If anyone would like to participate in the planning and implementation committee, we're taking applicants now. Must have expertise in complex logistics and planning.

"Not with a ten foot pole" was what came to mind first off.
LOL.
I have been thinking about this one since I found out it was HoFS, and I nave not been able to come up with anything helpful yet.

Can't help but grin though - and keep thinking.

SS

GC, seems to me the best you can do is by your actions assure him there are honorable people in that organization and in the world. My guess is you already have which is why he confided in you.

Heh. Me too, SS, me too. HoFS and I talk about it. And then we set it down and go on to other things. And then we come back to it. We speak of a future together -- and look for ways to have that happen. Ways that will not harm us or our children or the other people who are important (and they are all important, one way or another). I'd like an easy solution. I'd like my ex's husband to get a job he can't refuse in, oh, Canton or Akron or Wooster. And my ex, I'd like her to find something she can't turn down in that area as well. I would go happily. I like the small town life much better than big city life. My boss would find me work to do, I suspect, rather than let me leave the company. And eventually I would find local work and be quite happy with that option.

I'm sure the reverse would work as well -- HoFS' ex finding work that would make her very happy in DC. Other than those options, though, it would take either me or HoFS uprooting our kids, or leaving them behind, for him and me to be together full time.

That's a very hard option indeed. We're both aware of the pain it can cause. Considerations like that led us to be separate before. HoFS hoped I could find someone local who would be "better" for me than he was. And he was dating someone, and I was too close to the end of my marriage, and ... you know all the reasons.

And so here we are. In love and still faced with the same intractable problems. Apparently we're not very good at picking "easy" options.

Easy Options - ha, ha, ha.

Our oldest three kids were born in the same town, but then we moved 5 times before the oldest was out of HS. New towns, new schools, new friends.

They tell me it was hard, but not a bad thing. They seem to have developed good life skills.

I worry more about the children of D. It breaks my heart, but I can't do much, except care for my own M, and my own children. It must be so confusing to them. I wonder how they reconcile it in their minds. What they want, with what they have.

Your situation is often on my mind.

I don't see easy answers - or a good timeline.

My dad used to tell me (when I was a teen) that it was just as easy to fall in love with a rich girl, as a poor one. (yes, he was teasin me.)
I didn't do that, and I don't care. I am very happy and in love. It compensates for some things, but not for others.

Glad your home is doing better. It's hard to cope with so much at once.

SS

I fell in love with a rich man. (Sorry, I can't explain the joke without HoFS' permission, but trust me, the humor is there. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />)

Ahem. Anyway, it seems to me that children whose parents divorce need more structure, more love, and generally more of everything. Instead, they often get less because their parents were wounded at the same time they were -- and so are unable to help their kids as much as they might like.

Healing is hard stuff. Every person, whether adult or child, does it differently. My cousins have lived through five or six of their parents' various marriages. Or, well, if you want to count the marriages of all the adults who actually brought kids into the picture, it's more like eight or ten or twelve. (My cousins' mom remarried. She and their step-dad had kids who are cousins of mine. Then they divorced, he remarried, made more kids, divorced again, married again into a family that already had kids, etc.)

It seems to me that they've learned to be a tribe unto themselves. They saw that the stability was not in their nuclear family, but instead in the unbreakable bonds of blood family and all being kids together. Blood of their blood is family -- so my first set of cousins has what they call "siblings in common." Their half-sister has other half-siblings. They are not blood relations. But they are family and remain that way in spite of the crazy patterns of realigning adult relationships.

Does this teach them anything good about marriage? Errrrr...... no. And they have had far-from-stable lives. They attribute this to growing up in a cult (which they did), but it also has to do with the instability of their nuclear family. And all of it has to do with the people who were their parents. I think they have learned something good out of the situation anyway. If nothing else, they've learned to be self-reliant and to survive in situations where I would have given up long ago.

I don't know how to relate this to what my daughter and HoFS' kids will experience. It's just the only example of a blended family that I have personal experience with, so it always comes to mind when I think about this stuff.

