I was going to stay home to work on stuff and let The Wife take them somewhere, but there wasn't anything happening at the Art Institute today (so The Girls didn't want to go there), everybody seems bored with the Nature Museum at this point, our Aquarium membership expired last Friday, and our Field Museum membership expired as well ... at least The Girls are becoming sensitive to the fact that Stuff Costs Money, so they opted to not go to either of those, being that it would have cost a chunk of change to re-up for family memberships. The Wife had, however, just signed us up for a family membership at the Planetarium (so that Daughter #1 could take a friend there on a "playdate" last week), and The Girls said they wanted to go there. The Wife, however (having been to the Planetarium a few days ago), didn't want to go, so it was either let her spend another $80 or so someplace she did want to go, or take The Girls myself.
It was a beautiful day out there, but it just tore me up. The view of the City from the Planetarium is pretty much unrivaled, but all it said to me was "you're losing this forever". I had my camera with me but couldn't bring myself to even take it out. Even just being down at the museum campus (and so easily accessed via public transportation from here) was a looming reminder of all the stuff we're not going to have anymore.
I know that the the second of The Four Agreements is "don't take anything personally", but every damn thing these days seems targeted to make me feel like pond scum ... from bounced spam with my domain forged as its "from" address coming in as "failure notice" to the lottery ticket scanner ever so politely labelling me "sorry, not a winner". Really, I know, I get the picture ... I'm a failure ... I'm a loser ... I'm a useless sack of shit ... hell, I can't even stand being around me ... I fucking GET IT, OK? It's bad enough that the universe wants to knock me down, but the grinding my face in the muck part gets old real fast.
Of course, at this point, I have no confidence that it's ever going to get any better. I'm sure the "smart money" is on whatever we end up having to do ending up being a steep spiral into deeper nightmares. Sucks to be me ... and I'm sure it sucks to be related to me. I fear for my daughters. I feel like the Titanic, sucking everything around me into the cold, inky depths.