Properlixity

This domain is up for renewal soon.  Fortunately, I have eked out the funds for it, so I can do it any time.  I really love the domain name.  Which there was always a slight danger of her remembering I had come up with as an idea and finding that way.  Laurie recently got curious as to what one could find about her online, having covered her own traces but realizing she was not alone in potentially leaving them.  She found my original blog that I’d revived and finally gotten bold enough to be somewhat frank on.  Between everything, I’ve largely run down my griping anyway.  I simply remain baffled at her behavior of our early time together that led to this, no matter how well explained by bipolar, no matter how differently I could have played it.  Speaking of which, she told me if it’s any consolation, 90% of marriages involving a bipolar fail if the condition is not known ahead of time.  I can see that.  Anyway, as far as I know, she did not find or has not been ratted to about the presence of this.  I have such a hard time lyng, when she asked if I’d ever setup something entirely apart from our existing sites where I could vent, I merely told her nothing anyone could identify with her.  And technically it’s not separate, but it is hosted where she should never have any business going even had I not changed the password long ago.  Which she only recently discovered when the password to the hosting she still shares with me became corrupted and she tried the others, making it appear I’d changed them all.  Oops.

Ramble much?

Despite the lack of links to it, this place has been live for most of a year and has started to get known to Google.  Since my key way to make money despite custody of the kids and lack of employment prospects beyond what I already do is through blogging and selling link “ads” on the sites, more that can support that sooner rather than later is good.  I finally started generating a tiny bit of revenue of my own unknown to her - a whole $14/mo - from one of them, which gives me hope.  But I can’t develop this domain and have admittedly toxic content just waiting to be found.  I’d considered taking it down, with or without letting the domain expire.  I’d considered new hosting or a direct replacement - say on wordpress.com - and otherwise the status quo, just even less obvious.  I mean, if you know how and actually want to, you can figure out the domain is hosted with my other stuff.

At the same time, I love the idea of an entirely new secret identity and a from scratch blog about anything, emphasis on personal, that people can actually link to, and if she sees it she might figure it out but won’t be any more upset by it than by what I’ve put where she could see it.  Which is actually a measure of how far she has come, since what she read there sort of mystified her but she shrugged it off without vocal animosity.

For all I am upset about what I see as having been had, and her early behavior that led me to let her go and provoked my behavior that made her want to go, we do have good relations, a more or less plan for splitting households, and so forth.  My father perhaps put it best, that I should be happy Dan is willing to take defective merchandise of my hands.  Or however he phrased it.  And that is so, at the same time I resent the aggressiveness with which he pursued her before we were done beyond all hope (no matter when she says all hope was lost for her, which is about a month before I could probably say the same for me, and in either case before they ever worked together), and the receptiveness she showed, protestations notwithstanding.  She basically found someone remarkably like me, if not as good looking (which is funny for me to say, considering my insecurity about my appearance), but firmer, and it appears perhaps like her in one of the bad ways (embellishing or downright making up things that never happened that way), and used to dealing with a crazy woman.  Or at least not scarred by it so much he refuses to play.  She found someone whose sentences or thoughts I can complete or state.  Sort of a one-off from me.  But oh man, they are young, and they sound so foolish.  In a way I don’t think we ever did.  I am not convinced it’s as ideal as she perceives.  But except for how it affects the kids, that’s her problem.

Wasn’t intending to let loose this much.  Just planned to hem and haw about taking this down, taking down the content and starting new content but being broader ranging and more public, and hoping nobody who matters ever uses the wayback machine in a way that makes them That Upset.  Meant it to serve as possibly the only warning there might be, before I backup the blog as it is and reboot it.  I expect to keep the alias, and not let it be known any more than it is who it really is.  And as soon as I have page rank and enough content, sign it up for links.  As if I don’t have enough other content building to do.  That needs to be what I do in the next several months, though.  Rebuild the passive income that already exists, which her name or not goes to this household, and add more.

We’ll see exactly, but probably all that has ben here will disappear and be rebooted.

Need to figure out what I AM doing with this place.

It is suddenly looking probable that her schedule madness will cost my job, not just 2-3 hrs pay a week.

It’s funny how tapped out of rage and whatever other set of emotions to spew here I have become, combined with my being (overly) expressive in a closed environment elsewhere.  Perhaps this should go to the plan of being an “anything goes, anonymously” blog that just happens to include mention sometimes of guilty parties.  I certainly have ramped up in the opinions department directed outside of my own drama.  Mmmm… Mmmm… Mmmm… From such thoughts fall mighty potential oaks.

