Re: Living with an impaired person. I don't necessarily believe that all alcoholics have the same "around the clock" patterns of drinking. A term that used to be more commonly used: "weekend drunk." There were people who never touched a drop through all their work week ... but when their days off started, they drank themselves to oblivion. Maybe one stage of alcoholism is the ability to contain the addiction somewhat. I had an uncle who was too cheap to buy his own booze and went long periods of time without getting drunk because of it. But at any kind of party where there was free booze, he drank till he passed out, and we all still considered him an alcoholic.
I think Kaine had just recently started figuring out that drinking was a problem for TH--evidently from the point where she got the dui. Following this, he seems to have started noticing that her time to start drinking was around 7 pm. I don't think there's any way to know if she was also drinking during the day while she was out driving the kids around. I kind of doubt that she was. She was very active in Kyron's school, and someone would have noticed. She was out driving around a lot during the day, and I think she would have been stopped more. It sounds to me as though it's a least possible that for the most part, her drinking was confined to evening and late night. All of this would have had a bearing on how Kaine perceived her possible alcoholism.
My mother was a non-drinker, but she was a slovenly housekeeper, a night owl, and regarded as lazy by my father's family. In those days, when a lot fewer women worked outside the home during the day, my grandmother and some of my aunts would intentionally drop by between 8 a.m. and noon to see if they could catch my mother sleeping when they thought she should be up. Many times they did catch her--and I'd be wandering around the house, getting into things, watching too much TV, and seeing to my own food. There was talk among my father's family of having me taken away from her, but Dad did not want to leave Mom. He kept explaining away her sleeping and lax ways. In retrospect, it's a wonder I didn't burn the house down! But people thought differently about things in those days, and my grandmother decreed that I would be left in the home.
No one was a more loving, giving, forgiving person than my mother. It was only 8 years before she passed away that we learned she had a congenital heart defect. By the time we found out, I was full grown and more and more of my time was going to the caretaking of both of my parents. Yes, I probably was codependent. But I'm glad that I was left with my Mom rather than taken away.
Even with a person showing up with so many "character flaws" as TH seems to have, I doubt that she was all bad all day, or all good. Many have witnessing to her involvement at the school. There were probably times when she was close to Kryon--or seemed to be. Times when she baked cookies, times when she entertained his friends, times when she had long, interesting talks with him.
When you are looking at someone you've been living with and trying to understand what is true, you don't just see the drunk on the couch--or the tray of warm cookies. You see dozens and dozens of contradictory things, all changing from moment to moment, all jumbled together.
Sometimes I'm amazed that any of us ever agree to live with anyone at all!
