Bathroom Renovations (Present)

As promised - some photos of what is keeping us busy!

Werner fixed up this bathroom. It was full of mould, and yukky. Every time we paint or fix something up, it is more of the Prof gone, and gets more of an "our" character.

The paint was peeling off the ceiling. Here, Werner has scrapped it all off, and as you can see - the end result is beautiful.

This old basin was a problem and a half. When installing the new one, it leaked water on the outlet. Werner struggled with it for a whole day.... deciding that plumbing is not his thing. But - he got it sorted.

Christmas time Reflections (Present Tense)

Today, I am going on leave. Yah! We are not going away - we are fixing up the house. I will post some photos of our progress.

I was just looking back over the last few years in amazement.

Going back 3 years puts me smack in the middle of deep trouble and turmoil. The Prof had done his midnight ride to Witbank thingie, and was about to break the dreadful news of his imminent departure on Christmas Eve.

2 Years ago, I was friends with Werner, and spending Christmas time with him and his family. Quite a nice thought - neither he nor I ever spent a Christmas alone.

Last year, we were newly married, spending Christmas with the children at my sister's place.

This year: Christmas day is 1 day late - because all the children are with the Prof and Cream Puff - out on the farm in Witbank. We get them back on the 26th, so we have delayed our Christmas day celebrations to the 26th.

Christmas days used to be stressful affairs, with lots of family politics. Now they are a sweet gathering of my dearest family, and the only stress is : what dishes do we prepare for the meal. Wow - blessings indeed.

I want to take this opportunity to thank you dear reader, for sharing this journey with me. For the encouragement, for clever and insightful comments, for the keen interest and anticipation with which some friends await the next post! It has kept me writing, and challenged me to dig deeper within myself.

Mom, thank you for the beautiful translation work for our Dutch family, for the proof reading and for endlessly fixing up my WHERE and WERE mistakes!

I will do some post of photos, but continue with the story line in January. Wishing you all a very wonderful Christmas season.

Cream Puff's Birthday

Where were we? Oh yes - telling the story from Werner's side. It was March 2007, and they were still staying in their house, which had been put up for sale.

Werner discovered gifts that The Prof had given to Cream Puff – in the cupboard. (As I said before - not a very bright cookie!) There were mugs, shoes… and finally – Perfume.


I need to backtrack into my life here, to show you the significance of what happened. I am not a big perfume person. The Prof had bought me Jean Paul Gaultier perfume, the one in the picture at the top of this post. I quite liked it.

So, guess what he bought Cream Puff? Yup - Very original: Jean Paul Gaultier Perfume! The very same one.

On Cream Puff's birthday, Werner smelled this new perfume and just KNEW that she had received it as a gift from The Prof. He had not smelled it before, and she used to tell him when she bought herself perfume.

It was still early in the morning and the house hung thick with the smell of that perfume. It made him sick to his stomach.

“Go, bring me that perfume you have put on”, he told her. She bought back a bottle of perfume – not the Gaultier.

"No", he shook his head, "the other one... the one the Prof bought you for your birthday."


She eventually brought it out, and he went outside, into the street.

"SMASH it ", he told her.

He says she stood for a very long time with that bottle held high, eventually dropping it onto the street.

Today, he tells the story with a wicked grin.

"Do you know how perfume stinks when it has been in the sun all day? "

That smell he had been trying to get rid of, hung about the house like a fog. He scrubbed and hosed it down, but it took a long, long time for the smell to go away.


And my own bottle of Jean Paul Gaultier? Well, I wrapped it up and sent it to the Prof, when I realized the duplicity, and how Werner hated that smell. I imaged how the Prof passed on my bottle of perfume to Cream Puff, as a replacement.

2nd hand goods darling - like some people we know!

The Sweet Spot

This is one of my most poignant stories of Werner.

He put his house up for sale, on insistence of Cream Puff. In retrospect, he says, that it went on the market (and subsequently sold) for too cheap, because she was desperate that they get this house off their names.

This... the place that Werner had stayed home for on weekends, spent his time and money fixing up, just became another casualty of this thing called divorce.

