A Little Jealousy Never Hurt

Mr. Slick went to New York on personal business on Tuesday night and though he emphatically promised to call Wed morning to say he arrived safely, there was not a call until Thursday night. That means he missed the opportunity to wish me a Happy Divorce (WA and OR residents - these people rock.) I understood that he was busy, but it was the day we had been looking forward to the entire time of our togetherness. I was already disappointed that he was to be out of town for the big day, so the fact that he didn't call me really burned me. So when I was at Green Lake (do I go anywhere else?) on Wednesday night (DDay), I was pretty excited when a hot rollerblader approached me while I sat on a bench retying my trainers. He said he was new in the area and asked if I would like to have a drink with him, perhaps show him around the town. That was pretty lame- he found Green Lake didn't he? I respectfully turned him down - said that my boyfriend probably wouldn't like that, but got a pretty nice boost to my ego from the whole experience. So when Mr. Slick called me late last night (Thurs) we talked for a while before he finally said:

"So your divorce is final isn't it?"

"Mm hmm."

"That means you are a free woman, doesn't it? I better get home before some man tries to snap you up."

"Actually some guy tried to pick me up last night."

Silence.

"Where were you?"

"Green Lake - he was a rollerblader."

Silence.

"I am a jealous man, you know."

"I know - I respectfully declined, of course."

"If you have a thing for rollerbladers I can get a nice pair of spandex - bright green ones, and I can wear the helmet and wrist guards to bed."

I told him he was so silly and to just get his ass home. I don't know why I got so much satisfaction about creating that twinge of jealousy. Perhaps I was put off by the fact that it took him so long to call me. Perhaps it was a part of me that wanted him to know that if he doesn't shape up I have other options.

But I don't want other options- I only want Mr. Slick.

D-Day

It's final today - I am officially a divorcee - Lucky me! I have had four people including X excluding Mr. Slick call me and congratulate me on my divorce. It's nice but really depressing that so far more people have called me today about that than called me on my birthday. I guess people are just genuinely happy for me that I have made it to Splitsville. How sad is it when you tell people you are getting a divorce and their first words are - I don't see why you married him in the first place... He was always... Or I saw better things for you...It's about time... why did you ever marry him... I never saw you two as a match... I told you you were too young... And so on. I mean I know I made a mistake - hence the divorce. So rubbing it in - really not that necessary.

My Cheeks Were Red

Yesterday was another beautiful day in Seattle. As I have said - how typical - sweltering 100 degrees Saturday, overcast and frigid Sunday and a beautifully perfect sunny 80 degree Monday. So after work I headed to Green Lake. This time I was walked around the lake sans Discman mais avec mon frere and his live-in girlfriend. They have become the shoulders I lean on in this time of transition. I can talk to them about anything, although my brother pushes his fingers into his ears and goes LA LA LA loudly anytime I get remotely near talking about anything close to sex - understandable since I wouldn't want to hear him talk about it either. But it is nice to have a couple to confide in about anything. My other friends (read: my conservative Baptist pals from the South) were shocked and dismayed at the news of my impending divorce and even more amazed at my rapid leap into the arms of another man such that the nature of our friendships has been irreparably altered.

The friends X and I shared here in Seattle were all his friends and their wives from long before we met, so with the split he inherited the friends leaving me with a very small social circle consisting of family and Mr. Slick (boyfriend). Yes, the urge to inhale large doses of Ben and Jerry's does creep up on me on those evenings when X has Bubba and Mr. Slick and family are unavailable leaving me with a night to entertain myself by myself, but I am happy and have come to cherish my evenings alone - typically I spend hours playing the piano annoying my neighbors as I stumble through Moonlight Sonata or The Swan. Being self-taught leaves me far from Carnegie Hall-ready and I am sure a source of many an ear plug purchase, but it fulfills me. It was a life-long dream to own and play the piano, and there has been nothing better than realizing that dream.

But I digress....So we were walking around Green Lake in my typical counter-clockwise fashion and a couple of very attractive men went by on roller blades. I all of the sudden found myself wondering what it would be like to ask out or be asked out by one of them (it wasn't that I was interested just curious). I asked my co-walkers if they had ever tried to pick up a perfect stranger. Both admitted to the negative and inquired if I had either tried to pick up or had an attempted pick up by a stranger. I was about to say no but I remembered an occasion from a few years ago.

