Much to my surprise -- and, I must confess, much to my vexation -- I have to take a business trip to STBX's SexFest European Country. She texted me the other night: "Kids say u r going to Euro City?" Well crap. Reply: True tho plenty of other places would rather go. STBX: "Y? Just cause I fell in love there?" Reply: Boundaries pls. And yes. Some things dont really need 2 b refreshed. You can get Euro City in the divorce lol. So any place specific u go? Might avoid if possible.

For some reason, this wigged her out, and she sent this long, twisted, irrational e-mail that basically boiled down to "am I supposed to draw you a map?"

I was sort of asking, you know, do you regularly eat at Joe's Diner -- that kind of thing. Anyway, this somehow uncorked something in her, and I have had in the past 36 hours a DELUGE of messages from her -- over 50 emails alone!

When replies were in order, I worked on them very diligently and in accordance with the @Gypsy Doctrine, ensuring they always stopped "just short." For some reason, the fact that the tone of my replies, when I replied, was chipper and non-confrontational just made her madder and madder.

So she reverted to pattern and occasionally would send this really hostile and crude note; when it didn't provoke a rise, she'd try to jailhouse lawyer it into something; when that didn't work, she'd start cc'ing her attorney, as if trying to coerce me; when I replied (if I replied) I cc'd her lawyer, too, so there was not wiggle room for her to misrepresent; and with every iteration she would just dig herself deeper in the hole.

Finally, she obviously got so wigged-out last night that in frustration she sent one of the e-mail threads to a close friend of hers. In it, she'd mentioned this place she goes to in Euro City. And she wrote to her friend, "Of course he doesn't know I go there with Signore Schmuckatelli il Secondo, but I just like the idea of knowing he'll be walking in our footsteps LOL!"

Problem was, she was so mental at that point, that she sent it to me! Now I definitely don't think it was deliberate -- I think her e-mail client was auto-filling the "To:" field, and whomever she was sending it to had a similar address to mine.

But it was so awesome. Every time I thought about it I started to giggle. I sat on it a while and, just before bed, replied: Going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that I was not the intended recipient of this e-mail.

NOT A WORD. As if it didn't happen.

And all day today -- all day -- she sent a blizzard of notes on a dozen topics but scrupulously avoided mentioning it at all. Ah, gad, it was cool to watch.

Bottom line -- I don't know WHAT the hell is up with her. She's clearly out of her mind, but beyond that? We had another one of those power shifts today, that's for sure.

But the capper was this -- STBX threatened (or thought she was threatening) to file for a bifurcation of the D. We'd be legally divorced without a settlement of the other issues. In Coastal State they apparently give these things out like candy. Most people don't apply, because it means TWO divorce trials, not one, but (in theory anyway) it makes the property settlement easier because the emotional thing has been resolved. In practice, the people who DO file them do so because they've got major separate property issues (business or something) OR....wait for it...hold onto your hats...because they're wanting to get remarried. As a result, these things don't take more than 3 weeks on average.

Now I'm not sure what she was aiming for, but my reply clearly unsettled her -- because once she received it, she didn't send another note. And she'd been sending at least 4 an hour from 5 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.

My reply?

"Great idea! Why didn't we think of it before?"

And the funny thing is -- it actually is a great idea in my POV. I feel so oddly serene, like a dying person who's accepted the inevitably of the Grim Reaper's knock at the door. For the first time in months, I feel energized. There's a kind of relief in it.

Reminded me of that line from "Cast Away": Now I know what I have to do. I have to keep breathing. Because the sun will rise again. Who knows what the tide will bring?

On the other hand, I experimented with Vitamin B-12 this week and am apparently allergic to it, because I am covered in a decidedly non-godly rash. Oh well, win some, lose some!