I love coincidences

 Several months ago, pre-election, when I was on a book making binge, I made this.

It's a flip book in the style of the Exquisite Corpse game.

The pages are divided into thirds. Each whole page depicts a person, and when you flip a section of the page,  part of the person can be changed into someone else. Fun and games, and my mind saw a message just in the format. Walk in someone else's shoes. Get inside someone else's head. Feel what's going on in the heart of someone that isn't you. I thought the book needed a few words though so I excerpted several lines of a poem called, "In This Place." Turns out it's a poem by Amanda Gorman. I had no idea, back then, how appropriate that would be.

In other news, I am in this place--my new house in my new study where everything finally has a place and I no longer have to excavate a bin from beneath a bed to find a certain piece of paper.

Here are the other books I made during the book making binge.

And the sturdy deep shelves with room for books and my never ending collection of stuff.

The tiny closet is a wonder. There's room for my handmade paper, my hand-marbled paper, and all the stuff I use for collaging, plus the usual crap one keeps in a filing cabinet. Things like a final decree of divorce, mediation agreements, new divorce advice, tax forms, etc. 

A long while ago, there was this coincidence. Life is so mysterious and interesting. 

Friday Morning Beach Report

Looking to the right

Looking to the left

Looking straight out to the islands

Where have all the birds gone?

Do you see the sailboat?

I'm just now coming out of today's fog. I spent the day preparing for next week's estate planning session and reviewing my file on tomorrow's alimony mediation.

Yesterday I contemplated whether or not there was some way to reduce my property taxes or pay off my special taxes (a California phenomenon known as Mello-Roos) early and save billions. Hahahaha.

The day before that I looked into a re-fi for my mortgage. Nope.

I haven't hit the jackpot yet. Well. In many ways, I have. I'm not so lost in the fog that I can't see that.

Yesterday's Beach Report/What the Yoga Teacher Said (yesterday)/and Stuff I'm Avoiding

Beach Report: 

After two days of Santa Ana winds (they blow from the east) all the sand is back where it belongs. I missed my beach walk on Tuesday and when I arrived there yesterday, there was no dune to scale in the parking lot and the beach bathrooms were on level ground. The beach itself looked like a movie set. A smattering of driftwood, some rocks, and some beach glass amidst the pebbles. Like nothing  dramatic had ever happened. It seems that's the way some things in this life are. You spend years detesting someone while turmoil swirls and then you just can't work up the interest anymore. In fact, you don't even think of them, or IT, or anything much to do with the giant mess that once was.

What the Yoga Teacher Said: 

Find love in the pose, the yoga teacher is fond of saying. It's a job sometimes, finding love. It's there but you have to look for it, work at it. And during the struggle, it's the looking for love that makes the struggle easier. Just the other day as I logged on to check my mom's bank balance online, I discovered it was time to change her password. Without thinking I changed it to il0veyoumom! 

Stuff I'm Avoiding: 

I have three stacks of things on my kitchen island. The never-ending pile of paperwork for my mom. It took me months to get her on Medicaid (hooray!--she's on it!) and now there's a barrage of mail that I can't seem to comprehend on the first read through, so I stack it up. Stack #3 is the re-fi offers and my notes on how to negotiate a re-fi. I will have to gin up a certain mood to make those phone calls. Stack #3 is the alimony mediation stuff--those ducks are pretty much in a row.

And here's how I avoid the piles of stuff:

Rearranged Patio Stuff

It was warm and not windy today so I pulled up a couple of dead plants. I moved unhappy plants to places I think will make them happier. I swept. I weeded. And I decided to bring my big glass jar of beach glass inside and find a place for it since it's always misty with condensation and no one can see the beach glass.

