A bit of randomness for your Sunday Morning

I had a meltdown yesterday, one of those spectacular crying episodes that come out of nowhere. The kind where you start off crying about something little, silly even, and then all of a sudden it becomes a waterfall and those things you cried about months ago seem to have happened yesterday and need fresh tissues and a space to be heard. I am sure it was brought on by all sorts of things and the fact that I could not control it was somewhat scary at the time but given a few hours of perspective (and some cold pizza – ahh self-medication) it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal now. The big deal comes now.
What do I do from here? Essentially everything is finished yet I still feel somewhat in limbo. Work has finally calmed down (though I say that and will probably need to knock on wood to avoid another upheaval – Ok done.). The divorce is really and truly final and I can now say, for good or ill, I have been twice divorced. Though the second one was executed like a back alley kidney robbing in Thailand. I lived but it still hurts like hell and the lingering infection weakens me, but it is done and I can never go back. Someone else has my kidney now and I paid for it. I have no children. I have no family here (though my self-made family of friends is very comforting and I am so glad to know people so kind and selfless).
I suppose it is a quiet Sunday morning of questions. The sun is bright the air is cold my winter pajamas are more then warm and comfy and I look forward to a day in the West with friends who are fun and funny and have great hair ;-)
I need to make some tea and get over myself. Do some reading and writing. Quit cleaning to take my mind off things (yes I live in a very neat apartment, I have a cleaning problem – when I am agitated I clean. You should have me over sometime; I am really good at it).
Things to state for the record before I go for tea:
1. Walter is a very wise man and no one in my life has ever listened so hard to me and figured me out so well – thank you to whomever it was that brought him here
2. I miss my family terribly and wish like hell I was closer to them, but I know I will probably never live in North Dakota again. Which is really sad because part of me wants to very much but it is not financially possible. Everyone should experience the open like one can experience it in North Dakota. It makes you breath differently.
3. The Man From Snowy River is my favorite movie; I don’t have a favorite book because I can’t choose.
4. I have lived here since 1992 and have more close friends then I’ve ever had. They make being here bearable.
5. I miss Goddard and my friends from there. They are scattered and busy and I wish we could all live in a commune together because they are magic for my mind and for my heart
6. CBS Sunday morning is my favorite show. The Robot once described it as morning news for the geriatric, but I still like it and always will. I’ve been watching it since it went on the air 26 years ago. Same for This Old House. It reminds me of my dad and I won’t miss an episode.
7. I love tea and toast in the morning because of my life-changing trip to London with friends I have now known for 12 years. I think of them every single Sunday morning when I have tea and toast.
8. I am homesick for places I have never been

Up too early

This is one of those days where I am up WAYYYYY too early for the amount of sleep I got. Went to bed past midnight and was up at 5am (the usual time). I don’t know what it is about me that doesn’t allow me to sleep in. Maybe it was the years of chores I had to do, but even then my father wasn’t a task master – if I wasn’t up, he just did them, which I guess made me feel guilty so I made sure I was up, but regardless – I’ve been off the farm for a good long time now and I still keep the farm girl schedule – what gives?

A few important things:

My mom is OK!!!!!!! She went through the heart procedure yesterday and all of the times I talked to her after she sounded very much like herself (perhaps a bit more surly, but who wouldn’t be after being forced to lay still for over 8 hours). They will likely let her out of the hospital today into the care of one of my siblings for a few days. It was so awful having to carry the cell phone in my hand all day long. I hated being so far away.

The band is going to Amsterdam!!!! How much fun will THAT be! Suggestions for touristy things are welcomeJ

It is Walter’s Birthday today. Friday the 13th. He made it through one of the toughest years imaginable and I am so very proud of all that he has done the last few months. He took a terrible thing and turned it around into something positive for himself. I know he is still sad about Mary and what she and the Robot did, but he doesn’t talk about it much. I think he’s been dealing with it through music and art – which seems like a good way to go. I am trying to be as good as he has been about dealing with it. I have to admit I still have very dark thoughts and sleepless nights and cry a good deal. I think if we had not become friends after all of this I would have been lost. He and the music and my family and friends kept me from killing myself. If you listen to The Long Wait – you will hear that pain of loss. Funny thing is that he wrote that only a couple of weeks before the whole thing happened. (Little did we know it was happening already)? He has premonitions like that all of the time – a little scary actually. He seems touched in some way.

Read a few articles on Chuck Klosterman that were written by Boston based mags after his reading the other day. Poor Chuck, he’s going through personal stuff too, which sucks. His book is good if you like his essays, he certainly has an open and breezy no-nonsense style common to those who tell stories in North Dakota. I am glad he can translate that out to the world. Could North Dakota become a cool place to be from rather then just a cold as hell place to be from?

There is cool band news on the horizon – I can’t talk about some of the things, but we have TWO shows left in October. Monday the 23rd at Club Passim (Which is also an art opening. Should be pretty darn cool – that show is FREE

Also on Oct 29th we’re playing mass Morgue – if you want tickets get them NOWISH, I think I have 1 left but I can get a few more!!! We also have a ton of shows in December (some ion NYC) and some in January. So far Nov is mostly free – but you never know ;-)
Is a move to NYC or Portland or LA or San Francisco in the cards to the Broken Toys – we’ll let you know!!!

I’m off for a long soaking bath before work. I love my new tub!!!

Happy BD and D day

It has been a strange and exciting few days. So many good things are happening it is almost hard to believe. The only thing I really need is some more down time to write and relax.

We played the Stone Pony in NJ with a band called Soil Work (MTV video, European tour and the whole deal) odd to play a metal show with the kind of act we have. And I was the only chick, which meant my normally outlandish costume was made even more so by the fact hat every man in the place was staring at my boobs since they were the ONLY ones around.... But I screamed obscenities and compared tattoos with the rest of them. Soil Work was very nice as were everyone at the Stone Pony and Max Cruise. I don't know how many of you have been to this famous club, but it is in a really odd and surreal place in NJ. It looks as if the area once was very beautiful - over the top gorgeous and now it is trying to be that way again but has quite a few years to go.

Also other exciting news we are going to be on NPR!!!! Yes my friends, it is happening!!!!! I can't say much now, but to be sure I will be giving full details when I contractually can!

ALSO!!!!! We are going to AMSTERDAM!!! Check back for show details (there may be some, there may not) - can the dollies survive customs? Wait and see!!!!

So those were the exciting bits, the strange bit comes now... It is a weird day. One of those days you are unsure you want to do anything about. Today is simultaneously the day I am officially divorced and is the birthday of the person I am officially divorced from. I know many of you know this as I have already gotten a few emails today wishing me well and hoping I am moving on. I wish him well also. I hope that this new relationship he has brings him the kind of joy he was searching for and meaning through honesty, integrity and love. No vinegar here only hope. But a simultaneous divorce/birthday is not really the oddest part. The most weird is I received his teeth in the mail. OK, not really his teeth but a panoramic x-ray of his oral cavity. His ghost teeth smiling as me, suspended in black with silver fillings shining bright. It was certainly a bit of a shock to pull that out of a nondescript envelope. Granted, it was not entirely unexpected that I would be receiving an x-ray in the mail, but what I had expected was my own teeth. Now I am wholly unsure of what to do with this artifact. He is currently enjoying the benefits of health care that I am paying for (much to the distaste of my lawyer who advised me over an over again to save my money for something more useful - but I was insistent he have the option of taking care of himself - probably stupid of me but I always did have rose coloured glasses) So should I send him his teeth, would he want them? They are the only copy... it is certainly an odd dilemma. I have one more thing for him too, something I know for sure he would want, but haven't had the strength to send. I'll get to it I suppose.