He says - at the time, it is all unreal, and you don't really realise what is happening, it all moves too fast. I was so lucky in that sense. The Prof gave me the house, and I never went through the trauma of parting with my home and safe space.

But my story today, is about Werner's sound room. In the "Sound Industry" there is a term known as a "sweet spot". A "sweet spot", I have learnt (but never heard), is when the sound from all the speakers, in a closed room, hit your ears at the exact, precise same moment. There is not a millisecond delay in any of the sounds.

A room having a "sweet spot" will remain in exactly that state. IF you move a single article in that room, even if you bring in extra people - it changes the way the sound waves bounce off stuff - and thus disturb your "sweet spot". This is then, an elusive and difficult thing to achieve in any sound room. It requires dedication, hard work, experiments, measuring with sound equipment, disappointments, and above all - TIME, to achieve this. Some people never get it right. The shape of a room, the height of a ceiling - all affect the ability to get a "sweet spot" - or not, as the case may be.

Werner made himself a sound room in this house. He had the measuring guys there, he dropped the ceiling, put in double glass on his windows to stop vibration, raised and lowered speakers ... I think you get the picture. Huge schlep, huge expense.
And yes - FINALLY - he had a "sweet spot" in his sound room, after years of fiddling around to get it!

He called his dad and brothers, and they also heard the "sweet spot". Music was his very life, it was what got him through his weekends alone. This was a huge personal achievement.

And Cream Puff? She doesn't know what a "sweet spot" is. She never knew about it, and never heard it.

Selling a house, is kinda detrimental to a "sweet spot". They really hate that! You pack up that room, and the "sweet spot" moves out!

I guess it was the least of his worries at that stage, but his story made me really sad. I asked him once, if he would like to make a new sound room in our house, but he shook his head. The time, effort and money are too much. He had achieved it once, and that was it. It is a thing you only do once in a life time.

But, he said giving me a huge hug, YOU are my sweet spot now.....

Drugged

Werner himself says he doesn’t know where reality ended and paranoia started. He began to notice strange things. The first strange thing was that he was tremendously thirsty. (OK I was thirsty too, and I found out afterwards that stress does that to you – you are thirsty all the time, but you can’t eat.) As Werner describes it so well: there is a little man, standing on your throat, pressing it closed!


But together with thirst, he felt strange. He felt like he didn’t care, that he was disconnected.

A few years prior, the Dr had prescribed pills for stress, which he had not taken. He took it once, didn’t like how it made him feel, and chucked the pills, forgotten, on top of a cupboard.

He went looking for them. There should have been about 28- 29 pills left, but when he found them… there where only 2! He suspected that Cream Puff was putting the powder from these pills, into his food / sugar / coffee.

He also noticed that when he smoked his cigarettes, the filter part turned black. He kept a stash hidden away, and when he smoked those, the filter did not turn black.

Not knowing what to make of it all, he began keeping his own coffee and sugar, and was suspicious of absolutely everything Cream Puff gave him to eat or drink.

Please don’t misunderstand me, he did not think she was trying to kill him, merely trying to calm him down.

Adding to all this were the smses he had read on her phone, which also referred to pills.

Was Cream Puff drugging him as a precautionary measure to protect herself? Who knows. It is a pity he did not run blood tests at the time. But when he stopped drinking and eating what was given to him, he stopped feeling strange and disconnected. I leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Meet Jerry

There followed three very strange months for Werner. He somehow had a sixth sense about what Cream Puff was up to. Being friends with everyone at the university, he got the security staff to warn him when his car left the premises. He also went to look at their camera footage and saw there, that she was leaving (in the middle of the morning) with a man in the car.


It did not take him too long to figure out who the Prof was.

Now...Meet Jerry. The stories about Jerry are funny – but actually show a very desperate attempt on Werner’s part – to stop his life from falling apart. Jerry: a totally fictitious PI, made up by Werner.

How did that work? Well, we roll around with laughter when he pulls Jerry out of his hat of trick. Werner is an actor of note (he missed his calling in life!). Out comes the cell phone, as he gives us a practical demonstration. Using the house phone he rang his cell phone, then hung up the house phone and “answered” the cell. In a very serious voice he demonstrates “Jerry”.