The most immediate precipitating events have been an external nudge - one of many like it, in which I found myself wondering if I should blog under the alias Matt using a foreign word for Door as a surname, and fallout from the fact that between us we just plain make enough money to raise havoc with public assistance we’ve gotten during the past year or so.  While I’ve never stopped being uncomfortable with it, all while being harangued about being a loser and, well, at least part of it not being necessary in her eyes… before she was diagnosed, anyway - the change is remarkable, a shame that however she overdramatizes it there may be nothing to speak of for mental health coverage for her for at least a year, she in part for that reason has come to worship at the altar of it.  My discomfort combined with her jabbing combined with we were doing pretty well at the time combined with she still never lets me have time to do anything like that freely and I don’t ask made me late reapplying, which raised havoc above and beyond the income thing.  Which would always have been a factor.

It was my reaction to one of the “you were late, nyah nyah” mailings about benefits  that led me to a breakthrough leading up to and at my last counseling appointment.  And I mean last, unless I get coverage or pay cash to go talk to her now and then, which had I the cash I would consider worth doing as one-offs, but not biweekly.  I believe I posted about that, at least as a before the fact thing: Fear of her.  Which the counselor says I mean to phrase as intimidation.  Which it is, but there is fear.  Primal, gut wrenching, sparked my tiny bit of PTSD fear.  The PTSD being associated with my brother, triggered by his evil late ex playing him exquisitely - something my niece was pleased to know someone else had seen and believed - and applying drink to get him to kick in my door when I lived at his house and wake me with a punch to the face and a black eye.  As I’d discussed long ago with the counselor, Laurie’s times when she burst into my room to yammer at me, pointedly waking or keeping me from sleeping at all, hit too close to home, so I fear her in that way, physical or not, bipolar being treated and her having been downright human to me much of the time for several weeks or not.  In fact, I’ve been getting a glampse of what I saw in her and it helped me work all this out.  Heh.  I’ll miss her counselor, who seems to have been a big advocate for me.  She keeps marveling at why I let her spend so much time with Dan, why I don’t grab time myself, and that’s another of those “look fat?” unanswerables.  If I tell her I perceive it as I had no choice, she’ll claim I am absurd and go off on me, acting scary.  If I say no she’ll use one of the tools to make me regret it or “allow” it anyway.  Some of those tools in recent days confirmed my latest insight and that she’s aware what she’s playing, at least at some level.

Anyway, the same fear is related to my fear of crushes.  The more I like them, the more terrified.  The same fear seems to be related to my reaction to some bosses.  What had me thinking was, well, why not all bosses?  Why not all people who might be dominant types, intimidating to me?  I may have mentioned my discussion of DISC personality types with the counselor.  I seem to be S, and indeed tested online at a free “SCID” test (because who would dare steal “DISC” from those who charge big bucks for it) to exactly where I’d pegged myself.  Not sure how much is selection bias, but I suspect not enough.  I came out SCID.  The negative word for the S type is Sucker.  The prime positive/name of it is Supportive.  We think Laurie is a D, which is the smallest percent of people and hardest child to raise, which sounds like her.  That’s Dominant.  I tested as if I were her and answering honestly and got DCIS.  Our middles overlap.  The paperwork the counselor copied for me, seminar notes, placed D and S as a bad pairing.  And my S was huge, while my D was tiny.

I actually told her about an incident in 1st grade that I never told anyone except a single friend about, in the course of trying to puzzle out where I got the apparent fear of dominant people, emphasis on females.  My grandmother who lived in same house?  My mother, sister, aunts, other grandmother?  Teachers?  Girls who were peers?  Cousins?  I can’t pinpoint exactly, but I am sure it was early, and I am sure it was largely but not exclusively in the family.  The incident with the teacher, who not inappropriately yelled at me and smacked me on the hand publicly for something stupidly innocent I did while spacing out and questioning in my mind whether reality around me existed as I perceived it right then.  It was a weird state to be in, and while not common, hardly unvisited over the years since.  That became the overwhelming thing for which I remember my otherwise beloved and very special 1st grade teacher.  I realized recently it probably explains why I couldn’t bring myself to go visit her when I finished high school, as she’d wanted.

On a total side note, Sarah is fascinated by the idea of roller skating, which I’ve suggested she might be able to do with her grandfather, who was very into that.  When it came up yesterday, I recalled to Laurie the first time I went roller skating, but what I remembered about it was that I didn’t instantly get on my feet, stay upright and glide around effortlessly, and therefore I was hopeless.  I wasn’t perfect out of the box.  Despite getting competent pretty fast, and absolutely loving the sensation of rolling rather than walking on my feet.  Which then made me think of my father buying me a first bike that was too big for me to ride readily, too big for training wheels, and managing to set me up for failure.  After a year, I learned and I loved it and I was determined to be the Best Bike Rider Ever, or something like that.  I was always irate that in the meantime my sister rode the bike into the ground.

