Life is such a seesaw at times. Just when you think you get things figured out – BAM! – your ass smashes to the ground.

It’s not that some mean little girl jumped off it when she was at the bottom. While I used to think life worked that way, you come to find out that, well, there’s never a  mean little girl on the other end of the seesaw. It’s just life, getting its kicks, making you think that everything is going swimmingly, then BAM! – you bottom out.

Before anyone thinks my relationship is in the dumper or things are going badly, they aren’t (for a change). I have a great job, I work with great people, my son isn’t strung out on drugs or in jail, and my wife is adorable, to the point that even some of my female friends would like to steal her away from me.

But last Tuesday, well, something just didn’t feel right.

I used to be very used to that feeling. Life just didn’t seem right no matter what I did. I would choose the wrong mate, make bad business decisions, end up broke or freaking out that I might become broke, even though there was plenty of money in the bank, worry that my car would break, or not worry that it would break and have it crap out on me at the worse possible moment.

I’m still not really sure what brought this whole thing on. I guess part of it was all the stress and strain of buying a house. All the “i”s that had to be crossed and all the “t”s that had to be dotted. Well, you know what I mean. It’s all very exacting stuff and there are things to file, legal documents to sign, interest rates to monitor, decisions to make – everything totally outside of my skill set and comfort zone.

I guess that could be it. But still, I wasn’t really ready for the total crash and burn I had that night. One moment I was all giggle and grins; the next minute (I think it was 8:01 p.m.) and I was dead in bed, curled up with my pillow, wanting my mommy.

She’s dead, of course. So that could have been kind of creepy, instead of soothing. Still, I had just had it with all this adult crap.

You’d think that after 57 years, almost 58, that I would have mastered all this grown up stuff. I have managed to fend for myself quite well over the years, having to figure out all sorts of things, like how to move out of my house suddenly when my hand (and at least one vital organ) was in another cookie jar, to how to interview for a job that was 3,000 air miles away while trying to look like I was living in Ballard.

And yet, I crashed and burned for apparently no reason at all.

I know I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. I am, after all, only human. And while it appears that I have somehow, – in spite of myself – reached an unparalleled level of happiness and peace in my life, I am still just a little boy lost inside a mans(?) body.

I’ve always thought I was Peter Pan. This Captain Hook stuff is not all that it’s cracked up to be. I mean, I’m sure Captain Hook had to face the daunting prospect of mortgage payments on his ship, or at least the nautical equivalent of them. I’m sure he had to sign his life away at some point, if only by giving his hand up to a ticking crocodile.

I guess I should count myself rather lucky in this regard. I still have two hands. They are tapping away furiously on this keyboard right now. I didn’t have to give up a hand to the mortgage folks. Just a a couple hundred hard earned dollars. O.K. Several thousand hard earned dollars.

I admit that the prospect of parting with all these dollars would have sent me into a huge spiral in day’s past. But not these days. And  I have Kat to blame for that. She makes it easy to dream and plan for the future, even though it may mean that I have to engage in… engage in… engage in…

See how hard it is to utter the term Manual Labor? I thought I gave all that nonsense up years ago when I worked in the mailroom at Associated Grocers. I did my time. It was before I figured out how to get paid to make things up, something I really excel at and which does not require me to engage in… engage in…

Sorry, had to step away for a moment so that I could contemplate my coming life of indentured servitude, one that will, God willing, last 30 years as I serve as both slave and master to my new mistress, Casa Verde, 2,100 square feet of “honey dos.”

I know that it will all work out.

Wow, I am a great marketer. I almost believed that line.

I guess this is what happens when you break up with someone to marry another. I admit that I felt horrific guilt when I received a note from my landlord of the last four years telling me that I was the best she ever had…

… at paying rent.

Hey, I will take that. When I wrote her my Dear Landlord letter, I felt like we were breaking up when I told her that I had found another.

I will carry those scars for some time to come. And perhaps that is part of the meltdown I had on Tuesday. Maybe it wasn’t about facing all those years of slavery but guilt that I had found someone or something else – a home – one that I can grow old in, not that I wasn’t already growing old in this one since I was 53 when I rented it and several candle blowings have passed since. But I digress.

I could just be growing old. Peter Pan may be giving away, just a squidge, to the musings of a wily, but aging sea captain, one James B. Hook.

I can’t only but hope that Lynnwood is really located in Neverland County, not Snohomish.

In the Emerald City, pretty sure that there is a ticking croc in that drainage ditch of mine, just biding his time,

– Robb