Part 2, Nettlesome problems

1999, we learned that both sons had problems. Ted, who wasn't even a year old, was repeatedly getting ear infections. Even with insurance, the out-of-pocket cost mounted and the dream of paying off credit cards crashed. He needed surgery to put tubes in his ears. His health improved dramatically. It also became tougher because of Andy's problem. He did a test that indicated that he had autism. Now most people think autism is one major mental disease. It is not. What it is is a spectrum of diseases/symptoms that, at it's worst means that your child will have bad communication problems and backward social skills (sorry I'm no psychologist but I think I am doing an accurate job of explaining this). Andy has always tested at the most minor part of the autistic spectrum. But in 1999, he had to go to speech therapy, because of his deficits with communication.
Then I made a big mistake. I thought I would be nice to Maribeth. She was having problems with making ends meet with herself and the household. So I said, "Hey, let's have a joint credit card." Yes, it made it easier to spend money on things she needed. But the credit card debt spiraled more quickly upward.
Reader, please take note. I don't really think that Maribeth is a spendthrift. She doesn't go to the opera or even plays, she doesn't spend a lot on clothes or shoes. She doesn't want to drive a fancy car or spend a lot of money on books. Yet she is well read, going to the library. We've only took one vacation longer than 3 days twice in the 10 yrs. we were married! I think the lack of time off and the lack of just plain fun like we had back in 1991-1994 hurt our marriage too.
The 2 weaknesses were food/grocery store and toys. We live right next to an expensive grocery store named Jewel/Osco. Jewel's prices are so high that they were sued with Dominicks back in the late 90s early 2000s for price fixing milk . This gave both stores a black eyes imagewise and indeed, we were spending at least a dollar more every single time we went to Jewel and got milk. & then Dominicks was across the street back in the 90s and we were spending a great deal of money there, too. The judge in the price fixing case finally ruled that there was definitely evidence of price fixing, but then he said something to the effect in his ruling on Jewel & Dominicks, "Even if there's evidence of price fixing, so what? Buy your milk at Walgreens, or Aldi or Save a Lot! No one said YOU HAD TO SHOP AT EITHER JEWEL OR DOMINICK!" We should have & didn't .

& I was by no means a miser. I spent more money on clothes than Maribeth. I worked at a law firm, then I left Sudekum law firm for another law firm and got a big raise, than I left that one and went to a really excellent law firm that handled wrongful death cases as well as the usual car accident, workers' compensation, and premises liability. I loved that firm located on the 30th Floor (Dear Reader, that firm still exists and I didn't want to mention it by name due to the main partner there who has an obstreperous reputation)
I loved my office on the 30th Floor; I could look out that window and instantly calm down seeing Lake Michigan and the northern part of downtown Chicago. It drove home the point that my problems were smaller than the world I saw outside. My professional growth was leaping high as I learned a lot from the best paralegal I ever met, Mike Sullivan. Also, the personal injury lawyer improved my writing and legal skills and some of the survival skills in the cutthroat law firm milieu. (I was to learn more later as the law firms I went to were more cutthroat than the one I was at from 2000-2002. So now, I've learned the skills of the "Insider".)

At any rate, I had below average spending habits. I spent too much on history books, clothes (to keep my "image stylistically high" at the law firms). I loved getting CDs. I have a very successful younger brother who had, at one time, over 150 CDs, and I never have gotten to that point. Yet there was a big difference between him and I: as an engineer he was better able to afford a lot of CDs than someone who worked at a hospital on weekends and paralegal during the week.
Maribeth & I demanded a great deal from each other, and when we didn't get what we wanted, we fought like cats and dogs. We weren't as mature as we should have been.