I said "Well, there was this one time that I was working at Crab Co (local restaurant) as a hostess and a very handsome man came in. He gave me his takeout order. When I returned with his food, he paid, leaving a sizeable tip - and his business car. He said 'I think you are just absolutely beautiful and I would love to take you out some time. Here is my card, give me a call sometime.' From his card, he was an investment banker and, by the looks of his suit and car, a very successful one too.

Big (my brother) said "Did you ever call him?"'

"No," I said, "he was just too short for me."

Coco (his girlfriend) said, "What's wrong with that?"

I said, "I just had and have a standard that a guy has to be taller. The guy is supposed to be taller. I need to be able to wear high heels and still be shorter and at 5' 10" that is a tall (no pun intended) order." And just as I uttered those words I noticed the man walking in front of us, close enough to hear all I was saying. He was short, around 5' 5". He looked back at me to see who was so unacceptable of the shorter man and perhaps to see how tall I was. He smiled at me and shook his head. Immediately I felt mortified.

He said, "geez, no wonder-I'll never find anybody."

I tried to apologize, but the foot was firmly stuffed in my mouth, so I dug my grave a little deeper by trying to illustrate how it would never work by bending my knees until I was shorter than he. I was almost completely kneeling down - it wasn't my finest moment and probably did nothing to make the poor guy feel any better. He was cute and young too, just short, and to make matters worse, Coco is shorter than he and Big is 6'5"(another short girl snapped up by a tall guy and a tall guy hogged by a short girl - disgusting to all of the short guys and tall girls who find such mismatches mortifying and unfair to the proper balance of the circle of life). I decided to speed up my walk a little bit and take my red cheeks with me and hope that the poor guy finds love - and soon.

Flight's Beginnings Part II: The End is Near

Tomorrow, tomorrow. I love you tomorrow. You're only a day away!

Yes folks, tomorrow marks the day - Divorce Final Day. Tomorrow some judge in some courtroom is going to put an end to my marriage. If I feel great today, tomorrow I am sure that I will feel even better - relieved, excited, weightless, on top of the world. Or maybe I won't feel any different. Maybe it will feel the same way as turning 25 did. I already feel like I am divorced and have felt that way since I made him pack his bags, but at the same time tomorrow marks the day when the strings are officially cut. He can no longer call me his wife without putting an X in front of it, and that is wonderful in and of itself.

No regrets here, though I am jealous that my boyfriend (I hate, hate, hate that word) is working hard so that when his divorce is final, he will never have to see or hear from the Itch (wicked witch of the north [my affectionate name for his X]) again. Unfortunately I am bound to my X by a child. Now I understand how things can turn ugly with custody battles and the like. When you divorce someone it is because you no longer want to be with them and in some cases you never want to see them again. When you have a child you have to see X and talk to X, because there will always be something to deal with. Some days I just want to take my daughter and flee to Europe. But my daughter is my first priority and taking a daughter from a father who has caused no harm would be the worst possible thing I could do. All I am saying is that I can relate to the desire to do something of that nature, but you can relax, I would never do something that nutso no matter how tempting.

So even though the divorce is almost final and that provides a freedom much anticipated, I will always be bound by the ties of parenthood to X.

So I made my flight. You can figure out for yourself what made it narcissistic. I am ready to come in for a landing. My wings are clipped and I have gone as far as I can go. I have found the man of my dreams and though I will walk through the rest of my life and any subsequent relationships with the Ghost of Husband Past tied to my ankle, tomorrow marks an ending and a beginning - a new chapter (apt description no matter how hackneyed). The first half of my twenties have been so eventful - a wedding, 2 cross-country moves, graduation from college, birth of a child, a divorce, etc., etc. I have married, had a child (and no the child wasn't the reason for the marriage - she was born a year and a half into it) and divorced before most of my high school and college buddies have even thought about getting engaged. (I guess that is why so many wise people advise against young people marrying). I can't imagine what the next 5 years will bring but I am looking forward to them and whatever life changing events that come my way. I look forward to getting married again, but it scares me that I will have the same result. I don't want to be a serial marry-er a la J Lo or Ross (from Friends). But to marry once at 21 and then again at 25 (I hope)... Could I entering some weird cycle?

