December 19, 2008

Bad winter weather was expected. School was cancelled long before the first snowflake fell, foolishly throwing away a snow day when a half day would have done the job. The state governor shut down the state at noon, again, before any snow had fallen here. My wife’s company shut down and she came back here about the time it actually started to snow, about one. She reeked of vodka. I didn’t like it, but I let it go and we didn’t argue or fight. She just was not herself, IQ down a bit, comprehension and retention dropped and a bit harsh with me and the kids. Tolerable, though, so no real problems. The one time she got really spun up it was about her parents. And I agreed with her, so again, no problems.

December 17, 2008

Tonight she got hammered. She came back from work intoxicated, but apparently not enough. While I was cooking dinner, she came up and informed me that she needed to go to CVS ’for tampons’ and to get something for the kids’ Christmas stockings. When she came back in she was staggering drunk.  She barely made it through dinner.

Afterwards, she was very forgetful. I asked her if it was okay if we watched ‘The Pink Panther’ and she said fine. A few minutes later when we sat down to watch it she asked me what was I putting on. She didn’t remember my asking her just a few mintues earlier. Then she kept telling me the kids wouldn’t understand the movie. It isn’t rocket science, a lot of it is straight up slapstick. Stepping on a rake and getting bopped in the face, that kind of thing. Of course the kids could understand it. My wife didn’t last long, she went to bed and passed out after about a half an hour.

Then she got all pissed off at our son. He was planning to sleep in our bed, while I slept on the couch. She got all mad and started telling him she was going to kill him if he moved around in bed. He tried to sleep on the couch, but he got scared and I let him into the bed and traded places with him. My wife kept waking up and yelling at him or growling at him. Probably scared the crap out of him. Finally, after she woke me up three of four times yelling at him, I told her she could sleep on the couch and I would take the bed. She wouldn’t go for it, but she did stop yelling and growling and went to sleep.

December 16, 2008

Another work day, another drunk night. She isn’t to bad, we tried to have a conversation about her work, but it is just tiring. She is so angry and mean spirited when drunk. Plus, her IQ drops into the toilet. She can’t follow even the simplest conversational gambits and she either takes offense or needs explanations. Even watching TV is usually to much for her mentally. If the program is more complicated then Stupidest Criminals or America’s Funniest Videos, she can’t get it.

Tonight, she ranted a bit about her work. She is going on mandatory overtime and her bosses this year are both inexperienced and haven’t been through the busy season yet. So she has a lot to vent about. I try to listen to her, but she gets ranting and repetitive and profane and after a while it gets old. Then, a show comes on the idiot box. I started to watch it and she made a huffing noise. Okay, try something else. I put on something different and she didn’t want that either. I gave her the remote and she started her manic and frenzied channel surfing. It is like she has ADD. She can’t settle on any actual show and as soon as a commercial comes on, she is off and clicking. I start to get interested in something and ‘click’, away she goes again. After a couple of minutes of this, I said that I was going to go read. I can’t stand the constant channel surfing. And she tends to settle on mindless crap I can’t stand to watch anyway. Entertainment TV or VH1 or ‘reality’ TV or video clip shows. If we were trying to watch something, we always get there late, missing parts of the show the rest of us were interested in watching. So rather then get a headache from the constant bouncing around and kaliedescopic channel changing, I just wanted to go read. She gave me a look, offended by my lack of desire to sit with her while she wears out another TV remote. She said, “Never mind, I’ll go to bed.” And did, at eight. Again. If she is sober, it is hard for her to go to bed before midnight.

This is not why I got married. I want to be able to talk to my wife and listen to her gripe about her day or otherwise tell me how her day went. I’d like to be able to talk to her without worrying that I was going to verbally trigger some hidden landmine and set off an explosion. Instead it is a constant struggle. I can’t just relax around her when she drinks.

December 15, 2008

When my wife came home at 6:30, she was fine. I had made dinner, including a recipe she had found and been after me to try. By the time dinner was served, she was downstairs, drinking and dialing. She ate very little dinner (although she did say the bacon and cheese cups were tasty).

