March 9, 2017
I am getting exhausted already with this latest turmoil. But I made a visit to the local RCMP station this afternoon to ask a few questions and let them know what is going on out here and get some advice on what I should or should not do. I hate finding out after all is said and done that I 'should have done this' and 'if only I had done that'. I had a good chat with the officer there and in the course of our discussion he told me he had listened to Nick's audio tapes in which Nick alleges I am having sex in our bedroom with this Chris person, or certainly with someone other than my husband; and in another tape he says I am greeting Chris at the door of our home and proceeding to engage in oral sex with him in the hallway where the voice recorder was hidden. The first tape was supposedly recorded while Nick was away for work and the second one on the Monday after Christmas 2015 when Nick was gone for the day and I was home alone. Actually I was expecting my daughter to visit that day but she decided to stay at her sister's for the night instead, which I did not know at the time the recording was made. The officer also told me he heard no other voices on the tapes except for mine and he did not hear any of the activities Nick alleges took place. I was extremely relieved to have him reveal this to me. Although it is perfectly clear to me what I hear on the audio recordings I was never absolutely sure what conclusion someone else would arrive at about what they were hearing. And I have only listened to the 'hallway tape' and although I have asked many times to be allowed to hear the bedroom tape and Nick has promised many times to play it for me (as well as for my mother and daughters) I have never heard it. The officer said he had listened to approximately 40 hours of tapes in total and in none of them did he hear what Nick said he did.
I spoke to my mother last night on my way home from work. I stayed late in order to deal with a couple of things that popped up during the day and that I wasn't able to begin to resolve until almost closing time. And which couldn't be completely resolved until today when I would be off and which the person who works the opposite shifts from me would be there and thus obligated to handle.
I hadn't yet shared the news about the $31,000.00 Nick withdrew from the credit made available by the pay down on the mortgage and of course it upset her. She told me to contact the ombudsman who helped consumers with banking matters - I am not clear on if there is one for all the financial institutions or one specifically for the TD bank but this ombudsman got results on her behalf with an identity mix-up a few years back which she had been unable to straighten out despite months of trying on her own. I have called the TD branch where we deal three times and left messages asking to speak to or meet with the manager and the last time I called I received a return call from the 'manager who usually deals with customer escalations'. He answered my questions and addressed most of my immediate concerns on the phone but I still want to meet with a manager in person. I thought I might be able to do this today but was too busy yesterday at work to schedule such a meeting and I realized this morning I could not expect to see anyone today and decided to wait until I could call and arrange it ahead of time. And to be honest I couldn't face driving all the way in there today.
We needed 'sweet feed' for the calves - which is called 'sweet feed' when you buy it for horses but 'beef builder' when you buy it for cattle and it is essentially the same thing. It is a feed with extra protein mixed up with some molasses to give it a sweet taste and the energy boost that any form of sugar will give an animal the same as it does humans. It is a nice treat for the livestock and it kicks up their metabolism a notch which helps to keep them a little warmer during the winter. The feed store where I normally pick up the feed for the livestock had only one bag left when I was there earlier in the week and so I decided to stop by the RCMP on my way to a feed store which is actually closer to the farm but is in the opposite direction from my work. I managed to get something accomplished even though I hadn't done what I intended to get done today.
I got up to help in the barn before I hopped in the shower and I asked Nick about the marriage agreement as we were downstairs getting ready to go out. He avoided the topic and I refused to let it drop and finally he said he would review it and discuss it with me on Monday. I hope we can come to some kind of statement of what is mine to take from the marriage which of course is really just about everything because I paid for virtually everything. He was to contribute sweat equity and know-how for projects and improvements which never did materialize. The only sweat equity put into the farm was mine - I white-washed the fences at the front of the property and around the riding arena and I pressure-washed the deck this summer. He did put up the addition on the barn but he has never finished it. It needs stall doors and floors and a water-tight roof at the very minimum. It's extremely annoying because he does know how to do all of these things but he lacks any motivation to start any of the dozens of little jobs that need doing around here.
Whenever I ask him about fixing this or that, or about when he plans finish something he always has an excuse which ultimately comes back to the Chris person. Either the Chris person has taken the tools he needs to do the work or Nick says he isn't willing to make improvements around here that are only going to benefit me and my boyfriend. He also always claims that me and this boyfriend are continuously contriving to get Nick to abandon the farm so the boyfriend can move right in and take Nick's place. I wish somehow someone would walk out of Nick's bedroom instead of Nick and help me turn this farm into the homestead and country paradise I have imagined it could be since the day I first laid eyes on it.
Thursday, 9 March 2017
Monday, 6 March 2017
Monday, March 6, 2017
March 6, 2017
I spent most of the day doing errands related to getting out of this marriage. I went to another bank and spoke to a financial advisor about transferring my RRSPs from the TD who allowed Nick to get that draft to pay off his visa to the RBC. He was very nice and pointed out a few things he noticed right away that the TD was doing that was costing me money. Like a $57.00 quarterly service charge on the RRSPs which are in GICs. No one monitors them at all but still the fee is deducted. The RBC does not have such a fee.
I got a gizmo to back up my pictures and videos on my laptop and I also got a proper case to lug it around in. I made some inquiries about getting another cell phone because I am currently on the same account as Nick and it is his name on the account. So in case he doesn't pay the bill or decides to take my phone off the account somehow, I have a plan around what to do if this should happen.
After I arrived back home I got Nick to work for 20 minutes or so with Zach, who belongs to one of my daughters, so I could make a video which was requested by a guy who responded to my ad on Kijiji. I will put that on my laptop tomorrow at work and email it to him tomorrow evening, likely also from work because the internet is so much better there.
I made sure the hens and ducks had food and water and I filled up my wild bird feeders before I helped Nick bring the horses in for the night. I vacuumed and dusted and then we split wood in the basement with the electric splitter for nearly an hour before I came upstairs and climbed into bed with my laptop.
We were very polite to each other which I think is great. I don't know or care what Nick thinks of it but I know relentless nit-picking and nastiness really takes a toll on him emotionally. For someone who dishes it out as freely as he does he sure doesn't take it well at all.
I plan to pay a visit to the RCMP to give a statement or whatever concerning the threats on my life that were made by both Nick and his daughter during the fight on Friday night and I am going to take any advice that they have to give. I am also going to speak to a lawyer about how to proceed to get out of this miserable marriage as quickly and with as much of my stuff and money as possible. The information that my co-worker printed off the other night says that a judge can award one party more than the other if the marriage is less than 5 years, if one of the parties concealed information concerning finances and debt or if one of the parties was reckless in spending or whose actions in other ways led to financial hardship. There are a couple of other instances listed and I believe all of them apply in some way or another to our situation. Now that I know how bad his behavior really is and how irresponsible he has been with money I have no choice but to do everything I can to mitigate his effect on me and my financial security. I can no longer hope anything will work itself out. Nothing is going to get better and all indications are that things may just get a whole lot worse.
