THE BEST MAN

I’ve said before that when my husband cheated and launched his egress from our marriage I met myself. With stability yanked from me and control a thing of the past (or of the imagination in the past), I discovered my core. And I was delighted with what I found. I’m made of rugged stuff. My values are solid. Earnestly, I did everything I could to save my marriage. I wouldn’t change anything about my behavior during that time. I don’t mind telling you that when it comes to the matters that really matter, I’m thoroughly extraordinary.

And, as it turns out, that quality is inherited. 

On June 27th of last year, after The Wasband turned a cross-country video chat into my personal horror movie, I contacted my parents. Through a mess of waterworks, I told them that their son-in-law of ten years was having an affair and was presently packing up half of our house so he could move out. To where, he wasn’t certain. My dad, Jack, said two significant things. He told me to go home. I was away at school in Boston. He told me to bail and get back to Sparks. And then he said that if it was okay with me he was going to invite The Wasband to come stay with them.

I’ll say that again, because it’s so outlandish: my husband cheated on me—he was “in love” with another woman—and my dad invited him to come stay at their house in Utah while The Wasband figured out his next steps, hopefully landing on staying married to their daughter. To me, that spoke of two things. First, it said that my parents didn’t just think of my spouse as their daughter’s husband; they saw him as their son, and they knew that their son needed help. And second, it said that my parents are crazy.

Who just does that? Who feels the heartache of seeing their eldest daughter in the kind of pain they’d never seen her experience before, and invites the source of her misery to move in with them? Only my parents. They’re cyborgs. They plug in at night. 

Don’t think this was some messed up we-love-him-so-we’re-gonna-keep-him-even-if-he’s-hurt-you thing. No, they were taking their cues from me. Since I wanted to rescue the marriage, they were going to do whatever it took to help me. 

Wasband took them up on the offer. He moved a bed, some furniture, a TV, his computer paraphernalia, and all his clothes to a bedroom in my parent’s house 500 miles thataway until he couldn't take being away from his girlfriend any longer.

During the are-we-aren’t-we? separation period, I talked to my dad a lot. Some weeks it was every day. Jack would tell me I’m gonna be fine. He would tell me this isn’t the end. He’d say that though he knew I didn’t want to hear it and wouldn’t believe it, if the marriage didn’t work out, I’d find someone else who I wouldn’t have to beg to love me. 

Sometime in July The Wasband and his woman went AWOL. No one knew where they were. He wouldn’t return my calls or messages. For a week, I spent the nights sleeping fitfully on the daybed in my office, clutching my phone in case it rang. We finally got a beat on them when they showed up in Utah and The Wasband went to my parents‘ house to retrieve all the stuff he’d moved over there. The only person at home was my dad. My mom was in Sparks babysitting her sobbing disaster of an oldest kid.

Dad helped him. Because he is the best man I know, my dad helped my wayward husband move his stuff into a U-Haul. He helped until my ex asked if he could go get his mistress from wherever she was waiting and bring her up to the house. Then Jack appropriately went papa bear on his ass and kicked The Wasband out with only the stuff he’d packed already.

My dad stood up for me. Knowing that I wanted to save my marriage, he showed compassion, talked with The Wasband, and helped him move his things. And then, when shit got all crazy-like, even though he loved my husband as his own kid, my dad took out the trash.

When my divorce papers were being processed, Dad told me that he’d had my soon-to-be-officially-ex photoshopped out of the family photo. And before I started dating Jim, my dad started to throw his considerable creativity behind finding me a suitable mate. (Oh, Dad . . . ) It’s been almost a year since my life fell apart, and since then I’ve seen a side of my parents that I hadn’t experienced before. They take being supportive to an almost eerie level.

Today is Fathers’ Day. And Jack is unquestionably the very best there is.

SUMMER IN A DAY

On this single Saturday, I managed to get in a bunch of summer’s best stuff—

I slept in.

As part of the last leg of his 35-mile bike ride, the means by which I believe my boyfriend maintains the greatest pair of legs I’ve ever seen on a dude (I could walk up the stairs behind that man for days), my Jim guy came over.

We went to his house where I jumped on the trampoline with Grace and Blake, Jim’s kickass neighbor kids. After a few unsightly attempts, I stuck a front flip. I haven’t done that in, like, 15 years. (Blake, on the other hand, may have circus performance in his future. Front flip into back flip into twisty flip into back flip an on. I envy that 12-year-old's mad tramp skills.)

