On a different note, aanohelp made his blog private. I can certainly understand why he’s do this but I’m wondering how he’s doing. If anyone knows, leave a comment or email me. He’s the reason I started doing this blog and risky as it is to out our lives like this, it really helps me sometimes.

Shortly in to the party she was having a loud and semi-coherent political argument. I stayed away and played with S in the corner.

Later on I’m wanting to get us out of there because we still have lots of presents to wrap and I know at this point I’m doing it on my own. But she’s holding court. Then she’s having some involved conversation with The Host and our daughter, D. I don’t get it and don’t want to. I go back to playing with S.

I make another attempt to get us out of there and she’s talking to someone else. She asks for a new glass of wine. Finally I hand her her jacket. She drains the rest of the wine and puts it down. 10 mins later we leave. (We got there at 6, this was about 11).

In the car I settle in for the usual, but D surprises me. She says to W, “something, something, something…. (about the discussion they were having)… so then right after that The Host says he was trying to bail me out, and that you saying that because you’re drunk.” My muscles tighten and I expect an explosion. Instead W launches into a rambling nonsensical explanation of what he really meant. It made no sense. W asked more questions. I said, “can you talk about this later. We need to settle down so S can go to sleep.” She’s mad at me for that but is quiet.

For a minute.

Then she finds a work email on her phone to tell me about. Then she’s telling me about it loudly. I ask her to keep it down. I get the pissed expression. Then she goes back to discussing the email. Then she starts tell me about her new boss. She gets louder again. I give up on getting S to sleep. D pipes in and they start discussing something new. I’m gripping the steering wheel so hard I expect to find dents the next day. Miraculously he falls asleep.

We get home and I put S in bed. D goes off to bed. W tells me that I should go to bed and she needs to go answer this work mail. Seriously. On Christmas fucking eve. I think she’s forgotten. She spends an hour doing that (I tell her ok because I’m just not going to argue) and I start wrapping the santa presents. She comes down and sees me doing that and starts helping. I think she honestly had forgotten but smoothly covers it.

I convince her to just go to bed, but she remembers she has to prepare the turkey. So she does that and goes to bed. I finish wrapping and cleaning (I have high standards about the living room on Christmas morning), clean up the turkey stuff and start writing this at 4:30 in the morning.

But just for the hell I remember that something was bad about Christmas last year but I don’t recall the details. So I go look at this entry. Bad thing about this blog is that I can actually go back and relive this shit.

When we got home though she’d received a crisis email that needed dealing with. The annoying part was that she was so focused on this that she kept talking to me about it while I was trying to settle up with the babysitter. Not that I didn’t care. I just wanted to wait 10 minutes. After the crisis, another glass of wine, and some outdoor smoking, everyone went to bed.

Saturday night was another party at our good friend’s house while D went to her own party. It was more of a dinner party style. I spent most of the time keeping S occupied with toys in another room, which I don’t mind really since I’m not good at parties anyway. Two things though. As I’m trying to get us ready to go she’s in “holding court mode” and still drinking. As another couple is leaving I hear “…well you know how she is once she’s into ..” and then I got a slightly guilty look directed at me. No idea if they were talking about her or not.

On the way home (it’s a long drive) S was talkative but then settled down. I think he’d have gone to sleep except she was being very loud. When we got home he was almost asleep but she was still going so I said I’d take him with me to pick up D (another long drive). I was afraid that if he went in with her it’d be a long time before he got to sleep. So I dropped her off and took him with me. He was dead asleep in about 3 minutes. I picked up D and we got home. There was a fresh glass of wine out.

Sunday evening she poured out the remainder of the two open bottles. They probably needed dumping having been open for a while but I wondered if this was symbolic. She didn’t touch it Sunday and made a nice dinner while we were out at the usual Sunday night thing.

Monday night… pretty sure I know what’s going on. I’m home with the kids.

Friday and Saturday night are parties we’re attending — it’s that time of the year — and I’m come to dread them. Smile. Enjoy.

10:30. Kids are in bed. I’m trying to get some work done and then going to sleep. I suppose this is what I wished for. That if she was going to do this she do it elsewhere.

Saturday we were around the house, did the shopping, etc. Saturday W spent a lot of time with D helping her get her homework organized and it was really good. She was very plugged in. Sunday I’m outside putting up the Christmas lights with S when she says she needs to go in to work for a couple hours. I don’t doubt that but I knew what was going to happen after. I took the kids to the Sunday night thing.

