qoe, Michelle, Matilda, BND, alpha, Hill, fig, wii:

Thanks to all of you who continuously watch out for me. Posting to you all is not a luxury I can have right now. Sorry. I’ll get back to you all!

You are wonderful people who don't deserve the ration of shi* that life has served you!

First, thanks to all of you who continuously prodded, cajoled, and beat me into finally putting money away for me, and not worrying about W. I owe you all so much! I'd still be "using the wishbone for a backbone" as Suzy's post says. (I LIKE that!)

I guess this post goes back to D16’s email today, talking about the “tension” between W. and me. We have D17 who is accepted into three colleges next year.

To send D17 to the school she wanted to go to will cost 24K a year. I was in FLA and the kids had gone home. What a terrible time for a divorce! After the cost of 7.7K/month to put her through therapeutic school in Utah, with me needing an apartment, furniture and legal representation, I started to feel the walls closing in. Where will I get 24K a year, without her or me taking out huge loans?

She got accepted to the University of Connecticut satellite campus as well. No small accomplishment. UCONN is tough to get into. It would cost 5K a year, and she could live at home, until she puts a good year of solid “Bs” behind her, and can attend the main campus. I also called the school where I work in civilian life, and the counselors said they could get her into a state school in CT for 15K a year. Not cheap, but not 24K. I emailed W. these options.

Of course she emailed me back and states “D17’s therapist states she cannot live at home” with mother-daughter issues, plus old friends in the area would put her back where she came from with alcohol. She could live with me, but she flatly stated that she doesn’t want to go to school in CT (Tough sh*t, I thought. By the way, she can find alcohol and bad friends ANYWHERE!). W. added by “Me taking her to visit the school in NH, and raving about it, D17 was set up”…ugh. I'm the idiot...again.

The options I posed were summarily dismissed out of hand. Once again, treated like a petulant child. She told me she had send in the deposit for the school in NH. She said she would send D17 to the school in NH if she had to “beg, borrow or steal”.

W. asked me “How much am I WILLING to contribute to D17’s college”. I wrote her back and told her, it’s not what I was WILLING to contribute, but what I COULD contribute. What a set of gonads she has! How the hell do I know how much I have to live on, and how bad I’ll get taken to the cleaners by an attorney, a divorce, an apartment, furniture.

Talking with wife has been virtually impossible, without her condescending attitude, making me seem like a naďve little child with no forethought. Any idea is immediately riddled with holes. I had a phone conversation with her when I was back at home and flatly told her that I had no interest in talking to her and being hung up on and yelled at. She asked "When have you tried?" I answered "How about the last four years?" She then came back "How about recently". She had hung up on me two days earlier. WHAT?????

I have not communicated with her regarding where the money will come from for D17’s school in about three weeks, but I need to know how this is being funded.

17K in tax returns + 15K from our public school for daughter’s Utah school + stimulus checks + 10 months of 10.8K from me. Iknow it cost a lot to put D17 through the school in Utah. She would have most likely been dead or in jail if I didn't. W will have an answer for where it all went, and make it seem like I’m an absentee father, leaving her as a poor abandoned parent, left to take care of two emotionally distraught teenage daughters.

Thanks you all for you congratulations on the Bronze Star. It is an absolutely awesome feeling! 27 years of this. This is what it's all about.