Since my Haley-sister, her husband Jon, and their girlies, Adds and Cwaire Bear, were driving through Reno, we met them at at Scheels for lunch, where I ate summer’s own food—chips, iced tea, and a veggie burger. While at the behemoth sports store, Addie wanted to ride the ferris wheel, so we did that.

Next, Jim and I stopped for froyo. Mine was strawberry lemonade. He had root beer (which, until right now, I thought was one word).

Then, babied by a light breeze, we sat on the little couch on his deck, finished our frozen treats, and examined his yard for opportunity areas. Top of the list: the rose bushes around the basketball court. Who the hell puts roses around a basketball court?

When I got home, I made vanilla bean ice cream.

Then I took me a three-hour nap.

Now, after I change a tube on my bike, I’m gonna put my puppy—who I should have named Gidget because, I mean, look at her, it totally works—in the front basket and take the furball for a little ride. She’s liking that now.

How much summer can you fit into one day? Today tells me quite a lot.

SWEET NOTHINGS

• If you precede a phrase with “My therapist says,” you can get away with pretty much anything. There’s the true and somewhat reasonable, “My therapist says that I need to practice better ‘sleep hygiene,’ so I’m buying this lavender lotion,” and then there’s the fun, false stuff you can play around with like, “My therapist says that eating anything green will trigger a bout of self-hate, so I’ll have to pass on that creamed spinach you just put in front of me.”

• Tonight I witnessed a guy in a truck decorated with a bunch of love humanity-themed bumper stickers  wig out at a pedestrian for crossing on a green.

• When it comes to food preferences, texture is my overwhelming decisive factor. Though I sort of want to, I can’t get behind custard-drenched bread dishes. French bread. Bread pudding. I’ve never liked that stuff. The only bread pudding I’ve enjoyed is some my mom made that isn’t mushy, and I only tried it ‘cause she really insisted.

• After listening to a Studio 360 podcast today wherein Kurt Andersen interviewed the composer, I really want to see Broadway's Matilda. So someone please let me know when it travels west. New York is inconveniently far away from Sparks, Nevada.

• Since I deeply love false, drug-induced slumber, I miss Ambien like I’d miss an amputated limb. But even though I’ve got 45 pills left, I’m off the stuff. Shame and a teacher’s pet complex were my motivators. My doctor wanted me to be done with prescription tranquilizers more than a month ago, and if I happen to call on her for work and she happens to ask if I’m still taking Ambien, I’d be ashamed to admit that I am. I want to be the Good Patient and please my physician.

• The more you say/write, the less impact your words have. I wish knowing that could stop me from over-explaining as I'm so often wont to do.

• Yesterday evening, due to flooding in the area, my power went out. And for a few minutes I was utterly flummoxed as to what to do with myself without technology as a crutch. After a while I landed on origami, an activity I found to be challenging without light.

• My dog won’t jump up on my bed without an invitation. “What excellent training!” you might think. Not the case. I have no idea why she needs a verbal go-ahead to jump on the ottoman and then onto the bed she sleeps on every night. It makes me nutsy. She’ll get up in the night to go outside and then when she comes back upstairs, she taps her paw on the ottoman until I wake up and growl, “Good grief, get up on the bed already you dumb dog.”

• When I told Jim that I had dinner plans with friends tonight he was appropriately dubious. The man knows activities like that are pretty far outside his girlfriend’s norm. Me? Social? By choice? Inconceivable! I avoid socializing because I’m baffled as to why people would want to converge with me. I wonder, “Why me? What in the world do they they want with me?” It’s not a question to which I’ve ever landed on a sound answer.

• I couldn’t be further from needing more yoga clothes. But boy oh boy do I want some.

FRAGMENTS

• I fell of the Quicken wagon, like, two years ago. I’m back on. That means I spent two hours last night classifying three months of expenses. Quicken automatically categorized all my Amazon purchases as Gifts. So when I initially checked out the pie chart of my monthly expenses, I looked very, very generous.

• Quicken has revealed—okay, that’s a lie, Quicken has confirmed—that I spend a lot of money completely unnecessarily. So, I am not doing that any more. I mean it! I’m not!

• I genuinely like microwave popcorn. And I don’t feel guilty about it.

• Whenever a contestant on Chopped gets out the truffle oil I yell, “No! No! Don’t! Don’t do it!” because I know that the judges are gonna bust ‘em. Have these people never watched the show they’re on? Truffle oil gets you chopped, dudes.

