I can’t be strong, mature, and hard without hating myself for it. After my talk with Michael, I have been sleeping poorly. My digestion is upset. I am poorly focused. I have been fighting the urge to despise me, to punish me, to bludgeon me back into weakness.

For maybe the first time, I think I know why. I learned it on an apparently unrelated issue.

How to approach this tactfully…Hm.

I wanted to play cards. I’ve wanted to play cards for a couple of days, but Shannon was very tired from excessive workload. Tonight she agreed to play cards. After shuffling and dealing, I could see she wasn’t very interested in her hand, but was playing because I wanted to. She was willing and happy to be there, but not thrilled to be playing.

So I put the cards away. While it is acceptable for me to want to play cards, it isn’t acceptable for other people to be burdened with my needs. Many of you have heard me play this song before. My mouth rattled, and I said progressively stupider things, and she suggested that we just go to sleep. So we did. Well, she did. I thought.

First I thought about being fussy, but I’d argued for my right not to play cards, so that was out. I tried to revile myself for being unlovable and stupid, but got a tenuous grip. It’s something I’ve been working on. Why wouldn’t I want to play cards? I had a winning hand, she was willing to play….

She was too tired to have an interest in the game for herself. And if she couldn’t ….

Oh, screw all metaphors.

If she was too tired to manage an orgasm handily, then it is unreasonable for me to push myself on her.

Think about that one.

…

I am telling myself…in effect…I cannot have sex unless I pay for it.

Don’t I trust her to love me without paying off?

…Yes. (I stopped to check, just to make sure I’m not begging the question)

Then what is it I really don’t trust?

…

…

Why do I let people push limits beyond belief? Bow to Crystal for years, wuss out on enforcing rules with Michael, any number of other examples?

What has being fussy about laying down the law with Michael got to do with getting a happy tonight?

If I don’t supply orgasms, if I don’t cook, if I don’t fix everyone’s computers, if I don’t cough up cash, if I don’t bend the rules, break the rules, remove the rules, if I don’t eat people’s abuse –

– they won’t love me. I love other people because I do. It has little to do with them, in the end, more to do with me and how I feel. I have seen other people love; they are much the same as me. So I know that other people love,not because of what they get from the object of their love, but because they just do it.

Except with me, because I’m so utterly worthless.

“…so utterly worthless.” Where did that come from? It’s one of the things that I tell me when I’m hating myself. There’s hatfuls of such crap. I know it isn’t true when I’m healthy, but if I’m tired or depressed, sometimes I’ll fall into self-loathing. Last week I found that pattern, too.

When I’m tired or depressed, I am less productive. And, if I don’t cook, fix, serveserveserve–

You get it.

Most of you reading this have loved me far beyond my perceptions of self-worth. The only thing, in most cases, in common between you folk — besides the fact that all of you, to a person, is remarkable and wonderful and I love you — is me. If you are all so wonderful, then that tells me a lot about me.

But THAT ISN’T THE POINT.

Here is the point. This is what I may, finally, have figured out for me, something that I knew for other people since I was a child.

No one earns love.

You can’t. You can earn privilege, trust, respect, but not love. Love is a gift, and you can’t earn gifts, no matter how much you cook, no matter how much you bend, no matter how much you serveserveserve, all unasked.

People love me because they love me.

I’m going to go snuggle up against my wife and, if she wakes up, tell her that I’m smarter than when she went to sleep.

Michael and I get on well, but it has been degrading for six months. He is backsliding into torpor. I am not kicking his ass for him. When I do, I get fussy, because I have to be the adult for both he and I.

Michael is still unemployed. I have not been convinced that he is trying to be; there is little to reccomend employment and self-sufficiency, if there is some idiot willing to support you. I haven’t known just what I want to do about that. And then I did.

