Unlike what happens in Vegas, which ends up on the internet.

Bum: Excuse me beautiful lady, do you have any change?

Me: Nope, sorry.

Bum: That's okay, we can still get married.

Me: I've already got a husband.

Bum: Damn, girl. That's okay. We don't have to tell him. What happens downtown can stay downtown!

Willow

ceramic vases stand sentinel
cloying scent of lilies heavy, sweet
petals dropping like tears
loved me, loved you
loved her
forming drifts around
carefully typed words
inadequately embossed on stiff little cards
until the transient well wishes
can be borne no longer
and the detritus is cleared away
the cheerful reminders of death
stowed neatly beneath the sink
counters cleared of
thinking of you
ten tiny fingers, ten perfect toes
suspended in black and white
replaced by a grocery list
as normal begins to smooth broken edges
of life held together by grief
until from a distance
it looks whole again; fractured but solid
save for the space
that fits the shape of her exactly

Everyone Else is Doing it!

People are stupid. Seriously.

My parking garage has a single driveway that feeds two gates. EVERY SINGLE FUCKING DAY there is a line of chumps waiting to get in the garage. Why? Because like lemmings they all feel the need to line up at the same gate. Failing, apparently to realize that if there are two gates, two cars can slide in at once! The novelty!

Sometimes, for fun, I sit at the gate and pretend like I don't know how to make my card work, just to see if they'll wait patiently behind me rather than break rank and move to the other gate.

Because I'm an asshole.

A Ranting We Shall Go

Why the hell are some people such big whiny babies? NOT ME. I wasn't talking about me, though if you'd been at my house the last few days you'd be all "well you SHOULD be, Whiny McWhiner" and then I'd cry. Because that's how whiners deal with shit. They whine some more.

One of the things I do is make the kitchen duty list. Everyone gets a turn. Today Chief Whiner was all "Where's YOUR name on the list" so I pointed it out and he's all "why is it only on there once, mine is on there twice?" Listen, ManBitch, my name is only on there once because I do kitchen duty every fucking day. Any time someone else has a meeting, is off, forgets or just doesn't bother I do the kitchen. Sure, it can be argued it's part of my job to keep an eye on the kitchen, but KEEPING AN EYE ON IT and standing in as your mother because you never learned to put a cup in the dishwasher are NOT the same thing. Don't believe me? I DON'T CARE, I make the fucking list and if you whine any more I'm putting your name on it every other week. Don't like that? SUCK IT.

Seriously, the next person that whines "it's not fair" at me is getting punched in the throat.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Hey! I have a blog!

I know, right? The line to smack me forms to the left. Please be orderly and have your ticket ready.

So, I really don't even know where to start.

I got married. But most of you know that. Here we are looking all disgustingly in love and shit.

Just kidding. That's us with our attendants, Vodka and Jameson's. They've been such good friends to us over the years, it was important that they got to be part of the wedding.

I got a new job. It's pretty much like winning the job lottery. No, it IS winning the job lottery. The pay is great, the view is great, the work is great, the people are really great. If I didn't have to wear a grown-up costume to work everyday it would be the Best. Job. Ever. hands down. That's pretty much all I can tell you about it though because sometimes you see us on the news and there are Rules.

Um...what else? We went to Seattle in June for M's 16th birthday. Right? What the hell? She's working at summer camp now, which means that the next six months everything she tells me will begin with 'at camp'. I write her letters from the cat. One cat is a little tetched and the other is kind of a bitch and doesn't write letters so much as send a list of demands. No boring 'love mom' letters from this house. I mean really, she's gone for six weeks. And all I do is go to work. So it's not like they'd be a wealth of funny stories or anything...unless I ride the rail in.

Seriously. Do any of you commute on public transportation? Is there a law that states the minimum number of crazy people per train?