“O hi, yes Jerry. Mmm – good and you. “ Strategic silence. “No no, don’t worry – I wipe the phone logs clean – no one will trace you. “ More silence.
“Ok – what did you find out.” Then he would walk away – pretending a private conversation. Some oooeees and aaaahs coming from his side, some silences while Jerry supposedly “fills” Werner in on what Cream Puff and the Prof had been up to. Our sides ache with laughter as he demonstrates his fictitious conversations. We can only imagine how someone “listening in” would feel – especially if they start suspecting that they might be the topic of that conversation!

With his keen sense of observation, some excellent guessing and a goodly dose of reality – Werner took some “shots in the dark”, and managed to hit bull’s eye.

He would return from his conversation with Jerry, and ask Cream Puff things like: O did you enjoy your visit to Cresta today?

Cream Puff was completely freaked out. Apparently the Prof was too. “Stop following us around”, she told him.

Then on other occasions, Werner would take his cell phone, wipe the surface clean and carefully put it down on his bed side table. When he returned from from his shower, his cell had been moved, and was full of her finger prints. Was she looking for Jerry in there?

Appointments with counselors

Werner made an appointment with a counselor for Cream Puff, and asked her to go.


On return of her “counseling session”, he casually asked her how the session had gone.

“Oh fine,” she trilled (she is a very surface, fake type of person – in my unbiased opinion of course) . “It was just an introductory session really.”

Something sounded off.

Since they worked at the same place, they drove in to work together. Cream Puff had the habit of resetting the trip meter on the car (so Werner would not know where she had been?), but she had forgotten about a second trip meter function on the car.


Werner checked the car and discovered she had gone a mere 19km in total. Somehow that wasn’t right. The next day he drove out himself and when he had not even reached the counselor’s premises after 19 km, he turned back, knowing she had lied to him.

Again he confronted her, and she just shrugged her shoulders. He made another appointment, this time for marriage counseling, with a new person, with the intention that they would go together.

That counselor wanted to speak to them separately. Cream Puff went in first. By the time she had finished – the counselor too must have been of the opinion that Werner was murderous and violent. She did not "hear" what he had to say, and so ended the attempts for counseling to save the marriage.

Sad pictures

Werner’s dream must have been in about February 2007.

For you to understand what was happening in his life, I need to paint the picture of what his life looked like at that time.

When they were first married, Werner and Cream Puff stayed in a flat. They decided to buy a house. The one they eventually bought was in bad shape and needed a lot of fixing up. I often get the idea, that this house would not have been Werner's first choice - since it needed such a lot of repair work.

Werner started the 4 – 5 year stint of fixing up the house. He took out carpets, redid bathrooms and started making a sound room for himself. In the mean time he began fixing up the garden, and managed all that work himself – without any help.

Cream Puff’s mother had a farm in Witbank, and they regularly went to visit the family on the farm. With the advent of the house, it became too much for Werner to be away for whole weekends at a time, plus keeping the garden going and fixing up the house. Cream Puff began going to the farm alone, taking the children with her.

Cream Puff’s mother fell seriously ill. She had a type of muscular dystrophy – it was degenerative and fatal. With this, Cream Puff increased her visits to the farm, now going every weekend. This meant that Werner was alone, every weekend, no children and no wife. He did the garden and house, Cream Puff went to the farm. I wonder how he managed to survive this time. He is such a chatty, sociable person. For me, it paints the picture of a very sad and lonely way of life.

The weekend after Werner had discovered the cell phone with the messages – Cream Puff again went to the farm with the children. At this stage, he did not fully know what to make of the messages, but told Cream Puff to break off this “friendship”.

For some reason he can’t remember, Werner began looking for the children’s bible which he knew was somewhere in the house, during that weekend. While looking for this, he found more than he bargained for... inside a drawer, Cream Puff had hidden away draft divorce papers.

Now for the first time he realized – here is a BIG problem.

Dreaming

You must have asked yourself by now, as I did then – how did Werner find out about the Prof and the Cream Puff (and manage not to do any of them bodily harm?)

