Saturday, August 06, 2016

Hey, Wow, I Still Have a Blog!

Every once in awhile, I think to myself that I should get back to blogging. So, here I be. Who knows if I'll keep this up, but we'll give it a go.

A quick snapshot of my current life: Mark's got his own place and a girlfriend. They've been together for about seven months; she is a very nice girl, and the two are geekily adorable. He dropped out/flunked out/couldn't afford to keep paying for/ college, and is currently working full-time at a hardware store. Kira's still living at home, alternating a couple of weeks here with a couple of weeks at her dad's. She's got a long-distance girlfriend whom she met online but hasn't met in real life yet (there was supposed to be a visit here this summer, but the logistics fell apart). She's done a tiny little bit of dating here, but mostly thinks that the boys are still immature (of course they are), and a foray into dating one of her friends got too complicated when Kira wasn't as into it as the other girl was. K -did- get her first kiss, though, so that was cool. Kira went to France in April with a school group, and in May spent a long weekend at the Breadloaf Campus of Middlebury College in Vermont at the New England Young Writer's Conference. To be selected as a sophomore was quite an honor, and she absolutely loved every second of it.

Last winter I adopted Secret, a beautiful black cat, from the local shelter. Secret had lived there for TEN YEARS. She's got anxiety issues, but so do I, and she's a pretty awesome cat. Someday she might even get used to the idea of me picking her up. Right now she's lying across my arms as I'm typing on my laptop. Kira doesn't like her, which is disappointing, but probably better for me, because I am unquestionably Secret's human.

A lot of my life since Mark moved out has revolved around Kira, but K just got her license a few days ago, so she'll be slowly slipping further into her independence. Time for me to start practicing for the empty nest coming in a couple of years!

I've decided that I'm tired of feeling ashamed of my mental illnesses, so I'm speaking up more about them, just being more frank and transparent. I've gotten an astonishing (to me) amount of support, which rather makes me wish I had come to this decision ages ago. I'm also being more vocal about supporting the LGBTQ community, particularly since Kira has claimed one or two of the letters.

For the first time in my life, I'm actually paying attention to politics (really, how can you NOT...it's a circus).

I'm back in therapy with, as I refer to him, "my first, best therapist", Ed. Ed had to close his practice for a number of years because of late-stage Lyme disease, and in the meantime I found another guy, but that wrapped up in January, and then I chanced it that I could go back to Ed, and voila! Now I see him twice a week, which is good.

I'm still single, although I have what Kira refers to as a "flirtationship" (and I prefer not to define) with Michael, a man who lives 1000 miles away, whom I met online several years ago and have not yet met in person. It's complicated. I -could- date, if I wanted to, but honestly I have no real interest in it at the moment. I'm more interested in getting myself in a better headspace, and in spending as much time as I can being a full-time mom, until my younger child graduates and flies away.

So there we are. I'll make random references to things that I may or may not explain, but that's the overall view at the moment. ~mk