Month: October 2003

got back into houston around 1:00am. went back to work today. i feel pretty out of it at work. i’ve told stephen about things, but then he’s known what was going on the whole time pretty much. i told my dept manager last week because i was worried that management would notice the recent downtown in my productivity and attitude and such. so i wanted him to know what was going on and why my work might seem to have slipped recently and may be that way for awhile. he was really understanding about it. but then he’s a “yellow” (color designations for personality types based on a program called insights…don’t ask), so caring about others is what he likes to do.
the trip went okay. i completely lost it trying to load the motorcycle in the pickup by myself on saturday. i dropped it over once and broke a passenger peg, then i couldn’t get it started, then it started raining on me. it was too much for my fragile state. fortunately, about an hour later jack was able to come over and help me get it loaded. so i took off several hours later than i’d planned.
i got the motorcycle dropped off at my brother’s without too much incident. he had said his driveway was steep…i consider mine fairly steep and it’s maybe a 15 degree slope. well, i got to linc’s (first time i’d been to this place) and his driveway was like 40 degrees or something. it was crazy. after several scary manuvuers in my pickup, i ended up driving into the front yard and we unloaded the bike onto the porch and then moved it down into the carport.
the time home was somewhat awkard but not too emotionally traumatic. the awkwardness was because my parents and i never talked about the situation until the last night. it went about like i’d expected it to. my dad had sent me a couple of e-mails so i already knew sort of what he thought, and my mom had sent me numerous e-mails so i already knew where she was coming from.
surprisingly, the conversation with my grandmother went well. she wasn’t super strongly opinionated about much and i learned some new things about my family history. i’m sure it was troubling for her to hear though, and i hope that she can deal with it okay in the coming days, weeks, and months.
on monday i spent most of the day with my dad, going out to our land and shooting some guns. i had done neither in a long time. it was good to go out and try to reconnect with some of my family heritage, but it was also sad because i’ve not really been out on the land in a long time and a lot of things have fallen apart over time. a pecan grove almost completely died a few years ago during a long drought and hard freeze…i hadn’t seen it before. almost all of the trees were dead and falling down. the old “roads” (two dirt tire-tracks) on a lot of the land were barely visible, if visible at all. and pickly pear has taken over the places almost completely. it’s amazing. it makes me wish i lived closer to it, or on it, so i could do more to make things better. of course, that’d take both time and money, and neither my parents, nor my brother, nor i are very wealthy. and i for one am rather lazy, so time doesn’t really do much good for me either unfortunately.
while we were out and about, we also stopped by an old small cemetary out by the llano river off a dirt county road. some of my leifeste ancestors are buried there — several of whom are the ones that came over from germany. i was sort of overcome with emotion and had to choke back some tears. but then i’m not really in the best mental state these days, am i?

i’m going back to brady saturday and am taking off work monday and tuesday. it’ll be nice to get away from here. although it’ll probably be somewhat emotionally draining because i’ll be seeing linc and ash in austin, then my parents and my grandmother in brady.
i’d not talked to ash much in some time. both he and my brother have called me numerous times since the friday i found out. i had a lot of good times (and some not so good times too) with ash since we met in college. he and i get along well…it’s just pretty comfortable. there aren’t many people i’ve run across in my life that are like that for me. i miss some of the good times that he and i shared both in college and when we were both working for lockheed martin down at nasa/johnson space center.
i’ve talked with linc quite a bit since this happened. i know through the years he’s wanted to be closer to me, although i don’t think either one of us are all that great at being close. he’s better at it than i am though, i suppose. maybe this will facilitate some new level of friendship/brotherhood.
my parents…well, they’re my parents. they want the best for me, and they don’t want to see me hurt. it kind of makes sense what position they’d take on this matter.
and my grandmother…haven’t told her yet. i guess i’ll tell her this weekend. that should be interesting.
i’m also taking my old motorcycle (1994 kawasaki vulcan) to my brother. it’d be worth about $2000 if it were in good shape, it’s worth about $1000 in the shape it’s in, and it’d cost me at least $1000 to get it in street-ready condition. so i told my brother i’d give it to him if he wanted to take on the task. he’s wanted a motorcycle for some time, so he chose to take it. i sure hope it doesn’t turn out to be an albatross around his neck. he said he’d found some people who would help him work on it, and he’s take the motorcycle safety course to get his license. i hope it works out for him.

i sent an e-mail today. i had written some earlier, but after a day or two i was able to rewrite them and remove a fair bit of the hatred and rage that was in them. or least i was able to get rid of some of the more caustic sarcastic comments and most of the cussing (of which there was a great deal).
synopsis of e-mail: i’m fscked up. i can’t trust anything you say to me or have ever said to me. you need counseling. i don’t know if i could ever want to reconcile — how could i ever trust you in the future? and you say this guy is still your friend? fsck that. i think my taking money out of our joint account was quite reasonable, and i think the amount i left was quite generous. so screw what some lawyer-friend says about the fact that such things look bad in court. i think they’d understand. i think she’s still going out and doing stuff with the people she has said were wrong for her to be doing.
anyway…what a fscking joke.

i skipped work yesterday. i wasn’t really in a functional state. i decided to go to work today — it was a choice between worrying about breaking down at work and having nowhere to go to be alone, or sitting in my house by myself surrounded by the trappings of my shattered life. i chose work.

