Well thanks for the good thoughts and compliments everyone. Couldn't come at a better time, for I, Smiley's Person Himself, have been in a deep blue funk.
In many ways I zipped right back across time to that awful feeling of powerlessness that you have right after the Bomb. Just nothingness. The entire weekend went by in a haze; I accomplished nothing -- and lordhavemercy do I have a lot that has to be accomplished.
So what, you might ask, precipitated this most un-Mojo-like emotional-mental breakdown? What pre-post-marital crisis broke, what Batsh*t-Crazy did WAW Herself bring, what-o-what could have caused the usually sanguine Smiley's Person to fall into a pit of regret, remorse, and reconsideration such that he actually for a moment thought about throwing himself, prostrate, at the feet of WAW, begging her forgiveness for making her leave him, and committing himself body and soul in this life and the next to Making It All Better?
"It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" -- that's what done it.
The kids spent Hallowe'en at their mother's new house. It's in one of those townhouse complexes where the houses are all next to each other, and it also happens to be one where there are lots of kids our kids' ages. THE house, the former familial manse, is not located in such a place. So I thought it would be a good opportunity for Themselves and would help move them along in their own respective processes.
And then. About noon. On the day. It struck me.
Every Hallowe'en save one -- the one when I was in Iraq -- the kids and I have watched Charlie Brown. Just the three of us -- WAW isn't "into" cartoons, as she says -- and it was our Thing.
WAW doesn't have a DVD player. And when I realized that we weren't going to do that, weren't going to watch Charlie Brown, I honest-to-the-gods broke down. It's that whole "missing out on half" thing @Thinker was musing about earlier in his thread. Of all the dumb stupid ridiculous things to get upset about, 25 minutes of 43-year-old animation. And afterwards, after the tricks-and-treats, Themselves called me to report with glee how successful their candy-hunting endeavors were and to tell me that this had been the Greatest Hallowe'en Ever!
Which, of course, I was very happy to hear -- or so I told them. But inside? Man, it ate me alive.
It's not that you don't want your children to have every bit of excellent parenting they can get from Former Spouse; it's just -- I mean, let's admit it -- that you'd prefer that yours be excellentER. The innate competitiveness of the separated/divorced parent, I guess.
But ye gods! How it made the divorce real. And I honestly went into the worst funk I have experienced since the Great Art Museum Phone Call in Big Midwestern City back in the May -- the one that set me forth on the Path of Mojo Righteousness.
I feel better today, finally, and it couldn't (in fact, didn't) come a moment too soon. But oh, wow, how these things can bite you on the behind.
