Learning Becomes Her

For the past two weeks (with the exception of Father's Day weekend), I was fully responsible for my future step-daughter, Lily. I refer to this as mommy practice because it was the first time she was spending an extended amount of time with me, where it was just the two of us all day, every day. I've spent winter breaks with her before, watching her during the day while her dad and grandparents work because it's cheaper than paying for all day daycare for those few weeks. But this was different: I was paying for groceries and cooking dinner and there weren't going to be grandparents or daddy at night to take up her attention. This was me for the few months leading up to Mommy Practice, because I was super nervous about it. We spent all day together during the week, though not always on the same activities. When we were on campus (usually late morning until late afternoon/early evening), I read about a statistical software I will use for some data analysis this su...

I won't pretend to know what happened because I don't. All I know is that you asked me to stand beside you at your wedding last spring, and this spring, I don't get an invitation. It hurt and it sucked, especially when you couldn't be assed to respond to any form of communication. Unfortunately, I can't say I was that surprised. This past year has been marred by numerous cancelled lunches that you always promised to reschedule and never did. You would cancel and I wouldn't hear from you again until I reached out to you. After the third cancellation, I started to wonder if I should even be in your wedding because I obviously didn't mean much to you; and that was glaringly obvious when we scheduled a birthday lunch (for your  birthday) on a day when you said you had nothing else planned, and you cancelled an hour before we were supposed to meet. And the only reason I found out you were cancelling is because I contacted you to find out where we were meeting. ...