I'm tired of lies. In the course of my job as a newspaper editor, I hear plenty of lies. Many of those are dressed up as one "side" or the other of a story. Politicians. Developers. Business leaders. They all lie to some degree. Even criminals lie, calling me because their name appeared in the crime log. "Charges weren't even filed," they beg. "I'm going to sue."

Those lies are like gnats buzzing around. They may be annoying at times, but I can ignore them.

That's probably why the lies that seep from between my wife's lips cause me so much pain.

I haven't written in a few days because I was trying to come up with some witty anecdote I could cull from my childhood or some seemingly obscure bit of wisdom passed down from my parents that applies to my life now.

I don't have any of that.

I could have written about how I thought I was losing my mind over the last few days. I could swear my wife was hitting the sauce again, but I couldn't be sure. If she was, they were small hits and not enough to send her over the edge into full-blown drunk mode.

Each time, she swore she wasn't drinking and that I would regret ever asking her that question. She swore she hadn't had a drop. Not one.

I pushed and prodded, which I'm not supposed to do, and finally we went to bed angry. I just didn't believe her. What was wrong with me? Maybe she hadn't been drinking and I'm the one making this up in my head. Maybe I'm seeing drunk where there is only the cold we're still fighting.

Finally, the big day. We couldn't round up a sitter for Sunday because of the Superbowl. I'm not a football fan so when I reserved tickets for me and my wife to attend a play at 2 p.m., I didn't think finding a sitter would be so difficult. Three sitters, three strikes. We tried for two days to find one, but had no luck.

"It's OK," my wife said. "You can go and I will stay with the baby. Really, we'll be fine. You'll only be gone a few hours."

That little alarm bell inside my head was giving off a slight vibration, but nothing too serious.

As I headed out the door at 1 p.m., the baby asleep in his crib taking a nap, I asked, "You're going to be OK, right? I mean, I don't have anything to worry about?"

She laughed and smiled. She had only been back from her AA meeting for maybe 30 minutes. "No. We'll be fine. Now go on." She seemed so confident and sure of herself.

As I walked down the steps of the front porch and made my way to the car, I thought, "Wow. I'm really not worried. Can I finally trust her? I feel so good."

After a 45-minute drive, I made my way into the theater and watched 40 people perform a top-notch musical. It was very well done. A few folks in the audience recognized me from the newspaper column I write and we chatted during intermission. They were nice people.

The play wrapped up and I headed back up the hill to my home, with one stopover at the store to pick up cat food, litter and milk for the baby (he's really a toddler now so I need to stop calling him a baby).

In the parking lot at the store, I tried calling home, but there was no answer. I thought nothing of it and just assumed she was in the bathroom or away from the phone. We keep the phone upstairs turned off so it doesn't wake the baby (toddler, dangit).

I pulled into the driveway and popped the trunk. Carrying the bags of groceries up the sidewalk, I glanced in our front window and saw my wife sitting on the couch, her head slouched over onto her chest, her long hair covering her face.

"No, no, no, no," was all I could mutter as I ran to the door. It was locked, a tactic my wife uses when she's drinking so I can't easily barge into the house. It gives her time to hide the evidence. I fumbled for the keys, and dropped the groceries on the porch. "Oh God, please ..."

The baby was halfway up the stairs, the gate taken down. "What's going on?" I said.

She looked up with a glazed look and didn't answer.

"What's going on? The baby ... he's ..." I said, pointing to the stairs. She tried to focus her eyes and shrugged.

I ran up, grabbed him, and put up the baby gate. "What the hell is going on?" I asked again.

"Nothing. There's nothing going on," she said. A wine glass sat on the table beside the couch.

"What's this?" I asked, picking it up.

"That's nothing. It had nothing in it," she said.

The baby started crying. "Did you change him? Has he been fed?" I asked, checking his diaper.

"Of course I have!" she shouted. I changed his very full pee-pee diaper and asked him if he was hungry. "Uh huh," he said, shaking his head yes. I held him on one hip and fed him a banana.

Nothing but lies poured from her lips. "I haven't had anything to drink. ... I am telling you the truth. ... I don't know how that wine glass got there ... OK fine, it's all gone and the bottle is in the trash. ... There is no other bottle. ... I guess I fucked up. ... Just get off my back."

My wife went into the kitchen. After a few minutes, I followed. Her lies continued.

She left the kitchen and went back to the living room couch. The baby was following me around, crawling between my legs and laughing. "Yes, you are oh so cute," I said as I opened a couple of cupboards until I found the unopened bottle she said wasn't in the house.

I'm done. I'm tired. I'm not strong enough for this.

I can't even trust my wife to care for her own son for a few hours.

If she's not going to be serious about getting better, I can't be here. She isn't leaving me a choice.

The towel is in my hand and I'm getting ready to toss it in the ring. I think I'm done with this fight. I'm going to sleep on it, get through tomorrow and then figure out what my options are.

Right now I see them as "leave" and "leave."

If we had somewhere to go tonight, that's where we'd be. Right now, I'd rather be anywhere but here.