Now this next thing isn't weird, but I have to admit it is quite worrying. My mother is ill. She has to have a procedure done on her heart. Anyone who knows my past knows my father died of a stroke after two heart attacks so I am not unfamiliar with the tragedy of heart problems. The comfort is she is doing something about it, but it is still a scary prospect. Sometime I think Robot left because of all of the pain he might have had to go through and finding someone younger whose family she was more then willing to forget makes things easier. Dealing with just one person - one who will not have health problems for years and one who does not have a family makes it far easier to focus on yourself. But that is an aside and probably one with no basis in anyone's reality but mine, but I am so good at that ;-) Anyway, this Thursday my mother will be in the hospital. I am 2000 miles away from her and I do not feel that distance more then at times like these. I know things will be fine, she will come out of it healthier then she was before and the recovery will be relatively short, but I still want to sit at her bedside. I want to be there at the hospital. I feel far away and scared and inadequate.

I look forward to Thursday night and hearing that my mother is OK and better then she was.

Four Books – All Different – All the Same

Four Books – All Different – All the Same

The last four books I have read in the last four weeks are (in this order)


1. Genealogy: A Novel by Maud Casey
2. The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere: a Memoir by Debra Marquart
3. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
4. A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas by Chuck Klosterman IV

Seems like a weird combination when you think of it, though three of the four have a directly connection to me in some way and the fourth ended up making me feel like I had a direct connection to it.

First, Maud’s book. This came out a few months ago, but I did not read it when it came out, nor did I go hear her read parts of it in NYC when she was there – The reason – because I knew it would make me fall apart. Maud writes about mental illness in this book, specifically bi-polar disorder. This illness is something that we both have experienced intimately though from completely separate vantage points. When I worked with her (she as my advisor at Goddard) I knew about this connection at first only by instinct, then later after a little research through her writing about herself and her experiences. We never verbalized this connection between the two of us, but I have a few letters from her (ones that were writing to me about my writing during the course of stuffy at Goddard.) She actually helped me not quit Goddard when things became particularly bad. During one of my residencies I was getting phone calls every few minutes and crying a great deal, my heart split in two with my desire to hold and comfort my husband in his time of breakdown and my equal and seemingly opposite desire to stay and be a student and learn. My now Ex-husband sent me the mixed messages that bi-polarity brings into a relationship so I was constantly unsure and overly sensitive to not going to be glued to his side. He had his family and ways to work through tings but neither of us were confident he could make it without me. He ultimately did (though he did come to visit) and I ultimately made it through the residency (which I have to mention here is only 8 short days but seemed like an eternity). Maud helped with her attentiveness and kindness and, believe it or not, reading assignments for class that dealt directly and openly with aspects of the relationship people have to their own mental illness.
I know I haven’t actually talked about the book here. All I can say is read it. I marked several sections where there were lines that I had to read over and over again because the sentiment was so beautiful or the words and the way they sounded together were so visceral. I love Maud’s writing. It is intimate and fully realized and makes one weep with the context of all of the pain and promise rolled up into one.

My connection to the Horizontal World by Debra Marquart is a physical one. I grew up very close to where she did, though, it seems, about ten years later then she did and a bit more our of the cultural loop then she was. It was amazing to me to read this memoir, which is partly told in story form and partly told with historical and cultural context. Some of the things she said rang so true it could have been me. Particularly the working parts. Butchering chickens and castrating calves and some of the other things (town girls verses farm girls) did not enter my life at all. I love seeing how people who grow up in literally the same place can have such different views on things. The decade makes the difference in some cases, but in others it is a matter of personality and perspective. She does, however, talk about her father in the same way I talk about mine. A kind of longing reverence that hints at a closeness not really discussed or physical, but one of mutual respect realized after the heart attack. It did drive home one thing though, my mother really does know everyone. She knows Debra’s sister who owns a bar on Main Street in Napoleon. She knew of her family and talked to her mother at some meeting or another (I think maybe the electric cooperative meeting, but verifying this would mean calling my mother). When I write the memoir I plan on writing about my life in North Dakota – aspects of it will be the same. How I am now a stranger in my own community, though I have to admit I felt that way much of my kid-life. Also, my perspective on how I will always be drawn back there. Something about the people and the landscape IS in you, always. Perhaps it is the wind that always blows, it pushes the dust straight into your cells to bond with your DNA. This book is not really about North Dakota – it is about being a special person from a special place and trying to connect all the parts of your life together into something that makes sense – and each one of us can identify with that.


Now it is truth time… I picked up The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger at the airport wanting one of those “plane ride” books that you can breezily read on the plane and leave at wherever your destination is without guilt because the book was candy for your brain and didn’t make you think at all and you left it on the table at the B&B after finishing it without a second glance. But that is not what happened. What happened was an instant and searing connection to this book. It doesn’t really need help from me to sell it, but I have to tell you to buy it and read it. It will be one of those books you keep on your shelf and look at from time to time (after reading it) and remember how it made you feel. For me it was like reading the book “She’s Come Undone”. The author found some way to tell a story really foreign to my own experience (or anyone’s I would think) but tell it in such a way as to make you believe it and sympathize with it and hope beyond hope that time will bend, just this once, for these people and the inevitable will not happen. I think that is what the connection was. The inevitability of time and of being and of what will happen in your life are so starkly illustrated here that you can’t help but see your own lifetime rolled out in a single line like a heart monitor print out with the steady and rhythmic peaks and valleys getting scattered and messy near the end and finally stopping all together. Such a wrenching book that I cried several times and hand to have tissues within easy reach for all of the last four chapters.

