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two fer
2007-09-11, 4:27 p.m.

Day 1114

Happy Monday. Rarely am I so glad to see a weekend be over. Plenty of good things happened, if you like sweat and room makeovers. But the tension in the air was palpable. All weekend.

On the plus side, Saturday & Sunday Cindy never had a drink. Friday night is another matter, but one has to accept even the smallest of successes, right? Unfortunately, in her dryness, she also has diminished communication abilities. No talking to me except for one and two syllable answers to direct questions. If someone stops by (like my mom) she acts fine, but as soon as the audience is gone, so is the good attitude.

So. Saturday. Finished the interior trim on the new windows. Did the final mudding/sanding of the walls. Repainted the ceiling. Lordy, what an improvement that was. Got rid of the crappy, semi-gloss, splotchy looking mess that was up there and replaced it with a nice, even coat of flat white. Looks so much cleaner & crisper.

Yanked the windows out of the frames and hauled than down to the garage. They�ll be painted down there where it�s much easier to get to all the edges that need paint. It also makes it much easier to paint the frames when there are no windows do work around.

My mom stopped by in the afternoon, so we sat and chatted for a couple of hours. Nice way to kill an afternoon.

Went out to dinner Saturday night and sat through some more piss poor attitude from Cindy. She apparently doesn�t realize that this attitude of hers is having an effect on my desire (or lack thereof) to do any reconciliation with her. Why on earth would I want to even try to work something out with a person that has treated me so poorly over the last 3 or more years?

Guess that answers the unasked question lurking beneath.

Sunday turned into the paintathon. Primered all the raw wood & mud, then managed to get two coats of paint on the walls. Decided to rip out the old base trim and go with new. Makes it so much easier to NOT get paint on the carpet. The trim can be painted while set up on saw horses, installed & touched up all without risking getting paint (a rich, mocha color) on the carpet (sort of a creamy beige). Now, why is it the walls always look & feel smooth before you get the paint on them, then once the paint is going on, you find all these little defects you�d like to fix? Have to see what paintings & furniture will hide. I am NOT redoing all 4 walls again. ($%&*^ semi-gloss paint)

Later in the afternoon Sunday, close to dinnertime, I told Cindy I wanted to head out to an Al Anon meeting that night. I�d had enough of her attitude and wanted to:
A � talk to some adults that weren�t acting all passive/aggressive towards me
B � share a little and see what I learned from the feedback
C � just get the hell out of the house for a couple of hours.
D � go do something to help me forget that while I spent the entire day painting, Cindy spent most of it on the couch, watching the �all men are bad channel� (Lifetime). Sure she did laundry and ironed shirts, even came up and did some cutting in on the first coat of painting. But for the bulk of the afternoon, while I was trotting up & down (and up & down, up & down) the damn stairs � she was under a blanket on the couch, �in the zone�.

What did I get after declaring my desire to head out to the meeting? More iciness. Too bad it wasn�t 100 degrees out � I might have enjoyed it.

Man, I wish those lead free parts would show up in the parts library so I�d have something to do besides think about this crap. Maybe I�ll go play with my lasers for a bit . . .

Now we�re at Day 1115

Didn�t finish posting yesterday. Cindy�s car died during lunch yesterday. Went and picked her up and delivered her back to work. Made arrangements to get the car dragged into the shop. Ended up taking a half day so I could get more work done on the old bedroom too.

As of this morning, we still don�t know what�s wrong with Cindy�s car. Computer isn�t spitting out any funky codes, so the mechanic (Herb) is thinking it�s maybe nothing more than the fuel filter. He�s got a guy coming in with a more sophisticated computer later in the day to have a look. If nothing comes of it, I guess he�ll change the filter, I�ll pray that�s all it needs.

So. We�re down to one vehicle. We have two people that need to get to work, one 8.4 miles north & east, the other 9 miles away south & west. Sometimes being centrally located sucks. I�ve been wanting to try the whole commute to work deal on my bike, and this provided the perfect opportunity. This morning, Cindy took the van and I biked in. She thought I was nuts, but at least she was talking. She somehow thought it made sense for me to drive her to work, go back up to work myself, then go back down south to pick her up, 2 or so hours after she would normally leave work. I think that�s more nuts than my riding my bike to work, in spite of the threats of rain here today. We�re in a drought here, if we do get any rain, it won�t be much and it won�t last long. As long as the roads are dry enough for my brakes to work, I�m fine.

I sent Cindy an email this morning communicating what I�d learned about her car, and also telling her she could head to the gym after work if she liked, as I should be ok to ride home. Only stipulation was that I needed the van to go to my Al Anon meeting tonight. This is our last meeting before the Fall Assembly and I had to pick up something that I was to take to the Assembly.

Well, this started quite the snit fit. Cindy at first acted like I never told her about this assembly � like I was just now springing this on her. My reply was that she�s known about it since July (I neglected to mention that it was her snooping through my stuff that actually led to her finding out about it).

Her response? She thought I was �only considering� going. Now, I am keeping too many secrets (you think?). She can�t carry on a conversation with me (after a weekend of monosyllabic answers from her in response to direct questions from me. NOT yes or no questions either.)

There was a comment or three in there about her wanting to work on us for years, but I�d never open up and tell her what was bothering me.

That same email response also included the little tidbit that she�s decided to move into Zach�s old room. Once it�s done I guess. That�s the room we�ve been re-doing. Unless she means the room Zach was in while Jill was staying with us too, in which case she can move in tonight.

Boy, her moving to another room is really going to kill our sex life. Now instead of just rolling over and kicking me to make sure I stay away, she�s going to actually have to close a door. If she leaves the door open a crack, is that a signal that she�s in a receptive mood? No more Lifetime channel to fall asleep by. That could be bad. At least I think it�s as boring as watching paint dry. It puts me to sleep fast. Now I�ll get to watch something entertaining � probably stay up too late now.

I typed up an answer to her last email. I haven�t sent it. I think I�ll save it in draft mode and maybe print it out for myself. Push comes to shove, I can use it as a script for our discussion tonight. Before I go to my meeting.

The bike ride home tonight might be the most relaxation I get all day.


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