• I think it bothers Jim that I talk at—no, not in, at—movies. But I can’t stop it. I like to interact with my media. (If you click on that link and read the post, do ignore the parts where I say nice a couple nice things about the Wasband. That was before he left me for my boyfriend's wife.)

• Unabashedly, I get all my political news from editorial cartoons.

• My puppy turned 7 on Monday. Right now she smells like Doritos. I don't find it offensive.

• Learn from my poor choices and heed this valuable piece of jaded advice: Don’t rely on anyone for anything. Be as self-sufficient as possible. That way, when your piece-of-garbage spouse leaves, you won’t be adrift sans motor.

• Isn’t panettone just the Italian version of dreaded fruit cake? Nobody likes that stuff. Calling it something fancy really shouldn't change that. Dried fruit things don't belong in baked goods.

• Cooked cherries gross me out.

• American Apparel’s Le Sac dress is a masterwork. I wear dresses home from yoga class and the Le Sac is a revelation. I have three. I want more.

• I miss my Ambien. I didn’t think that I was having bad dreams. Oh, but I am. When I was on my beloved sleep drug, I didn’t remember the nightmares. But now that I’m back to sleeping horribly, I have the privilege of remembering my rotten dreams about the Wasband and his whore next door.

• It’s a blast to come home after the maid service has been here. I get to walk around the house and play Where The Hell’s My Stuff? Nobody’s stealing things; the gals just replace items in strange places. Bath mats in front of the washing machine? Okay, sure. Floor pillows set decoratively on the guest bed? All right. A photo of my sister’s dog Dash in my bathroom? Yeah, let’s do that.

ON DATING

When divorce revealed itself as holy-shit-this-is-really-happening-I’m-about-to-become-a-statistic, I told Shrink Nancy that seeing as I have a family so phenomenal they seem fictional and I’m rockstar at being on my own, I would abstain from dating. Seriously, for what did a I need a man? Experience taught me that things with penises were naught but nuisance. The dear psychologist responded that I was setting myself up for a life of stagnant loneliness. I countered that I was looking at unfettered productivity.

But the mind wanders and, as so often it does, mine took me to list-making. Okay, Shrink Nancy, so say I do date; there’s stuff I’m gonna require in a man. My list was specific, brief, born of caprice, and included stuff like:

He must give hot yoga a fair try, be a Mac user, love dogs, be more of a man than I am, and must not be mistaken for a dude that prefers dudes.

These things are less shallow than they may seem. If a guy isn’t open-minded enough to at least try my Bikram, he won’t ever understand why I merit a high five when I come home from class unrecognizable through the wet of my own sweat and unable to link words into sentences. If he’s a dedicated Microsoft man, he’s dense, and I require someone with smarts. And I don’t ever want to again be imprisoned in my current situation—constantly being asked if my ex is now ex because he finally came out. 

Since the beginning of 2013, I’ve indulged in the luxury of adding cockamamie specifics to my portrait of a man worth maneuvering off the market. 

I want a guy who lifts me into his car when a pencil skirt is prohibitively tight, who shows up with an iced tea—that he couldn’t have known I was craving—just as yoga ends, and who holds me when I cry, waiting for when I’m ready to explain the outburst. I want a man who tries hummus and—hey, why not?—likes it, a guy who remembers that I hate mayonnaise, avoids nonessential garlic because I think it stinks, and, even though he loves to barbecue, the guy I want won’t mind that I’m a vegetarian. And that guy, he’ll make bread.

I want a man who appreciates that I would rather jam forks in my neck than put people out.

The ideal guy for me will think I have skill with words, will love to hear me read my writing, can respect the well-placed curse word, and won’t mind that I swear like a sailor; maybe he’ll even like it.

I need a man who exercises without badgering.

I want a guy whose kiss makes me forget my name, who holds my hand automatically, and, as a blessed change, only gives a damn about fashion when it comes to what I think. Also, he’ll look sexy as hell in glasses.

Because I’m in my 30s, the guy I date will probably have kids, so I’m gonna say he has to be a kickass dad, the kind that doesn’t freak out when it’s not necessary, gets out his fog machine and laser show when the children need entertainment, and loves his offspring like my dad loves me and my sissies. (Read: lots.) He will be the kind of man who is pals with his siblings and who has earned friends who will do anything for him. His friends will be funny, and they’ll be game to give me a shot. My ideal man will text my sisters sometimes, and his parents will see me as the good part of a bad situation. 

