A Brief Journey Back to Divorceville

I awake with a vague awareness there's something I need to remember about October.

Yes, yes. In a matter of days, it will be 12 months from the entry of the final judgment in my divorce.

In a hour, I nearly destroy my bedroom looking for the hard copy of the paperwork that I am certain is stashed in a handy file in my cabinet---but isn't. The dreadful black file box reveals only page 1. I tape it to the window sill so as not to lose in the flurry.

Why do I need this document? Two words. "Credits and reimbursements."

The black box yields nothing but a memory of heartbreak. I feel it all again. Muted yes, but it rises up as I touch attorney bills, bank statements, copies of motions. I feel the disbelief layered over the knowing. The grief and betrayal melting into sickness and hysteria. I feel it in my stomach and my chest. The anger. Still there.

In the end, I find an electronic copy on my computer. I print out three copies. While they are printing, I email The Someone. And formulate a plan. When he doesn't get back to me in 48 hours, I'll email him again. I will contact my attorney 24 hours after that second ignored email. Because yes, it will be worth the stress and the expense. One daughter in grad school. The other going back to school after the new year. But wait. As I'm about to ignore the mess and go on with my day, I see his name in my inbox. A check in the mail today, he says.

Maybe when it arrives,  I'll tape it to the window sill for an hour. Let it wave a bit in the breeze while I put the mess back into the box. If I can stand to touch any of it just one more time.

Credit Where Credit is Due

Below is the exact text of an email I sent yesterday:

Hi,

I tried again recently to get my name taken off our joint credit card. No go since I am joint owner of the account. 

It is possible to close the account even though a balance remains. Bills would continue to arrive, etc.

Would it be all right with you if I closed it? It's important to my personal and financial well-being.

Please let me know.

I have not yet received an answer. But my brain is working overtime on this thorny issue. I have not used this card since October of 2008, and the balance continues to grow and grow. 

Credit card companies do not recognize divorce, which I've written about here,  and here. 

Yesterday I called the credit card company for advice. "You could get an attorney and take him to court," the young woman said.  Ha, ha, ha, I said, not going into any detail about the fortune that I've already spent on my divorce. But, yes, I thought, after I hung up, what about the Stipulation to Divide Joint Assets? Didn't my attorneys include some provision about this credit card, and yes, I will invoke whatever solution lies within this legal document, because several times I expressed my concern over this card to them, and yes, that's where the solution is!  Here is what I found in the Stipulation. 

Credit card account xxxxxxx : (Respondent shall close the account upon payoff by Respondent)


HMMMM. Toothless is the word that comes to mind. 


Meanwhile debt continues to mount in my name while I ponder my options. One option I am NOT considering is going back to my attorneys for advice on this one.

Checks and Un-Balances

"I guess this isn't all that unusual" the young bank teller at bank # 2 said. He was wearing a pullover sweater that seemed a bit vintage. A sweater like a boy in my high school might have worn. "Just last week there was a woman who closed a joint checking account ten years after her divorce," he said, wide-eyed as if he were at the zoo trying not ogle some exotic beast. I'm glad I'm not that woman. It took me half that long to realize I had to be the pro-active one. It was quite simple, really. A cashier's check drawn at each of the two banks where the joint checking accounts were held.

The teller at the first bank was more worldy. Middle-aged with crew-cut, shiny with product. A beautiful pink shirt and a co-ordinating tie. He explained how he was printing out the transaction. Proof that the amount of the cashier's check equalled the amount of the current balance. Well...minus this bank's 10.00 fee (!!!) for the cashier's check. "You have to be careful," he said.

"I have two cashier's checks for you," I said when I called The Someone. I said I'd be downtown today, but without a car, and he could meet me in Little Tokyo or at Union Station. Or somewhere after I got home tonight. He'd be in his office all day, he said. I did not offer to walk several blocks and deliver the checks to his office door. "I won't have a car" I said. "Union Station," I repeated, and he agreed.

