December 7, 2009

Well, for the second time in five days my wife has broken her promise to quit drinking. Made and broken. Tonight, she was hammered. After dinner the fun really started.

First, she started asking me about a problem our son is having with one of his friends. She made it clear that if I didn’t go talk to him, she was going to take matters into her drunken hands, so I stepped up and went to talk to my son. We settled things, or at least well enough for now. I stayed up and watched some TV with the kids.

Then, my wife showed up. She was visibly upset and weepy looking. She started talking about how sick her father was and kept telling the kids that was why he was being so mean to them and why he wasn’t ‘Silly Grandpa’ any more. This would have been okay, except that she was over the top maudlin, kept crying and every second word was a swear word. Plus she kept badgering the kids to make sure they were paying attention and were understanding her. The kids were both staring at the wall, anywhere but looking at their mother, who was ranting and crying and carrying on. I tried to calm her down and I tried to explain to the kids what was going on in rational terms and to mitigate whatever damage my drunk wife was doing. It finally got so bad that I just took the kids up to bed.

The wife followed me upstairs an kept nagging at me and the kids, telling me that I just didn’t understand. That it hadn’t happened to me, so I just don’t know what it is like. Not like my father died of brain cancer and melted away before our eyes in three months, or my grandfather’s liver cancer that turned him from an active sixty something to someone who looked like a concentration camp victim in six months. Nor was I getting to watch my wife destroy herself with booze over the last eight years. No, there is no experience I’ve ever had that could possibly compare or prepare me for what she is going through. I finally snapped and told her that I did understand and that I didn’t appreciate her constantly telling me that I don’t. That shut her up for a minute. Then she went downstairs and plunked herself down in front of the idiot box. I put the kids to bed, read to them, and then went to bed myself. The wife stayed up for a little while muttering and finally came to bed, still muttering stuff under her breath.

Thought the fun was over, but no. My son started coughing and apparently made himself throw up. So he came down and I gave him some cough medicine. The wife got up and got in the way, couldn’t find the medicine, kept telling me we didn’t have any or that what we had been the wrong stuff. I found it, gave our son the right dose, settled him in on the couch where I could hear him better. He kept coughing, it does take some time for the medicine to kick in, and the wife kept getting more and more agitated. She got up and yelled at the boy to blow his nose. But he wasn’t to use her Kleenex! I got up, again, and gave him some tissues (out of her box, that got me some dirty looks.) Then she told him that his lungs were filling up and he had the croup. I had him take a deep breath, which he could do, no problem. No wheezing. He has a sinus drip, his nose has been running all day and now that he is lying down, it drains and he coughs. I told the wife that, and she yelled at me some more and informed me that I had never had a cough like that. (Not true.) Then she started reciting the last couple of months and said our son has been sick the whole time. (Not true. Some runny noses and the occasional cough, but not three months constantly.) So I asked her if she was so concerned about it, had she called the doctor and made an appointment for him? She said no. I asked her why not. She said, “Because you are an asshole.” Okay, that is clear enough. Not. At this point, I told her to just leave the boy alone and let him get the sleep he needed and let the medicine do its thing. Then I read for a while, until the boy was asleep and the wife was passed out again.

December 4, 2009

Thursday at lunch, I called her and ripped into her about her drinking. I told her how it made me feel, how it seemed that nothing ever got any better about her drinking and I was done with it. That I would be gone if she did not stop. She told me, again, that she would stop. I got one night.

Friday at lunch, I called her and she told me the computer system had gone down at work and they cut them loose for two hours. She had apparently said something about going to Vito’s for ‘poppers’. Her boss had said she had better mean jalapeño poppers and my wife played it off like, sure, that was exactly what she meant. My wife lamented to me that no one took her up on it. And then pretended that she was joking the whole time. But she wasn’t really.  I could see right then that she just did not understand that she needs to quit. I also knew she would be drunk again that night. Sure enough she was. But the important thing to me is just that it shows that she has no real deep understanding that she needs to quit drinking, that it isn’t a joke any more, that I no longer find her drinking fun, funny or cute.

So Friday night rolls around and sure enough, there is the drunken troll on the couch. My mother-in-law had decided that it was time for Christmas decorations to go up and she dragooned my daughter into helping. My daughter did all of it, including putting the lights on the tree. Now my girl has never done this and when she did, she plugged all the lights into one another. She had six strands of lights stuck into each other and stuck into the wall outlet. They stuck out almost a foot! I told her I didn’t think that was right and that she needed an extension cord. She also showed me that there were three other strands that she hadn’t managed to plug-in yet. My in-laws had gone out for dinner, so they weren’t around to ask about a cord, so my daughter decided to stop for the evening and finish the next day. No problem, until my wife see this. She goes bananas.

