Alex gets home in four days. It also happens to be my dad’s birthday and the anniversary of a dear friend’s death. So it’s loaded all around. The kids are ecstatic. Especially Bea. Sometimes I think I wouldn’t care if he never came back, which is a weird thing to say about someone with whom I spent sixteen years. Just seems wrong to feel that way. … But back he’ll be. Living a block away in a dingy duplex that he’s renting. Taking the kids places. Maybe doing his date-a-thon routine again, maybe not. I’m trying to figure out what I can control about the situation, e.g., when he can come over to our house and when he can’t; how often he’ll see the kids, etc. What I want and need to control. The kid-time thing is soooo tough because after seven months apart, they want nothing more than to see him. I could use the break and have a mile-long list of things to do with a bit of free time. And yet, the three of us are a little unit at this point, and I’m not overly thrilled with him breaking that up.

Wait and see. Four days. We’ll see…