When I got there, I decided to treat myself to dinner. A glass of red was set down in front of me just as he called. "I'm eating alone," I told him. "I don't want to walk away from my table. Can you park and come in?" He laughed. Then told me he'd send his secretary in. "I'm giving her a ride to the train," he said. Then there she was, breathless and rushed, but just as congenial as ever. I gave her the envelope. "What would he do without you?" I said.
"Can you believe I've worked for him for 26 years?" she said.
"Almost as long as I was married to him," I said. And then she mentioned her train. We hurriedly wished each other happy New Year.

I had a second glass of wine. A chocolate pot de creme. I won't eat the whipped cream, I said to myself, but somehow I did.

And as I walked through the station to catch my train, in front of me there was a father with two little girls. They held his hands, the younger girl blond and the older one dark-haired, looking up at him as if he was everything.

photo credit: the writer of the above check which I found somewhere on the Internet ages ago and laughed my self silly.

Winter Solstice

"How have you been feeling?" the man who loves me asked this morning as we lay in bed. It's hard to give an accurate answer to that question in that setting, in those circumstances.
"I think I'd be feeling fine," I said, "if I could just get The Someone's signature on the last two divorce documents." We talked for a little longer. Got up. Had our toast and coffee and went our separate ways.

Instead of walking Humane Society dogs right after exercising, I went home to pursue the missing pages--(mistake #1.) I'm not sure what mistake #2 or #3 was, but the cold-bloodedness of the whole thing tsunami-ed over me about two minutes after I walked in the door. I don't buy the argument that The Someone is just trying to hang on to me, that he doesn't want to sever those last connections. It's torture he wants. Drawing it out and making me ask, and ask, and ask. Back when I was going to therapy, my therapist told me that I was being treated the same in my divorce as I was treated in my marriage. It explained a lot.

What it doesn't explain is this feeling of sometimes still wanting my family intact. How could I want that given what I have now contrasted with how I was treated then? What warped reasoning possesses me to wonder what we might be doing for Christmas if...? To imagine all of us together in some snowy respite gathered around a fire, or under a beach umbrella in a tropical paradise, or even in the same room of our house for an hour when the likelihood of any of those things actually happening would be approximately zilch.

Still, that thought is the elephant in the room inside my head. The elephant that keeps me from seeing the gifts in front of me. The beast that blocks out the sunlight. And then I crawl into bed for hours because I feel as though I am literally freezing to death, and it's the only way I can get warm.

I think more and more about gender roles these days, and how I was so completely conditioned to wear the apron, how filled up my little head was with princesses and happy endings. How I would have done anything to save the idealized version of my nuclear family dancing like sugar plums inside my head, all the while waiting for happiness to drift down like the perfect snow in a snow globe. What I needed was a hammer to smash it all to bits, crack open the plastic, and let some honesty in.

I know all of that. I'm just having trouble feeling it. So on this the darkest day of the year, I will keep turning, turning, turning toward the light.

Report from the Pumpkin Trenches

And the divorce trenches (this may actually be better than pie)

Next: The Stuffing Wars

I'm a Little Creeped Out Right Now

For the purposes of dividing The Someone's retirement plan between him and me, I am what is known as "The Alternate Payee."

Here is the change in that division that has been recently suggested by The Someone's Retirement Plan folks: If Alternate Payee dies before she commences benefits, in accordance with the Plan's QDRO policy, no benefits are available to her or her estate. 


Here is how it read originally: If Alternate Payee dies before full payment to Alternate Payee has been made, the amount unpaid shall be made to Alternate Payee's designated beneficiary, or if none then to Alternate Payee's estate.


Okay.

My wise ex-mother-in-law would say something like, "Well, if you die, all of that will be someone else's problem."

True.

The man who loves me would probably tell me once again the story of

"The Appointment in Samarra" 

Here's a version I found on the internet:
(as retold by W. Somerset Maugham [1933])
The speaker is DeathThere was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me.  She looked at me and made a threatening gesture,  now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate.  I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me.  The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went.  Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threating getsture to my servant when you saw him this morning?  That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise.  I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.