tamara came by today, with jack. jack brought jackson. that’s kind of awkward, huh? a four-year-old kid walking around, not having a clue what’s going on but making both of us try to retain some amount of composure. eventually they went outside so tamara could talk to me. i can’t say i was too excited about looking at her or talking with her, but d4mn it this is where i live and i have no reason to go away and hide — i’m not the one that commited adultery.
mostly it was more of the same kind of stuff that had been mentioned in the e-mail. she is willing to reconcile if there’s any way i think i could ever forgive her for what she did. it blows my mind…how in the world is it that she wants to reconcile NOW? what a bunch of sh!t that she gets to go off and fsck some other guy and then come back and want to reconcile. why can’t she just take the path she already chose for herself? she was the one that kept talking about how mediocre our marriage was, how she knew what she wanted but was scared to do it. of course, now i know that she was already doing it. (pun intended.) what a crock. i was going through hell trying to figure out how to keep our relationship from disintegrating so quickly in front of my eyes, putting up with being treated like sh!t and trying to be loving (kind, patient, long-suffering, etc…I Cor stuff), and she’s going out behind my back getting drunk and developing a romantic relationship with some guy who she ends up fscking.
and how exactly is it that i’m supposed to want to reconcile?

tamara sent me an e-mail this afternoon. she said she confessed her adultery because i should be able to make informed decisions about our relationship. and to “respect my wishes” she’ll move out of the house.
one good thing — she said she is willing to persue “even — maybe especially — Christian counseling”. this is good because in the last couple of weeks she was adamant about not wanting to see a xian counselor. why could that be? i’m assuming it’s because she didn’t want to have anyone tell her what she was doing, the way she was acting and thinking, was completely wrong and sinful and that her marriage vow is a given. well, at least until one commits adultery.
of course, at the time she was telling me this stuff i didn’t know she’d done something so completely stupid and so disrespectful, dishonorable, base, and plain wrong as that. it kind of pisses me off that she chose to throw our marriage in the toilet by commiting the act she did, but now she wants to reconcile. shouldn’t the marriage be worked on BEFORE one commits adultery? maybe that’s just me…. she already chose to leave me spiritually and mentally, and at least part time physically. i’m just glad we hadn’t had sex in a couple of months. the thought of touching her makes me sick to my stomach, knowing what she’s done to me and our relationship.
she also noted she’d like to come by and get some stuff. she’d planned to do it while i was at work, but i won’t be going to work because i’m in no emotional state to do so. then there’s the fact that i changed the front door lock and changed the garage door code — that’ll make it hard to get in without me here or without jack (who has the second key to the front door). i don’t know if i’ll be able to look at her…i may have to leave the house if she comes by while i’m here.
her closing comments: “My act of infidelity was the supreme trangression against you. Nothing that I can say can mitigate that in any way.” well said…that pretty much sums it up.

so tamara and i had talked about how interested we were in tarantino’s new film _kill bill_. even though tamara should have been teaching tomorrow (saturday) and would thus probably be grading papers this evening and perhaps all night, i thought i’d call to verify and see if she wanted to try to catch it on opening day. if not, there was always an internet cafe jay had mentioned he might be going to tonight.
so i call her cell around 1:30pm…to voice mail and left a message. nothing by 3:30pm so i call her cell again…to voice mail and left another. nothing by 5:30pm so i call her cell again…to voice mail and leave another.
i leave my desk and she calls around 6:00pm and leaves a message. what does it say? (paraphrasing) “hey, yeah, you’re right, i’m going to be grading papers tonight. tomorrow i’ve got the classes, then i’m going to try to do some school work up at school, then there’s an entertainment system show i’m going to, and of course people are going out to party afterword so i’m going to that. we may also go see _kill bill_, so if you want to go see it tonight you can. i guess if you don’t get to see it this weekend and i don’t either, maybe we can see it sometime next week. bye.”
nice, huh? so i’m sort of miffed. does it seem like maybe i’m getting leftovers and pretty being completely disregarded? it’s nothing new…it’s not like that hasn’t been going on for the last month or two.
so i call her back to tell her that i’m offended and annoyed by what she is yet again doing to me. i talk until after i miss my last bus home, but i kind of fall apart and tell her i no longer can make any decisions or know what to do because i don’t know what will be the right thing to help our relationship. i tell her i made a commitment to G-d, her, myself, and others and that is what is important and i have to honor that. she says i have a choice. somewhat confused i say “no i don’t. i made my choice when i chose to marry you and said the vows.” she says “yes, you do.” i say “no, i don’t. what do you mean?” to which she replies “yes, you do…because i’ve been having an affair.”
i’m standing in my office at work. how great is that?
after much crying, screaming, cussing (a lot of cussing) on my part — along with hanging up a few times — i learn that they “only had sex once”, something she quite adamantly tells me. how long ago? “i don’t have my planner with me.”
hello? does one write “commited adultry” in one’s planner? “first fsck with someone besides my husband of 5+ years”? maybe a little scarlet “A” so as to be a private note to one’s self? anyway, i get her to guestimate…about 2 weeks or so.
so for at least 2 weeks i’ve been putting up with her treating me like sh!t, while she was going out and fscking somebody else and had sealed the deal on the destruction of our marriage. wonderful.
after the final hangup, i call my friend jack and he comes and picks me up and gives me a ride to my pickup. i talk to him a bit in the parking lot, he gives me a hug that ends on my side way before his. then i drive home.

so it begins. the first entry of a probably soon-to-be-forgotten weblog. one of many, i’m sure. anyway, the main reason i set out to get this up and running is so i can crank out some thoughts on the most recent event in my life: my wife had an affair. that’s a pretty big one, huh? should be good for lots of thoughts and rants and crying and “fsck life” rambling, don’t you think? we shall see.
NOTE: i’m predating this entry a month. it’s really 11/04/03 as i write this, but i want to get the entries for some of the “big dates” on the actual dates that they occurred. i’m anal that way, i suppose. but hey, at least i didn’t lie to you and act like this was all done real time, right?