Worse, I was closer to Sarah than to normal.  She’ll cry if she does something imperfectly and you notice.  Or get angry at you.  Which was her mother’s issue as a child, before she was even old enough for it to be anything but innate.

In the case of managers, or colleagues, there seems to be a range.  I have to take you seriously and respect you before I really fear or am intimidated by you.  Some who are just not competent or otherwise have no respect from me can be furies and it largely flows right past me.  Maybe knowledge they have power over me gives a little concern, but there seems to be a correlation, close enough.  If I don’t like you, I am less likely to be afraid.  You don’t rate.  The whole disproportionate response for me seems to be tied to how I feel about people.

It also, on reflection, seems to be influenced by my perception of rationality and predictability.  I seem to need stability in my people.  Someone can tend to yell, be brusque, bossy, loud, demanding… but if they are Just That Way and can be worked with rationally, or are explicable to me, whatever.  If someone seems impossible to please, prone to unpredictable behavior, or has irrational spots that mar the competence, it hits me.  If there’s not competence and the irrational person is a joke, then it’s not fear so much as - I want to say loathing just to complete the logical word association, but that’s not quite right.  Or maybe it is.  It puts me in condescension mode, even if purely internal.

Then of course the other factor is amount of power over me, amount you can ruin my life.  Clearly a higher authority is scarier.  If you have a client and deal with a manager who is pretty level and competent, she’s less scary than the owner who has the ultimate power, is more enigmatic, and is known as fantastic at his craft but would be hopeless on the business side without the manager, but who is still ultimately involved.

So.  Laurie is dominant.  Inexorable.  Respected by me.  Beyond unpredictable and, hello, now we know all this time she was at least some of the time in bouts of crazy.  She has great power over my life.  For almost 2 years she’s threatened to leave, take the kids and move across the country, leave and stick me with the kids, kill herself, throw me out, and I will for at least another 16 years have no choice but to deal with her to some degree, whoever has the kids primarily.  She’s intense.  She’s so “don’t fuck with me” intense that I almost hung up the phone without saying anything based on her tone when she answered it the first time I called.  She made the decisions from day one, including the notion that this was definitely love and her rejection of the idea of marriage for her be damned, we’d get married.

And I love her.

That is part of the problem I had completely overlooked.  I’d talked myself into believing I’d fallen way out of love, maybe was never in it, just as she claims I wasn’t.

It’s been her reformed and mostly pleasant behavior that brought  that home.  It’s been the times when it’s seemed like what the hell are we thinking, and the times we’ve come way to close to a spontaneous hug.  The fear just didn’t fit until I reluctantly realized that’s in the mix.  It’s not even so much a root of the fear as it is a root reason why anything she says goes.  I do and do  for her.  I still cater to her in a lot of ways.  I miss that I can’t discuss this with the counselor, but she probably could have told me this was the case and would be as pleased I realized it as she was that I decided beyond any doubt that I would never take her back, period.  And that was something that made me say WTF to myself, why act so nice.

Yet I do hate her on some level and don’t want to be nice!  That’s where passive aggressive behavior comes from for sure.

It’s funny.  It’s almost as if she’s such a force that she needs both me and Dan.  She’s been obsessed and angsting over the benefits stuff, but until that, and in snippets still, I’m the other one she talk talk talks to about work and the kids and the treatment and stuff she reads or watches or thinks.  It sometimes bugs me we’re that close and friendly, given everything and the fact I need her to fit into the “damn ex” box.  (Not to be confused with the damn Xbox.)

There was a time five weeks ago when she got a sudden promotion and schedule change that conflicted with my piddly shift at the job I inexplicably love, and that makes me feel good about myself and features managers I respect and don’t especially fear or find hard to talk to.  (Part of that is age and maturity and an outlook similar to theirs, part of it’s the straightforward nature of the task, part of it’s my competence that I have no doubts about internally.)  I would normally be there almost an hour longer on the 4 days a week affected.  I was sure I would have to quit or be fired for not fulfilling the availability requirement, and they never did officially sanction it, but they have allowed me to leave early and arranged things around me.  They like me.  They really really like me.  At the time I was anticipating the possible promotion, not realizing it’d be so immediate that she’d not get the matching raise for a month and have less money because she’s covering my shortfall, I considered the option of moving out as my response, rather than lose the job that is my reality anchor.  That I didn’t lose it has, I think, made me more fearless and more open with people there, like a near death experience.