So why, after that roller coaster of a ride that was the Time Traveler’s Wife did I pick up the new Chuck Klosterman book? Because he was coming to read and I really wanted to see him and get him to sign a copy of the book for me. I actually wanted him to sign my hardcover of Fargo rock City (which is a book that is funny as hell – as they would say in my home state) but that hard cover is at my sisters house and I literally found out he was reading near me the day before it was to happen, so there was no time to get that book to me from North Dakota. Chuck’s reading was fantastic. Filled with Emo kids that he constantly made fun of without them knowing. I love seeing how he has changed over his years of living in the cities and writing. I met him once when I was younger. I hadn’t realized that he was actually a SENIOER when I was a 7th grader; I thought he was a freshman that is how awkward he was. But I have a friend whose older brother was his friend and we went to a football game and I met him. I didn’t actually remember this, but when his first book came out, my friend called me and said “OMG that’s Chuck – I haven’t thought about him since we met him at that football game.” So I had to read the book. This new book is a collection of pieces he’s published with extra commentary for context or things that got left our of the original piece or updates on things that have happened since the essay (article) was published. It also has a piece of fiction in the back. I’ve read this book mostly in the bathtub. My singed copy now sports curled pages from the humidity of a steamy bathroom. Now Chuck, don’t take offense – I read in the bath thing I really want to pay attention to and absorb. Your book is like bath salts that soften the water of my brain and make the ideas flow into the soft cells like softness into soaked skin.
It was weird to get him to sing a copy of the book. I waited inline with all of the kids and actually talked to him about where I was from etc. I know I am one of the slew of people he will see during his singing tour and he will not in anyway remember me or our encounter, but he doesn’t have to, because I will and I will write about it and it will affect me and he will go on with his NYC writing life. I did, however, give him a copy of my CD. He will probably not listen to it, but I had to do it. Who else is a rock writer for famous magazines that I once met at a high school football game and grew up in the very same small rural state that I did. Right – you guessed it, no one.

These four books seem to be emblematic (sorry about the over used word) of my life at the moment. At once looking to my roots and my past. Dealing with what happened to me and the ramifications of mental illness, looking to the future of my band and where I want my life to go and connecting with different experiences with that one thin filament of emotion. I think anyone could read any of these books in any order and feel how similar they are and how, in spite of the subject matter, they connect to each other and to the world in similar ways.

Thinking about this makes me excited for what is next – suggestions welcome.

Weddings and Other Sacred Events

My sister’s wedding was beautiful, spiritual, and full of love and hope much like my two must have been. I remember the first one fondly and have for some time. Even when things were the worst between us, I never hated any of the memories of him or of what we did. But the second, the one closest to heart, is also the most painful to remember. I find myself loathing those memories as they pop up. And I don’t want to. I want them to remain, as they are, sweet and pristine and full of the laughing and fun that filled that second time around. Like the fact we almost got run over by a train on the way back from picking up the flowers because he was so nervous to be married. It was the second time around for both of us and the wedding was exactly what each of us wanted. Small. Simple. Beautiful. But we acted as a couple that had not been around the block. Perhaps marriage does that to you. Makes you sweet and innocent again. I want that memory to be forever wonderful. Protected under a glass done. The taste of the cake with its raspberry crème filling, the vows he said to me, his voice strong in spite of being so nervous his hands were shaking. The cigar he and my mother shared.

But it is difficult not to color the distant past with the recent past. Perhaps it is because of the way things happened. How he chose to implode so rapidly and without warning. Removing himself from our lives so utterly that the void was as vast as an ocean. Didn’t he understand that an implosion of that magnitude warranted an equal and opposite explosion in my life. Something had to fill the void and what did was pain and sadness, loneliness beyond anything ever felt and all the while him, running and laughing as if it were his wedding night. Spending on fancy places to stay, good things to eat, going to those places with her that I had always wanted to go. The crash and reverberation was so fast and large that I felt as if I would never recover.

Things are still exploding, expanding to fill that void. This hole that he left threatens to chew up all of the good memories, falling into it like a sinkhole, flowing to the bottom to collect and drown in each other as if it is only the hole that is important anymore. Is it the same for him? Has this disaster touched him, made him see that this was not the right way to do things? Is it stupid of me to think that someday he will face me in person and explain himself?

I think to some of our recent correspondences where he asks for a trade of equipment he thinks I might still have (stuff, I have to write here, that he left behind and told me on several occasions was my replacement for what he did and for him). It was true, he did have something I wanted and I wanted to give him everything I had left even the hole in my heart and the burring memories of our good times. But when it came down to money I knew I was lost. I thought about all of the money I have spent over the past few months to clean up the mess he has left. I got too tired to continue the talk and stopped. I came up with things like; well I am paying 126 a month to keep you in health insurance because I wanted to make sure you were OK. The lack of appreciation for that is deafening in its silence. I don’t want it to get petty because it so easily can. I want to hold onto the memories that were good and remember him as we were and as we loved and push the thing that he did aside, bury and burn it as I have the person he is now so that it won’t negatively affect me for the rest of my life. He is still a person, not dead, still out there being somewhat who I thought he was, but he is not my person, he is not my husband or friend. He belongs only to himself, not even to that other woman who helped him in his implosion, not to the other woman who claimed to love me and wrote me love notes, the one I was desperate to be friends with not realizing that for her, friendship was just a disguise like a Halloween mask warn at Easter.

I took pictures at my sister’s wedding. Smiling faces, tear streaked cheeks. Hands held across emotions. People bathed in and held together by the feelings that weddings bring up. There were some there like me. Happy for the couple but tinged with sadness at their own misfortune. None of us can help but feel that. My own mother, I could see, missed my dad at that moment. Looking across the isle at the mother and father of the groom, able to be next to each other at this event she had to attend alone. If my father were still alive I would not talk to him about what had happened to me. He would hear what happened and be sad and angry in the only way a Norwegian farmer can be, with silence. We wouldn’t discuss it, instead he would tell me stories and say odd things and be more himself then himself to make me feel better. Some of that connection between us had been lost over the years that I was away from home. He had grown closer to my sister, the one he knew would stay, but my father and I were so alike it was impossible for us not to communicate our feelings to each other, even if it wasn’t through words.

I talk to him still. I think of him many mornings, as I get up early to write, knowing he was his best self early in the morning when the sun started to color the eastern edge of our land. Even in his later years, living in town, napping often, the bones and blood refusing to spring awake as they once did when he was young, He was more himself at six in the morning then at any other time of day. I should have called him more, visited more often, made more time to just be with him. The last occasion I spent time alone with him was my first wedding, which is now so many years ago I have a hared time believing it. I had friends staying out at the farm and he wanted to take a ride out there. I was busy with wedding preparation but for some reason I decided to go.

We started off from the house in town, not taking the road over the big hill the one that gives you a panoramic view of my hometown from the top, but going straight. It was my favorite way, more windy with a little bridge and a tree, but we did not turn at the regular turn, instead we kept going straight past McCully’s place and truing down the section line that held the dam where we fished for bullheads a few times. I am not sure why we stopped there. Maybe Dad just wanted to be with me at a place he knew I liked. Where he remembered me as a girl, where I was dependent on him to get the fish of the hook. It took me years to realize that no one can really see into your heart unless you let them and on that day, my dad was open. His heart was full of love for his family and for the love he knew we would have in our lives.

But he was sad too, he was wiser then I knew. I feel like he predicted that I would have a dramatic life and he took me to that fishing hole to remind me that there are safe places in the world and in ourselves that only we know and that sometime we would need to go there weather we were happy or sad. I hope the outcome for my sister is much more the conventional long and happy life with a loving and devoted partner then mine has been. I feel more akin to one of the odd cases people have in their families. The crazy auth Ethel to whom something happened and the children of the children of the siblings of aunt Ethel forever wonder how she got the moniker “crazy” and what the stories were the surrounded her life.