I was waiting for the train and a homeless person was digging through the trash. Not a big deal, there are frequently people collecting things to recycle. Not this guy. OH NOT EVEN A LITTLE. This charmer grabs the WHOLE FUCKING BAG and brings it on the train with him. A bag of trash. Trash that has sat in the 100+ sunshine cooking that old nasty chicken to an extra special level of stank.

The next day a different guy, not visibly homeless, took the time to sit down next to each passenger on the train one by one and assure us each "everything was going to be okay". Some people got addressed as "brother" or "sister". I'm not sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I just said "thanks" and was glad he moved on.

Riding the train makes people very short tempered. Not just me I mean. I'm always short tempered. It's part of my charm. Yes it is. Shut up.

You're the reason Mama doesn't blog anymore! And why can't have nice things!

Friend this.

This place has gone from a complain about everything (but in a humorous way! With mirth!) to a "work through the issue around divorce because my therapist is too far away and I work too many hours to go anyway and also I'm off all my medications oh and PS I'm having wicked body issues and aside from THAT Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?" bit of Internet that I mostly forget exists. I know. I suck. I blame the hippies and their damn patchouli oil that stink up our office.

See? Hippies. (side note: these particular hippies, while colorful were actually not at all smelly)

As usual I'm fully off my train of thought here. Surprise, surprise. I guess not EVERYTHING changes.

Okay. The point. Facebook in all it's amusing sadism, thinks I need to be "friends" with my ex-husbands new girlfriend. I'm sure she's lovely. In fact, I bet she's perfectly nice and I probably WOULD like her, but hello? Awkward much? Yes. Today they recommended we "reconnect" for the ten thousandth time and I noticed that her profile picture is one of her and J together, posed all couple-y in front of a landmark.

In all the time we were married, in all our road trips snaps, in all the family vacation photo's there are maybe two or three pictures of J and me together. Okay, maybe four. He refused. Flat out, absolutely NO FUCKING WAY refused to ever be photographed on any of these trips. Not alone, not with M, not with me and really, really never all together in front of some commemorative scenery.

Thirteen years of snapshots of scenery and not a single damn human in any of them. I quit asking. Quit wanting to be able to show people those photo's that no one except your Gram ever wants to see anyway (and here we are in front of a shrub! and this is us with a highway guard rail!) because I got tired of hearing "no" over and over. Instead M and I would do long arms of ourselves or she'd pose and I'd shoot. It's like he was standing outside our lives the entire time. When I sorted through the (oh dear god, the number!) photographs from before we went digital do you know how many I found of us as a family? A dozen. Or less. He simply wasn't interested in standing beside me to mark some little event that years later you look back on fondly.

And yet, two months in, there he is with his new love. Standing in front of a scenery marker, arm around her. Saying "look! we went somewhere and it was fun and we enjoy each other's company!".

Why wasn't I worth that same? Why wasn't the fact that I wanted it enough? What did I finally manage to say with my leaving that I couldn't say with my begging?

Don't misinterpret. I'm not jealous or...whatever else is not jealous but implies that I have a problem with them going places and enjoying it enough to want to remember it. I'm so very much happier where I am. But I don't understand. I can't wrap my head around why I had to dismantle our lives to finally get him to acquiesce to the tiny things that would have maybe been the Dutch Boy's finger.

I can't help but think that I really wasn't enough. That I am not enough. It's a fucked up smack to the face to finally begin to feel worthy of the happiness you've scratched out to then be confronted with the evidence that you've finally won a battle you're not fighting anymore. Or maybe lost it. I'm not even sure anymore.

Da Who Dores

My make up is all fucked up, y'all. And I blame Christmas.

I've resisted very heavily the idea of putting up any and all decorations for Christmas. I haven't written a single card, I've only just barely wrapped any gifts and even those only because they had to go in the mail. I didn't make a single cookie and the only person I've wished a Happy Christmas to is the Salvation Army Bell Ringer (put a nickel in the pot, save another drunken sot).

