What should I do? Which technique to use?

[jzoom]

Fri the bike wouldn't start so she had to drop me off at work. She had a friend come take a look at the bike and it was just a dead battery, I just didn't have time in the morning to fool around with it. Her oldest was staying with exes grandma and middle child wanted to sleep at her dads but is scared to do so alone; also, her dads wife expects her to sleep over to take care of her own kids unless she really has something desperate to do.

So Fri night she picks me up from work after midnight and then heads back to her dads for the night. I charge up the battery and in the morning we text and I tell her I'm good to go. I head to work and afterwards go to a lobster dinner I was invited to. Now, I had told her about the dinner Thur night and said she was invited to go if she could get a babysitter for all the kids, when she said no I told her I was still going.

I go enjoy the dinner with friends (GALing) and 8:50pm I get a text from her (first since 8:30am) saying the kids want to stay at her dads again and she'll be back 9-9:30 tomorrow and says she hopes I'm having a great night. I wait until 9:30pm to respond with, "I am" and a min later, "Good night". She responds with "That's good glad to hear" and I just ignore it.

I'm home later on and at 11:50pm I get a text, "I really don't want to fight with you. Thought we were good and starting to get better but I guess not." I ask her what she is talking about and she says she got woken up by a loud motorcycle so she thought I was checking up on her again. I tell her no and she says she's really sorry. I just say, "Yup. Have a good night." She says, "I hope you had a good night see you in the morning :-)" and me, "Thanks, I did. See you."

This morning she doesn't come over until about 10am and only with the middle child. She says she's surprised I'm up b/c she thought I'd sleep in on my day off. Now, what I did was make sure I got up, got showered and dressed, and ate breakfast b/c I want her to see me at my best right now. She says they're running late and she takes middle child up to shower and I stay downstairs. I had to run up for something and she asks if I'll give the hermit crabs water and I say yes since she thinks they're ugly and disgusting.

Kid is in the shower and is yelling for her so I step in and play dad b/c kid is done in the shower and I say to get out and hand over a towel. Kid keeps yelling for her and she is getting agitated and tells me "it's been like this all weekend." Kid goes in to get dressed and she says they need to start putting their dirty clothes in the bathroom. I say, "yeah, I have a dirty clothes hamper" and my decision now is that I'm going to continue doing laundry but only the laundry in the dirty hamper. I'm not running all over the house picking up dirty clothes to wash. I'm balancing the alpha/beta, I'll do the wash but there are natural consequences of not putting dirty clothes in the hamper - they don't get washed.

Kid points to a bowl of rotting fruit in his room and I say, "That's why you get bugs" and she snaps, "No, that's not his, that's *oldest childs*" and I just walk away. I then get called back in and she says, "*oldest child* is grounded, there's a knife over there on the floor." I go over and near the closet is a big steak knife. Middle child says that oldest was cutting up something to make a house for the hermit crabs and told him not to tell anybody. She says that he shouldn't have left the evidence laying around.

We are all heading back into the bathroom for different things and she's saying she needs to change. I just need to grab something and so she's standing in the middle of the bathroom, as I walk past her I lightly put my hand on her side to let her know I'm passing her. Then I'm waiting and she moves out of the way for me to go back out. She tells kid to close the door so she can change and I go about my business downstairs. They come down and I tell kid to have fun at the popcorn sale. As they are going out the door she says, "we'll be back tonight." I just nod and when they open the door I lightly touch her upper back and tell her to have fun. Off they go.

I knew somewhat what the plan for today was. Thur night when we were talking she told me that on Sun, today, the kids had a popcorn sale at Wal-Mart for scouts and then her grandma wanted to visit with them. Right now, her dad and grandma, and basically her whole family wants nothing to do with me, they don't want me around at all, they won't talk to me b/c, as she says, "they know what's going on." Very vague statement b/c I don't know how she has been portraying me to all of them, this is becoming very much a case of the biased shoulder. Her family and friends are ALL against me.

Basically, going into today I knew they weren't going to be around much and Thur, when I told her about the lobster dinner, she almost seemed disappointed that I wouldn't be home earlier Sat night. It seemed like it was hitting home that she wasn't going to see much of me this weekend (and she said she didn't really want to go to her grandmas but was b/c it's family and more for the kids) and my GALing was having an effect. Then, couple that with the smiley face about seeing me in the morning and so far no protests to the light friendly touching...and it was HER telling me that she thought things were starting to get better.