D.G. Reid

Stitching through time

Posted on April 26 by Scribbler / 0 Comment

I know I’ve mentioned this before but it keeps popping up and surprises me like the first time I realized it; I have a lot more time on my hands these days.

It’s very, very strange.

Yes there is always laundry and cleaning to be done and figuring out meals happens on a regular basis. But the impetus to be busy in these ways, to devote copious amounts of my time to the thoughts and actions, is significantly reduced when one goes from a household of five to a household of one daily, two regularly and three rarely.

I was never really on my own, all alone and the only adult in the house except for about a year between when my daughter’s father moved out and two others moved in. Except for a short time after I graduated college, I’ve always lived under someone else roof or a shared one. And even then it was more of a communal living situation as I knew people in 6 out of the 8 apartments in the building.

It’s funny the things that pop up and need to be radically adjusted when living circumstances change.

Trying to learn how to adjust the food in the chest freezer is driving me mad. I know it’s more efficient to keep it full but with dollars the way they are these days I have to shop especially carefully. I’ve been saving gallon milk jugs and filling them with water for the bottom of the unit but even that is problematic. We just don’t go through milk all that quickly anymore.

I bought two pounds of prosciutto for $8 recently and separated out, vac packed and froze it. Gave some to the eldest to take back to school with her and the remainder will feed us for 26 meals. Yes, I’ll need some other ingredients like pasta, heavy cream, Parmesan or maybe mooz and thin sliced chix cutlets but these things are cheap in comparison to what prosciutto usually costs. We’ll probably make use of this for at least 9 months, possibly a year.

Do most people have to think this much about prosciutto?

I sure hope the fuck not. But this is my reality and I know I’m not alone.

I have a list in my phone now with a full inventory of what’s in the freezer that is current at all times. That’s only possible now because I’m the only one who pulls stuff out of the frozen tundra.

What a strange way to spend so many of the precious minutes that make up a life.

So in my copious spare time that is not being taken up by hustling for cashy money I’ve been playing with creative stuff.

I can’t work all the time.

Came across a length of vintage cloth and wanted to see it go for some use other than rags. It was too good to waste, probably a mix of cotton and linen with a lovely texture to it. But I’m also determined to find new homes for those things that serve no purpose. The house needs clearing and everything must serve a purpose or at least a purpose in the near future. Trying a bit of Morris meets Marie to whip things into shape. So the fabric needed to be used or it needed to go. But use it for what?

I have some basic crafty skills. I’m not an artist by any means, just a dilettante. I can stencil, silkscreen, paint something that’s already traced on the wall like letters or a basic pattern, sew a straight line, crochet as well as do various types of needle work like embroidery and such and recently I’ve begun playing with beads. I like playing around with new materials and methods but finishing things is not my forte’.

I really need to finish things. Lots of things.

Here’s the start of something.

It’ll be interesting to see how it works out. And I’ve promised myself that I will actually finish it.

Part of the craftyness has been realizing that it’s okay to take up hours sketching something out that I later discard. It’s part of the process. And then, when it’s ready, it’ll come together. I just need to be a bit better about following through.

Various paper drafts of another project that is also underway.

But I also have more time, and brain space, to follow through now so maybe I actually will manage to finish this thing, whatever it actually is.

It’s very strange.

Life is very strange.

Just focusing on the next stitch.

musings/the scribbling life

Distraction or viable idea?

Posted on April 19 by Scribbler / 0 Comment

Work has been especially busy lately but the end is in sight and my creative side isn’t satisfied with waxing and moving lots of old and heavy furniture no matter how much it needs to be done. So I’ve been trying to sit at my desk every evening and pound out a few words, thoughts, ideas on the page even if they never make it out into the wider world.

I’m getting more comfortable with the thought that a person has to make a lot of mistakes before they finally pull off a finished product. Whether that be relationships, meals or creative works. There’s a lot of trial and error, let’s throw this up against the wall and see what sticks, happening before something finally jells and it all comes together.