Still. I'm feeling a tad bit paralyzed here.


photo credit: members.fortunecity.com

Yes. The answer is yes.

Yes. The division of joint assets has been accomplished. Yes, as a writer, I know that's a crappy passive-voiced sentence. But I love that sentence. It's the best damn sentence I've ever written.

I'm equally fond of this sentence: "Petitioner shall refrain from publishing Internet blog content related to..." That is a fucking brilliant sentence. And because you, my fabulous readers, are equally brilliant, you know what it means.

Maybe now my brain can cast off its chains and do a little writing. In the active voice.

Pardon me, is this Margaritaville?

I got an email from my attorney today. The email that I've been waiting years for. 

I'm not traveling with my computer because there's no wireless here at my brother's house. I have my iPad though, and when AT &T deigns to send me a signal, I get online. The one tiny nubbin of a bar increased long enough for me to check my email around 4 this afternoon, and there it was--complete with an attached document that held a very familiar signature. I had to go out to Staples in order to print it, and afterwards in the sprawling Arundel Mills shopping center, I found a Starbucks. Over an Americano, I read every word.

I hope I understand the legalese thoroughly. That there's no hidden snake pit I'm stepping into.

So I'm here. Where I've been wanting to be. And while it's true that "Margaritaville " is nothing like the way I'd originally imagined it, say two or three years ago, I think I'm lucky to have gotten here in one piece. It's perfect and lovely. A little overcast today, but sky has a strange sheen to it. I'm predicting a rainbow.

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.

Doesn't this look like a big fat indian wedding to you?

Mr. Ex owes me money. A lot of money.

For a brief review of the chronology of our divorce and the duration of the my struggle to get my share of our joint assets see my sidebar.

I put Mr. Ex through law school. I lavished loving care on the three houses we owned and lived in over the duration of our marriage. Rose gardens, fruit trees, well-kept interiors. I tended hearth and home with complete devotion.

Mr. Ex claims I owe him a stunning 6 figure sum for the 14 months immediately following our split. I wrote checks from our joint account, used our charge cards. The wheels of the divorce machine were turning slowly, and I had no alimony yet.

Now, before the final payout, he's spin-doctoring the books. I spent less money that what my alimony would have amounted to if the system would have pulled itself out of the muck in a timely manner.

The foresic accountant's spread sheet has allocated a variety of items to me that are not mine. Like a 14,000 charge to a place called Distracted by Decor.


Photo credit: distractedbydecor.com

One of L.A.'s Prominent Lawyers

The Narcissist (a.k.a. Mr. Ex) has been busy these past few weeks. He's stopped ignoring me and my attorneys and put some effort into screwing me.

I went without any spousal support for nearly 14 months after he left me. During that time, I used our joint checking account and our credit cards. Now he's claiming that the money I spent should be characterized as an advancement against my share of our community property. Had I received spousal support in a timely manner, I would have received quite a bit more money than I actually spent.

And then there are all those dinners on our joint credit cards in the months leading up to our split. Lots of nice downtown eateries and  price tags just right for dinner for two. I wonder if there's any case law out there that would support him paying that money back to the community?

My ex-husband is a liar and a cheat--and a partner in a large prominent law firm. I used to think of attorneys as members of one of the "trusted" professions.  Priests held a spot in that pantheon once. And bankers. Not any more.

Mr. Ex and I were wined and dined quite a bit when he was applying for his first job. We lived in a 450- square-foot apartment and drove a Honda Civic that cost $4800.00. Our other car was a 1966 Dodge Coronet with 200 thousand miles on it and a set of temperamental spark plugs. I didn't know much about big fat law firms in those days. I wanted the people that Mr. Ex worked with to be interesting. I wanted dinner conversation to consist of something other than droning on about vacation homes and private nursery schools. I wanted him to find partners that would treat him well because tolerating criticism was not one of his talents. I wanted him to be happy.

