Well that was . . .

Oddly anticlimatic. My mother came to town this weekend with her new squeeze, otherwise known as Blog Fodder, otherwise known as The Once and Future Stepfather. And it was just fine.

Actually, it was better than fine. We went to eat, and we admired TheBoy, and we talked -- without getting into the gory details -- about how my mother is making this massive life transition and settling in now that she's traded sunny South Florida for scenic-if-chilly Canada. (She's in far northern Washington, but it's close enough to be Canada, except without that pesky universal health care.) BF/TOFS seemed a bit nervous, which is understandable, but handled himself with just the right amount of grace and good humor.

This is where the ability to compartamentalize your worlds, which I don't seem to have, would come in handy. Because my mother is happy. Undeniable, disgustingly so. And not just because of the massive new collection of very large and very hard rocks on her left hand. It's kind of sweet, as long as I keep the flip side of this -- the pain I feel for my stepfather, etc. -- in its own little box.

Being an adult is very, very hard, but apparently not as stressful as I feared. Although I did have this awful, awfully vivid dream the other night in which my mother died. For the record: I was reaaallly upset.