Thanks for the congrats, they are gratefully accepted. I am absurdly delighted to finally be in the lists there, at my favorite book places. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

It really is funny to me, because I'm just an ordinary person - weird, but ordinary - who has everyday responsibilities ranging from grandfather to Dervish, who scrubs her own toilets, mows her own lawn, washes mountains of other peoples' laundry (mostly belonging to the Dirty Dervish), has a few 'science projects' growing in dark corners of the refrigerator, and has dishes piled up more often than not. Not to mention the mice.

I always pictured a writer's lot as more glamorous, somehow. None of the writers I envisioned ever had to have close contact with disgusting bodily emissions, or burying German shepherds. (I draw the line at disposing of the mice. Mr. Computer makes a killing throwing them away for me.)

But no one guesses any of that when I get up in front somewhere. I clean up pretty well, and even the Dervish usually acts human in public. I think he just likes the cute little old ladies to ooh and aah over him. I clean up well enough to look like a polished writer, once in a while, but it just isn't like I thought it would be.

<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Naturally I decided that as long as Gargamel had been accessing AJ's email for many, many months (he had foolishly given her his password for something early on in the A), that she might as well find out a few things.

First I went onto my 2nd email address and sent him a love letter, saying, "You don't have to respond to this one either, but I just wanted to tell you how I feel about you..." And proceeded to tell him how wonderful he is, and talk about how happy we are together.

We sent a few things back and forth, just enough to show how lovey-dovey we are. The day before I locked his account down again for him, I emailed him the password for my 2nd email account, "because I don't want there to be any more secrets between us". Then, at the pre-appointed time, I unblocked my other address, re-blocked hers, and changed the password.

I have no idea if she saw the email with my password or not, but I took just a little more latitude with that one. Still keeping up the once or twice a day love emails, I exchanged emails with Neaksis and gellnjen, some of which contained unpleasant revalations, if anything was revealed at all.

There was also a certain amount of misleading information that we disseminated. On August 21 she had emailed me, saying she had heard we were moving, and was this true? I responded very vaguely, that moving was certainly a possibility, and gave her Mom's PO box as the address to which she should send future written communications.

I still don't know for sure who was the leak. Only a handful of family and friends knew that we were thinking of moving...at some time in the distant future...but obviously somebody we trusted had blabbed. So without ever lying, we said things we knew she would misinterpret if she saw. Jen & I chatted about our AR property (a tiny bare lot, nothing to brag about)and we talked about packing stuff away, (all of us knew that Mom was bringing loads of boxes from the hosipital so I could do major spring cleaning and get rid of a bunch of stuff).

And, well, eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves. One letter to Neaksis, I allowed myself to vent a bit. It made me feel much better, whether she ever read it or not.


A little note about Cindy. Her husband lives in his own house, though they have not divorced. At his house, he keeps horses. Two of them belong to Gargamel. While the A was going on, Cindy's husband kept bugging and bugging to find out who it was that Gargamel was seeing. Apparently he had had a crush on her for quite some time, and Gargamel professed to be rather creeped out by his attentions; why he even went so far as to bring her flowers and stuff! And yet she continues to board her horses with this creepy person, even after all this time. I know I'm not the only one who smells something fishy with that whole sitch.

Apparently AJ is not the first married man she has had an inappropriate relationship with.

After a few days of fun, I changed the password on my account, too, and the party was over.

I slept in sooooooo late this morning. I didn't get up till 9:29 sharp. The kids had been up for quite a while, but not as long as they would have been if the lightning and thunder hadn't awakened them at 3:30 this morning and kept them awake for a while.

After they got up, I woke up lots of times for a second or two each time. At one point I asked my princess to check and see what everyone was doing. Then I had a little dream that she came back and told me - it was something to do with a tiny rabbit??? - but I was fine with it and happily went back to sleep. Much later I woke up enough to realize that I hadn't gotten the answer that I wanted, and was relieved when all they turned out to be doing was watching Herbie.

In a bit we'll go to the park while it's still sunny, before the next round of rain hits later today, and give them a chance to try out their "new" rollerblades somewhere besides the living room.

I will keep the Dervish's adrenaline strips in my pocket (thank you, Neaksis <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" />) and slip them to my niece and nephews when no one is looking. Maybe I'd better have one, too.

Then, when we get home I will try and find someplace to put the bagpipes where no one will ever ever find them again.

If any of you had a Christmas that was less than merry, just picture me shut up in the house with six little children and a bagpipe, and you will feel so much better. See? It could always be worse. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

I am still dumbfounded. Bagpipes.