Previously, with my creative time so very limited by family and other responsibilities I was very uncomfortable with just playing around, whether it be with needle and thread or words. I was convinced that every moment needed to be used Productively and every creation had to be Worthy of the time and effort.

As you can probably imagine, that didn’t go very well.

I spent a lot of time being blocked and staring at the screen frustrated or on Friendface or otherwise frittering away the precious moments.

And then life changed.

I over think as a writer.

I ponder ever word to the point where they lose all meaning.

I never finish anything.

I’m trying to leave all that behind in the past with a lot of other baggage. Trying to listen to Mr. Gaiman and JUST FINISH SOMETHING.

The other key to this lock was an article that’s been rolling around in my head about not focusing on accepted submissions but instead on racking up the rejections. Focus on quantity over quality because you’ll eventually get a gem with the former method and the latter just paralyzes.

With the aforementioned problem with finishing things however, it’s tough to come up with something viable to send out.

A friend especially liked a particular post of mine last year and suggested I send it to a specific publication for consideration. I spent ten months emailing the piece into a black hole as directed by their website before resorting to the same friend passing along a paper copy at a publication party. It’s been over two full months since that and I’m thinking I’ll count it as my first official rejection. Just would have preferred a more definitive one on paper or in email.

There’s projects like The Tome that take almost as long as real children from conception to leaving the nest but there’s also a side of me that just wants to whip through something for the fun of it. Something a bit more creative than a post on this page.

Something thrilling and/or full of adventure. That’s the kind of stuff I read. Fluff and nonsense for the most part but very entertaining. I generally don’t like to get bogged down in my reading. I’m already part of a meaty and tragic multi-generational saga, IRL and my writing universe. I want to go Somewhere Else when I read.

I don’t know if I can write like that though.

Then again, I’ve never really tried.

I want to write something quick and dirty.

I want to send the first chunk off into the universe before I’ve figured out how to write the next section let alone how it’s all going to end.

I think I want to write a serial.

Now the thing to determine is whether or not this a viable idea. Or is this particular bit of goo sliding down the wall I just threw it at and leaving slime marks all the way.

in the kitchen/musings

Sub-par ingredients and intrusive thoughts

Posted on April 12 by Scribbler / 0 Comment

Had a grilled cheese and bacon sandwich for dinner the other night and as I was waiting for things to toast and melt I had a moment to let the thoughts wander in a multitude of directions as they often do.

Would the sandwich be better with a better quality cheese? Fuck yeah, but the 5 lbs of American “cheese” that I picked up at Costco is what I can afford at the moment and I’m grateful to have it.

But just because the ingredients aren’t top-notch doesn’t mean that it can’t taste good. This is where the technique/skill aspect comes in. Not that there’s much skill necessary to make a grilled cheese sandwich, but you want the cheese melted and the bread toasted, not burnt, so that does take some attention to detail.

So, get the pan to a good temperature. Melt some butter and a bit of bacon grease (I keep it, filtered after cooking up a batch, in a jar in the fridge) and toast what will be the inside of the bread for a moment. Then add another blop of the fats and flip over so that the outside of the bread is getting toasted. Put on an ample, even amount of cheese and then cook it low and slow till the cheese melts. You might even be able to turn off the pan if it’s hot and heavy enough. Warm the meat if you’re having any, before adding it to the sandwich right before you assemble it. Let it rest in the pan for a minute so it can all melt together and then cut and plate.

Yum, sorta.

While I’m cooking this gourmet meal I remembered one that He and I had on the way to Vermont. We stopped at this lovely, if rather expensive place, because we were both starving, it was getting late and we were only moving deeper into the middle of nothing. It was parents weekend at a local boys boarding school and there were cars in the parking lot worth more than my house with people dressed to the nines, dropping more on one meal than I spend in a month.

Sooo not my world but I can code switch with the best of them and the place smelled great. We sat at the bar because that got us menus quicker. We shared dates stuffed with blue cheese wrapped in bacon (which is why my sandwich brought up the memory) and we both had small pasta dishes. Mine was a mixture of sauteed mushrooms with a light cream sauce tossed with fresh made noodles. Exquisite. Eat there if you ever get the chance.

