What a difference a year makes

OK, this is just silly.

A year ago -- longer, actually -- I found some quiz out there on the internet that rates how badly you suffer from each of the Seven Deadly Sins. Sounds like a hoot, right? So I took the quiz and posted my results here. The part that was a little embarrassing was how low I scored on Lust. It kind of made me wonder if there was something about me that drove Wife to all of her affairs in desperation, because she just wasn't getting any from me?

What a difference a year makes. In the fifteen months from then till now, I have come to realize that our lousy sex life had a lot more to do with Wife than with me; and with that realization I have come to see her affairs in a new light too. I also just re-took the quiz.

Greed:	Medium
Gluttony:	Low
Wrath:	Medium
Sloth:	Medium
Envy:	Very Low
Lust:	High
Pride:	Medium

The Seven Deadly Sins Quiz on 4degreez.com

Of course, maybe all this proves is that the quiz is too simplistic. But the contrast with last time sure caught my eye.

D's husband has had a stroke

I just got off the phone with her. She just heard the diagnosis. A couple of days ago she talked with him on the phone, having been back home the weekend before; on the phone he sounded very confused. One son is home for Christmas; D talked to him, then called again the next day and her husband was better. But not enough better -- she and her son decided that Husband should go to the hospital. She has been driving back home this evening (once she got off work) and just called me. The hospital confirmed it was a stroke.

She doesn't know what this means, but tells me she is sure her life has just turned a sharp corner. As a veteran of so many of Wife's medical emergencies, I have told her just to put one foot in front of the other but not to think too far ahead or make any long-range plans until she really has to ... and until she has more information about exactly what happened, how much damage there was, etc.

And she remarked that of course she has been planning to divorce him. But today, tomorrow, it may be useful that she can still sign forms as "Mrs." How long will that be true? How much does this change? We don't know.

Wow. "Turned a corner" indeed.

"Cheap K-Mart earrings" ....

Anyone who was reading last year will remember that Wife and I have very different attitudes towards Christmas presents ... enough so that we have fought over the subject any number of times.

Over the years I have tried to shield the rest of my family from my fights with Wife. But of course that's not her policy at all, so I'm sure they have heard plenty about this issue, ... plenty more than they ever wanted to hear, in fact.

And so, apropos of nothing at all, my father e-mailed me this little video today. All he said was that one of his old friends e-mailed it to him. No idea where it came from originally. He didn't add any other comment at all, but perhaps he didn't feel he had to ....

Thanksgiving Day

We spent Thanksgiving Day with my parents, and it was very pleasant. Lots of food -- lots of food! -- plus time to spend with my brother and his girlfrend, and just hanging out. For her part, D had a very restful and pleasant day as well, albeit with a neighbor and not her husband. Still, after last year's drama, that was certainly a good thing.

Wife started out the day still a little absent-minded. As we were getting ready to drive to my parents' house, Son 1 went into the back bathroom to take a shower. Wife and I were both in the adjacent bedroom getting ready, and Wife called my attention to Son 1 having stepped into that bathroom. All the same, a few minutes later as Son 1 was drying off, she headed blithely on into the bathroom to get some medications. I stopped her and suggested he would probably like privacy while he was drying off. (Son 1 is 13, and already his voice is changing and his underarms are furry.) She told me she didn't know he was in there. I reminded her that she had been the one to tell me he was in there, only scant minutes ago. She said she didn't remember.

We got down to my parents' house somewhere around noon, and dinner was still in preparation; but when it was finally ready, there was lots. Nobody went to bed hungry that night! My brother and his girlfriend were there, and they are always a lot of fun. Son 1 and Son 2 both piled onto my brother to wrestle with him, because he has always been a good sport about being an energetic uncle; his girlfiend and my mother traded off talking with Wife; and I seemed to spend lots of time discussing history with my Dad.

Late that night, as we were talking about other things, my father did ask me if Wife and I were divorcing, and I said yes. He nodded and didn't say a lot more about it.

I realize that most of the day was better to live through than to tell about, because pleasant and low-key times make for a boring narrative. But there has been enough excitement in my life lately that I am happy for low-key when I can get it. Something to be thankful for, I suppose ....

Eighth date: the home front

So what was happening at home, all the time that D and I were going to the movies, to the theater, to one restaurant after another, ... and of course all the time that we stayed back at the hotel in bed, whispering softly, kissing sweetly, caressing delicately, and fucking as if our lives depended on it?

I didn't get any horror stories of Wife falling asleep at the wheel (although come to think of it I didn't exactly ask). On the other hand, the boys were only in school two days that week before Thanksgiving Break kicked in, so I think the risk should have been minimized. But I did learn a few odds and ends when I got back.

The day of my return, Wife spent an hour and a half on the phone with Friend (who is, I am convinced, merely a role played by the same charlatan who spent so long claiming to be Boyfriend 5).

The day of my return, while the boys were home from school, Wife decided to make chocolate-chip cookies with them. She got as far as mixing up the dough, but never actually baked the cookies. "I ran out of time," she told me later. But then she didn't bake them Thursday morning, before we drove to visit my parents for Thanksgiving Dinner; she didn't bake them Saturday or Sunday,when we were home all day and doing nothing. Anyone who remembers the great saga of cleaning up the study will recognize that this is starting to look like many of Wife's other projects. When I got home from work today I realized that she hadn't baked anything, but there was visibly less dough in the refrigerator than there had been this morning. Aha, I see. "Baking with the boys" has come to mean "letting the boys make up cookie dough for me to scarf during the week." OK, got that.

