Hope and heartache

[ClingingToHope]

Interesting day. A couple of friends called out of the blue to see how my marital situation is going. I spent about an hour catching them up. Thank God I have a flexible job and understanding boss.

About 4 p.m. daycare lady calls to ask me to talk to the girls. D7, the ADHD one, was chasing D10 around with a steak knife. D10 is a drama queen so she was beyond panic.

I diffused the situation and went over to pick them up at 5 p.m. since it's my night. We went out to eat because they've been couped up.

W called when we got home. She finally got to daycare lady's message -- I told her to call W to fill her in.

D7 was with me so I told her to talk to W. When they were done I went upstairs and called W to talk to her without D7.

From Oct. 22 to Christmas I was extremely short with W whenever we did talk -- quick to get off the phone and never stray off point.

I called back because I thought she'd want to talk about the incident some more and she did. D7 has been backsliding the past month. W hasn't been giving her protein in the morning, which is supposed to help ADHD kids.

That lasted for five minutes or so and when it was over I didn't rush her off the phone, I paused for a second and she jumped in saying, "people at work are driving me crazy." And then she filled me in on a couple of situations.

This is where there's a disconnect between the DB forum advice, LBS rules and DB counselor advice.

Many will say I'm allowing her to cake-eat, vent like I'm at home without being at home. Dottie told me to look for opportunities like this, where I can show her I'm listening and not trying to fix things, that I'm genuinely interested in her. That's a 180. Toward the end, I used to kind of shut these conversations down because W wouldn't take my advice. I was too stupid to realize she didn't want my advice, she just wanted to vent.

She hasn't been venting to me since October, which means she is venting to someone else.

By the end of the conversation, both girls were up in the room and laughing hilariously so W finally said, "well, I should let you go."