A couple weeks ago I chatted with Michael. We sat at the computer and I brought up our household budget spreadsheet. I separated out the things that aren’t his problem (like budgie food), divided by three, and noted that, if he were a roommate instead of a child, that would be his rent to live here in the style to which he is accustomed.

Then we added his projected expenses; court fees, school fees, bicycle payment. And luxuries; a cup of coffee a day, a sandwich twice weekly, two dates with his girl-thing each month. He agreed that it was quite a chunk of change.

When Michael is registered in school, if he files paperwork the child support payments will shift from me to he. It will just barely pay tuition. Not books. Not coffee. Not, in fact, all of tuition. Unemployed, he will undoubtedly hit me for the rest of tuition, books, lab fees, rides to town, and so forth. I will feel obligated, since I am supporting him, to provide him with spending money, as well.

To sum that up, I will take an income loss, gain someone else’s bills, and be priveleged to feed and house him for free while he goes to school and plays in town. That doesn’t work so well for me. “Here,” I said, “is what I am suggesting.

“While you are going to school, you may live here for $200/month. You pay your own bills; the rent is just for housing, groceries, utilities, computer, and so forth. That isn’t even a third of what it actually costs to live here. If you aren’t schooling, you pay $600/month. It is not an attempt to regain the lost child support checks. What it is, is freedom. If you are paying rent, paying your tuition, paying your bills, have a job…you are an adult. That’s good for you. It’s a step forward.

“But that’s not my only goal. It’s freedom for me. If you are adult enough to pay bills, hold a job, go to college…you are adult enough to buy your own mp3 player batteries and movie tickets. You are adult enough to not need me to hold your hand. You are adult enough, in short, for me to be cut loose to just take care of my own problems instead of yours.”

Then we did math and fiddled and figured out that, with a half-time job and child support, he could handle his expenses and have money to burn. No hurry to start this, I told him. October is fine. Get registered, get a job, get growing up instead of extending your adolesence, unchanging.

That was a couple weeks ago. It was the opening moves in my plan.

This week, Michael registered. To register, he needed $65 as a down payment. He called me for it, and I had him come visit me at work.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am excessively gently spoken to people’s faults. There’s reasons for that, reasons that I’m just unravelling, but that is a different post. Michael came, and I spoke.

“Here’s the deal. You haven’t a job yet, you’re doing the same things trying to get one, and they aren’t working. I’m worried that you aren’t very interested in having a job. Or that you aren’t desparate enough. Or…for the last few years, no one has required you to be…they’ve….” I faltered, looking for tact. Then I stopped looking.

“Fuck that. You want my money, you can get my thoughts without tact. You have been spoiled. Not that you are spoiled, but that people have been spoiling you. No one has required you to pull your weight, clean up after the cats, take out the garbage. That’s minor. You didn’t pass classes for years, but went to movies, played with the computer, went out and about, watched TV. No requirements to produce, no requirements to carry yourself, but all the benefits you could want.

“I’m worried that, even though I’ve told you you must work, must pay your way, that I won’t carry you…you don’t believe it, deep down. You believe that, when the chips are down, you can hit me for the $65 or whatever and I’ll come through. And we both know that I’m a wuss, and I would. I’ll give up what I want and give it to you, ’cause I’m stupid.

“I can’t. I can’t afford to take me back to school, so I can’t afford to put you through it. And I don’t want to. We talked about rent a couple weeks ago. That quantified, in very explicit terms, the value of responsibility. Responsible equals $200 a month. $199 isn’t responsible. Easy. No opinions needed, no different perspectives. We agreed what was reasonable, and anyone with an opinion can go whistle; you and I decided, and we are the only ones that matter in this decision.

“But now you can coast forever, unemployed, and I won’t put that into effect, because, again, I’m a wuss.

“Nope.

“I’ll give you to October 15. Seven weeks. Get a job, get enough money together to pay rent. If you haven’t, then I will approach you and we’ll discuss your options. I’ll know that you didn’t like the ‘live at home cheaply’ option. That’s okay. It won’t hurt my feelings. Sometimes we need to move out, but don’t have the balls to do it.