It’ll be important that he has a ruefully intimate understanding of what it’s like to have your spouse ditch you for someone else.

This guy’ll help me loosen up, will make me see that 80% of the stuff that stresses me out isn’t worth that kind of energy. Just associating with this man will motivate me to be better at living. He’ll think that watching sports on TV is a waste of time. He will be able to juggle. Sometimes he'll have get off the phone because there's a lizard in his front yard, and he must go catch it. And if he snores, I have to find it inexplicably endearing.

I want this guy to know shit; like, say, when I point at a piece of furniture and ask, “What kind of wood is that?” he can inspect the grain and name it. And when he finds out that key lime pie is one of my most favorite things in the entire world, he’ll research the best one in America and order two. From Florida.

It’s all a helluva lot to ask, I know. But aren't I worthy of something like that? Someone like him?

You know, I think I might be. Which is good news, because, well, I have that. I have him.

My husband left me for another woman. And—oh, so blissfully and so very gratefully—I am dating her ex-husband. 

DIE, SODA!

Diet soda. Now there’s a fraught topic. It’s tasty. It’ll kill you. It’s eating your brain. It’s calorie-free. It’s stealing your bone mass. It’s like mother’s milk. Yay. Nay. Whatever.

Four years ago, I ditched the drink. But when I started grad school, my stress level reached critical mass, and I indulged in a vice. I let diet soda back into my life. I let it back in in a big way. You could say I gave up water in favor of Diet Dr. Pepper. But, I’ve finished school now, and, at the beginning of April, four months after graduation, I realized I wasn’t entitled to that liquid crutch any more.

Dammit.

I’m not big on giving up food items. Aside from eschewing meat, which I did for, ahem, emotional reasons, I’ve never been successful when I’ve tried to cut something out of my diet. I quit, and then I crash, and then the forbidden food suddenly becomes my primary source of “nutrition.”  So the plan with soda has been to slice it out completely for a while, and then, after a spell of purity, to permit the occasional bottle. You know, in a more reasonable fashion than using Diet Dr. Pepper as my chief method of “hydration.”

I’m in the loop about soda being bad for me. But I’m as human as we come, and I need leeway in my life. One of my greatest talents is justification; very proudly, I can vindicate anything. And when I come to the point where I feel it’s okay to allow a diet soda once in a while—to give moderation a shot—the way I’ll justify an evil drink here and there is that, for the most part, mine’s a healthy lifestyle. My exercise is much. I don’t eat meat. I swallow vitamins daily. I’ve never drank. I try to get a decent amount of sleep. I’ve never smoked anything. I visit the doctor regularly. I eat tons of fruit. I keep my mind lively. I engage in vegetable consumption every now and again. And since I’m no longer in the depths of divorce despair, using candy as a meal substitute is a less frequent happening.

When it comes to other people drinking lotsa soda, I land exactly where I land regarding other people eating meat: do as you will; the kinds of things you put in your body are your business. You're telling yourself that it's okay to suck down buckets of diet soda 'cause the first ingredient is "water?" Sure. Whatever. Okay. I am a master at telling myself stories. Personally, I employed that one off and on for years. Sometimes it's time to back off of certain things. Other times, like, say, during a couple years of graduate school, full-time work, designing stuff, and plowing through the trauma of a cheating spouse, it's time to have a vice, make mistakes, tell yourself lies, and justify. 

Where I’m lucky in shedding my “need” for DDP—and I knew this would be the case since I’ve been here before—is that I feel a difference in just a couple days of abstinence. My skin’s not great to begin with, but diet soda makes it really suck, even when I’m sweating a lot in yoga, even when I’m adding in extra water. I’ve known that fact for years, but, with my life being as it was, that understanding wasn’t enough to get me to sever the dependent relationship. Fortunately, for now at least, it is enough to keep me from sliding back into the habit of spending every day guzzling gallon after gallon of that truly toothsome poison.

BUYCYCLE

On Monday, the sunshine poisoned me with an idea: I want a bike. That’s not just a strange thought for me; it’s like I’ve gone bat shit crazy. I haven’t been on a bike in fifteen years. I don’t do Outdoors. I avoid UV rays like they’re mayonnaise. As a result, I am so white that I make porcelain look tan. However, I suddenly wanted a bike.

