kvetching up

You fit into me Like a hook into an eye A fish  hook An open eye --Margaret Atwood It is a quiet Sunday morning. I'm soaking in the bath.  Jenny is up, just.  She told me the lower back pain she has been suffering from since the terrible retching of a couple weeks ago has been largely improved by using heat and ice as our friend and LMP Diana suggested.  Finally something works.  So her back is better, her digestion is better, her spirits are improved.  It's marvelous news and I'm thrilled for her.  It also means that she will see Eric  the pinché motherfucker this week, which isn't new, but grates.   I have given up worrying about the agreed upon rules.  I'm sure she lies about when she sees him, that is nothing new.   I have given up worrying about her texting him at hospital.  It is strangely liberating to just assume she is doing so.  I have given up being concerned about her texting him in the car. She used her p...

L einey turned 19 this morning at 634 a.m. She has the most positive disposition of anyone I know. She also makes Jenny and I look like we hold 1950s small town conservative values.  Leiney's beliefs are well informed and based on reading, schooling, podcasts, life experience and activism.  She is everything I would be if I could go back and do my life over again. She can be sanctimonious, can perseverate, and be very judgmental of her parents, but that goes with the territory of the adult teen years. She has it all figured out. For now. She is a light burning bright. The Birthday Party It was a low key affair.  Jane and Catherine came over, Jenny's sisters are in Sun Valley.  Abby was moody, said moodiness has escalated in tbe last few days, for reasons unclear.  Moreover, she is aloof with even me, which is new.  That was true even before last night's drive to Red Robin. She, at 15, can truck no advice or direction on her driving.  When I told her la...

Chemotherapy Day VM Chemo Rooms Jenny has been dreading this day, after the awfulness of the last chemotherapy three weeks ago.  Who can blame her? I roused Jenny at 8:50, for a 9:15 departure. Her appt at Short Stay, where she gets her blood drawn first thing, before the appointment with the doctor and before chemotherapy.   I made Jenny her favorite cheesy eggs l, cleaned up afterward, loaded and ran the dishwasher. We seem to have the routine down to a science at this point.  The only variable is the time of the three appointments, which are invariably variable. We left at 9:15, and made the first appt at 9:40. on the nose, after checking in at the oncology front desk and getting necessary paperwork which contains your assigned Short Stay treatment room number on top. Short Stay is interesting.  Unlike other places in the hospital, you don't check in with anyone. Instead, when walking into the clinic, you drop off paperwork and enter the treatment room, and w...

The research, published in the September issue of APA's  Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (JEP: General)  (Vol. 130, No. 3), indicates that expressive writing reduces intrusive and avoidant thoughts about negative events and improves working memory. These improvements, researchers believe, may in turn free up our cognitive resources for other mental activities, including our ability to cope more effectively with stress. https://www.apa.org/monitor/sep01/keepdiary

Now I Can See Love's Taken Her Toll On Me Today, technically yesterday, was therapy.  My therapist helped get me to this point over  the course of months.  It shouldn't have been a revelatory session.  There isn't any unplowed land, but it does seem that I have let some ground lay fallow as we have been on this journey, not wanting to face the truth--that Jenny doesn't love me enough to end the affair, and all I keep trying to do, without realizing it, is to convince her that I am worthy of her love.  But that effort is always going to be for naught, and doesn't make sense.   I want out.  People may think I'm being selfless by staying, despite the affair, and caring for her when she is dying, but I'm not.  I simply cannot bear the thought that she will die of cancer loving someone else, not me.  She will die of cancer.  She will never love me.   Nothing is scarier to me than contemplating a world where the woman I have lov...

Abigail May The younger teenager smiled at me this morning. Twice. Our baby, firmly ensconced and clearly comfortable in her separation from us as she lives in the land of teen angst, rarely smiles. She can snark with the best of them. If someone asked me where to find an example of pure teenager, I would point to her. I know nothing, she would report. Her favorite question of me, often spoken with exasperation and a lilt of humor and frustration in her voice is, "Why are you so annoying?" And today she smiled at me. Twice.

Sacrifice Sacrifice .  Self-sacrifice to be more specific.  Its a mystery to me how one can be so oblivious.  This evening we had our regularly scheduled Tuesday tandem therapy. It was fascinating, start to finish.  The therapist, Shayla, asked how we were doing.  I was stewing, had been all day, because I was and am convinced Jenny has been seeing  Eric  the pinché motherfucker on the down low.     Jenny answered Shayla first, and said she thought things had been going pretty well, actually. I was hesitant to speak my mind.  In fact, I had been kicking around all day whether or not to remain silent, but my big mouth got the better of me.  I went on a soliloquy, not a jeremiad.  I said that I was unhappy, that I had believed that by telling  Eric  the pinché motherfucker's wife, Jenny would see the light, that something would change.  I noted that I realized now how ridiculous this idea was--magical thi...