I’d had it figured that I could keep the part time job as a base.  In my other time, freed from babysitting duty, I could job hunt, build web sites and develop them toward a revenue stream in my own name, be able to accept freelance work and seek it more actively, and maybe take a second or third “lowly” job of some kind.  Basically have a life again.  How funny is it that I so measure my worth by my employment (which is bad, considering what my employment has been!) and yet ended up being SAHD?

Anyway, after the 5 and maybe part of a 6th week, the idea was she would have a schedule that would start 1 hour later or 3 hours later and possibly be off entirely one of my work days.  Starting an hour later technically violates my availability requirement, but it’s more along the lines of requests they normally get and live with.  Well, no.  They don’t normally live with them.  They’ve made a big exception for me, partly due to the work I primarily do.  And the fact I can do a variety of tasks to fill in for people.  They’ve ditched people who’ve had to leave every day almost an hour later than me.  It turns out they’re stuck with a computerized scheduling system and rotations and earlier starts than expected.  Some days will be the same or just half an hour later.  Some will be an hour later, and some 3 hours later.  Sometimes there will be a Sunday shifts, sometimes not.  And this week coming up they have decided to ignore the schedule and have everyone come in the early time and stay as late as needed.  Now I am going to have to jerk work around with a some days super early, some days early, some days fine, and hey it’ll change!  I’ll have to get a schedule from her in order to know.

That has me wondering, will they really put up with it?  Probably, but I am not happy.

Meanwhile, she’s hot to have one of us move again.  To help qualify for benefits and because she’s sick of me.  Her notion of having me go is that I would come here each day and babysit as if nothing had changed!  Except… no.

When I thought of moving as her promotion was pending, I realized I needed time to prepare, really, if I wanted to move my stuff really.  If you thought you might move, you’d shed anything extraneous, de-packrat, organize and segregate your things, make it easy to pack and go.  Then I realized that’s exactly the description of what she’s been doing for months.  While burying my room in so much stuff I may never get to the bottom of it.  Which scared me, because I’d rather be the one to “shake things up” by leaving.  I hate this place and want to move.  Even if I have the kids and she’s gone, I want to move.  She likes it far better than I do.

People have wondered about leaving her the kids when she has trouble sometimes having them for an hour without “backup.”  In which backup means I deal while she closes her door and hangs out in peace.  Yeah, I worry too.  Part of it is she’s just so unused to it and feels incompetent to take care of them and respond to what they want or need.  Part of it is the ever present part of her that never wanted to have kids.

Worst case, she’ll adapt enough and I’ll lose the chance for custody if only out of spite or precedent.  But it may be worth it for her to prove to herself she doesn’t want them, not full time, once and for all.  I’m also not sure it’d be a bad thing to make the kids less absurdly daddy-centric.  That’s partly her doing from the outset.  There is nothing, nothing that I could be doing that is too important to come change this diaper.  Or whatever.  Paying work.  Job hunting.  Trying to leave for somewhere.  Cooking.  She’s always miffed if I’m truly occupied in a way that leaves her stuck with parent duty.  She could use a break from the break.  I could use a break from the abuse, and won’t get it otherwise.  Even if I did come here to babysit during her work hours, that would be a reduction for me.  She’d have to remember that she has kids at 3 AM too.  Not just at 5 PM mommy’s home! Hi kids! Now out of my room! time.

Where was I?  Contemplating the moving thing again, after her declaring one of us needs to go, and sounding too suspiciously like she might do it.  Though she’s gonna get benefits better if she stays along with the kids and I don’t have a place here.  I dunno.  The logistics are hard.  I’d prefer to stay local and keep the job I have now at least until I have something solid full time landed.  One seems to have gotten away that came up last week.  Would have paid enough to cover babysitting and left me approximately as well off as she is.  Either we could have done well continuing to share the place, or she could have left and maybe contributed the online income or official support to the cause to make it fly.  Because 50k less babysitting is not enough to support me and the kids on here.  It is tempting, the idea of moving or crashing temporarily out of the state, but unless I moved to a job or promptly went and got something anything I’d be really screwed.

Rooms seem to run just under what I earn part time.  Which is funny, since it’s not that much more for some of the local apartments, plus utilities.  Logistics of my STUFF are kind of tough, there’s gonna be so much even if I purge some first and leave huge amounts behind.  She’s excited by the idea of moving and starting from scratch getting furniture and household stuff that is hers.  Which is funny, because I am too, and figured most of that kind of stuff was a sacrifice to the cause of wherever the kids are and learning my lesson.