One of Mr. Ex's classmates had a wife with a different set of criteria. Eddie wanted to know how many of the senior partners were divorced in the law firms where her husband was interviewing. Only one partner out of a dozen or two still with the original wife? Nope, her hubby couldn't work there. I wish I had been smart like Eddie, but the fact is, I did the best that I could with what I knew then. I loved The Narcissist. And I thought he'd always love me. But love isn't always enough.

People are corruptible. Parents want their kids to be friends with nice kids--not heroine addicts. "Birds of a feather flock together," my dad warned my sister and me when he didn't approve of someone we were hanging around with.

Mr. Ex's flock would make Hitchcock's birds look like a bunch of parakeets.

photo credit: wackyowl.net

Notes from the Treehouse

As I lay in bed with the man who loves me, light poured into his kitchen as the sun lifted its head over a far hilltop and settled itself just above the hill he lives on. The Treehouse (my name for his place) feels combustible in the pre-coffee hours of the morning, but we were safe in his dark narrow bedroom I call "The Bunker." I need a bunker these days. "I can't forgive him," I told the man who loves me, turning the conversation to Mr. Ex after we'd discussed a recent betrayal by a friend of mine. I was wounded by my friend, but we'd talked about it. She apologized. I forgave. Chapter closed. Happier pages await in our story. Not so in the three-and-a-half-year divorce saga with Mr. Ex.

Yesterday the barrage of emails from my attorneys left cartoon character dollar signs imprinted on my eyeballs. We're into the land of six-figures now. Spent in the struggle to get my half of the community property. Thirty years of marriage. A third of it with begged and borrowed furniture, our first meals cooked in a donated and dented electric frying pan. I put him through UCLA Law School. Supported him with love and money. I want to hate myself for staying home and raising our daughters and trusting him, but it's hard to hate the memory of that. So I hate him, the way he Bernie Maddoffed me. The way he secretly plotted and schemed for months to leave us and then dropped his bomb just before M. left for college. Not even the courage to let her know before she committed to a school far from home. I hate him for delivering his message of doom by cellphone to C.---a thousand miles away when she'd just been home and he could have told us all when we were together. I hate him and his ruthless conniving Little Missus who, in my mind, deserves to have her family destroyed. I hate him more with each passing day and dollar.

"Something could happen that might change everything," said the man in the bunker. "If he gets sick, say." Oh, there could be a deathbed reconciliation, I suppose. But I don't really see myself in that scene. Even if my daughters are there,  I see a hole as big as a bomb crater. A hole with years lost. Years that can never be found.

Dreams, Real Life, and Writing

A couple of weeks ago (about a month after I started going to therapy) I began to feel as if I'd had surgery-- like some poisonous little thing had been snipped out, and I was all sewn up and tucked in for a long recuperation. A little later I began to imagine my situation as an untangling. Somehow my  sense of wellness and my view for my future had gotten knitted into the same garment as the financial settlement of my divorce, and now we'd pulled the whole thing off the needles for a thorough unravelling. I still really, really want to get my half of the joint assets, but it don't feel like I'm wearing it all the time.


Then Sunday I went by myself to a poetry reading in Santa Monica. My friend Sharon Charde had come all the way from Vermont to read with a group of other poets who'd all been published in Rattle. Somewhere on the 10 West the muse slipped into the passenger seat unannounced--not comfortably settled in exactly, but an idea or two rose up out of somewhere, and it occurred to me I should jot a note. I don't really jot down notes anymore, I thought. So I didn't bother to rustle around and find the pencil and the post-its I keep in the center console.


But there were more ideas, and finally during the poetry reading intermission, I pulled my index card notebook out of my purse and wrote something down.

And the dreams. I'm having dreams and remembering them. My therapist, who's trained in Jungian dream analysis, listens to me while I read my written record of my dreams, and then she reads them again herself, and we discuss them. When I was growing up in Iowa imagining that I'd meet my one true love and stay married forever, I'd never have predicted that 40-some years later I'd be divorced and dreaming about my ex and telling the dreams to a therapist and feeling better about everything.

I keep dreaming about light.

