I had saved up 90 days of leave when I retired the purpose was to use to look for work and to try and enjoy some time with my family.  My retirement ceremony was held in early June of 1994 and exactly one week from that was my 20 year high school reunion.  I had been planning on that since December of 1993 when I first heard about it.  I had also told Susan that I wanted her to attend my reunion with me as well.  I told Susan often about the reunion because she had pull with the dance studio the girls went to so she would help them choose a date for the annual summer recital that would allow us all to go to Iowa for this reunion.  However, Susan hated school herself and often thought I was a nerd or an idiot to keep my memories of the fun I had or the friends I had there.  Susan skipped most of her high school years playing around the area where she lived with one or two close friends.  She hated the fact that I still had all my year books along with other memorabilia from my High School and really hated when we would go to Iowa and I would not only visit my old friends but even make a point of driving by my old school at least once during the trip.  It’s not like I lived close by for the previous 20 years I was thousands of miles away and only did this trip on an average once every 4 years so it really only happened about 3 times with Susan in my life.  So please don’t think it was abnormal behavior on my part.  At least I don’t think so. 

            As it turned out Susan deliberately helped plan the summer recital during the weekend of my reunion.  Since I had all ready paid money for the reunion I was going with or with out her in my mind a 20 year reunion only happens once in a life time and I missed my friends and wanted to hear more about them and share my life with them as well.  Susan was very mad at me that since I no longer had a military obligation that I would not attend the recital and watch our daughters dance after putting in so much work.  However by this time in our marriage I was keenly aware of how Susan tried to manipulate me like this.  I had started to rebel in so many ways to her little high school girl stunts such as this one.   For a simple example when we would go out shopping together and walking along and talking together she would often stop along an aisle and simply stand there while I kept walking thinking I was talking with her until I would look over where I thought she was only to find her several feet behind me simply staring at me and getting mad at me because I did not look at her the whole time we were together.  I can’t tell you how mad that use to make me once I understood it was on purpose on her part.  She laid one guilt trip on me after another for years in that manner. Often getting mad at me in front of the children claiming that the only reason I worked so many hours was to get away from the family.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  It was simply Susan never understood that money really didn’t grow on trees and the money I made came at a high cost and yet it  was never enough to satisfy her appetite for spending.  She would always say that she didn’t care about money and now I believe that statement money means nothing to her at all it’s the spending of money she is addicted to.  She also feels that the entire world owe her for her miss childhood as well. 

            I took my son to my reunion he could not participate in all the events with me but he did attend the picnic that was planned on Sunday afternoon. It was really cool that my two best friends through out high school that I had maintained contact with over the years all had sons at or near my son’s age.  It was neat to watch the 3 boys together as if they had spent a life time together as soon as they met.  They had all heard stories about us when we were their ages and were eager to relive some of the more stupid things we told them as you can imagine.  It was as each of our roles as we were younger had also developed with our sons. Each had the same personality as their fathers did in our younger relationship.  It was fun to watch them. 

            What I learned during the formal dinner on Saturday night was hard to hear and understand.   I set alone at the table with my old friends some I had not seen since high school all with their wife’s at their side.   I listened to a couple of them I had known in high school that got married to each other.  They were high school sweethearts and got married about two or three years after graduation, she was two years behind my friend and I.  However they had a great marriage and children of their own.  He took a job right out of high school with the post office in Des Moines. His father had worked there over 25 years at the time and was able to help him get a job there. He too had worked there now 20 years.  His responsibilities there gave him some horrible hours at times often reporting for work at 4 AM.  However I learned from his wife that did not bother her in the least. She would get the whole family up at 3 AM and they would eat breakfast together every morning. After he would leave she would put the children back to bed until it was time to get them up again for school. She would always have a family dinner for him no matter what time he got home from work. She clearly believed and stated that the family schedule needed to revolve around  the father’s work schedule.   That was the exact opposite of the way I had lived the whole 15 years Susan and I had been married. Susan as you may remember from previous chapters not only demanded that I be home when she was ready to feed the family but would throw out any thing left over to prove her point that if could not eat with the family I should not expect anything to be there when I did make it home.  Up until that night I really don’t think I knew any differently I had grown to accept my home life as it was, I will admit I was never happy about it but as many people who know me I hate conflict as well.  I had to face as much conflict in my job responsibilities as I was prepared to do and had no energy or desire to fight with Susan every night or at all.   

