Playing with Fire?

It's my dad's birthday! I hope he ate chocolate cake for breakfast! You really need to on your birthday, in the interest of world peace and harmony.
______________________________________________________________________

I have managed to organize a shipping company, an animal transport carrier, and collect all the records we will need to have upon our return to the USA. But still it doesn't feel lke I've done enough. The departure date is looming, like the sweaty build up of a summer storm, 16 days and hell or high water we are boarding that plane.

I hate packing. I loathe packing. It is tempting to just leave it all in the house that his hideousness wanted so badly. Knowing my babies will return here in 6 months time for a visit keeps me from doing just that. Again it's not about him, it is about what is best for them. They do not need to return to the house where we lived for so long as a family and see it as we left it. They do not deserve that heartache, and that is exactly what he would do to them. I know because when we came back last July after 7 months away, that is what we walked into. It's not healthy. I wish he would think of that. It is as likely as world peace but I can still hope for it while not holdng my breath. Most likely he'll stay trapped forever in the misery of his cult believing he is doing God's work all they while he's lost the most precious of treasures.
____________________________________________________________________

Rugby players ears warrant enough notice to prevent my sons from ever playing that game.
____________________________________________________________________
It is a mix of the two.

I can still remember the dread, my belly seeming to drop outside my body when the babysitter yelled at my sister and I. I had never seen him do much of anything other than sit at the table , push his glasses back up his nose and study those books. I was in love, the books, in my seven year old mind, books that big, with their sturdy hard backs that looked like they'd been read over and over and over again, had to hold some fabulous wonderful stories. The horrible words he yelled while his neck turned red. We had heard those words at school. "there's a tornado coming!" I remember running to the bathroom, feeling like my belly was back there somewhere in the living room with an entire bag of the valetines love heart candy rotting in it.

The tingling in my hands, the fluttering of my heart in my chest, the warm flushing of my face as his lips headed for mine, the thrill racing through my teenage mind.

The dread and the thrill, the pendulum swings with alarming rapidity between the two. Flirting after divorce.