I spent most of the day doing errands related to getting out of this marriage. I went to another bank and spoke to a financial advisor about transferring my RRSPs from the TD who allowed Nick to get that draft to pay off his visa to the RBC. He was very nice and pointed out a few things he noticed right away that the TD was doing that was costing me money. Like a $57.00 quarterly service charge on the RRSPs which are in GICs. No one monitors them at all but still the fee is deducted. The RBC does not have such a fee.
I got a gizmo to back up my pictures and videos on my laptop and I also got a proper case to lug it around in. I made some inquiries about getting another cell phone because I am currently on the same account as Nick and it is his name on the account. So in case he doesn't pay the bill or decides to take my phone off the account somehow, I have a plan around what to do if this should happen.
After I arrived back home I got Nick to work for 20 minutes or so with Zach, who belongs to one of my daughters, so I could make a video which was requested by a guy who responded to my ad on Kijiji. I will put that on my laptop tomorrow at work and email it to him tomorrow evening, likely also from work because the internet is so much better there.
I made sure the hens and ducks had food and water and I filled up my wild bird feeders before I helped Nick bring the horses in for the night. I vacuumed and dusted and then we split wood in the basement with the electric splitter for nearly an hour before I came upstairs and climbed into bed with my laptop.
We were very polite to each other which I think is great. I don't know or care what Nick thinks of it but I know relentless nit-picking and nastiness really takes a toll on him emotionally. For someone who dishes it out as freely as he does he sure doesn't take it well at all.
I plan to pay a visit to the RCMP to give a statement or whatever concerning the threats on my life that were made by both Nick and his daughter during the fight on Friday night and I am going to take any advice that they have to give. I am also going to speak to a lawyer about how to proceed to get out of this miserable marriage as quickly and with as much of my stuff and money as possible. The information that my co-worker printed off the other night says that a judge can award one party more than the other if the marriage is less than 5 years, if one of the parties concealed information concerning finances and debt or if one of the parties was reckless in spending or whose actions in other ways led to financial hardship. There are a couple of other instances listed and I believe all of them apply in some way or another to our situation. Now that I know how bad his behavior really is and how irresponsible he has been with money I have no choice but to do everything I can to mitigate his effect on me and my financial security. I can no longer hope anything will work itself out. Nothing is going to get better and all indications are that things may just get a whole lot worse.
Sunday, 5 March 2017
Sunday, March 5, 2017
March 5, 2017
I am lying here in bed freezing as the wind is whistling around outside. My phone says the real-feel temperature outside is -20C. I love the way the wind chill is expressed in Nova Scotia - when I lived in Winnipeg where the temperature was often -30 or -40C and stayed there for days and weeks at a time, the wind chill was never added to the temperature (or subtracted!) like that. Wind chill was expressed as a separate number - so 1600 was a pretty stiff wind and 1800 meant something like exposed skin would freeze in two minutes or three minutes or whatever. I guess if the numbers were given out there as they are here no one would leave their homes. I asked someone when I first moved there in September how they coped with such cold weather and the response I received was that 'you just didn't stay outside for very long'. And indeed almost every home has a garage for their car and shopping malls have indoor parking designed so you spend very little time getting inside and the downtown was full of heated walkways either above or below ground that connected many of the buildings.
A whole paragraph about why my fingers are so cold and I am neglecting to write what I actually got up to jot down because I couldn't get back to sleep while these thoughts were swimming around in my brain. I have to start getting ready for work in about 20 minutes.
I wanted to note for the record a few other things that Nick claims this Chris person is responsible for. Our riding arena was is very good condition when we moved here, it was very well made by the previous owners and was very well maintained by them. I have mentioned that the electric fencing for the calves is now down all over the ground and broken in places, but I don't remember if I have said that all of the electric fencing that was in place when we moved in is now down. And a lot of it is still lying on the ground here and there. A lot of the wooden fence rails and posts are down and were never replaced over the past 4 years but Nick has put barbed wire in these places, usually only after a horse has gotten loose. I walked the fence lines last week and found a spot where 3 posts in a row were on the ground and I reported this to Nick. This portion of the field is currently not accessible to the horses and that is because it includes the calves' enclosure and the calves were roaming around after their fence was pulled down and they wandered off of our property twice before we put them in the barn. It was the middle of winter and I was happy with this.
So, to the point, the riding arena has electric fencing which is still intact and so Nick began putting our first stallion up there after he broke out of his pasture one day and got one of our mares pregnant, and our current stallion was there for many months until we sold one of the horses which allowed the stallion to be moved from the riding arena to a pasture behind the house.
As a result of a stallion being kept in the arena the sand along one side is all worn down where the horse paced back and forth all day - this is the side that faces the other horses and the barn. Of course this makes it unsuitable for riding in that area and there is also the problem of manure that has accumulated there over the approximately 3 years that horses have been kept there on a daily basis.
Nick has this story that the Chris guy and/or one of his friends came onto the property one day about 3 years ago and took a lot of the sand from this riding arena. It is right in full view of the highway and he says that our neighbour across the street saw this and verified to Nick who she thought she could recognize. When I said I was going over to chat with her myself, Nick told me that she wouldn't admit this to me because she didn't want to get involved for the reasons that she had to live in the same small community as these folks and that she was afraid of repercussions. I know from an incident that occurred with my neighbour at my previous home that Nick said someone said something which was later checked and proved not to be the truth at all. The person he said he spoke to had moved to another continent but Nick didn't know that the two former neighbours of mine had become good friends and communicated regularly by email. So I am sure that nobody saw anybody doing anything at all.
I am coming to the realization that part of Nick's 'procedure' is to blame others for things he is responsible for. And he also finds a reason to blame this person or persons for preventing him from doing repairs or stuff around the house and barn and animals that he should be doing. It is now to the point of negligence and none of it is Nick's fault. It is usually the fault of the Chris guy. I guess which actually really makes it my fault. Because I am the one who supposedly gives Chris permission to do all these things and it is I who somehow provides the keys to things to him. I'm not sure how I do that because I don't have keys to these things myself - my own choice. Nick said the other night for his daughter's benefit that I had snuck into his room while he was sleeping and removed the key to the tractor out of his pocket. I think it was the tractor key, don't quote me on that. He claims that Chris took the tractor in the late spring or early summer of last year and that he had to take the chains off of the back tires to drive on the road. Apparently when he replaced the chains he used a much smaller clasp to hook the two ends together than the one required to hold the chains securely to the tire. As a result the chains were now floppy and had too much slack in them. Nick has been telling me this for months and each time he tells me he makes a big deal of the point that Chris thinks he knows what he is doing but actually has no idea. Nick probably had that clasp off for some reason and set it down somewhere, and then couldn't find it when he wanted to put it back on. At any rate he did know the chains had too much play in them and he failed to fix them himself. I feel anyone who wanted to take good care of a 70,000.00 tractor that was only 3 years old would have replaced the undersized clasp. But Nick didn't and the chains caught the door and ripped it off.
