Late Fees

It's a beautiful day in New England. It's sugaring time. That's when all of us, even if we can't tell a maple tree from an ash tree, get to say - "oh it's good sugaring weather" with a sense of pride and self rightous yankiness. The truth is, good sugaring weather is just plain good weather. Clear sky, sunny during the day, so if you are doing any physical activity at all, you are comfortable in shirt sleeves, but if you want to sit on the porch and drink coffee, you need a heavy sweater. Then the nights are clear and cold, like 20's cold, not sub zero. That makes for great sleeping. So when you can wander through the general store with a 50 pound bag of bird seed slung on your shoulder, and catch three diffrent conversations about how the sap is running, it's a really good day. Even if you are poor. Even if you are seperated, even if you have no idea what the next phase of your career might be. ...but then maybe you stop in the video store to grab a movie for your kids. When you check out with your movie which is not a new release because they are too expensive, and the multiply pierced clerk says, "You have 13 dollars in late fees". You raise your eyebrows in a "how is that possible?" kind of way, and he lists a bunch of movies you've never seen. That's when it dawns on you..."oh yeah, I'm seperated. My husband watched all those while he's been baching it at his new pad, and then forgot to return them." So, had an american cross section today; New England maple sugar time, and the mid western divorce surprise bonus at the movie store. Lucky me.

organic cheese curls AREN'T cheetos

OK - I've already kicked myself in the ass and I have an idea why I was so down. I fucked up today. I went to the wrong job this morning and worked for a few hours, then went to the other job and everybody was pretty pissed that I had pulled a no show. With my recent history, they thought that something terrible had happened. Oopps. So started the day feeling like an idiot. Then later I ran into someone in this little small town of ours who, how can I say this?....she basically made it vivadly clear that she didn't aprove of me. Let's just say "the hairy eyeball" is NOT descriptive enough. It was like a brand new kick in the head when I had conviced myself that the kicks in the head were coming to an end.

So my answer? Use the EASIET recipe for the steak, because failure is not an option, my ego couldn't take it. Then treat myself to some cheese snacks and a beer before dinner - but wait! Those aren't cheetos, those are organic baked cheese curls!!!! Damn, kicked in the head again.

Blu

Sometimes it's not as easy as it looks. Looking around and just feeling a profound lack of motivation. All this "redefining myself" and "new chapter" is hard work. I don't really know what to say beyond that. I want drive fast, run away, hide. I instinctively understand the need to find comfort in my solitude, but I'm pretty sure that solitude is a calm and peaceful place, while loneliness is an empty place. Loneliness doesn't seem quite right. There is anger, a sense of injustice, and a big dose of "how did I let myself get so deep in the well?"

The answer: stand up from the keyboard and try and figure out how to cook a good dinner (steak and potatos) for my kids, then do homework with them, then just get to bed early.

BLog blather.....better than hiding in the back yard and having a cigarette....right?

