Ever wonder why people make these things? Me neither.

I don't know what's getting into me. I'm not enjoying my places that I go online as much as I used to. It seems that the forums I used to haunt are full of all these new people, and my buddies are all dispersed into the wind. It's a sort of sad feeling. I know that it's the middle of the night, and I'm in a sort of morbidy/down mood at the moment, but there it is, eh?

So. School is over for the summer. I have the days free (sort of) next week; I'm working nights. "Back to the salt mines," I like to say. Grading tests isn't too bad, but the project I'm doing has only three questions, and they suck. It's difficult to get excited about, is all I'm saying.

Life in general is sort of muddling along ok. There are a lot of things that need to get done this summer that I've been putting off for a while. Mark (that's my roommate of the past nearly-two-years) is moving out for good this next weekend, or at least he says he is. That leaves me with this apartment to myself for a month and a half until I can finish this lease and move into something different. I have financial stuff to look into, I have classes I need to take for getting my license renewed, and come the middle of July, I'll start teaching summer school. And, somewhere in there, I need to call my mom once in a while.

I talked to my brother a week or so ago, to wish him a happy birthday. He and his family went out west to visit Dad and Pamela. He talked about how nice it was to get away, how nice it was of Dad to rent a 15-passenger club van for them to haul themselves around in (what with 4 kids and all...). I asked if Dad had mentioned me at all. He hadn't. I'm not entirely sure what to make of that. It sort of sounds like he really doesn't care that he hasn't seen me or my daughters for over a year. That, of course, was sort of my point, but it still baffles me. If one of my kids wasn't talking to me, I'd ask the other at least something like "well, is your sister doing ok?" or "have you talked to your sister lately?" Nothing. The whole thing leaves me feeling empty and limp. I have feelings of anger and bewilderment toward the man, and the frustrating thing is that I have to learn to understand that he really is incapable of any emotion toward me at all. I've been learning a lot about psychological stuff in recent weeks, and the more Iearn, the more I realize how much he probably really gives me no thought at all. I think of all the "stuff" he had by the time he was my age, and I start to understand how much he's really pissed away over the years, and it makes me angry that someone could be so selfish and stupid with money. It forces me to look at what I'm doing, every time I think about it. Am I making choices that will take away opportunities for my daughters to have financial windfalls one day? Am I doing things in such a manner that they will feel empty, confused, and neglected? Will my children wonder why I do the things I do? I hope not. The only way I can be sure that they don't feel that way about me is to spend time with them, and that's been difficult to do in recent days what with all the jobs. So, if I'm working all the jobs in order to have money to send them, to spare them from financial hardship and all that, and this keeps me from seeing them, which is worse? If I quit jobs to be with them (and, honestly, would I spend all that much time with them?) and then there are money problems, which is more selfish? Which is more damaging? I already have missed out on two years of their lives, pretty much, and that, in itself, can be too much to bear some days. My friend Marion said "the worst thing about divorce; they take your kids." I know that she hasn't "taken" them away, but they don't live with me anymore, and physically, they are absent from my life most of the time. It sucks. I don't want to be back with their mom, though, so what does one do? I don't know. I do know that the sun is starting to lighten the sky, that I can tell that the trees behind me are green with dawn's light, and that I need some more sleep before I try to accomplish anything today.