The reason I've been a little distracted of late

I’m sorry I haven’t blogged for a few days. I had a writing project to finish which took up what was left on Saturday after I had driven from San Francisco to Cambria (about five hrs on the PCH,) via Monterey where I met up with MTFF and her adorable infants for a couple of hours of lovely chat and frolics on the sand. Sunday was basically a drive back to LA, yesterday I shopped & cooked all day for my hosts and today I have been sick (not related to my cooking, I hasten to add).

But, really, the main reason is that I am feeling emotionally drained & battle weary. My parents finally meet in the county court tomorrow for the opening salvos in their increasingly bitter divorce case.

It’s been nine months since my mother kicked my father out – on the day of their 40th wedding anniversary - after having finally been put in an untenable situation, partly engendered by his grasping slapper of a mistress who telephoned my father very early in the morning knowing he would be with my mother. (Whatever the rights & wrongs of their situation, lil’sis & I have no time for her appalling behavior, the very least of which includes going to the family home and raking through my mother’s possessions whilst she was out of the country.)

Lil’sis and I feel rather like Dr Doolitle’s Pushmepullyous. Each parent feels they have right on their side. Each has some valid points. There’s been some outrageous behavior on both sides. Each considers the other unstable. And so it continues. I wish I didn't know any of this, but we’ve never been a family who held back in its opinions, and therefore there is little in which lil’sis & I haven't been involved, but this blog isn’t the place to argue one side or the other.

We love both our parents very much. We want them to be happy. And that happiness, it seems quite clear, does not, has not & will not come from their remaining married to each other. Neither of them are easy; neither, I suspect, are we. Caught squarely in the middle of their battle, it feels as though our heads are swivelling on our necks just trying to maintain some sense of a status quo. Lil’sis isn’t well at all, I’m thousands of miles away. I miss all three of them. It’s far from ideal.