So I went online, and within thirty minutes of my impulse to ride, I had Auntie Amazon hooking me up with some wheels. Now, because I haven’t been on a bike since I was knee-high to a grasshopper (oh, all right, that’s not fair; I’m still knee-high to a grasshopper), I wasn’t sure if I was actually going to like it. After all, this was born of a whim. So I put my reasoning prowess to work and formed a plan.

I’d like tell you that I’m usually smart with money, but that’d be a big fat lie. I spend like death's upon me. Instead, I’ll tell you that, in my typical fiscally reckless fashion, I came up with this idea: as an experiment, I would order the most inexpensive cruiser I could find, knowing that there's a good chance it'd be crummy. If it turned out that I enjoyed riding a bike, I’d give that test bike away and upgrade to a good one. Instead of rashly purchasing a bike, even a cheap one, could I have borrowed someone else’s wheels to see if my whim was nothing more than hormones? Sure. But that would have been money smart, and I don’t operate like that. (Though I am strongly considering wanting to start behaving that way.)

The bike came in a box. I had to put on the front wheel, the front fender, handlebars, the seat, and the pedals. Sounds simple enough, yes? Well, it took me three hours—not because it was complicated, but because putting shit together ain’t my in wheelhouse. I know people who’d have been happy to lend a hand and make the process go faster. But that too ain’t in my nature. Recently my ma pointed out that I like to do things the hard way, that I seek out challenges. I disputed. She provided plenty of examples. And I have just added another to her list. I wanted to put the bike together all by my onesie. I wanted to do it because I didn’t know how. The directions that came in the box were for a different bicycle, so those things were worthless. All I had were the parts, my tool kit, and these wits. And three hours after perching on my garden stool in front of the disconnected bits, I circled the block on my pale turquoise cruiser bike, decked with a rattan basket hooked to the handlebars for transporting Sophie. (An idea about which she is less than enthusiastic.)

If you haven’t been on a bike in a decade and a half, those first few feet on two wheels are pretty damn shaky and you might find yourself alarmed to consider that you’re the only person to ever defy that common adage, “It’s just like riding a bike . . . ” But, as it turns out, after a couple minutes, riding a bike is just like riding a bike. You pick it back up in no time.

SIX DISPARATE BITS

• I’ve been out out of the design loop for about a year now. Though I sold lotsa prints in 2012, I didn’t design anything new. But today I identified a fairly obscure font at a glance. I impressed myself with a skill I thought I'd lost. Which is excellent news, ‘cause I really need to have It right now. I received an invitation to contribute a couple new works to a show. The exhibit directors gave the artists a quotation to use as muse, and we’re supposed to derive art from there. But I'm not sure I remember how to use my design programs, and my inspiration these days is anorexic. My proposals are due in five days, and it appears my creativity is on strike.

• I can look kinda cute in the right light. Fluorescent is not the right light.

• Since I’m an essentially egocentric person, I don’t get hot and bothered over feminist issues. Being a girl hasn’t been a hindrance to anything I’ve wanted or needed to do. The stuff that might hinder me is inexperience, ignorance, and inertia. Yet recently I’ve butted up against a couple instances that raised my feminist hackles. Last month when I was on the x-ray table getting shots of my problematic hip, the tech asked me what I do for a living. “Pharmaceutical sales,” I told her. “Oh,” she replied, “was that a hard job to get as a woman?” Uh, no, my vagina didn’t prevent me from snaring a job pedaling insulin. And that’s where I’m lucky. Women before me cut that trail. Back in The Day, my industry was all dudes. A drug rep was called a “detail man.” Gradually, however, them girlies snuck in, and now about half of all drug sales people are women. And we can use computers and drive and buy lunch and everything.

• Creating art takes time. Creating useful art takes witchcraft. 

• Next month is my nine-year yoga anniversary. I’m elated that the activity I use to keep me healthy—body and mind—is one that maximizes my body’s particular strengths and has been around for centuries. Chasing fitness trends like CrossFit, P90X, Jazzercise and the like would wear me out.

• After the requisite product discussion, today’s work lunch deteriorated into pregnancy chatter. Generally, I can endure it comfortably. But this afternoon I wanted to put in earbuds and slide under the conference table until the conversation moved on. I’m 31-years-old and I have exactly two friends that don’t have kids. I have spent all of my adult life hearing about discerning between gas and a kicking baby, watching fetus hiccups, and Braxton Hicks.

