July 3rd...

...mah birfday, and the first one in a lllloooonnnnggg time when I didn't wake up feeling oh-so-sad. Time passing, the fleeting nature of life, and all that crap.

In honor of the day, the mailman brought me a thick envelope with a cover letter reading, "Dear Jane: Enclosed is a copy of the letter we sent to D today, serving him with the commencement documents...." Commencement documents? Is he graduating or being divorced? Lawyer-speak is so odd, isn't it.

Also in honor of the day, I bought myself a huge whipped cream and fresh raspberry with chocolate cake confection at the Nugget's bakery. You will no doubt hear me speak about the Nugget often as it is now the sole reason why Elk Grove is worth living in. Think a privately-owned Whole Foods where the service is so good that they are something like the eighth best company to work for in ALL OF AMERICA. Which is why I wasn't surprised when after I told the checker that it was my birthday (hey, I've been singing to myself all day), he closed his register, said "don't move," and came back a couple of minutes later with a huge bouquet of flowers. Not surprised, but very very pleased and honored. I even put them in water when I got home.

I am, I must say, a happy camper.....

From the files of: Here's What It's Like To Live Without A Man Around The House

I wish I had taken photos, but really, I was too shocked to even think of it. This morning, just after I brushed my teeth (in all innocence), I spied through the corner of my eye: my brand new outdoor umbrella go sailing across the yard.

I ran. I flung open (or should that be shoved, considering it's a slider?) the back door and raced to the Good Neighbor fence off to the left. There tottering teetering precariously about to pitch itself head first into my neighbor's yard was my unfurled umbrella. I grabbed it, hoping that I would not pull a Mary Poppins. The umbrella and I did the Texas Two Step for a couple of beats before I brought it to heel (aren't you excited by the wild mixing of my metaphors here?). I managed to find the crank and turned it as fast as I could. The umbrella furled. The crisis was averted.

Until I looked at the redwood table. Here it is. The umbrella fits into a hole in the center of the table and then extends down to a cast iron umbrella stand. I repeat, cast iron. I paid almost as much for the stand as I did for the umbrella because I'm smart and I know that these umbrellas require steady footing of some sort. Clever, aren't I.

So back to the table. It wasn't there. Not there at all. The chairs were there, but the table, she had gone elsewhere. Perhaps to Oz.

Ah, shit, I said, because I'm eloquent and articulate that way. I did a three eighty of my backyard and, oh yes, I see it now. The table has been tumbled this way and that and is now on its head over by the fountain. Because I'm clever, I got immediately what had happened: the Mary Poppins scenario had happened to my table.

Since I live alone, there's no one to share this mighty feat of nature with. But then my gardener, Bob arrives and despite the fact that I know this will extend his time doing my yard work from 5 minutes to 7, I take him around back and show him my table. He is most appreciative. And helpful. He gets down on the ground and shows me that there's this screw thingie on the cast iron umbrella stand. One is meant, he tells me, to put the umbrella in the stand and then tighten the screw thingie. That, he assures me, is what is necessary to keep the umbrella where it belongs.

He was right. The wind blew like a bitch all afternoon, but my umbrella, she stayed put and my outdoor scene is restored to normalcy. Except for the vinyl tablecloth. Which is probably in someone's yard a house or two down.

Los Angeles, San Jose, or Elk Grove

The subtitle for this post could be, "To move or not to move; that is the question." Not exactly Shakespearean, perhaps, but vexing all the same to me. The other day Karen of MidLife's A Trip posted a piece on Choices on MidLifeBloggers. It spoke to me because I've got this whole where shall I live thing going on.

When D left, much of my reason for living in Northern California slithered out the door as well. We moved up here because he hated LA. I didn't; I loved it. But dutiful wife that I was (so sayeth I!), I went along with the selling of the LA house and the buying of the Elk Grove house and the subsequent moving of much shit and a few good things to our brand-spanking new Elk Grove house, where we were supposed to live--tra la!--happily ever after.

I don't want to rehash the whole thing, but suffice to say the happy part was very short-lived. For him and for me. I never feel like one of The Gang anywhere I go, but up here in what is basically a suburb of Sacramento (which, forgive me, should really be considered be suburb of the Bay Area), I am that proverbial Sore Thumb.