And I've had two dreams about cats--cats that I, at first, thought were other animals, and then, Presto! The rabbit turns into a cat.
The fish turns into a cat.

I hope I'm turning back into a writer.

Dear Mr. Ex

Dear Mr. Ex:

I have spent this Friday evening actively loathing you.
The money I have dispensed on attorney bills trying to get you to finish up our financial affairs is now an amount too terrifying to utter.
The brain power I have given over to the rage and grief at the way you have treated me is a creativity-devouring, heart-shredding monster.
Someday that monster will devour you and spit out your bones one by one. I will gather them up and hang them in my tallest tree as wind chimes. The sound will remind me that you're gone, and I will dance.

Another Autograph

Downtown again, papers in hand for Mr. Ex to sign. His secretary riding a lunch rush elevator between me  in the lobby and Mr. Ex ensconced above us in one of his two offices in a shiny downtown high rise. I had three forms for him to sign. Two versions of a form designed to release me from responsibility for a joint credit card account I haven't used since my alimony began, and a form from an investment account that has been designated as my sole and separate property by an Interim Division of Joint Assets signed, sealed, and delivered by the L.A. Court.  It should have been simple. It wasn't.
Mr. Ex had already signed off on the Interim Division of Joint Assets which awarded a few things to him and a few to me with more yet to be divided if he's ever cooperative enough to do so. The investment firm had already received the official court documents, but they had a little form of their own for Mr. Ex. to sign. "Where are the forms for the things that I get?" Mr. Ex reportedly asked. "I'm not signing her form until she signs forms saying that I get my things."
Um. No forms seem to be necessary for you to get your things.
Poor secretary.
I called my attorney and left a message suggesting we look into a contempt of court filing. I called my financial guy.
About an hour later, thanks to the financial guy, things were sorted out--at least for the investment company's form.
As for the credit card account, Mr. Ex won't divulge his "gross household income"--a necessary number before the credit card company agrees to let him be solely responsible for the account. But I'm not giving up. I'll figure out a way.
Meanwhile, it cost me 13.50 to park. If I asked him to reimburse me, do you think he would?

It's Not a Trojan Horse

Beware of Ex wives bearing gifts?  No need. 

Call me a fool, but I'm having another go at it.

Dear  Mr. Ex:

I send you these mementos of happier times, and I ask you to consider the significance of each one. Think. Remember. We had a pretty good run.  In fact, at the risk of beckoning a visit from depression, I’d even say that some of the years I spent with you were among the happiest in my life.

All that’s finished now. You have a young wife, a beautiful son, and the beginnings of a whole new life complete with a prestigious career that you worked hard for. The beginnings of that career grew from the seeds planted by the two of us and nurtured by me.

You might recall that I made a conscious decision to “put all of my eggs in one basket.”  I gave up working to raise C. and M. I gave up working to support your career and your efforts. Every place we ever lived together, I made into a beautiful home. I did my best to do all of the errand running, the chores, the household management, the home improvements, and the child rearing so that you could put your energies into your work. My appointment books and day planners from the years of our marriage are records of intense devotion and a full schedule of domestic engineering.

All I want at this point, Mr. Ex, is that we finish dividing our joint assets.  I ask myself daily why you have not given me what is mine under California law. Is it the influence of your partners? Your wife?  Do you think I don’t deserve it? Do you harbor secret fears of severing the final ties with me? Do you think I will give up? It’s only the last question I can answer. I won’t give up.  So please, let’s not waste our time and energy on this any longer.  I’ve spent pretty close to $50,000 on attorney fees.  It’s sickening to think what that money might have bought.  I do not know what you have spent—I suspect it’s dramatically less, but the two of us could have done a lot of better things with that money.

Please. Raise your son. Love your wife. Do your work. And finish your business with me.

Sincerely,

Ex-in-the-City

Divorce Advice: My Half-Dozen Rules

No one's asked, but I think I've learned a few things as my divorce has dragged on through these past three years.

