Seeing Lots of the Kids

My son's puppy likes the view from the rotten old boat.

Over a year ago, I wrote about seeing less of my three children after my wife and I separated for the final time.  At that time, getting used to being alone was the biggest adjustment I had to made although I was only alone for a day or two each week.     

Typically,  my son and wife are in constant conflict.  Last week, they had a screaming fight which resulted in him moving out "permanently."   While I know that 15 year old boys aren't always easy to deal with, my son and I rarely have conflict.  My wife just pisses people off all the time, snoops and meddles in her children's private spaces and then gets angry when no one takes her unsolicited and ill-advised advice.

Of course, I was unaware of any of this until my wife phoned to pick him up.   He showed up with duffle  bags of clothing, his carpentry tools, computer, X- boxes, a smallish flat-screen TV and the like. I told him he had to see is mother sometimes and he said, "I'll stay at her house one day a week and that's it!!!"

Despite my concerns of a year ago,  "seeing less of the kids" turned out to be no problem at all.   I quickly discovered that having an evening or two by myself was a blissful respite from the usual routine.   The times I did spend with my kids became more special when we didn't see each other all the time.  It was also nice to have my Special Guy over for a private evening or even an overnight visit without having to make complicated arrangements.

In fact, I am now trying to hard to banish the thought from my mind that I am now seeing "too much" of the kids.  I often have all three of them here at my waterfront home, especially on the weekends and will have all three here for most of the summer.  Just this week alone, I had to turn down hookup opportunities from two sweet 20ish guys this week because I couldn't host.  This won't do!!

For Sean's Dogably Pawfect Saturday, here are a  few pics from http://menwithbeardswithdogs.tumblr.com/