However, I am a determined Sore Thumb and so I have, over the past almost three years, worked hard to make a place for myself here. And I have not been unsuccessful. Thus, when D left and everyone thought I'd hightail it immediately back to LA, I didn't. I bravely stayed put. I earnestly believed I was DOING RIGHT by make a new life for myself here, in my house, with my stuff. Then the housing market tanked and my new house was right in the middle of the implosion. Now it seemed important to me not to sell my house at a significant loss. So I've kept on keeping on.

Except that along with the housing market, the economy has now tanked and my house just sitting here minding its own business has lost considerable, VERY CONSIDERABLE value. That's equity, people. And speaking of same, that's what I'm living on, basically, 'cause the job, she is not coming. I'm starting to get a wee bit concerned. (I'm also starting to sniff Molly's dog food to see if I could actually eat it if I had to.) The fact is, I need to be earning money, and while I did cash my first BlogHer check the other day (hooray!), it wouldn't keep Molly herself in dogfood for a month. So what to do, what to do, what to do....

I'm not just telling your all this to entertain you (you're laughing at my misfortune, are you?). Rather, I'm telling you all this because in the next couple of days, I'm going to lay out the pros and cons of moving and not moving. I'm doing it because I believe your collective wisdom is exactly what I need right now. So will you please come along for the ride? It will be a short one, and while there's no prize at the end (okay, I could come up with something if you insist), you will have the tremendous satisfaction of knowing you've helped a pal along the way.

Pa Joad Left Last Night

Tied his mattress to the top of his vehicle and lit out for parts north, Yuba City to be exact, where he is now a proud homeowner.

You did know that he's been here all this time, didn't you? Through Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's...he's been my "tenant." Paying rent. Sleeping in the guest room. Taking the garbage cans out every Sunday, but doing the dishes far less than he used to (in the short time he was in Oregon, he developed a cute habit of just leaving his empty plate sitting on the table-- waiting for Mable to come clear the dishes, I guess). We generally ate dinner together, either of my making or his gathering, and breakfast was ALWAYS a Starbucks and scone (well, it still is, but now I have to go and get it myself, gosh darn it). We coordinated our lives and lived as--well, really as we always did. Which is telling, I'm sure.

Flotsam and Jetsam...post Christmas

I don't know if several days break is what I've been giving myself. I don't think it is the beginning of the end. More, I want to really get at why I'm doing ByJane, the "good" reasons and the "ill". I've erased that last phrase several times, because I don't like the opposition of good and ill. But it keeps coming back into my head, and I think it's because in some ways the "ill" reasons are those that I consider parts of my psyche that I would rather not exist. In other words, shit that I do.

One majorly (as they say) reason I've done (tense intentional) ByJane is because I want to play with the big guys, the A-listers. Not because I particularly like them (some I do; some--eh) or because I have anything really in common with them, thirty- and forty-something mommybloggers that they are. I want to play with the big guys because, pure and simple, that will signal to all and sundry, not the least of which is moi, that I have great worth. This is so obviously "ill" that I need say no more.

Another reason, which is nestled right in tight with the one above, is that I want to make money writing. Now I could, as I have done before, work to do it the traditional way: query, article, rewrite, revise rewrite, revise revised rewrite, wait for pay. Can you tell what fond memories I have of freelancing? So one would think I would do most anything to avoid it. Yes, one would. Unless one knew my uber-contrary ways.

Here are the things that I have been told/asked to do on my blog so as to make it PAY: (1) Focus on just one topic. I am constitutionally incapable of doing this. I have ADD for chrissake, people; my focus is in the best of times scattered. And besides, I don't wanna. And besides that, shouldn't the sharpness of my prose make up for the lack of focus? I mean, some days I reread what I've written and I think, hot damn, that's good. I wait for the world to beat a path to my door and...and...and...I'm still waiting. Then I think, hey , maybe it's not so good, maybe I'm fooling myself, maybe I've lost It. And then I'm all depressed and sad and who wants to write cheery things in that state of mind.

(2) Write about the breakup of my marriage. Do you have any idea how my stats went up when I first broke the news? Not to mention that I got a contract to write about divorce for a site that either never got going or is swinging without me. Because, frankly, I'm not so good at putting that ironic twist on someone else's, my soontobex's, psyche. I figure he's entitled to do his thing without my commenting on it and drawing the world's attention to it and creating subtle jokes and cynical snipes about it. And since all of that is one half of the story, I sorta can't write about the breakup of my marriage. Even if it would pay handsomely to do so. And maybe, even, make me an A-lister (because even I realize that Divorce is a focus, a single subject, that elusive grail). Not writing about it also means that some days what is on my mind is a great big ole elephant in the blog. A subtle beige one, with floppy ears. About which I will say no more because who wants to write cheery things in that state of mind.