Speaking of, I seriously can’t imagine ever letting myself get sucked in like this again.  Something I was looking at the other day, where I noted a picture of my brother’s kids when they were young made me think of our kids who would arrive - before we met in person, made her say she should have noticed stuff like that seemed creepy at the time.  I laughed and told her I’d been thinking similarly, but didn’t elaborate.  I shudder, looking at the steady stream of cards and notes she mailed, sounding so contrivedly mushy.  It feels now like fishing tackle, reeling me in.

I keep diverting.

I agree with her that a total change of paradigm would be good.  I specialize in letting myself get to the breaking point, then doing just that.  Well, sometimes abruptly, other times planned and only seeming abruptly to other people.  Like the time I took a semester off from college and drove 1575 miles to stay with a friend for what turns out only to be 6 weeks, working a job in another state during that time.  It was a total shock to my father and stepmother.  She’d forbidden me, age 25 (the counselor was astonished when I told her about this), to help my friend move, driving there with him and taking a $99 flight home.  Driving there months later was my reaction.

People are used to stability from me.  Steady.  Predictable, if odd.  Always there to boss around or take advantage of.  But push me and that might not remain the case.

On that note, really have to get to bed.  I wasn’t allowed to nap in the morning.  Heh.  She was horrified I would consider doing such a thing while I was responsible for the kids.  Wasn’t sleepy by then anyway, but needed rest, which ended up bing in my chair, reading, since laying down and reading was too much like a nap.  It’s now 3 hours later than when I could have gone to sleep, and about 7 hours from when I can expect kids to wake me.

I finally seem to have accumulated more to say, which means it’s time for a post or three. When I can fit them in, anyway.

I came to a rather sudden and clear understanding about myself, and Laurie, and other people over time, and maybe even developed some idea how it came to be. Keyword is fear.

Peripherally related, going into the welfare office (same dif - it’s where both cash assistance and food stamps are processed), just to drop off a printout, reminded me such places have such a psychically poisonous atmosphere - which was how the unemployment office once was as well - that it made me want to drop everything and make money, lots of money, even barely enough money, some way, any way, right away, and at the same time find some way not to have to deal with public daycare assistance either. She keeps talking about Head Start, at least to give me some “me time,” which her counselor seems to have beaten into her that I should be, should have been, allowed to have.

Speaking of advice, my doctor is the first person to opine, based on the clear expression of my leaving as an option, that I should keep doing what I am doing for the sake of the kids. Not because I feel bad about ruining her career, or that kind of thing.

It certainly gives me pause, every time I see how completely lost, at best, she is when trying to handle the kids. It’s pathetic. When they are on somewhere between normal and good behavior all day and she thinks they’re being insufferable, that’s not a good sign.

One thing that’s been developing, mentioned pretty much as soon as I realized it and related nuclear options for dramatic change of circumstances might exist, is the possibility of her moving in with Dan, whose mother is in the mental hospital again. And who is applying for a real management job. Speaking of, have I even written about her promotion, her work schedule, my ending up apparently not losing my job, just 3-4 hours a week for several weeks and with possible… scheduling touchiness subsequently? Must have.

Way more than I’d meant to jot. Might as well have done one full post in more detail on a topic, but oh well. Need to work on touchy stomach, settling kids toward bedtime, tidying kitchen, etc.

Out of work. As suspected, where she’s in a special situation until the store reopens, everyone has to work the same hours, no exceptions.

At least the other night when she peered out the window there was a reason. Dan was due to show, well, before then, so she’d have been looking for him. We just missed running into each other in the yard, by the sound of it.

She has more plotting going on behind my scenes than I might have expected of her, and that maybe a lot of the pleasant exterior - which it is much of the time, notwithstanding the absurd or crazy bouts - are more veneer than my gullible nature wants to perceive.

Not that I’m not guilty of that, in that I post about her behind the scenes (and am still not convinced she isn’t fully aware - or able to guess - or seeing/being relayed all or parts of that while somehow able not to let on), but this is the difference between my just lately starting to plot to leave if I think I must, and her having made plans to leave and “started” plotting a break in 2007.

Or perhaps it’s just her feelings are more strongly negative in spots than I usually see. Not sure if I mentioned several weeks ago seeing her look out her window from her chair as I was leaving for work, shocking me with probably the most bone chilling look of pure hatred that I have ever seen. Maybe not helped be being before her breakdown, but I’ve never seen anything like it. I was reminded of it last night by her peering out the window, pulling back the sheet that acts as a curtain, when I was getting in the truck, then again to watch me back out and pull away. Not the same evil eye, but not exactly happy. And apparently wide awake at her computer at 3:20 AM. And having left the door to the apartment unlocked, which made no sense as she’d not have been doing laundry and Dan has a key.