I tell people it's because there isn't anyone going to come to my wee little house on the east end of the world, but the truth is it's because I simply couldn't bear it. Christmas is about Family, and even though I've got an amazing bunch of friends (and Shush, let's not forget him), my family is far away. M is far away. The idea of a Christmas morning with out her...well. Let's just say there isn't water proof enough mascara.

But still, I missed it. I missed the hassle of figuring out why there are three rows of branches labeled "N" and none labled "L" and I missed the stupid string of lights that has to have it's plug's angle JUST SO or it doesn't work. It didn't feel right though, some how, to put up the decorations made of glued macaroni and glitter. Somehow, that tree leaning lopsided in my living room made Christmas too real. Made it too hard. No go. I'm Grinching it. Fuck those stupid Who's and all their Who Spirit, Mama isn't interested.

On his way home this morning Shush called me to tell me he was bringing home Something that had been given to him by a friend at work and while he didn't know what it was there was a lot of it and I was under strict instructions to open it today.

He carried in boxes and bags and laid them on the living room table. A half dozen happily wrapped boxes (with ribbons AND bows. Show off).

The biggest box was to be opened first, he said, so I did.

Y'all...this is where the tears started.

There, inside a that cheerful Santa paper was a Christmas Tree. A gift from a girl I've never met but who somehow knew exactly what I needed. Box after box contained ornaments, lights and even a star for the top of the tree, somehow chosen in exactly the colors I would have picked.

I can't even begin to tell you how much it touched me. Here, somehow, was the whole meaning of the holiday. The proof that even when you're alone, you've got someone, somewhere thinking about you.

the F-ing X-mas F-ing Spirit.

There are two things in this world that I believe above all other - badly fitting underwear will ruin an otherwise amazing outfit and Nice Matters.

This holiday season I'm pretty well on my way to Poverty. Well, not WELL on my way, but certainly within the Poverty Metropolitan Area. It's okay, I'm happy. I like my job despite the fact I work for about $2/hr when all is said and done. There are more important things. Like not being homicidal. But when it comes to being all Holly Fucking Jolly, I'm just...not. I put up a string of Christmas lights so that we're not the Scrooge House and I wrapped and mailed the presents, but if it were up to me, we'd all just sleep in and then eat waffles in our pajama's on Saturday just like if it was any other Saturday of the year.

Call me the Grinch, it's okay, I can take it.

But, in true Grinch Spirit, my cold, black heart grew a few sizes this morning when a Tiny Tim-esque boy held open the door at the Quick Trip for an elderly woman with a walker and an oxygen tank. Seriously, Kittens. How much more Tear to The Eye can we get? A kid the size of a hedgehog wrestling the door open so Grandma Moses can buy a 4 Loko and a pack of Marlboro Unfiltereds? It was fucking beautiful, that.

Lost

Sometimes I sit and stare at this template for a while and then, dejected, exit.

It's not that I don't have things to say (seriously, me?), it's more that...I want to say things I can't. The random musings that almost to a one will cause someone to be upset with me about all, or part, or whatever they think it is that I have said.

It's like I've lost my FuckIt.

Upped

As more people in my "real" life run across this blog, I find that I censor myself more. Which sort of defeats the purpose I had for this blog to begin with. That makes me sad. I'm not, by nature, a confrontational person. I'm the one that ends the fights, not the one that starts it. To the point that I find that I don't stand up for myself when I should.

A week ago while I was in Seattle on vacation J called me and read me the riot act about having brought Shush up there with me. He didn't want M to get mixed messages about whether or not HE agreed with MY dating while the divorce was still pending. Okay. Fair enough. I think it's not a necessary concern since M is 15 and a pretty sharp kid, but okay. For almost 30 minutes he lectured me up one side and down the other about it. I stood up for myself far more than I normally do, but still, he dug in when he could with comments like "I guess it's your life and I don't have to agree with your choices anymore", and "I just don't want M around 'that kind of thing'". I was furious, I felt attacked, but he IS her other parent and does get to voice his opinion in what she is and is not exposed to. That said, Shush and I have been together since July, and have known each other for about a year. We live together, this isn't just a 'fling'.