Okay, the symmetry of these two final sentences is very nice and all, but really leads to the impression that I'm walking around wounded, dragging my limp and shattered ego/heart behind me. Well, t'ain't so, McGee. Generally speaking, I'm pretty up these days. I'm working on stuff and there's movement and life is good. Maybe because I'm working on Stuff. The advantage to having this shrink education (not to mention the wisdom of, ahem, the elders) is that I really can see my Stuff. I can lay it out and go, Ohho so that's what that's about...Hmmmm, very interesting. And then I think, oh, great for the blog. And then I think, why do I have to turn my every insight into a blog post? Am I living my life to live it--or to blog it?

And that brings me right back to the Original Ill--blogging as a manifestation of an untoward ego need.

Wooow! who said that?

Flotsam & Jetsam & Metaphors Galore

Last night I dreamt I got stuck in a steep ravine. I started to climb out and then stopped because I remembered how old I am. Too old to be climbing out of ravines, it would seem. In my dream, I found another way out, but when I awoke--now--I'm wondering if "too old" is a fact of life to be dealt with (as I did in the dream) or an excuse.

The brined chicken was not successful. Despite being all nicely browned, crispy even, on the outside, it was still pink--oh, yuck!--on the inside. I had to zap it in the microwave which, of course, left it dry. I'm wondering if brining does something to poultry that affects cooking time and temp. I find myself, in this current bout of cooking mania, very interested in the chemistry involved. It's as if--no, it is!--that I've suddenly discovered that cooking is really a chain of chemical reactions. Unfortunately chemistry was my worst, absolute worst subject in school...


The product of my weeding on Sunday: I chopped and trimmed and cut and eventually pulled out a dead bush . It was the sister to the bush below on the left. Why did one live and prosper while the other died? I'm not sure. Maybe it was the incredibly invasive vining weed that had wrapped itself around and through the bush. Or maybe it was just Its Time.

This is the clear space that's left, and now I get to decide what I want to put there. I'm thinking bulbs--I love hyacinths. And maybe herbs. I'm not sure.

When I typed that first sentence above, it came out as , "The product of my wedding on Sunday..." Today, actually, is the anniversary of my wedding nineteen years ago. Do I regret it? No. Do I regret its ending? In some ways, yes and in some ways, no. It is what it is and I am what I am, and today I'm happy with that.

My 200th Post....must be pithy!

But I am so not in a pithy state of mind. (Can we please set that to music and have Jamie Foxx do Ray Charles singing it?)

My mood is [puts-spit on finger to the air] pissy, I would say. When one has so completely fucked up one's life, how else should one feel. One would ask. And one would have no answer.

I am down and out sad. Okay, there; I've said it. And now what? I don't know. That's the problem: I don't know.

Mea Culpa...

The drive to LA takes 6-7 hours, depending on all the variables that time and distance offer. I go on 5, the IntraState, the big, wonking highway that all the truck drivers use as well. It goes, for me, from Elk Grove to Stockton, down through the Central Valley, the home of America's Big-time Agribusiness. No sweet little farms here. Just acres and acres, miles and miles of arable dirt in various stages of production: tilled, sowed, growing, harvested. The total effect is brown. Dirty brown. It's as boring as pig shit*. Speaking of which, scenic route 5 also is home to--okay, not pigs, but cows. So let's revise that to, it's as boring as cow shit. Of which there is an amazing amount. There are feed lots along the highway where they bring in cattle to fatten 'em up for the--well, you know what. The cows, thousands of them, just stand seemingly by the road, for miles inland, chewing and shitting, shitting and chewing. The smell is beyond belief. It's enough to gag a maggot.*

(*I'd like to thank my college roommate, Harriet, for both of these metaphors. If they seem somewhat dated--well, you know how long ago I went to college)

I tell you all this so you have some idea of what I endured during those 6-7 hours down to LA. And the 6-7 hours back home. Alone. By myself, that is. The radio--oh, the radio gets for most of the trip a choice of Spanish-speaking stations, Country & Western or Save-Me-Jesus stations. I don't speak Spanish. I like C & W, but it's all a bit too tragic for me these days, so I spent some considerable time listening to Pastor Whatchamacallit trying to convince me to give up my life for the Lord. Or, at the least, send him, Pastor W, a donation so he could pray to the Almighty that my sinning soul would be saved. I was unmoved, beyond noting that these guys are all heavily into the Old Testament,and they are also overly-partial to Paul, who as best I can tell had lots to say about women and hair. But then I'm Jewish, so I may have misunderstood.