My soon to be second ex-husband asked me to stop writing about him or at the very least not sharing that writing, but I feel like this is the only way I will not become that crazy aunt Ethel. The one who dies in some far off place, alone with no children to tell her story. The family gets pieces of her. Her three cats need a home now; her sparkly red Dorothy shoes need to go to Good Will. Her hundreds of wigs sent somewhere for children to play dress up with. But none of the stories of those things will ever be told because Ethel, because I, did not have anyone to tell them. My cats all have names and personalities. My Dorothy shoes are beautiful and make me feel like I walk on air even though they hurt like hell. My wigs turn me into a different person each with a distinct personality. The stories of why I have those are mixed up with and because of the story of him. I can’t extract that form me. Not now and perhaps not ever. This is the explosion that is filling the implosion. My dad knew this then, at that spot and I know this now.

For the rest of my life, weather it be a car ride, a funeral, a wedding, a concert, I will have memories of him and they will make me feel and I must write them or I will forget and they will forget and everything will become nothing instead of becoming one of those sacred events that marks each of our lives.

The love I thought I had lost forever, but perhaps, never had

So many things have been on my mind lately, Now that the big show is over and I have a break until I have to be in Boston again, I am back in my tiny new place leading my tiny new life. The worries: 1. The house - still the bullshit continues and I am going more and more in the hole. It is literally down to one more month and the bank gets it. I imagined I'd be able to live there - but within a few weeks it was quite clear I could not. I imagined selling it would be painful but pretty easy. It has not only been painful but perhaps the least easy process I could have gone through. I saved the Robot from much heartache for sure, but in doing so I did not save anything of myself, in fact it has made it impossible to mentally move on from the place I was in March. Every time there is a glimmer of hope I either have to deal with yet another disaster at the house (the latest is the septic is STILL a problem, in spite of every thing passing in from the town, the total bill is now 53, 175 and change and perhaps there is still a problem (that is not counting the 8K in fixes and improvements I had to make to it just to get it on the market), the other is the furnace and a leak and small fire - all happening while I'm lifetimes away. It really sucks to deal with these things yourself. I wish I could have kept the house, lived there, been happy. But they were in every room, I found so much no cuckolded wife should ever find. The notes were both forgotten and on purpose, cruel.
The second is I've been ill. I played our CD Release party with a temperature of 102. As far as temperatures go, 102 is not that bad for me. I generally run high fevers. Or should I say ran, when I was ill, before robot even came into the picture. There were hospitals, trips to the emergency room, infections without cause and cure, crazy drives to the Doctor holding my bleeding throat wishing someone would kill me or that I would have the guts to just let myself bleed on and on and be done with it. I have a diagnosis, a baby step to the big a big one some day (or not, no one can tell me - that kind is not for sure until your muscles are water and you are a brain only)- I refused the chemo, refused the drugs and I was fine. For years - now some of the symptoms are back, and I haven't let myself be scared, but at night I have a hard time sleeping the physical evidence is more and more. I need to go back to the Doctor but I know what they will say and I wish hard to not go through any of it. Robot never had to deal with this, I hid when I was ill because it made him so crazy, made him mire ill, perhaps it was good for me, perhaps not.
The saving grace is that from before, I learned not to sit too still. Sit still and feel sorry for yourself, sit still and not be able to get up again. I got up, I have to, I rest, sure someone is making sure of that and I think him because I wouldn't without that. But, like the release party, sometimes you just have to, no matter what the consequences, no matter the pain and agony. Never let it show, just keep moving.
The reality is that these things that are happening could just go away. Exercise a bit, lose some more weight be calm and slow and DON'T worry so much and the body will heal and keep this at bay. I am trying so hard to do that, trying so hard to let each little knife in this terrible six months pierce me but then heal. Don't pick at the wounds, don't get drawn into silly emails, don't say - well yes I could give your stuff back, if I had it (why don't you just sell it - he told me over and over - but I couldn't it was like selling a liver or a stomach), but you never wanted it (And I gave you so much you just left behind - what about that stuff - so I get any credit for not burning it), yes I want my domain back but what can I give you - I spend 125$ a month to keep you in health insurance because I was afraid you did not have any - is that worth the price of my domain. After several emails back and forth, nothing was resolved, still bargaining, like he always used to with others but never with me. Now I am on the other side and it hurts so much, I can barely think about it. After all those years of trying so hard for him to see me as a person and as someone who wanted to help and how loved him so deeply, it is down to bargaining about a stupid domain - yes I want it, but can't he see I've done so much and I have nothing left physically or mentally. Never let is show, just keep moving sigh it is so hard. I have to concentrate on the good stuff. In spite of yet another trip to MN with pokes and prods, there will also be a wedding - which is going to be happy in spite of me being sad and negative about weddings. But their wedding has none of the sadness and they are doing it their way. So after the poking and prodding I will be out there smiling and hugging and hoping beyond hope that things go well forever and ever for them. That they realize that each other is the important thing and you can make yourself happy for a time by ignoring those who poured heart and soul into you, but it will all come back around, eventually. I am not saying I was all good, no one is, but I did not deserve this, I did not deserve the action or the aftermath. It was cruel in the extreme. So cruel that even in his mustang and long hair and new leather duster, he could not look at me in the eye and that is and will be the last time we see each other. Some times I miss so much that person who was so funny, so talented so full of life and theory. One of those rare people who comes up with something so out there, but then can back it up, and if helped, can make it happen. This is not about what I have now, this is about he past and how it intrudes into my healing time and is making me ill. I would be dead now if it weren't for those people who have helped me thus far. So many of you and a few that have gone so far above and beyond. I love you all so much. Thank you for keeping me looking forward as much as I can, and for giving me the love I thought I had lost forever, but perhaps, never had.

