still here

Still here in this crappy inbetween place. Still here posting, despite a lag (of a day! the horror! That daily posting thing in November really set me up).

So, as usual, a lot to type. I'm exhausted, so hopefully I can sum it up fairly succinctly.

First, I'm exhausted because all hell has broken loose with my two year old. I've mentioned in passing that there's a cold going around my house, I think. She's got a terrible, gut-wracking cough. And, back molars coming in. Somehow, that's translating into little sleep for her - or husband or me. Typically, she sleeps from around 8 pm til 7:30, maybe even 8 in the morning. I know, we are incredibly lucky. Now imagine your wake up call comes at 5:45 am. For the past 5 days in a row. Oh, and there's another wakeup in the middle of the night, too, and that usually lasts at least 30 minutes, if not an hour. My husband and I are walking zombies from that, then add in the not sleeping because of our own emotional issues, and the emotion-laden talking, and just the gut wrench that is our life right now, and boy. I'm amazed I can still type. It's 10 pm and I need to get to bed. Please someone, please please tell me she's going to go back to sleeping. Please.

I remember she had a cold in early October - before life implosion (well, before I was aware of life implosion, though it had already happened) - and I remember turning to my husband and say, ok, well, that's it, she's going to have a runny nose til April now, isn't she? Little germ bombs. If someone had told me the worst part of having kids was the fact that your normal one cold in the winter, one more randomly during the year thing was going to turn into more snot than you ever could have imagined, I wouldn't have believed them. But it is true. And it sucks.

So, the big other thing. What's the latest in the marriage war? Well, Friday was tough. Thursday night, husband went out with friends to watch football. He went right from work to out, and didn't get home til after midnight. Then, Friday night was my night to go out on my monthly night out with friends. So who makes it home to let the nanny go? And who cooks dinner? And who gives our daughter dinner? That would be me. Husband works late, gets home late, and sends me off late. Nice. While waiting for him to get home, I just thought, this is pointless. Is this whole working things out really just a front, so that he doesn't have to spend Christmas Eve alone in some new apartment? Is anything going to change? Cause while I need to change, and we need to change, HE really needs to change too.

Then, Saturday morning he was in a funk. And pretty much all day in a funk. We went to a brunch party a friend of his throws every month, and I get to hear him talking about how he's going to go with his buddy to his college football team's bowl game. Over New Years. He had told me about those plans, but I've not been thinking about them. Selfish bastard. Off to the sun for New Year's Eve. Pretty much robbing me of any possibilities to do anything. Garr. We haven't talked about it at all, but yeah, pissed about that.

Anyway, Sat night we had our nanny babysit and we went off, on our counselor's recommendation, to see Tyler Perry's movie Why Did I get married? It's lingering in a few theaters - when we got there we were the only people in the theater, though eventually 4 others showed up. I think the movie might even be out on DVD. It's the story of 4 couples who get together every year. One is a psychologist, and so their annual vacation is also a couple's retreat. Well, one couple had a child die (check, though ours was pregnancy loss, not child), another couple has a controlling wife (check, according to him), the third is dealing with one spouse wanting another child while the other is too busy with work (check) and the fourth has a cheating husband and long suffering wife (check!). We covered every problem in the movie! Wohoo, us!

Jill Scott plays the wronged wife. She's about 100 pounds overweight and her jerk husband reminds her of this at every opportunity, belittling her. He even convinces her to bring a friend (his mistress) along on their retreat. It comes out he's sleeping with the friend, and after a big blow up at the retreat, they get a divorce. She meets, right away, a decent, hot man, the county sheriff, who helps her get back on her feet, works out with her, and by the end of the movie (supposedly 8 months later) she's lost, oh, I don't know, over 50 pounds, has married the sheriff, and is happily over jerk husband. Jerk husband has married the mistress, and upon seeing ex wife, is filled with remorse and regret. One of the other men, early on, invokes the 80/20 rule. He says you only ever get 80% of what you want in your marriage. But you meet someone who offers the 20% you're missing. And if you go for it, you get that 20%, but you lose out on 80%.

It was a good movie, and good for us to see. It was a bit heavy handed and preachy, though from my perspective that was a good thing. Interestingly, the only other movie we've seen since our daughter has been born is Chris Rock's I think I love My Wife, another movie about infidelity, though while he is tempted, Chris Rock doesn't actually go through with it.

I can't stop my eyes from leaking tears as we leave the movie, though I tried to disguise it. On the way home, my husband says he could see himself in many of the 4 guys, though not enough of the one true, supportive husband.

When we got home at first he said he was going to bed, and was too exhausted to talk. As we were both prepping for bed, he came in my room to say goodnight, and we ended up talking.

I'd been feeling like crap all weekend, thinking again this was all just a ploy to keep him home til after the holidays. Turns out, according to him, he is just so filled with self loathing right now he can barely function. He felt the entire movie was just directed at the mistakes he has made, and in many ways it just made him feel worse about himself. He says he feels so unworthy right now.

On the one hand, well, dammit, good. He should feel like shit. On the other hand, I explained to him I took his silences for regret that he was spending any time with me. He assured me that wasn't the case. While he felt "he didn't deserve this" instead of the previous he deserved better mind space he was in, now it was he didn't deserve another chance with me. He had screwed up so badly, was it possible to recover? I'm too tired to explain this coherently.

He has a lot of work to do to get right with himself and what led him to make horribly destructive choices. He feels like he's let so many people down - me, our daughter, his family, my family, friends....the list is long. And includes his co-workers. He said things were not going well at work. "they weren't able to function as a team." He wouldn't elaborate, nor did I want him to, but it seems his "girlfriend" - his 25 year old direct report - isn't reacting well to all this. (gee, ya think?!) He feels he's going to have to leave his job. He has other options, so this is not a disaster. But his company is a small start up of friends. He's one of the top people. He says no one knows at work, but I have to believe that's not going to last long. If this woman is not reacting well to him, it's going to trickle out. Early on I gave him a really hard time about how he was screwing up his work - how he was setting his company up for a bad fall. How he was totally in the wrong, and how this woman could sue. If the board of his company found out what he was doing, how they would fire him because of the liability he was causing.

I don't know what's going to happen. I do know he's taking too much of the blame - she's not blameless. I'm sure he feels he led her on, and he did. How could we ever go to company parties, or any type of work function again? He screwed up, in a major, major way, and leaving is going to be very hard on him. Ya wanna play, ya gotta pay, as my dad says.

OK, I've rambled too long, and rather disjointedly. I can't keep my eyes open any longer.

We're off to counseling again tomorrow - me with mine first, then ours together. Doubling up for me because of my trip. Stay tuned.