All of this--yes, I have a point and I am getting to it--is to say that I spent some 13-14 hours by myself in the car, and something odd happened. My point of view began to change. On this whole thing, this marriage stuff, with D. After a couple of hours of regurgitating my plaints, poor me, bad him, oh woe, I suddenly had what might be called a chiropractic adjustment of the psyche. I started, maybe just out of sheer boredom, to think through the whole thing again but to see it through his eyes. Oh wow.

Suddenly, all the stuff that he was saying and doing made complete sense. I got It. Really got It. And I saw how much of all we have and have not become has been because of what I wasn't, rather than what he wasn't. Basically, I saw that I have been over the years so focused on ME ME ME and what I should have or want or need that I stopped seeing him. Stopped hearing him. Stopped being with him.

This is huge. D has said from time to time that I can be an obnoxious asshole. He's right. I can, and I have. There is something incredibly liberating about realizing this. Maybe because realizing my culpability also realizes my self-determination.

Why I Write

I am quite sad today. It has been a week since any contact with D. I’m having those moments of abject amazement that after decades living in each other’s pockets, we have come to this. I don’t know how he feels about it, obviously, but I’m assuming he’s okay with it. Doin’ all right. Makin’ out. Whatever.

How do guys do that, turn their backs so completely on a relationship? It happened to me once before, in college. One minute I had a boyfriend and the next he was telling me that he had succeeding in putting me out of his mind. An act of will, to what end I’m not sure. Maybe that summer vacation was beginning. Maybe that I wouldn’t put out. I still remember sitting in the park, at night, on a bench and listening to him say that he’d just made up his mind not to care for me anymore. My mouth is still hanging open at that one.

I’m not writing this for publication, particularly. Maybe I’ll put it on ByJane, probably I will as I’m not uncomfortable revealing the things I do. But I don’t want, as another blogger put it, a pity party. Mostly I’m up, or at least even-keeled. I think when I have to talk about the situation to others, it puts me in a funk of sorts. Yesterday I had lunch with a friend, and though she wasn’t at all nosy, I ended up spending more time with those words about the situation in my head and mouth than was good for me. And last night at knitting, a friend asked how I was doing. She asked out of concern, to be supportive, but what I thought was, I don’t want to have to think about it enough to articulate something reasonable and truthful to someone who is not inside my head. But I did answer her, and maybe that’s why I had a painful dream of D and the situation he has created, and I woke up feeling sad. And now, quite sad.

But this is why I write. Because somehow, after saying all this, I don’t feel so sad anymore. Why is that? Because I've said what I'm feeling, I've communicated my state to the outside world. It's not just holed up on my heart where unspoken, it can fester. It doesn't matter that it's just me and the laptop (and Molly, the faithful dog) here in my office. I 'm writing to people who I know read my words, even if I don't actually know my readers face-to-face.

The meme on BlogRhet asked: Can you point to a stage where you began to feel that your blog might be part of a conversation? Where you might be part of a community of interacting writers? When did that happen for me? In stages, incrementally, often microscopically. First, there were the people I actually had relationships with before blogging, and then came the people I met through blogging. And then people who I've never seen and maybe never will. But they're in my heart and--

--I just realized--they're in my head. They are the people in my head for whom I am "articulat[ing] something reasonable and truthful." And the act of doing so to my blogging community is vital to me. Non-bloggers often assume that what we do is just an on-line journal, and for some that may be. But for me, it goes beyond the bounds of a journal. My journals over the years are so full of woe and pathos, even I can't bear to read some of them. I just spill it all out there, guts on the page, inarticulate, pure emotion.

In fact, I started this post in my journal and you can see by the change in font where I switched to the Blogger post. It was at the point where I realized that I had written myself out of sadness, and set about to figure out why and how. And I recalled the moment, round about the middle of the second paragraph where I made the choice of voice, my voice, the voice of ByJane, which is totally different from that of my journals. It was a deliberate choice, and it signaled my intent to work at articulating what was reasonable and truthful. To write and revise, rework and rethink so that I'm telling all of you what I am feeling right now. Not shouting to myself on some private pages.