I know I’m not alone in this—we’ve all been hearing these stories for years—but the difference here is that when I listen I’m not waiting for the woman talking to shut up so that I can go on about my own gestation experience. It’s a different thing listening to these stories over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over without contributing. It dulls the individual sparkle of each tale, because I really have heard it before, and I actually heard it; I didn’t just compute a buzzing sound preventing me from telling my own stories of morning sickness and desperate needs to pee.

Yeah, yeah, I know pregnancy is a mysterious, magical thing. I know that since I’ve never been through it I’m simply incapable of understanding the majesty of it all. But it’s not by chance that I’ve never been with child. I've prevented that with militant vigilance. Go ahead and talk about your pregnancies all day long, but don’t pity me for not having been there. Don’t drone on in a preachy voice about how nothing compares to the immense joy of holding your baby for the first time. I believe you. And I plainly don’t feel compelled to want to want that.

IN HOT PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

Since—wise or not—I’m the kind to tie my self-worth to achievements, for the last five or so years, I’ve brilliantly spun my birthday (last Friday) as a designated moment to be bummed out that I haven’t gotten more done. Or rather, that I haven’t pushed to do more with my life. I’ve got the capabilities, just not so much the drive.

Achievement-wise, I’m treating this calendar year a little differently than I have in the past. Should I be successful, at the end of the year I will have calmed the hell down. (I see the irony in this.)

Now, I don’t take responsibility for the Wasband’s unbelievably shitty choice to have an affair and ditch me for her, but I had a part in the marriage’s demise. I was unavailable. I was busy. I was off achieving stuff. I was designing and selling prints. I was working on the Masters degree. I was doing my drug job. Writing that out, it doesn’t sound like much, but I was really busy. Too busy for a husband. Since the divorce, I’ve fatalistically joked that I had better make something out of my writing degree because I lost my marriage over that thing. It’s not true. But it sort of is.

Since reappearing on this blog and telling the tale of my divorce, I've received comments and emails from gals worried about their own marriages. But you seemed so happy! You really loved him! I'm scared this could happen to me! The bad news is this: Yeah, it can happen to you. We weren't unique. Since I have a 100% fail rate, I can't give tips on how to avoid losing your marriage to the whore next door, but I can serve as a cautionary tale.

When I started my Masters program I told my then-spouse that these next two years were gonna be tough. He said he knew. He said he’d tough it out with me. And it started that way. But as I got busier, he fell further and further down my priority list. It’s the most common of affair stories—one spouse gets immersed in work or school or even kids and the [insert adjective      here     —I suggest something along the lines of "weaker," "pathetic," "selfish," or all of the above, if you're feeling generous] spouse ditches their post.

Again, I don’t take responsibility for what he did. But I know I had a starring role in the beginning of the end. I’m achievement-oriented, and I failed in that I didn’t see a strong marriage as something to achieve.

Necessary side note • I am holy smokes! happy to be divorced. With all this blather about the dead marriage, don’t think I’m mourning some loss. I’m not. I’m stupid happy right now. (More on that later. If’n you’re lucky, that is.) 

So, in the aftermath of the Infidelity Fallout, I’ve decided to chill. I’m not pursuing design work. (Part of that might have to do with my genius resolution to make less money so I pay less taxes.) I’m not fretting over writing. I'm not even going make sure that I'm the guy The Guy counts on. What I’ve scrawled in my notebook is that my plan right now is to—Do yoga. Work my job. Enjoy myself.

I’m going to put less pressure on The Self to do anything beyond those three things. Though I’m delighted to be done with that marriage, I got some wounds from losing my fight to keep the union. Healing happens naturally with time, but I also believe part of it has to do with making the choice to get better, to get over stuff, to move beyond, and so on and so forth.

I do need to submit essays to journals. That’s important in making something of the graduate degree. But I have essays enough to submit and submit until the pieces find an appropriate home. And I’m going to enjoy doing that. It’ll be work, but I have a perverse love of rejection letters, and the more stuff I send out, the higher my rejection potential.

This year I’ve been trying to get to my mat a lot, do a good job at my job, and give it a rest already. Even though I found some success in my design work and my writing, even though I felt more love from my family and friends than I could have ever imagined, last year was poisoned and can be summed up as "effing awful." So I’ve got to reorient. I’m on it.

CHOICES TO KEEP ME

Way back before phones were smart and tags were hashed, I went to college. It was there that I met the Wasband. I first spotted him sitting in the back of a fireside—that’s an extracurricular church meeting, for the uninitiated—and I had two thoughts, which of them came first I’m not quite sure.

