Maybell 41: The Saga Continues

[Maybell]

I'm just going to throw this out there so I can get it out of my head...

My D14 has been working hard on her relationship with her dad. Everything he has going on she works to make herself part of it. (Totally different from my sons, who are oblivious).

A couple of days ago she gave me an ENORMOUS gift when she made up a meal plan for the week, prepared the grocery list to go with it, and figured out the time when she and I would go together to accomplish it. I was SO grateful. As we were in the grocery store she picked something up, read the nutritional label, and commented "Dad should get this. He's been trying to gain weight lately." I said, "Oh, really?" She asked didn't I notice how skinny he's gotten. He was always a skinny guy -- really skinny, and I don't look at him almost at all any more as part of my gray rock strategy. But then last night she showed me a picture of him from around the time of BD and yes, compared to now he has clearly lost a ton of weight.

My mind goes to wondering, why would that be? In all the time we were married, he never put on more than about an inch around his waist line (from age 23 to age 39). He never lost a whole lot of weight either -- a little during the divorce, but not 30 pounds like me. Now, though, my D is right, he's looking gaunt. Is he sick? Is he suffering because he's not taking care of himself as well as I took care of him? Is he doing drugs?

The other thing is that about a year and a half ago he bought an incredibly expensive house in our little town. It's gigantic. So gigantic that he has a tenant in an apartment or guest house on the property, and converted part of the house into an apartment that he rented to his admin assistant. I'm not sure he can afford the house without the tenants. Well, his admin assistant moved out, and my D has announced that he's turning the apartment into an AirBnB.

The first part of me is immediately concerned about the safety of my children. The apartment can be accessed by an interior door from my sons' bedroom. It has its own exterior entrance but it is still a single family home and Mr. Fantastic did not upgrade the door or wall it off from the corridors that leads to the apartment. My older son has already told me how uncomfortable he felt knowing the full-time tenant was right there on the other side of that door. How much worse will it be with a parade of strangers over there?

The second thing that comes to mind is... What a stupid life Mr. F has set up for himself. Grown-ups in his position (he's an executive) don't live with an AirBnB in their primary residence. Grown-ups don't let out part of their house in order to be able to afford to live in it. Grown-ups don't need their parents to buy their furniture for them. Grown-ups don't need to delegate the job of setting the apartment up to their 14yo children. (My D was asking My Guy what it would take to cut out a pass-through from the kitchenette into the living room, among other things).

I will say, this experiment has been very enlightening for my D, since she's been put in charge of arranging the apartment she's been making lists of everything the place needs, from kitchen equipment to linens to rugs, and has come to realize how much money it takes to set up a household. So in that sense it's been good for her, but in every other way, it's not the safest thing he could do to my children's part-time residence.

I used to have a huge respect for Mr. Fantastic. With all the difficulties of relating to him, I was always confident that he would take good care of us and make good decisions on our behalf. But now that I see what he does for himself, I have to say, we were not in good hands. I'm not perfect, but holy smokes! He doesn't think things through at all.

WRT the weight loss thing... there is a part of me that wants to think, all smug, you didn't have health problems when I was taking care of you... But I'm trying not to, because it doesn't matter anymore.