Because I am part of a community of bloggers, I know I'm being heard. And that makes me not alone.

Blogito ergo sum....indeed.

The Newly-Single Woman Goes Food Shopping

...and what she buys--well, just have a look.




I spent just about what I always spend at the supermarket, give or take a dollar or two (or ten)(or twenty). But there was a noticeable difference in what I bought. I haven't exactly reached the cat food and powdered milk stage, but I think the perceptive reader can tell there's a change in my larder.

For example, Coke Diet 6-8 oz. Have you seen these 8 oz. cans? They're kinda compressed, sort of midget versions of the real thing. I bought them because I never finish my Cokes, and before I was newly-single they would hang around the refrigerator going flat. And annoying D. Who could drink a 12-pack of Diet Coke in 36 hours.

If you scan both photos, you'll see that there is no meat. NO MEAT! Where's the beef? It's not a meal if there's no meat. Gotta have meat. This was the mantra I lived by before I was newly-single. But now--ha! I get to eat what I want, when I want. Maybe I will eat meat and maybe I won't. My call--tra la la!

There are, of course, the obligatory diet frozen dinners for those evenings when I just don't feel like cooking. Before I was newly-single, those were the nights we ate fast food. My cousin wrote Fast Food Nation, so I know how awful that stuff is for you. Now stocked up as I am with Lean Gourmet Meals, I can get my engineered food and multi-syllabic chemical additives without leaving the comfort of my own home.

Then there's the Nature's Path Organic Optimum Zen cereal. This was an impulse buy, I must confess; I went originally for Cheerio's. But how, in my current situation, could I resist a breakfast food that promised me "a 'Zen' moment, where health, mental balance, spiritual fulfillment come together and you can 'be' the best that you are." I'm really liking that whole mindfulness thing, so why shouldn't my stomach benefit as well.

You can see I bought lots of produce. Grapes and cherries. For me. All for me! And salad stuff and single serving cans of tuna and beans and cantaloupe and my own mini watermelon, which is listed as Org Personal H2O (which the wicked might think was a strange device for pleasuring onesself, but it's merely the supermarket's way of cataloging Very, Very, Very Small Watermelon).

And finally, you'll notice the last two items are digestive-related. A bit close to the cat food model, perhaps, but don't you think that a newly-single woman has earned the right to her heartburn.

Why I Have Not Posted Since Last Week...

...no good reason. Or maybe that should be, no good reason to post. You'll forgive me if my head is somewhere over my left elbow these days, and my scintillating self has gone into retrograde (like Saturn, or is it Jupiter?).

My last post notwithstanding (and what the fuck does that actually mean?), I spent all of Saturday cleaning my house. There is a certain kind of cleaning that I really do enjoy: it's the once in a blue moon, only when I feel like it deep cleaning. Saturday I turned on the TV and Got At The Floors.

First I swept and then I Swiffered and then I Swiffered with wet stuff. I have tile floors that look like something from the Getty Museum (at least, I think so), and they do, as the Brits would say, come up all nice when they're clean. I also Swiffer Carpet Flicked the area rug. Several times, since Molly likes to chomp on her crunchies while lying on the rug, and she will get crumbs, you know.

You might be asking why I didn't just vacuum the whole thing, and that is, of course and indeed, a legitimate question. Particularly since there are several vacuums in the house. But they are Electroluxes, the cannister kind with a long hose and attachments. It isn't that they belong to the former man-of-the-house--which they do and he is a cannister vacuum junkie. It is that I have found in my vast experience with floors that I cannot bear dragging the cannister along like a recalcitrant dog whining at the end of a leash.

Along with my Swiffer activities, I did some redecorating. I had the Home & Garden channel on, so I was inspired I suppose. I rearranged tschokes and pictures, made little arrangements, as they tell you to do, of bullshitty whatnot stuff that I've had lying around for ages. I actually went shopping in my own house for knicknacks. It was fun. I had a good time. I went to bed happy.

But really, when all is said and done, what I was really doing is no more than a cat does when he marks his territory. I was claiming the house as mine and mine alone. Or almost. Maybe.

I Feel Sleepy, Very Sleepy, So Slee--

I'm fine as long as I'm upright, but the moment I sit at the computer, I begin to sink into the chair and drone into some slllllloooooooooowwww alpha state. I'm trying to do stuff, to get things done, to achieve and make much of my life, but I feel sleepy, so sleepy--!

