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.

Martha Went Home

I am not a neat freak. (Shut up CK) I accept that. That said though, neither am I a slob. I like to call my homemaking style "benign neglect". We're not being buried in trash, but you can sometimes (most of the time) write your name in the dust on the television.

My husband? IS a slob. Like a serious Collyer Brothers style house keeping when he's in charge.

I know this. I mean, after all, we've been married for about a hundred years. In theory, he also knows that I get majorly stressed out when people are coming over and the house is a mess. More of a mess, I mean. Not the haha yesterday's mail is on the coffee table and there are dust bunnies under the china hutch! messy. Really messy. Messy like a sink full of dishes, the dining room table piled with school papers and dust bunnies forming a zombie-style Apocalypse in the hallway. Messy like the laundry is over flowing and the shower looks like a science experiment. Messy like the camera crew is going to show up with Neicy Nash at any moment. I cleaned the house Friday morning before I left for home, but still. It's a bit of a wreck.

So what does my husband tell me last night at 10pm? That one friend is coming over for help with his resume and another is bringing her car to have the A/C looked at.

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?

My unpacked suitcase is still on the bedroom floor. There are two baskets of unfolded laundry stacked on the desk and Jack has decided the dining room is a reasonable place to relieve himself and so the carpet needs shampooing and...and...and...STRESS

I think it's a girl thing. It's not so much that I notice if other women scrub their baseboards and dust their ceiling fans, it's that I think they'll notice if *I* DON'T.

Do you girls do this? Do you make yourself insane thinking that the minute your back is turned that someone is going to run a finger down the lampshade and then NEARLY DIE OF DUST POISONING and then they're going to sit down to a cup of coffee with another woman Nescafe commercial style and dish that you never vacuum under the sofa?

Why do we DO this to ourselves? It's not like other women don't realize that we're busy balancing a full time job with a full time home. It's not like we're not all trying to run circles around life and produce a Betty Crocker Dinner in a Martha Stewart home while looking like June Cleaver and staying as cool as dammit?

I get it. I get that you'd rather watch TiVo'd episodes of Chopped than organize the bookshelf, I understand that you spend seven hours a week driving kids to this game and that meeting the other practice.

Why don't we give ourselves a break? It's unreasonable to expect perfection. It's silly to believe that we can do it all and do it perfectly.

So here's what I think we ought to do.

Not go on strike, exactly, but rather go on...break. Let's all take a day or two or a whole week and just not give a shit if the Avon lady drops by and you haven't washed the windows. Let's sit on the couch this afternoon and finish that book that we started reading in July but haven't finished because the floor needs mopping instead of believing that we're bad mothers and terrible wives because you can't eat off the kitchen floor.

Wouldn't you be happier if you could look at the cobwebs in the corner of the garage and then shrug?

I would be.

I will be.

If y'all need me, I'll be over there googling maid services.

Hu Ha

Am I the oldest girl in the world who purposely picks a line not staffed by a teenage boy when I'm buying something embarrassing like Monistat or Super Jumbo Tampons or mustache bleach?

Ouiser says....

When I see a really unattractive girl out on a date, I feel both happy and sad.

Happy that, you know, ugly girls can find love.

Sad that I immediately assume it's because she gives good head.