Nothing and then everything

Nothing and then everything

Nightmares are interesting things. Often mine are based around things I am actively trying not to think about – like selling my house. And things I caught on TV – like a helicopter made of wood and a chair. These odd things get paired up in a sheet-twisting nightmare that wakes me at 4am and doesn’t allow my brain to get back into sleep mode.
The actual dream becomes faded and unimportant the but thoughts I’ve been trying to quell then have a chance to float right above my closed eyes in the soft grey front of my brain. Did I do that math correctly? Will the offer really only lose me a few thousand dollars. Is it really worth it? What else can I do? I’m stuck in a new city trying to leave the old city behind – I need to get rid of it and him and all of the rest.
Course – I am still partly in this old city – playing a show here or there, seeing friends from before. But I am new and the friends are treating me newly. This is a good thing, I am a different person, or maybe more like the person I should have been all along.
Now I only take care of me and sometimes even get taken care of. Getting taken care of feels very good. Friends making you go out dancing feels really good. Being able to say – yes I’ll be there Friday for your show – and not have to worry that at the last minute, someone will have a breakdown and you’ll end up crying yourself to sleep instead worried about yourself and the person and how disappointed you are that those fun things are not really fun but a hollow and forced attempt at fun. But there is no guilt anymore – I can say I will be there and unless I don’t want to go, I will go and have fun and not have to worry that I will come home to disaster. It is such a strange feeling. Complete independence. Hard to get used to actually.
I invited some friends for dinner tonight – I am cooking steak (which I have not done in eons as I rarely eat meat) and I am looking forward to it, none of the worries of mood or angst. And I had coop this past Sunday. The first one I’ve had in months and months. It was GREAT. Everyone was here and there was much chatting and laughter and eating. I love cooking for people.
Why the nightmares then, well I guess you can never leave your old life completely behind.
The music doesn’t help – performing reminds me of my time with the other band. But it’s weird. This band is so different and I am different in it. I am confident, I am up front. I take my clothes off for fuck’s sake. AND the most AMAZIONG thing… I sing. And I can hardly believe it, but enough people have told me honestly and sincerely… but I sing well. Even when I was told over and over again for years that I did not sing well and my confidence in singing was so low that I could barely open my mouth to sing by myself in the car. Now I sing all of the time and it feels SO releasing. Everyone should try it.
After my last performance (where I have to admit, I hit a few clunkers) a wonderful singer and famous music teacher came up to me and told me what a sweet and clear voice I had and asked me where I had gone to school for voice. Even after I told her my only school was church choir and singing in the car growing up, she insisted I must have studied with this certain teacher in New York that she knew. “Oh no, you do his style, it’s quite clear” she gave me her email and his number and told me to contact them both. “We set things up all of the time, you’d be a good fit – please do contact us”
I try to quiet the doubts, the nightmares the “can I really do this” thoughts I have every waking moment. Everyone has them, I am no different, but I feel like I’ve gone through a war. Can you believe it’s been since March. Is the reality that it had been since much much before that? The two of hearts says yes, more journals then I care to read say yes, but for me, March was when I became nothing and then everything.

A Perfect Saturday

1. Get up early – perhaps not quite as early as I did nor with as little sleep as I had, but certainly before you could go to the grocery store or run this errand or that. I’d say 6am at the latest.

2. Read – something light and fun but with enough biting with to keep it interesting. How about something like Jasper Fforde’s “The Fourth Bear”

3. Make a grocery list with all of the possibilities for lunches and dinners for the next week. It exciting to dream ahead to a grilled chicken salad adorned with tomatoes you’ve grown yourself (or picked up at the farmers market) grilled on your new back deck with its sweet little baby grill.

4. Have a lovely time at the market. If everything is not new to you, pretend it is. I walked down each isle marveling at all of the new stuff I could buy.

5. Arrange your new purchases in your cupboards. This is not yet habit for me. I am still deciding where things go and how to put things.

6. Have tea and toast with blackberry jam or, if you are feeling decadent – and I always am- with nutella. Nothing is better then sitting in your new little sitting room in your new comfy chair and reading that last chapter of the book you’ve loved from page one.

7. OK< Now you’ve pampered yourself and you’ve done your shopping. It’s still quite early. Ten am even. I went to run another errand. Pick up a few things for the new place at a local store. A brushed metal coat rack for the hall, a new set of sheets, perhaps a knickknack or two. Take them home and arrange them. I cleaned a bit as well and “finished” unpacking (are you ever really finished?).

8. Now it is noon. Time for a quick nip of a shower and a bite of lunch (Left over pizza from the night before) and off to a Belly Dancing class.

9. I highly recommend belly dancing, esp. with a friend. This was an introductory course. Having a friend along will allow you to laugh at yourself rather then take yourself so seriously. The instructor was marvelous. And marvelously six months pregnant. If belly dancing gives you that body, I am in, even pregnant she was tight and lean and sensual. I learned a few things in the 3 hours of class. It certainly made me want to take more. I am no dancer for certain, but feeling your body move to music centers you and belly dancing makes you pay attention.

10. After that class, hang out with that friend. Do some errands with her. Chat.

11. Dinnertime, already? But of course. Pick up a few small bites at the local organic grocery store. Don’t bother making dinner; you’ve had a full day.

12. Share dinner with another friend, one that doesn’t care if you are sweaty from dance class. One that will arrange the supper, pour you a big glass of wine and serve your dinner to you on the couch. This friend will also clean up after dinner while.

13. His cleaning up will allow you to take a long hot bath with a new book and a glass of wine. I chose to read Frances Mayes “A Year in the World”. What a better way to get to know a travel book then a hot soak. She describes a year of adventure she had while traveling to places she had always wanted to go. It’s your basic travel book. Describing places and food but this one hits closer to home. TO the elemental travel need that I have and the realization that my own journey, although it started 6 months ago now – almost to the day - is really as long as I make it and starts when I want it to. So I decided August 1st of this year was the beginning and it will run for 1 year. I will travel my own life and write about the new person that I am. Oh, there will be history thrown in, there has to be, it reflects and informs whom you are, but the history will not be the journey.

14. Dry off from your bath and move to the bed. Bring your book, but tonight you won’t need it, instead you will have long and slow sex many times over until the combination of the early hour you awoke, your dancing, drinking and soaking all catch up with you and lull you into a land filled, for the first time n months, with lovely dreams full of women dancing and yourself being free and floating. Taking control of yourself and your own world. This is your year. Your year to do as you please be, as you want to be. You are no in the world, you are the world.

The dreams are worse

I thought starting this new phase this new city would keep the dreams at bay. Perhaps it is the illness or [perhaps the mojo of this place but the dreams are more vivid and more upsetting.

Night before last it was a swimming pool. I was trying to keep it clean and show it to people and then finally sell it, but he kept blocking all of my actions. Once, having an all night sex party that I wanted to attend but wasn’t told about – but watched from a high high window.

Last night was a house, full of rooms that were unused. The house had a swamp outside of it. It looked rather like that Club in Portland – all dark and hot, but beautiful at the same time. There were people there. He was playing music again, but this time just for me; just him and a guitar. Though I know he is making music again (I’ve been dreaming of that for over a month) I doubt it is just him and a guitar, that is not his style.

The house was broken inside. I had to go through drawers to find something. The drawers were filled with maps. I should have taken one of those maps and followed it to where ever it told me to go. I sort of did, in real life. I chose a city and moved to it and now I am a stranger among strangers. But haven’t I always been.

I must go, shake off the death grip of that dream, have a shower in my blue bathtub, have cereal at my cozy kitchen nook, look over my balcony at this strange city – Maybe my dreams will change to those before the war – those that for told a quiet life filled with flowers and walks to the river.

The Standard Disclaimer

Writing, for me, is all about healing. It is about describing an action, event or moment in time from my point of view (after all, I am no empath, what other point of view do I have?).

I post here so that the people *I* know can read it and anyone else who wonders here can as well. This is not a public forum but rather a place in the world where I can keep thoughts and feelings.

Yes, granted, anyone could see this, but for the most part people who do are searching it out for a reason and perhaps know the people involved. Like any memoir it is full of truth but that truth is my own and only my own. I do not pretend to speak for anyone else or how they see things or feel about things or people who might be represented here.

If you do not agree with the portrayal of an event, simply ignore mine and do not come back or speak of it, it is the right and sane thing to do.

I have the right to my story just as you have the right to yours. I am portrayed in not-so-nice terms in many venues just as I am portrayed in overly nice terms in others. I figure it all works out for everyone in the end if we keep in mind that writing is a form of truth that is only truth for a moment then moves beyond itself and gets read into and out of and over... over and over again.

