Yeah, Back to My Nemesis
2008-06-24, 5:21 p.m.

Day 1402

Just have very little time for journaling these days. Work is brutal. Too much to do at home. Bike riding to get in. More projects lined up. I need a clone.

Heard from Ms. CL recently (like yesterday). She�s given up reconciling with her husband and has moved out again. Something about the city attracts her � she�s come back in from the sticks and lives about 3 miles from where I work.

Now, put your �Danger Will Robinson� signs down. Turns out she�s met someone she thinks she might be able to get serious with. Have no clue why she�s letting me know. Fishing maybe? Seeing if there�s any interest left?

Sadly, there is, but I can�t go there again. It was thrilling. The sex was pretty damn good (and plentiful). There are so many things she isn�t (boozing & smoking being a prime traits she lacks) and other things she is (tall, a good kisser, uninhibited in bed, in the car, in the theater . . .). But. She left her redneck, ignorant, control freak, 8th grade educated husband and didn�t take her 17 & 11 year old girls. Her relationship with them is strained at best. Downright adversarial at times with her older daughter (who actually rules the roost now I guess). Her relationship with her mom is also rocky. There�s something about that girl that just doesn�t ring true.

Anyhow. I bid her good luck and left it at that. But man, do I wish we could go just one more round in the sack. For old times sake.

Blueyemom wrote recently and made noted that maybe Cindy hasn�t reached her real bottom yet. Perhaps she hasn�t lost anything important to her yet. She (we) weathered the storm that was the last four months of last year. I�m toeing the line again, so she�s relaxed. She�s still sneaking drinks but is getting bolder (sloppier?) about hiding it. Talked with my therapist about the same thing a couple of weeks ago.

I�ve been finding myself very angry of late. Little, nonsensical things touch me off. It�s kind of embarrassing � I have to watch myself or it�ll sneak up on me and leak out. We (therapist & I) explored reasons why. Turns out, I feel I�m getting screwed, and not in the fun way. The initial agreement Cindy & I made was that I�d give up seeing Ms. CL and spend less time at the computer in the evening. Cindy was to (and this I where accounts differ) stop drinking (I maintain), or not drink as much as she used to (she maintains).

I�m sure there were smaller, ancillary conditions, but these were the biggies. Now I�ve stopped seeing Ms. CL. I�m working on the computer business. I am limiting it to legitimate uses (banking, shopping, weather.com, research) and even do a bit of it on the laptop, in the living room while Cindy is watching some mindless shit on Lifetime. Sharing precious prime time hours.

I give up Ms CL, she only gets sorta shitfaced 2 or 3 nights a week, vs. getting totally bombed 4 or 5 nights a week. Woo-hoo!

Then there�s support of endeavors. 3 nights a week (M, W, F), I get home from work and pitch in to do dinner while Cindy is at the gym after work. I aim to have dinner ready by 6:30 so she can eat before she heads out to her 7:30 AA meeting. Sometimes, I miss and dinner isn�t ready till 7. Cindy won�t eat then � she asks for hers to be �saved for later�. Meantime, I get to do kitchen clean up while she heads to her meeting. When she gets back? She�ll eat anything but what was set aside. �Too late for that�, �too cold�, �don�t want it�, �too heavy for this late�, so it gets stuffed in the fridge and eventually gets tossed out a week later (after it gets blue & fuzzy). No thanks, no help, no nothing.

One night a week, I scramble to get dinner ready in time for me to go to my Tuesday evening meeting. It�s usually a rush to get dinner on the table by 7. Always seems to be something more involved � chicken parm from scratch, a soup with 10 tons of prep chopping, or just something that takes a while to cook. I rush to get dinner in me, then scramble to clean up. Last week, I left clean up to Cindy while she bitched about having to do it. One fucking night.

The Tour de Cure. Her amount of sponsorship? 0. She even went so far as to make it difficult for me to get in training runs, bitching if I took a ride longer than 2 or 3 hours. Tough to train for a 6 � 7 hour ride when all you can get in is little trips. That� why I took vacation days to get in longer rides. Cindy didn�t mind if I took time from my paying job to train, but heaven forbid I go ride from 6 � 11 on a Saturday morning.

So yeah, I feel like I�m making efforts to allow Cindy to get to her meetings and get in exercise, but if I try and do the same all I get is grief. Or shit. Either way, it sux.

So tonight�s little talk will cover that. It�s going to run the risk of over running my meeting, but it� a sacrifice I need to be willing to make.

Last time I did one of these little �sharing my feeling� talks, it earned me three days of silence. Wonder whaat the big pay off will be this time.

In the good news department, we picked up Eric�s car at lunch time today. The dealership tried real hard to screw it up (more on that another time), but Eric is noww officially off my insurance policy. Got to call my agent.

Also need to call The Bob�s estate attorney. We�re going to arrange a little gifting. Basically split Bob�s estate in half. Half for him to live off of for the next 5 years, half to be split amongst his 2 children � to be used to send the grand kids to college (even though 3 of 5 have graduated). The quarter that goes to Cindy�s brother? Ostensibly to be used for his kids college. He has roughly 6 years to over. His split will do that and then some easily at a state school. Cindy�s quarter? Will pay off all the parent loans we took out. That alone will save us half a mortgage payment a month. The rest? CD�s, IRA�s, a pop-up camper.

But once the parent loans and a few other minor debts are gone? The potential for freedom grows exponentially. Scary, exciting, sad.

Sorry to whine. Had to unload.

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