            The subject of sex came up as it always did with my friends and I when we were together. We were not at all as graphic as we were in high school but I learned they all had sex  3-4 times a week with their wife’s.  That was another eye opener for me, since I was lucky to have sex with my wife twice a month by then.   I learned too much from this reunion that my life at home was not a normal one at all.   

            For me personally the reunion was quite eerie, the reason was I felt that the previous 20 years and all I had done never really happened at all. It was nearly 20 years from the date we graduated and I had spent nearly the whole time in the Army thousands of miles apart from them.  We all picked up our different relationships with each other as if that whole 20 years never happened except those of course that not only stayed in the area but also remained life long friends.  For me it was simply like we got together a week after graduation and we were telling old stories and a few new ones we experienced on our own in the past 20 years.   

            With the 90 days I had saved up in leave I also got an additional 20 days of retirement temporary duty to allow me to look for a place to live and work.  I didn’t get to use but 14 days of those as I found a job a couple of weeks previous to my retirement ceremony and starting my leave.  I was not going to actually be retired until 31 August 1994 officially.  So when I did retire I got paid almost 25 days leave as well.   

            I found a job at the US Treasury right next door to the White House. Almost nothing changed for me as my commute was concerned except I was making it every day now since I no longer traveled.  I would get up every morning and go to the military gym at the Navy base the White House Communications headquarters was located on.  I would meet one or two of my old friends and we would still run anywhere from 5- to 8 miles a day together.  Then in stead of catching the military shuttle to the White House I would drive a couple of miles from the base and catch the subway to the Treasury every morning. 

            I didn’t have to be at work until 9 AM so that gave me plenty of time to shower and eat breakfast with my friends if they had the time.  My hours were simply 9AM – 5:30 PM  commuting back from DC every night was a nightmare that would take anywhere from two to two and a half hours to drive home. Yet I was still home earlier than I had been getting home from the White House and I was home every single night.  It was at this time I started to learn that it may have been too late to reinsert my self into my family.  I would get home around 7:30 to 8:00 O’clock every night but my wife and daughters were never home, only my son was there alone since coming home from school.  It didn’t bother me at first because Susan usually got home around 8:30 or 9:00 at first. However by the fall that had shifted to more like 10 – 11 every night. I would go to be by 9:30 so that gave us little or no time together.  She was a lot like me when she would get home and needed some time to herself to wind down after being out so late so we rarely got a chance for any intimacy.  The house was all ways in a state of total disarray as well since for some reason she never found the time during the day to clean it up. 

            Susan and I had agreed a few years earlier that Sara our youngest daughter needed to be taken out of public school system in southern Maryland. Most of the children she went to school were lived in near poverty in that area.  One day Sara while in 2d grade came home crying because her teacher was so mean to the other kids. It’s not that she had been mean to Sara but Sara sensed that what the teacher had said was wrong and it broke her heart. Sara was and is to this day a very sensitive person. The teacher got mad at some of the kids that day and said to them how stupid they were and how they would never be anything but homeless tobacco pickers living in shacks and hotels just like their parents and grandparents had for generations.  Well that was enough for me to know that Sara did not need to grow up learning things like that from anyone. Susan I agreed that Sara needed a different environment.  I would not have my children growing up thinking people had no chance in life what so ever. 

