Please help...need MLC advice

[tpaschal]

Thanks Pam and Sandy and Bomb (and anyone else I may have missed) for your words of support and advice. Sorry I didn't reply. I actually did write out a long reply (that addressed a lot of points Pam brought up---thank you Pam) last Thurs. evening before I left town, but my computer froze and I didn't have a chance to reconstruct the post.

So, I did bust my butt to get the house looking more like I wanted it, in some part so I wouldn't have to hear sh** from H, but also so I could be proud for my own sake, and did tell H he could stay here at the house with the kids.

I sent him a very cheery email saying that I was excited to be off on my trip but would miss the kids. Gave him an outline of the kids' schedules for the weekend, and wished him and the kids a good time.

There was some minor drama with the computer, though, and I'm not sure he ever saw the email!

I packed up a big box with my files and things that I didn't want H to have access to and took it to my girlfriend's house on the way to the airport Friday afternoon. But I hadn't had time to disable the desktop computer! (Which is having major problems---it keeps freezing up. The friend who built it for us 3 yrs ago has offered to rebuild it for me at no cost, but he's been busy with work and we just haven't connected on it to get it done yet. H knows all of this.)

So I gave my friend my house key to go pick up the computer. She went straight over to the house, and H was already there, much earlier than he had indicated to me he would be! She went to the door anyway, was very cheery and nice and told him she was there to take the computer to be repaired. (the computer guy is a mutual friend.) H gave it to her with no questions asked, thanks be.

I think things went okay for the kids overall, but my in-laws were around for a lot of the time and helped out quite a bit---they keep saying he needs to sink or swim on his own, but then they feel bad for the kids and don't want them to miss out on things that they know H will just ignore and not take them to or do with them. So they step in.

MIL told me that S9 stuck to H like glue, and D5 was fussy and whiny but fine overall. D14 told me it was the worst 3 days of her life. (Of course, she is a teenage hormone bomb prone to melodrama, so I do take what she says with more than one grain of salt.) I do think it was very tense between the two of them.

I had fun on my weekend away with friends, but it was hard in parts, too. Many of the friends there were couple friends, so it was sometimes very sad to me to be there on my own. I know they love me for ME, and not just as part of a couple, but I miss being part of a couple. I miss HIM.

I did get grief from my MIL when I returned.

On Thurs. night before I left S9 had soccer practice and got his practice shirt muddy, then had a nosebleed in the middle of the night, and D5 wet her bed (which is VERY unusual, but maybe the stress of me leaving town?) I stripped both beds and put on new sheets, but didn't get to all the laundry that day. I hadn't packed at all due to trying to get the house in shape, so had to do that on Friday, plus still had to do my regular morning and afternoon carpools, plus D5 had a program at school on Friday that I attended.

So since H didn't get email due to showing up at the house early and having no computer there, he had no idea where the soccer shirt was for Friday night's practice and dug through the dirty laundry, rolling his eyes at the unwashed sheets. D14 told me later that MIL had the nerve to tell D14 that nothing had changed, and why should Daddy want to come back to that? WTF? I later told MIL point blank that I appreciate her help but to not to ever say anything like that to D14 ever again. (Don't hold out much hope of her actually following that rule, though.)

Ugh!

MIL did also tell me that she and H had some words. She told him how embarrassed she and his dad are at his behavior and who he's hanging out with now, and put down the OW. She told him that she'd had plenty of experience fighting off "those types" of women (my FIL is Greek and had serial affairs, but his family was always his priority and never left his kids, though of course all the OW's pushed for it). I've told her before I don't think that helps, especially because H already KNOWS all of that (H always told me that he would never cheat or leave his family because of how much his dad's behavior hurt him and the whole family) but she says coming from her it's different than if it was coming from me. I can't control her, any more than I can control H, so I just have to turn it over to God.

I got home Monday evening and saw that he did do some repairs around the house while he was here, and I did thank him very nicely for that when he came to pick up the kids for school Tues. morn.

So...no negative fall-out (so far) from letting him stay here with the kids, but we do go to court this Wed., so guess I'll see.