Lest you think I come from an indecisive line

My mother broke up with her beau. Remember, he was the angel collector so worthy of my time and efforts. I gather she didn't cotton to life on a shelf.

Exasperated, she told him this weekend that she already had two husbands that did nothing but sit on the couch and she'd be damned if she was going to go through that again. Apparently in three weekends, they'd gone out to eat once, ordered in once, and sat on the couch the rest of the time.

When he played the "I had open heart surgery last year" card, she told him that it merely confirmed that they want to/are able to do different things.

All I can say is that maybe some warning was in order, as I don't have the impression she tried to talk to him directly about this ahead of time. That's not to say they didn't talk, because she'd emailed me previously that they spent hours each night on the phone and she signed up for call waiting just because of him. I guess they didn't talk very constructively. And I guess that allowed him to sit on the couch during phone calls more than she would have preferred, sort of setting a precedent for when she was there.

The guy, an Egypt1an, rather exotic for her, plead with her about maintaining a friendship, but she is of the same mind set as me there: nope, over is over. I do wish she'd reconsider, as I believe they had a lot in common.

So my mother is single again after over a month. And she's asking me when I'm going to dump mine.

Mine is trying, but there's a lot of substance there. He is a genuinely good person with a moral backbone much like mine. He is overly patient, too, which leads us to trouble when he is overly patient with his ex-wife.

I think he creates day-to-day drama and he's been put on notice about that. After his kids are gone in January, classes are over, and peak time at work is through, if he keeps up with the scurrying about like henny penny with no time or focus, then he is history.

I hate more than anything feeling like I am in the way or hindering someone's productivity, yet I hate to cede the way for someone not using their time well. For his graduate class, he took an incomplete, this after taking more than a full day off of work to write a paper he didn't touch, him taking time from me yet spontaneously inviting me to do things while he's supposed to be doing his paper, him not even going to church - all for naught. Well, worse than naught because he has one semester to make up a paper and a final, so it won't be ending any time soon.

He's very good at spinning his wheels and I refuse to feel responsible. Norma told me the other day that I'm enabling him, in part because Friday night I stayed up all night - not having sex for the last time in weeks - but wrapping his kids' presents and packing his kids' clothes. What was he doing as I wrapped? He was not washing clothes, packing, or preparing for his pre-dawn flight. No. He was writing Xmas cards, something he could have done with his half day of flying the next day, but he insisted that flying is for sleep. Sometimes we literally are not on the same page. In this case, I feel ashamed that I completely decorated his apt, put up his tree, and wrapped all his gifts over the last few weeks when I have not done one of these things for my son here. Guilt.

Bottom line is that we have very similar personalities and, to boot, I think he's ADHD like me. One in a relationship is weird enough.

I'll be patient until the holidays are over and his kids are gone; maybe he can prove himself. Remember how bad it was last year around here? I want calm, even if it has a small price. I'm not going to do like I did about four years ago; I'd been dating a guy maybe two weeks and talked to him February 13 to tell him that I didn't want to see him anymore. He told me to enjoy the flowers I'd be getting the next day. ba dum bump I don't have to be quite as decisive like my mom this go around.