He told me on one of our coffee dates.

Werner does a lot of video recording work. It is his hobby, work and passion.

One night he had a strange dream. He dreamt that Cream Puff was recording on his video camera. In his dream she would not let him see the footage she had captured. He went after her and managed to get the camera from her. When he looked at the footage it was of her and another man.

He woke from that dream with a start.

It was the middle of the night, but he went in search of her cell phone. He had never looked at her cell phone before, but the dream had been disturbing enough, to make him look. What he found there shocked him to his very core. There was the evidence of what he had been dreaming. Endless messages from an unknown man – put on her phone as ALP (or something to that effect. I know the Prof used the initials of a very old detective series which used to be on television: Arsen Luper ). It was a game he played – sort of an “undercover” identity.

Some of those messages were so bad, that Werner refuses to tell me what was in them. Better that way.


He then went to wake Cream Puff, confronting her with the cell phone. She could not do much to deny it. I think she also tried to make out that this was a friend and the messages were just "jokes". But Werner saw through that.

His world fell apart, the same as mine had that Christmas eve. Unlike the Prof, Cream Puff just had not been as forthright with Werner. I have often wondered what made him dream such a dream. Did his sub-conscious perceive something which his conscious world would not acknowledge?

The Start of a new life - with good grace

I had long since decided I would celebrate the divorce. Well, not the DIVORCE itself, but the new start in life which it represented.

So - the day after the divorce, I went to work with a bottle of champagne. We have no champagne glasses in the office - so we poured it into coffee mugs. Ha - it reminded me of my wine in the juice glasses!

At first - the people at work looked at me so strangely. What kind of crazy stunt was this?

"I am celebrating the start of a new life, with good grace", I explained. I am sure my boss thinks (right until today) - that THAT was the cause of all the stuff which was to follow. Ha!

I did the same with the Divorce Care group - took a bottle of champagne with to the next meeting.

A day or so after the divorce went through, a dear and close friend, told me that the Prof had asked her husband how I was doing - on the day of the divorce. He told his friend that he had made the biggest mistake of his life, had now lost everything, except the children. Sweet revenge? Well not really - it is a very sad admission. It was also the ONLY indication I have ever had, that he might have regretted his decisions. But... by the time the divorce went through, I had long since reached my point of no-return. I had learnt to be happy, and I was discovering a new Yvonne.

As opposed to what the Prof might have been thinking, I was starting to feel like the Prof had done me a huge favour.

The Divorce

At last the day of the divorce arrived. Behind the scenes the negotiations had been back and forth about the settlement. It had me emotionally exhausted, but in the end, it was all agreed upon. The Prof today is still complaining about it - and saying that I "forced him", "manipulated him", etc. His 2nd biggest pain in life is the maintenance money he pays . (His BIGGEST pain is Werner. )

The date was 27th July 2007. By now, I actually couldn’t wait for it to be over. I was the one who had to appear in court. When there are children involved, at least one parent has to appear in the High Court and it is usual for the person who is suing for divorce, to be the one to appear.

My dear friend Kay was visiting from Australia, and she had come with me to give me support. Thank you dear friend - your company and support were invaluable.

We drove into town with my lawyer. An advocate had been appointed by the lawyer - because only advocates appear in the High Court. Our advocate had been chosen by my lawyer according to something she called - "seniority". Sometimes the Judge asks the advocates appear in order of seniority. I had no idea what this meant. Did it mean the most experienced advocates go first?

Soon, I found out that seniority meant – oldest. Well, I don’t know where my lawyer scratched out this gem! She was old as the mountains, had a dicey leg, and was a nervous chain smoker. Another lady, who was also getting divorced, had driven in with us, and our lawyer met up with a 3rd customer, a man. The advocate pushed and hustled the 3 of us into a tiny room – to rehearse – she said.


Rehearse? You “rehearse” your divorce?????

She slammed her papers down on a bench in front of her, and started rustling through them. The more she looked for a piece of paper, the faster she started chain smoking. Then, victoriously, our advocate would hold up a sheet and say – ah – here – which one of you is ….- and then whatever the name was on the piece of paper she had in front of her.