He also claims that the hydraulics have been damaged somehow by Chris and that the front part of the main frame has been twisted by Chris. It is impossible it is anyone else's fault. Not Nick's, nor the owner of our boarded horse and certainly not Nick's daughter's boyfriend who have both driven the tractor on more than one occasion. It is far more likely that I crept into Nick's room in the middle of the night, removed the tractor key from the pocket of his jeans, and gave it to Chris so he could steal the tractor. The part I have trouble with is what key Nick drove the tractor with if Chris had the key. It also seems very unlikely that Chris would have been able to take the tractor off of the property, use it for whatever job he needed it for and then return it without anyone noticing it was physically missing.
I am lying here in bed freezing as the wind is whistling around outside. My phone says the real-feel temperature outside is -20C. I love the way the wind chill is expressed in Nova Scotia - when I lived in Winnipeg where the temperature was often -30 or -40C and stayed there for days and weeks at a time, the wind chill was never added to the temperature (or subtracted!) like that. Wind chill was expressed as a separate number - so 1600 was a pretty stiff wind and 1800 meant something like exposed skin would freeze in two minutes or three minutes or whatever. I guess if the numbers were given out there as they are here no one would leave their homes. I asked someone when I first moved there in September how they coped with such cold weather and the response I received was that 'you just didn't stay outside for very long'. And indeed almost every home has a garage for their car and shopping malls have indoor parking designed so you spend very little time getting inside and the downtown was full of heated walkways either above or below ground that connected many of the buildings.
A whole paragraph about why my fingers are so cold and I am neglecting to write what I actually got up to jot down because I couldn't get back to sleep while these thoughts were swimming around in my brain. I have to start getting ready for work in about 20 minutes.
I wanted to note for the record a few other things that Nick claims this Chris person is responsible for. Our riding arena was is very good condition when we moved here, it was very well made by the previous owners and was very well maintained by them. I have mentioned that the electric fencing for the calves is now down all over the ground and broken in places, but I don't remember if I have said that all of the electric fencing that was in place when we moved in is now down. And a lot of it is still lying on the ground here and there. A lot of the wooden fence rails and posts are down and were never replaced over the past 4 years but Nick has put barbed wire in these places, usually only after a horse has gotten loose. I walked the fence lines last week and found a spot where 3 posts in a row were on the ground and I reported this to Nick. This portion of the field is currently not accessible to the horses and that is because it includes the calves' enclosure and the calves were roaming around after their fence was pulled down and they wandered off of our property twice before we put them in the barn. It was the middle of winter and I was happy with this.
So, to the point, the riding arena has electric fencing which is still intact and so Nick began putting our first stallion up there after he broke out of his pasture one day and got one of our mares pregnant, and our current stallion was there for many months until we sold one of the horses which allowed the stallion to be moved from the riding arena to a pasture behind the house.
As a result of a stallion being kept in the arena the sand along one side is all worn down where the horse paced back and forth all day - this is the side that faces the other horses and the barn. Of course this makes it unsuitable for riding in that area and there is also the problem of manure that has accumulated there over the approximately 3 years that horses have been kept there on a daily basis.
Nick has this story that the Chris guy and/or one of his friends came onto the property one day about 3 years ago and took a lot of the sand from this riding arena. It is right in full view of the highway and he says that our neighbour across the street saw this and verified to Nick who she thought she could recognize. When I said I was going over to chat with her myself, Nick told me that she wouldn't admit this to me because she didn't want to get involved for the reasons that she had to live in the same small community as these folks and that she was afraid of repercussions. I know from an incident that occurred with my neighbour at my previous home that Nick said someone said something which was later checked and proved not to be the truth at all. The person he said he spoke to had moved to another continent but Nick didn't know that the two former neighbours of mine had become good friends and communicated regularly by email. So I am sure that nobody saw anybody doing anything at all.
I am coming to the realization that part of Nick's 'procedure' is to blame others for things he is responsible for. And he also finds a reason to blame this person or persons for preventing him from doing repairs or stuff around the house and barn and animals that he should be doing. It is now to the point of negligence and none of it is Nick's fault. It is usually the fault of the Chris guy. I guess which actually really makes it my fault. Because I am the one who supposedly gives Chris permission to do all these things and it is I who somehow provides the keys to things to him. I'm not sure how I do that because I don't have keys to these things myself - my own choice. Nick said the other night for his daughter's benefit that I had snuck into his room while he was sleeping and removed the key to the tractor out of his pocket. I think it was the tractor key, don't quote me on that. He claims that Chris took the tractor in the late spring or early summer of last year and that he had to take the chains off of the back tires to drive on the road. Apparently when he replaced the chains he used a much smaller clasp to hook the two ends together than the one required to hold the chains securely to the tire. As a result the chains were now floppy and had too much slack in them. Nick has been telling me this for months and each time he tells me he makes a big deal of the point that Chris thinks he knows what he is doing but actually has no idea. Nick probably had that clasp off for some reason and set it down somewhere, and then couldn't find it when he wanted to put it back on. At any rate he did know the chains had too much play in them and he failed to fix them himself. I feel anyone who wanted to take good care of a 70,000.00 tractor that was only 3 years old would have replaced the undersized clasp. But Nick didn't and the chains caught the door and ripped it off.
He also claims that the hydraulics have been damaged somehow by Chris and that the front part of the main frame has been twisted by Chris. It is impossible it is anyone else's fault. Not Nick's, nor the owner of our boarded horse and certainly not Nick's daughter's boyfriend who have both driven the tractor on more than one occasion. It is far more likely that I crept into Nick's room in the middle of the night, removed the tractor key from the pocket of his jeans, and gave it to Chris so he could steal the tractor. The part I have trouble with is what key Nick drove the tractor with if Chris had the key. It also seems very unlikely that Chris would have been able to take the tractor off of the property, use it for whatever job he needed it for and then return it without anyone noticing it was physically missing.
