I'm not gay, but we have a change of plans

Tomorrow morning I was going to get on a plane and head for some sun and fun with my sister in Hawaii; Ian was going to take the kids out of school for a couple of days to go skiing. But then we overheard the kids talking and realized they wanted to send real time with their dad, not time spent on the slopes, and then yesterday we had to decide quickly what a tsunami headed for Hawaii might mean for my trip with Nika.

The airline was willing to refund and the hotel, if we decided right on the spot, was willing to give us vouchers for either a future visit there, or for use at another of their hotels, so we decided to cancel.

I assumed that meant that we'd reschedule for later this year, but Ian still wants us to go do something this week. Nika took the time off work, and the only other time she'll get later this year will be for her wedding, and once fall rolls around she'll be in school on top of working. We either go now, Ian pointed out, or we might not go at all.

Last night was a flurry of phone calls, trying to decide where in the U.S. we wanted to spend a few days. The only criteria is it has to be warm. We narrowed it down to a couple of places, and when we just couldn't decide, my brilliant father coughed up the solution.

Flip a coin.

So based on the turn of a quarter, we're going to Las Vegas. And honestly, I think we're going to have more fun there than we would have in Hawaii. Ian made all the arrangements this morning, and after we take the kids to school in the morning he's taking me to the airport where I'll meet Nika, and head off for whatever trouble we can get into without the guys around.

I felt bad that Ian switched his plans around, because he really did want to take the kids skiing, but he doesn't seem to mind pushing that back for a week. The kids have scheduled his afternoons from the time they get out of school until bedtime, practically, and none of it revolves around dance lessons or the dojang. And he does have a few things he keeps putting off that he can use the time to get them done, and one of them, against my initial resistence, is finalizing a potential job for himself. It keeps him marginally in his field, but it's not full time unless he turns it into full time, and he can work from home; I can't fight him on that. It gets us what we both want; he's working, but I have him home.

We'll see how it goes.

Things I learned yesterday

Boobs are not puppets, and women don't appreciate it if you treat them like they are, especially not with goofy voices, and especially not with her father in the house (though I would have refrained if I'd known he was there; he's a sneaky bastard and showed up while I was taking a shower.)

Things are only made worse by insinuating to her father, even in an off-handed kind of way, that his daughter has some very specific talents; he might appreciate that, but that doesn't mean she wants him to have any idea what she likes/doesn't like/is especially, incredibly, overwhelmingly good at.

After two royal blunders within an hour, it's really stupid to joke Woman, make me a sammich, because she will, but it will be your least favorite, and she will threaten to stuff it down your throat.

Never, ever, even remotely, minutely, infinitesimally agree with her when she mentions she feels like she's gotten a little curvier, even if you say it in a way that suggests you like those curves. Don't offer to show her how much you like those curves, either, because you've already blown it and that just makes it worse.

If she gets mad enough to call you a dick, slams the door in your face, takes the kids grocery shopping after school instead of coming straight home, then tells you that you're not having dinner at home but you're going out with your friends because she has arranged a playdate for her most immature child, you've overstepped the line badly enough that a simple apology isn't going to cut it.

If, when you get home, she's soaking in the bathtub and the kids warn you to not go in there, go in there anyway. Just take a bottle of wine, a single glass, and a handful of dark chocolate; then apologize, offer to make hot chocolate for everyone when she gets done soaking, and then don't stop apologizing until she probably wouldn't mind if you turn her boobs into puppets.

But don't do it, because one way or the other, that will come back to bite you in the ass.

So you don't think it's 24/7/365 Mushdom here:

At 6 this morning, she really liked me.

At 10, she was annoyed with me.

At noon, she tossed a sandwich on the table and told me to eat it or else.

At three she stormed out of the house to get the kids from school and specifically did not want me to go with her. They should have been home by now, but I suspect she dragged them grocery shopping with her instead of coming straight home.

No, I didn't do anything particular; I was just being me, which is, honestly, not always the wisest thing to be.

Kind of surprising she doesn't want me to get a job and get out from under her feet more.

Because I'm gay, we have a change of plans

There's a room between ours and the first of the kids' rooms; that buffer was intentional because we realized sound would carry in this house, and there are some things we don't want the kids to hear, obviously. On paper the room is a den, ideally the room is a home office, but in reality it's where the kids sit when they indulge Kevin when he wants someone to play a board game with him. Last night, while Char and I were sitting on our bedroom floor (I was helping her stretch, which she still needs to do daily, so don't let your brain go to the kinky places) they were in the den playing Scrabble, and without intending to we could hear what they were talking about. And the gist of the conversation went something like this:

Kevin: I'm gonna miss Mom.
Rachel: We'll still have fun.
Kevin: But it would be more fun if Mom was going with us.
Alex: No shit. You know Dad's not going to have as much fun as he thinks he will.
Rachel: Why not?
Alex: Because he's so damned gay for Mom that he'll be mopey.