At one or two am she came to bed and I could smell it even though I was half awake. You know the smell that’s on someone’s breath when they have been drinking but not recently. This morning catching up on Facebook you can pretty much chart the progress where her comments go from funny to bombastic. The later I recognize as comments made under the influence.

Got up early this morning to take the kids to school and she was up and unusually chipper despite her lack of sleep.

In a way this is better. I never really see what she’s up to. It’s better than the days when she used to be drinking around the house. I think she’s probably avoiding doing it in front of me or perhaps it’s just more fun out at different bars. But it’s widening the gulf and I don’t want that.

On the way home was one of those semi-coherent conversations that really take me back. When we used to come see these friends a lot years back (before S was born) there were a lot of these conversations where we’d be driving home and W would try to explain something to D and get caught up in knots. I’d be driving along in silence thinking, “just knock it off” in my head. This was one of those. I didn’t say anything because I could think of nothing useful to say. Believe me I tried but all I could think of was, “Hey, look! A UFO!” and that seemed a conversational dead end once everyone had looked.

Of course the conversation ended badly. Mutual fault there. Then W became engrossed in her phone. She started making Facebook posts and I thought to myself, “this is usually the point where she finds a work emergency that needs dealing with, but happily it’s Thanksgiving. But I forgot how many of her coworkers are outside the US. She found a situation that needed to be dealt with. When we got home she said she needed to go take care of it.

S fell asleep in the car on the way home so I got him in bed, where I’m writing this, and she’s outside with cigarettes and a glass of wine. I assume the later but she would not be sitting outside if it weren’t for the former.

Guess I’ll go to sleep. There are lots of things I’m thankful for.

Update: At 4 in the the morning W woke me up from a dead sleep and said she needed to go into the office. I didn’t think she was in any condition but couldn’t bring myself to stop her. I said be careful, then lay awake thinking of all the awful things that could happen. A while later she came in and got ready for bed. Said she was able to solve it remotely. I was relieved. Not great for my sleep though. And in contrast today (we had the day off) was great.

I got the kids and headed home. To my surprise she was home already. Not to my surprise she smelled of her hobbies. She explained something about her afternoon schedule which did not line up with the fact that I saw her on the road. But I didn’t call her on it. I’ve played hooky too. But my place is a burger joint.

Then it went south, D was being a brat about having W take her somewhere while I took S to swimming. Somehow that descended into a fight. W ordered D to the car, but she took off taking a walk down the street. Her impulse when upset is to remove herself. All of this put me uncomfortably in the middle. Before D did her act I thought she was only being a brat and while she shouldn’t be rewarded for that, I thought W was much more upset than seemed warranted. I can’t help but think this was due to her chemical state and that probably made me much less supportive than I should have been.

I took S to go swimming, gambling that I’d be able to locate D on the way. I did and made her get in the car and come with me to the lesson. I thought this was better than sending her home for the two of them to continue the fight. She moped the whole time. Of course it means she missed out on going anywhere.

On the way back she did open up a little and wanted me to explain why mom gets upset the way she does. I had to walk a very fine line here. First off all she, my daughter, did a number of things wrong that night. I didn’t want to let her off on that and I tried to explain. But on the other hand I couldn’t hide the fact that I thought W had over-reacted, but I did hide why I thought she had. I don’t think I really got my point across. Fuck, I don’t know what my point was.

I expected to come home to more of the same, but apparently despite the amount of booze currently in the house she was done for the day and was pretty calm. I didn’t expect that.

I’m pretty sure now that this is dumb advice about everything, including management, but definitely about more serious issues. It’s pretty much like starting a sentence with, “you know what your problem is…” Here’s the dumb thing I did: I agreed with The Ex. He’d accused her multiple times of having a drinking problem. At the beginning I didn’t believe it. By that point I had started to wonder. And once, she asked if I thought he was right. She seemed vulnerable at that moment. She seemed like she knew the answer and actually wanted confirmation. I took the advice. I said, diplomatically as I could, that I could see where he thought that and that sometimes I worried about her.

The wall went up.

Probably in the top 5 of the dumbest things I’ve said. But then again, if I’d lied she’d have known that. I’m bad at it and she knows me well. That probably would have been worse.

No right answer to that question I guess.