HS, I don't think she has much of anything (in the present) to grip about so she has to do it about meaningless stuff. According to her the "real problem" would be that she doesn't want to be married. S13 told her again today that all she does is tell him what he does wrong and that all she does is criticize him. She has plenty of problems, I can't begin to figure them out and I can't fix them anyhow. And believe me I've tried
Today I got up, showered, dressed and started coffee for my wife and left for work. My wife and kids were all still sleeping, surprising to see my wife sleeping so late (about 9:30-10am at least) but she'd been up at 4am the day before and worked around the house a bunch (tho' she tried to act like she'd been napping all day). About noon I sent S13 a message to see if he was up yet. He said he'd just gotten up. I told him to wake up S15 and that they should come meet me at work and we'd go to lunch and go the fireworks store that has all the "good stuff." He said he'd go wake up S15. A few mins later I got a call from my wife saying she was on her 5 mile walk and had stopped 1/2 way at the golf course clubhouse and was going to have the boys meet her for lunch and I could just meet her and them there, then go get fireworks. I told her ok, I'd meet her at the golf course.
I finished up some work I was in the middle of and then told the last person the in office I was heading out to meet my wife and kids for lunch, that started a 15 min conversation about "how sad what I was going thru was..." This is a woman that is my wife's age and she wanted to tell me all about what she went thru during menopause and her first marriage of 17 yrs. I tried to listen and not put her off, but the conversation carried on and I was trying to be polite. Finally got out of the office, called my wife on the way to tell her to order for me, asked if the boys were there yet. She said the boys weren't there yet, she started to get irritated with "you haven't left the office yet..." I told her I got hung up at work, but I had left the office, would be there in 15-20mins and she could order for me. She said something about "being the story of her life...waiting for me..." I didn't get sucked into her spew, I've heard it before, she asked what I wanted, I told her just order me a hamburger and fries.
I got there in about 15mins, maybe 40mins since she'd called me about meeting her. S15 was sitting in front of the clubhouse in his truck with my wife talking to him thru the window. I parked, and he drove off, my wife said that S15 was depressed and didn't want to eat lunch, she'd talk him something. She hadn't order any food yet. We sat outside and watched the people on the driving range, waited for a bit to order, then quite awhile for our food. I said we could kit some golf balls while we waited, that I had my clubs in the truck. My wife said we could do that, after we eat. As the waiting for food drug on, my wife said I might as well go get my clubs, then she told the waitress she just wanted to leave, forget the food (ya, she is impatient, 'eh) but the waitress was bringing the food as my wife started to tell her. When I got back with my clubs we ate, then I paid for the food and asked how long it would take to get a hamburger to go for S15 after how long we'd waited for our food. Bought a large bucket of range balls and my wife, S13 and I all hit balls for a bit. My wife keep telling S13 "look at that one...check out that hit..." even tho' S13 was on one side and I was in the middle with my wife on the far side from S13. She didn't tell me to look at any of her hits, but I did compliment her a couple times when she had a good drive. My wife helped out S13 with how to hit a golf ball a bit, that was nice to see. We all had a good time, then I dropped my wife off at home and waited for S13 to take a shower.
Headed with S13 to the fireworks store, took an hour to drive there and back, plus the place was packed with people. Finally got back to work after a 3 hr lunch of eating, hitting golf balls and buying fireworks. Took S13 to work with me to save driving home and back which would prolong my extended lunch even more. I had bought a skybox with 8 seats for the baseball game tonight (Tuesday) and had S13 and S15 trying to drum up 4 friends to fill up the 8 seats. Since I had S13 with me, I called my wife and asked her to have S15 drive her and him to my work and we could all go together from there instead of me driving home and then back to get the game, plus it would let me catch up after being gone for 3 hrs for lunch. She said that was fine. Later I called to tell her that S15 and her needed to pick up S13's friend and bring him too.
About 15mins before S15 and my wife were supposed to be at my office S15 called and said that one of our dogs has something stuck in its eyes and the eye is swollen shut and they need to take him to the vet right away. The same thing happened to my beagle about a month or so I ago. I told S15 to take the dog to the vet by out house that I'd taken the last dog to. Next thing I know S15 walks into my office and my wife is out in the car and wants to talk to me. She has the dog, wants to take it to the vet. I make the decision that S15 can drive S13 and S13's friend to the baseball game which started in an hour and I'll drive the dog to vet with my wife. I print out directions to get to the ballpark for S15 and explain to him how to get there, give him 6 of the 8 tickets and tell him to go tell my wife to get in my truck and I'll take her to the vet.
I get the office shutdown, alarm set and climb in the truck, start driving to the vet back by our house. My wife says something about "she doesn't know why we both have to take him to the vet. I tell her I can take him and she can go with S15 to the game" she says no, it is fine. As I'm heading back towards our house, my wife asks where I'm going, why aren't I going to the vet downtown, I tell her that I'm going to the vet by our house, I thought they were going straight there, not sure why they came to my office. She lays out a line like "everything with you turns out like this...17 yrs of this crap" basically blaming me for the problems of not knowing if the vet by our house is open past 6pm, me not knowing the phone number to call them. I'm irritated by this comment, I flat out tell her that she doesn't have anymore answers than I do, that I don't need to be nothing but criticize for everything at the same time nothing I do right seems to matter. She says she doesn't need to hear about "how all she does is criticize me..." Then she says "we already know this marriage sucks, lets just call a truce and go to the vet and not fight about it. I ask her which vet she wants to go to, just tell me. She says she doesn't know the town, I do. I decided to go downtown to the critical care vet that did the surgery on my beagle when I ran her over last year. It is also close to the ballpark. I was fixated on going to the vet by our house and trying to figure out how to get there ASAP, didn't plan to go to the vet downtown since it is only open after 5pm and only deals with critical things during the day. I also didn't want to drive all the way there and back to take the dog home afterwards either. But it seemed like the best best, I know it'd be open, it was close to the ballpark and if we could bring the dog to the game with us we wouldn't have to even go back home to drop it off. I got on the freeway to go downtown and my wife asked where I was going, I told her, she said "I don't know why we just didn't go there from the start, the other vet probably closed early for the 4th of July holiday anyhow."
