Sunday, May 9, 2010
Mother’s Day. Usually a day of spoiling Ceecee by me and the kids, but not this year. She’s really down and it just doesn’t seem like there’s anything to celebrate. Steven took off to go back to Tennessee and it just wasn’t much of a day, much less a mother’s day.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Ceecee started her Galloway training this morning. It’s every Saturday morning, so I went to the gym while she went to run with her group. She showed up and said she didn’t even break a sweat the first day. I figured they start slow and it will get tough later. The marathon isn’t for six months.
Steven showed up and we were trying to communicate about the bike in secret. I called over there to try to get information about the brand and any details and all Angie could tell me was it had “skinny, skinny tires.” Later Steven called me and said he looked it up on the internet and it was worth about $900. It was a red Raleigh Gran Sport and it was really nice.
At one point during the day, we snuck away and took the bike to a local bike shop for a tune-up and general getting ready. Steven’s girlfriend almost accidentally gave it all away, and at one point, I thought Ceecee had figured it out, but we kept up the act and hoped for the best. We decided it was better to just leave it at the bike shop so that it couldn’t “accidentally” be found at Angie’s.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Every year, on one of the last Fridays of the school year, our junior high sponsors what they call “eighth grade weekend.” It’s a field trip for eighth grade only where they get to go on an all day trip to Silver Dollar City. Ceecee and I both got to go this year because she was recruited to walk around with some special needs students. It was a nice day and we had a good time. I’m still pretty freaked out from last night, but today didn’t seem any different than any other lately.
Ceecee found out today that her brother from Tennessee is coming for a surprise visit to celebrate Taylor’s graduation. What she doesn’t realize is that the surprise is on her. She really wants a bike that she can start training to race in triathlons, but even used, they are really expensive and we’re pretty broke right now. I’ve been shopping on line, but we haven’t been able to find anything that way.
Somehow, I was talking to her stepmom in Tennessee the other day and she told me that they have one that is almost new and they would be willing to let me have it for next to nothing. Then we were trying to figure out how to get it shipped here and this idea of Steven coming to visit materialized and there it was. He has a pick-up truck and he’s driving out. He is bringing the bike and is going to take it to Angie’s house where we’ll keep it until Ceecee’s birthday. I can’t wait! I love pulling off these kinds of surprises!
A surprise I didn’t like was finding out I have jury duty the Monday after school gets out. What a way to start my Summer vacation. Oh, well. Maybe it won’t happen. A lot of times these things get cancelled.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
This walking to the farmer’s market and talking about our marriage thing is really weird. During all the rest of the week, she won’t talk about it at all, and I know better than to push. It will just start a fight and make things worse, so I just kind of go along with whatever is happening throughout the days and hope things will get better. I keep thinking that any day now, she’ll say she’s sorry for the way she’s been acting and this will all go away.
Tonight, she indicated that she’s not sure she loves me anymore – no surprise there – and went on to say a bunch of stuff that sounded crazy to me. She said she doesn’t know who she is anymore and that she needs to find out what she likes and what she wants. She said she needs time and that if she can have the time to figure all this out that she might be able to choose me again. Then she asked if that made sense. I told her “not a bit, but I respect you and if that’s the way you really feel, I don’t understand it, but I’ll respect it.”
I wanted to scream at her, “You’ve already chosen me. You’re married, remember,” but I knew that wouldn’t help anything, so I mostly kept my mouth shut. How can she say these things? You don’t marry someone, raise kids together and then change your mind. Yes, I was unfaithful, but that was over a year ago. How can this be happening now? And why?
Saturday, May 1, 2010
I started doing a running program called the “Couch to 5K” or C25K for short after Ceecee’s half-marathon. The goal is to get a person to be able to run a 5K race within about nine weeks starting from nothing. This morning, Ceecee ran a 5K race called the May Day 5K and I did the one mile fun run. I wasn’t even completely sure I could do the mile, but I did, and it was actually pretty easy.
Ceecee ran the 5K in just over 27 minutes and said her next race will be better. I was impressed with her time and think she did great. She even told me that her shoes came untied twice and she had to stop and tie them. She amazes me. She’s been swimming more and more and just gradually increases her distance. We go to the pool together and I try to encourage her, but she still doesn’t think she’s much of a swimmer.
She wants to run a marathon this year. She says it’s to “prove that she isn’t old.” She’s turning 39 in a couple of weeks, so I don’t know what she’s talking about. Anyway, they are starting a training program soon for the Bass Pro marathon and it’s $100 and I went ahead and signed her up today. She wants to do this and I support her. It’s through a running guru named Jeff Galloway who I’ve never heard of, but he has a book out and it’s supposed to be a big deal.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Another walk to the Farmer’s market and another eye opening talk. For some reason, while we’re walking to and from the market, there’s an openness to our communication and we actually talk about our relationship.
We kind of picked up where we left off last week and took it a little bit further. Ceecee reiterated the ideas of not trusting me and being hurt and angry, but she wouldn’t get specific. Finally, I just asked her, “Does this go back to what happened with Emily (not her real name)?” She said that yes, it did. Emily was a younger woman from church whom I had fallen for, but that had been a long time ago. I thought we were past it and I certainly didn’t think it would still be affecting things now.