NASCAR and George W. Bush

In addition to the wide variety of therapist apointments I have, today I went to a chiropractor for the first time in my life. It seems that my new computer research job, combined with trying to teach myself how to play the guitar, have caused a few rotated thoracic vertebrea, which basically means that I am in pain while driving, sleeping, and...oh yeah...breathing. Off to the chiropractor I go.
Upon entering the small brick building, which stands alone by the side of the road, with three parking spaces and a lot of mud (New England in March). I am confronted by two large framed photographs of George W. Bush, each signed with a message of "thanks for the support". The second one even has a note saying "Here's hoping we can keep control of the house!" - We all know how that went. I seriously considered turning around and leaving, but the pain was brutal, and I'd be waiting another few days for a diffrent doctor, so I continued to the registration desk.
That's were a sign on a stand, the black slotted board with little white plastic letters, tells me to "pray for relief from pain - scientists say it works!". The young woman behind the counter smiles and says "You must be Virginia" - Now I can't leave because they will charge me for the visit. So I filled out paper work while W. stared down at me. I waited for the first magical "Adjustment", something I had been told about my whole life.
After the initial intake interview, the chiropractor felt obliged to advise me about my divorce. Just so you know, he feels that lawyers are the biggest obstacle to a healthy divorce and that everything should be worked out ahead of time because as soon as the lawyers see your financials, then they determine your fee based on how much they can take of your assets. I'll look into this theory. He was not instilling great confidence in his expertise with his complete dismissal of all lawyers as quacks.
Fast forward to when I'm on the table, face down, in a spectacularly flattering johnny, and he says "I'll leave you in the hands of my assistant for a while, then I'll be back to do my work." I wait. Then I hear "Wake up before you make me fall asleep honey, (giggle giggle)" As I continue this narrative, please understand that I say nothing. I can't, there are no pauses. She puts a glop of mentholated linement on my back and begins lightly massaging the area on both sides of my spine; this is not unpleasant. And she says......
"What do you think of this weather, I mean rain? What's that about? If it keeps getting warmer I'll have to put my four wheeler back together and get out on the trails. These legs don't like hiking, but put me on my ATV and I could spend all day on the mountain. Everyone says I ride like a guy, that is unless there's barbed wire fence involved. They are crazy, they go 35 or 40 miles an hour with barbed wire fence running just inches from thier leg. That I won't do, but I catch up after a while. I can't wait for Summer. Last year I worked two jobs and had no time for anything. I maybe swam for 5 mionutes and I went camping for a night, but somehow that camping trip ended up with two days at a truck show, and all the money I earned at my two jobs? Poof, gone on who knows what at the Truck Show. This Summer's going to be different. I only have the one job, and I made a lsit of all the things I want to do this year. I am definately going to Six Flags with my girlfirends, it's a great place to meet guys. The most important thing on my list I already took care of though. (Pause...beat...beat) I got tickets to the races. Two days of NASCAR will probably put me back quite a bit more than that truck show did, but I don't care, this is for me!"
Now, I am smiling. The work she's been doing on my back this whole time is wonderful, and she is so excited about her plans that it is infectious. I actually begin to wonder what it would be like to go to Six Flags at the height of the summer. Through this whole experience I made a choice not to look up from the bed. I never saw what the assistant looked like. I envisioned her as lovely, not petite, and a big smile. The stories and the voice, and my imagination where helped by the relief from pain that was seeeping into my back. Then she stopped the massage and said "Don't fall asleep now. The doc will be right in, and stay dry, oh and have a good summer too."
The adjustment was terrifying and thrilling. The pain is gone, the weepiness that seems to come with a constant low-level irritation is gone, and I get to go back on Friday.

"Can't take to the sky until I like it on the Ground"

i don't have to raise my voice

don't have to be underhand

just got to understand that it's gonna be up and down

it's gonna be lost and found and

i can't take to the sky before i like it on the ground and

i need to be patient and i need to be brave

need to discover how i need to behave

and i'll find out the answers when i know what to ask

but i speak a different language and

everybody's speaking too fast

KT Tunstall

Confessions

I played My Chemical Romance VERY loud and opened a beer before 5:00pm today. My husband cleaned out his side of the closet and took the kitchen table and chairs to his house. There is no part of me, that I can find (and I've looked), that is sad about him not living here. There is a sense of feeling blue. So far, I'm pretty sure that it has to do with wishing I could go shopping. It feels like a time to bring new "me" style things into the house. It's the first time I've had a place where I was the only decision making adult. For the last eighteen years I have lived with someone who took great pride in a spartan, uncluttered, no-debt, household. It is important to "live within one's means" and I rarely chaffed in the atmosphere, but now?.,.....today? I want "stuff". Nothing out there really that I NEED. A dvd player would be nice, but then it leaps to things like a kick-ass laptop so I could update this blog while I sat in bed. I supose that I should just look around and celebrate the new found me, the one who doesn't have to hide behind someone else's career.

Tonight? I will go out with a friend. She is also seperated, beautiful, and bored with small town gossip. We will go to the next town over, eat at a bar that has live music, and just enjoy the moment. What moment? The "how the hell did I end up here?" moment. The "what took me so f*ing long to see how lonely I was?" moment.

....and celebrate.

