When to post, what to post?  There were times this week when I felt so victorious over the situation that I wondered if I would have anything to write about, again- delusion.  I thought if we could just get through the next weekend without excruciating drama, it would be a breakthrough.  Frankly, I am finding enduring however long it takes for me to feel like things are all right a lot like watching paint dry.  Apparently, I am an impatient person.  Apparently, I think I am imbued with powers above and beyond the average woman, powers which allow me to suffer pain with enough force to rip me apart before I get up, dust myself off and go back to the plow.

One truth is that I’ve learned not to need people.  This was useful when navigating treacherous family relationships, but now that those people no longer have my phone number and address, that skill is not actively employed, but it does dominate my relational horizons.  Friends have become less important over time, since my husband and I were the best of friends and enjoyed spending all of our time together when one or more of our teenagers wasn’t trying to break us up.

Christmas weekend was sad.  We had planned to gather with the rest of Husband’s family in another city, but something important blew up at work and he had to go in.  Once home, he had to wait to see if it would happen again, so we threw in the towel and stayed home.  We were sad yet relieved although sad but relieved.  Husband’s mother and her absence weighed heavily, a loss compounded by one son’s lack of interest in having Christmas breakfast with the rest of us.  Said it was the only day he had to sleep in.  Ouch. No, we didn’t raise him that way.

We settled into our quiet Christmas after the kids left to be with their other parents.  It had been a good week, under the circumstances,  and I’d gone from resenting Christmas’s timing to tolerating and even enjoying the coming of Christmas.  Then Husband dropped some news: O.W. had tried to re-friend him on Facebook through a different account.