So I go from remembering this wonderful meal on the beginning of a weekend away full of promises and potential delights to dinner in the cold and the dark, all alone and it bothers the Hell out of me but it doesn’t.

I’m finding that I like being alone for long stretches of time. No one who knows me is probably surprised by that. I think what I am surprised by is just how much I enjoy it. Deciding what, or not, to have for dinner. Three nights a week when I’m kid free (she’s with her father) I can do whatever I want. Generally what I end up doing isn’t all that exciting, working ten-hour days and sometimes eating cereal for dinner. But the potential is there and sometimes that’s enough. Or I can go out to a two-hour movie that starts at 8:50 p.m. like I did the other week and there’s no one to double-check or make arrangements with.

Standing at the stove in my pj’s, shifting back and forth through time and space, smelling the bacon from my shifty sandwich, remembering the amazing meal at Blue Heron and how I do so love to share good food with those I love.

I go from that to

THIS

Talk about reality smacking one upside the head.

It’s like he’s dead. But he’s not.

He’s just not here anymore.

This is really something that I never even imagined.

I was daft enough to think that he was the person to stay by my side through thick and thin, for better or for worse, till death do us part.

It seems he wasn’t the man I thought he was.

Whoever he was when he was with me, he’s now a person I text occasionally about picking up the last of his stuff or to check and see if he’s waiting for the mail that shows up at the house. Sometimes I have a tech questions and he’s kind enough to answer.

He never texts me first.

That’s very telling. Just not quite sure what it’s saying. Knowing him as I do, it could mean many things, all at once and each entirely opposite in deeper meaning.

Were he once was there is a very large void and it only gets larger as he moves further out of orbit and off into the darkness.

I’m still learning how to fill that void, maybe even make it a bit smaller and more manageable. Nature abhors a vacuum so I’ll obviously figure it out, eventually.

This is where the creative work comes in. So much more time now for futzing around with stuff that serves no immediate purpose other than the joy it brings through creating.

That time is a gift and one I refuse to waste.

But I miss him, even after everything that’s happened.

He’s been a part of my life in one way or another for the last 30 years and now there’s just

musings/the horde

Increasing levels of control

Posted on April 5 by Scribbler / 0 Comment

I am currently the only adult in the house.

There are some very good sides to that.

And there are also some very bad sides.

The good side is that I can decide what colors the paint is bought in. Yes, the stairwell walls are going to be bright yellow and the banister eggplant purple.

The bad side is that I’m ultimately responsible for just about everything in this little bit of the universe. That’s a lot of bills to pay with not much of a paycheck.

Since the boys left there has been a grand cleaning, sorting and chucking going on. It’s a daunting task but by focusing on one room at a time it’s a bit more manageable.

The youngest has been working on clearing out her room for the last month or so.

She has literally laid hands to everything she owns and done one of three things with it; set it aside in her sister’s room so that it could be returned to her room once it was clean, set it aside in that same room so that it could go somewhere else (the Little People and the Brio train set are getting set aside for the next generation but the tyranny of Barbie has come to an end!) and then the inevitable trash and recycling. She filled both bins.

Problem is her sister is due home from school soon. She probably would like a place to sleep and access to her belongings.

So all weekend we spent working upstairs. I spent some time tidying up my own room and guiding her. She did the majority of the work. She hit the wall of exhaustion eventually. She said to me when we finally retired to the couch at the end of a very long day, “Is this what you feel like all the time?” and I gave her an honest answer. How could I not?

I hit that same wall the next day while we finished the clearing and began the cleaning. I was planning on sitting down once her bedroom floor was mopped and drying but only made it through four loads of laundry washed and hung, cookie pick up for scouts and the beginning of the Slaying of the Dust Mammoths. The final vacuuming and mopping had to wait.

