So as not to hijack **Quasimodal’s ** “How was your Christmas?” thread, I thought I’d make a separate one to express my thanks to the universe that for once, miraculously, Christmas was not nearly as bad as how I thought it would be.
I had a great time at my work party on Friday-had a chance to hang out with extremely attractive and personable ladies from another area of campus I never see, drank a lot of free scotch and narrowly avoided making an ass of myself with one of the new hires in my building. Whew!
On Sunday, I took the Burritos to have lunch for the first time with my adult daughter. Her adoptive mom dropped her off and she thanked me for “giving her her lovely daughter” - that was a little wierd & really awkward. I understand the sentiment- it just felt strange. She seemed nice enough and although she didn’t stay for lunch, we agreed we’d get together sometime for coffee. Lunch went great and it was so nice to see my daughter again. The Burritos would have been happy just to eat pizza, but they were in heaven when they finally got to see and hug their big sister.
Christmas Eve we took the mother-in-law to Red Lobster for lunch. It wasn’t too bad. Our server was great and the kids behaved. I really enjoyed how thrilled they were to see the tank of live lobsters. After lunch we opened presents-the kids loved the gifts and were so excited about everything. We watched “Madagascar” which was funnier than I thought it would be.
There was drama late that night, and I ended up doing my “go to the gym/sleep in the car” routine. My soon to be ex-wife was giving me a hard time because I had waited to get her gift till the weekend before Christmas (never mind that that was when I got pretty much everybody else’s gifts) but she had gotten me a gift card weeks ago. I only got her a gift to avoid bloodshed anyway. UGH!
On Christmas the kids and I had a great time sledding on about 1" of snow. I didn’t think it would work, but they insisted that we try and whaddya know, you can actually sled with those cheap plastic disks on a sprinkling of snow and deep grass. All in all, not bad.
Late that evening, we talked about the divorce, and how she thinks I’ll destroy everyone’s life and eliminate the potential for any happiness by proceeding with the divorce. I calmly reminded her that she can make her own choices - go along with the divorce or delay it; work to improve her situation in the meanwhile, or maintain the fantasy that I won’t go though with it; seek out other people who have been in her situation and come through it ok, or fly blind. I don’t know if anything at all sunk in, but at least there wasn’t any outright insanity. I thought for sure there would be a lot more screaming, crying and maybe another violent episode.
That is my Christmas miracle and I am more grateful than words can say.