Let's talk about The Box. She gave it to me to keep at my house. I put it away on the top shelf in the closet and forgot all about it until I ran across it last week while I was hunting for the Christmas presents I had hidden. Very well, as it turned out. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" /> During my increasingly-frantic search, I saw this strange box and opened it up to see what it was. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" /><img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" /><img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" /><img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" /><img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" /><img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" /><img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" /><img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" /><img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" /><img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" /> It wasn't Christmas presents, that's for doggone sure!

t&l

6-27-5 was quite a day wasn't it? I never dreamed when I got up that morning it would turn into the kind of day it did.

There are three of us here that I know right off that count today as the 6 month anniversary of the beginning of recovery. For me, it was also d-day.

If you are like me, some days are good, some are iffy, and some are just bad. I must say that the good and iffy outweigh the bad ones now.

I hope in 6 more months that the good will outweigh the iffy and the bad ones will be few and far between.

I can not even imagine how rough it has been with a pregnancy, the loss of a child, and the OW remaining in your life because of the financial reasons.

Your dependence on the Lord I kjnow has been what has gotte you through.

I hope you have a very blessed day.

Does AJ realize that this is 6 months? I know mine doesn't, but it is not a good day to remind him. He is studying and he doesn't need anything to throw him off today. He has to take professional exams tomorrow and Thursday (prayers appreciated)

Blessings

Overall, yes, intimacy and everything else has improved. I am going through another smaller dip right now, but I am sure it is directly related to his grouchiness over the last week, and not something deep and lasting. He has been fine the last two days, and I am losing the urge to kick him. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

He has been having to get up at 3:30-4am for the job site he's been going to, and not always getting to bed as early as he should. Sleep deprivation makes him cranky. Christmas Eve was the worst, when Neaksis called up about 9 to see if I could bring a few presents back to her, that were still in my trunk. I didn't mind, but he had just dozed off and woke up enough to order me not to go (:eek!!!), and after I hung up the phone continued to complain for a while in a rather rude way until he finally dozed off again.

Less than five minutes later, one of his good friends showed up at our gate, honking his horn and shouting for help. His pit bull had gotten entangled in whatever they were using to tie it up, and was in danger of choking. His wife was useless; she has excessively long manicured nails, and a dislike of anything smacking of manual labor. Oh, I didn't want to wake up AJ, but his poor friend was frantic.

AJ woke up fine, was gone a few minutes, and then came back fine. I just went about my business, not feeling particularly snuggly for some reason. The Dervish plopped down next to him and asked, "Daddy, why you so mean ta Momma?" LOL! AJ remembered nothing, but asked me about it and felt very bad when I told him. And of course when I tucked in small Dervish, I reassured him that Daddy was very sleepy and didn't mean to be grouchy, and he had said sorry.

The other times AJ was grouchy he was awake, and at least apologized on his own, making an effort to guard his hasty tongue. While I try not to hold grudges, it takes a while now for me to relax and get close again when he has done something I don't like, even if he is sorry and stops. (Fortunately this has not happened much so far in R; he has done very well in being someone I want to be close to.)

I have recently talked to him a little, in general terms, about how hard R has been for me, and he had the idea of one night a week counselling with each other so if one of us is having a problem, the other can at least offer support. I think it's a wadfoil idea, but in the last couple weeks of work and holiday prep it hasn't happened. Maybe this coming weekend will work. On the one hand, he wants to know more about my feelings and trials in this, but on the other hand they make him feel really super bad, too, because he knows it is his fault. Somehow we will have to reach a happy medium between me telling him nothing, and me telling him every bad thought that floats through my head and bothers me. I am not a medium kind of girl, and it will take some work.

That was kind of a long answer just to say, yep, we're getting better a little at a time.

Wow, there was another page I didn't see till now. Prayers for your husband, MoFo. (Howdja like that one? Better than the other! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />)

I'll remind AJ later, prolly after he gets off work. I don't think it will upset him, and what I hope is that he will feel better that together we have beaten one of Gargamel's unholy prophecies.

I was just thinking of that abbreviation this morning, and wondering if it might be an acceptable substitute. Either our thinking of it separately means it's a genius idea, a stroke of brilliance, or else is just means that 2 people happened to have the same bad idea at the same time and so what?! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

t&l

LOL. It is nice to know I am being thought of anyway <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

i dont know....
i am thinking that MoFo is almost worse. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" />

lol- I guess I could make up a new name. I really am not comfortable with my real one. Guess I could come up with a name I have always wanted to be named, huh?

Hey Neak:

I have a son(8) and a daughter(6) too. Do yours fight with each other a lot? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />

Are you in Montana? I thought i read something about you moving there. I am thinking about going there.

But MoFo sounds so hip! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" /> We could always go with the buttoned-down "Ward", lol. I like the name moveforward; it is just hard to nicknameize.

Oh, my kids fight allllllll the time! It is like a hobby for them, but bugs the snot our of me. It seems like I am always having to break up a fight and try and redirect them to something more fun than clobbering each other.

We live in CA, but I want to move to MT. It's getting too crowded here, and there's not enough snow where we live; once or twice every ten years or so. I've been trying to convince everybody to move to MT with me anyway.

P, if it's not too sensitive, how did you know there was one? I am in awe.

Ooops - Lost me on that one Neak. I know you are the Idiotville IT head, but I'm ALL MIXED UP.

Ooooh, here is the question! Believer, it's a cleverly disguised question for me - so cleverly disguised that I didn't get it at first - about a spy who may or may not have been reading my posts and reporting to my STBX.

I was trying to be sneaky, and apparently succeeded. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Like I said, that Neak is a clever girl.

Sometimes I even outsneak myself.

-Not_So_You_Sneak

Oh, my puns are awful.