Anyway, she got her promotion, abruptly, and starts Monday at 7 AM. I will not know until sometime Monday whether she will be able to get an 8 - 5 rather than 7 - 4 starting Tuesday.

Turns out even if she gets 8:00, I had forgotten than my hours officially are until 8:00 if they need me. So the deal is that if I ever have to leave before the work is done - which it usually is before I’d have to go, but not always - I get written up. Two of those and you’re out. Actually, I believe that’s two in a month’s time. As always, depending how badly they want to bother.

So I may still have to decide whether the job goes or whether I show her what ruining her life actually looks like by fleeing, or may have to try to be all contingent with if work can warn me and I can warn her and we can warn the person who can babysit for minutes to an hour, so if there’s a seriously late day it can be handled. We’ll see.

If they tell her no, despite her being happy to do it if they’ll let her, and despite having a precedent example in her first boss there, then it’s probably gotta be the convoluted babysitting thing (for which I just had an alternate idea) for now.

My stepmother made a good point a few days ago, encouraging me simply to move out and move on and stop messing around: “She’s not stupid.” Which goes back to the theme of this… wondering what’s really going on in that head and what she’s up to that I’ll regret still further.

And in reapplying for food stamps, it appears that we may actually be over the threshhold between qualifies and gets a surprising amount and just plain doesn’t qualify. Which is funny, because my getting the job and making about the same additional last time reduced us almost nothing.

Since I have a matter of about $20 to spend a week and I have no control over what gets bought if I don’t do it, that makes it interesting…

It helps not to outright make things up when doing the woe is mr routine. Why do I not walk out again?

• Laurie’s promotion is looking pretty probable.
• Drop-off babysitting with family seems to be an option if that happens. Problem is it would involve her having to get kids up, pack them in family car, drive them most of way to my work, drop them, drive car rest of way to my work, park it and get her car, drive what will then be double the distance to her work. That’d be needed 4 mornings a week. It would need to be not much after 6:30 when she’s leaving from where I work. And some days I could be out that early! Or not much later. Current volume, schedule, and management of logistics has been getting me out right about 7 even starting at 3:30 (no more almost 4 hour days on average I guess, more like 3.5).
• I am hoping that either the schedule will be 8 - 5 officially, rather than 7 - 4, or that she can and will, once they clearly want her, say “here’s my situation…” and ask for 8 - 5 the affected days. Again, since I seem to be getting out at the time I’d have to tell them I must leave by, it’d seldom be a problem and oh well.
• Big question will become what of appointments. She will work weekdays and I will either need babysitting or evening appointments for anything.
• Not sure if I mentioned here or to someone in person that her oft floated idea of my doing a night shift (or her but same would apply even though she is not the babysitter by default) would mean she works during the day, comes home and expects the evening - and a couple of them would be evenings out on his days off -and to sleep the night, maybe resenting having to be the woken up parent if a problem, which she is now only during the part of night I am working, and which almost never happens. For me it would mean I would work overnight and get home in time for her to go to work, as kids get up. Then I would sleep during the day. Er, I would take care of the kids. Sleep. Kids. Sleep. Kids… And in the evening, well, I would taje care of the kids and probably need to have made supper. If I slept evenings it would “ruin” her daye nights and be a burden to her and I would have ruined her life. And my day would be completely sucked away by sleep and attempts to sleep interrupted by kids. I would probably not be able to get an overnight job for “real money.” Maybe not even for what I make now per hour.
• Counselor this week was really struck by how completely me-centric she is, with basically no consideration for anything but what she wants. She knew that already, but the story of my 55 minutes late getting home after last appointment and Laurie’s freakout, then other stuff including her pushy neediness to Dan, just floored her. It’s a prime component of what I mean when I pin her behavior on just plain being young. Except… she’s not that young anymore. Was just thinking on my way home this morning that she’s improved under treatment, but part of her behavior is just inherent.
• Counselor doesn’t think I should blame myself as much as I do, passive-aggressive behavor and malicious compliance I self-diagnosed notwithstanding. I am tasked with thinking of how I could have handled things differently, which I’ve done to death already, with an eye toward how to do better in the future.
• My finger still has the indentation from the ring after 6-odd months not wearing it. Amazing.
• The counselor thought she ought to simply ask them for 8 - 5 and boom, we’re all set.
• Crying kid, gotta go!