I almost fell over I was so dizzy. Told Sofie I was going downstairs and literally fell onto the couch. It took a few minutes for the room to stop spinning and then I went into a coma for two solid hours. I never nap like that anymore. Then again, I also haven’t been doing this much up all by myself until now for quite some time.

A good thing about being the only adult in the house is that I can tell the kid to make her own supper out of what’s in the fridge and she’ll do it if she wants to eat.

She could have had pork roast but chose roasted potatoes and a salad. Said she was going vegetarian for the day. When there’s five or four people to feed it’s not really possible to survive an entire day on leftovers. There aren’t that many. With just two we are able to get three meals out of a deep dish sausage and mushroom pizza.

After my epic nap and a half hour laying on the couch waking up, we tackled the rest of the room. Vacuumed from top to bottom, floor mopped for the first time in quite a while. All linens and curtains washed, line dried in gale force winds at 26°. She carried things in from the staging area in her sister’s room and the hallway. It was a surprisingly little amount. I’d say she probably purged about two-thirds of what was in that room.

So now it’s down to me to go through the detritus that has been discarded and do one of three things with it. Set aside somewhere safe and save for the next generation, send back out into the Great Material Continuum, or recycle or chuck.

Goodwill pile under the window. The stuff to the right is all going to school to be distributed as needed.

It all comes back to me as the only adult in the house. But at least I can get these sorts of projects underway for the eventual greater good (how long has that white bin of stuffed animals been in the hallway under the laundry chute? And the doll bunk bed waiting for a clear space under the window and holding up plants?) and now that her room is clean, it’s been made very clear that it needs to stay that way.

Mattresses made and the beds ready for Emily and Mia.

I’m so very proud of her. She’s done s a great job. She has taken control of her universe and made it what she wants.

Just like I’m trying to do with mine.

I think I just had my first moment of actually feeling like an adult.

#funtimes

in the kitchen

Searching for that perfect balance

Posted on March 29 by Scribbler / 0 Comment

The older I’ve gotten the more I appreciate the malleable beauty of caramel.

I don’t remember the flavor fondly from my childhood. I remember one experience with attempting to make a caramel apple with those packaged sheets and it not going well and tasting even worse. There was probably the occasional hard candy as well but I’m just coming up with a sticky linty flash of vague memory.

And then one day, a few years back, I picked up a container of dark chocolate covered caramels while at Trader Joe’s. Suddenly I understood the appeal of caramel.

It can be a syrup over ice cream with flecks of vanilla in it. Works slow baked on popcorn for that sweet and crunchy fix or sandwiched in a torte between shortbread and a bittersweet chocolate ganache. It can be cooked to the right temperature to become a solid that can be topped with sea salt for a contrast to the sweet or enrobed in dark chocolate to really push one into a diabetic coma.

So many things can be done with a simple sugar, water, cream, butter, vanilla combo.

Beyond my experiments with caramel corn and the aforementioned torte, I’ve been working lately on how to make the perfect dark chocolate caramel cheaply at home. I’ve been using this recipe for a while and love the caramel it produces. After making multiple batches I found that if I added the salt dead last, stirred just to combine and then poured into the prepped pan, the salt doesn’t fully dissolve and you get bursts of it among the sweet. I only use a 1/2 tsp salt and don’t sprinkle with extra salt once it sets but as the eldest says, I’m salt intolerant. I want to taste my food, not the salt.

I follow the recipe as written for steps 1-3 and don’t bother putting them in the freezer to chill. The house is cold enough and I generally make it early enough in the day to leave on the counter for a couple of hours before popping it out and cutting with a bench knife.

The directions for doing the chocolate part is reliable but I don’t have the time or patience to temper chocolate. I also find that dipping the caramels ends up with a lot of wasted chocolate on the parchment paper after dipping and whatever’s left in the pan. I don’t like to waste good chocolate. And it just takes too much damn time.

So in my search for sugary perfection I came across this recipe at my favorite place and gave it a try. It’s not for caramel but I enjoy making my allergies flare up with the occasional Heath Bar so I figured why not give it a try? It’s good but I left out the nuts so I wouldn’t be miserable and that just makes it too sweet. Can’t blame the recipe because I left out a key ingredient though. The youngest ate more of it than me. I’ll probably pulse the rest of it in the food processor and mix it in with ice cream. Yum.