Whining Isn't Cool

A heat wave in Seattle - 100 degrees of miserable miserableness. Saturday was one of those days when you envy the Southerners that, even though they endure 90 degree weather and 99 percent humidity, are blessed with air conditioning in every home, and for the most part it is central air, so there is no looking at those ugly AC window boxes that enjoy stupendous sales here over weekends like the last. It was too hot to even go to the lake and swim. But alas, sans AC most homes were stifling with no respite in sight, so I decided to avoid both my house and outdoors by heading to my local grocer's freezer section. Aaah, sweet relief - and it was even a little too cold - dressed in a tank and shorts, I left frozen to the core and even enjoyed the heat of the sun when I stepped back outside, but that ended the second I got back in my SUV, which was a regular sauna. I made it through the day somehow, though and that night I slept on the floor in my living room by the open screen door because it was the only semi-cool place in the house. When I woke the next morning I decided to make use of the hot day and this time go swimming - why not endure the heat and car ride for some splashing fun? I got myself dressed in my bikini, board shorts and tank and dressed Bubba, (a nickname for my 2.5 y/o daughter [yes a product of unhappy marriage- yes one of many contributors to soap opera current state of life, which I've touched upon and may expand on later]) in her suit and terry cover-up, slathered us with sunscreen, gathered snacks, towels and a magazine pour moi. I made sure Bubba went potty and loaded myself up and went outside only to discover that it was overcast and frigid.

Typical.

Promenade

Yesterday was a beautiful day in Seattle – the kind of day that makes people forget about the 360 cloudy days of the year and remember why they moved here in the first place. The kind of day that you can’t experience in any other city in the country – okay maybe I am biased- the mountains were out (even on some sunny days the mountains can remain hidden in a far off haze), Mount Rainier was unfettered and the Seattle skyscrapers and the Space Needle all made for the picture perfect day – especially for the tourists. So because it was such a beautiful day I, and hundreds of other Seattleites descended upon Seattle’s Green Lake, a pond really, at three miles in diameter. People come to walk, jog, run, bike, roller blade, or skateboard around the lake for exercise, conversation, or just to enjoy the day. There are soccer players, volley ball enthusiasts, basket ballers, filled tennis courts and even a little rapier academy that sets up on nice days. There are families galore picnicking, playing Frisbee or catch, enjoying the wading pool or even fishing. I was just there to exercise via speed walking (not nerdily, just at a brisk pace) as I listened to the music provided by my apparently obsolete Discman (everyone is carrying the ultra-hip iPod now) and people-watch of course. I love to see the people that come out on a lovely day to walk around Green Lake. It is more varied than your average cloudy, drizzly day, when the park is populated by hard-core sporties (one of which I will be someday, I just know it). So I embarked on my walk – I always go clock-wise around the lake because the people on wheels all have to go counter-clockwise, so by going the opposite, I have double the people to see face on. I set myself a nice pace and began to look around me at the people I passed or approached. I would smile at the cute little puppies, ugly dogs and old people, I would pretend that I didn’t see the hot guys jogging sans shirt (but try not to appear snobbish by maintaining a half-smile), I would try to check out other girls’ bodies as I walked by to compare mine to theirs (it is amazing how much more eager I was to check them out than I was the guys –granted I do have an incredibly gorgeous boyfriend already, so why check any others out because they won’t compare – but I guess I wanted to see if her stomach was flatter than mine, her hips more shapely, I already know that her boobs are bigger, so I don’t even bother with those). I felt almost like a man trying to gawk without gawking. I felt the girls looking at me in the same way I looked at them and realized that we were all scrutinizing each other. Here we are trying to get in shape for ourselves and we are all sucking in our stomachs so the next girl will be jealous. I think that maybe girls are a lot harsher critics when it comes to bodies than guys will ever be and it is not that I am critiquing their bodies but rather making a comparison with mine when she is in better shape than I am because I want to have a six pack and I want my calf muscles to ripple when I jog (yeah right). But I digress, I wasn’t just checking out the girls, I was admiring the babies in strollers, the old men and their old wives, the young studs with their girlfriends, the couples linked arm-in-arm so obviously in love walking at a snail’s pace as they gaze into each other’s eyes and coo lovingly at each other (these were my favorite people because that was me and S just a few days ago).

