Jeez, Peeps

Don't panic. I said nothing I wouldn't have said a month or a year ago if I was sick and tired of being sick and tired and didn't care what anyone thought. Mostly tired of watching what I say here. So here's the word: This is a blog, which means it isn't true, except when it is, which means that it isn't. I will be passive-aggressive enough to delete it, though, if anyone I'm related to mentions it to my face.

I'm weird like that.

So we're on the cusp of a major milestone, the younger kid being set to enter dorm life this weekend, and us the loving parents driving him down tomorrow to make it happen. For years and years this has been the milestone before which no decision can be made, no matter what. But no: Hey, we did our job. Parenting's first stage is well and truly done. We can do what we want! Especially if that means get divorced! Yay!

But what if we don't? Will you be disappointed?

The other day, or some day other than that, I don't know, I got analytical about why we stuck it out this long. One, we love each other. Duh. A pretty good pairing. But I've done some stupid shit, and some of it she knows about. She's pulled her pranks too, though I'll be the first to admit none of them were deal-breakers, just fucking annoying consequences of having her personality. So no one's perfect, yet even so I sometimes wondered why I was unable to get within miles of considering a split. I decided it was about passion: I'm impassioned about parents sticking together. Somehow the experience of parents divorcing when I was four coupled with a childhood in which both of them found that ignoring or being ignorant of their responsibilities was a lot easier than actually raising their children (right, this is one of those annoying spoiled yuppie moments where the self-hating "adult" blames it all on his now elderly parents who actually did the best they knew how to do), all that, once understood by having my own parenting experience, led me to a point such that it was simply impossible to do to mine what was done to me, and we stuck it out, and here we are:

Too old to move on, too young to settle.

Thus the dice remain in the air where they've flown for years now. The difference really is that our youngest is an adult now and about to spend the rest of his life living elsewhere. The psychobabblish effect this has on our attitude (well, mine) is immense. I really don't know what's next, I don't always care, but sometimes I do, and most of all it needs writing about. This is very likely the wrong place for it but, once again, with feeling: I don't give a shit.

And so your visit isn't a total loss, here is a recent photograph that nicely summarizes the subject matter.