Not only is it yummy but you also get to beat it with a hammer!

What did work about the recipe though was the way of getting the toffee and chocolate together. So I tried it with a batch of caramel and was pleased with the results. Spread some dark chocolate chips on a buttered cookie sheet, pour over the hot caramel, top with more chips and let melt for a couple of minutes before spreading the now melted chocolate around to cover the caramel. Let it all set for a few hours and then cut with a bench knife.

Perfect dark chocolate and caramel balance with minimal fuss and bother and the bit of salt in the caramel adds the perfect counterpoint.

The perfect balance.

Now if I could just figure out the same for the rest of my life.

musings

Retread

Posted on February 1 by Scribbler / 1 Comment

Well, he did it again.

Sy dumped me – again.

I’m using those specific words, even after he asked me not to use that term while we were talking it out. Where’s the fun in not taking a moment for some self-pitying pettiness?

I knew this was coming?

I had just hoped that we were ever so tentatively stumbling our way towards how we could keep what was good in our relationship while ditching the bad.

Yes, I wanted to have my cake and eat it too.

Why not shoot for the brass ring of relationships? Or at least a brass ring that I found particularly shiny and appealing.

I actually prefer us living in separate households. I just need to figure out the financial end of things. I’m working on it.

I’m stating the obvious when writing that any relationship, whatever the form, needs to work for all parties involved and I guess our current one doesn’t work for him.

But like I said, I knew this was coming.

When he left in late August he said we were done. He was back in two weeks and we had our cheesy romantic moment.

He asked me to marry him soon after that.

He’d never done that before.

I asked why. I just figured all these years that he didn’t want to and I wasn’t interested (or confident?) enough to do the asking. At the time he said that he figured I was gun-shy. He’s not necessarily wrong. And on a completely practical level having to get divorced is a complete and total pain in the ass. As well as expensive.

Although there are the movies that are going to need to be split up. That’s going to be a bitch.

He said tonight that he still meant it (the proposal that is) at the time.

So how does that change in just a couple of months?

That’s what’s confusing the fuck out of me.

We went to Vermont together and had a very us weekend. Not nearly long enough but I don’t think any vacation would be long enough when it’s been 10+ years since I’ve had one and even longer for him.

And then he just kinda dropped outta sight.

Didn’t really answer electronic messages of any sort except occasionally. We weren’t talking on the phone either but we haven’t been doing that since he moved out. I gave him his space. It seemed to be what he wanted and needed and honestly I’ve got bigger problems on my plate at the moment.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a real bitch of a taskmaster.

And then we had Thanksgiving at his place. It was odd and very different. I am sooo not used to not being in a frenzy for weeks beforehand. And I wasn’t cleaning up for weeks afterwards either. Very strange. But not bad, just very different and sometimes it takes me a while to adjust to the different but I always get there in my own plodding way.

And then he was gone again.

And then he was here for the open house on xmas day and it was odd and very different but he got me a cool and thoughtful present (even if I haven’t had the time or brain space to play with it) and he seemed to like those that I got for him.

We talked almost through an entire night right after the holiday and spent a few days together over New Year’s. Yeah, it was a damn fine way to ring it in.

And then POOF.

He said yesterday in a text that he wanted to talk.

I asked if he was dumping me.

He said he wanted to talk in person.

I told him that sounded ominous.

He says he still loves me and that I’m his best friend but he just can’t be with me. He gets lost.

I understand what he’s saying because I do the same thing too. We are very similar after all.

I guess the difference is that I’m more comfortable with getting lost in the moment, lost in the other versions of myself, whatever they are, and then going on to the next and not necessarily having them all be completely integrated into one me, one experience.

When I’m at work and slamming though things I never want to leave again.

When I’m snowbound in the house nesting I never want to step outside the door again.

When I’m writing I never want to put the pen down and close the composition book.

