You may try sending her a handwritten letter (short note) to let her know that she is in her thoughts and that you are available for her whenever she is ready. I know that after my daughter passed, I was crazy with all of the support people tried to provide. It was a little overwhelming, then and even now, and it's been 13 years. Maybe after things settle, or when she has one of those low moments, she might give her some peace to see you note letting her know that you are there for her. That may be enough to get her back to center, so to speak. You may want to drop by and sit with her for a few moments, just so she will have someone to vent to. It's tough, as we all know. It's just as difficult to be in your shoes, but sometimes it only takes something simple to be a true friend.

"...or am I still chasing a dream?" Not trying to be a jerk or anything, honestly, I feel for you, having been thru this myself. But if I had to guess, I would say the chances of reconnecting with her are not great. I think I can offer some advice, since I really did go thru a lot of what you describe with my ex (only real difference is by the time I realized there were issues and started trying to reconnect with her, the affair had been going on for 6 months, you only have mild suspicions at this point). Don't look at this ordeal, as many guys do, as a "challenge", "something to conquer", "something to fix". Love does not work like that for women. It is fairly obvious she has fallen out of love with you, same as my ex did with me. I did love my ex...before I found out about the affair, she was not a perfect match for me in many many ways but I was happy and desperately wanted to "fix" the marriage. I went about it completely in the wrong way. I'm a "logical" person by nature (engineer, computer programmer, etc), who thinks rationally and not emotionally. I looked at the problems we were having as just things on a checklist that I could change and all the problems would go away. What I didn't realize is that she didn't want me to "fix" things, she wanted attention, romance, to be wooed, to feel special....all that stuff that seems silly to lots of guys (still does, sorry ladies) but women live for, whether they admit it or not. If you do make the decision to do whatever it takes to save this marriage (and don't do it JUST for the child, yes it plays a big part of it, but be honest with yourself and figure out whether this is really the person you love and want to spend your life with), the first thing you need to do is get home. You have ZERO chance if you are across the planet....none. You sound relatively young, money issues will usually take care of themselves in the long run if you are hard working and not stupid in your lifestyle, you have only ONE shot at winning her back, and more time apart from you is just more time for her to lose her feelings for you. Once home, you essentially will be starting from ground zero with her, you will essentially have to wooo her all over again, like you were just starting out. I didn't do this, I took the approach of "let's talk about what's wrong so I can fix it" and "what am I doing wrong?" This had no effect on her, I realize now. Sure, couples therapy should eventually be part of it I think, but the main focus should be in trying to reconnect with HER, not identifying and fixing problems. Take her on dates, go for walks, send her silly emails with pix of kittens, whatever makes her smile. Spend TIME with her...not just with your child there too. Again, not sure if it's possible at this point, but taking this approach might be your best shot. Again, take my advice with a grain of salt as it is from some stranger online...don't quit your job unless you convince yourself it is the right thing to do. But as someone who's been thru this, and didn't make the right choices, I wish I had the ability to go back in time and change the way I approached things.

Thanks everyone for your insight and input. Your comments fit right in with what friends tell me but I kind of wanted to get an unbiased opinion from people who don't know me. I have to agree that the whole thing is creepy and fishy. I cannot imagine not seeing or contacting my children for such a long time in the first place, but of course he says that is all my fault. I can't imagine not wanting to spend every second with them if I hadn't seen them in such a long time. He is such a creep. I have heard over and over again that I had no right to "take his children" away from him and that because of ME he has no relationship with them. Ummm...not buying that one buddy. When I was growing up I had one Grandma in the UK, one across the country and both of them managed to create and maintain a relationship with me back in the days when there was no email, no free/cheap long distance, and certainly little face-to-face contact. I seldom saw them but when I did we were comfortable with each other because we had a long-standing relationship. Why were my Grandmothers able to do that and my ex is not able to do so with his own children?? Because it was a priority to my Grandmas to nurture a bond and it obviously isn't a priority for him. He takes the easy way out by blaming it on someone else. Unfortunately what this entire situation has taught me is that the legal system is really, really messed up. Even though he has abused and stalked me, I CANNOT keep him away from his children because he has never "harmed" his children. I was warned of that in court by the judge who oversaw our case...my God, how could his behavior have NOT harmed our children? So the option of not allowing unsupervised visits is really not an option. As many of you already know, the court will not back me up until AFTER something happens. That really sucks. Anyway, I've decided that I will email him and tell him that his plans are not acceptable. I will drop the boys off and pick them up...haven't decided if it will be at the hotel or at the police station. I'm going to stop by the station this week and find out what the police would be willing to do...actually I had already planned on explaining the situation to them in advance of his arrival but I need to check if I can do the drop off/pick up there. My boyfriend has already insisted that he be with me no matter where the exchange occurs, even if it is the police station.

I've been following your threads and I feel for you. The whole renovation process can get overwhelming at times. I like your original design a lot - it has many beautiful features. I agree with what nancyjwb said about its functionality being not terrible, but not ideal. You could just move the sink off center and go with it if that's what you want to do (and you'd have a gorgeous kitchen.) But, if you want to make it function significantly better, I think you could make a few relatively minor changes. It would not require that you scrap the current design and start over. Here are 3 things you might think about tweaking, in order of importance (the last one being mostly aesthetic.) (Also, I think the recommendations you got in the other thread about the stacked cab heights and lining up doors were great - I'm assuming you're going ahead with those.) 1. Make sure all your aisles are wide enough. This probably means at least 48" on the two working sides of the island. It may mean you need to shrink the length of your island to about 9'. If your island is 9'x5', to get your 5 seats, it looks like you can put 3 facing the back wall and 2 facing the dining room. Check the distance to the angled window wall to make sure you have enough clearance there, though. 2. Move your cleanup sink to the pass-thru counter and put a prep sink in the island (to one side, probably toward the back window wall.) I think raising the back half of the pass thru to block the sink from the dining room is a good idea. If you are worried about only having 15" of space on each side of the sink with the current pass-thru design, I think you have 2 options: (a) move the sink off center to one side or the other so you have more continuous space on one end for putting dishes during cleanup (b) make the pass thru wider by turning the tall cabs on either side of the opening into glass cabs. These would be the ones in red, below:You would still have the tall cabinet at the left end of the pass-thru. In a big kitchen like yours, this would be a huge improvement in function and let multiple people work in the kitchen at the same time. (I am actually thinking of a similar design with the sink on a pass thru wall for my kitchen. More than anything else in my redesign, I want to be able to separate the cleanup zone from the prep/cooking zones.) With those 2 changes, I think your kitchen would function really well. 3. Like I said before, this one is more aesthetic than functional. There were a lot of comments in both threads about the weight of cabinetry on the back wall. I know you don't like the view out that side of the house and don't like the position of the current window, but you might want to think about putting in a pair of narrower windows on either side of the range like this: As others have suggested, you could use leaded or reeded glass to obscure the view while letting in light. You probably don't really need the storage of those uppers. This would address the 'heaviness' issue and brighten up your kitchen (see pic below.) But if you don't want to do it, then don't. Ultimately, it's your kitchen, and you should do what you want to. Based on the drawings, it is going to be beautiful!