Sometimes You Can't Make it On Your Own

U2-song, and so true. I am the luckiest woman in the world. My friends have said the most beautiful things, thank you. Yes, it's all good. Tomorrow he'll be moving furniture out and I can rearrange, and hang all my jeans in the closet instead of trying to keep them folded in a drawer. I can burn incense whenever I want and I can talk on the phone while lying in bed, all activities that weren't comfortable before now.
I was ranting to myself in my car (it's a wopping 4 minute commute!) about the fact that I wanted a signing bonus for just making it through the week. Between the four therapists, the orthodontist for TWO kids, and getting the oil changed in my car it's a wonder that I can get to my job, much less juggle the two jobs I'm currently working to try and establish my own income. All the same, being on my own is terrific.
My daughter and I were sitting on the bed watching Jon Stewart (the 8pm showing of course) and she turned to me and said "I'm pretty sure that I'm heterosexual, but it's nice to know that I can change my mind if I want to." At that moment, I knew I was doing something right as a parent. In the next moment she tried to disect his sarcastic political humor, it seems I may have modeled some pretty uber-liberal beliefs for her too.
It's another weekend, more movies, more relaxing, and more loud music on the stereo while I clean the house and wait for the snow to melt.

Equinox - greening up

Equinox celebration with the kids. We ran around the house cleaning cobwebs off the ceiling and dust from all the corners. We banged on tin cans and rang bells, we shouted, sang badly, and said "bye bye" to Winter, and "Hello" to Spring. After sweeping the dust and detritus out the front door, everyone got thier own stick of incense to cleanse the space so it would be ready for the new beginings. The girls insisted that we round the whole ritual off with ice cream; I didn't complain.
I must confess that the idea of new beginings is quite comforting right about now. The greening of the Goddess, the growing of the new self, all resonates quite beautifully for me today. Starting tomorow there is more light than dark. It's as simple as that.

Couples Counseling

OK, so you've probably heard the phrase "Give 'em enough rope and they'll hang themselves"? Need I say more? My spouse thought he had me a teed up for a doosey of a swing on Monday morning with "our" therapist. He launched right in with...."I'm not comfortable with the fact that she's not seeing her therapist more. She was so screwed up six weeks ago, how can she be so functional now?" and he went on. In fact he went off. Having spent the last 20 years with the guy, I had an inkling that this was coming. I just watched and listened. Our therapist was visably disturbed by the diatraub. When he finally wound down he looked right at her and said "I'm right aren't I? She can't be OK?" she adjusted her jacket and was actually speachless. Her response? "I'm not going to answer that question. What I'd like to do is try and understand what has brought about all this anxiety for you?" Hmmmm....this was definately NOT the answer he was expecting.
I won't continue to regurgitate the session. Just know in your heart that it was awesome. He became more irrational, she became more alarmed, and I sipped my coffee and revelled in the fact that I wasn't going to throw him a life vest, I wasn't going to interperate for him, I have done that for long enough.
When I walked out of the office I had to surpress my smile. I had witnessed the car crash and I had stayed on the side lines. It was the new me. I hadn't gotten sucked into the fray. It felt great. The underscoring for the entire morning was KT Tunstall's "Suddenly I See" - and boy did it look good.

Catching up on DVDs

Sunday night. So this is the end of the first weekend when "the kids are with Dad". How was it for me? Well, I caught up on the DVDs that I felt I should have already seen. Little Miss Sunshine, Da Vinci Code, Devil Wears Prada. LMS was as good as everyone said, DaVincci code was better than everyone said it would be (which isn't saying much because everyone told me it was awful), and Devil Wears Prada was fun to watch with my girls. The wierd thing is, I lived parts of that movie. I was the "fat smart" assistant for a Dragon Lady. She was not a fashionista, she was a Broadway Producer, but not too far off the mark from the character Meryl Streep brought to life. Luckily I also chose to see the goodness of a living a genuine, uber-liberal, lower middle (or upper lower) class existance while watching or reading about the people I had been making dinner reservations for.