So as I progressed I felt utterly content...that is until a bug flew in my eye. I could feel it in there and wanted to throw up. I pulled to the side and tried as hard as I could to get it out – the acrylics were no help. I couldn’t get it, so I resumed walking with the knowledge that I had a bug in my eye – a phrase that kept repeating over and over in my head. My eyes were tearing, my face distorted and I was no longer getting the looks of approval from the men that I encountered on bike or roller blade but rather of avoidance. They would glance then look away quickly. But I didn’t care about that, embarrassment was nothing compared to the most disgusting feeling (well having a roach crawl across my face in the middle of the night it, but that is a different story) of having a bug in my eye, so I sped up to a jog and made it to one of the conveniently placed restrooms and prayed there would be a mirror...there was! I rushed over and pushed my eye up close to it and pulled the bottom lid down, and there he was tucked neatly down in the bottom corner of my lid. I shuddered as I pried him out knowing that my early attempts to remove him were responsible for lodging him so deeply in my eye socket.

So trauma over, I resumed my walk. I now walked with my head tilted down slightly hoping that the brim of my hat would prevent any other such invasions of self and I tried to calculate the odds of such a thing happening again. I tried to figure out the number of gnats (millions), adding in my height (5’ 10”), rate of speed (10-15 minute mile) and thanked God I didn’t try to be a mathematician (there is a reason that word sound so close to magician) cause all those numbers meant nothing to me when added together. So I just decided that I had never had a bug in my eye before when walking around Green Lake, so maybe this experience would last me for a few more years and concentrated on my people watching and walking again. I found myself passing a woman who was walking at the same rate as I was but the length of my legs allowed me to cover a greater distance in the same amount of time, and I have tucked her into the back of my mind with all the other people that I pass had she not sped up her walk into a sort of walk/jog combo and passed me. I was in no mood to compete but part of me wondered if she was. I forgot about her for the moment as a young guy jogging through the grass with a puppy who was only a few weeks old (no more than 12) distracted me. It was such an adorable site because the puppy followed his master so adoringly, but the puppy was of the killer dog variety (which I despise, why not have a nice golden retriever if you want a big dog) so I lost myself in the vision of the dog biting some child’s arm off in a couple of years and the cuteness of the scene was lost on me as I found myself passing that woman for a second time. She seemed to speed up in attempt to thwart my passing her as she looked back out of the corner of her eye at me, but I passed her anyway. Then a few minutes later she super speed-walked past me (nerdily) and then I passed her and she passed me and I was getting so fed up with that game that I was glad when my walk was over. I never once changed my pace, but the fact that she seemed so determined to stay in front of me was infuriating and that she wore overly-tight spandex that I was more than glad to leave behind on my first passing just didn’t help matters much.

Can't it wait 'til you're done?

Today returning from an errand, I entered my work’s office building and saw a man about to come out of one of the other offices that share our building. I watched him go to the door, then pause, look down at the magazines sitting on a nearby table and select one. Please don’t follow me, I thought to myself. But he did, and the unfortunate thing and reason for my hope is that the only place for him to be going, if he followed me, was the bathroom- we are the only other office in that direction. So as I got to our door, I did a little half-turn (why? Morbid curiosity, I suppose) and saw him entering the bathroom with said magazine folded under his arm. I couldn't help but laugh as I walked in. I wanted to tell co-workers but feared that the humor in the idea of a man reading a magazine in a public restroom stall would be lost on them. Maybe I am the only one who doesn't understand it.

Will someone please explain to me, who in his right mind would find the idea of reading in a public restroom pleasing? Hello! I just want to get in, do my business and move on to other things, but he seemed like he was ready to settle in there and maybe have a siesta if the mood struck. I know that people all over the country enjoy reading while on the “throne,” but I was not aware of those that do so publicly. Now I will admit to reading All in a Day’s Work from an 8 year old issue of that Reader’s Digest that’s on the back of everyone’s toilet now and again, but I will only do so in the comfort of a home, where there is no possibility of other people coming in to do their business at the same time. I don’t know why I pick up that magazine, sometimes the urge just hits me. But the idea of just hanging out in a stall at work reading that same article seems a bit absurd.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have an appreciation for doing my business with other people around and I certainly don’t enjoy serving as their audience (if only from an auditory perspective), so why would I want to elongate the process?

