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We had a second counseling session, in which she reiterated how awful it was to have to apologize for my bad behavior, my abrasive personality, which was why all her friends no longer came to see her...
Which is a load of crap, as you well know. Her friends from work are friendly to me; her older friends have moved from the area following grad school and she never wanted to invite anyone to the house because it was "a mess". Which, of course, was my fault.
She is cherry-picking the incidents that demonstrate my abrasive behavior, going back more than 5 years, so I know what this is: she got angry and then found things to justify her anger. Too bad for her that I don't buy it. I'm going to keep working on the underlying issues until we get somewhere, but I'm not letting her blame me for her unhappiness.
We also met this morning on the mediation, and our mediator had us begin the final steps: the "buy-out", or -- as I like to think of it -- how much do I have to pay her to GTFO? She wants more, I want less. There's room for maneuvering, but I have a slight advantage in two ways: I know how to negotiate (and I have more experience in this), plus I have the guilt factor working for me. I offered a low number, quite deliberately ($25,000), and her initial suggestion was double that.
On other news:
Last night I spent a few hours installing and checking car seats. I really must do this more often, as it gets easier with experience. It was a pleasure; everyone is always happy to be there and thankful for our volunteered time. Just before that, I'd stopped by the fire department admin building to get my fingers printed in the final steps for CERT membership. It's taken a while to get here, as I'd been playing phone tag with the CERT officer in charge of membership and then didn't immediately get around to signing up for the fingers. It's all on computer now, so no ink to wash off. I was the last appointment of the day, arrived about 15-20 minutes early (I'd budgeted enough travel time for traffic and did better than initially expected), which made the technician very happy. We had a lovely chat about things while she was printing my fingers, and then I drove around the very long way to get to the car seat check.
Last week, I took in a mom cat and her ten kittens; I'm fostering them until they are old enough to get into homes. We'd discussed trying to do this in conjunction with the local county shelter, but they are rules-bound and bureaucratic, so we gave up on that and went with Plan A. The woman who caught the cat is a semi-professional animal rescue person, just didn't have space to keep these guys right now, so I've got them in the former guest bedroom/swing space. Momma is skittish and hides; the kittens are all growing although two are much larger and three or four are much smaller, with four right in the middle of the size range. There's one all orange tabby, two little brown tiger tabbies, three all-black, two with black and white, and two black with orange and white. All are adorable. (!!) Momma is a calico DSH, by the by.
School has been successfully going for two weeks now; Sonny is driven to school by the parental unit with whom he stays that week and takes the bus home -- which is to say, my house. He arrives around 2:30, reports to the responsible parental, lets the dogs out or walks them, has a snack, does his homework, reports on the conclusion of homework and if acceptable, is allowed to watch tv. Not a bad gig for a 9th grader. We shall see how well he does; if this keeps up, his grades could even become excellent. One can only hope.
I've been making sure I reach out to friends to do things - met up with some friends last weekend at a pub across the county; one was playing with a group of musicians who apparently meet there regularly, and the rest of us came to hear them. A good time was had by all, and I hope to do it again this weekend. Other friends came over to the house for tea the weekend before, and another good time was had. We made plans to go to the Ren Faire this year, and just need to get this on our calendars.
My Aunt P will be visiting her sister, my mom, in early October, so I have a trip to make up north that weekend. I'll also be going south to Atlanta later that same month, for two back-to-back meetings. Of course, I'll make time for a Making Light gathering in Atlanta as well.
We had a baby shower at work for an Italian woman who is having her first baby. She was not familiar with the American custom, but was educated by her colleagues in the lab, and they had a splendid selection of food. I'd sent her the item she had listed at Buy Buy Baby, which she already got, but then got a hand-knit sweater and cap from Mom. I brought that to the shower, and everyone oohed over it. Mom's knitting is high-quality, and hand-made is always nicer than store-bought. Now we each have a small box of Hershey's Kisses in thanks from our soon-to-be madre.
Which is a load of crap, as you well know. Her friends from work are friendly to me; her older friends have moved from the area following grad school and she never wanted to invite anyone to the house because it was "a mess". Which, of course, was my fault.
She is cherry-picking the incidents that demonstrate my abrasive behavior, going back more than 5 years, so I know what this is: she got angry and then found things to justify her anger. Too bad for her that I don't buy it. I'm going to keep working on the underlying issues until we get somewhere, but I'm not letting her blame me for her unhappiness.
We also met this morning on the mediation, and our mediator had us begin the final steps: the "buy-out", or -- as I like to think of it -- how much do I have to pay her to GTFO? She wants more, I want less. There's room for maneuvering, but I have a slight advantage in two ways: I know how to negotiate (and I have more experience in this), plus I have the guilt factor working for me. I offered a low number, quite deliberately ($25,000), and her initial suggestion was double that.
On other news:
Last night I spent a few hours installing and checking car seats. I really must do this more often, as it gets easier with experience. It was a pleasure; everyone is always happy to be there and thankful for our volunteered time. Just before that, I'd stopped by the fire department admin building to get my fingers printed in the final steps for CERT membership. It's taken a while to get here, as I'd been playing phone tag with the CERT officer in charge of membership and then didn't immediately get around to signing up for the fingers. It's all on computer now, so no ink to wash off. I was the last appointment of the day, arrived about 15-20 minutes early (I'd budgeted enough travel time for traffic and did better than initially expected), which made the technician very happy. We had a lovely chat about things while she was printing my fingers, and then I drove around the very long way to get to the car seat check.
Last week, I took in a mom cat and her ten kittens; I'm fostering them until they are old enough to get into homes. We'd discussed trying to do this in conjunction with the local county shelter, but they are rules-bound and bureaucratic, so we gave up on that and went with Plan A. The woman who caught the cat is a semi-professional animal rescue person, just didn't have space to keep these guys right now, so I've got them in the former guest bedroom/swing space. Momma is skittish and hides; the kittens are all growing although two are much larger and three or four are much smaller, with four right in the middle of the size range. There's one all orange tabby, two little brown tiger tabbies, three all-black, two with black and white, and two black with orange and white. All are adorable. (!!) Momma is a calico DSH, by the by.
School has been successfully going for two weeks now; Sonny is driven to school by the parental unit with whom he stays that week and takes the bus home -- which is to say, my house. He arrives around 2:30, reports to the responsible parental, lets the dogs out or walks them, has a snack, does his homework, reports on the conclusion of homework and if acceptable, is allowed to watch tv. Not a bad gig for a 9th grader. We shall see how well he does; if this keeps up, his grades could even become excellent. One can only hope.
I've been making sure I reach out to friends to do things - met up with some friends last weekend at a pub across the county; one was playing with a group of musicians who apparently meet there regularly, and the rest of us came to hear them. A good time was had by all, and I hope to do it again this weekend. Other friends came over to the house for tea the weekend before, and another good time was had. We made plans to go to the Ren Faire this year, and just need to get this on our calendars.
My Aunt P will be visiting her sister, my mom, in early October, so I have a trip to make up north that weekend. I'll also be going south to Atlanta later that same month, for two back-to-back meetings. Of course, I'll make time for a Making Light gathering in Atlanta as well.
We had a baby shower at work for an Italian woman who is having her first baby. She was not familiar with the American custom, but was educated by her colleagues in the lab, and they had a splendid selection of food. I'd sent her the item she had listed at Buy Buy Baby, which she already got, but then got a hand-knit sweater and cap from Mom. I brought that to the shower, and everyone oohed over it. Mom's knitting is high-quality, and hand-made is always nicer than store-bought. Now we each have a small box of Hershey's Kisses in thanks from our soon-to-be madre.
