Ray is off to his first day of work at his new job.  {waits for applause.}

As you will recall, Spouse got laid off a while back.  We don’t like to talk about it, or, at least, I don’t.  It was reminiscent of an old episode of Friends (I guess they’re all old now, aren’t they?) wherein Tom Selleck was commenting that when people asked him about his divorce, questions would be posed with the “I’m concerned” head tilt, which was met with the “I’m OK” head bob.

This comes to mind because I lost count of the number of times I had this conversation at work:
Concerned person {tilts head to the right}: “How’s Ray?”
Me {bobbing head}: “He’s OK.”

To be perfectly fair, we never did go through the massive rage phase that I was expecting.  Instead, he signed up for extra classes at the local community college, bought the P90x DVDs and started working through the program, and generally settled down for a role as stay at home Dad to Mocha.

As you’ve surmised from the title, it was this last one that started to concern me after a while.

It became clear that Mocha was growing quite attached to Daddy (Ray insists on referring to me as “Daddy # 2,” which is both cumbersome and seems to confuse her.  Mocha understands perfectly well who I’m referring to when I ask her to “go get Daddy.”).  Once upon a time when I came home from work, Mocha would meet me at the door, tail wagging, and sometimes trying to do that jumping thing that she only does when she’s really excited.  But lately?  She barely acknowledges my presence when I come home.  “Oh, it’s you,” she seems to say, rolling over and going back to sleep on the couch.

Ray, of course, denied that her behavior was favoring him (don’t they always?), right up until the other night when she refused to sit next to me on the sofa and ran around to the other side in the hope of sitting next to Ray.  Only when it became clear that there was no room on that side did she deign to sit next to me, but I got the butt end.

“Um,” he said, “So, maybe she IS getting a little too attached.”

Ray was offered a three to four week contract at a company that does pretty much exactly what he used to do at Hell Dell, but has already been told that there’s a significant chance that he’ll be brought on permanently.

He called today, having survived his very first commute downtown (how kyoot–call me when you’ve been doing it for ten years, honey!) to report that he has a stunning view of the capitol building from the office where he works.  I’m quite content with the red clay tiles of the school of architecture next door–and, just between you and me, I really don’t look out my window that much. But don’t tell my boss–I’ve been demanding a window of equal or larger size in my office in the new building we’ll be moving into in three years.  (However, I may need to be more specific: I’ve been told that I’ll have a floor to ceiling glass wall … it just may not actually be to the outside of the building, however.)

And so, for the time being at least, we’re back to a dual income.  And, just to prove that the universe is righting itself … Mocha met me at the door, tail awagging this evening.

It’s the small things.