I don't want him to go

I've written a couple of whiny posts and saved but not published them.

Here's the brief version: I have accepted that Evan is going. I understand and am even beginning to appreciate the benefits of his plan. I also don't want him to go. My not wanting him to go is a very basic, child-like emotion. It is no longer complicated or masked by disapproval or irritation. It is pure sadness. I don't want him to go. I don't want him to be far away. I will miss him.

He will go, and I will try to be happy for him. I will try to be the adult. It is difficult because I feel about three years old. I want to go and curl up on my bed and have a good cry because he's leaving and I, it seems, am going to miss him far more than I thought I would.

You know that he is over-bearing and argumentative right? He is a real pain sometimes. He monitors my mood and activities constantly. He leaves dirty dishes in the living room, fills up my DVR with junk shows, doesn't do his chores without being nagged, periodically drives me crazy, makes me horribly anxious with his various addictive behaviors, and uses far too much toilet paper. I mean, he leaves huge globs of toilet paper in the bowl sometimes that clog up the pipes.

And I don't want him to go.

And yeah, that is the brief version.

He is not leaving for five and half more weeks. (I'm tempted to put up one of those count-down clocks on the page. I am going to be calculating it in my head otherwise. Might as well have the computer keep track of it. But I don't know where to get one and people normally use them for events they are happy about.) I need to pull myself out of this mood. I just can't keep feeling like this for weeks.

On one hand I really like that I finally have a kid moving out in an orderly and planned way. On the other hand it is rather like having a bandage being pulled off very slowly.

Cause, you know, it is all about me.

So here are other things that I think about:

-Throwing him a going away party. He said that he wanted everyone to go with him to the airport. His flight leaves at 9:00am which means he should be there about 7:30am, and I don't think that our whole family, and his extended family will all want to do that. I suggested that we have a party the night before. We'll serve hamburgers and apple pie and drinks with ice.

-Thinking about the next kid. It would be nice to have a break. It would also be nice for Evan and the next kid to meet. The social workers do not have anyone identified for us either in the program or even applying to it, but they will. They warn me that it could be a while. That's okay. The truth is that no one has any idea when it will happen, but it will happen suddenly.

-Thinking about the next quilt that I will make. I want to make an Amish-style quilt like this1 or this2 or this3. I have about 30 fat quarters in various jewel tones. I could even do color wheels, or build rainbow blocks of some kind or other, if I bought more yellow and orange. The boys though all think that those quilts are garish. They recommend instead something boring like this. I suggested something with cool optical illusions. I told them that I would even do it in blues, but they still turned up their noses. I wouldn't care what they think, except that I am guessing that they are better predictors of what some as yet unknown teenager might like. I think that if I could know how long it would be before then next kid comes I could make a decision. If it was going to be soon then I could make the conservative, boring quilt first and then make the Amish one just for myself later. Evan, by the way, says about the quilts that I like, "What if you get a typical gay kid who cares about things like interior design?" I think, "Well then he will like the Amish-style quilt, not the boring one." (I am happy to take votes on this issue.)

I also checked out the page Bacchus posted before: Quilts of Gees Bend. In response to Bacchus, I have never made a quilt like this, but I'd like to sometime. I don't know if I am up to it yet though.