Big Fun in Little Asheville

Or something. Actually fun is stretching it a bit. My ex husband the loony was in town. He brought M back for his doctor's appointment and ended up staying for a couple of days. We're all very civilized and hippie around here after all. My x is sober now and even more of a conspiracy theorist than he used to be. He's still a monologuist; he hasn't changed, I haven't changed - or have we? Maybe we've intensified. Maybe we're more us, and completely antithetical. He's single again now too - before I saw him again I toyed (extremely briefly!) with the idea that maybe we could be one of those couples who get back together 10 years later. The minute I saw him that idea was out the window, forever. Not because he's unattractive, because he's still a good looking bastard, but because seeing him makes me remember just how bad it was. And it was very bad, oh very bad, very bad indeed.

So last night we had dinner at home together, which was eerie and surreal, then went to see Being There at the Walk In Theatre. It wasn't a very good choice for walk in theater: it was crowded and the sound was all blurry. We sat behind a couple in their early thirties: they were very affectionate and she was expecting. It made me feel weird - as if they were us 14 years ago, in love, pregnant with M. And I didn't want to curse them or anything by being so utterly divorced - so utterly that it's hard if not impossible for me to even remember what I ever, ever saw in the X.

M & the X left early; A & I went to the Westville & drank beer & smoked cigarettes and discussed how much we didn't want to go home. But eventually we did, and then he & M left for West Virginia today, and M will have to figure out his relationship with his father on his own.

Poor A's friends have all deserted her somehow and she is relying on me for companionship. Leaving entirely aside the question of whether it's healthy to go out drinking & smoking with your 22 year old daughter on a regular basis (I think maybe it's not), I'm starting to feel like we're dating. For one thing, I have to buy everything since she doesn't have a job, and then we've taken to going out almost every night. Tonight we had dinner at Taqueria Fast & then went to a ball game. You can't smoke at the ballpark anymore - suckage!! - and the first place we went to sit we were chased off by an extremely nasty Xtian man who told us officiously that this was the FAMILY area with NO alcohol allowed. The ball game was fun, but not worth that. Than A wanted to go out again but I said no, I can't afford it - which I can't - and then I felt guilty, like I was letting my SO down. This is nuts.