Day two. What does a Mom (over 35 but under40) do with a St. Patrick's day afternoon to herself? Funny you should ask. Today I left my kids with the husband and went off with no particular plan. I spent almost an hour hanging out at the local record store. Yes, I DID say record store. I have fond memories of record stores when I was a teenager, and Music Matters is as close as we get up here in rural New England. I looked at the new Yo La Tengo CD, I thought about buying some music that I'd never heard (and then realized that money is a huge stress factor in my life) and ended up leaving with exactly what I went in for; Abbey Road on disc. Boring? Yes. However, you can't get the Beatles on I-tunes, so it's a good excuse to actually go in a store and talk to the local owner about music and life, and Rat Dog, and snow storms, and of course, kids and "the transition".
Then it actually got interesting, for me at least, I went to an Irish Pub, sat at the bar, had three pints, ate lunch, and wrote in my handy dandy spiral notebook. I desperately hope that the college students thought I was an interesting troubled poet or something. The truth is, I'm sure that no body even knew that I was there. I had a lovely afternoon. It's been a while since I've had the luxury of hanging out at a bar in the afternoon.
Perhaps I will return to the bar on my way back to the car. If anyone has read this far, they may be wondering where I am. Well I'm in the library of the local university, using a free computer to write my blog while still enjoying the afterglow of the three pints.
I would like to take a moment to say how much I enjoy sitting in the pub during a snow storm. There is nothing like it. Back to the point...that is, the Fall. Last night I stayed home and watched Little Miss Sunshine. That was good. Celebrate life and all that. Made me smile. Now, I suppose it's time to divide up the cookbooks tonight. I am desperately hoping that the husband has cleared all his things out of the closet today. I must confess, and it's probably politically incorrect to say this..but, I've been looking forward to having the whole closet to myself. It will be one of life's small joys to let my clothing spread out and fill the space.
Can we talk about music? I mean, it is the soundtrack of everything, including the fall of civilization. That's the whole quote by the way "After the fall of civilization some people simply slept." I have no idea where it came from, but it's been stuck in my head for years. I do believe that in my childhood I would go to computer stores, please understand, it was an "all DOS all the time" world back then. We precocious kids had to "program" everything line by line. So I would program this phrase "After the fall.." etc, onto the store computer and make it scroll endlessly. I thought I was so cool.
That's not music though. My Father was giving me advice about my divorce (and I would have to write a very long pithy novel to explain the irony of this statement) and he said that the hardest thing about divorce is dividing up the music collection. I decided that it would be prudent to mention this to my husband this morning. Hmmmmm, maybe not. He was offended. something to the effect of, "I've got much bigger things to think about than music." OK, so forgive me for trying to bring the mundane into our reality. A few facts, he is planning for 50% custody of our beautiful children, I applaud this, I have no reservations about it, I think it will be interesting. However, I'm not sure he has any idea what we have to look forward to. I mean frankly, one of them has entered puberty and has the emotional thermometer of a gnat (that is to imply that all things are emotional and mercurial, and instant).
Let's try again on the music. I like what I like, and I know what I like. I like the Alman Brothers, I like the Who, I like Alannis Morisette (even if I can't spell it). I also like Antler, My Chemical Romance, and AC/DC. Listening to music and NOT worrying about what the people around me think about what I like; that's a challenge.
After the Fall of Civilization, some people simply slept. Yup.

Day One. Probably actually something like day eighty-something, but it's the first day I'm blogging. After the Fall refers to "The Big D - and I don't mean Dallas" watch as the great middle American Marriage transforms into the newer, more creative life of a divorce with two kids. Like magic - don't look now but the earth is shifting under your feet! So, perhaps I thought that I knew what to expect of my life. Perhaps I created a nice neat and tidy plan a long time ago that ended in an RV somewhere in Arizona with a short guy, some retirement funds, and a little dog. Well, I was wrong. I was so very very wrong. Not only did I never want the little dog, but that wasn't the guy I wanted to retire with. Some of the finer gems: since moving out he stopped by the other morning to drive the kids to school and handed me his stinky spandex shorts and said "When I have spinning class, I can only really wear these once, are you doing laundry? Could you throw these in?"

And, by the way, how ios it that I went from no therapist to four of them? There is my individual, our couples, the consultant, and now the family. That's right, I now have four professionals looking me in th eye and asking, "how the hell did you end up with him?"

Granted, he wants to do the right thing. He wants to take be present and take care of the kids, and be at the teacher conferences, and pay the bills, and point out what needs to be cleaned, and then go on vacation with his girlfriend. He actually complaine dto me th eother day about how he was struggling with having commitments to two women, and he meant his girlfriend and our daughter. Needless to say, I just smiled and nodded. Let me point out, this blog, this last five minutes of ranting, that's my "boyfriend". This is it folks. It's me, learning to take care of me, and learning that it's OK for someone to be angry at me, and it's OK for me NOT to try and make it up to them.

So I'll have my beer, eat my tortilla chips and watch a movie.