And when I’m with Sy I never want him to leave my sight.

But every moment passes, as it should.

Otherwise you don’t get to experience the other ones.

But that’s me.

I’m going to miss him.

Miss us.

Yeah, I don’t get it.

But at least this time I had some idea it was coming.

I don’t have to get it.

I just have to accept it.

musings

Sea of pink

Posted on January 23 by Scribbler / 0 Comment

I’ve had the chorus from Patti Smith’s Gloria running through my head for the last week or two and finally decided to try to exorcise the ear worm by listening to it on Saturday night.

It didn’t work.

What’s odd is that I’m not really a fan.

I respect her work and its place in the pantheon but it’s just not my cup of tea.

I read Just Kids and loved it but returned M Train to the library after only reading 25 or so pages. It didn’t work for me even if I could see why it might work for others.

Borrowed Horses from the library a year or so ago and pilfered a digital copy. Might be time to burn a disk for the car and give the entire thing another listen.

I usually don’t listen to women singers with the exception of a few.

Maybe it’s time to add to the list?

My favorite artists tend to be men. Is that because it’s what’s available or a true preference? How does gender affect a writer, painter or singer? Is gender the primary framer of a world view or is it just part of the vast web of personhood? Up until now I’d say it’s been the former, hopefully we’ll be moving towards a world where it’s the latter.

Watching all the posts of hope and unity scrawl across my feed Saturday was a welcomed balance to the divisiveness of the day before.

Image from https://twitter.com/i/moments/822803803049078784

Yes, it was exciting to witness this moment in history. Hopefully it’s a turning point towards equal rights for all and love trumping hate but it doesn’t change anything in the daily grind of this single mother who is struggling with balancing my precarious physical reserves with my meager financial ones.

I’ve been fighting for 47 years.

I’m getting a wee bit tired.

I’m exhausted.

Time to get to work.

in the kitchen/musings

Contingency Plans

Posted on December 31 by Scribbler / 0 Comment

Didn’t know what I was doing to ring the new year in until late last night. Still don’t know exactly what I’m doing but I’m willing to wing it a bit.

Unexpectedly made plans with Sy. That was a welcome surprise. Had already made plans to amuse myself but I’d rather spend it with him if possible. Just wasn’t sure that it was.

While still in a holding pattern last night after work I made what is basically a fancy baked chocolate pudding and the mix for an adult beverage as well. Even if I was going to be enjoying them alone it’s good to celebrate and now that I’m going to be sharing them, even better.

It’s been a very odd year. Not all of it good but not as bad as its been either.

Still struggling to get all the hamsters running on their wheels in the same direction. It’ll happen, eventually. Just need to keep on top of the little bastards.

I’m hoping that 2017 is going to be a kinder, gentler year but given the political situation I’m not holding on to any great hopes.

Ah well, hope for the best while preparing for the worst.

What else can we all do?

At least there’s pudding.

Happy New Year everyone!

in the kitchen/musings

Round Midnight Pesto

Posted on November 1 by Scribbler / 0 Comment

Never watched the movie but I recognize the name and graphics from my time behind the counter of a video store. You know, back in the dark ages when one had to actually leave the house to get a movie.

The staff got an extra dollar an hour to work in that particular store, compared to the other locations in the small chain, because of the neighborhood. I grew up three blocks from the store and most of the other employees were neighborhood folk as well. We called the extra money combat pay and chuckled all the way to the bank.

It sucked being on my feet for an entire shift but the pay was decent and you got to not only watch movies while working but also take them home. I watched so many movies during those days. I’d try just about anything because it cost me nothing but a bit of time and I discovered some treasures along the way.

Can’t remember where I was working when Clerks came out but I do remember seeing it at York Square with a group of friends and us all damn near dying of laughter. We’d worked as clerks in convenience, video and book stores and I’d not only done the aforementioned video store but also a newsstand and so had a couple of others. Dealing with customers from behind a counter has a certain amount of universality no matter what’s being sold.