They had more to discuss, but the end result was realizing that they really don't want to go skiing next week. It's partly because they're worried I'll be miserable the whole time, and partly because they won't have as much fun as they would if their mother was going to be there. And they're probably right, to a point. I'm certainly going to miss Char while she's gone, but I don't think I'll be miserable, and I do agree that we all have a better time no matter what we're doing when she's there. None of them wanted to tell me any of this to avoid hurting my feelings; they like the idea of having time alone with me, but they would prefer we did things close to home. Bowling, a movie, just hanging out.

You know, things where we can actually talk to him.

We wouldn't be doing a whole lot of talking while speeding down the side of a mountain.

So we're changing plans. I didn't tell them I overheard their conversation; instead I asked them if they minded if we delayed the ski trip, because I have a few business related matters to deal with. That's not a lie; I do have some investment matters to attend to and a publisher to contact regarding some potential editing work. Char will be back on Friday, and Kevin's birthday is the following week, and why not make the trip with his birthday in mind?

They're happy with that; Char is happy with that; all I wanted was to spend some time with my kids, and I'll get that no matter where we are. So they'll go to school and skip the dojang and dance classes altogether for a few days, and we're just going to hang out, go bowling, have dinner in places Char normally says no to, and anything else they think they want to do.

Early Monday morning Char, the kids, and I will pile into the SUV, and head for the airport. She's headed off to Hawaii for a few days with her sister, and the kids and I will head off for three days of skiing and whatever trouble we can get ourselves into. Our original plans were to hang around the house after school and live on pizza and Trix, but then a friend mentioned going skiing, which made me ponder us taking the kids when she got back, and she mused that I might as well go while she's off drinking mai-tais with Nika.

I was frankly surprised when she agreed to me taking the kids out of school for a couple of days just to ski, but there's a method to her madness.

If I take the kids skiing, I can't surreptitiously go job hunting while she's gone.

She's still determined to keep me home and unemployed. While neither of us has tired of the togetherness yet, I keep thinking that sooner or later I'll need to do something to get out of her hair for a few hours a day, or she might start feeling a little homicidal. I know I'm not the easiest person to live with; one would think that being stuck with me for virtually 24 hours a day would be pressing on her last nerve.

I get why she's in no hurry to send me back out into the rat race; these days I'm a much calmer person, I don't fidget as much as I did even just a year ago, and I sleep. She doesn't have to wonder how long I'll be able to sit still if we're watching a movie with the kids, she knows I'm paying attention to what she or any of the kids are saying in a given moment, and if she wakes up in the middle of the night she can be pretty sure I'll still be in bed. If I'm not, she can be pretty sure I just got up to go to the bathroom.

She has the mostly normal husband she thought she was getting fifteen years ago and doesn't want to give that up.

I get it.

I also get that neither of us is exactly ready to spend large chunks of time away from each other. Until this weekend, I don't think either of us quite grasped that, not until it was bluntly pointed out to us. While we were lying in bed last night, Char confessed, upon advice from the friend doing the pointing, that she wasn't sure she really wanted to take this trip to Hawaii just yet. Maybe in a few months, but not now.

I had to admit that I'm not all that keen on the timing, either.

But she has to go. No, it's not the money already spent on tickets and hotels, and it's not the time Nika took off work to go. She has to go because if she doesn't, she'll regret it. And delaying the trip isn't going to make it any easier on either of us, because if she pushes it back a month or two or ten, we'll still have to face the enormous weight of being apart for the first time since her accident.

You're clinging to each other, our friend pointed out.

And she's right. After the horror of last summer, neither of us is ready to let go at all, but we have to. I'm not letting her back out of this trip because as badly as she doesn't want to go without me, she needs to. As much as I want her skiing with the kids and me, I'll take them alone and try to distract myself from all the what if thoughts.

Once she's there I know she's going to have a great time soaking up the sun, getting slight blitzed, and probably flirting with random guys who don't realize they won't have a chance with either of them. Once the kids and I are on the slopes, I know my gut won't be churning so hard worrying about every horrible thing that could happen to her while she's gone. I'll have a blast spending this kind of time alone with my kids, something that doesn't happen very often.

We'll get through the trepidation, and then maybe (maybe as in a long shot), she'll be a bit less reticent about the idea of me working, and I'll be a little more willing to push the point.

Mostly, we're both going to have a kick ass time.

Tonight's 3am gem:

He woke me up with his mumbling, but he got my attention when he slapped my ass and said, "Paper covers rock!"

I'm giving him half an hour to get out of whatever game he's dreaming about, and then waking his ass up.

If I'm awake, he deserves to be, too.

Why we should make sure none of the kids are awake when we come back from a night out:

Ian, just a little tipsy, throwing the door open: "I didn't mind. I like it when you beat me."

Alex, from the couch: "Holy shit. Really? I'm right here."

Ian: "Well, next time you can come and watch."



(For the record, he was talking about losing to me at nine ball 13 games in a row; Alex, on the other hand, has a typical 14 year old dirty mind.)