All apologies

I have been out of town. I took a sudden and wholly self-indulgent trip, whose details I kept very much to myself. I did not agonize over asking “permission” from the au pair, even though I needed him to log some extra hours. I didn’t feel like a bad mother for leaving the kids for a few days. I kept in touch by cell phone, of course, but I wasn’t all uptight about it. For part of the time my kids were off camping with their dad and his girlfriend (consoling-windows friend and her sons came over to feed the insatiable kitty, play with her, pick her up and pet her, and so on) which was great. Being away for a few days with an out-of-town friend felt like the most natural thing in the world–and was massively therapeutic, since I know I never had that particular freedom when I was married. (I don’t know many married people who do. They don’t call spouses the old ball-and-chain for nothing.)

And although I have neglected both of my websites, I actually caught up with many other tasks (financial aid application for my elder son: check. Letter written to financial aid committee, letter written by my son to financial aid committee, 1040 filled out and sent to them along with letters: check, check, check. Various moneymaking assignments: check. I am more on top of my game, in other words, than I have been in quite some time).

Even as I was packing and flying hither and yon and socializing and basically living large, some part of my brain has been–ever since Honduras, actually–blessedly still. This is good news for me but bad news for the websites, I suppose, as I no longer have a surfeit of anxious thoughts I’m eager to express. This does not mean I’m abandoning the blogs. It just means I’m somehow feeling calm and competent for the first time in years. The small tasks I’m responsible for seem feasible. I do not spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about my ex-husband’s problems, my boyfriend’s problems, my friends’ problems, my relatives’ problems. I have detached a bit, which for me (bossy, controlling wench that I am) is a very good thing.

I do feel a little brain-dead, but it’s a small price to pay. I spent today cleaning up my house, which had gotten rather squalid, and playing with the kitten, whose name (since a couple of you asked in the comments if we could call her something, just for the blog’s sake) is Cassiopeia–Cassie for short. This is her real name, not her nom d’ordinateur (I don’t think she needs a pseudonym, do you? Kittens are not usually terribly Googleable), and it was my younger son’s choice. When asked why, he shrugged and said, “After the constellation,” and we left it at that. Fact is, Cassie is a lovely name for a kitten, though we have amused ourselves calling her the name that came home on her papers from the pound (which is, mysteriously, “Hoku”). By any name, she is completely insane. She eats like a horse, gallops through the house like a…horse, I suppose, and has a very strange habit of hissing as greeting. Her body language completely belies the hissing. She hisses as she walks happily toward you, tail up, ears forward, all set to nuzzle your hand, and we have never heard her make any sound resembling a meow. She tolerates cuddling, purring so loudly that it’s more akin to growling, but doesn’t actively seek it out yet. She prefers my younger son to the rest of us, which is exactly how it should be. And she has grown so much that we wonder whether she is in fact a Bengal tiger in the making.

Any minute now my younger son is due home and we shall commence playing with Cassie–her favorite toy is a nerf dart tied to a string tied to the Harry Potter wand my boyfriend carved for my son last year. I have books to recommend, more tales of Honduras to tell, and a Babble blog to catch up on, but I wanted to check in. Friends, I’m happy. I honestly wondered whether I’d ever feel this way again.

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