It's been 2-1/2 weeks since an update, sure seems like longer than that! Interactions between W and I have been pretty limited and mainly centered around the kids, but I did bend the rules on that for Mother's Day. I helped the kids make some decorated pavers with their handprints in them. They also did some of those when they were little (still have them), but now that two of them are grown the bigger handprints are an interesting comparison to the older pavers. Also got W some flowers and we all went out to a nice dinner. Went by the next day and mowed W's overgrown lawn while she was at her mom's house with the kids. W did seem to appreciate it all.
As I've mentioned before I don't pry about suspected OM, but the kids usually spill the beans after he's been somewhere with them. W does something with him just about every weekend, sometimes with the kids and sometimes without. My brother and sister think they're just friends, I don't know and I don't particularly care at this point since we're so close to D anyway.
W hasn't brought up the D since my last update, but she did say she was waiting until the kids were out of school to file and that's not until next week.
On the weeks I have custody W has been sneaking the kids away from me 1-3 times a week lately. We had originally agreed to allow some flexibility on this, but I've been respecting W's time with the kids while she has been abusing the privileges in return. It came to a head yesterday when I had made plans with the kids and W suddenly showed up at lunchtime to take D16 just as I was about to take all the kids to lunch. It's a bit hard to explain, but W had called at 10 asking to take D16 shopping that morning, but D16 had worked the night before and when I woke her up and asked her, she said she wanted to sleep in. So I told W that D16 didn't want to go, she wanted to sleep. Apparently W interpreted that as meaning they would go later whereas what I thought I told her was that D16 didn't want to go. W didn't say another word again to me, she just showed up to take D16. I didn't want to have a big blowup in front of the kids, so let them go. W didn't bring D16 home until 10 pm and it turns out she had a big school project due today, so we were up until 1:30 am working on it. I get up at 5:45 am and S10 is ADHD so needs his sleep, so normally we're in bed at 10 pm. I told W last night that this needed to stop, she needs to respect my time with the kids and if she had done so I wouldn't have to be up half the night helping D16 with a project. W's response was that I shouldn't help D16, that it was her fault for not starting the project sooner. Wow. I tried to stay calm, my voice did raise a bit a couple of times but overall I kept my composure pretty well. I explained to her that if D16 had been home with me, I would have asked her -like I do every day- if she had any homework and we would have been able to tackle the project earlier in the day without screwing up bedtime. W kept trying to turn it into an argument, but I just kept reiterating that I was just asking her to respect my time with the kids like I respect hers.
W actually called this morning and apologized, said she thought about it and understood what I was asking and agreed with what I was saying. I apologized to her as well, told her that I should have waited to discuss it with her when it was a better time for both of us instead of talking about it late at night when I was tired and crabby. We both agreed to try harder at communicating with each other.
^^That^^ is a 180 for both of us, in the past neither of us would have apologized, we would have each stewed in our own righteous indignation, LOL!
In general I've got to say I've been really content/ happy in life for the last several months. On the weeks I have the kids I thoroughly enjoy doing stuff with them and on the weeks I don't have them I actually enjoy the alone time to get projects around the house done or get out for some GAL stuff. I do have plenty of alone time at the house, but I no longer feel lonely when I'm alone. I actually relish that time now whereas a few months ago it scared the heck out of me being alone. I truly am in that DB place where I am happy about my future even though I don't know if W will be part of it or not.