Sunday, March 5, 2017
March 5, 2017
Well Nick is still quiet since the yell fest the other night. His daughter left the car in the driveway as I asked and I will have to see about selling it shortly. I think I will check with one of my close friends - I have about three - whose son is a used car salesman who could perhaps take it off my hands or at least give me some advice. I am not one for putting an ad on Kijiji for a vehicle, especially a 15 year-old one, in case something happens and the person feels I ripped them off or cheated them in some way. I don't care what I get for it - if it's $500 or $1000 or $100 - but I would like to get what it is worth because I truly can put the money to good use. I could ask Nick what the red book list price is but I don't want to discuss the car with him and I also know he scoffs at selling vehicles to used car lots. He believes you are always better off to sell it yourself and I don't want to argue with him about anything anymore.
I have got myself in gear to get out of this marriage as quickly as I can but also with all of my rights protected. When I left my first marriage my then husband talked me into an agreement between ourselves not involving the courts and I feel he got the good end of that stick financially. But the non-confrontational approach served us well and to our daughters and to outsiders the divorce seemed incredibly amicable. The truth was that both of chose to put the well-being of the kids before the hunger for revenge we all feel in these situations.
But this time I intend to see a lawyer. I am going to speak to my daughter about that although I do think it is a good idea to use the same one as Nick's ex-wife used. I will have my options all on the table and I won't have to wonder or worry about what ifs.
I have been thinking a lot the past few days of all the little ways that Nick makes life difficult for me.
Of course there are the ridiculous things that have gone on as a result of his jealousy - not interacting with any of the neighbours, not joining one of the local churches, not attending any get-togethers at the local community centres and actually living a rather isolated life out at the farm. He used to make me go with him when he drove his son back after he was here for few days. Usually Nick would go and get him when I was at work but if I was home at the time I had to go on the return leg. I hated driving in the car on my day off as that position of sitting really aggravates the stiffness and discomfort in my back. It takes an hour to drive each way, plus any extra time spent stopping along the way or chatting in the driveway. A lot of times I would take a pillow with me and just sleep the whole time. At least that way I was doing something beneficial, instead of aggravating an injury AND wasting a good chunk of the day.
I tried arguing my case to stay home but the time or two I did stay behind it absolutely wasn't worth the hassle I got from Nick after he got home. Of course he was convinced that I had been with the Chris person and would make up things that he said proved he right about my activities while he was gone. If I had been busy cleaning out the stalls then he would say I had help with the stalls in order to free up some 'personal' time while the opportunity was there. It's easy to incriminate someone when you just make up whatever you want.
Another thing he used to do and still does from time to time, is drive to my work, wait for me to finish for the day and then follow me home. And he would also give me the grand interrogation if he thought I hadn't arrived home on time after a days' work. I used to get upset and agitated if I had to stay late to finish something up because I knew what would happen when I get home but I have learned not to care anymore.
A lot of things Nick does - or should I say things he doesn't do - make more work for me. Extra work and needless work. He puts whatever he wants into the kitchen garbage such as glass bottles, tin cans, milk cartons or compostable items like chicken carcasses or potato peels. He says recycling in our area is a waste of time as mostly everything that is collected is not recycled anyway but goes eventually to a landfill site. We are required to put our household garbage in clear plastic bags for pick-up and as a consequence of Nick's laziness our bags are left at the side of the road because the rogue items are easily spotted by the guys responsible for collection. So I usually end up taking a bag or two to work with me once a week or so and putting it in the dumpster there. Not great for my trunk and rather unpleasant on the nose in the summer.
Another thing he does is toss the baling twine from the large bales of hay into the spare stall across from where we put the bale of hay we are currently using. I have placed empty feed bags there so the twine can be put directly into them and then just thrown out with the rest of the garbage. But he just tosses on the ground instead of in the bag and that room is a mess of string at the moment. I have tidied it up a number of times but it ends up looking just the same after a number of months so I have given up it.
He also will not put the garbage from the barn or the house into those large black garbage bags. I won't take anything to work unless it is in one of those bags just in case my boss objects to my dumping my garbage in his bin. He has told myself and other staff that he pays a flat fee for pick-up and that he is not keen on locking the dumpsters because that is inconvenient for us especially in the winter. But I don't feel I should just toss my white feed bags or kitchen garbage bags into the bin - it is very obvious whose garbage the feed bags are.
I often joke with customers at work that I spend most of my time off cleaning up after my animals. Shovelling the horses and the calves stalls and picking up dog poop around our yard. Nick never does this. Even when he has the dogs out on the leashes which have the poop bags dangling from them he won't pick up after them. Which leaves me to do it once a week or so.
Whenever Nick can't find something that he has used and left lying around somewhere he tells me that he tried to do this or tried to do that; or if I am home he insists that I stop whatever I am doing and look for the item he needs. He will always make the comment that it probably has been stolen by Chris. Most things I do manage to locate and if it is something he has looked for and not found he will claim that it was missing but then was returned and I knew where to find it because it had been returned to me to put away. Once he couldn't find the key to our truck and insisted that Chris had been seen driving the vehicle and so he still had the key. I combed the house and barn and garage for that key and couldn't find it anywhere. I will often find things where Nick has told me he has already searched but when I started to look for the key in the kitchen he told me he had scoured the kitchen so it was a complete waste of time to look in that room.
In the end we had the truck towed to the dealer who made a new key for us. Between the tow and the key I think it cost me around $400.00. And less than a week later I found the original key on the table under the lip of the decorative bowl we usually keep all the vehicle keys in. It was obvious to me that he had tossed the key on the table and it had slid toward the bowl, landing just out of view. He swears there is no way the key was where I found it and that it was returned to me by Chris.
All this thinking about extra jobs created by Nick is making me weary. I have a list of things to do tomorrow as I have the day off and I have to get busy with getting myself out of this marriage and getting on with my life. Stay tuned for an update on how much I get accomplished.
Well Nick is still quiet since the yell fest the other night. His daughter left the car in the driveway as I asked and I will have to see about selling it shortly. I think I will check with one of my close friends - I have about three - whose son is a used car salesman who could perhaps take it off my hands or at least give me some advice. I am not one for putting an ad on Kijiji for a vehicle, especially a 15 year-old one, in case something happens and the person feels I ripped them off or cheated them in some way. I don't care what I get for it - if it's $500 or $1000 or $100 - but I would like to get what it is worth because I truly can put the money to good use. I could ask Nick what the red book list price is but I don't want to discuss the car with him and I also know he scoffs at selling vehicles to used car lots. He believes you are always better off to sell it yourself and I don't want to argue with him about anything anymore.
I have got myself in gear to get out of this marriage as quickly as I can but also with all of my rights protected. When I left my first marriage my then husband talked me into an agreement between ourselves not involving the courts and I feel he got the good end of that stick financially. But the non-confrontational approach served us well and to our daughters and to outsiders the divorce seemed incredibly amicable. The truth was that both of chose to put the well-being of the kids before the hunger for revenge we all feel in these situations.