I get it, I get it. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

SS

I swam a mile the other night. Next I should try doing it in open water.

Tomorrow morning I'm getting all my wisdom teeth yanked out. I hate pain.

GC

I had an "Outdoor survival" instructor way back in JC (the school, not the dude in the cloud), who told an interesting/harrowing story about swimming a mile in open water...

He was in Baja CA, and decided 2 swim out 2 an island that was a mile offshore. Halfway there, he noticed large, dark shapes beneath him. He stopped, and looked down 2 find about a dozen hammerhead sharks circling him. The largest was 15 or 20 feet long. 42nately, rather than panic, he did the 'strong swimstrokes' thang and swam on.

...but he re2rned 2 the mainland rather than continue 2 the island, in case he met up with the sharks again!

-ol' 2long

I was told a long time ago that I ought 2 have my wisdom teeth pulled before I 2rned 30, because it would be a lot painfuller (new word in 2long's dictionary) if I waited until I was 40ish. I never did.

When I was in my late 20's, they used 2 bother me, but stopped by my mid 30's, and haven't bothered me since.

And I'm all the wiser, 2!

-ol' 2long

My mom took me to the dentist to have my wisdom teeth looked at. The dentist told me I didn't have any wisdom teeth. My mom must have looked amazed. He looked at her and he said "no, he doesn't even have any wisdom teeth. He's too dumb."

Said it with a straight face too.

SS

That's the best delivery, after all...



<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Reminds me of Buster Keaton...



Ever see the Twilight Zone he starred in? No kidding there was one.

Opening scenes are in Victorian times, and it's silent with subtitles.

He winds up in a time machine and gets transported to the 1960s, and now there's sound.

I don't remember much else of the story, but I've always loved old Buster Keaton movies, so I was enthralled with his role on the Zone...

-ol' 2long

Gray, is this swimming an exercise thing, or some kind of goal you have to become a swimmer?
Both?

SS

Maybe he just wants 2 be a fish when he grows up...


(I'm on a roll 2day. Good thing I'll be out of town the next 4!).

-ol' 2long

2long,
I don't think I know about this one. Where you going?

SS

Oosp, 2 pick up MIL and bring my truck home.

W is going 2 her conference week after that, then home.

RM may be there, but he's not presenting if he is. I asked if she wanted me 2 go and she said she didn't, but in a manner that didn't sound red flaggish.

I figure I'll know if they hook up. And after all that's happened, I could simply accept that this is what she needs. So long as she lets me go.

But I have other reasons for believing that there's nothing 2 worry about - in addition 2 the fact that I'm simply not worried.

-ol' 2long

You are always welcome if you stop. Understand if you can't.

But I have other reasons for believing that there's nothing 2 worry about

Good. That's what we like to hear. I hope you are right.

SS

Uh, the mile was a small goal. It's like this: if you can freestyle a mile without stopping, you know you're fit enough to do bigger stuff. Maybe a triathlon.

I used to be a light smoker. When sparrow skedaddled I became a smoker. The combination of the lack of an appetite for something like 1.5 years, going on and off cigarettes, and going on and off anti-depressants, I was discombobulated.

I don't want to overstate it. I wasn't that screwed up. I was only a little screwed up. I also don't apologize for it. I was in ****** and doing my best to manage it.

But I finally got it together to start eating more and to stop taking on foreign substances. Decided to get strong.

Done.

Now possibly I can get happy. See? The physical part matters.

For the record, I would LOVE a cigarette right now. But not a chance, daddy.

Beer by the way is not a foreign substance.

It's a food.

GC

I hope I'm right 2. But I'll never be torn up again if I'm wrong, either.

Life is 2 grand for that.

-ol' 2long

(on your beer comments)
LOL, LOL, LOL.

Ok, makes sense.

We have two DIL's that have taken up triathlons. Everyone (here) says the swimming is the most difficult. One DIL is a former college swim team member. She says the running is more difficult for her.

Do you have a time and place in mind?

SS