And then she went to see an attorney. In fact, Wife was awake when I got home late, late at night, so that she could tell me what she had learned. The short version was, "You can't afford to divorce me, so you're going to have to learn to live with me."

Say what?

The longer version was that she had given this fellow some (inaccurate) figures purporting to be our monthly income, and she had gotten him to estimate child care and spousal support based on some other highly doubtful assumptions. Based on the outcome of this dubious calculation (garbage in, garbage out) she concluded that in case of a divorce, neither of us would have enough disposable income to continue to live in exactly the same neighborhood of the same city where we live today. And so she concluded that divorce is financially impossible.

That there are people on this planet -- and even in our state -- who somehow make do with these smaller sums she has in mind does not seem to have been a relevant consideration for her. She assumes that staying put is an overriding concern for both of us, so that anything which imperils that is financially unthinkable. I dunno, babe; I do have some financial priorities, but never moving for the rest of my life isn't at the top of my list -- even if it does kind of appeal to my native sloth.

Anyway, I'm not terribly worried. This attorney specifically says that all he does in family law is to give advice, not represent parties in litigation. I'm not sure where he makes his money, but apparently inciting expensive court battles ain't it.

And I don't think Wife was quite expecting me to reply, "Wow. Well, we're going to have to do some hard thinking to figure out how we can each of us get by on these numbers ...."
__________

There was one odd postscript to Wife's visit to the attorney: she got lost trying to find her way back to her car.

I should explain that his office is on the main street through downtown, and that we have lived here for some 19 years. She had parked a couple blocks up from his office and walked down to it, because parking on that street is often at a premium. She didn't tell me how far away she had parked, but she made it sound like it wasn't far. But when she left the office, the sun was going down and she couldn't recognize any of the landmarks. She didn't know where she was, and she couldn't remember if she had parked up the street or down the street. So -- again, entirely on her own account of the story -- she wandered back and forth up and down the street looking vainly for her car, more and more lost and finding nothing. Her feet started to hurt, so she took off her shoes and walked in her stocking feet. Finally she saw a store she recognized; she went into the store and asked how to find the cross-street where she had parked. They pointed her in the opposite direction from the one she had been drifting; and when she went that way she found her car promptly and came home.

And of course I have to wonder if events like this one have anything to do with her sudden reluctance to divorce?

Eighth date

Last week I took a short vacation. I told Wife and the boys that I had to travel for work; then I told the office I was taking a few days off. I flew to a city where I often have business to conduct, and reserved a room in the hotel where I usually stay. And then I met D at the airport and we spent the next three and a half days in bed.

That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but it's not much of one. I arrived Saturday evening. D was already at the airport waiting for me. After not seeing me since the end of July, she was pretty much ready to tear my clothes off right there in the airport arrival lounge. Indeed, my routine of calling home right away to let them know I arrived safely was something she found very disorienting. Here I was saying "Hi there, how is everything at home? My flight was boring and uneventful, so I'm going to go get some supper now," while D was thinking, "Put down the damned phone and kiss me, already!" But soon enough we were at the hotel, peeling our clothes off, and falling into bed.

And from that point, our itinerary was pretty simple. It was already nighttime by then, so we fucked until we fell asleep, ... then woke up about 2:30 in the morning and fucked again, ... and then woke up in the early dawn and fucked some more. Late Sunday morning we pulled on our clothes to go out for breakfast, and then came back to the room until dinner time. (No, we did not stop long enough to let Housekeeping make up the room.) After dinner we went out to the movies and saw "Precious": a well-made movie, but not for the faint-of-heart. And then, back to bed ....

Monday, we stayed in bed till lunchtime. We went out for lunch, spent the afternoon wandering around the city talking, had a light supper at a local wine bar, and returned to the hotel for more sex.

Tuesday, I think we stayed in bed till dinner time. (Once again, Housekeeping didn't get to make up the room. Besides, the smell was getting pretty rich by then, so we would have earned a lot of smirks if they had.) After dinner we went out to a local (live) theater to see an original comedy, and then ... well, you can probably guess the rest.

Wednesday, we finally had to leave. We checked out of the hotel about noon, got some lunch, and headed for the airport. And after a lot of kissing, we found our ways back to our homes in plenty of time for Thanksgiving on Thursday.

It was an amazing vacation, possibly the most remarkable I have ever had. D was ecstatic, joyful, elated. As we left the room one evening, she murmured that her whole pubic area was "sparkling" as with little stars. And for myself? It was enormously gratifying, even though I can't pretend that I have the responsiveness of a twenty-year old any longer. I spent a lot more time with kisses and fingers than I might have as a younger man. But D, bless her, was delighted with all of it. Sometimes I think there is something miraculous about her passionate and abundant responsiveness -- I have alluded to this here and here, for example -- and I am always grateful for it.

We talked a lot too: about our love for each other, my marriage and hers, my work and hers, my life and hers, religion, poetry, politics, ... all manner of things. It was a time of deep sharing on many levels.

And I am sure Housekeeping had a hell of a job of it when they finally got a chance to clean the room.

"What were you thinking???" part 2

Fortunately, life is a series of anticlimaxes. After a few days, Wife got a Money-gram from Boyfriend 4 covering the missing money. And after that, his accounts were all closed.

I told the story to D, who was a little surprised that he sent us the money. (Truthfully, so was I.) Her comment was simply, "If he's not going to live more than another 18 months, what motive does he have to pay any of it back?" But he did pay it, along with plenty of apologies and some words about "oldest friends". So another drama over and done with.

I am writing this on my way home from another trip; I wonder if there will be any new dramas awaiting me?