This morning on my long walk with Molly, I saw a huge white rabbit, complete with big, perky ears. I did a double take. To see a hare on my walk, or ducks, geese, edible birds of all sort is not unusual. But a white rabbit? The Easter Bunny? And it was --did I mention this--huge. I know I saw it, but my life is such that maybe I didn't. Or maybe it was my father come down to beat the shit out of D for abandoning his little girl. You can see where my mind is these days.

Speaking of my father (yes, the emparadised one), did I ever tell you that I carry a picture of him in the console of my car? Sort of like a photographic St. Christopher. Yesterday I took it out--because I was stuffing yet another gas receipt in the console--and put it in my Date Book, which I was carrying to my appointment with the lawyer. What do you think of them apples, Harold Darling, I asked him. He didn't answer, but I can tell he isn't pleased.

The response to my Meme in Quarter Time was so fantastic that I've had to forego the prizes, since there were so many I couldn't possibly choose. I will now, however, begin the backstories. Don't know how far I'll get today, because remember that I feel sooooo sleeeeeepy. So maybe I'll just get the Bold-faced Lies out of the way to begin with:

4. I love Progressive Jazz.
Wrong. I hate Progressive Jazz. It is the only kind of music I have absolutely no tolerance for. Rap, yes. Country/western, certainly. Rock, pop, folk, and classical--yep, yep, yep, and yep. Progressive Jazz--nope. It's just noise to me. I get that there are improvisations and trills and drills and recurring whatevers, but that's all intellectual as far as I'm concerned. Maybe I'm not smart enough. That has occurred to me, since my sense is that Progressive Jazz is the province
of intellectuals. If so, call me dumb; or call me someone who needs more melody, more heart, more emotion in her music.

Two Weddings, Two Divorces

The first time I got married, I wasn't exactly blushing, but I certainly marched down the aisle in full regalia. I was married at Heinz Chapel, which is an 18th century reproduction of a 16th century church in Europe, somewhere. It's got gorgeous stained windows, six feet high, depicting what I can't quite remember, but it seems to me that blue, deep dark blue is the prominent color. You'll forgive me for my sketchiness of details: it was a long time ago and I was really just a girl then, full of hope and dreams and fantasies about what my marriage would be. That it wasn't could have been predicted at the moment, but how was I to know that.

The second time I got married, it was in my parents living room. My sister played me in to Here Comes The Bride on my dad's electric organ, and the only people present were those family members who were my nearest and dearest. I wore an elegant silk suit in a champagne color, size 7 if you please. We drove to Oregon to honeymoon, and perhaps the result of that marriage might have been predicted by the sight that greeted me the first morning: dead moose heads in various stages of decomposition jammed on fence posts.

I thought of the difference between my two weddings this morning when I sat in the lawyer's office and listened to her tell me the drill. It didn't sound familiar, even though I must have gone through it once before. I couldn't figure out why and then I thought of how Marriage Number One came to an end: not with a bang, but a whimper. I left the marriage but didn't divorce until some, oh, say, about ten years later when a friend who was a lawyer could not stand it anymore and prepared all the papers for me. All I had to do was show up in the court room and respond to the judge's "is-it-true-that-irreconcilable-differences" spiel in the affirmative.

This time promises to be somewhat different. I really will have to be engaged in the process, which is ironic considering that in #1, I engineered the breakup, and now in #2, I haven't. Another irony: big fancy wedding>puny little divorce; puny little wedding>big fancy divorce. I'm not sure what, if anything, to make of that.

Don't Slam The Door....

So here I am in my newly-emptied house. It's not really empty. Just the clothes and the books and the paintings and the man are gone.

For the past few days, he has been filling the SUV, newly registered in his name, with stuff. The garage, which we had specially fitted-out so it could be his studio, took the longest time. And made the smallest dent in my perception. But then, sometime yesterday or maybe the night before, I started to notice. A favorite painting that I sort of considered 'mine' was gone. And his clothes--there are few things sadder, it seems to me, than a closetfull of empty hangers. Of course, the good news is that I will probably never have to buy plastic hangers again, so many do I now have as spares.

Paintings off the walls and some transportable furniture left bare places that I couldn't leave alone. So I went trolling through my side of the garage and found a painting that I had done when I was about sixteen to hang where one of his had been. I quite like the painting; it's an abstract that I did in my aunt's studio one night while the grownups were talking 'round the table. It doesn't really fill the space, but it's better than blank wall, until I decide what I really do want there. And one of the Mission rockers that I bought at an auction in PA, that I put where his huge upholstered Bishop's chair had been. It's too small as well, but it will do the job. That all went out yesterday, and truth to tell, I felt quite sad all evening.