            Susan loved having Sara around since she really never wanted to let her go anyway.  She could keep her apron strings tied very closely to Sara now. A lot of that was due to the fact that Sara was forever going to be her last child and it forced Susan to come to grips many times with that and the fact she was getting older her self.  I will tell you that Susan was obsessed with Sara and keeping her a child as long as she could she nurse her at times up until Sara was 6 years old. I thought it was strange enough that she was still nursing her on our move to Washington DC when she was nearly 5 but I learned in the last few years that she would let her nurse at times even at the age of 6.  

            My first day at the Treasury was quite bizarre. I was hired to be the manager of the civilian contractors in the Telecommunications Department by the Contractor. I was not a government employee at all.  My government supervisor also wanted me to take on many of her responsibilities that were overwhelming her at the time to supervise some of the government employees under her as well as do project management for the department.  Many of the government employees resented that a great deal and in fact didn’t have to work for me and hated that I was to look over their work. For the most part as you can imagine were the most useless group in the branch.  The other employees didn’t need any supervision at all but enjoyed my experience often taking advantage of knowledge I had to the benefit of all. 

            The very first day I was given a project to develop a call in line to take opinions about the President’s and the Secretary of the Treasury new gun control law they were trying to get passed in congress. We were to develop a toll free number for people to call in to either agree with the new proposed law or to disagree with it. I noticed the government employee I was teamed with from the telecommunications branch was wearing his life time membership pin with the NRA.   

            After getting the details and assuring the group that it was easy to build such an opinion line with existing  equipment we were then given future instructions that may or may not shock you depending on how much you understand politics at this level. We were given specific instructions at this point to keep every single call that was in favor of the new gun control law but to record no more than 5 calls from people that disagreed meaning if more than 5 people called to disagree we were simply to record the new messages over the old but never more than 5 in the box ever.   

            This was a very hard thing for me to accept as you can imagine even after 4 years at the White House I had never send or heard of such a thing I was never involved in political discussions at all even supporting two different national elections while assigned there.  I did not accept this and went directly to tell my government supervisor about the details of deleting messages. It was clearly stated during the meeting to develop the opinion line that no one really wanted to hear the opinions of a bunch of crazy people any way.  We were lucky in that she also agreed with us and took the matter to the Director of IT for the Treasury that took it to the under Secretary she reported to. He agreed with us that was not the objective of the opinion line and we would record every single call pro and con until counted.  However I will tell you this new friend and I were taken off the project the day it started and we were never given a similar project again the whole time I was at the Treasury.   

            Life at home was becoming increasing hard to deal with coming home every night to an empty house except my son.  I spent at least an hour every night looking for work on the west coast specifically in Washington State. I wanted more than anything to move my family out of that area in an attempt to regain a family not a bunch of individuals that we had become.  Everyone had their own separate lives now since I had been gone so much while in the Army.  The only things we had in common now was the house we lived in and the money I made that they all depended on for every thing they needed and wanted.   

            Early in the fall of 1994 Susan’s parents came for a visit with us. I was thankful because when ever they came Susan made a point of cleaning the house at least before they would get there. After they got there Susan counted on her mother to do the cleaning and cooking for everyone so she could keep her busy schedule.  I came home every night to a clean house and a great meal. Neither of which Susan had done since about 1985.  I remember one night about a week after they got there her mother was sitting at the kitchen table waiting on me to come home.  While eating the great dinner she saved for me she asked me if Susan was ever home anymore when I got home. I told her no she wasn’t and would not be coming home before 9 or 10. She asked how I felt about that and of course I told her I wished it was different but Susan was not going to give up a single dance class just to spend time with me.  She told me then for the first of many times that maybe I should teach Susan a lesson and maybe find a girl friend that would feed me and spend time with me.  I brushed that off thinking at the time I could never cheat on Susan ever for any reason.  However I will admit that for a few years ever since our sex life had gone down so far and the rashes I would get on my genitals after having sex with her that she was in fact spending time with other men or even women since she always had one or more of them with us anytime we went on an outing or vacation.   