After dinner, she started trying to takl to our daughter. There is an after school program to expose kids to different kinds of exercise and to teach them how to eat healthy food. My wife and I had talked to her about it and she wasn’t open to the idea. I didn’t realize it, but in the description of the program they talked about rockclimbing and kayaking. My daughter is scared of hieghts and she doesn’t like kayaks, to tippy and she feels trapped inside the little hulls.  I talked to her about it and told her that she wouldn’t have to do anything that scared her, that we had to interview for this program and we could ask questions and if the answers weren’t reassuring, I wouldn’t make her do it. So we settled things there, try the interview and see if it would work for her. Then my wife staggers back upstairs and starts talking about this program. But instead of trying to convince my little girl, she starts asking her things like, “Do you see your mother? I never tired anything. You need to. I’m scared to try stuff and you shouldn’t be.” All of this in her drunken angry slur. My daughter started getting nervous again and I told her we’d leave things like we talked and steered my wife away from our girl.

We went downstairs and my wife passed out by eight. An hour and a half from normal to stupid drunk and passing out. I wonder what her friends thought of her drinking and dialing conversations?

December 12, 2008

My wife had a farewell party after work. I met her there. She was drinking, but she was decent. We had a late supper afterwards. No real problems.

December 11, 2008

She was drinking again tonight. But she was making an effort to behave herself and I won’t complain to much. It still isn’t the same as having her with me. It is hard to talk to her and I have to constantly edit my conversation so I won’t hit on a topic that sets her off. Even though she was okay with me and the kids, she went off on people at work, particularly her boss. There was an incident where one girl was able to access the medical claims of a co-worker and she was punished for it. But the boss who enabled it to happen was not. My wife got really worked up about it. I am just glad her anger didn’t spill over towards me or the kids.

December 10, 2008

My daughter’s Christmas concert. Another time for my wife to show up reeking of vodka, babbling drunkenly and trying to publically pick fights with me. Another joyous child’s event ruined by rotgut vodka.

She didn’t eat dinner, so she was drinking on an empty stomach. She reeked of vodka. She kept demanding that I run up during the concert to take pictures of our daughter, even though they were setting asided time after each group performed for people to come up and take pictures. We argued about that. One of the people she was talking to told me to “rein in my wife.” I think he was joking, but…

After our daughter performed, I went up and took pictures. Our son came with me, but my wife remained at our seat in the back of the auditorium. The concert was over and I motioned to my wife to meet us at the car. She nodded and waved, so I took the kids out the back, which was the way we came in and closer to our car. No wife. I waited a few minutes and figured she might be waiting for us somewhere, stewing or fretfull. So I locked the kids in the car and went to find her. I made a sweep of the auditorium, but no sign of herr, so I went back to the car. She was there and pissed. Said she hadn’t seen my signal, claimed she “couldn’t see anything.” (okay, not when she is drinking.) Wanted to fight with me then and ther. I just said, ‘Look we are all here safe and sound. No harm no foul, so just drop it. Let it go.” I drove back to the house.

Then she demanded that I record Top CHef, even though we were sitting down to watch it. I told her it didn’t make much sense but she insisted. I didn’t see any harm and figure it would be easier then arguing with her, so I did it. About half way through the show, she looks at me and goes, “What are you recording?” I told her and she wanted to fight about that. I just told her that she had insisted and I knew it wouldn’t hurt anything so why argue about it. She dropped it, because even she could see it was just going to make her look stupid.

Then she was mean to our son. He was getting scared at the prospect of going to bed and I was going to let him sleep downstairs another night or two so he could break the cycle of nightmares. She insisted that he sleep upstairs, so up he went. He fell out of bed and bashed his head. She still wouldn’t let him downstairs, but I fianlly did. I got a few dirty looks, but the hell with it. If I didn’t let him sleep downstairs, he would have come down in the middle of the night and really messed up my sleep, so I just decided to get a whole nights sleep on the couch  rather then get woken up and killing my night.