Last time I had counseling appointment ran to store after and she freaked so I sit fearing to go pick up butter on way home.

Naturally I will milk prospect of my job promoting and depending on me for guilt purposes, even if it changes nothing.

Obviously the whole getting discouraged and ditching him is a process. After being so angry and dismayed, last night she came home, then met him back at the store to help him pick a Blu-Ray thingie. Which he wants for hsi OMG TV even though Blu-Ray is from what I gather dying already. We don’t sacrifice sleep that way when we are that serious about our dismay. Or maybe we do, and I am not in the spirit of things.

Right now she is at an interview - which she knew she had when she failed to sleep last night (why should I have sympathy again?) - for the department manager job that could Change Everything per the prior post.

Here’s the deal with the quickly mentioned work thing.

Out of the blue her having held herself forth as a prospective department manager and having gained some relevant experience will likely pay off. The local store that’s been closed for remodel and is similarly near to us has department manager openings, and her manager above department level, who rocks, introduced her to the manager there when he was asking about people. Since she has had experience in pharmacy and one of them is pharmacy, it’s a great fit.

Financially it’s a wash. Gain a buck an hour. Lose the exact same in OT pay for working Sundays. It gets her out of the same store as Dan and eliminates any possible trouble the relationship might ultimately cause work-wise. If she’s thinking to that degree, ditto for not being in the same store if they split, which is gaining juggernaut-like probability.

She thinks that pharmacy will be 8 - 5, not 7 - 4, but if she gets one that is 7 - 4, that means I cannot work my current job that’s at the only time she’d allowed for me. I’ll get back to that.

The job would actually leave her far less able to see Dan, since it’d be insane to have him come here after work. She’d be getting out when he goes in, and to different stores. Days off? Well, she’d have evenings off, so his days off would be two evenings they could see each other, subject to his mother.

The same mother who called him just before 4 AM when he was here in her room and they were discussing how they’d have a relationship with his mother as a factor. She was paranoid someone was in the house or some such, and his brother, who plans to move out and ditch her to him ASAP, was refusing to respond to her at his door even though he was home and Dan was not, and could in fact have as easily still been at work.

In short, she’s a low priority and he’s making decisions that keep her increasingly so, but she’s the best lay he’s had, so why not try to keep her if he can, but it seems to me that’s what he is there for, even if it wasn’t always so. She’s so pushy and needy that if anything it has to have encouraged his behavior. It’s like watching her with me, but sped up and no kids or legal entanglements, and a guy who reacts more assertively. To her, but not to his mother or family. Oddly, I might be more assertive to the family if that were me, though that does tend to manifest as an all or nothing abruptness that surprises people.

Like… faced with a last straw of having to quit a job I like that is a good basis for bootstrapping myself if she is out of my way, it would be pure, classic me to walk. Leave here, not the job, reclaim my life, put plans I can’t pursue because of her into action. And fuck her for being snide about not believing I’ll actually do things I have in mind that are impossible because of her.

But… the kids!

And for all I am angry, she needs the work and the moving ahead to be less crazy. It’s what I missed, early as 2004… Making her go have a part time job, something, would have helped. I could have told the clients that during X days and hours I simply wasn’t available for emergencies or staying extended hours on-site sorry. That throws her into welfare or something, and takes me out of the hands-down presumptive custodial role.

So then what? Anything else I might find is going to conflict or be absurd. The pay is actually good enough that I might need as much as 1.4 hours at whatever to replace an hour there.

Or, as she has mentioned possibly doing, she leaves. And that’d be funny, eh, if she left in response to my deciding to leave? She seems to be picturing renting a room somewhere and leaving us to welfare.

For the first time since I left my last Real Job in 1999, I have a good idea what I want to do, economy permitting, and I’d come up with a plan (only viable if kid-free) for economy not permitting or intentionally going/remaining relatively “Galt.” I just have to be able to take what’s in my head and work through it… after everything else that she’s prioritized first on my plate, or by walking.

A conundrum. She’s right things will and must change, but her pushy and odd ideas of it are at odds with my reality. Nothing will change that all my time is hers. Nothing will change that I am back to not even getting a few hours to go to a movie. I can’t even go shopping for groceries unless I take the kids, because she won’t take charge of the kids that long. Heh. Week before last on Wednesday we had a great discussion of custody and I happily told the counselor about it Thursday. Then I got home 55 minutes late from counseling by making stops for diagnostic check of her vehicle, gas I was under no obligation to buy for her vehicle, and a few groceries centering on making sure there was bread for her lunches. She called twice, frantic, unable to handle the kids. And had forgtten that on most Thursdays I have that appointment and having freaked inherently by my being out at all when she got up.