            I know her mother spoke to her about the fact she was never home and they would fight about that and the fact that her mother tried to get the kids to at least clean up after themselves. Susan would get just as mad at her about trying to turn her children in to slaves like she thought had happened to her as she would get as mad at me for trying to get the kids to do some kind of chore around the house.  So the conversations she had with her mother never led to a change they only strengthen Susan resolve to keep the status quo.   

            My emotional and physical needs to be with Susan more than once or twice a month were growing stronger and a couple of times my physical well being with suffer with the old infections coming back from the dried sperm in my body.   I tried once again for Susan to help in this area, but when she got home so late I was often asleep since I needed to be on the road at 5 AM every morning to miss the traffic. If I left at 6 I would face a 3 hour commute and have to go straight to work after fighting 3 hours of bumper to bumper traffic. If I left at 5 I would be on the base at 6 and able to run and do other exercises clean up after and still have time to relax and eat and get to work by 8:30 every morning.  Susan’s answer was to come into the bedroom and grant me anywhere from 5-10 minutes to help me masturbate she didn’t want to spend more time unless it was between the TV shows she had to watch like Emergency or 90210.  Sex was to say the least not much anymore. Even that was only happening a couple of times a month anymore.  I was not obsessed with sex I was however becoming physically ill again and obsessed with the lack of sex.   

            By November I had gotten a PO Box for two reasons first to get mail that I had to have Susan had a bad habit of loosing mail or simply forgetting where she put it. She also had a very bad habit of throwing away my mail pertaining to my job search out of state.  She no longer wanted to leave Maryland at all and would do anything to prevent that from happening.  I also started to subscribe to two adult magazines at that time Penthouse and Gallery.  I did not want them delivered to home where the kids may get them or see them. 

            My sex life had returned to that of a teen age boy again.  Susan would get mad when she would discover the magazines with pictures of naked women in them and we would talk about me giving them up in exchange for more time with her. I was more than eager to give up the magazines I wanted more time with her in the first place. I was just UN able to remain celibate for weeks and months at a time is all.  At first when we would agree to this we would have sex a couple of times a week for maybe the first month or 3 weeks. However as the case was more often than not sex with her would last for only 3 weeks then I was expected to go with out for weeks or months again with out it.  Simply try to imagine how I felt at this time.  I was a man only 38 years old deeply in love with my wife. In my heart and mind I was married to the sexiest woman alive and I loved her more than anything enough to give up a very successful military career to be with her yet I could see her and yet not allowed to touch her. Can you just imagine what that does to a man’s insides.  Not only to my heart and my emotions but to my physical needs as well to be so aroused by a single woman, to live with her, see her daily, sleep with her and wake up with her with your heart full of desire to please her and be with her physically yet not allowed to touch her? That was not a brief thing that was her thing from 1992 until 2000 when I was arrested.   

            In December of 1994 I discovered more on the Internet than I could actually handle as it turned out.  I found chat rooms on line on Prodigy.  I found married women as frustrated with their life’s at home as I was with mine.  They were not only willing to talk about sex and what they desired and were missing they were starting the conversations with me. For me living with Susan where talking about our sex life was a forbidden subject I found this to be a gold mine to me.  Not only was Susan never home anyway I actually found some companionship with women across the country that if nothing else I could have a conversation with about sex or anything we wanted. I had no one else to talk with anyway except myself. I know I could have chosen to read a book, watch TV, or quit my job and spend my day at the dance studio with Susan I however choose to talk with other women since Susan didn’t want to be part of my waking hours any longer.   