Thought one: What’s that good-for-nothing doing in cargo shorts and a t-shirt at a fireside?

Thought two: He’s handsome. I will have him.

And I did.

I’m pretty good at getting what I want. I finagle and figure and generally make stuff happen. Unfortunately, what one wants may be the thing that does the most damage. I came out of the whole deal scathed. However, there were good years, though I don’t remember them. And there was laughing, though I don’t remember it. And there are merry memories—that I don’t recall.

One of my brain’s greatest strengths is its greatest weakness. I forget things. Or do I repress them? In either case—I don’t remember. I know that the last six months of 2012—July and September most significantly—were the worst months of my life. But really, I don’t remember much of that time. I know I cried myself to dehydration. I know I watched Downton Abbey over and over and over. I know that I couldn’t sleep, so I asked for drugs. I know that my family and friends were more there for me than I ever thought I’d be comfortable with. I know I got a therapist. But I have don’t have concrete memories of that time.

And along that same vein, I don't miss my married life since I can’t remember what was good about it. I can’t call the Wasband’s face to mind anymore. I know that I don't think he's handsome anymore. If I try to picture him, I get dark hair, thick eyebrows, and that’s about it. We weren’t picture-takers, so very little of my last decade is definitive. My mind is a selective sieve. There are things I forget that I wish I’d remember. And then there’s the stuff that I’m grateful to forget.

One thing I do remember and prize from my time with the Wasband is a lesson that I taught myself. 

When we were in school, he lived off-campus. I lived on. One evening he retrieved me from the dorm, and as I got on the back of his motorcycle he asked if I should run back inside, change into pants instead of a skirt, and maybe grab a jacket. It was warm, so I said no. He persisted. So did I. When we drove off campus my arms and legs were bare.

It was cold when he brought me home that night. On the back of his bike, I shivered. “Do you want my jacket?” he asked. “Nope,” I chattered back, “I’ve got my choices to keep me warm.”

It’s a phrase I hang onto and mold to fit circumstances. Stayed up too late and find myself damn tired the next morning? Well, I’ve got my choices to keep me alert. Elected to eat six or seven cookies after having candy for breakfast? I’ve got my choices to make me feel thin.

See, I make my world. That’s what I taught myself. I can’t control as much as I’d like to. The people around me have influence. But at the core of this life are my choices. And I’ve got them to keep me happy.

OLD • OVERWHELMED • VEGETARIAN • YOGI

• Yoga’s been my first-line exercise for nigh on nine years. Never in my yoga life did I imagine that I’d long for Bikram’s triangle pose. That pose extra sucks. I hate it. (Actually, I hate all 26 postures when I’m in The Room. But Bikram Yoga’s like crack; I can’t help but show up again and again.) Because I want my bum hip to heal, I’m babying it. That means no triangle pose. So while the other 35 people in the room do triangle, I just stand there, perspiring and heaving. I’m jealous of all those sweaty humans. I want to do triangle! I want my thighs to shake. I want to fuse my shoulder and chin. But more than that I want to heal fast. So I refrain.

• I wish I had come up with this instead of hearing it on one of my food shows—“Powdered sugar is what comes out of God’s nose after a night of partying.”

• Here’s something I like about myself: for the most part, I’m not a weak woman. I’m newly divorced (for how long are you “newly” divorced?) and damaged in fresh and thrilling ways. But I am not the kind of woman who disintegrates without a husband. I like living alone. At first, I was a little afraid of it—in some ways I still am—but I’m not incomplete without an arbitrary man in the house. I do divorced okay. (Wait until you heard how I do dating. That’ll make your head spin.)

• Work’s sorta intense right now. There’s much going on all at once. I’ll get everything handled, but, truth be told, I’m a edging on overwhelmed. Overwhelmed doesn’t look good on me. That is, if you end up seeing it. I'm pretty good at hiding that kind of thing.

• I’m what I call an Emotional Vegetarian. I didn’t give up meat for ethical or health reasons. I gave it up ‘cause I believe animals have thoughts and I can’t eat things that think. My Sophie’s what did it. Her definite personality changed how I felt about animals at large. An example: Because she just had a lot of dental work done in her crummy little mouth, Soph had to eat soft food for a couple weeks. Dear Reader, if you haven’t opened a can of soft food in a while, you might be surprised to discover that it looks exactly like people food. Shredded chicken, pasta, carrots, peas. My beast was over the moon. And the other day I went to her bowl and found something most charming: the little dog had eaten around the peas. She’d licked the bowl clean except for twenty-some-odd peas. As a pretty damned persnickety eater myself, it was sort of a proud moment.