Do I still feel the same way I did 6 months ago? For some things yes, for some things no. Do I see things differently now then I did then? For some things yes, for some no. Is it true that everything is true here? Yes, emphatically and also no emphatically

That is the reality of reality.

It can change in an instant, a phone call, a heart beat, a plane ride....

Dreaming of Spain

Spain seems like a long way away from here – but with this beach and this body of water – I can almost imagine myself being there again. Barcelona was life changing. I think, perhaps for the very first time, I actually got that feeling of happy relaxation when I visited there. It was a rainy Sunday morning. In Spain, Sunday is family day. Most everything is closed except the church and we had four within walking distance of us. Four HUGE catholic cathedrals replete with robed men to lead you into a holy state. I had wanted to go to one of these services. Dip my fingers in the cool stone basin, dribble the water on my head, kneel and genuflect, but my traveling partner (who had been my partner as well) was not so much into that anymore. Memory of his past kept him from being excited by actually going to a service. Instead, he lay in bed through the morning, sleeping on an off, slightly feverish. I bathed. One of my favorite things to do is to light a few candles and draw a seeringly hot bath and read while submerged in the water. The bathtub we had in the room was square and deep and perfect. I have not found the like again. The cloud filled sky gave way to a steady and pattering rain against the brick and stone outside of our room. The quiet of his sleep leant itself to the quiet of my bath.

Submerged up to the chin in sweet smelling water I read of a time in Spain when Federico ruled and women who had visions were shunned at best, killed at worst. I had waking dreams of living there, perusing books stores, writing in a turret on top of a grand old building, eating chocolate con Churros everyday. It was then that the feeling happened. Slowly, starting from just under my breastbone and spreading out until even the tips of my fingers and toes were tingling with relaxation and possibility.

I feel that here even though I have no desire to move here like I had to move to Spain. It is a combination of the quiet, the water and the company. Being totally free to express yourself however you may choose. No schedule, no worries, do what you want when you want if you want.

Right now I am on the deck, early grey in hand (thank you David) and watching the ducks play in the glass calm water. I almost wish for rain to complete the mood, but instead a brilliant sun in promising to top the buildings and rule the day. I resolve to go back to Spain, to find that feeling again there and in all of the other place I am. Even in my real life, the daily life of a person chained to reality as we all are. Find that spot in myself that is in total peace and quiet and wonder at the world.

Domestic Details

I washed clothes today – normally not something one would write about, but laying here reading a story about travel in a vacation home thousands of miles from my own, wearing the shirt I washed to bed… all I can think of is home. Not only my new home, the home full of love and hope and promise, but my first home, my family home, my mother.

I was wondering why I was thinking about her when I realized it was the fabric softener. I don’t use it when I wash normally, but here, they have it, Snuggle. The smell of it reminds me of the farm, of Saturdays when I would do the wash. I usually put too much in (just as I did today) but the smell, like rain or flowers, is worth that little bit extra.

I wish I could live close to my family and my friends, but they are all scattered. I wish I could have a job where I could have several places that I lived – or maybe one place but the leisure enough to travel to those other places and be completely free. I miss my family terribly. They don’t really know the person I turned out to be and it makes me sad to think of that. I doubt I could live in the state where I grew up. Though maybe I could, maybe if I could manage to keep mostly to myself, my ideas anyway – too liberal. I would likely offend people, get in trouble and unfortunately I am not quite brave enough not to care. I know some people who can live that way and I admire them, but I have not yet grown to that point.

I wonder what my old classmates would think of me now, of what I do and how I am. I don’t know any of them anymore. I’ve lost track of my best friend, the one who got me through much of high school and ended up so different from myself. We used to say we would be Kate and Alley – perhaps we still will be. It will be me without the kid though.

Washing clothes is essentially a domestic task, but the domestic details of daily life are what keep us grounded. I quite enjoy cleaning and doing laundry – one of those few tasks you can start and complete and know you have accomplished something. Admittedly, it does get to be a chore, something you have to do even when you don’t feel like it, but on days like today when the simple scent of fabric softener can bring you memories of a happy time long past – it seems well worth it.

Vacation

Vacation

For the first time in years I am relaxed. I have had a few days off from work and have done (and this IS rare) absolutely nothing but lie around, read, swim, and cook… Usually I must do something all day long with only short breaks to indulge in such activities. Those things are usually mindless things, cleaning, arranging, running errands, and making plans, working on stuff for work. But this week, so far, I have done nothing but sloth. It feels good, good to be dependent on no one, good to know that I am being encouraged to do this by everyone, supported and not guilted.

I have had a lot of guilt in the last six years. You don’t realize how much it envelops your life until it is magically gone. Of course the leaving of that guilt was not magic, in fact it was a hard reality that I would wish on no person. A reality full of disrespect. Oh, I believe he loves me, believe that I love him (yes, still, I love him) but he stopped respecting me and that is a fate worse then stopping loving me.

He knows where I am now, if he cares to remember. This trip was to be with him too, all of us together, have a chance to have a good time and to connect again. There is a strong connection with these people. A surprising one considering my age. I am, though, still the outsider. Maybe not as much as I was, but certainly still a bit on the fence. Not of anyone’s specific doing, it just happens that way – it is a combination of my distance, life experience, personality. It was apparent when they asked me not to go to SF when I so clearly needed to. I think that there was fear I would ruin a vacation, make it all about me. But I never had before and I wouldn’t have then, but I understand the sentiment, why have someone damaged when you are trying to relax. But it did hurt. I needed proximity to people who would not mar me, I needed to do and see different things then I was seeing. I needed to be out of my element so I could have some distance from that thing that damaged me. But I could articulate none of that and I have never told them how much they’re asking me not to come hurt me.

But that is over, past and done. I muddled through without that, found escape and support without a trip. It was probably arbitrary anyway. And things have moved so far past it that it is not even worth mentioning or talking about. Certainly things are good now. Not the best, not back to being ultimately happy, but was I truly ever. Even now I wonder. I spent so many years wondering if I was happy and I still don’t know. Now I am though. Partly because of the things that have happened since the divorce and partly because I am a different person.

This is the truth; I will never be that person again. I fundamentally changed the day he left me at the airport. At first it was for the worst. I have never felt like I did. I wanted to shoot myself, to drive into a truck to tear my eyes out and to wound ever part of me. Pierce my body in places where they couldn’t’ save me. I tried some things, but I was saved too many times by too many people. Why did I become so self-mutilating? I guess I believed the best part of myself was gone. No warning, nothing to tell me that he would do that. Not until I looked back did I even realize what had been happening. She too was a clue, but one I didn’t see. I have changed so much. I am not sure others can really see the difference, not the ones that know me from work or the cursory acquaintances, but the ones that know my inner self know that I am not the person I was. I will forever be damaged, but I hope, and maybe this is naive, that this damage will make me stronger and make that hurt something that cannot occur again. A piece of my soul was ripped out and stolen and nothing will give it back, it is forever missing. Some part of me will always love him. The him that I loved is still there somewhere, perhaps buried forever, but there nonetheless. I see glimpses of it when he writes to me of things he things matter to me, or matter to him. But I also see the new him, the him that I saw only glimpses of when we were together, the him others got full force but was never directed at me. I get those emails now, the ones he used to send to others. They confuse and frighten me and make me wish I wasn’t me and didn’t have to read them, but because of who I am, I do. Someday they will stop hurting, but it may take a while, perhaps seventy is a good age to look forward too.