            Susan and I would a few more times agree that I would throw out the porn in exchange for spending time some time with me instead. She really hated the porn because in her mind she was loosing her control over me. She enjoyed using the lack of sex between us to control me and get me to eventually beg her to spend time with me or to do other things that she wanted to do.  However with the porn I no longer was desperate to do anything and could at least relax a little.   I was also having a few on line affairs with about 3 different women across the United States at this time to have some sort of conversations with. One of them and I would write letters and call each other often since neither her husband was often home and Susan was gone nearly all the time now.  We had plenty of time to talk on the phone to each other. We would not only talk about sex but everything else a man and woman should talk about as well.  What I found is that every time I through away the porn Susan after a week or even just once would wait to give me sex again for weeks or months until she found that I had gotten porn again . I am not talking here about getting porn the first week or first month even or going with out sex for a week at time or even a single month I am talking that after 2 or more months of living in sexual frustration from her refusing sex with me that I would go get another porn magazine again.  That made her mad as all get out she could not control me. She started to tell everyone then that I preferred porn over her and to this day tells everyone including our children the reason she left me is because it was quite simple I preferred pornography over being with her. The plain simple truth was I choose porn over living life celibacy with her living in the same house.   

            During the first year I was retired I tried in vain to get Susan to look at homes closer to DC where the commute would not be so hard on me. I hated working an 8 hour day and spending from 5AM to 8 PM nightly commuting and working.  She had no desire what at all to move from southern Maryland even 25 miles closer to DC.  She loved the fact that she was so isolated there and could keep her house as messy as she wanted with out any more witnesses to it than myself and our children.  She could come and go as she pleased during the day since I was at work all day and no way to get home during the day either.  She had totally given up any responsibility to be a house wife or a wife to me at all.  

            I kept looking for more work out in Washington State but with no luck. The contractor I worked for at the Treasury was doing many things to cheat the government and we did not get along very well at all. The government had increased the amount of payment for my position by $50,000  a year in exchange for the contractors promise to increase my pay so I could afford to still work there. That happened during my first 4 months at the Treasury however they refused to pass any of the increase along to me personally even though it had been based 100% on my performance and potential. 

            By October now of 1995 I had given up finding work out west and found a much better paying job in Vienna, Virginia. It added another 20 miles to my commute but as long as I left at 5 am it was okay I missed the traffic. Not to mention it gave me a chance to travel again and miss the whole commute completely the days I was on the road. Since Susan was rarely at home the few waking hours I had there I jumped at the new job, better responsibilities and a $10,000 a year increase in pay.   

            I was a Program Manager for a Telecommunications company that was helping the new wireless cell phone technology come on line. We had contracts across the nation with all the major cell companies.  My responsibilities quickly became centered in the south west United States and more and more around a single customer in Houston, Texas. They were under tremendous pressure to be the first city and company on line to over the new digital technology.  With that internal pressure they were harder and harder for my company to deal with at all.  It became clear that with my experience I was the only one that was going to be able to keep this contract going and it was very lucrative for us. We were getting any where from $20,000 to $60,000 a day from this company for our services.   

            Most of the income was due to the fact that their engineers continually changed the specifications on their equipment and antenna towers. Every time they made the slightest change in power, antenna height, tower location they were required to contract with us again to do another 100% analysis of the effects it would in generate on surrounding telecommunications systems.  As I spent more and more time there trying to learn the reason for so many changes and to keep the Vice President of the contracting company happy I learned that the engineers were not telling him personally that every change they made required us to re do all our work and that was the reason that analysis from us were changing so often and expenses with us were increasing. As I set in on one of their own meetings on morning I listened to them talk about having to make power changes and antenna changes on 5 of their sites.  When they were through I looked over at their VP and asked him he understood what that meant as far as new analysis from us based on the changes they made to their 5 locations. He didn’t realize that at all so I explained to him that since we had done our interference analysis based on a system with x power being transmitted and y height of the antenna by changing either and in this case both that the analysis was no longer valid and they could in fact interfere with different systems than before or in some cases interfere with less.  He understood completely once his engineer agreed with me. At that time I became his favorite contractor and program director. Our contracts increased now being responsible for multiple projects as well replacing microwave radio systems around the region and country. 