AND THEN. Oh, yes, and then.

THEN, about two days later he tells me he's bringing a girl he's been dating for THREE WEEKS up there with him for Christmas. For the record, I'm GLAD he's dating. I'm glad that he's found a nice girl to hang out with and I'm glad that they like each other enough that they want to spend the holiday's together.

What I'm furious about is that he thought it was okay to try and make me feel terrible for having done the same thing. Seriously. Why is it okay for him ? Is it because *he's* the "wronged party" in this divorce? Because he's the one who got left, it's okay for him to move on? Is it because "everyone" (oh, yes, the ever present "everyone" gets a voice in this one too) is "worried" about him, that it's okay for him to bring a girl, but I, the one who "everyone" thinks "is making bad decisions" can't? Or is this some sort of score that needs to be settled? Some "Oh yeah? Well, *I* can move on too! See?". Either way, if he was even CONTEMPLATING taking her with him when he called me then yelling at me was not "being a concerned parent" it was being an asshole. And I thought we were past that. I thought that we'd agreed that we were going to do this differently. I know I've tried. But this? This is exactly why we had problems before.

Why can't I let this go? I didn't say anything to him about it, because, well, I have fought with him enough to last me a lifetime. It's seriously bothering me.

Dogfaced

I was at Walmart today, a place that makes me want to stab people in the throat on a good day, and I happened upon a pair of women with about eleven children between them.

One turns to the other and says "I'm just so worried about feeding Gavin formula, but I can't keep nursing! Every time I hear a dog bark my milk let's down."

Then the other one says "Oh, I have that problem when I hear fire engines".

Seriously.

Choice

So, as it turns out I'm not dead and I didn't lock all you kids out because we're having some sort of secret meeting and eating cupcakes and riding unicorns and everyone but you is invited. We were eating pudding and riding hedgehogs, which sounds fun, but I assure you is very pokey about the lady parts.

Probably right about now you're picturing Lady Gaga in her non-meat dress riding a hedgehog and singing about her pokey place. No? Well you are NOW. So HA! I win.

Am I trying to deflect from where I really went and what really happened? Maaaaybe.

The thing about where I went and what happened is, well, it's complicated. And sticky. And smells a little like an old meat-dress.

For starters, my husband found this blog. Let's all wave to J now. I want to take the time to point out that he didn't ask me to take down any posts, let alone the whole blog. I did take down some posts from earlier this year. Not in favor of censorship but in the spirit of saying "what I said, while true, was mean". And we all know that being mean doesn't solve anything. Being mean gives you wrinkles and saggy boobs and no one wants more of either of that.

Things with the divorce are moving slowly, but amicably. I know, right? Did you guys even know that could be done? See, here's the thing. All that anger? It isn't productive. It makes you sick and it makes you mean. And even when it's justified, it's just...well...icky. All that anger feels like a vice. You can't go backwards, because what's done is done and you can't go forwards because you don't want to. You're mired down in the swamp of "but I'm RIGHT" and you don't see that it doesn't matter.

Sure, what happened matters. It hurt. It made me angry. It made me turn into someone that is the very thing that I didn't want to be. Mean. I don't know how many times I've said that nice matters only to turn around and be anything but nice.

No, it doesn't excuse what went on. It doesn't mean that I wasn't justified or right and it doesn't mean that what I said was invalid.

What does it mean? It means that I, right now, am choosing to go forward without anger.

I'm choosing to believe that being divorced doesn't mean you need to destroy yourself or the other person just because that's "how everyone else" does it.

I'm choosing to let go of the things that happened in the past that kept me from being nice.

I'm choosing to go on with life.

It isn't going to be easy. There are still things that make my heart hurt. There are things that I have said or not said, or wanted to say or wish I hadn't, things I've done or not done. There are things. Of course there are. There are any number of things. Infinite things. But above all there is one thing. Choice.