Even if you think you were married to the most upstanding, moral, wise, and essentially kind human being, he has probably changed. At the very least, he's in a crisis and not thinking with the "big head." The head he is thinking with is no longer the least bit concerned with you or your well-being.

1) As you prepare to move out--or as he moves out, be absolutely certain you have made copies of everything--or just take the originals. You can make copies later and see that he has whatever paperwork he needs at some later point if you are feeling generous. You need everything. Bank statements (or access to on line banking--and if you do have online access change those user names and passwords before he does), credit card statements, insurance documents, absolutely everything financial. You need to continue to keep tabs on all financial transactions from the date of  separation until everything is settled. I wish I had taken the entire filing cabinet. Don't forget to take his cell phone records.

2) If separating your finances is going to take some time, consider canceling  all credit cards. If you need the credit until your spousal support kicks in, think about adjusting the credit limit. I now could be liable for  tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt racked up by  my ex because I didn't take any action. You have to think clearly about what you need and what could happen as an outcome of any choice you might make. I wish I had simply taken half of every liquid asset immediately. It would have been appropriate to my circumstances--30 years of marriage, 20-some years of raising children while not working outside the home, community property state.

3) Don't be overly patient. A reasonable amount of time for Mr. Ex and me to settle our financial affairs might have been 6 months or so. I've now spent so much on attorney fees that I could have gone to trial at the 6 month mark and ended all of this. Go to trial if there's a possibility of things dragging on  and on.

4) If your ex is planning to remarry, use the time pressure inherent in this situation. DO NOT BIFURCATE.  Bifurcation means that the dissolution of the marriage is on a separate timetable from the settlement of financial affairs. Don't let your marriage be dissolved until he has paid up by dividing all joint assets and agreeing to alimony. My attorney suggested bifurcation. It's common. It's what people do. Don't do it.

5) Don't be so damn nice.

6) Don't be nice at all.

What I Will Tack to Mr. Ex's Front Door This Weekend.

Dear Mr. Ex,

On this weekend of Labor Day it is fitting, I think, to remind you that I labored to bring our daughters into the world. And once they joined us on this earth, I continued to labor. Hearth. Heart. Home. Strawberry fields--or at least a small rectangle of sweet red fruit in our front yard. Every day for weeks a mixing bowl full I served to us, and to family, friends, and the attorneys you occasionally brought home and propped at our dining room table. Then came grapefruits and oranges. Plums and pomegranates. Loquats and guavas. But you'd tired of our eden by then. Still--I marinated chickens, squeezed lemonade, and with the same hope, I pressed the juice from our our lives. Let it be sweet, I prayed. Not saccharine. For us--only the real.
I planted roses. I planted trees. I planted hope, and I watered it. Kept it alive--in drought years, with carefully rationed tears.  Kept us alive as long as I could.
But you've let so many things die.
My pension was in those plums. My retirement in roses.  My 401-K wrapped round and round a sun that, at present, shines only on the bright planet of you.
What I ask of you is this: Divide what bounty remains.  As the sun tires of its labors this holiday weekend, promise me half of the fools' gold that glitters in the night sky of our lives.

Show Me the Money

It's hard to believe, but more that three years after Mr.Ex dumped me for the gal with the shoes, it seems that he and I have succeeded in dividing 2 of our joint assets. He signed. I signed. A document came back from the court with the marvelous phrase, "IT IS SO ORDERED." There's a date stamp and a judge's signature stamp.
Now show me the money.
And dare I say, it's time to get on with dividing the rest of it?  NOW.
It's interesting to ponder how differently I might have felt about Mr. Ex if our division of joint assets had been handled without the foot-dragging and the dispensing of 50 grand in attorney's fees. I might have felt...oh..I dunno...like some year I could sing Auld Lang Syne while spilling some champagne on his pants and then let by-gones be by-gones. As it stands right now, I don't think I'm going to give Mr. Ex the lovely present I bought for him the day I got the email from my attorney notifying me that Mr. Ex was feeling somewhat cooperative.

The man who loves me and I have already dipped into it.

And we liked it.