We had just sat down to dinner when she comes downstairs yelling that the lights that don’t work should be thrown away and  what the hell is going on with the plugs? I told her that our daughter had done it all with no help and just didn’t know the right way to plug things in and we were waiting on an extension cord. The wife kept yelling about lights that don’t work needing to be thrown away. I pointed out that not all the lights were plugged in, it wasn’t that they don’t work, they just aren’t plugged in yet. She kept screaming at me, with her voice climbing higher and higher, that they were plugged in and they should be just thrown away. And what is wrong with the plugs? I told her again. She kept screaming at me that the lights were plugged in and the ones that weren’t lit should be thrown away and what is wrong with the plugs? They never were plugged in that way before! Again I told her that our daughter had done it, she didn’t know how and no one told her the right way and the lights that weren’t lit were simply not plugged in and we were waiting for an extension cord. My wife continued screaming about plugs and throwing away the lights and what extension cord? Finally I yelled at her that I didn’t want to talk about this any more. I went back to my dinner. She glared at me and refused to eat, again. I took the kids for a walk after dinner and then put them to bed. The wife had passed out.

So much for quitting. I am now doing my best to live as well as I can, for me and the kids until I can get us out of here. I try to minimize the damage her obnoxious drunken behavior does to the kids and to me. This isn’t what I want, but I can not stay attached to this malevolent presence that has grown into our family. If I must detach, then I must.

I spoke to again on Saturday morning and told her how disappointed I was that our talk on Thursday had amounted to so little. I told her that I had known as soon as she made her little joke about going out for drinks while her system was down that she just did not get it and would be drunk that night. That this wasn’t working. That it has been eight years since I told her this would end badly if she didn’t quit drinking. Five years since we moved up here where she had told me that she “wouldn’t be able to drink like that in front of her family.” She told me again that she would stop. (I don’t believe this, but I’ll let her try.) It isn’t like I can leave right this minute anyway. No money, no place to go. I have to take the kids with me so that requires a certain level of housing and security that I might not need if I were alone.  There is no way I can leave them alone and unprotected from drunk bitch.

December 2, 2009

Another obnoxious drinking night. She was mean to the kids and spent most of the evening glaring at me and arguing. She refused to eat dinner, which I know was pretty good because the boy had a second helping. I am tired of this and I just don’t want to play this game any more.

December 1, 2009

The usual again tonight. Just drinking and being obnoxious to me and the kids. Her mother found that someone (probably our daughter, who is overweight and is therefore a target for this sort of thing) had eaten most of a pack of leftover chocolate morsels. Shocking that a kid would dip into an open bag of chocolate morsels! My mother-in-law took the few morsels that were left and dumped them out onto the counter and just left them there as some kind of statement. (That she is a bitch?) Then she nagged at my wife about it and cleverly waited until she was drunk. My wife then came down and bitched at me. WTF? I had nothing to do with it. Then, when she got drunker, she went and was nasty to my daughter about it, but wasn’t really making a whole lot of sense and just confused and upset her. When I put her to bed, I had to talk to her about sneaking food and making better dietary choices.

Then the little woman came in and started in on our son. Because of trauma related to a mildly botched circumcision, he has issues about handling his penis when he urinates. This causes accuracy problems and wet toilet seats. I have spoken to him many times about this, to no avail. So my drunk wife sat on a wet toilet seat and then came in and reamed him out. Understandably. But then she kept going on and on about it and just kept piling up embarrassment for the little guy. He sulked for a while and I talked to him and pointed out that he was now old enough to clean up after himself and to do a better job of aiming. I apologized for embarrassing him, but pointed out that he was at fault here, too and needs to take care of his little problem. It seemed to sink in better than it has in the past, I hope so.

November 30, 2009

Another drinking night. She complained about dinner and refused to eat more than a couple of bites. She said her chicken drumstick was underdone and she wouldn’t eat the coleslaw I made. (The drumstick could have cooked a few more minutes, but the meat was not red and the juices were clear.) That pretty much set the tone for the evening.

While I was helping my daughter with her pre-algebra homework (working with positive and negative exponents, which she claims the teacher did not explain, so I had to teach it to her), my wife started in with, “Don’t get pissed at her like you did with me.” Years ago, she took a pre-algebra course as a first step to go to nursing school. She didn’t finish the course and gave up on nursing school. While I was trying to teach our daughter, my wife kept saying, “That doesn’t make any sense to me. What you just said doesn’t mean anything to me. I told you I am no good with numbers.” I tried to tell her that as long as that was her attitude, it guaranteed that she would never ‘get numbers’, but she didn’t see my point and just kept telling me that she didn’t get numbers and I knew she didn’t get numbers. None of this was helping our daughter or helping me teach her exponents. She did seem to get it after a while though, although my wife was never convinced and kept bad mouthing my teaching and saying our daughter would never ‘get numbers’ either.