We all kept odd hours then. The job of the month demanded it if nothing else. Some of us found real careers, some had kids and got married. Once we were inseparable and now I can’t remember the last time I talked to most of them. It’s life, it happens. But at that moment all those years ago, sitting in that theater, we all saw our lives up on that screen and laughed together.

Time shifts as you age. Or at least it has for me. It’s very odd. Where once a summer off from school seemed to last forever, now I blink and a year has passed by. How do you grab onto something when its moving so quickly it’s just a blur?

One constant is that I still keep odd hours so there I was the other night coming up with dinner after eleven at night.

Starting dinner that late I didn’t want anything too complicated so I ended up making a sorta pesto minus the bother of a true one.

Cook a pasta of your choice, I used tortellini, and when you drain the pasta reserve some of the cooking water. Take some roughly chopped basil and add it to the cooked pasta with a generous amount Parmesan or Romano cheese and some of the pasta water. Toss it all together and let it rest for a moment. The cheese will melt in the pasta water and make a light sauce. Add a splash of heavy cream if you want to. If you want to get fancy include a side salad and some bread and dinner is served, even if it is round midnight.

musings

Nano? Na NO?

Posted on October 26 by Scribbler / 0 Comment

Life’s been a wee bit too interesting lately.

Sy moved out and obviously took Mal and the cat with him.

We sat down to talk about something inconsequential that particular day and by the end of it he was saying he was moving out. Okay, not going to argue once you drop that particular bomb.

And I’d thought that we’d been doing better. Guess it was just me that was doing better. That’s not a bad thing. Really can’t have one without the other and if I’ve got to pick one it would be the latter.

Once I got over the initial WTF I realized that while this does suck, it’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened to me and if I’d survived Those Things I can certainly move on from this one.

It also didn’t hurt that as soon as he moved out we started talking again.

I’d really missed that.

Two weeks after he moved out, he texted when he got out of Second Work and asked if he could come by. When he walked through the door he came right up to me, told me he loved me, missed me and didn’t want to live without me and then laid one on me like he hasn’t in far too long.

It was both utterly romantic and totally absurd. Works for me.

It also worked that in no way, shape or form was he asking to move back in. Not that I would have let him even if he had asked. Once he was gone I remembered how much I like being the only adult in the house.

He found a beautiful apartment. I’m putting my house back into the order that I prefer and doing a lovely sort and purge in the process. I’ve been here for 12 years, it’s time.

We’ve known each other for 28 years in so many iterations. This is just another episode in the continuing adventures.

We can do it this way, for now.

The way that works for us, for now.

Is it perfect?

Hell no!

But what relationship is?

But I’d much rather miss him and be completely present when he’s in front of me, then have him here all the time and not be present because I need a bit of peace and quiet to hear my own thoughts.

And I get more time alone with him awake then I did when we slept in the same bed every night.

We just got back from a beautiful weekend in the North Kingdom. Was it the idealized romantic interlude? No, but it was perfectly wonderful and very us.

In all the years we’ve known each other, we never went away together. Not quite sure why. Bad timing and worse economics I suppose.

Economics is an issue being the only adult in the house. But when isn’t it?

It’s not unreasonable for me at my advanced age to be financially independent. I was for a brief moment before Cassie but kids have a tendency to change that particular equation.

I have more time for writing now even if this particular bit of the universe hasn’t been reflecting that.

I think I needed to process things a bit. Not unreasonable considering the circumstances.

I’ve got the first chapter of The Tome’s total rewrite printed out. I started with a blank page and went from there. It’s rough as fuck with chunks that still need to be finished, sections to be filled in and stuff that needs to be saved in a different place for subsequent chapters. But it’s all there from start to finish. Just need to add some frosting to the cake after I clean it up a bit.

Toying around with the idea of doing NaNoWriMo since I’ve obviously got to bring the incremental forward momentum on The Tome to a screeching halt.

At least it’s a distraction with a built-in time limit?

It’ll be fun! Right?

Eh, whatever. No need to make any life altering decisions, for now.

Just kinda seeing where this takes us all.