But this time I intend to see a lawyer. I am going to speak to my daughter about that although I do think it is a good idea to use the same one as Nick's ex-wife used. I will have my options all on the table and I won't have to wonder or worry about what ifs.
I have been thinking a lot the past few days of all the little ways that Nick makes life difficult for me.
Of course there are the ridiculous things that have gone on as a result of his jealousy - not interacting with any of the neighbours, not joining one of the local churches, not attending any get-togethers at the local community centres and actually living a rather isolated life out at the farm. He used to make me go with him when he drove his son back after he was here for few days. Usually Nick would go and get him when I was at work but if I was home at the time I had to go on the return leg. I hated driving in the car on my day off as that position of sitting really aggravates the stiffness and discomfort in my back. It takes an hour to drive each way, plus any extra time spent stopping along the way or chatting in the driveway. A lot of times I would take a pillow with me and just sleep the whole time. At least that way I was doing something beneficial, instead of aggravating an injury AND wasting a good chunk of the day.
I tried arguing my case to stay home but the time or two I did stay behind it absolutely wasn't worth the hassle I got from Nick after he got home. Of course he was convinced that I had been with the Chris person and would make up things that he said proved he right about my activities while he was gone. If I had been busy cleaning out the stalls then he would say I had help with the stalls in order to free up some 'personal' time while the opportunity was there. It's easy to incriminate someone when you just make up whatever you want.
Another thing he used to do and still does from time to time, is drive to my work, wait for me to finish for the day and then follow me home. And he would also give me the grand interrogation if he thought I hadn't arrived home on time after a days' work. I used to get upset and agitated if I had to stay late to finish something up because I knew what would happen when I get home but I have learned not to care anymore.
A lot of things Nick does - or should I say things he doesn't do - make more work for me. Extra work and needless work. He puts whatever he wants into the kitchen garbage such as glass bottles, tin cans, milk cartons or compostable items like chicken carcasses or potato peels. He says recycling in our area is a waste of time as mostly everything that is collected is not recycled anyway but goes eventually to a landfill site. We are required to put our household garbage in clear plastic bags for pick-up and as a consequence of Nick's laziness our bags are left at the side of the road because the rogue items are easily spotted by the guys responsible for collection. So I usually end up taking a bag or two to work with me once a week or so and putting it in the dumpster there. Not great for my trunk and rather unpleasant on the nose in the summer.
Another thing he does is toss the baling twine from the large bales of hay into the spare stall across from where we put the bale of hay we are currently using. I have placed empty feed bags there so the twine can be put directly into them and then just thrown out with the rest of the garbage. But he just tosses on the ground instead of in the bag and that room is a mess of string at the moment. I have tidied it up a number of times but it ends up looking just the same after a number of months so I have given up it.
He also will not put the garbage from the barn or the house into those large black garbage bags. I won't take anything to work unless it is in one of those bags just in case my boss objects to my dumping my garbage in his bin. He has told myself and other staff that he pays a flat fee for pick-up and that he is not keen on locking the dumpsters because that is inconvenient for us especially in the winter. But I don't feel I should just toss my white feed bags or kitchen garbage bags into the bin - it is very obvious whose garbage the feed bags are.
I often joke with customers at work that I spend most of my time off cleaning up after my animals. Shovelling the horses and the calves stalls and picking up dog poop around our yard. Nick never does this. Even when he has the dogs out on the leashes which have the poop bags dangling from them he won't pick up after them. Which leaves me to do it once a week or so.
Whenever Nick can't find something that he has used and left lying around somewhere he tells me that he tried to do this or tried to do that; or if I am home he insists that I stop whatever I am doing and look for the item he needs. He will always make the comment that it probably has been stolen by Chris. Most things I do manage to locate and if it is something he has looked for and not found he will claim that it was missing but then was returned and I knew where to find it because it had been returned to me to put away. Once he couldn't find the key to our truck and insisted that Chris had been seen driving the vehicle and so he still had the key. I combed the house and barn and garage for that key and couldn't find it anywhere. I will often find things where Nick has told me he has already searched but when I started to look for the key in the kitchen he told me he had scoured the kitchen so it was a complete waste of time to look in that room.
In the end we had the truck towed to the dealer who made a new key for us. Between the tow and the key I think it cost me around $400.00. And less than a week later I found the original key on the table under the lip of the decorative bowl we usually keep all the vehicle keys in. It was obvious to me that he had tossed the key on the table and it had slid toward the bowl, landing just out of view. He swears there is no way the key was where I found it and that it was returned to me by Chris.
All this thinking about extra jobs created by Nick is making me weary. I have a list of things to do tomorrow as I have the day off and I have to get busy with getting myself out of this marriage and getting on with my life. Stay tuned for an update on how much I get accomplished.
Saturday, 4 March 2017
Saturday, March 4, 2017
March 4, 2017
Last night when I arrived home from work Nick's daughter was here. I don't like surprises. Especially after the one I was still reeling from. I just wanted to get bundled up in some warm clothes and go to bed. But they usually stay up and watch movies and the living room is directly below the master bedroom. Nick doesn't hear well so the volume is always too high when he watches TV or listens to music. Sometimes I can't sit there comfortably and watch something with him because I find it way too loud. And then he will try to have a conversation on top of it all.
The weekend she was here for the cat pictures - was that just last weekend? - they kept me up for at least an hour each night and I was the only one who had to go to work. I also have a bad taste in my mouth for this behavior. When I would stay at Nick's before we moved to the farm, his daughter and her previous boyfriend would stay over quite often and their room was next to ours. This next part is going to sound really wacky, but the master bedroom in Nick's previous house had a large walk-in closet which was big enough to fit a single mattress on the floor. And this is where I would go to sleep when Nick woke me up with his snoring or when the traffic was keeping me awake as the house was on a busy street which happened to be extra wide and the cars would usually do over the speed limit as a result. There also happened to be a French language school at the end of the street where all French language students from all over the city were bussed as well as two daycares, one French and one English. It was so heavenly quiet in the closet and I loved sinking into the cool sheets. I was losing the battle with night sweats and hot flashes during that year or two and the change of location was the perfect sleeping potion for me. But the closet was right beside the other bedroom and the sounds of the kids' voices mixed with the voices and sounds from whatever movie they were watching seemed to be amplified as it passed through the thin walls and reverberated in the closet as it would in a hallway. I would experience such anxiety every evening when I tucked in for the night that I got into the habit of bringing a glass of white wine to bed with me and I would chug a mouthful or two to calm myself down when I started to feel myself getting stressed about being kept awake.
My point is I was less than pleased when I pulled into the driveway and realized she was here for the night. And by the time I had come through the door into the kitchen I knew I was not going to be able to contain my anger as I had for the previous several days.
