Limping To The Finish of February

MOVIE NIGHT ...

... not. At the precise time I was starting out, it was blustery and snowing. I thought how big of a butthole I would have been, trying to get all the way out to Birmingham, if it was as bad as forecasted.

It wasn't. IMO, it did not even remotely approach the prediction of 6" of snow that I heard in one report.

So in a word, yesterday 'bit, and bit hard'.

POLICY CHANGES

I have decided to make some key changes in my direction, because they are necessary and important in my keeping my focus on where I intend to go.

Sent what will be my last letter encouraging a 'date' to Skye and her Mother... and don't anyone DARE go, '...oh, but Mark ...'. Get here, be here, and see it all so you can make an informed decision. After all that, you can still keep it to yourself. Not going to slag on my ex wife, but it takes more than my incompetence alone to cause my daughter to feel this way about our relationship. It is particularly telling that when she was in elementary school, we were cool. Whatever happened, happened. That is between her and her Mother. I will always love my baby ...

... will keep her 'updated', but I am not going to ask her to do more than what she has chosen to do already. I will still K.I.T, just won't look for her to answer back.

Barring the unseen, I don't think that I will be mentioning Tee Jay too often anymore. Remember, in a long and distinguished career, Mookie was the very first 're-date' kind of relationship I had. Thought the idea of this 'ex list' was done so I could keep Tee Jay in my mind, the doing part of this, is a huge challenge. Honestly, I have no idea of how I am supposed to go about getting back into someones life, once we have said our good bye and everything.

For me, it is precisely that 'I KNOW YOU', that keeps me from wanting to make any effort to get back with someone. Whether it was my fault (which of course, it usually was) or their fault (and that did happen ... once ... maybe twice!) that intimate knowledge has kept me from being too enthused at the prospect of winning someone back over.

SO WHA' CHA WANT?

Don't know how long this is going to 'run' ... but anywho, between me knowing someone, for all their sugar and spice, it isn't like they don't have their own warts. Some women think that the sole reason that they have poor relationships, is that their partners are slugs, dogs, what have you. They don't account for what they may or may not have done that contributed to either choosing poorly or causing the relationship to fail.

When I sat across from Tee Jay at our dinner date, I had to accept that there were certain traits that were going to be in our relationship, I would have to change how I looked at the world, and lobby for certain things to be part of an 'us' objective.

Single, I wouldn't have to do that. In a new relationship, I wouldn't have to do that. Going back and bothering with someone I already know thinks that I am this and that (see, it is a FCC requirement that I inform readers that this and that aren't related), I would have to involuntarily cram myself into a box.

For example, if me and a mosh pitting Catholic school teacher decided over coffee at Beaners to hang like laundry on the wash line, it would be cool to make 'alterations' to make that perspective relationship work. Now, once our
individual compulsions decided that they couldn't work, that would be fine too. Whether she still wanted to have a go at it, or I DID, once we have reached the point where we've turned and headed away from 'us', I am going to find a way to deal with it, and not look back, save to learn and grow from it.

The closest I had ever came to maybe changing how I handled the end game, came with Tee Jay. We had several 'dates' after we broke up, all of them ending with me dropping her at her house ... no stops. I couldn't find a way to say that I still wanted her ...

I would write letters ... the first two or three months I was still upset over SOMETHING ... can't remember what it was, but there had to be something there, because I kept referencing it. After about three months of writing, the tone changed, and I just would wish her well, want her back but understand that I blew my chance. And that was how I would write for THREE YEARS.

How do I know all this? Because I NEVER MAILED THE LETTERS. Pride, principle, whatever it was, I couldn't let myself mail them to her. Better for her to have moved on, and for me to do the same. I have always been willing to look forward to what's next, not to be lost in what was ...

... still hanging on to them ... why? I dunno. But now that I am 'talking them up', it is unlikely that they will make the trip to Nebraska.

COMING SOON: THE ECLECTIC METHOD!