Today, he packed up his computer. But not before I undertook the Herculean task of deleting all of my files and programs. We shared that computer for a number of years and unwrapping my life on the hard drive from his was probably harder than the legal separation of property will be.
This is all so new and mostly, I don't know what to make of it. When I think of the reality of what's happening, I'm astonished, aghast, appalled. How can this be? How is it that in the space of what, six weeks, life as I knew it and expected it to be has been erased?

Still, I can't say I'm suffering mightily. I'm shocked and hurt and disappointed and mad--hey, I'm a candidate for the stages of mourning, aren't I! Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, writ large. But I'm sleeping well, and my appetite isn't off. And I'm exercising--yes, yes, yes--on my new Pilates Reformer, so tomorrow is another day, etc. etc. etc.

Actually, Molly is the one that I feel the most for. So much of her life was spent with him. They had routines that she won't have with me. I won't be taking her to Starbucks every morning and sharing my scone with her. Nor will she accompany me on trips hither and yon, although I do have her carseat (yes, Molly has a car seat, of course) in my car. But they used to spend some good portion of the day driving. And if he was in the garage painting, she was there with him. She doesn't understand what's going on. All she knows is, something's wrong with my people. Today I sat on the sofa with her after he had driven off and she scrunched herself up small, shoved her head under my hip and jammed the rest of her body as close to mine as she could get. I think she would have gotten inside me if she could. And then she'd be sure that I too wouldn't leave her.

I'm in Exalted Company, Lucky Me

Last week when I was at my dentist's in LA (yes, darling, of course I go to B.Hills for my dental work), I told him about the demise of my marriage. He was appalled. Chagrined. And sympathetic. And then he muttered something about it happening all over. I didn't question him--because his hands were in my mouth, for god's sake--but I wondered. And now I'm wondering no more. All is clear as headline after headline hits the tabs about famous couples breaking up.

Larry and Laurie David, 20+ years. Anthony and Corina Villaraigosa, 20+ years. Dermot Mulroney and Katherine Keener, 17 years.

Is there something in the air? It's a pretty big deal, it seems to me, when couples split after such a long time together. Your lives are so intertwined. You get the same jokes. You know where to tread lightly and where not to go at all. You live overlapping lives, which is sometimes good and sometimes bad and sometimes just plain blah. But just how irreconcilable must differences be in order to warrant creating the cataclysm of divorce after decades together?

Still, my second or third thought after hearing about these splits was--hey, these guys are now available. Not that I find the notion of dating at all, AT ALL, appealing. When D and I first married, I said, this is it. If this doesn't work, I'm done with the whole man thing. But still, I quite fancy the idea of having dinner with Larry David.

And then there's Paul McCartney, he's on the block as well. I always was a big Paul fan.....

The Wandering Minstrel Boy Returns....

...and not to a hero's welcome, obviously. I've got my ears plugged up with my Ipod buds (thank you, Steve Jobs) and I'm doing my best to maintain the illusion that I'm alone. This was the resulting dialogue:

D: So, that's the way it's going to be from now on? You're doing vengence.

J: No, I'm doing self-protection.

And it's true. I am not into the vengence trip. It is exhausting and so non-productive. I just don't care enough, I guess. But it does interest me that he would assume the starring role in this little play.

So What's New?

I've spent the better part of the day mewling and puking on the nets, checking my email, reading blogs, rechecking my email, reading more blogs, rechecking my email--. You get the point, don't you.

That was the portion of the day when I was not telling D that I wanted him out, out, out.

I can hear a collective gasp. But really, those of you who are careful readers must have know this was coming.

I want him out because he (1) doesn't want to be married any more, and (2) wants to move to Oregon. I'm not sure how those things are related, but this is a guy that has never really been alone, so I'm willing to bet he's got some close personal friend waiting for him up there. Whatever.

He announced this, apropos of nothing, about a month ago. I've been sitting on it and with it since then. The whole thing is a mystery to me, and it's not like I'm an ostrich when it comes to things psychodynamic. He seems incapable of or unwilling to offer any rational explanation. He can't even come up with a dramatic one that I could make some money off in Nashville.

So here I am, "ahem"-years old, married for almost two decades and, hey world, welcome me back.