I asked Nick immediately if he had looked at the marriage agreement I had handwritten the day before and asked him to sign. He turned and glared at me for mentioning this in front of his daughter. But that was why I had mentioned it, because she was there. Then I asked him in a louder voice and I let more than a little frustration ooze out over the words. He said something about leaving his daughter out of it and that the matter was between him and I, to which I replied that by stealing the $31,000.00 from me behind my back had changed the game completely and I wasn't going to keep my mouth shut and take his verbal, emotional or financial abuse any longer. There was a huge shouting match during which many ugly things were said by all three of us, but I can honestly say that every single word I said was the truth. I didn't have to exaggerate or expand on any of it in any way. At one point Nick said to his daughter that we never yell like this at each other. and I said 'yes, that's correct - he usually just yells at me and I usually just sit and take it.' Nick was in a complete and total rage by the end of it and his daughter really lost her cool. I was amazed that I felt very calm and very pleased and relieved that I had finally chosen to speak my mind and unload a lot of the crap he had been burying me under for the past two years or so.
She threatened more than once to get me and kept inviting me to hit her so she could 'take me out'. I don't think those were her exact words - there was so much yelling going on it was hard to catch any complete sentences. But the message was very clear. I am very pleased that I have it all recorded and securely stashed away. I intend to go to the RCMP station and file a report. I hope I get to play the audio for someone while I am there.
I was mean enough to tell her I wanted back the Honda she had been driving. I owned the car and I was paying the insurance and registration on it which all of a sudden seemed ridiculously generous of me in light of how her father had been treating me and how he had sealed the deal by essentially re-mortgaging the farm to withdraw every penny of equity we had paid down over the 4 years in order to pay his visa off. And there were no signs of him slowing any of his spending down. I have been eating peanut on whole wheat bread as sandwiches for nearly every meal while he feasts on his regular assortment of protein powders, creatinine, amino acids and the like.
My daughter's car had broken down about 4 or 5 months ago and Nick had managed to get it towed to his ex-wife's driveway so it could stay in the city where it will be repaired rather that dragging it out here. I mean, it wasn't hurting her any to have the car there. And then in the middle of one of the prolonged snowstorms we had a few weeks back she called Nick and told him that she moved the car so it was now parked along the street and the city was preparing to tow it away as it was not allowed to be parked on the street during a storm or during the hours following a storm to allow the plows to do their job of clearing the snow. Another tow truck had to be summoned and this time the car was moved to a lot belonging to a friend of Nick's. It was easy for me, all I had to do was give my visa number.
I stayed up quite late last night and went through all the paperwork we have in the house, as almost all of it is stored in the master bedroom. I just thought it would be prudent to gather up any documents that may be of any value or that would just be nice to have in a safe place. I got up and left for work before they were up and tonight when I came home the Honda was in the yard, but no daughter. Nick was out in the barn and came in just as I was dressing to go out to help. So he stayed in and I went out, mostly because he never seems to feed the chickens or the ducks and I feel the calves are loosing weight and are never given enough to eat. I am glad I did go out. The ducks had some feed but the hens had not a speck of food. I just hit the water dishes on the ground to break up the ice a bit so there was some water available to drink, though it will all be frozen solid in an hour or so anyway. I gave the calves some more hay and I also gathered up the loose hay that falls all over the floors and that Nick never bothers with. He just leaves it there to get walked over and soiled by spilled water and manure. I usually rake it up and then toss it into the stall that is the closest so each horse gets another couple of mouthfuls of hay. I also filled up the dish for cat food for the barn cat. I bought a huge bag of inexpensive stuff at the feed store but Nick is stingy with it because a neighbour's cat also eats from the same bowl and he doesn't like the cat or the woman it belongs to.
Last night when I arrived home from work Nick's daughter was here. I don't like surprises. Especially after the one I was still reeling from. I just wanted to get bundled up in some warm clothes and go to bed. But they usually stay up and watch movies and the living room is directly below the master bedroom. Nick doesn't hear well so the volume is always too high when he watches TV or listens to music. Sometimes I can't sit there comfortably and watch something with him because I find it way too loud. And then he will try to have a conversation on top of it all.
The weekend she was here for the cat pictures - was that just last weekend? - they kept me up for at least an hour each night and I was the only one who had to go to work. I also have a bad taste in my mouth for this behavior. When I would stay at Nick's before we moved to the farm, his daughter and her previous boyfriend would stay over quite often and their room was next to ours. This next part is going to sound really wacky, but the master bedroom in Nick's previous house had a large walk-in closet which was big enough to fit a single mattress on the floor. And this is where I would go to sleep when Nick woke me up with his snoring or when the traffic was keeping me awake as the house was on a busy street which happened to be extra wide and the cars would usually do over the speed limit as a result. There also happened to be a French language school at the end of the street where all French language students from all over the city were bussed as well as two daycares, one French and one English. It was so heavenly quiet in the closet and I loved sinking into the cool sheets. I was losing the battle with night sweats and hot flashes during that year or two and the change of location was the perfect sleeping potion for me. But the closet was right beside the other bedroom and the sounds of the kids' voices mixed with the voices and sounds from whatever movie they were watching seemed to be amplified as it passed through the thin walls and reverberated in the closet as it would in a hallway. I would experience such anxiety every evening when I tucked in for the night that I got into the habit of bringing a glass of white wine to bed with me and I would chug a mouthful or two to calm myself down when I started to feel myself getting stressed about being kept awake.
My point is I was less than pleased when I pulled into the driveway and realized she was here for the night. And by the time I had come through the door into the kitchen I knew I was not going to be able to contain my anger as I had for the previous several days.
I asked Nick immediately if he had looked at the marriage agreement I had handwritten the day before and asked him to sign. He turned and glared at me for mentioning this in front of his daughter. But that was why I had mentioned it, because she was there. Then I asked him in a louder voice and I let more than a little frustration ooze out over the words. He said something about leaving his daughter out of it and that the matter was between him and I, to which I replied that by stealing the $31,000.00 from me behind my back had changed the game completely and I wasn't going to keep my mouth shut and take his verbal, emotional or financial abuse any longer. There was a huge shouting match during which many ugly things were said by all three of us, but I can honestly say that every single word I said was the truth. I didn't have to exaggerate or expand on any of it in any way. At one point Nick said to his daughter that we never yell like this at each other. and I said 'yes, that's correct - he usually just yells at me and I usually just sit and take it.' Nick was in a complete and total rage by the end of it and his daughter really lost her cool. I was amazed that I felt very calm and very pleased and relieved that I had finally chosen to speak my mind and unload a lot of the crap he had been burying me under for the past two years or so.
She threatened more than once to get me and kept inviting me to hit her so she could 'take me out'. I don't think those were her exact words - there was so much yelling going on it was hard to catch any complete sentences. But the message was very clear. I am very pleased that I have it all recorded and securely stashed away. I intend to go to the RCMP station and file a report. I hope I get to play the audio for someone while I am there.
