, I have repeatedly asked the kids to not count drinks, to not snoop for hiding places, to cut it with the sarcastic remarks � to basically give her a little room to try and either work a program or fail miserably. I told Cindy all of this � she refuses to buy it. I then asked her to call Eric, ask him what he told me, ask him what he saw, ask him if I trained him to spy on her, ask him WHY he�s doing it. She refused. Big surprise.

At the end of the evening, I left her with two thoughts. That whole decision thing, for one. The second was that without her quitting drinking, nothing will get done on the other eleventy billion issues we need to work on. I didn�t put time limits on anything, but I told her I wanted to see progress. From our talk two weeks ago, she already knows I�m out of patience.

Saturday we went over to Zach & Jills to help install a washer & dryer. I think it was sometime before Jill�s parents arrived, Zach & I headed off to the dumpster to get rid of cardboard & trash and Jill had done a quick errand. When Jill returned, she caught Cindy snooping through her dresser. WTF?? That might explain why Cindy was trying so hard to be civil to me the rest of the day. She may have been worried that Jill told me about it that day. What compounds matters is that this is the second time Jill has nabbed her prying. I guess back before Cindy�s started the AA meetings, Jill caught her Cindy going through her wallet. Jill asked the �what are you doing?� question. Cindy�s response was �I thought it was my wallet�. Ummm � no. Lucky for Cindy Jill never told me about any of this till Sunday night. Also lucky for her Jill & I agreed not to bring it up with her. Yet.

Is she looking for evidence of Jill spying on her? Is she looking for evidence of anything she can use against Jill for some twisted reason? I am so, so glad Jill and I get along really well. What the hell is she snooping around in peoples private business for? Speaking of snooping � I did call her on that response thing she typed out and left me. Cindy acknowledged she left it out for me to read. I acknowledged that yes I read it, but how on earth did she leave it in response to MY list, when my list was in a folder, in my briefcase and never shown to her at all? I thanked her for respecting my privacy.

I knew she was prying into my stuff. But poking around in the kid�s stuff? Worse yet, snooping around in Jill�s stuff? Desperation at work I�m afraid.

So. Washer & dryer got installed in spite of some inappropriate activity. They even work. Before we did Zach�s laundry room, he came over to the house and helped me load up a bunch of scrap metal I had laying around. The load included one 27 foot Ester Williams pool (all aluminum), 83 pounds of lead, 18 pounds of copper, 20 some pounds of brass and a huge 120 pound electric motor and a compressor tank. In all, it took about 30 minutes to load up and we spend maybe another 30 minutes at the scrap yard. Our profit? $180 � and I think we got screwed out of $50 or so on the pool. Still well worth the effort. The bulk of the money was from the pool, but copper will net $2 a pound at the scrap yard. I may start keeping all my scrap wire in a bucket and take it in every year or so. Heck � I�ll start looking for scrap copper. I never realized how lucrative the scrap business could be.

Finally getting back into the swing of things at the gym. Lovely class this morning. New instructor, Bill. Love his taste in music. It�s much closer to what I have on my own MP3 player without actually copying anything. Yet. Got back to the weights too. I thought that after a 9 day layoff I�d have regressed some, but it looks like that little break is just what the muscles needed. No let off at all. Have to see how things feel tonight though. Got some nasty hamstring cramps during lunch. Maybe that�s all the complaining they�ll do. Tomorrow is a run day, followed by upper body weights. Kind of a break for the legs, run notwithstanding.

I gotta go hide in the labs for a while. Staying late to catch up after last weeks lazy schedule. Maybe there�ll be another hot discussion tonite. Anything to get closer to a resolution.

If you use a pop-up blocker, hit "Ctrl" when you click to leave a comment