Travel and the Single Man

For most of last year, I was on the road with my job.  I figured I was away from home 40-45 weeks out of last year.  I have previously surmised that I felt the traveling played a significant role in why I am no longer with my wife and daughters.  It’s a somewhat ironic thing because it wasn’t that I was out messing around when I was traveling which is what breaks up a lot of marriages.  In fact, it was quite the opposite.  When I was away, I missed my family and thus I spent the majority of my evenings in my hotel room.  Sure, I would go out to eat but I was pretty much back in the room by 8 or so.  Even if I had to stay over the weekend which happened a few times, I still wasn’t out partying at some bar.  I’ve never been the type to do that anyway and even more so when I was married. 

Now that I am single again, I thought that traveling would be a more exciting proposition.  Granted, I don’t travel near as much as I did.  As I’ve said in previous posts, I changed to a job that kept me home more.  This was a valiant (although futile) effort to save my marriage.  My first big trip post separation was a trip to Prague in the Czech Republic (mentioned in the last post, Tales of Beards and Bracelets).  This was for my company’s sales kick off and I thought “Man, this is where I am going to make my mark on being single again.”  You see, at events like these, there are a lot of meetings and presentations but there are also a lot of social events.  The company would tell you it’s a chance to network with your peers but most of the company’s employees will tell you it’s a great chance to get really drunk. 

Seeing as how there would be several hundred employees there from all across the world and that I would be in a foreign country, I was ready to do my share of mingling and maybe even have some “fun” while I was there, if you know what I mean, wink-wink-nudge-nudge. On the plane over, I got my man-bracelet and had a few drinks to prep myself for what was sure to be a few nights of frivolity.  I was excited.  I was ready to do this thing known as being single.  I couldn’t wait so much so that I couldn’t sleep on the plane. 

This excitement and readiness for living the single life at its fullest didn’t last long.  The first social event was after the first day of the meetings and there was a happy hour that went well into the night at the bar in the hotel.  Plenty of women and conversation but I was somewhat off to the side.  Not alone, though.  I had a few of the folks I work with who I should actually refer to as my friends but I wasn’t in the middle of chatting up some woman.  I felt out of place.  I felt like it was wrong.  I couldn’t shake the fact that I had just gotten out of the most important relationship I ever had in my life and trying to dive into the single life at that point was like diving into a pool that had no water.

Still, I tried to be as sociable as I could but the flirty single man wasn’t coming out.  At one point, I was showing the man-bracelet that I got on the plane and said it was something to replace my wedding ring.  One woman who was in our group laughed and said, “Oh I know your type.”  I looked at her quizzically and asked, “What is my type?”  She proceeded to describe me as the man who cheated on his wife and now left her and his children behind in order to pursue a mid-life crisis as a single man on the prowl.

The words stung even though they were very, very far from the truth.  Whatever winds I had flowing through my sails were suddenly stopped.  I politely (okay maybe not so politely, I had a few drinks in me after all) advised her that she was wrong and that my wife lost interest in the marriage and I wanted to work things out.  I never cheated on her and I couldn’t wait to see my daughters again.  She quickly shut up.

The rest of the trip was fun but there was one evening where the guys I was with were busily trying to find something to buy their wives and stopped at several stores to haggle for the best deal.  Another moment where my ship stopped dead in the water.  I didn’t have anyone to buy something for.  Oh sure, I did get my daughters some souvenirs but it would have been nice to have someone special for which to buy something special. I would have been right there with my friends in the haggling arena if that were true.  Instead, I stood outside the door and watched people walk by letting that all too familiar buzzing of “whys” and “what happened” dart around my head.  I tried to hide my depression from the guys but I’m not sure I did a great job at it although I hope it wasn’t too obvious. I didn’t and don’t want to be a downer around everyone just because life shit on me a little bit...okay so maybe this blog goes against that thought but I’m not forcing you to read this! :)

Another aspect of traveling relates to those little moments I talked about in The Little Things.  Whenever I used to sit at the airport waiting to board the plane or as soon as I got off the plane, I would call the MMC (see sidebar) just to talk for a bit or let her know I arrived if that was the case and ask how things were going.  I would talk to the girls as well but a highlight was just talking to her.  Like I said, I missed my wife and family when I traveled so making even short phone calls helped to ease that bit of loneliness.  Now, I don’t have that option and when it occurred to me the first time I stepped off a plane, it felt odd…weird…different.