Then came that awful day in early March, 2000. I was told that I was let go from the Personal Injury Department. The office manager said something to the effect of, "Vince we thought you did a very good job. We have no problem with your productivity, your excellent attitude and your work ethic." I learned later that they wanted to put more money and manpower in the Wrongful Death Dept. and less money in the P.I department because the main partner didn't think the profit in the PI Dept. wasn't high enough. Death yields greater profit than injuries in a car accident. The lawyers didn't invent that, the loss is obviously more in Death!
We went to marriage counseling from 1999-2002. I think when I announced that I lost my job at this firm, it was the only time one of us broke down and cried in the middle of the marriage counseling session. For many guys, losing your job is more humiliating and more painful than if someone took all your clothes off in the middle of a mall and had everyone laugh at you.
Yes, that's the way I view it now, and that's the way I viewed it then. It may be wrong to think that way, but that's the way I value work.
My paralegal skills worsened. At the 2 jobs, I was at, I thought I had to be "perfect" as a paralegal and brooding about my mistakes and worrying about getting fired made me not as good of an employee at the 2 law firms I was fired at (one in Sept., 2002 and again in April, 2003).
September, 2003 was one of the darkest months of my life. I was fired then handed divorce papers by Maribeth. Why did she divorce me? We fought more and more, my depression was worse (obviously) and it was determined that I needed surgery for a deviated septum.
Then I had the terrible luck of getting an ECG which yielded a false reading of a heart attack. So before the surgery, I had a nuclear stress test, and a whole slew of other tests. My tests turned out that my heart was in great shape, and I went ahead with the surgery.
When all of this was happening, on one Saturday morning, Maribeth and I were grabbing and fighting over the Doctor's orders for more heart tests. I laughed at Maribeth and teased her. Now Maribeth gets mad when she argues with someone. But she sees a flaming orange when someone teases and laughs at her. She started punching me, and it made me laugh even more. After the test, I went to the law firm to work. She called me at the firm and told me she wanted a divorce. I reluctantly agreed.
They took me to surgery one morning. She was supportive enough to kiss me when I was rolled into the surgery room. Dear Reader, have you ever had surgery, and you woke up from anesthesia with bizaar effect? As soon as I woke up from anesthesia, I burst into tears, sobbing. The nurse there came over and listened to me. She held my hand in both of hers. She told me that she was divorced too. Now, it's unethical to ask a nurse for their name and phone # so I didn't. I took the high road and when I was given a hospital critique, I wrote her a very positive review.
Basically the next 6 months went from bad to worse. The week after the surgery, my law firm fired me. I learned that they didn't like me taking a week off from surgery. & again, I was a less confident paralegal than I was when I worked at that great law firm on the 30th floor. What an awful taxi ride home after being fired! The firm gave me $20 for cab fare home, but since Oak Forest is 25 miles away from the Loop part of downtown, it cost about $40 and I didn't have enough of my own cash to get there. My taxi driver became more and more mad. I imagined that he would let me off by the side of the interstate, and some thugs would come and kill me as I walk the remaining 10 miles. In fact, I was kind of hoping that. At least the pain and anguish would go away! But that didn't happen, the driver & I mutually agreed to stop by a gas station, I would give him $20 more, and lo & behold his whole attitude towards me changed noticeably. Bless his soul, he even helped put the two moving boxes that the law firm provided me right in my trunk. ya, right.

I was rehired in Nov., 2002. In mid January, 2003, I left Oak Forest and moved to a small apt. in Midlothian. The pressure to make ends meet were more, and I was paying child support that Maribeth & I mutually agreed on. In April, 2003, the judge set the amount of money I would pay her. (The divorce didn't go through for awhile because Maribeth would stop paying her divorce attorney. She also yelled at the lawyer's secretary for having an "attitude" with her. When she finally started paying again in the fall and winter of 2004, her divorce attorney finally made the divorce final, but Maribeth & I had already agreed to all of our divorce terms the summer of 2003)
The week after the judge set the terms of the divorce, I was fired again April 13, 2003.
--------------------
In Part 3, it gets worse but slowly and surely, it gets better until Nov., 2006.