I watched this whole scene with the utmost amusement. Who would think – divorce could be such fun, I thought. Then the serious side of me says– Yvonne, you better hope you get divorced today – this woman is as mixed up as can be. She will never find your papers – you will be here till tonight when they chuck you out of court, while she still tries to find your papers.

The advocate, somehow managed to find our documents and ran through the procedure. "Will you swear to tell the truth and nothing but the truth?" (hey I thought that stuff came out of movies), "Then you will place your hand on the bible and say yes."

"You will be asked the reason for your divorce" ( ok – that one is a no brainer in my case), "and when asked about the children – you say it is all handled as per the settlement agreement. " Walla - that was it.

We stepped into the court. The most pressing question on every one's mind is whether the judge would ask for seniority.

She did! Yah! The Advocates looked at each other and made slight bows, to concede age. Our Advocate was not the oldest – merely the 2nd oldest!

Well, this daft lady, with her dicey leg ,was as organized and spot on inside the court, as she had been disorganized, outside the court. Never, judge a book by it’s cover. She was clearly highly respected and professional. Was it just us plebs, who got a sneak preview of something different?

I love people, I love stories – so I could not help, but enjoy myself a little in this new world, playing out before me. This interplay of characters intrigued me no end. But…it does not take away, the sadness of what those courts represent.

So many faces, people with broken lives, who had been married 1 year, 2 years? There was an endless stream of them. 3 Court rooms packed full, every Friday – going through the same routine – that of pronouncing people divorced.

Not long, before it was my turn.

I swore on the bible, held up my hand, gave my name to the court, and answered the questions. How long were you married? 17 years.

Did I imagine the slight pause, and the quick glance up, of a judge who had heard it all? Was there a hint of a something in the audience? I am not sure, but I think it was there… because I was by far, the only one with such a high number of years to record – from what I saw that morning anyway.

It was all done in a matter of minutes. Amazing, that which you spend so much money on – a perfect wedding, the years together, the children, the history… it all gets wiped out by the fall of a gavel, in the space of a few minutes, and by pronouncement of a judge.

But that is not really right. I guess it had all been wiped out so many months before… in the split second where the Prof and Cream Puff chose to cheat....

Arriving Home

Werner and I had not intended for him still to be having coffee at my house, when the Prof arrived there to drop the children off. We were not on a "revenge vendetta", but when the Prof's car pulled up in the drive way...we just shrugged our shoulders and thought - oh well, too bad.

The children came running up the driveway, looking a bit like miniature thunder clouds. How dare someone visit with their mother! They had asked their dad - whose car is THAT. The Prof knew full well whose car it was, and mumbled crossly - that is Werner's car.

The Prof drove off, as soon as the kids had their stuff. They disappeared into the house. Werner did not stay long after they arrived home.

The children cornered me later with: why did you invite him, why was he at our house - I sure got the second degree from them. I told them that we went to Divorce Care together, and that they must remember he was just as much a victim in this story as they were. This was reaching out to someone who was as hurt by the story, as we were.

I did not have long to wait before the Prof's reaction came. It arrived in the form of an email a day or so later:

Did I know what I was getting in to? Hello - did you, I thought.
Did I know what a dangerous man this was etc. etc. (I wish I had kept that email!) It tickled my funny bone - I could throw all those questions back to the Prof. Had he known what HE was getting in to? Did he know the dangers involved in the game he was playing? I was not involved in an affair - I had merely made a new friend. The Prof's email did not warrant an answer - and I hope I did not answer him, but I can't remember if I did or not.

A funny antidote I have to tell, which did not happen on this day, but sometime during those early days. I can't remember the order of events, but it had the same "atmosphere" as this one. Somehow, the armed reaction company still had the Prof on their contact list. There was a day where the Prof picked up the children, and had seen Werner was there. Werner and I had decided to go out, and I accidentally set off the alarm. The alarm company phoned the Prof, and he, in a panic phoned me to find out if I was OK. Did he think I was being beaten up / murdered by his lover's X. Who knows - but it had us giggling for a long time after that.