You know I've read in several books that mediation works out only usually if you have 2 somewhat agreeable people, and I don't think your W qualifies!
That's another thing you and I can certainly agree on, quite obviously.
<journaling>
I had another verbal altercation with W this afternoon. I wish I would remember to record these things. She called to check on S3 this afternoon, but she quickly turned it into an inquisition into why I wasn't cashing her checks. I don't agree with her "interpretation" for what this monthly reimbursement was for. I think she's now trying to make it look like she has been paying me for half the mortgage out of the child support payment, which would mean I am not contributing to one or the other. I told her, no, it was for half the rent for her mother to stay there, which is no longer the case as of March 15.
W now flatly denies this, saying this was never the case -- her mother didn't need to pay any such rent since she was providing "free" daycare. W not only conveniently forgets, but has concocted a whole new history.
To rebut this I reminded W of a conversation she started with me when it came to me asking for the very first payment for her mother's rent. She had suddenly gotten all sulky and asked me, "What would you charge your own mother, say, if she had come to stay with you? Would you charge your own mother?"
I saw her question for the rhetorical barb it was. I replied, "No, for my mom, in all honesty, I would not ask her to pay me rent -- but I know darn well she would insist on doing so anyway."
When I reminded W of this conversation, she actually said, "I don't care." She tried to rehash everything that had transpired regarding her slanted versions of separation agreements, from the mediation and going back to the first week after she dropped the "bomb" on me last June. She again began saying something to the effect, "You sat right there on the couch agreeing with what I was drawing up..."
I told her not to go there. I told her she knew I was still in shock from her betrayal when she began this effort to "ramrod" down my throat a document wholly unfavorable to me.
She tried to say by setting things the way she had drafted them that she was just trying to make things "simpler" for me, but I had kept insisting on making it more complicated. I told her thanks, but no thanks.
She then asked what did I want to pay in child support. I told her simply what is fair. I tried to ask her for all the details of her income so I could calculate a C-S payment using my own figures. She turned that around by asking me if I ever sent a copy of my new pay stub to the mediator -- no, not since I did not have one myself just yet.
I told her we needed to start completely over in figuring the actual C-S payment, and that I was not interested in anything other than what was fair, even if it meant I paid more than at present. But I don't trust the way she and her mediator went about what was included and what was not in their estimates. She had the audacity to begin to accuse me of trying to control the situation. She launched into a diatribe, to which I threw in was the repeated phrase, "Pot-kettle. Pot-kettle."
This then quickly turned into another of her oft-repeated rants about how for years she paid all the bills, took care of the house, took care of the children and basically ran everything (while I did nothing else it would seem.) And how I didn't respect her or appreciate her, etc., etc.
Finally at one point, after quietly allowing her to vent her fury all over me, I told her I had had enough, and I announced to her that before I said anything I would later regret I was going to hang up -- which I then did, just as she was opening her mouth yet again for another volley.