If it wasn’t for the people I have in my life, I would still be that person who walked all night with two phones in her hand and the computer two feet away, obsessively calling and texting and che4cking email. Calling the police every three hours for word, calling everyone I knew, emailing everyone I knew for some word, any word of how he was doing, where he was, if he was still alive. I lost 20 pounds in two weeks being that person. I never knew that person was inside of me, could take me over. I fear that happening again. God help me it doesn’t.

I started off talking about vacation and rambled on to what happened 6 months ago. 6 months that dominated and ruined what I thought was a life. I am slowly getting it back, that life. This time I hope it is better; that it will treat me more nicely and that I will come out with a better out look a better future.

For now, it is back to napping and reading and swimming and thinking about the possibilities of that life and of who am I am want to be.

The first day

Last night my mother called today “The first day of your new life”. In reality that day happened almost 6 months ago now when the Robot decided this his life should begin anew and my life (as a consequence and nothing more) should as well.

I have to say – for a new life – most parts of this have really sucked. Not since my father died have I cried so much, I have NEVER had to figure so much stuff out before – so many set back and kicks in the teeth, just another one the other day. A bill for yet another thing relating to selling a house I am a stranger too.

I calculated how much the divorce has cost me over all in the unexpected expenses and it is topping out at a whopping 64,000. The 50 for the septic but the rest – god the list is so long and poised to get longer.

There have been good things though. The band is doing very well and it is probably the most fun I have had working with another person on a project. Also getting a few movies made with has been really cool – esp. since I can’t wait to see what the Diva does with the dialogue and music and her own vision.

I am so tired though – no the kind of tired that is normal “oh I didn’t sleep well” tired, but a tired that comes straight from inside and permeate my bones and brain and makes me sit for hours listening and watching nothing but the voices and pictures in my head.

So many what if’s and now – today – there is so much that will change. SO much that will be entirely new. A part of me wants to stay in bed, thinking about this and writing about this, but I know that staying in bed never got anything done – I had a very good example of that.

I am excited for my new life. (Well, "Excited and scared" to quote a musical - oh God did *I* just quite a musical???)I am hoping the still open soars of the old one don’t do anything to jeopardize the good parts. As we all no, even if you run away – life finds you. I would never do that, never just run - no matter how tempting- I cannot be cruel, but it is a romantic thought. Instead I will try very hard to let go, burn some sage against eh black oil seeping from my eyes. Do a prayer and emit white light to protect myself from those evil influences. Start my new life with only a shadow of the past. Shadows can’t hurt you unless you let them, and I won’t let them

Bring on the new life – Mom was right – today, it all starts over.

The last day

The street was exploding. This street, the street I have walked every morning while here, with no destination only direction is now, at this early hour, filled with flowers. People setting up stands – long rows of pure summer colors and smells. I stop, not being able t help myself. Here you do not touch. Point and they hold it up. Yes, I want those. Perfect new potatoes with skin as delicate and transparent as a new born. I have no kitchen here, no stove, and no way to cook them. But I get them anyway and slip them into my bag with the large headed sunflowers from my childhood. Heads as big as my own. I’ve always felt like a sunflower. Fringes with color that draws the eye away from the inside. But I you did look, it wouldn’t just be a slick black swirl, but a complicated spiral indicating the trajectory of life.
The chef at the café I’ve been frequenting is beside me.
“What would you fancy for breakfast this morning?” His emphasis on this in his lightly accented English which dances over the display of dusty hued fruit. I reach into my bag and pull out a perfect new potato, round and still wrapped in a light dusting of soil like a receiving blanked protecting its delicate skin. He turns and his green eyes look just like leaves in spring, newly furled and unprotected.
“Perfect.”
A half hour and two cups of tea later, a plate of lemon ricotta pancakes, faces as big as the yellow fringes ones poking out of my bag, arrives with a side of fried new potatoes and some sort of spicy smelling sausage. The chef brought it all himself pointing out all of the ingredients he bought at the market that morning.
“The lemon made me think of your sunshine” He said pointing to my hair and then to the flowers. The pancakes are good. Lemon and ricotta not heavy but rather like the ocean. Smooth waves of flavor complemented by the tea and fruit. The potatoes and spicy sausage do not go with this meal, but he knew I wanted them. The crisp potatoes have a flavor I can’t quite put my finger on. Something like the taste of a warm kiss but more salty. Maybe something of the earth, perhaps they were grown near the ocean. I think of them growing in that dark secret place I have never been and envy the silence they grew up in.
Other people are here now. Drawn, perhaps, by my breakfast. Highlighted so perfectly in the window. I think to myself, “This is my best time. I am the most perfect self I will ever be.” Radian, redolent. Full of summer fruit and love for myself, yet the oily black swirl is still inside. It cannot be drowned out by the brilliant yellow fringe.
Pink Floyd is playing and I think for a moment that it is inside my head.

And all that you are
And all that you miss
And all that you love
And all that you kiss

Those are probably not the words, but that is what I hear along with the "ahhh" of the back up singers raising like mist off of pine trees. It is not in my head, but all around us. Voices lifted over our breakfasts. Each of us eating, consumed as we consume and now pressed by the weight of the just-too-loud music out lives and the future near and empty plate, far an empty life.
Anyone who knows me and read this will wonder – really? Pink Floyd? Yes. It is one of those surreal moments. The ones you look back on and think “Ah, it was then that the direction changed.”

A City That is not my own

Being in a city foreign to your own is so odd. Even this one – one I have visted before – but before is so long ago – I can barely remember what I was like then much less what this city was like.

I went to dinner and had churros con chocolate for dessert – I loved to order it, loved to dip the sweet hot cinnamon pastry into the thick dark chocolate. You know it is good when the pastry stands up in the chocolate – at least that is what the guide book says.

I saw a movie too – it was sweet and made me cry a little

Walking back to the hotel I was asked for change 4 times and then a man followed me when I ignored his plea. I had borrowed a large umbrella from the hotel and was carrying it. After three blocks I stopped and waited for him to catch up and told him if he followed me any farther I w0ould have him killed. It was stated like a fact.

He stopped following – I wasn’t scared – I didn’t think he would really do anything – but I certainly scared him. He held up his hands “I jus thought you were pretty” or some such thing – it was hard to understand his accent – esp. with all of the alcohol. Not mine of course, his.

I looked at myself in the hotel mirror for a long time when I got in. I am so much older then I was. I don’t really think I look like I do, but of course this is me, how I am how people see me. Wrinkles. White hair coming in – There are so many things that could have been different. What if I had had children – would I be a different person – have a different life. What if I move to this city – learn this culture – what would I do if that man had followed me in my city?

