Feb. 20/2017
I am upstairs in my bedroom writing this at 4pm, which is an odd time for me. I usually get around to this just before I switch the lights off and scurry off to dreamland. But Nick's daughter has a photographer downstairs taking pictures of her and the cat we have been looking after for her. A lump was discovered on the cat's belly, which was biopsied, and which came back malignant. The vet feels the cancer has already metastasized and so the poor cat is being treated as if it is already dead. Thus the photographer - to take pictures of the daughter with her cat before there is no cat left.
My daughter had texted me at work yesterday and asked me if I was off today. It is a provincial holiday today, known as Heritage day here, so she had the day off as well. Since I was off and had no particular plans for today she drove out last evening and spent the night. She left early afternoon and gave me a lesson in makeup application that I had asked for the next time the opportunity presented itself. I had reminded her yesterday to throw some basic makeup in her overnight bag.
Nick had told me last night when I got home from work that we were having the photo shoot today, so my daughter vacuumed last night and I tidied up a bit. I left most of the cleaning for this afternoon, and I was just on my way to the kitchen sink to rinse the mop out before putting it away when the young lady who was going to take the pictures arrived. So my house is presentably clean and tidy and Nick and I will go out closer to suppertime to do the second lot of barn chores for the day. I helped him this morning while my daughter walked the dogs and spent some time on her phone and tablet answering emails and communicating with her boyfriend who was back to work today in England after spending just over two weeks here with her. He got a terrific introduction to our Canadian winter, at its finest - with all the snow we had last week - plus his first live hockey game, his first afternoon of tobogganing with the traditional hot chocolate finale and a mere two tumbles on our beautiful outdoor skating oval where he tried ice skating for the first time one evening under the lights. They also spent a romantic night in a seaside cottage complete with a fireplace, which is of course, the epitome of coziness in a maritime province in February.
My daughter left just as Nick's daughter pulled into the driveway, and I power-cleaned the rest of the house before grabbing a bite to eat and then I escaped upstairs.
Before I came up to my bedroom, I stuck my head into the bedroom downstairs where we have the desktop computer to ask Nick to check the fire as the house was starting to feel chilly. He had been burning wood off and on for the past few days since his son-in-law was out two days ago and split some of the wood in the basement and had started a fire on Saturday when he was here.
As often happens when I interrupt Nick on the computer without knocking first, he quickly clicked away from the page he had been looking at onto some news page. A few weeks ago - well actually a few months go now, it was sometime in November - I walked into the room one evening and saw him on the match.com dating website before he could click away from it. A few times after that I came back downstairs after I had 'gone to bed' to find him on that site again and once I stood there and watched as he communicated with someone 'live'. He would sit and wait for her to type something, read it and chuckle or smile and then type a response. I watched this exchange for several minutes before going back upstairs. Then I walked into the room when he was on the dating site and stood there quietly to see what he would do when I coughed or spoke and he realized I must have seen what he was doing. He quickly turned around and spread both arms as nonchalantly as he could to block as much of the screen from my view as possible. He somehow managed to click off the site at the same time. I said nothing and pretended not to notice but I brought it up the next day or the day after, telling him that I saw him on a dating site. His response was that he was communicating with a woman merely as a messenger for someone else who was married and afraid of being found out. My reply was that I wasn't born yesterday and that I knew what I saw and that there is only one reason why a person goes to a dating website. The next day when Nick was on the computer, he had the door closed.
I told him that night or the night after that I wouldn't be having marital relations with him if he was seeing someone else, which was obvious to me that he was or that he intended to. He went to sleep in his daughter's room and has ever since. I love having the king size bed to myself and I love not being woken up multiple times every night by snoring. Did I mention that his dog also snores so loudly I can hear her upstairs? My dog is not completely innocent, he does snore from time to time, but far less often.
I know I did say that Nick managed to charm himself back into the bedroom one weekend when things were going well between us and he caught me in a brief moment of hopefulness. But on Monday morning he went outside and I was in the kitchen about to follow him out when I noticed that his cell phone was sitting face down on the counter. I found this odd because it is always face up so I picked up the phone and swiped to unlock it. It is the same phone as I have so I know exactly what to do. Immediately I saw the most recent email that read 'my heart is with you'. I was standing right beside the sink which is directly under the window and the next thing I knew Nick was standing outside tapping on the glass and pointing to his phone in my hand. He came inside the house and asked me 'what the heck were you doing?' And he didn't use the word heck. I told him what I saw and he just snatched the phone away from me and started to make some story that I can't even remember enough of to repeat it here. I was so flabbergasted and so completely blown away after the reconciliation I thought we had decided to work on just the day before that I just stood there. I am sure my mouth was open. It was almost like I had that little person of reason and reality on my shoulder to tell me to pick up the phone so the decision I needed to make about our relationship would become clear again.
When I came in from the barn later that day and saw Nick's phone on the counter, I picked it up but this time it had been locked and a password was required to get any further. Now he had his phone locked and closed the door to the bedroom when he was on the computer. To me these are clear affirmations of guilt.
He has been studying the Ukrainian alphabet and has a book or two on learning the language. He also has one of those little travel books you can get to help with common phrases and things that are handy to know about places and customs in the Ukraine. He texted me twice while I was at work telling me that a fellow he knows wants him to go overseas to inspect a vessel for a client to see what kind of shape it is in and what it might be worth before the client makes an offer to buy it, or passes it by. I just replied that he can't leave me alone with all these horses in the wintertime. I can do morning chores before I go to work but I don't get home in time to do evening chores. If the horses are left out that late they will undoubtedly get out of their pastures. The fences we have can't be trusted to keep the horses on the property, they haven't been inspected for 4 years and any repairs have only been to spots through which the horses have already escaped.
I don't believe for a minute that there is any vessel to inspect, or if there actually is one, I am certain there will be a side trip planned to visit someone he has met on the internet. As if we have the money to do any of this. I am still struggling to finish paying for the hay - I managed to squeeze $400 out of my last two pays, but the cash is presently sitting on the kitchen counter waiting to be delivered. I have paid all but $200 on the power bill but there will be another one arriving soon. My daughter's car is sitting in the yard of a friend of Nick's waiting for a new transmission, which I have purchased but have not had the money to have installed. There are three paydays in March so I am going to devote one to getting her car on the road again and to catching up on some bills. My Visa and my line of credit also need some attention.
Well the photographer has left and as I sit upstairs I can see two of the three pastures the horses are in. I guess it was the frantic running around that caught my eye, but all of them are in one pasture and that means that a fence is down again somewhere. The spot they got through the other day was fixed I was told, but I am going to have to get my boots on and go out to help. It is nearly 6pm so it is time to do evening chores anyway.
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