The kids wanted to make lunch today, and it was the most awful thing. I did not have any.

They made grilled cheese sandwiches. They followed my instructions to butter the outside of the bread, then freelanced and filled the skillet with 1/2 inch of oil. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" /> Buttered deep-fried grilled cheese sandwiches, my favorite! Sounds like a great southern dish. (Spoken by a true Yankee.)

Today has been an accomplishing day, bookwise. (My house is still a mess, and I'd better get busy.) Neaksis & I received word that our children's book is slated to come out in February, or at least by March if they're running a little late, and I sent in the query letter to the other publisher for my book about Peter. Now that was an ordeal!

I have ordered Neaksis to begin work on our next children's project, and we spent a while brainstorming today. It looks like the next one will be a kid set into the story where Paul was lowered in a basket from the wall of Damascus. Sounds like oodles of fun!

Neaksis, by the time you read this, I want the first draft ready. If it's not, get cracking!

Well, time to put all this energy into something more constructive, like the kitchen.

I have been far too busy arguing and stewing to contribute anything useful for a while. (I am nothing if not honest.)

Recovery is a daunting process, even now. At least we are agreed that we both still want to recover.

Communication seems to be the big problem. On the one hand, AJ says he wants to be my support, and to have me be able to confide in him whenever something bothers me, even if it is something that pops into my memory from the A. On the other hand, he frequently becomes angry when I try to tell him something, even if it's not an actual bothering thing. And then I don't handle that very well, though I haven't thrown vases at his head yet, as I have been tempted to do.

I don't understand what he wants from me, or how I can phrase things more delicately so he doesn't get upset, and he doesn't understand why this still bothers me so much, when he has tried so hard.

Nothing is resolved yet, though we have at least progressed to the point of having some good discussions about it. I pointed out that we are ahead of the curve for the six-month mark, and told him the three reasons why.

1. God. We both rely on Him for help, and pray together often. (For some reason these other problems seem to pop up when we haven't prayed together as much.) We ask God for healing, and He smooths the process along.

2. The changes I have seen in AJ's life, and how consistent he has been with them.

3. The efforts he has made to show his transparency, and that there is still NC.

This has meant that most of what I am dealing with is old stuff, which gradually fades with time. There have been few new wounds, and most of them were related to my extended contact with Gargamel, which I am so glad is ended. (BTW, I will be sending her the final payment on the personal stuff this week, then I won't even have to worry about that.)

When I see him in the nude, I still think a lot of where his penis has been that it shouldn't, but even that is better. It's more of a steady, sad knowledge than the excruciating pain of before. And if he puts his mind to it, he can make me forget that completely, at least for a while.

AJ has been discouraged at times all the way along, because at some times we're close, and sometimes we're driven apart. I think deep down he thinks that is my fault, and because something is wrong with me, (well duh), and that I should be over it by now. He seemed to understand this last time when I explained how it usually takes at least 1-2 years, and that we are doing fine and everything we're going through is normal, and better than normal.

Now we'll just have to see how long he remembers it.

But we are to the place now where we can feel intimacy again, and pray sincerely for each other (maybe he could all along, but I couldn't have much this last week). One more bump crossed over, and a smoother time in which to figure out what to do about the communication thingie.

One funny thing was when he said he noticed I hadn't wanted to be around him as much, and I answered that I didn't like to be around him when he was grouchy, even if he wasn't grouchy at me. His face took on a look of total mystification. "Why not? You're my WIFE!"

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

Really, it's better now.

(((Neak)))

Gosh, did your write this from my POV?

I am feeling so much the same way. Is there comfort in knowing you are not alone?

I agree with steady sadness instead of excruciating pain. It is still not a good feeling.

Mine thinks he has recovered, so I should be, too. NOT.

I think I am worried that the next 6 months will all be anniversaries of things between them that I knew nothing of. He says he doesn't trigger unless I ask him about her or something associated with the A. How does that happen? how can he just stop thinking of her. I honestly believe he is serious, too. Drives me nuts.

She was his old GF from HS so I know when her birthday is. The week of d-day, I told him we were going to do something really special like go to Vegas and renew our vows that day or something. That is not going to happen because of money and work. That is just one more anniversary date in the next 6 months. I hate these thoughts.

My mind is never still. How can he not think about her? Maybe I think about her enough for both of us.

Hang in there, Neak. We are going to make it.

Hey Mom, could you open The Box long enough to look at the date on the 'Morning After' letter? Lots of ugly 1-yr anniversaries are coming up soon, and that one in particular I want to be on the lookout (more than usual) for C attempts. There is also his birthday in May, but at least I know the date on that one.

We went to rescue Neaksis in enemy territory today. She stopped to see what that awful noise was, and it was the muffler dragging on the ground - never a good sign even in the best of weather.

She took haven in a thrift store. Poor Neaksis. Forced to await rescue while immersed in her natural habitat. Ok, so it's my natural habitat, too, but I wasn't stuck.

Coming out of the parking lot we met a vehicle that, through befogged windows, closely resembled the Gargmobile. Also, I haven't gone yet, but AJ was kind enough to warn me that the ice cream shoppe where the Princess wants to use her free birthday sundae certificate (say that three times fast!) is also a favored hangout, which is why he resisted all her pleas to take her there. Lucky me instead.

For the most part I have just been doing my shopping down in the valley, where I don't have to look over my shoulder so much. Of course I have nothing to be ashamed of, but it does wonders for my attitude when I don't have to have my face rubbed quite so firmly in the reality of there being Another Woman out there.

But Neaksis was important enough to make an exception for. ("I'm sorry, Neaksis, but you had the misfortune to break down too close to Gargamel's lair. Maybe you should wait until the rain stops and try to fix it yourself. Surely the thrift store has some wire...")

[That was a joke.]