We all make choices, even the ones that are seemingly made for us. What will my choices be? How will I decide who I am to be from now on?

I'm not sure I trust - but it probably doesn't matter

So I decided a few days ago to post here again - but then I read a few of my earlier posts and almost deleted the whole thing.

So much has happened since this blog started I start to get sad just thinking about it. Not the actual things that happened but the time - the long long years and how they went so fast and how things that happened in those year seem not to matter that much.

I asked the Robot to stop reading this blog and to stop looking at my MySpace

www.myspace.com/edrie
www.myspace.com/armyoftoys

So I have to trust he will do that, though I know, in my heart – that he will probably look at everything I post publicly because he is that kind of person – someday he will search the internet for me because of something inside of him that makes him wish to tie up loose ends (like the T girl who will never talk to him again)

I will be a loose end and he will search and I will be easy for him to find. Though I know I will never find him online if he doesn’t want me too (beaker?) Though I don’t need too since I keep getting not so mysterious emails from someone giving me updates… Who could that be I wonder…

So I am going to stop wondering about others, do things that make me happy in whatever way I can be.

I made a resolution to myself this morning - to make thing matter more. To try not to do any throw away things or things that other people want me to do or I feel I have to do unless I want to do them, unless (for some reason) it is the right thing to do for me. I have never been selfish and never really protected myself in that way - I have always felt obligated to others. I was brought up to care more for others then for myself and to not account for my own feelings in a situation before I account for how I might be making others feel.

This is, in essence, why the Robot ran away. I think I was very good for him for a time. He was good for me too, in way I will write about some day, but when he realized that I would always make him feel - and he didn't want to feel those things anymore - he went with a person who made him feel like when we first met. Which was wonderful for the most part, but also bad in some ways. I loved those days, but not more then I loved getting to know what our future would be - could have been.

The funny thing is hindsight - as it always is, you see things that you don't see while you are going through it. In the movies and books I can always guess what I am supposed to be paying attention to and can guess what will happen to those characters because of it, but in my life, my real life, I can never see those things or guess them. I see them for others - all of the time and want to tell them to not do things because I know how it will turn out - but I found out early that is not a good way to keep friends...

So anyway - the thing I should have paid attention to - which in a move or book would have been very clear to me and even cliché... was a report on NPR that I heard while The Robot was sleeping in the car on our drive to Boston (as he almost always did)

It was a report on the fact that out of everyone who got divorced (and that is over 50% of people) 90% of those divorces are within the first 5 years. Coming up fast on our 5-year anniversary. This made my ears prick up. I had no indication we would not be together in just a few weeks. That my whole world would be suddenly and cruelly changed - but he did - he knew - somewhere in the sleepy recesses he was already gone. I just didn't know. I told him of the report and he took too much of an interested. An interest in the way he always took when something was bothering him, but I didn't notice, I thought it was something else, something about work, something about the collective or the band...

But that, as most things, does not matter anymore.

Other things that don’t matter anymore…

All people who have relationships have things they have to work out. I always did more house work then the Robot – I felt bad, he felt guilty, but nothing much came if it, not for lack of trying though – I made a list of chores, he made a list – we tried – it didn’t matter

Look at this

TIME FRAME DATE DATE DATE

Fri 7-9
Sat 11-1
Sun 12-2
Mon 7-9

CHORES
Basement
Vacuumed
Cat Liter
Sun Room Sweep
Dust Table
Wash Floor
Hallway Dust Table
Sweep
Wash Floor
Living Room Vacuumed Rug
Sweep
Wash Floor
Dining Room Dust Table
Sweep
Wash Floor
Kitchen Clean out Fridge
Clean off Counters
Clean Stove
Sweep
Wash Floor
Dishes/dishwasher
Shake out rugs
Laundry Room Shake out rugs
Clean Surfaces
Clean Toilet
Sweep
Wash Floor
Stairs Up Sweep
Wash
Hallway Sweep
Wash
Master Bedroom Dust
Vacuumed
Spare Bedroom Dust
Vacuumed
Bathroom Shake out rugs
Sweep
Wash Floor
Clean Surfaces
Clean Toilet
Clean Bathtub



It is a crazy list – and something I would do almost every week – the idea of writing it out was to get him to help – we even put timeframes there because we were going to do the chores “together” it never happened – to my recollection we did a few of the things a few of the times and then went back to our old ways. And now – the house is for sale, our life is not ours and I never do the chores unless the real-estate agent says she needs to come over.

See how much we do that doesn’t really matter? Things can be messy – they will be cleaned – relax, don’t worry about what time he goes to bed, just worry about yourself and being happy


Post where you want – consequences are in consequential

Last Post

This may be my last post in this blog - I have made a new one, if you would like the URL - please email me - anyone who reads this will know my email

I may post again here sometime 'cause I like the name - it is mine after all, but for now - this is over

So hot and tired

The house is a furnace and I am really tired - I think I got 4 hours of sleep last night

All of the changes at work are really hard to take - so is not knowing if I will have a job in a few weeks or not...

Why do all of these changes have to happen at once?

I am having very bad anxiety dreams again, but I will not take any of that stuff anymore - I think it makes me sad.

The therapist is a riot though - I see her every other week now. I really hate talking about myself, but she makes me and it is good I suppose. I never back out of a promise and I made this one to my sister. So I have to go - it will be good for me in the end.

And no interest in the house at all - I am going to make flyers and post them this weekend. I hope it works.

I also got the first bill for the loan for the septic system (which isn't in yet and wont be for a few more weeks)- OMG is all I have to say - and I am paying interest only -please sell house, please sell and let me break even on that.

My consolidation went through for my student loan so the payment is just under $500 a month - but in 10 years (10 really wow) I'll have that paid off

I could defere for hard ship - I could also get a credit card, but why fuck myself even more finaincially. it's not worth it, just don't eat or drive or go out and I'm fine. And I'm not helping anymore - though I would if asked.

Of course I took the max student loan for both years (40 K in total) because I used the 20K extra to pay the credit card debt (discover and Amex Blu and a good chunk of citi bank) 'cause in the long run the student loan was less interest. I hadn't anticipated what happened - I thought it was good for us to do this. But there is no us, and he has his own problems

Then he goes and says - how can your student loan payment be so high? Um right, like you don't remember the conversations and the fact we paid off SO Much $ in just two years. fickel memory

I am not getting a divorce though. He'll have to figure that one out

The farmer's market is back - so saturday I will go get yummy bread and have that and tea. It makes me happy to do those little things

And my sister is still coming - no matter what. I told her I wanted to go to NY that weekend and then come back sunday and hope that he was there to pick us up, so that we could start over. She didn't think anything good would come of it, but I thought it might be nice to at least pretend. But pretending doesn't get you very far in real life.

Ahh well - I have a show anyway and that will be much more fun then pretending

Finding Neverland

I was hopelessly naive when I married you. I thought brilliant people went to some secret place where brilliant ideas floated around like leaves in autumn.

I never anticipated that instead those people experienced for a short time then moved on. And often that moving could be cruel