“The other three options would be 1. find an apartment (hard without money), 2. move in with the Clan (where you can be unemployed as long as you like) or 3. move in with your mother, who will probably support you and probably pay for your school and probably run your life.

“Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t want you to leave. I think staying with me is your best choice. But it is your choice, and I need to stop pretending I can make it for you. I can’t make your choice, but I can force the date, and then we can both get on with what we need to do, however you decide to work it.

“I don’t imagine you will remember a quarter of this. Remember this. October 15, no rent, you find another place to live. I will not wuss. I have told people I will do this, and that creates my courage for me. Here’s the cash. Go register and be wildly successful and happy.”

Seven weeks and we are both free of this progressively dysfunctional relationship.

Yesterday I told him, “I was pretty direct yesterday. I meant it, and I’ll follow through. But I really, really hope you decide to stay. I like you here, and I think it’s good for you to be here.”

“I want to stay. I hope I do, to.”

Good.

Our hero’s eyes become all of one color, that being green with a faint spark of yellow at their centers, and in a voice that is perfectly clear and somehow faint and far away says: “There is a change in the flow of the tides of Life. Not a riptide, but a tidal wave. Not merely an abrupt current-flow but something that may change in a moment the shores against which the waves break, moving the currents to different paths forever.”

He taps the ground sharply twice with his silver-headed cane, smiling. “Surf’s up.”

This, because I haven’t the time to talk, but wanted a place-holder to remind me what I wanted to say. And because it will amuse Ed, who will recognize the reference.

The truck runs. I have driven it to the dump and dropped a load of garbage there. It needs more work; for instance, it would be nice if the brakes worked next time I drive it.

I am working, frequently, through breaks and lunches.

I received a ticket this morning for driving past a pedestrian who stepped off the curb while I did so. $242. There is nothing to contest; if the pedestrian steps off the curb, I am culpable and without defense by the laws of Medford.

Michael still has no job. He claims to have been looking for over 2 months, but frequently does so in torn jeans and cleverly sloganned t-shirts; “Buy your soul for a cookie?” and “I’m the teenaged girl you had cybersex with last night” are not conducive to winning over prospective employers. I can’t tell if he doesn’t want a job, doesn’t care, or believes that he is trying.

Michael registers for college this week. I am likely to be tapped for this, which means that I can spend the grocery money on him (no) or that he will be going 1/4 time or less. Or I can decide his registration isn’t my problem, and he will likely go limp until I kick him out, after which he will be even less likely to go to school. No good choices there.

I have spoken explicitely with Michael. I will begin charging him rent in October; $200 if he is a student, $500 if he is not. We went over the bills of the household together, and discussed his probable bills over the next year. He doesn’t like it, but recognizes that he is still getting a better deal from me than elsewhere. My motive: I want him in college, and progressing.

I have planned with Shannon. Come October 15, if Michael is not employed, I will discuss his options with him. He can find a nice apartment somewhere. He can move in with The Clan (his grandmother). He can convince someone to pay off his legal debts and move in with his mother in Tennessee. Or he can get a job and have his rent paid appropriately. By that time he will have been job hunting for four months.

I wrote an entire page of novel this week.

I’m getting very tired.

I took the truck’s timing chain cover back off. I took off the chain, the cam locater plate, the various pulleys and gears. Carefully, then, I degreased and examined each item for any marks placed as reference points.

The cam locater plate was upside down and backwards.

The distributer drive shaft has timing marks that must be oriented.

The crankshaft sprocket has a timing mark filled smooth with grease.

The timing chain does NOT have two bright links. I created a second bright link at the correct interval.

Then I put it all back together, without the radiator or fastening down the top cover. After two cycles of the starter motor, the engine started. vroooOOOM.

Tonight, I will take it all apart again to install the oil flinger, which I cleverly left off.