It Doesn't Take A Weatherman To Know Which Way The Wind Blows Today.  I've been busy with work much of the morning, but thoughts of this so called life are preoccupying.  Jenny announced two things last night: 1) She was going to sleep on the sectional to see if it helps with her back.  For those of you playing the home game, I moved to the living room sofa well before the sectional was  delivered in late October. I have slept on the sectional since we swapped out the couch. Sleeping in the same bed with a cheating spouse isn't tenable for me.  Also, I am trying to uncouple. Given her recent attempt to attempt suicide, I moved back home, not wanting to risk her following through without me intervening to stop it, and not wanting my kids to discover her lifeless body if she carried out her plan.  And yes, she told me that day she had a plan, and yes she told that to my sister--in-law Judy.  And yes, she now denies she was ever suicidal.  And, final...

Monday.  We moved the desk out today to the living room from the office.  Leiney removed the rolltop's screws last night, so Jenny and I easily got the two pieces to the living room with the help of a hand truck. Soon after, around 9:30, Jenny left for her 10 am at the chiropractor in Ballard.  She texted me and said he was running 30 minutes late, likely a lie to buy time. Even so, a 1030 start would mean she was done by 11:30.  She got home at 1:18. She said she had had lunch at McDonalds. She left Eric out of the story, but I'm sure she saw him. Certain. Title from Cold Shot by Stevie Ray Vaughn .

  How Long Has This Been Going On?   Jenny and I have been in therapy for several months.  Ostensibly, we are working to learn how to live together when she loves someone else, but needs a caretaker as she is sick and probably dying.  She has fed me a lot of horseshit.  A lot.  She hid the affair and lied to me about trips and nights out. When caught, she lied repeatedly about the length of the affair, first admitting to only a few months, then a year, then July 2018. She lied about why she wanted  Eric  the pinché motherfucker to shave her head. She has become an inveterate liar.  She lies to her friends now about our relationship, she makes me an ogre.  Throughout the lying, since caught, and probably before, she justifies her bad behavior by lying about me in dozens of ways.  She does everything, I do nothing.  I am the fault of the dead relationship. Because I didn't respond to lengthy texts, its my fault she is having...

My sleep hygiene is worse than my dental hygiene, and that says alot.  I went to sleep this morning after 4 a.m. , yesterday, about 3:30.  I got up, thanks to Buddy's insistent coaxing, just after 9.  After I had brewed coffee, Jenny came out of the bedroom and into the the living room, just around 10 am. She was in pain, so I comforted her. We snuggled on the couch for hours, watching first Seinfeld and then 2.5 hours of Who Killed Jeffrey Epstein.  The modem went on the  fritz after the first two episodes but t it just needed a reboot.   At 1:22 p.m. Abby was finally ready for our drive to Renton originally scheduled for 10 a.m.  I had let her sleep. Given her sleep patterns are as fucked up as mine, and the reaction one gets from a teenager when they are disturbed, I opted not to bother her.  Oh, also, given my ADD addled mind, I also forgot that I had promised to wake her. Abby drove via 25th until it turns into Montlake and then into 23r...

Pollock Over the months I have quite clearly fallen down on the job in chronicling this journey.  I am trying to do better.  For instance, since Jenny was diagnosed, we consulted both in person with the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and over the phone with Memorial Sloan Kettering.  Each place told us there is nothing to be done other than the palliative care she is receiving.  We knew it was bad news at SCCA, when only a single doctor came to meet with us, where a team had been promised.  I imagine the rookie doctor gets the job of kissing off cancer patients that are determined to be well and truly fucked.  At the Sloan-Kettering phone conference, the doctor (we only expected one) was incredibly apologetic and sad for Jenny.  I found him lovely, but presume, given he was at least my age, that this work will destroy him, if it hasn't already. While irrational, I expect there may be attendant guilt with telling someone they are beyond rescue.