I'm choosing happy.

Borrowing

You've only just gone to the corner, a brief errand that takes you away from me only for a minute, or ten. I am putting laundry into the washing machine, wiping the counter of crumbs from your endless stream of peanut butter sandwiches and singing something stupid and tuneless.

Your key is in the door and we're sitting down to eat things that are not good for us and watching things that will rot our brains and talking about nothing.

And I am happy.

I want to tell you that I am happy. I want to tell you that for just a moment, everything is so heartbreakingly perfect that misery seems to exist only in theory.

But instead I cry.

Baby, you say, what's the matter?

I'm afraid, I tell you. Afraid that something will happen and you'll be lost to me. Afraid that what could be will be so bleak that my heart will at last break entirely.

You pull me close and my head nestles into the crook of your neck and I know that this is enough. One minute of you, is enough.

For now, what is, is perfect.

Feckless

Sometimes I just want to be in a Bad Mood. I don't WANT to be cheered up. I don't WANT to hear all about that one time when you had it so much worse. I want to be fucking miserable and enjoy it.

In that vein, the following things can Fuck Off.

* the telephone that won't stop ringing off the hook
* Ketchup
* mail that only contains bills
* people who insist that there is something Wrong with me
* people who insist there is NOTHING Wrong with me and I should just "cheer up"
* Abnormal test results
* having my office moved to sit by The Evil
* DVR's that cut off the last minute of a show
* opening a new check-out after I've already unloaded my cart on the conveyor and still have to wait for some stupid twat with every newspaper insert for the last month trying to price match.
* fabric softener stains on white shirts
* shoes that stink
* job interviews that last five minutes and result in a form letter telling you to suck it, you're lacking the skills needed to OPEN MAIL and ANSWER THE PHONE
* people who say mean things and then get all butt-hurt when you take offense to them
* not being able to just check out of 'real'
* unanswered prayers
* Lite Mayonnaise
* companies that intentionally spell things wrong like "Kountry Kitchen"
* Reruns of the only episode of the show I've ever seen
* NetFlix not having the last season of a show I DO want to watch
* Pennies
* Left overs that are too dried out to eat
* Commercials talking about how you "deserve" a new car
* dead bugs
* live bugs
* computer bugs
* insomnia
* tepid coffee
* soda machines that eat your money and give you nothing
* lists of things that can Fuck Off
* Shush saying I'm funnier when I'm miserable and it being true
* "verbiage"
* full trash cans
* Pop Tarts. Because I don't have any.
* Paying for parking
* underwear that creeps
* cryptic Facebook statuses
* bad photographs
* Ke$ha
* Marijuana being illegal
* People who think you can legislate love
* Forwarded emails about Frozen Black Headless Dino Angel Sister Jesus who went missing from Bumfuck and urgently needs you to copy this email so that Bill Gates will buy him a Coke at Disneyland

I would make a list of things that can Not Fuck Off, but I've been sitting here for an hour and all I have listed are bacon, cake and kittens.

The Hell?

I am wearing white jeans today, Kittens. THAT IS HOW FAR OFF THE FUCKING DEEP END I HAVE GONE. White. Jeans. Seriously.

Now, let's examine the things that are wrong with this;

1) I am a slob.
2) I work in a manufacturing plant and there are pigeons living in the false ceiling of my office.
3) I drive an old POS truck that hasn't been washed since 2005.
4) THEY'RE WHITE FUCKING JEANS.

See? I'm not even making this up. I know that's a TERRIBLE picture, but you bitches can just shut up about how I look wrinkled and knock knee'd until you have tried to take a picture of your own thighs, you just don't know how fucking hard it is. THERE IS NO FLATTERING ANGLE. And I don't want to post one of those stupid 'in the bathroom mirror' shots because I hate them and also because the flash makes me look like a white pants wearing serial killer.

I'd keep going, but let's be real here, I need to not be all shouty because there is coffee on my desk just waiting to spill onto my lap.