Trying to move on

[ClingingToHope]

Long strange day. Just got D7 and D10 to sleep. D10 has had a really emotional weekend. Her first rehearsal for her play was last night. I picked her up at 9 p.m. It took me a minute to get D7 in the car -- a mini meltdown over Oreo cookies.

When we got in the car D10 was balling. She said all of the other plays when she got out of rehearsal she got to go home to mommy and daddy. Now, she misses mommy when she's with daddy and she misses daddy when she's with mommy.

I didn't know what to say so I just held her hand.

Today, she had another rehearsal. When I picked her up D7 went down to see W who is on the costume committee.

W ended up carrying D7 back and D10 was sitting with me. D7 said she didn't want to leave mommy. I said "honey, it's my weekend." And D10 said "I don't understand why don't you guys get back together?"

W didn't say a word and walked away. I looked the other direction.

We spent the rest of the night at the apartment. Playing the Wii, watching movies. D10 had homework and kept dragging her feet. Finally, she asked me if we would skip church tomorrow if she wasn't done with her homework.

I told her no, we were going to church but if she didn't finish her homework then we weren't going swimming.

That set her off on about an hour drama of crying, yelling. D7 didn't help things by pretending she was going to bite her every time she calmed down. D10 is a drama queen and D7 knows she can get a rise out of her.

I finally lost it. Telling her loudly to just do her homework.

So after 10 more minutes of crying, I went upstairs to calm her down.

It all comes back to what's happening in the M. D10 is taking it worst of all. She said she doesn't understand why we don't get together because we are getting along so well when we are around each other.

I told her that I've given her too much hope. That this is our life now.

She didn't like that. I told her it took me a long time to realize it as well.

Things got better after that.

Just put her to sleep and we had another long talk.

An interesting thing right before bed though. A couple of months ago D10 told me W was always happy. Tonight she said W is getting sad alot. She'll start crying at night and D10 will ask her why and she'll say she's sad about work.

I asked her if it's happening a lot. She said it's pretty regular now, a couple of times a week.

Luckily the lights were out in the room. Otherwise D10 would have seen me turn my head and smile. W's job is her identity and someday it's going to kill her.

I felt bad about smiling.

W makes $10k more a year than me even though she doesn't have a college education. But I wouldn't trade places with her for all the yen in China. I love my job. I can do it until I'm 100 -- as long as the newspaper industry survives.