            At first I was spending only a couple of days a week in Houston and I was very tired of the commute back in DC. I started to look for a room or an apartment in the area closer to where I worked since Susan would have no part of moving from our home in Maryland. I found a place with 3 other single men I had worked with at the White House. We all knew we could trust each other completely and we also knew that rarely if ever if all of us would ever be in the home at the same time. They all had different travel responsibilities at the White House often all gone at the same time and I was only looking for a place to stay a few times a week when I was simply too tired to drive home anymore. 

            My plan to live closer quickly died out however. My mother had come to visit for Christmas of 1995 and during this time and actually about a month before Sara had become very ill.  The problem is with Sara is that Susan wanted to ignore her symptoms. Poor little Sara was only 9 years old but had come down with diabetes.  She had to go to the bathroom every few minutes and was either sleeping or drinking all the time she was not dancing.   A few times since Thanksgiving Susan would mention it to me and I told her how important it was to take her to the doctor as soon as tomorrow to get her looked at. Susan would say she would but never did. She could not find time in her schedule of dances classes to take time to take Sara to the doctor. The symptoms of course became worse and worse.  While my mother was there who her self is a diabetic finally told us that is what she has. Susan did not want to hear that or discuss that at all with anyone of us either.   

            Mothers as they often are, are very perceptive about how their children are living. My mother was no different in many ways that Susan’s mother had been a little over a year earlier when she stayed with us. The only real difference about how my mother saw my relationship with Susan verses the way her mother saw it was that my mother sensed then that Susan was out to destroy me in any way she could accomplish it.  The fact is just after Christmas and before New Years I heard them fighting like cats and dogs after I had gone to bed.  My mother told Susan point blank that since she no longer felt any love for me and it was obvious to her in the way that Susan treated me then why didn’t she just leave me.  Susan hit the roof because it was all taking place in front of the kids.  I let it go on because it really wasn’t that different than what her own mother had tried to get me to understand a year earlier.  However the next morning I told my mother she had to go home that day and to pack her things I had changed her flight to that day. I could not have her fighting with my wife like that in those words and especially in front of the children.  So we all got up and took her to the airport to complete the last ever visit she would have with us ever. 

            Also that day when we got home I was mad at Susan because for two months Sara had only been getting sicker and sicker and she would not take her to the doctor. I told her point blank that since the day was shot today and tomorrow was a Saturday I would take her to the emergency room to see exactly what was going on. Susan was quite mad about this and she knew I would do it too. So the next morning she decided to pack Sara up and take her to the military medical center at Naval Base close by. I was to stay with the kids.  By late that afternoon my worst fears had been confirmed. Not only was Sara diabetic she was nearly in a coma by the time Susan finally took her to the doctor. Her blood sugar was over 850 and normal was around 120.   The doctors had given Sara her first dose of insulin and her changes were dramatic. However they were too dramatic as her body lower her blood sugar too low too fast. They decided she needed  immediate air medivac to the DC Children’s Hospital in DC to monitor her for the next few days. I dropped the phone told the other two children that I had to go and what was up with Sara. I didn’t know when I’d be back or how late it would be but they had to stay. I wanted to be on that helicopter with Sara.   

            By the time I got there they had decided it was not as bad of an emergency as they though it was but she needed to be hospitalized just the same. They had called for a special team from the Children’s Medical Center to transport her in their ambulance. I got there just in time to be with a minute or two before they loaded her in.  I nearly cried because I felt so bad for her  having to be like that for weeks before being taken care of and how bad it was now as a result.   

            I followed the ambulance into DC and Susan rode with Sara.  We stayed there with her for several hours and I left about 1 or 2 in the morning to go home to our other children while Susan spent the night with Sara. 

            Her fist day in the hospital now was going to be New Years Eve. There was not much of a staff on hand at the hospital and it was the first civilian hospital I had been in for years. It was filthy by any hospital standard I had ever seen in the military.  That whole weekend no one even cleaned the restroom. I’d walk into the men’s room and my shoes would stick to the floor from all the urine on the floor and the trash bags were overflowing from the first night.  