My Entire Collection of Beach Glass--except for what we used to tile the fireplace

So I dumped all the beach glass out and washed it and laid it out on a towel to dry. Then I took the big glass jar into the laundry room to wash it. But I broke it. I had this beach ball sized jar for 20 years, and I've moved it to three different houses. It's funny how I always go into denial first when the bad thing happens. That just a bubble of dish soap, I said. I didn't break a big round piece out of that beautiful jar. But I did. Not salvageable. 

So the beach glass is now in a bowl that my mom gave me years ago. And it's very cool because the mirror let's you see the glass in the bottom of the bowl. So there you have it. The mess cleaned up. And the next time I move, I won't have to transport that huge jar. I'm finding love in that thought.

State of the State of the Margaritaville

It not yet 8:00 p.m. here in Margaritaville, and I am in bed, wearing my warmest pajamas while the wind tosses patio cushions askew and makes my house feel about as airtight as tent fashioned from a fishnet. In bed with me is my heating pad, a sorry substitute for the man who loves me. The man is tucked into a hospital bed (where he's been since Thursday night,) and if the energy level he exhibited when I left him around 4:30 remains the same, I'd say he is fast asleep. Once again he's been laid low with a soaring white cell count, and this time he had a racing heart and a fever to go with it.

"You knock me out," he murmured when I kissed him good-bye. He looked at me the way he looks at me. Go ahead, imagine it--because I don't have the words for it. Maybe it's the way you'd look at a woman made of water if you were dying of thirst. The way you'd look at a woman breathing out sunbeams if you were freezing to death. Yeah, something like that.

I came home from the hospital and made my favorite no-brainer of a dinner. Salmon poached in a little vermouth, sweet potatoes, green beens, and sliced tomatoes and avocados. I loaded the dishwasher and left my 89-year-old mother to wash the pots and pans.

And in other news, before going to the hospital, I drove to 65 miles to a divorce mediation first thing this morning. Long time readers of this blog, those of you might recall its original name, which I am prohibited by order of the court to render into  print here, sit yourselves down. The mediation went well. Yes, indeed, two months short of seven years since the uttering of the sentence with the trifecta of bad news (our marriage is over, I'm marrying someone else, and we want the house so we can raise our new family here,) the mediation went well. 

It's been a mixed day. And while I would not have ever thought it possible seven years ago to imagine   being more sad than happy on a day when the divorce mediation went well, that is how it is here on this particular evening in Margaritaville.

Devices, Dessert, and Other Good Things

There are three main indicators that my mom is feeling well: 1) She heads for the coffee pot immediately upon waking. 2) She has a martini at 5:30. 3) She spends a lot of time at the kitchen island reading the newspapers on the iPad. Her iPad (well, mine actually) is behind the Kleenex box in this photo of the goings on after dinner last night. If you look past the ice cream and the cake, you'll see her not-quite-finished martini, but she did indeed drain it sometime after dessert.

It was a pretty fine weekend here in Margaritaville. We didn't just stare at our respective screens all weekend.

There was beach walking.

And coffee-talking at  a quaint place with crocheted table legs.

On Friday I installed some of the crochet-work of my mom's that we brought back from the East Coast.

my bathroom window

the bedspread

All in all, it was a more than fine weekend with the many good and sweet and amazing things over -shadowing the alimony mediation that swallowed a portion of Saturday. My mom is recovering. M was here all weekend. And the man who loves me managed some extra hours in Margaritaville too.

Falling Apart

Dread. That was what I felt all week waiting for the mediation. Dread like you'd feel if your teeth were furry and you were scheduled for a cleaning. This will be unpleasant, I said, but good and necessary.

The personal statement of appreciation I was instructed to prepare had to take one of those little numbered tickets and wait as if the muse had a crowd of people lined up. Finally the number was called at 7:30 that morning, and I had something to say that was true. I wrote it down:

I appreciate the innocence of a clean-cut kid who didn't know enough about working in a big law firm to wear dress shoes with his suit. I appreciate the way that innocence mingled with his sense of humor and led him to hang a long neglected formal portrait of a deceased founding partner above his desk, and his blissful un-informedness that allowed him to believe that new associates really were entitled to an entire month of vacation. It was on that very vacation that our first daughter was conceived. Both of our daughters carry their own versions of that happy wackiness, the ability to be comfortable in their shoes, to amuse themselves, to recreate full out, and to promptly seize not just the day but an entire month.