Moni popped by this morning to drop off meds for Jenny that we had sequestered because of her recent suicidal ideation, but that Jenny will need next week, post chemotherapy. Moni is leaving to go to Sun Valley with Chris.  I asked her if she knew that things with  Eric  the pinché motherfucker and Jenny continue apace, as if I had never disclosed anything.  If anything, Jenny seems emboldened, btw. More on that in a moment.  Moni said Jenny had told her that last Thursday.  So, my intuition is much better than it had been.  The suicide was driven, not so much by the chemo, but by the fear she had lost Eric because I told Kandice.   At one this afternoon, Jenny was on a call with a prospective therapist for Abby.  Abby has dumped 4 or 5 therapists over the last year and we desperately want her to have one, what with COVID-19 and distance learning, the loss of both Mic and Bea, Jenny's cancer, and Jenny's long-term and ongoing affair...

It's Enough To Startle Us I am glad to be journaling this journey, but reviewing old posts realize there are large gaps in reporting significant things, like last Monday when Jenny and I were alone, Leiney having driven Abby to acting. Jenny begins to interrogate and berate me for things I said to  Eric  the pinché motherfucker on the Saturday call and in the texts to get him on the phone.  Seriously.  She is fucking this mutt, and upset I called him a PE teacher. Funny thing, she thought I was being classist. In fact, I have always hated PE teachers. Hated.  Jenny actually asked me why I would want to hurt an innocent third party--referring to me disclosing the affair to  Eric  the pinché motherfucker's wife.  Just a reminder, she is fucking the innocent person's husband.  I will do better.

 Well, Leiney and I got our second round of the Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccine yesterday at the Everett Clinic in Mill Creek. My injection hurt a great deal.  And today, my arm hurts at least as much as it hurt after receiving  the first dose in January. Otherwise, I don't have any symptoms, I don't think.  I am achy all over, but that may be from shoveling snow. She's Gone  Here is a pattern.  When Jenny feels good, she isn't here.  This morning she walked around Green Lake with Kathy Schmidt.  She came home for a bit, and I shaved her head and she cut my hair.  Then, she left for a massage at Marianne's and then Murray, Marianne and she were planning to have soup, presumably on Marianne's front porch.  I expect the rest of the week and next to repeat this pattern, as Jenny moves into the second week of a hiatus from chemo while she gets vaccinated. She will wait another two weeks before she again receives chemotherapy--Feb 25. Yesterday...

I hate snow I hate snow.  My mom certainly taught me that.  I didn't understand it until I started driving.  Even then, I loved snow, I just hated the driving.   When Jenny and I were first dating--during the massive blizzard of December 1990--I loved the snow. I remember walking in a literal blizzard with my BoSox hat on at 45th and Roosevelt. Near whiteout conditions, a gusting wind blew my hat into the intersection, and the wind chill keeping the temperature in the single digits didn't stop me from walking to a date at the Last Exit,to drink mocha floats and then later making snow angels, the two of us basking in the bloom of new love. That was then.  I have, upon reflection, hated the snow since the kids were little.  I hate the cold.  It just fucks with my life too much.   After my mom died, a snowstorm came which forced us to cancel her memorial service.  I had scheduled it to take place at a Unitarian Church in North Seattle...

Same As It Ever Was. Entry 1 Jenny has just returned from the chiropractor.  She came in, acting clearly and looking guilty.  She has with Eric   the pinché motherfucker .  I have to let it go. She thinks I'm stupid, she must, or simply doesn't give a fuck or both.  It's tiring, and I just don't understand.  I just don't.  She really doesn't give a fuck about me. I spend my days caring for her when she is debilitated, I have come back home to keep her from killing herself because she has been suicidal. And. It. Just. Doesn't. Stop. To be clear, I am not pleased that she is seeing him, but that is not what is upsetting. She gave me her word she would tell me when she was seeing him, and has never kept that promise. Jenny is feeling remarkably better.  I must note that she hasn't brought up Eric   the pinché motherfucker , except to suggest he come move the desk and the couch on Saturday, if I am not interested in doing it.  Which, tells m...

Am I a clown? Do I amuse you?     This morning started with several texts from Jenny, a sampling of which I present here: I called her after I received the first text just after 5 a.m.. I asked her to wait to leave. I didn't take her threat too seriously, she had run away the week before and came back. But I didn't laugh her off, and became increasingly worried as the texts continued. I called her again after 6, and after receiving a text listing a few more bills I would need to watch after she was gone. I asked her if she had a plan to hurt herself.  She said yes. I asked her to wait for me to get there before she left. She agreed. Remember, I was only 10 blocks away on top of a steep hill. Outside, I discovered my Jeep lock was frozen shut. I would have to walk--or run actually to get to the house. I had to go change into warmer clothes. I called her, told her my dilemma, and then asked her yet again to wait.  I called and texted both her sisters.  No response...