Home Improvement #1: The Powder Room

I have no idea where my financial situation is headed. Maybe there's a light at the end of the tunnel--or maybe the light is the oncoming train. One of my contingency plans is to sell my townhouse. C. offered her services to make a few improvements in lieu of rent when she came back to stay with me and go to school. However, City College is overwhelmed and she can't get the classes she needs, so she's going back to work on a boat in a month. Meanwhile, there's work to be done.
The powder room took a beating after the stupendous failure of my ingenious but misguided dog control device. I had the plaster and paint professionally redone right away, but ignored the wooden cabinet with its deep scratches....until now. C. is a meticulous painter, and the cabinet is renewed in glossy black (to match the black granite floors) with new hardware. Piper the reclusive cat still lives inside the cabinet.

Dream Houses and Vistas

You'd think I was homeless the way I dream of houses. A couple of nights ago in a dream, I emerged from my bedroom to find my neighbor in my entryway with her cocker spaniel. She was smoking. She can't smoke in my house, I thought. She can't have her dog in my house. What will my dog think? My dog, Layla, was asleep on the patio, so I guess I'm more territorial than Layla--in my dreams, anyway.

In last night's dream, I was at the house of a writer I know. He was living in a house that Mr. Ex and I used to live in (in some dream life, I guess, because it wasn't a house that Mr. Ex and I really lived in.) It was a fabulous hillside place with views and a big terraced back yard. As we climbed up the hill through the trees  and got ourselves situated in the large kitchen with its windows that opened to a view of the city lights, I said, "It's not so bad losing my posh house, as long as someone I know lives in it." There were lots of geek chic artist types at the table and everyone laughed. The writer's wife was frying mini-burgers and arranging them on plates with an array of garnishes.  We passed them from person to person around the huge wooden table while one of the other guests gathered up the plates from the first course. "I was hoping, though, that a visual artist might buy this place," I said. I nodded toward the side window. Out there beyond a row of bamboo was a stash of architectural salvage--old cornices, one of those fabulous Egyptian heads from the Vista Theater, elaborate wrought iron pieces.
"That would be me," the wife said.

Mr. Ex and I really were homeless once. After our drive from the midwest to California in June of 1975, we figured we'd find an apartment in San Diego easily. I was performing with a summer commedia dell'arte troupe, and we had a few days before rehearsals started. We'd saved up money for a deposit by camping all the way, but San Diego was expensive and there was nothing in our price range, so we lived in our tent in a campground in Chula Vista. After a couple of weeks, we answered a "roommate wanted" ad and moved into a brand new condo with a guy named Barry. The place had smurf blue plush carpeting, and Barry didn't like it if we left a section of the Sunday paper on the floor. The newsprint would rub off on the new carpet, he said. Mr Ex and I had pretty much nothing then. We slept in our sleeping bags on the floor. I had an antique trunk we used as a night stand for our alarm clock and our books. We stashed our  beat up styrofoam cooler in a corner of the patio. It was a long road from living in a tent in Chula Vista to a posh house in L.A.

How the Hearing to Recover Attorney Fees Went

I had my day in court on Wednesday.
But not really.
I was there, as were two of my attorneys and Mr. Ex's attorney, too.
Mr. Ex himself had better things to do. Which is what
the judge said. Surely, it was time to wrap this case up, he said,
because Mr. Ex, the big name L.A. attorney from one of the biggest and fattest law firms surely had better things to do. 
The judge scolded my attorney for a technicality. She did a decent job of defending herself...and me.
I was not allowed to speak. I did not say
that I, too, have better things to do than sit mutely in a courtroom
on a
Wednesday morning in March.

On Thursday I flung doors and drawers wide and
threw paper away.
Not motions, nor declarations of income and expenses, nor schedules of assets
and debts, nor stipulations for the divsion of joint assets. Not
the final decree--but notes for stories already written and early memoir drafts, handouts from classes, rosters with names of
people I can't quite remember. I didn't throw away the things I don't want to remember, I threw
away what I am finished with. I am not finished
with you, millstone of a  husband. I will print out every email, bind them into a book
and then
I will burn it at your feet.


The judge has taken the matter under submission.  I don't know anything yet. Meanwhile another godzilla of a bill from my attorney is weighing down my desk.

Writing and Healing

I imagined two different ways of killing myself after my husband left me for a woman more than twenty years younger. I would hang myself or jump.

I had the sense to know that I needed help. All three of my children were stunned and grieving. I wanted to stay alive for them. And for my mother. Love kept me alive.

I had already written a memoir by the time my husband left me. I'd penned 85,000 words about giving my son up for adoption after a secret pregnancy--and twenty-one years later reuniting with him with the help of a clandestine adoption underground railroad. I started writing this story by accident. I had another story I was burning to tell then. A story involving teen-age girls, lies, Los Angeles gangsters, and a party gone wrong. I put pen to paper on the spur of the moment one morning after I'd pulled my min-van back into the garage--home from the morning school run. A mug of coffee and the L.A. Times were on my kitchen table, and after reading some article about teen-agers, pagers, and drugs, I grabbed one of my husband's yellow legal pads and a pen. I wrote pages and pages over the next week. Then I spotted a flyer in a local coffee house about a writing group. I folded the flyer in half and stuck it to my bulletin board. When I showed up for the first meeting, I was stunned to learn that the workshop was for writing memoir--true stories.

My story about teenagers and the lies they tell was mostly true anyway, but what came out of my pen that first Saturday morning was about my son. An essay, I thought. I had 35 pages of essays about giving up my son by the time I took my first real writing class at UCLA extension a couple of years later. The essays turned into a book. I got an agent, did a lot of revising, and I like to think  that if I hadn't been turned into a blogaholic by my divorce, I might have a book out in the world by now.

I think that memoir will be published eventually, but meanwhile I've had a lot of time to think about the stories that life delivers to us. I know about what it feels like to open a garden shed where two colorful jump ropes hang on a hook; what it feels like to run my hands over them while my eyes survey the children's climbing structure in my back yard. I know what it's like to find the view of the Mississippi River  from the window of a hotel room unbearable and the relief when a friend not only returns my phone call but shows up at the hotel.

I've altered my brain chemistry with two courses of anti-depressants since my marriage fell apart. I'm on my second therapist. I've had light therapy, dropped Bach Flower remedies onto my tongue, taken a  fine selection of herbal concoctions, and anesthetized myself with gin. I've exercised faithfully to up my endorphin production and devoured a boatload of chocolate. And I've  written so many essays about my divorce that I have another book.  

Writing heals. I'm not the only one claiming this.  Check THIS out. And THIS. Google "writing and healing." Read some more.  Then grab a pen or fire up your laptop.