I arrived at the mediator's office first. Not nervous. Not angry, not sad. "I'm hopeful," I told her.

I choked up when I read my statement, but I got over it. Moved on to the crucial stuff. There was a smidgen of drama. Not much. We agreed to meet again.

I was lost when I came out of the mediator's office. Not lost as in upset. Just lost. I could not get my bearings--so I walked to a Starbucks and took forever deciding that I wanted a dulce cinnamon latté and then stood looking out of the windows. I drove down Lake, I said. I turned on Green. Green is a one-way street. From Green I turned right. I had it all figured out then.

I sat at my desk when I got home talking to a friend on the phone about books and cakes and stress and yoga. I decided to have a party to celebrate the end of all this wrangling. But a minute after I hung up I was cold and shaking.

Hours later, finally out of bed, the man who loves me called for the second or third time, and said we should go to a movie. That Woody Allen Paris movie. I don't know, I said, is it a romance? Oh I get it, he laughed, you don't know what to do with emotional involvement right now. I don't know what to do with Paris, I said. And a wail came out of me and the wailing wouldn't stop.

I woke up under two blankets on my couch wearing a sweater, and a sweatshirt and a terrycloth bathrobe. The man who loves me said it was a seductive look. I took a long hot shower. We made dinner. And then I was pretty much okay for the rest of the night.

But I still don't know what to do with Paris.

Photo credit: idle-thoughts-elcees.blogspot.com

How the Mediation Went

 

There was movement.

A white blank page and a swelling rage

I've been captivated by Mumford and Sons ever since the Grammys. I've listened to the album "Sigh No More"over and over as if I were a teenager locked in my room with a "Do Not Disturb Sign" on the door. The mark of a good popular song, I think, is that it seems to be written just for you. For me right now the song, "White Blank Page" is about Mr. Ex, the Little Missus, and me.

I sat on my patio yesterday with 60-some pages of forensic accounting that attempted to prove why I should pay a shit load of money to the man who dumped me. His wedding decor, his life insurance premiums that will go to the Little Missus when he croaks, his doctor bills, parking tickets, remodeling on his house--I owe him for all that and more, the report claims. I get nothing for putting him through law school and supporting his career by keeping the home fires burning. I get nothing for raising our daughters and irreparably compromising my own earning power.

I used to be a writer. I'm not anymore, and I haven't been for a long time. I'm a crazed divorcée pretending to be a writer. Whenever I think I might be able to settle in, there's an email from my attorney--or worse yet, a bill from my attorney. I have to update my Declaration of Income and Expenses or my Schedule of Assets and Debts, or comb through another set of bank statements, and then pay them big bucks to read them. The sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach returns, and I decide to open the fucking Pandora's box of papers pertaining to my divorce. I feel some sick impulse to confirm that yes, he called her every morning and every night for months before I got the news that our empty nest was going to be even emptier than I thought. The next thing I know every last duplicitous moment of his plays through my head like a series of deranged fairy tales. It was comforting every now and then to think that I'd at least get a hunk of cash. "Half of everything I have is yours," he said. I believed that too.

Yesterday, a few pages into the forensic report the gears in my heart were grinding so bad, I called him. He was in his car, and I'll bet his bifocals didn't adjust and he didn't see that it was me. He answered and we talked and he actually agreed to see the mediator I'd tried to arrange last week to no avail.

We'll meet on Saturday, and the mediator has asked each of us to bring a personal statement reflecting at least one thing we really appreciate about the other person or our shared past.

A white blank page and a swelling rage.

I wish I were a writer.