Then my wife went up and took a shower. Later, I went upstairs and found that she had cut her hair, while drunk and thrown away a bunch of stuff that she shouldn’t have. This is very typical behavior for her. I had to dig it out of the trash and put the bathroom back together again.

When she came down, she demanded that since she couldn’t afford a haircut, I needed to shave her head. I told her that I didn’t think it would be a good look for her. (I didn’t know at this point that she had been snipping away at her head while upstairs.)

Finally, she started bitching at my son for pretty much nothing. He asked me a question about the brand of tomato juice that was used in some commercial jingle. I asked him if he meant V-8 and he said yes. My wife jumped in and started yelling at him that he was never going to drink tomato juice so why did he need to know about V-8? The boy and I decided it was time for him to go upstairs and go to bed. The wife passed out when we left.

November 28, 2009

We went to a hotel for the night, mainly because my wife wanted a break from her family. I couldn’t really blame her, I could use one myself. We found one with an indoor pool so the kids would have a good time, too.

We brought the booze we had bought the night before Thanksgiving. Once we got to the hotel, I made myself a drink and asked my wife not to turn evil on me. She said she’d try not to, but it didn’t really work out. We went out for dinner, and by that time she had been hitting the bottle pretty hard. Everything was crowded and had a waiting list. As we drove around looking for a place, my wife kept picking fights with me and telling me which way to go, usually the wrong way, which just meant we had another thing to argue about.  She just kept getting meaner and nastier. We tried several places and finally found a Mexican restaurant and just ordered our food to go. My wife stood outside yelling at the other patrons that they should all go home and they were stupid for eating out. (I couldn’t help but wonder what that made us, but I didn’t bother pointing that out.)

When we got back to the room with our food, she basically wouldn’t eat what she ordered and passed out for a bit. When she came to, she got amorous, which was awkward since we only had the one room. I just wasn’t up for going for it in the bathroom, especially not since we had been arguing for the last couple of hours and I wasn’t really ‘in the mood’. She finally realized that it just wasn’t going to happen and passed out fairly soon after.

November 25, 2009

She was drinking again. Just before the liquor stores would close, she asked me to take her to get some vodka. I could see a fight brewing if I refused, so I took her. She would have just gone herself, and been pissed off at me, too, so I went along to get along. When we got back, she was already drunk enough to just pass out so she didn’t drink any more and we didn’t fight.

The next day, Thanksgiving, I told her that I wasn’t going to tell her not to drink, but I reminded her that when she was sober, she was able to tolerate her family better, so maybe if she could hold off on drinking until after dinner, or at least, mix her drinks (instead of guzzling her rotgut vodka straight out of the bottle, her usual method of consumption). She told me she wasn’t planning on drinking at all and she didn’t. Consequently, we had a pretty nice Thanksgiving.

November 24, 2009

The boy had basketball practice, so we ate late. My daughter and I took him to practice and my wife was shit faced and mean when we got back. She sat there bitching about how she was starving. I had made dinner already, it was sitting on the stove waiting for our return from practice. I made a curried beef with a cucumber riata and some store-bought Naan. The little woman took one look at this and declared that the naan was doughy and disgusting. (She has eaten this before and raved about how good it was.) She spooned some of the meat onto her plate and a little of the riata and then tossed the riata into the salad I had made and threw her napkin on her plate. I guess she was done. Later, my son bit into a dried chile pepper in the beef and it was a bit much for him. My wife started bitching at me for putting the chiles in the curry, like I had hidden it deliberately to hurt the kids. I refused to answer her, as I couldn’t say anything that wouldn’t just lead to a fight with a drunk and I didn’t want to do that over dinner.

She had also ‘cleaned’ while we were gone. She did some vacuuming and left the vacuum in the middle of the floor, so her parents will be bitching about needing the vacuum and I will be carrying it back upstairs. She moved furniture around and managed to put the recliner in front of a pole so I can’t recline it and wedged some books underneath it. She also went through some magazines I was saving and left them lying on the floor, like she wants me to throw them away. I ignored all this too, and will restore the furniture and books and magazines while she is at work. Touching any of it would have meant another fight and I just don’t see the point.