Why is it that people feel the need to read in the bathroom in the first place? Is it really an activity that necessitates outside entertainment? My little brother used to spend hours reading his books in there. My mom would take the Sunday papers with her. What about number two makes people desire mental stimulation? And why can’t it wait for us to be done. Why do people linger? Really, why hang out?

I would love to know what people get from the "reading on the toilet" experience.

It's my party

I just celebrated with my co-workers - they went all out, beer, wine, chips, dips, cheese and cheesecake, usually the birthday person just gets a cake. Maybe they feel guilty for all of the phone calls they pass along to me that they don't want to make themselves - such as the one to the CEO of a company to make sure that it is in fact his direct line (what was I supposed to say - uh is this you, k just checking). It must be nice to be able to pass stuff off to the little guy. I am the end of the line. I don't get to pass off the annoying, backbone testing chores to some poor, underworked, bored administrative assistant who resents that the only work passed her way is the stupid stuff that no one else wants to do because that poor soul is me.

I have never had a job on my birthday before. I went to school - had summers off, had a baby and didn't work till she turned one, then got fired in June and didn't work till last September. I have never even worked through a summer before, so you can gather that I have never had a job for more than a year. This will be my first - if I can stick it out - but argh! the boredom is killing me. Hence the blog. I have been reading them for months, figured I like to write meaningless so and so like the best of them, and have forty hours a week to burn through so why not?

So needless to say, this was my first daytime co-worker birthday party. It was great. I stuffed myself on cheesecake and Minute Maid Lemonade while listening to shopper insight talk (I work for a marketing research firm) and frequent flyer perk conversations. I wasn't much of a contributor. It is so awkward to sit in a room with all of those people and try to be social. I am the Honey-do member of the team, so I don't get to hang around with them too much during the day - I am relegated to my post, whereas the rest of them wander freely, stopping by his or her desk for a little chat about the baby or the hockey game. I just get to see them as they go to and come back from the bathroom - and that just isn't a chatty time for most people.

Just as I thought

This morning I watched the sunrise on my 25th birthday and realized that 25 feels no different from 24, in fact it feels suspiciously like 24 - could it be a conspiracy?

Relax, it's just a manicure...