I had allowed myself to get caught up in the idea that my marriage had become stale and boring and at that same time, I was getting attention from Emily that I didn’t feel like I was getting from my wife. Really, I wasn’t even sure whether Ceecee still loved me and it didn’t seem like either of us was really sold on the marriage anymore.
We were living on the farm and I was working all the time. I was teaching full-time and we were running a CSA out of the farm and selling at several farmer’s markets around the area. It seemed like Ceecee and I were just going through the motions a lot of the time. The farm was my idea and she never really liked it. Neither of us was getting what we needed out of the marriage, but we were too busy to ever stop and deal with any of it.
In the middle of all of that, I had befriended Emily. My intentions weren’t bad, but I was in a state that wasn’t healthy, and getting close to someone of the opposite sex while you’re married is never a good idea. She treated me the way I wanted to be treated, and I allowed myself to have feelings for her. It just grew out of control and I didn’t want to stop and do what was right.
My wife figured it out, but I lied about it when she first brought it up. I kept up the lie for some time, not realizing the damage it was doing. She had always known me to be an honest person, and she knew I was lying, but I wouldn’t back down from my story. It really caused her belief in me to crumble, knowing I could willfully tell her that nothing was going on when it was obvious that I wasn’t telling her the truth.
Finally, I came to my senses and fessed up. Of course, Ceecee already knew and told me so. I also called Emily and told her that I couldn’t go on like we were because I didn’t want to ruin my marriage. We both told each other we were sorry and that we never meant to hurt anyone and she left the church about a week later.
Ceecee and I went through a rough patch for a while, but then we took a weekend and went to Eureka Springs, Arkansas for a make-up session. I thought it was our way of saying we were choosing to stay together and that we were putting our marriage back on the right footing. We stayed in a bed and breakfast and had one of the most memorable times together of any in our marriage. After that, I thought everything was fine.
Now, she’s telling me that’s why she isn’t sure she wants to stay together. Well, she didn’t actually say that, but I can’t get her to say she loves me either. Now she’s sticking to the story that she can’t trust me anymore and she doesn’t feel the same way about me that she used to and she’s telling me it goes back to that. What do I do with this? I told her I thought when we went to Eureka Springs that we got past all that. She said that she thought so at the time, but now she just doesn’t know.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Worked out this morning and then went to Branson in the afternoon. The weeks have been so long and hard that we find ourselves looking to get away a lot on the weekends. We walked around Branson Landing today and enjoyed the nice weather. It’s an outdoor shopping mall right on the water and it always seems like a place where people are happy. I guess that’s why we like it and why it appealed to us today. There hasn’t been much happiness at home.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Had a very interesting conversation with Ceecee while walking to the farmer’s market this evening. They have a small market in the town where we live on Thursday evenings and it’s close enough to walk. It just opened for the season last week and we like to try to get there and support the merchants. We used to have a small farm and we know many of the sellers from when we were involved with farmer’s markets ourselves.
As we were walking, she opened up a little about our relationship and where she was. She said she was confused and didn’t understand the way she felt. She said she didn’t mean to hurt me and that she wanted things to be good again, but she just wasn’t seeming to be able to get past some things. I asked her what they were and she didn’t really say, but she said she no longer trusted me and couldn’t get over some hurts.
I told her that I was afraid she didn’t love me anymore and she didn’t say anything. She just said she needed time and that she didn’t want to be this way. I decided to take that as hopeful that this would pass soon and didn’t push. We held hands while we walked and at least that was something.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Well, all the good from St. Louis last weekend is gone. Ceecee wrote on her Facebook today that this is her “hating random people day.” It’s been weeks now that we haven’t been close and I can’t seem to reach her. No matter what I do, it doesn’t seem to matter. We aren’t fighting, she just seems to have turned off to me. She goes through her days angry and distant and just goes through the motions at home. I don’t know what to do.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Went to St. Louis today and had a really good time. Ceecee and I go to St. Louis about once a month, usually right around payday. Sometimes it’s for the weekend, but a lot of times it’s just a day trip. We “discovered” St. Louis over the 4th of July in 2009 when we spent the weekend there.
I remember passing by on vacations when I was a kid with my family and thinking, “What a horrible place.” It always seemed awful from the car windows going by on I-70.
When we moved to Missouri – and especially when people would find out that my wife is Italian – they would say, “You know about The Hill, right?” As time went by, we came to understand that The Hill was an Italian neighborhood in St. Louis and people would talk about it like it was this wonderful place. I couldn’t imagine anything in St. Louis being nice, but eventually, we decided to go check it out.
Over a Fourth of July weekend, we got a room for two nights and completely fell in love with not only The Hill, but the whole city. We discovered Forest Park, which is bigger than New York City’s Central Park and houses the Zoo, Art Museum, History Museum (which are all free) and much more. We went to Soulard’s, a huge farmer’s market down by the river, and we ate one of the best meals I’ve ever had at Charlie Gitto’s, one of the many Italian restaurants on The Hill.
Anyway, we went today and had a lot of fun. We went to Soulard’s, got orange cream soda at Fitz’s, had a picnic in Forest Park, and spent time at The Hill, of course. We shop for Italian groceries while we’re there, and we always go to one of the bakeries for treats and bread. We’ve talked about maybe living here someday, but we’ll see.
The Restoration Tour 