I was mean enough to tell her I wanted back the Honda she had been driving. I owned the car and I was paying the insurance and registration on it which all of a sudden seemed ridiculously generous of me in light of how her father had been treating me and how he had sealed the deal by essentially re-mortgaging the farm to withdraw every penny of equity we had paid down over the 4 years in order to pay his visa off. And there were no signs of him slowing any of his spending down. I have been eating peanut on whole wheat bread as sandwiches for nearly every meal while he feasts on his regular assortment of protein powders, creatinine, amino acids and the like.
My daughter's car had broken down about 4 or 5 months ago and Nick had managed to get it towed to his ex-wife's driveway so it could stay in the city where it will be repaired rather that dragging it out here. I mean, it wasn't hurting her any to have the car there. And then in the middle of one of the prolonged snowstorms we had a few weeks back she called Nick and told him that she moved the car so it was now parked along the street and the city was preparing to tow it away as it was not allowed to be parked on the street during a storm or during the hours following a storm to allow the plows to do their job of clearing the snow. Another tow truck had to be summoned and this time the car was moved to a lot belonging to a friend of Nick's. It was easy for me, all I had to do was give my visa number.
I stayed up quite late last night and went through all the paperwork we have in the house, as almost all of it is stored in the master bedroom. I just thought it would be prudent to gather up any documents that may be of any value or that would just be nice to have in a safe place. I got up and left for work before they were up and tonight when I came home the Honda was in the yard, but no daughter. Nick was out in the barn and came in just as I was dressing to go out to help. So he stayed in and I went out, mostly because he never seems to feed the chickens or the ducks and I feel the calves are loosing weight and are never given enough to eat. I am glad I did go out. The ducks had some feed but the hens had not a speck of food. I just hit the water dishes on the ground to break up the ice a bit so there was some water available to drink, though it will all be frozen solid in an hour or so anyway. I gave the calves some more hay and I also gathered up the loose hay that falls all over the floors and that Nick never bothers with. He just leaves it there to get walked over and soiled by spilled water and manure. I usually rake it up and then toss it into the stall that is the closest so each horse gets another couple of mouthfuls of hay. I also filled up the dish for cat food for the barn cat. I bought a huge bag of inexpensive stuff at the feed store but Nick is stingy with it because a neighbour's cat also eats from the same bowl and he doesn't like the cat or the woman it belongs to.
Thursday, 2 March 2017
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
March 1, 2017
The reality of what has just happened has sunk in. I cannot no longer hope for anything good to come of any of the past seven years since I met Nick. Actually it will be eight years in July.
I can feel my head starting to pound now, I am surprised it hasn't already exploded. I know my heart is in a million pieces. Not just in the usual way, as in when a love relationship comes to an end. More like when your life comes to an end.
One moment I am semi-rational and I begin to mentally sort through what I must do and the sequence of what I will do first and next and after that. And the following moment I catch myself wondering 'if maybe'. Completely self-destructive. I have to get it into my head once and for all that I am clinging to a ledge on the side of a bottomless pit and if I don't soon start to attempt to climb upwards, even if I am only able to hold on with my fingernails, then I most certainly will fall further and further downward. The reason a bottomless pit is called bottomless is because no matter how far down you are, you can still go lower. Forever.
We are running out of hay. I have asked Nick dozens of times to find out if we owe any more on the hay we are just about out of. The last payment of $800 that I scraped together he left under a milk can on the doorstep of the guy we buy our hay from. When I found that out I was thinking the next thing would be that the money went missing. But Nick told me the other night when I asked if he had dropped the money off that the fellow's wife had called to say the money had been safely retrieved and that 'this must almost make us square'. I want to know for sure so I can go ahead and have my daughter's car fixed with my next paycheque.
Tomorrow is going to be a difficult day. I am going to try to get Nick to sign something that spells out in writing the terms of the verbal contract we made concerning how money would be spent and what belongs to who, although just about everything has both of our names on it. I have to make a concrete and water-tight agreement with him. I wonder if that is even possible. He is so much more sophisticated when it comes to legal matters and divorce. I have hesitated to ask my daughter for advice because I am so ashamed of the situation I have found myself in but to hesitate any longer is just stupid after what has happened at the bank. I even thought about suicide this morning after I woke up and remembered what I was going to have to do today. How easy that would be. But how hard on my mother and my daughters. I suppose there is some solace in the fact I have a life insurance policy that is paid in full which will only go to my girls. It isn't a huge amount of money but it will be about $100,000.00 for each of them and it will be non-taxable. At the very least I will get 60% of the equity in the farm but I am going to do everything I can to get my down payment of $90,000.00 back. It is all that is really left of the proceeds of my previous home that I worked so hard to pay off over the thirteen years I lived there. I should be entitled to half of what we have paid down on the mortgage here in the last 5 years - actually more than half because I have been contributing $1000.00 each month compared to his $800.00 - but my portion of the $31,000.00 or so is likely long gone now. I was thinking last night that if I had known it was possible to do such a thing, how sweet it would have been if I had been the one to take that money. But I am not like that. I am fair to a fault. I see no reason to take what doesn't belong to me. In the end, I just want what's mine.
The horses have to go ASAP. I can no longer wait for Nick to do it on his own schedule. We agreed a year ago in October to re-home at least half of them by April, which was just about a year ago now. He keeps pleading that his injured back prevented him from working the horses, but I don't understand why his doctor wouldn't give him anything for it. I know he saw the duty doctor once who gave him a prescription for a strong muscle relaxant, but he didn't ever get anything for pain. No physiotherapy or anything like that. Apparently he had two TENS machines here but I don't know if he ever used them. I only know he had them here because he borrowed them from his ex-wife and that he couldn't find them when she asked him to return them to her. I looked around and I found one of them but I couldn't find the second one. I am guessing he had two here because he couldn't find one of them either.