            All of us spent New Years Eve with Sara in her hospital room and watched TV and brought in the New Year together like we nearly always did except the one year I was in Japan on New Years with the White House. 

            By the first work day of the week and with in the first hour of the duty day I had decided that Sara did not belong in the Children’s hospital. The only thing her doctor talked about was our military insurance and who was going to pay for it. He was not interested in treating her until that was resolved. So, being forceful as I am only in matters of health and life or death I demanded that she be released and she was transferred to Walter Reed Army Medical Center where she belonged anyway. If the US military insurance was not as good as the welfare system that 90 % of the other patients in the hospital had to rely on I didn’t want any part of a hospital more interested in payment than my daughter’s health. 

            We took Sara our self to Walter Reed and believe it or not a team of over 7 doctors and special nurses were waiting for us where little Sara was treated as their priority and a queen the whole week she had to stay there.  The way they treated her and us was far above the call of duty and was greatly appreciated by all of us. Her main doctor when she was released gave us his home phone number along with his cell number with instructions to call him any time day or night if we had questions and not to hesitate to call at any time. He himself would call daily the first week to check on her. 

            Now as for Susan’s obsession with the dances classes it would appear her obsession had no bounds. The very day Sara was released from Walter Reed there was scheduled a dance regional dance competition in downtown DC very near the Capital building. Susan would not hear anything about how Sara should go home for a couple of days and insisted that we go to the hotel there and spend the next two days there even before this little 9 year old could go home.  On top of that DC had experienced a lot of big snow storms that year and one was on the way the next day that could force us to spend a few days in DC.   

            Sara did compete as well as did Angela our oldest daughter Susan go her way again and proved once and for all to me that the dance studio and her time there was the single most important thing in her life.  We left the next day in the middle of the blizzard that dumped over 15 inches of snow in the area. We barely made it home and only because the car we were driving had font wheel drive.  We were snowed in for I think 3 days once we got home. 

            I decided that Sara needed me home now more than ever to watch out for her because I feared Susan would not take as good of care of her as she should since she was so easily distracted by her dance class schedules. So I decided to opt out of the apartment I found in DC with my friends so I could be home more.  I had taken a week off from work to stay with Sara and the kids while she was in the hospital. I was lucky in the place I was working did not charge me  any vacation time as a reward for all the extra hours I had put in for them regarding Houston. After all I was the only one in the company willing to fly out on Sunday afternoons so I could meet with our client first thing on Monday mornings.  That took a lot of personal time away from me that no one else would do.   

            Only two weeks after Sara got out of the hospital however things in Houston got desperate for our client from the pressure they were getting from their company headquarters to speed up their process of coming on line.  They demanded that I spend the whole week there now for the next several months.  I only agreed to do that when I asked for my salary to be doubled. I never thought they would agree to that but they said I could have anything I wanted as long as I stayed and finished this job for them. 

            They rented me a very nice corporate apartment less than 5 miles from the office I was working in. Our client gave us space so I could hire a support staff and have our engineers and sales staff work there as well when required.  I would leave my home in Maryland about 2 O’clock every Sunday and not get home again until midnight on Friday nights.  The money was good, the fact that I did not have to commute during the week even 5 whole miles was good. Every penny I spent from Sunday afternoon until I would get home on Friday night was covered by the company now. My salary was now over $127,000  a year.  My commute on Sunday to the airport and Friday nights was a breeze since there was no traffic at those times. Actually it would take less time to fly from DC to Houston that a one way commute for me during the week to DC.  

            It was only 3 weeks after I started working in Houston that I got a call about a job in North Idaho. I had finally realized my dream that I could get out of DC and maybe still be able to recover my family again or at least have a chance to do so since it would be so new for all of us and remote. My thoughts were we’d be forced to rely on each other as we had in Germany and we were all so close to each other.    