We get the vet, of course on the drive there I notice my wife has a most revealing top on with her new breasts sticking out, I make a point to ignore them and look at her as little as possible. For some reason I still get a sick to my stomach feeling over them, sucks to feel that way, but they seem to bring up all the crap she pulled back when she had the surgery, compounded by the fact that I can't see or touch them makes me not want to look at them. My problem no doubt, have to finish getting that stuff straight in my head somehow. We're at the vet for an hour, at one point since I'm standing up across the exam room and my wife is irritated that we might have to wait for a long time to get the dog treated, she says I "might as well sit down" even tho' she is sitting on the small sitting area with her feet up on the bench. I sit down and put her feet on my lap back across the bench like they'd been with my hand on her leg. Resisted rubbing my hand up and down her leg and the fact when I look over at her I could see practically down to her belly button with the top she had on.
Anyhow get the dog fixed, looks like it got in a fight with one of our cats and the cat scratched it's eye along with it's belly once or twice. We take the dog to the game, we get to the skybox and I look for the food that came with the deal I bought and find two plates with foil over them, take the foil off one and hand it to my wife, she says "I can get my own food", what a snotty remark, whatever, I just took the plate myself and added some other food to the plate and headed out to the seats ouside the skybox to watch the game. It was the 3rd inning by the time we got there, I sat next to my wife, arms touching quite a bit, just nice to feel her next to me after a month of not seeing her and zero physical contact since she showed up this time and very little last time. She held the dog on her lap almost the whole game until near the end when the dog wanted to crawl over on to my lap. I got slightly more comfortable seeing her breasts hanging out, still hurts in the pit of my stomach, but hopefully I'm slowing getting over all of it. Watched some nice fireworks after the game, plus our home team creamed the vistors. During the fireworks my wife covered the dog's ears, bascially holding my hand in the process for a bit, was nice. As we started to leave, I patted my wife on the leg and said, thanks for coming (I bought her the tickets for our anniversary) but didn't throw out the anniversary part. She didn't really say much back. Later as we walked for 5-10mins to the car, I asked her if she had a good time and she said ya. Drove home with the radio on, don't think we said much if anything to each other.
Came home, changed into my PJs, came out and my wife was laying in the master bed, waiting for me to change in the master bath so she could do the same no doubt, I told her I was going to bed and goodnight, she said goodnight.
Overall a good day, lots of quality positive time spent with my wife and kids. Our one bit of bickering was stopped by her, even tho' she had to throw out the "this marriage sucks" I guess it is positive that she mentioned "marriage" like there still is one. I didn't carry on about anything, stood up for myself a bit and think I got over the negative interaction fairly well instead of getting quiet and putting off "negative energy" around her like I would have in the past for awhile.
Tomorrow (4th of July) I told my wife my church is having a family picnic, if she and the kids want to go, I said I'd be going for a bit whether anyone else wanted to go or not, she said she'd think about it. My wife also mentioned wanting to go golfing after our time at the golf club today at lunch, plus wanting to go innertubing on the river. She says the kids never want to do anything, I told her to forget them then, we can go. So might have some other fun things to do with her Thursday/Friday. One other conversation we had was at the vet while waiting in the exam room. My wife has mentioned a couple times how she has to met with our ex-SIL on Thursday morning to co-sign for some loan he is getting to pay off his credit cards. His credit is screwed from all the crap surrounding his and our daughter's finances and divorce. My wife said she is done paying anything for our daughter and that I'd better not tell her that she is helping out D23's ex-husband or she'd have a fit. I said something to me wife about "protecting herself from ex-SIL not making the payments on the loan with her on it..." and got interrupted with "I've been trying to protect myself and all I get called is a selfish b1tch!!!" and some other ramblings. I just shut up and listened to her spew, while thinking "protect herself... from what?" Anyhow I finished my thought a little while later, told her that she was better off paying off his credit card and him making payments to her because the way he is doing it she'll have to worry every month for who knows how many years about whether he actually made the payment. She said "do I have $6000 to pay off the credit card" and I told her no, she said "neither do I" which is a fat lie, she doesn't have it in her "master plan" for hording money, but she has at least $60k in her saving account, most likely more. She also started ranting about never paying for anything for D23 again and how she only has 5 yrs until S13 is 18 and "then no more payments for him either..." She is so obsessed with money and not having to support anyone or pay for anything she doesn't want to pay for, she is so sick... She mentioned how all her brothers and sisters have a "problem child" and she named her sibling off and their problem kids. I asked if it was all the oldest kids and she said "yeah, almost all girls too." But she said she has "woke up" and she is done with her problem child, that she drove her crazy and she couldn't deal with D23's drama anymore. Oh, also I got a VM from D23 with a sad sounding message about wanting to know "what options she has for health insurance since the school wants $620 for health insurance and she didn't know if she had other, cheaper options...(hint, hint, dad)."