Once the livestock is gone then I can manage here without Nick and I can sell the tractor, but I suppose it would be to my advantage to wait until the door is fixed. He told me that is being put through insurance. I told him I would pay half of the deductible, of which my half is $125.00. Which is probably stupid of me but it is fair. I don't want to stoop to his level. I read something from the internet last night at work (that my co-worker printed off for me) that a judge can award one party more than 50% if there is evidence of reckless spending, etc. on the part of one of the spouses. That is certainly the case here. I am going to have to go to the bank and see what I have to do to prevent Nick from withdrawing any more funds against the house and I also have to see a lawyer. I would like to retain the family law lawyer that my daughter articled for, who also happens to be the same lawyer that Nick's previous wife used. She is very good - the lawyer I mean - although expensive, but the advantage I think is that she will know if Nick's behavior follows the same pattern as before and this will work in my favour. She is the type of woman who despises men like Nick and cranks things up a notch because of this. She was very pleased with my daughter's work with her and they parted on very good terms when my daughter left to join a criminal law firm, which is the type of law she has always been interested in. This woman attended my daughter's 'call to the bar' ceremony and I was introduced to her then. Although my feeling on lawyers is that it is too bad they need to be hired to settle matters like mine but the courts are not sympathetic to those who fail to realize the need for legal counsel when faced with legal problems. If they weren't so expensive! That being said I have paid for eight year's of university for my daughter and she has worked extremely hard to get where she is today. I will admit she probably worked harder than I did at my education, and I worked pretty hard at mine. Not to mention the 16,000.00 per year tuition for law school, the mandatory LSAT admission exam and the four-year undergraduate degree.
I feel a bit better and somewhat calmer after making something of a plan of action that I hope will begin to clear a path out of this marriage to Nick. I have to keep reminding myself that he is not of sound mind and that I cannot and must not expect or even hope that he will react or act in a predictable or even in a reasonable manner. There is also the glaring disconnect that gnaws away at me everyday and especially in the dark hours of the night - how and why can I continue to have feelings for Nick after all of the deception and lies?
The reality of what has just happened has sunk in. I cannot no longer hope for anything good to come of any of the past seven years since I met Nick. Actually it will be eight years in July.
I can feel my head starting to pound now, I am surprised it hasn't already exploded. I know my heart is in a million pieces. Not just in the usual way, as in when a love relationship comes to an end. More like when your life comes to an end.
One moment I am semi-rational and I begin to mentally sort through what I must do and the sequence of what I will do first and next and after that. And the following moment I catch myself wondering 'if maybe'. Completely self-destructive. I have to get it into my head once and for all that I am clinging to a ledge on the side of a bottomless pit and if I don't soon start to attempt to climb upwards, even if I am only able to hold on with my fingernails, then I most certainly will fall further and further downward. The reason a bottomless pit is called bottomless is because no matter how far down you are, you can still go lower. Forever.
We are running out of hay. I have asked Nick dozens of times to find out if we owe any more on the hay we are just about out of. The last payment of $800 that I scraped together he left under a milk can on the doorstep of the guy we buy our hay from. When I found that out I was thinking the next thing would be that the money went missing. But Nick told me the other night when I asked if he had dropped the money off that the fellow's wife had called to say the money had been safely retrieved and that 'this must almost make us square'. I want to know for sure so I can go ahead and have my daughter's car fixed with my next paycheque.
Tomorrow is going to be a difficult day. I am going to try to get Nick to sign something that spells out in writing the terms of the verbal contract we made concerning how money would be spent and what belongs to who, although just about everything has both of our names on it. I have to make a concrete and water-tight agreement with him. I wonder if that is even possible. He is so much more sophisticated when it comes to legal matters and divorce. I have hesitated to ask my daughter for advice because I am so ashamed of the situation I have found myself in but to hesitate any longer is just stupid after what has happened at the bank. I even thought about suicide this morning after I woke up and remembered what I was going to have to do today. How easy that would be. But how hard on my mother and my daughters. I suppose there is some solace in the fact I have a life insurance policy that is paid in full which will only go to my girls. It isn't a huge amount of money but it will be about $100,000.00 for each of them and it will be non-taxable. At the very least I will get 60% of the equity in the farm but I am going to do everything I can to get my down payment of $90,000.00 back. It is all that is really left of the proceeds of my previous home that I worked so hard to pay off over the thirteen years I lived there. I should be entitled to half of what we have paid down on the mortgage here in the last 5 years - actually more than half because I have been contributing $1000.00 each month compared to his $800.00 - but my portion of the $31,000.00 or so is likely long gone now. I was thinking last night that if I had known it was possible to do such a thing, how sweet it would have been if I had been the one to take that money. But I am not like that. I am fair to a fault. I see no reason to take what doesn't belong to me. In the end, I just want what's mine.
The horses have to go ASAP. I can no longer wait for Nick to do it on his own schedule. We agreed a year ago in October to re-home at least half of them by April, which was just about a year ago now. He keeps pleading that his injured back prevented him from working the horses, but I don't understand why his doctor wouldn't give him anything for it. I know he saw the duty doctor once who gave him a prescription for a strong muscle relaxant, but he didn't ever get anything for pain. No physiotherapy or anything like that. Apparently he had two TENS machines here but I don't know if he ever used them. I only know he had them here because he borrowed them from his ex-wife and that he couldn't find them when she asked him to return them to her. I looked around and I found one of them but I couldn't find the second one. I am guessing he had two here because he couldn't find one of them either.
Once the livestock is gone then I can manage here without Nick and I can sell the tractor, but I suppose it would be to my advantage to wait until the door is fixed. He told me that is being put through insurance. I told him I would pay half of the deductible, of which my half is $125.00. Which is probably stupid of me but it is fair. I don't want to stoop to his level. I read something from the internet last night at work (that my co-worker printed off for me) that a judge can award one party more than 50% if there is evidence of reckless spending, etc. on the part of one of the spouses. That is certainly the case here. I am going to have to go to the bank and see what I have to do to prevent Nick from withdrawing any more funds against the house and I also have to see a lawyer. I would like to retain the family law lawyer that my daughter articled for, who also happens to be the same lawyer that Nick's previous wife used. She is very good - the lawyer I mean - although expensive, but the advantage I think is that she will know if Nick's behavior follows the same pattern as before and this will work in my favour. She is the type of woman who despises men like Nick and cranks things up a notch because of this. She was very pleased with my daughter's work with her and they parted on very good terms when my daughter left to join a criminal law firm, which is the type of law she has always been interested in. This woman attended my daughter's 'call to the bar' ceremony and I was introduced to her then. Although my feeling on lawyers is that it is too bad they need to be hired to settle matters like mine but the courts are not sympathetic to those who fail to realize the need for legal counsel when faced with legal problems. If they weren't so expensive! That being said I have paid for eight year's of university for my daughter and she has worked extremely hard to get where she is today. I will admit she probably worked harder than I did at my education, and I worked pretty hard at mine. Not to mention the 16,000.00 per year tuition for law school, the mandatory LSAT admission exam and the four-year undergraduate degree.
I feel a bit better and somewhat calmer after making something of a plan of action that I hope will begin to clear a path out of this marriage to Nick. I have to keep reminding myself that he is not of sound mind and that I cannot and must not expect or even hope that he will react or act in a predictable or even in a reasonable manner. There is also the glaring disconnect that gnaws away at me everyday and especially in the dark hours of the night - how and why can I continue to have feelings for Nick after all of the deception and lies?
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