Well, I had to remind myself where we left off, it has been so long since I've been in here. The next item that had to be tackled after shutting down her little email eavesdropping project was that of getting company equipment back from her.

Just as with sending a full total for the amount owed, she had promised some time earlier to mail out the uniform and office key, knowing that she would be reimbursed for postage. As time dragged on, I asked several more times for the company items and she ignored me.

Then came the point where we were losing the office because there was no money left in the corporation to pay the rent, and we had to get the keys back to them. The idea of leaving her with a key to somebody else's property was almost as scary as her having a grudge and uniforms. Who could even imagine what someone with so much malicious inventiveness would do? I really didn't want to find out.

So, from the September payment I subtracted $110 to cover the cost of shirt, jacket, and new locks for the office. Almost instantly, an email flamed its way back to me, entitled "Don't play games".


This letter, along with so many others, tried to slyly undermine the small bit of faith I have in my husband by bringing up yet another thing he had "neglected" to tell me about, and the tone was unmistakably hostile. How badly I wanted to at least blow up her house, but settled for just breaking chairs on Idiotville....again.

It was two days before I was calm enough to respond with grace, and her threat to track AJ down just had to be dealt with.

Grrrrr. I just lost my whole post, but I'll try to recreate it the best I can.

It must have taken her a while to come up with further awful ideas, because it was five more days till she wrote back.

Obviously the word "sleazy" hit home.


My fellow Idiots had great fun pointing out the irony of an OW generously providing marital advice, even suggesting that she go into business for herself. "Gargamel's Marriage Counseling Services." ROFL!

As I mentioned before, I do feel the need to over-explain, and it took lots of encouragement for me to ignore the 'chance' part. I wanted to rub her nose in the fact that I was not the one with the chance; HE was. HE was the one with the chance to make right what he had done wrong, and I had mercifully granted him that chance.

And he had taken it, and dumped her, hahahahahahahahaha. No, I wouldn't really have said that.

And when I told AJ of the contents of this letter, he became irate at the "plans for the future" part. He said he never made her any sort of promise, and told her repeatedly that he wouldn't be able to decide anything while he was still with me.

I suggested that maybe he had said something, and just forgotten, but he was still very insistent that he had done no such thing. I have no idea whether he did or not, but I believe he truly thinks he did not. Either way it was just typical cake-eating behavior at the time, so it had no significance in the present besides just being interesting.

He readily admitted the surveillance, once reminded of it, but as far as he remembered she had agreed to do it strictly as a favor, and it lowered her even further in his already very low estimation, that now she was asking to be paid for it and using it to try and destroy his hard work in the trust-building department. (He really really resented each effort to undermine him.)

He was very open about the whole thing, yes I had asked her to do that, I just didn't remember it till now. No one who knows him would find this hard to believe. It sounds much better to say that he is a big-picture person than that he is absentminded and probably had forgotten by the very next day.

I reassured him that when I responded I would continue to be professional and polite, ignoring her attempts to make trouble. He made me very happy when he encouraged me in that, saying, "You are so much better than she is!"

So with everybody's help, I was good.


That last part was upon the advice of the corporation's attorney, who is going to help handle the remaining collection/lawsuit efforts, and who kindly sent out a letter to Gargamel a couple weeks ago, at no extra charge.

She must have had fun making The Box.

The less said about The Box, the better, so this will be short.

I got the corporate items back, and still consider it worth it for them not to be in the hands of an evil woman.

She included a number of other items, too, like a series of nauseating love letters, one ostensibly written the morning after the first time they rutted like hawgs, and saying bad things about me ("I don't know how you can stay with someone who treats you like that" <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />), his toothbrush, and some cards, INCLUDING THE ONE I HAD SENT BACK TO HER IN JULY, LOLOLOL!!!!

Yes, I cried for a good hour, but still feel very satisfied that she didn't get to get away with just keeping stuff that didn't belong to her, and using it as one more form of leverage.

Upon excellent advice, I never so much as acknowledged, even professionally regarding the company property, the receipt of the box.

The next time I heard from her was November 7.

I had just gotten back from the hospital, and learning that Dillon was dead. As I logged into my email I knew, as surely as if I had heard a voice, that she had emailed me. I really think God was protecting me by not letting it be a surprise. Sure enough, she had, so I just closed my email box and left it alone for a week.

They induced me the next day, and the funeral was on Friday. I had the feeling she would use this as an excuse to break NC, and I was right. Tuesday the 29th a mystery card came in the mail. Our address, "AJ & Family", was written in an unfamiliar cursive (Gargamel usually prints), no return address, and postmarked in Sacramento.