December 5, 2008

Another drunk night. She has been making an effort to behave herself, but it just isn’t the same. The personality changes when she drinks are so weird and unpredictable. I just don’t know who she is any more. Some of the things are silly, some less so. Her tastes change when she drinks. Things she has eaten for years she will suddenly announce she doesn’t like. (And often when sober, she will go on eating them!)

Last night, to avoid the meal her mother made, she ate a grilled cheese sandwich that I made. She informed me, after eating most of it, that she doesn’t like mayonaise with cheese. They just don’t go together. I can’t believe some of the crap that comes out of her mouth. Every grilled cheese sandwich I have ever made her had mayo on it. Twenty years of grilled cheeses and now she doesn’t like mayo? Plus she raves about the artichoke dip I make and all that is is artichokes with MAYO and CHEESE. Or the night that she informed me that she doesn’t like the oil and vinegar dressing I have put on virtually every salad I have made for the last twenty years. And she has eaten without a word of complaint. 

It is like she is a completely different person with completely different tastes and she just isn’t the person I fell in love with and married. When pressed on this, she either doesn’t remember saying this stuff or tries to make some lame excuse why she didn’t like it this time. It is to weird for me. I know it sounds silly to complain that her taste in food changes when she drinks, but that is really not the only place it does, that is just the most obvious and easily pointed out and explained. In any event, when she drinks, she just isn’t the woman I married.

December 3, 2008

She was drinking, but she was trying to behave herself. I’ll give her points for effort, although it still isn’t the same as her not drinking. I guess I’ll take what I can get and be glad that she made at least the effort to get along.

December 2, 2008

Drunk again. I am beginning to really dislike her drunken persona. When my wife drinks, I have to watch evrything I say, because I never know what will set off the powder keg. I am getting tired of not being able to just have a conversation with my wife. Whenever we talk when she is drinking, she says things that I can’t agree with but I can’t object to without starting world war III. So conversing with her is a strain and tonight is no exception.

Our daughter has a sore throat and her eyes are scratchy. The kids asked me for some herbal tea with honey in it. My wife insisted on making it herself and she put milk in it and dumped a ton of sugar in it. It tasted awful and my son poured his out. Then, our daughter was complaining about her eyes. I have found that when I have a mild eye infection, if I wash my eyes out with soap, a lot of the time I can avoid having to get drops from the doctor. My daughter hates eye drops and they are a royal pain in the ass to put in her eyes. So I tried to tell her to go wash her eyes out with an antibacterial soap so they might start to feel better. My wife jumped in and told her to just use water, which might make them feel better but surely won’t help clean up an infection. I dropped it and just let my little girl do what her mother told her to do. Pushing it would have led to a fight in front of the kids, something I just don’t want to do any more.

My wife started going on about my daughter’s supposed need for braces, about her possible strep throat and her pink eye. My daughter had fallen asleep on the couch and was snoring. Somehow, to my wife, this was a sign that our girl was really sick. To me, it just meant the cold medicine we’d given her had kicked in (she always snores, although this one sounded a little different.) Then I got a picture emailed by my brother. It was pretty gross, some guy ran his boat ashore and got a fence post stuck through his groin and out his back. I said, “Oh my god, you have to look at this.” My wife, got pissed because I was more concerned over this picture of the fisherman then I was over my daughter. Just not true. We had medicated our girl and I was taking her to the doctor the next day, she was comfortable, what else was I supposed to do?  SIt there worrying about her and wringing my hands? (As it turned out, at the doctor’s, my daughter did not have strep throat or pink eye!) So she got really pissed at me and went off on me. I just deleted the picture and said okay, I’m done.

Later, my wife started in on me about the argument we’d had about the Wal-Mart employee who got trampled to death. She accused me of having a snotty tone. Maybe, but I didn’t have the drunken angry insane shrill tone that she had. So I told her I couldn’t do this any more. That she was drunk again and I wasn’t going to talk to her any more. She got mad at this too. Then I suggested that she just watch a show we had recorded with our son and i would go to bed and read. I fell asleep before we could fight any more.