One more story of travel and being single and then I’ll let you go.  When I was returning from going to Seattle for my niece’s wedding (see An Open Letter To My Niece), the girls and I got upgraded to first class on the flight back.  They sat together in the first row and I was behind them in the aisle seat, ready to spring up if they started acting up.  A woman sat next to me in the window seat.  The girls were absolutely perfect the entire flight and it certainly helped that it was a red-eye because they slept the majority of the time.  Those first class seats were practically beds for them.  When we landed, I was getting the girls up and their things together when a woman who was seated across the aisle remarked to the woman who was sitting next to me that she has never seen such well-behaved children on a plane before.  My “seat mate” said that she could take no credit for the girl’s behavior which I thought was a great response.  The other woman said “But you’re with the man who has the good little girls so you should be proud of that.”  We looked at each other, smiled, and let it go.  No sense in trying to explain, although it did kind of bother me that this woman across the aisle made no attempt to give the compliment to me, the father.  Like fathers have nothing to do with the behavior of their children!  Oh well.  Maybe I should have gotten the phone number of the woman who sat next to me but this was before the Prague trip and if I wasn’t ready for single life then, I certainly wasn’t ready for it at that time. 

I said I was going to let you go after that story, didn’t I?  Well, one more thing.  I’ve noticed an evolution with these posts as I have been writing them and I wondered if it was noticeable to anyone else but me.  I started out with the hurt and pain of losing the woman I loved.  I spent a few posts noting (hopefully humorously) about some facets of being single again (specifically in Bed, Bath and Bothered) and how I will be a single father (as in Parents, Inc.) but I spend most of my time on the divorce and the emotions around that.  Still, I do see that the posts are becoming less about her and more about not having someone, which I believe is signficant in that I am probably getting over her but not the situation.  I think loneliness is part of the “suddenly single” package, isn't it?  While it doesn’t have to be a sad thing, it is a major part of getting through all of this.  The end of this may be when I meet someone but I think the end will be when I am WITH someone. 

Okay, you can go now. Thanks for listening.

 

Next time:  The lessons of life

Tales of Beards and Bracelets

In between the time that my divorce papers were filed and I moved into my own house, I went through a period of doing some things outside of my normal routine.  Namely, I grew a beard and bought a bracelet…well, I prefer to call it a wrist band but I’ll get to that in a moment.  These were somewhat subtle changes but they were things that I would not have done had I remained a married man. 

About a month before I moved out, I went on a business trip to Prague in the Czech Republic.  To get there, I had to take an international flight.  I looked into renting a car but the ones that go into the water were apparently all booked up.  Since this was an international flight, you had the opportunity to do some duty free shopping on the plane and as I was thumbing through the catalog, a man’s bracelet caught my eye…and again, I don’t like using the term “bracelet.”  It sounds too feminine for me.  Even though that is how they are classified I decided the term “man-bracelet” took that girly edge off. 

Anyway, this man-bracelet was made of Italian braided leather and had a titanium clasp.  Clasp.  There’s another term I’m not real fond of because, again, there is a feminine quality to it.  Clasps are for bras and necklaces and other types of jewelry and yes, this man-bracelet is under the jewelry umbrella but just on the outer edge and probably gets wet a lot.

Wow, I cannot stay on topic here, can I? 

So the man-bracelet caught my eye for two reasons: one, it was cool looking and two, I think subconsciously I was looking for a replacement to my wedding ring.  As I wrote in The Discord of the Ring, I loved wearing my wedding ring not only for what it represented but because it was comforting to have it on and to know it was there.  Once I stopped wearing it, I would occasionally panic because I thought I took it off and left it somewhere.  I still have those moments.  I needed something to take its place and this duty free bracelet for men felt right.  This was also the start of a pretty cool trip to a foreign country and I thought I was kind of kicking off my single life (I’ll talk about that in another post, though).  The man-bracelet was my new wedding ring; a symbol of me being single again.  Being round, it had the same quality as a ring but it wasn’t a ring so no connotations of being married were attached to it.  In a word, it was perfect.  I flagged down the flight attendant and bought that baby on the spot.  It didn’t last more than a few minutes in the box before it was on my wrist.  I still have it on and am considering maybe adding one or two others.  Is that too much?  Is one too many?  I’m not sure but I don’t really care.  I like it and that’s really all that matters although I did ponder if I needed to wear it on a certain wrist to indicate that I was not gay.  No disrespect to my homosexual friends and readers out there, but I grew up in a time where if you had an earring you’d better put it in the correct ear.  I thought maybe the same applied to bracelets on wrists.  Then I realized I was 47 years old, not in high school anymore and it was 2012 so I put it on the left wrist.

….that’s the correct one, isn’t it?  No…wait…don’t answer that.  It isn’t important.

The Man Bracelet!

After I returned from Prague, I decided not to shave.  Initially, it was the result of the laziness that is born out of depression but then it became something of a statement.  I was stuck in my old house with the MMC and the tension was still palatable.  By growing the beard, I felt like I was putting some insulation between myself and the situation.  Perhaps it was a mask of sorts, trying to hide my pain.  Truth of the matter, the MMC hated beards and that was pretty much the only reason I needed at the time. 

I ended up referring to the hair growing out of my face as my divorce beard.  Thus I had the divorce beard and the man bracelet.  Kind of sounds like a cheesy 70’s buddy cop show, doesn’t it? 

Divorce Beard and Man-Bracelet!  Two cops looking for justice…in all the wrong places. 

Thursdays at 8 pm, 7 Central!