            A couple of weeks after the first call I flew up to Idaho and had my interview.  I made it clear and in no uncertain terms my experience was in management since 1978 and management of large numbers of people and very large IT projects. I had no hands on technical skills that I could match with any technician with even only a year’s experience.  All seemed to understand that skill set I was explaining and it was as they stated just want they wanted. I interviewed all day on a Friday, that happened to be Susan’s birthday in 1996 and on Saturday morning I was taken to breakfast and hired that happened to be Angela’s birthday.  I missed both their birthdays but had hoped this change would be the best thing that ever happened to us since the days the children were born. 

             My family all seemed to be excited at first about moving to north Idaho. We all loved the mountains and the snow and looked forward to living in an area that we use to only be able to take a brief vacation in from time to time.   My responsibilities in Houston were very big and I was responsible for over 50 million dollars in contracts and projects. I convinced the company in North Idaho I need to give 4 weeks notice and not simply walk away and leave the company holding the bag. It was clear to the company in DC and in Houston that I was the only one they knew that could keep things going the way I had started them for them. 

             When I first told my bosses in DC that I would be leaving the company they were somewhat upset. We had gone through a great number of engineers that were hiring on like mercenaries at the time since there was a great demand across the globe for them.  They soon accepted my departure even after offering to double my salary again and give me a VP title if I’d would just stay on. I told them in my case it was not about the money I was loosing my family and would give up every thing I owned to try and safe my family and spend time with them again. Not one of them argued once I told them I was taking a 50% cut in pay just to save my family. 

            I spent the first couple of weeks recruiting a good friend of mine from the White House I worked with. He was a retired Air Force officer with a master’s degree in electronic engineering. He was much more technically inclined than I was and equally a good leader and dedicated to his work.  The only real difference between us was he would refuse to fly on Sundays to Houston and wanted to be home on Fridays as well.  Other than that he was the only one I knew of that could keep the schedule I had set up for the project or beat them.  The company was quite happy with him after interviewing him and together we spent my last week in Houston together as I introduced him to the staff., all the projects, and all the people around the state that I had contact with weekly.

             I worked in Houston the rest of  my time there only coming home on weekends as before. But, just like before Susan was never home on the weekends she and the girls were at the dance studio both Saturday and Sunday all day and often until late in the evening so I really never saw them. Even the last weekend I was home. 

            I had a very rough flight home my last day in Houston. The day before I left I had gone from one party and big meal from breakfast to dinner and late into the night. It was the best send off I had ever had including any one of my military assignments.  I had gotten the worse case of food poisoning I had ever had.  I was thankful I was flying first class that day because I spent nearly 95% of the time in the bathroom sitting on the toilet and my head in the sink with the poison coming out of both ends at the same time nearly the whole way home.  The flight attendants were very concerned for me and offered to make an emergency landing about half way home. They were convinced I needed immediate medical help. I was even in the bathroom during the landing but they simply knocked on the door and told me not to worry we were almost home. Even during the flight the pilot came back a couple of times to use the bathroom and would go to the back of the plane instead after hearing what the attendants told him about me. When we finally got to DC I felt much better with in about 30 minutes it seems as if I got rid of everything I ate the whole week before during the two hour flight.

             That next day I spent alone with Shawn packing my truck and our boat by ourselves for me to leave for Idaho the next day. Susan couldn’t miss even one Saturday of dance class practice to spend with me for what we both knew would be weeks or months before we were together again.  She would not even have sex with me that night and it had been over a month since we were together the last time.  Up until this time I had never considered ever cheating on Susan under any circumstance or lack of attention from her.  However with in two days that was about to change for ever. I had finally had enough of the neglect and punishment for working so hard to provide a living and nice things for her and the children. I no longer wanted the sex life of a 15 years old boy at the age of 40 with little to no hope of it ever changing the rest of my life.