Independence in Stuff

I think part of what’s keeping me away is that the idea of having to play catch up with everything that’s happened in my life since I took a hiatus from writing here. So the solution is to not bother writing about any of that and just skipping over it and writing only about current stuff.

So things are relatively OK in my life. No major catastrophes have happened. I had a regrettable affair with a partner at my firm and I don’t really want to write about it. It’s all over right now. It never should have happened in the first place. I think shame from that whole experience was part of why I wasn’t writing here.

A quick update on the kids:

Olsen and Megan seem happy. Neither of them seem to really be working this summer and it feels like they go to the beach every day. Part of me wants to encourage Olsen to be doing more with her life but at the same time I’m jealous because I feel like I never had that kind of freedom (and free time) when I was her age. I was the kid always studying in the library while my friends were out having fun.

Mercy is preparing to start college in the fall. She decided to live in a dorm and I went along with it on the condition that she pay a percentage of her living expenses. I had this same argument with Olsen when she started college. I don’t see any reason to pay my kids’ rent when they can live in my house for free. I get that they want some independence, but that shouldn’t fall on me financially.

I feel like I never say anything about Mercy regarding her being transgender. Mostly because it seems like everything with her has been either outside of my involvement (she sees therapists but never talks to me about this stuff), or has happened so simply and naturally that it didn’t seem like a big deal. I helped her get a court order to have her gender legally changed in terms of her drivers license and stuff like that. But that’s about the full extent of my involvement.

Harrison keeps talking about how excited she is to soon be an “only child” once Mercy has moved out. She’s the super social one in the family and I feel like I almost never see her between school, her boyfriend, blogging and vlogging and tweeting and instagramming. She’s lately been talking about being the next youtube sensation and I wish her luck. It’s amazing to think that there are people online making serious money from posting videos. I feel like the online world has gotten almost more complicated than I can understand.

I’m going on a blind date tomorrow night. I hesitate to use the word “date” because it’s with a woman and I’m straight. It’s a weird long story but Megan told me she wanted to hook me up with a “friend of hers” and said that we’d really get along. I was coming off the terrible office romance and I thought it might be just the thing to help. It was only after I agreed that Megan told me it was a woman.

I told her to cancel it. I think I called her a few foul names and said she needed to stop being so manipulative. She loves doing stuff like that. But she cried (literally) and begged me to hang out with her friend. I told her I wouldn’t mind making a new friend but it wasn’t really going to be a romantic thing for me. So that’s where it stands. I’ll go have dinner with someone and be friendly and maybe it will be nice to have a a new platonic person in my life.