Post-Divorce Hunting

I've had to do quite a bit of hunting since my divorce. A place to live. A re-imagined future. I've gone off in search of my sanity, my self esteem, my reason to keep breathing. I've found those things.

More recently, I've been hunting for a house where I can bring my mom to live with me. I think I've done it.

I still need new tires though.

The painting at the top of the post is Guercino's Diana the Huntress

Change Might be the Operative Word

I've had a lot of weird dreams lately. One where I bought a new car that looked like a fire engine--but only on the outside. Dust that turned into blood. An Irish setter that could talk.

Last night it was a fancy party. The women in evening gowns. The men in tuxedos. My friend El was radiant, towering over the crowd in her stilettos, her blond hair like an aura. Later in the kitchen she told me she and her husband were getting divorced. She was laughing and eating cake. As the party wound down, the husband followed me into the hallway and told me he wanted to marry me. But he changed his mind in the dark post-coital hours. It hadn't occurred to him that I was too old to bear children. The next morning he went back to El.

Somehow this rejection segued into a dream about house hunting. The houses were old and interesting. Attics converted to rumpus rooms. Bedrooms a warren of connectedness. Floors that needed leveling. Architectural detail that required shoring up. "This time I'm going to buy the house I want," I shouted at the group of nay-sayers as they murmured  their concerns. I was still wearing pearls and a party dress, everything a bit askew.

The day after tomorrow I really will go house hunting. I hope there won't be any shouting.

In which I resurface and return to the blogosphere

"Where are you and why are you neglecting your blog?" My friend Julie messaged me on Facebook days ago, and I had an answer, but it was the simple version of why I haven't been blogging.
I've been zipping around in several directions lately. In addition to my new commitments to the San Gabriel Valley Humane Society and the Downtown Women's Center, I've decided to apply to another MFA program in creative writing. I've also set myself on the path to selling my townhouse and moving north of Los Angeles to a house as close to the beach as possible. Both of these projects will involve a couple of years of effort. Thursday my daughter C.(the bride,)who is visiting, and I drove an hour up the coast and met with a real estate agent. The trip was not so much about looking at houses, even though we did that, as it was about looking at neighborhoods. So somehow, I may start grad school in the fall, temporarily move out of L.A., and then permanently move from the city that has been my home for most of my adult life.
But if I had harnessed enough of my focus to blog, I would have blogged about 2 things:

1) The state of disequalibrium I experienced while visiting the banks that continue to host the two joint checking accounts that still tie me to a certain person I am restrained from mentioning on this blog. I literally fell down in front of one of the banks after I learned that I cannot take my name off of these accounts. The accounts must be closed, and because the certain person continues to use them, he must do the closing after he sets up new auto-pays for his bills. Of course, I could do the closing if I were the sort of person who went around poking bears with sharp sticks.

2)El Dia de los Muertos
I am not a fan of Halloween. I never liked traipsing around the streets of L.A. with my children while feeling like a bad mother when they recoiled from some gory display on someone's front porch in order to receive things I didn't really want them to eat. But remembering our dead loved ones seems like a holy practice. Love, I'm convinced, moves from one world to the next.To celebrate this holiday, I did what I have done every year for the past decade--I went to the fabulous exhibit at the Folk Tree in Pasadena. The photo at the top of the post was taken there.

Cat/fish

In the dream, my son and his wife T. live in a long low rambling house a few miles from a river. The house is a rendez-vous point where I often meet my aunt and uncle who have a boat they take out on the river. Or sometimes I use the house as a jumping-off point to drive to the river and visit them.

My aunt and uncle like to barbeque, and they want to cook burgers for all of us--my son, T. and their kids. I figure they'll bring their Coleman grill and some charcoal, but instead they arrive in their station wagon with the burgers all cooked. They pull them out of a cooler in the back--already on paper plates. It's not what I expected, but it works.

Another time, I go fishing on the river and catch a big orange fish. I bring it back to the house and later when I go to look at it, I see it's not a fish at all. It's a tabby cat with a gash in its side that looks a bit like a gill. It's still alive, and it looks as if I can nurse it back to health. "I didn't know it was a cat," I tell T. I'm worried it might have fleas, and now maybe there are fleas in the house, but T. doesn't seem upset about it at all.

Later she and I go shopping in a big warehouse. There's household stuff there. Cleaning supplies and light bulbs and stuff like that. It's dark in the warehouse. They keep the lights off because of the heat and turn them on section by section when needed. T. and I wander apart, and I befriend a clerk and walk across the parking lot with her to the employee lounge. I have my cart full of stuff with me which feels a bit awkward because I haven't paid yet. The clerk and I talk about travel--how there are so many places she wants to go. She's married and very pretty with long brown hair that swishes across her back when she walks. She's forty. "You're young," I tell her. After her break we walk back to the store together, and I feel a bit guilty that I've gotten separated from T. My son is there to pick us up, and they are looking for me.

Before I can go I have to load the wooden rocking horses into the cart that I've gotten for the kids. Somehow I've managed to carve designs into them, and they're nicely done. One of the designs is a sort of swastika, and I feel obligated to explain to the proprietor of the store that before it was appropriated by the Nazis, the swastika was a Native American symbol. The proprietor likes my work, he tells me. The carving is expertly done, he says, and he likes the piece of iron work that I've designed, too. No one questions how it is that I've come to this store to buy these things that I've made. We load them into the cart and roll to the car.

Why I Hate You More When it Rains

I hate you, Mr. Ex.
But I hate you more when it rains.

I was in a hurry to buy my own place. The Little Missus (she was still "Miss" then) had already slept in our bed. She'd cooked in my kitchen, stuffed her leftovers into our fridge. The candles on the dining room table were burned lower, and two empty ice cream dishes flaunting pink plastic spoons basked on our patio. A bar of sandalwood soap perfumed our shower.

Yeah, I was in a hell of a hurry to make my escape. Running for my life, I looked at twenty townhouses searching for the one that could accommodate two big dogs. I pondered hallways and elevators, stairs and patio walls, neighborhoods and parks. It was September. An easy time in Southern California to forget about rain. In September we think of wildfires and smog and is the heat ever going to break, and why do some people say "Santana" while others call those evil winds "Santa Anas" and we know  it doesn't really matter because we're all thinking of The Devil and praying that hell hasn't burst  through some fault line to colonize the City of Angels. In September.


I didn't notice the place I chose had no kitchen door. No island of tile or linoleum on which to coral a soggy dog.

And now it's another December. My patio is a sewer.

And I wish you were floating in it.