I slipped it to Neaksis, who did the dirty work for me. She really snickered at "From one friend to another..." <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />

As long as I was very unhappy with her manipulations and disrespect anyway, I decided it was time to read the other letter.

It was not so bad, "laughable" is how Neaksis described her continued attempts to poison my M.


Yep, pretty pathetic. I still have to smile about the Ms. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" /> No matter what her keyboard does, she can't change me from a Mrs.!!! Bwaaahaaahaaaa!!!!!

The damage came from having to go over the horrendously long list of loans yet again, and seeing all the little things he forgot.

It was never a question of current honesty. He told me everything he could remember, which was all the big stuff.

But even so, it was still very hard to find out that he had gotten petty cash from her a number of times, and that as far back as early February she had paid for a motel for him. Each of these things was little and didn't diminish present trust, but they stirred up so many feelings of anger, resentment, and even hatred, that I knew I was going to have to cut her off as quickly as possible if I wanted to have a hope of recovery.

Sure, the other times had awakened very bad feelings, too, but not on the same grand scale. Along with the death of the baby, and everything else that had gone on, it was just too much.

I'm so very sorry to learn about your loss, Neak...

I've just now been keeping up with your situation..

How far along were you..not that it matters....in regards to the painfulness of this for you two..

Note: the manipulations and disrespect were those of Gargamel, not Neaksis. More English humor - sorry, Dobie. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

It was oh, 3 or 4 weeks before I was up to talking with AJ about it. (Right after a big argument <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> when I asked him about what appeared to be a discrepancy in his story, and he didn't like how I approached him about it. I asked that in the future, if he doesn't like the way I am saying something, that he simply and calmly say that he doesn't like it, instead of getting angry with me, then I try to go about it a different way. Sounds reasonable to me - both of us changing for the better. This has not been retested yet.)

I expected to have to work a bit to persuade him that NC was needed for me also, especially since he didn't really remember when I talked to him before, all the things she had done to try and drive us apart. But he immediately agreed. I didn't even have to drag out my list of memorable quotes to show him how toxic she was. He even remembered the other things I mentioned earlier, where she told him we wouldn't last 6 months, and he didn't really love me, etc.

So we had a really good talk, and came away in agreement, though he recommended I wait until the attorney sent her the letter notifying her that the corp. wasn't able to make payments at this time. And that was fine.

A few weeks later, I just felt this sudden urge to work on my NC letter. After I wrote the rough draft, I almost pushed 'send' by accident when saving it to my draft folder in the email. Whew! Then I posted it over on Mom's thread for advice.

Believer had a couple of very good suggestions, so I immediately went back in and incorporated them, and saved it into my drafts again.

Well, that is what I thought I did.

As I clicked back into my inbox, it struck me as kind of funny that it had wanted to add Gargamel's second email address to my address book. After all, it only did that when.....an......email..........was...........SENT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!


I was very frantic at first, mostly from the shock of everything and jumping the gun when I didn't mean to.

But it all came out in the wash. The attorney's office called about a half hour later to say their letter to her had gone out, and everyone petted and soothed me so I finally calmed down.

It really is different now that she is blocked and gone. I still have some worries about possible lawsuits, but suffient unto the day is the evil thereof, and I don't think about it much. If it happens, it happens. Even a lawsuit won't bring her back into our lives, but will just be another annoyance that will be dealt with at the time.

As far as can be seen, the Gargamel book is now closed.

I got roses for Christmas.

Hi Mimi, it is nice hearing from you. I was right at twenty weeks when they induced me, but he had been dead for close to a week by then.

The cord was twisted, so he had not been able to grow properly from the time he was 12-13 weeks. When he was born, he was the size of a 14-weeker: 5 inches instead of 10-12, and 1 1/2 ounces instead of 1/2-1 pound.

The pressure caused an abruption, which is what finally brought his ordeal to an end.

You are right about how long it was not making much difference, but I relaxed after 12 weeks, since the highest risk was past.

How many living children do you have and how old are they?

Yesterday was so funny, yet touching, with us sitting at the table with our two young men (19 and 23)..

Seems like just yesterday that they were playing with their toys...

It was very nice, too, at AJ's request I posted (on Mom's thread) a link to Dillon's guest book, and a number of very kind people expressed their sympathies. It has meant a great deal to us, as well as the condolences here on the board, and I was very glad he had that idea.

Mine still play with their toys, but I'm sure that all too soon they will be old like yours, with their cuteness all used up. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

My oldest son is 8, my daugher is 6, and my wildlife reclamation project, I mean my other son, is 4. (He is not called the Dervish for nothing, lol.)