Since when did pampering yourself become sheer torture? I know that some routes to beauty are supposed to be painful – waxing, plucking, facelifts – but a manicure? Since when is getting your nails done supposed to involve an hour of torment? Perhaps doing so in one of those strip mall shanties is just asking for it. I liken my experience to going to the dentist after not flossing for a really long time. The hygienist gets to dig at my gums with a sharp metal thing scraping away at my teeth in theory, but in reality more just torturing me. You would think they would try to avoid the gums, but no, they just poke that metal thing right down there and jab away – torture. But it is also torture that I have come to expect from going to the dentist. If I flossed like I was supposed to, I wouldn’t have to endure such agony, so I deserve the punishment and the resultant abused and bleeding gums. But I know that I didn’t do anything wrong to deserve the beating my fingers endured last night. See the whole reason I went to get my nails done was to have a fun, little outing with my sister (we don’t do stuff just the two of us too often – it’s an oil and water thing), so naturally I wasn’t expecting pain and misery when I stepped into the little shop. Now for those of you rich people who can afford going to one of those ritzy joints that offer you tea and soothing music, let me tell you this wasn't it. We walk in and there are two people lounging in front of a television blaring a baseball game. They look over at us, but make no move to welcome us or even stand up. It wasn't until sister reminded them that we had an appointment that they made any movement to treat us like customers (so much for the "walk-ins welcome" sign. Fortunately for me, they didn’t speak English well, so any questions resulted in a nodded head from my side and a puzzled look from theirs. Maybe the torture was a punishment for my inability to understand. The woman who sat in front of me at the nail station looked innocent enough, but deep down inside she must have some traces of evil, or maybe not deep down inside because she seemed to take pleasure in the pain I was clearly experiencing, each time I winced or flinched and my hand jerked to escape the pain, she merely cooed and smiled to herself. She first took a lovely sander with which to rough up the nails in readiness for the acrylics and was nice enough to rough up the cuticles for me as well. Very kind lady. That is where the dentist comparison comes in. The scrapey thing is fine and dandy on the teeth, but watch out if they start going to town on the gums, and so goes with the sander- heaven help me and my poor nail beds. So I flinched and winced my way through the sanding process and thought it was done as she attached the tips and applied that mystery stuff that turns into hard nails, but then came the buffing process. She took a little 4-d rectangle that was covered in sandpaper and set about attacking each nail. Oh the pain! She banged down on each nail with this lovely devise of torture as if with a hammer while sweeping to the side to polish – so it was bang, sweep, bang sweep (kind of like a hard smash then drag the nail to the side - try it on your nails a couple of times- push down really hard on your nail and then push it to the side and imagine that happening again and again without reprieve for your already tortured nails) in rapid succession again and again on each nail. It seems like it would never end. It wasn’t even so much this new pain of the bang and sweep that bothered me, but the fact that it accompanied the old pain from the sander, because she was nice enough to include my cuticles in the bang and sweep process – sandpapering away at the raw sores that I had hoped were to be left alone for the rest of the evening. When the torture was over – after another go with the electric sander, which this time wore the cloth buffer (didn’t make it any less painful), I paid up and gave the lady a five dollar tip. What was I thinking? I have never paid for pain in my life, and here I give a 20% tip to this, this spawn of Satan. My fingers were swollen from the bang and sweep, my cuticles were bleeding, and to top it off there were bubbles and a speck of dirt in the acrylics – just lovely, and here I go and give 5 of my hard-earned dollars away. I began to think that maybe that was all a part of her plan. Torture, instill fear, reap money from the weak – as easy as 1, 2, 3.

The Flight's Beginnings Part 1

Did you ever get the suspicion that your life has taken on a certain soap opera quality? Okay so I haven’t just discovered that my husband was actually my long lost twin or anything freakish like that, but for a girl who thought her life was somewhat normal, the truth is creeping in – Okay well I never really believed that my life was normal. I just wanted other people to think it was. And hey, if I can convince people that I had a happy childhood or a great marriage, then really I should be President of the United States of America, or at least work for him (or someday her?) [isn’t that what politicians and their trusty sidekicks do – take the bad and twist it so "hey everything looks great doesn’t it?"]. I am great at giving the impression that things are a lot rosier than the darkness and despair (read: bad dad and bad sex {don’t combine the two, people!}) that truly lingers (oh c’mon it wasn’t that bad). Read on.

Tomorrow is my 25th birthday. I’m sure I won’t feel different, does anyone ever? I am hoping to be proposed to tomorrow, and the funny thing is – I am still married and feeling a little like J-Lo or more appropriately her other half oh I can never remember his name – he always reminds me of a rat for some reason – he is so skinny and little. I just don’t get that he has sex appeal, he certainly doesn't appeal to me. Anyway he had to wait for his divorce to be final before he could get married again – he even hurried it up by traipsing down to some Caribbean courthouse, and here I am the conservative Baptist who doesn’t believe that divorce is right (but wait there’s more!) tapping her watch in anticipation of an approaching end of marriage decree from some judge who must get a little burned out ending so many marriages. Or maybe you don’t get burned out, maybe the knowledge that you are ending someone’s misery is satisfying. I can’t decide.

I am convinced that if I were the/a divorce-signing judge I would have the hardest time not turning into the GOSSIP QUEEN of the UNIVERSE. Take that scandal with Jeri Ryan and her senator wannabe husband (why can’t I remember men’s names today?. I'm sitting there in my mahogany clad office reading reports of a scumball dragging his wife to odd sex clubs and wanting public intercourse and all that, how could I keep it quiet? Sealed, my ass. I’d be taking it down to Access Hollywood. Reason #1 that Roxy is not a judge (maybe I will explore that later because I am certainly judgmental, so you’d think that there might be a few reasons why I should become a judge (or is that just stupid? No need, I already know)).

Not everyday will be like today.