I don’t want to fight and argue with a drunk any more. It isn’t that I am spineless, it simply is pointless. She won’t remember it the next  morning and I will have just gotten all worked up and angry and have scared the children for nothing. I don’t really even see the point in trying to talk to her when she is sober. She either just sits there staring at her table or the floor or she agrees with me that she has a problem. Then she says she will do something about it and she never does, at least not anything at all in the last two years and pretty little before that. One trip to rehab, which kept her sober for less than a month. She hates AA, and I can’t say that I blame her. For those that it helps, great, but the success rate is abysmal and the religious overtones are off-putting. When she tried AA, either she would show up drunk (like many others) or she would get drunk afterwards. It was just a way to get out of the house and hit the liquor store. Her last trip to AA was the night I brought the kids back from North Carolina two years ago and she killed her van by driving it into a tree. She says “black ice”, I say “vodka”. Since she had crumpled the front end enough to smash the radiator and apparently had no idea of the extent of the damage done, (she tried to drive it to work the next day), and had driven it back to the house after her accident, probably to avoid tickets and DUI’s, I think vodka was a pretty safe bet. She also doesn’t deny being drunk when I asked her about it.

I am just trying to keep things on as even a keel as I can until I can afford to take the kids somewhere safe without her. I am getting my family out of this mess. If she can leave the booze behind, she is welcome, if not, she isn’t.

November 23, 2009

Another work day, another drinking night. I tried to talk to her Saturday after she had let her daughter down by not being there for our girl to deal with her menstrual issues because of her being drunk and psychotic. She told me she would do better and show me that she cares, about our children and our marriage. But not tonight, I guess.

She wasn’t horrible, just drunk enough to be stupid and argumentative. We were watching Jeopardy and I (deliberately) mispronounced an answer, the Beatles. My wife looked at me and asked me (with this rather hopeful look on her face), if I were drunk. That was when I knew for  sure that she had been drinking. Then she complained about dinner and didn’t eat more than a mouthful. She does this a lot, I suspect she either doesn’t want to ruin a perfectly good buzz by eating or being drunk already, she just isn’t interested in food. I let that slide. Why not?

Later, she demanded that I cut our son’s fingernails. Okay, they needed it and to avoid a pointless drunken confrontation, I went to get the nail clippers and do the deed. But the clippers were gone. Turns out that my wife had gotten drunk a few nights ago and ‘cleaned’ out the shelves where we keep the clippers. At first she denied throwing away any clippers, of course she wouldn’t do such a thing, but then it came out that she didn’t like the clippers I liked and since they were useless to her, she threw them out. Now we have only one set of toenail clippers (and it has a curved cutter, I was always taught that one should cut one’s toenails straight across to avoid ingrown toenails, so this one is not as useful as the one she threw away, to me) and no fingernail clippers at all. And she got mad at me for this!

She then tore apart the little box I kept the clippers in, along with other odds and ends, including my wedding ring, which I no longer wear. She found it and got mad about that, too. There is a reason I don’t wear my ring. I am a machinist and machinists that wear jewelry often get the jewelry caught up by the powerful and swiftly rotating machinery we use and lose both the jewelry and whatever bits of our selves the jewelry was attached to. I have a number of friends who are minus not only their wedding rings but their ring fingers, too. I like my fingers and I have always promised myself that I would leave this job with the same number of body parts that I started with.

November 20, 2009

Another drunk night. She comes down all weepy looking and I ask what is wrong. Our daughter (just turned thirteen) is having her period and hasn’t talked to my wife about it. My wife was all upset that our daughter won’t talk to her about this. It is supposed to be “her thing,” she said to me. I could see she was drunk and I just said that, “I don’t know what to tell you about that, honey.” I could have said that your daughter needs you and you are too drunk to deal with her problems, but other than giving me a nasty sort of cheap shot, what would that accomplish?

So I went up to see my daughter and she was crying, too. My wife had upset her. I sat with her and put my arm around her and let her cry for a minute. Then I asked her what was up. No answer. I asked her if she were having her period. She nodded. I asked if she still was. Yes. Did she have pads? No. I said I would go get her some and in the future, she needed to tell me when she ran out. Not when she was having her period, simply when she had run out of her supply. I asked her if she had cramps or anything. No. That is a good thing, apparently my wife had horrible cramps when she was young. Did right up until I knocked her up, too. So my wife has a lot of issues about menstruation.

So, I prepare for a trek out to get my girl some pads, and I tell my wife that she should go upstairs and just sit with our daughter. Put her arm around her, and not say a damn thing. Her response? “It is my job to nag at our kids.” So I said to just forget it. And off I went.

Later, before she passed out, my wife insisted that I get her a bag of ice to make her red, puffy eyes look better. I do it. Shortly after that, she goes down for the count. Another fine night, courtesy of my wife and the fine distillers of Dubra Vodka.