soapboxdiner

Take the money and run.

D00d will be here in an hour. I so love that man. He completes me. Heh.

ANYways, fucking life, man. The mroe I think about it, the more complicated it gets.

But D00d's son has an internet girlfriend in CA that he wants to spend New Years with, so we're driving him down to Napa at the end of the month, which will totally rock -- sans the wine tasting tour that I would love to take. Only D00d doesn't drink any more, and he's very sensitive to "excessive drinking". He wouldn't enjoy a wine tour, with good reason, and it wouldn't be fun for me seeing him uncomfortable. Anyways.

We went to the library and got a tourism book, so I'm gonna see how he'd feel about Frisco instead. The Kiddo would get a kick out of Alcatraz.

D00d and I have been discussing cohabitation. He's two years away from paying off the house he and his mother purchased together. She's helped him raise his son and neither D00d nor his mother have really dated since. Weird, I know. But it's worked for them for the last 14 years since they bought the place. They've saved money, bought a home that they've continuously called home, and his son has has two people who love him to grow up with. I applaud that whole-heartedly.

Only ... Saturday D00d took his son and the Kiddo out to the game store for manly man fun time and left me at his home with his mother. She's wonderful. We talked about D00d and the Son, and living together, and Son's deadbeat, perpetually procreating mother. Grandma went so far to share that she's been Son's "mother". And for all intents, she has. But ... she's grandma, you know? She's not wife. And for the first time, she grilled me about my life before D00d. What can I say? Needless to say, the report was mixed and superficial, but apparently in very polite terms did not meet her threshold of acceptability.

Oh fucking well, I say. Life's tough sometimes and you do the best you can. Her opinion doesn't carry nearly the weight that D00d's does, and he's FINE with me in all my lackluster glory. And if he wasn't, then he'd be curbed, too.

But he's such a bachelor. Which D00d would happily tell you is evolving now that he has a partner who cares enough to HELP him, rather than Honey Do him. With a few projects down, D00d is excitedly coming up with his own ideas about fixing his place up. Which makes me really happy to see. Only Grandma comments every weekend now, "Oh, SBD, you're always working on the place, raking leaves or doing dishes, painting the house or cooking dinner. You don't have to do all that work, you know. Really, just stop it."

I call that pissing on her tree. She's marking her territory. And D00d takes care of her, you know? She's retired now and on a fixed income. She putzes and farts around with her hobbies and he gives her money when she's short. And that's what life has been for them for 14 years. She's paid her dues and I'm the interloper in her eyes. In D00d's eyes, I'm the future. And he gets excited about us doing things together to bring the Kiddo and me into his life and his home more. He solicits my opinions and shares he excitement, and I want to help him achieve all his ideas. But to do that, I would have to step on Mom's toes and usurp her position.

I need to talk with D00d about it. I've gently taken a step back from all the projects we started, but I haven't told him why. I don't want to cause any friction with my supersesitivity. He obviously knows his mother better than I do, but a woman knows other women in ways a man can never know them.

D00d wants to pay off his house before we move in together. I told him I would prefer an accelerated plan. I don't want to wait two years to be together full time. He doesn't want to rent, preferring to buy a new home for us. He wants to save $20,000 for a downpayment. I remind him that separate housing takes over $12,000 per year out of the nest egg we could otherwise save for a downpayment if we joined household expenses. Doing the math there, that's FOUR YEARS before we could even hope to accumulate that kind of money separately.

Do I really want to wait four years in hopes of one day getting to wake up every morning with the man I want to share the rest of my life with?

And to make it even more fun, I look at the position I hold at work and helped develop into an all-encompassing position of trust and growth. Only I've taken it just about as far as I can, which is only half of the way to awesome. I am at a plateau of my physical abilities, while I see all the potential of the position that a truly exceptional administrator could herald in. The longer I'm there, the more I realize that I am a great organizer but only a marginal administrator. I am the placeholder and the developer who builds the structure. And that's OK. That is worthy of respect. It's just approaching the time for me to hand the baton off to the next guy who will complete the work and take it to greatness. The building blocks are all in place now. Just as I was the stopgap that organized my last position in the company, I readied the position for the next person to fulfill my vision. And he has. And now that time has come again.

The only fly in that jar of ointment is what to do with the relic. And for now, that is me -- and the only place is down the ladder or out.

And while I am fine with that on a pragmatic level for the interest of the company, it does nothing for me monetarily other than make my goal of home ownership with D00d just that much more difficult to achieve.

6:13 pm - 12.02.08
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