• My favorite ice cream(s): Häagen-Dazs Caramel Cone, Ben and Jerry’s Coffee Heath Bar Crunch, any and all pink peppermint ice creams, and, if if I'm needing a fat-day ice cream substitute, Häagen-Dazs Lemon Sorbet is more than satisfactory.

• When you get divorced you divide up the friends. At least you do when there was an affair and people have to pick sides. In my case, the only friends I had to surrender were my West Wing friends. If you’ve been around this blog for a while, you know that I love The West Wing. Not a little. A helluva lot. Josh, Donna, Toby, CJ, Leo, Sam—they were my pals, and I lost them in the divorce. See, it wasn’t just my show, it was our show; it was honestly a significant bonding element in our relationship. We loved and learned from it together. I can’t watch that show anymore. I trashed the elaborate boxed set of all seven seasons. And then I trashed the backup set too.

• I tend to get more depressed than usual 'round this time of year. I turn 31 next week. Nothing quite like a birthday to make you feel like an unproductive failure at life. 

OF LATE

• I have tendonitis extending from my right hip. Boo. Hiss. Way to smack down my yoga practice, body. Week before last it hurt to walk. Anti-inflammatories and—grrr—rest have helped. To everyone who thinks I overextend my body: you’re probably right—and the doctor said I didn’t do this to myself! Sometimes it just happens. That news didn’t elicit one sigh of relief; it elicited many in quick succession, which looked like slow-mo hyperventilation.

• Last week I spent four days in San Diego at a meeting. A bit ago my company shifted our meeting dress policy from business casual to “smart casual.” That means jeans! (Along with apparel troublingly termed "dress shorts.")  I get to wear jeans and flats to my out-of-town meetings! (!!!) During the various sessions of this meeting I folded about fifteen origami flowers, a couple boxes to house the pretty litter, a few frogs, and a crane or two. Remember when you were in Restoration Literature in college and there was that one girl who spent every class making elaborate doodles in her lesson notes? That was me! Keeping my hands busy with creative activities helps me learn. So it's a good thing I now travel with a stack of origami paper.

• Team, I went to an amusement park for the first time in, like, eight years. This last weekend, Josie, Ben, and Jim took me with them to Great America. I got my scaredy-cat ass on twisty rollercoasters and other some such rides that make me question my own decision-making abilities. “But why?” says you, “if’n you’re not a fan of the terrifying and ridiculous?” Oh, because my 11-year-old friend wasn’t scared. In fact, her fun had something to do with scaring the hell out of me. When she invited me to come on the day trip I told her that I’d be afraid, but I wouldn’t say no to any ride. Turns out I lied. Dearest Reader, I really couldn’t make myself go on the upside-down pirate ship from hell. Or the thing that drops you 22 stories in under four seconds. I offered Josie five bucks to not make me go on that one. She turned me down. What’s five dollars when you can watch a 30-year-old quiver with dread? But—bummer of all bummers—we didn’t have time for that ride. However—best of all good news—Jim so kindly got me a season pass.

• This next weekend I’m going to a wedding in an orchard. 

• If you eat enough salt and vinegar potato chips in a row the acid will burn holes in your mouth. Somebody told me that. I didn’t discover it via experience.

• I graduated with a Masters degree in creative writing three months ago. Since then I have written nothing. Not one essay. Not a single paragraph for an essay. Not even a sentence for a paragraph for an essay. No outlining. No brainstorming. No notes. Do I feel guilty about this? I do. So I’m thinking very seriously about thinking very seriously about maybe doing something about that sometime.

• If ever you're looking for some wholesome entertainment, watch me put sheets on my bed. It's a king that's three feet tall. There's pulling. There's grunting. Heaving and ho-ing. And the whole show takes about 25 minutes.

• Oh, and an update for Leslie: I haven't yet mastered the art of cooking with my mind. However, I was listening to a Studio 360 podcast from Decemberish today, and I learned that EEG technology is helping folks use their minds to levitate, so extrasensory cookery can’t be all that far off. And until then at least we've got hands-free calling that can get the Chinese food delivery guy on the doorstep in 45 minutes or less.