Oh well. Bed, before she gets home any second.

Was just telling my mom big decision ahead if Laurie gets income neutral promotion starting too early for me to keep my job.

She’s a few weeks from breaking up with him over his crazy mother being #1 priority to her #3 or 4.

Maybe will post if wake in wee hours. Various news and thoughts, one is think he is stringing her along now.

Just wow.

This is a great article. I can see it being the right approach more often than happens. Trouble is, Laurie would probably say the husband sounds like me, and I’d say the husband sounds like her. I think we’d be right. Then what?

The loss of confidence. The moping. Yup. But… what if the wife is the single biggest trigger of that? For all she tells me I have a family full of negative people who make me feel lousy about myself, she’s been Pessimus Prime and it shows.

The just wanting to give up and leave when even she has doubts that’s the best thing. Yup. Except for her it went hand in hand with a build of confidence and a crescendo of knocking me down. It’s as if we’re one… one… one spouse in two (but no Retsyn).

Argh. Kids. And Wikipedia. If there was more, can’t remember don’t have time.

If you leave your clean laundry sitting in the living room instead of putting it in the bedroom you close and lock, the kid will strew it around the floor. Not entirely his fault you want to kill him. Not the fault of your ex who washed and folded and neatly stacked the stuff you proceded to leave there to create a failure condition.

I should take notes so I can tell the counselor next time, after discussing the self-sabotage habit Laurie has with the counselor this very morning.

There’s more, but someone pooped…

Laurie has a longstanding tendency to sabotage herself. She assumes bad will happen and makes it so. In reading about self sabotaging behavior, it seems the common thing the term refers to is stuff like always being late, unprepared, unaware, etc. Ouch in my direction sometimes.

What I mean, though, is knowingly leaving expensive glasses on a low surface, knowingly leaving open a door you’d ordinarily close, being out of sight of them for a period of time, when having them ruined is predictable and when it’s a disaster.

What I mean is knowing how to get the tub faucet to stop dripping in a way that creates runoff onto the floor, in fact having been the one to diagnose the problem and solution even though I then perfected it, and having started leaving it dribbling every day so that if uncaught by me for long enough it will leak through the neighbor’s ceiling.

What I mean is having the notion that marriage can’t last for you, and making it happen.

What I mean is being tempestuous, pushing pushing to try to kill a seemingly ideal relationship, because these things can’t work and you will always be left.

Parts of this can be signs of borderline personality disorder, which can also be marked by self-harm like cutting your wrists, manic-like behavior such as spending too much, and so forth. Heck, spending too much is a self-sabotaging mechanism.

I’ve been told I have a family of Eeyores who sap my will by being so negative, and there’s a degree of truth to that. What’s funny is that she could be describing herself.

Anyway, what prompted the post was the followup to the ruined glasses (and oh, to me they don’t look beyond repair or beyond ability to reuse the lenses, but she won’t even consider and I dare not suggest it), finding the bathroom floor soaked. I’ve been excoriated by her in the past for doing the same a couple time, or failing to notice when she did it, which is you know the same as if I’d done it myself so doesn’t matter it was her.

I’ve noticed the gloom and sabotage almost since we first met, just as I noticed her looseness with detail. Yeah, no dishes had been washed in four days so we had no clean spoons. Except… it had barely been two, we’d not used enough dishes to run the dishwasher, but we’d used a ton of spoons. Duh, it happens. Or she went to bed at midnight, having gotten home at 11:30, but she spent an hour filling and running the dishwasher (this was last week) and silly me for not noticing in the wee hours when I stumbled out the door. (Actually good-natured about it, just surprised.) I hate the level of hyperbole. It seems to go along with the all good or all bad thing.

Leaving glasses where 2 yo can destroy them is pretty stupid but at least she said as much herself.

Former partner & friend who became lawyer lately tells me don’t mention ex & divorce on Facebook. Argh! Peeps said same re twitter.

Woman downstairs told Laurie she saw her kissing a strange man, so she explained in brief. As if they hadn’t already figured it out!

She is all but giving him ultimatum anyway because he is taking all the responsibility for his mother, besides too friendly other girls.

She spent last few weeks helping clean his house so mom could come home. He now teases about his being cleaner but that reflects on me.

Need to update soon before I forget it all. Latest is I am insulted by her idea to have him come over Tues to help her clean…

Dan’s mother is home and while Laurie can go watch a movie or such there we are back to nocturnal emission visits by him.

It really irks me that our doctor questions her bipolar diagnosis. Life a mess cuz she is or vice-versa? No contest!