They are adorable, mostly, and have had a nice Christmas. They made sweet little crafts, helped me cook, and ate all the candy they could get their sticky little hands on.

In a little while we are taking all six (which includes my sister's three) to the tennis court so they can try out their rollerblades. And so they will stop driving us crazy for a few minutes.

Wow..what a great family, Neak...

Our boys remain "CUTE"...

However, I have to share their adoration with the "CHICKS"... <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Lol...:)

Recovery has been very weird for me. (Eighteen minutes to the six-month milestone.)

MC commenced at once, well as soon as we got back from St. Louis, and went very well. We spent a few weeks making sure the pre-A issues had been addressed, then just focused on Building A Stronger Marriage.

Thirteen days into R, I got pregnant, though I didn't find out for some time.

For the first two months or so, everything was going really well. MC almost stagnated, as we quickly assimilated the information, and there were no new problems to bring up.

The MC asked, one last time, if there were any difficulties in our sex life. Oh, no, everything is just great! And right after that it all started to fall to pieces for me.

I don't think it will ever be possible to sort out which feelings were A-related and which were made worse by the PG, but suddenly I lost every shred of desire for my H. All I could think about was him and her, even worse than before, and I didn't want him to touch me, or really me to touch him, either.

Did I talk to him about this? Well, no. I probably would have brought it up if the MC had asked, but he had already given up on everything as fine. I gritted my teeth and kept going, but without much inner enthusiasm. Not that it didn't feel good, but it was just sex. No emotional connection for me.

The emotional distance started to show up more, too. (I didn't talk about that, either.) I still made every effort to be loving, since love is an action and not a feeling, but my feelings were mostly getting worse.

In recovery #1, I was ready to fall back into his arms, to believe him and trust him and love him. The second time around, I just sat back and waited for the A to start up again. I had no confidence that it wouldn't, and rather thought it might at any time, despite my determination to divorce if it did.

And, finally, the resentment and anger started to surface. Or if not to make it all the way to the surface, at least it got high enough to where I could feel it. Into this environment came those awful letters from Gargamel, and you can imagine how that made the whole thing worse.

Not that it was all bad, and that's what was so confusing. We prayed and worshiped together, which was wonderful, and I would feel quite close during those times. Or when he would be extra thoughtful or loving, my happy feelings would overflow. Temporarily.

As soon as he wasn't around to show love and affection, such as being at work, I would be right back slogging through all those bad feelings, no matter how I tried to distract myself. It was always better on here, because then at least my A thoughts were turned to constructive directions, and not just a continual reliving of the place which would be censored if I mentioned it here, that AJ put me through.

It was wrenching, having dual citizenship in heaven and yet still in the bad place. I still do, to a certain extent, but not quite as much.

MC became quite frustrating to me. We would go over the same stuff each time, everything we talked about was fine, but inside me was this seething mass that was never dealt with, and I didn't know what to do about it. I mean, MC was always about us, and this problem was just within me.

AJ was happy, AJ was content, AJ was totally in love with me, AJ didn't think much about the A, AJ was JUST FINE! And I wasn't. All I could do at the time was keep on behaving in a Christian manner, continue to show love-by-actions, and hope it would eventually go away on its own.

Well, congratulations to me, and to us. Six months, yesiree. I'm going to celebrate by pulling AJ's uniform out of the dryer and going to bed.

To those of you who are still struggling at whatever stage of this thing, and that includes me, I pray you will be given the strength you need. The Lord is good, and will grant what you need to get through each day. Keep your courage and faith, and you will eventually leave the Valley of Shadow for the green pastures not far ahead. Your trials in the shadow will prepare you to enjoy the peace in store for you.

You're counting the minutes?!!!!!!!!!!! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />

And for whatever it's worth, everything you've faked during this time has been faked very, VERY well. If I weren't your mother I'd commend you for your inventive skill and admirable determination. Since I am your mother, I'm tempted to shake you till your silly teeth rattle! Nothing good comes of keeping all this bottled up, and I'm speaking as the Grand Champion Bottler, too. Someday it will all blow up, and some poor grandchild will doubtless be injured by one of your ricocheting eardrums. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

t&l

So has the intimacy improved?

Sorry to hear that Neak. Keep in mind that recovery takes a long time. My WH and I split up, and I didn't start feeling recovered for 2 years. I can't imagine what it would have been like with him still here.

If it hasn't it's certainly not for lack of effort! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" /><img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /><img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" /><img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /><img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" /><img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /><img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" /><img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /><img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" /><img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" />

t&l