I have never been one to grow a beard.  I had a porn-star style moustache for most of the nineties and I actually shaved that around the time that the MMC and I first met.  Interesting that I started to grow facial hair again when that the MMC were splitting up.  But beards?  I could never get one to grow fully.  It mainly grew thick in some places and thin (or not at all) in others.  Add to the fact that now that I’m older, the sides come in mostly gray so it didn’t look like it was growing at all. 

Still, I persisted with the beard for a good two months or so.  Unfortunately, I got a bad haircut due to a miscommunication between myself and my hair stylist (is that what they call the folks who man the scissors at Pro-Cuts?).  My almost shaved head looked really funny with my gray and splotchy beard.  I looked like the lead character on Breaking Bad and that really wasn’t the look I was going for being newly single and all.  I tried trimming the beard down so it didn’t look thicker than my hair but then I looked like I just got out of prison. 

Ultimately, I gave up.  I shaved off the beard and actually felt better about it.  I’m sure I will try to grow it again but for now, I’m back to being clean shaven and looking a lot less like a ex-convict, meth dealer or homeless programmer. 

I still have the man-bracelet though!  I won’t give up on that.

…I just may put in on the right wrist? 

Next time:  On the road again

The Little Things

Recently, I went back to my “home” state of Texas (I put home in quotes because I’m not originally from there but its where I spent my formative adult years so I like to refer to it as my home state ((Arizona is my other home state where I spent my formative teenage years))).  Outside of seeing friends and family, I also went to Texas for the 19^th season of my Fantasy Football League.  Even though I lived several states away, I made it a point each year to go down there to attend the draft.  This year it was decidedly cheaper since it was just me going and not the whole family.  I like the fact that I have this league and draft to go to each year.  It helps keep me in touch with the friends I have in Texas…although, with the divorce and my need for support to get me through the last few months, I have been in almost constant contact with a handful of them.

A major part of the draft is the poker tournament we have after.  Usually six or seven of the guys stick around, we each throw in $20 and have a tournament.  The payout goes to the first and second place finishers.  On this particular occasion, the cards were falling for me and I ended up winning the thing.  That was $120 in my pocket and it felt good. 

Well, almost good. You see, this was one of the little things in life that is made better when you have someone to share it with.  While I was happy to have the money and to win the tournament, my impulse was to call the MMC (see sidebar), tell her about it and then tell her how I did in the draft…like I’ve done for the past eight years…but that was no longer an option. 

While I am on the mend now that I am on my own, there are still these little moments that become somewhat hollow because I don’t have someone close to share them with.  Any event, no matter how small, becomes much more significant when you get to tell the person you love about it.   For example, in my new place, I decorated a wall with various pictures of the girls and ceramic fish my brother made a long time ago.  I was proud of the placement and the way it looked but even though I enjoyed it, it wasn’t the same without someone to enjoy it with.

I’m not sure how I felt about the little things when I was single (pre-MMC).  That honestly feels like a lifetime ago.  When I experience the minor “life wins” like breaking 100 in golf (okay, 105) or assembling something that has “some assembly required” without having to take it apart because I got a piece backwards, I’m sure I enjoyed them much more back then than I do now, but I doubt I enjoyed them as much as when I was able to tell my wife about them.  I wonder if this says more about the person you are with than it does the event or even more specifically, that you HAVE a person to be share these minor events with.

The other problem I have when the little things occur is the feeling that I should do something to get that person back in my life so that I do have someone to share them with.  For the most part, I don’t think about getting back together with the MMC.  These are the times when I am firmly planted in reality and know that it's over between us.  But when a small win comes along and I don’t have her around to share it with, I start to get lonelier than I did before which in turn lessens the significance of the win.  That loneliness leads to thoughts of what I could do to “win her back.”  Unfortunately, I know that will probably never happen.  I feel certain that even if she felt like she wanted to get back together or that she made a mistake, she would never tell me.  She couldn’t tell me there were problems to begin with, why would she make an even bigger effort to work things out now that we are split up and the divorce will be final in less than 20 days?

No, reconciliation isn’t in the cards and that just means I need to take my little things, enjoy them to the best of my ability and try to not follow that up with bouts of loneliness.  Even better would be to find that next person to share them with. 

If I do that, I would put that in the category of a big thing.

 

Next time:  Talk of whiskers and bracelets.

Entertainment Tonight, Today, and Always

As I was preparing to move into my own house, I considered the entertainment options available to me.  I am not much of a habitual TV watcher anymore.  I used to be.  I used to love television and had a set of shows I would watch each night.  I could tell what day it was by what shows were on.  There was a time when a certain show caused a lot of talk in the office on the following day (i.e. Lost) so I had to be up to date or out on the office chatter. Consistent TV watching has waned since I stopped working in an office   It got even worse when I was a frequent traveler (I rarely turned on the TV in a hotel room) and even more so with recent events (and if you don’t know what those are, welcome to my blog!  We’ll wait while you get caught up…start at Why? and work your way up.  Done?  Great!). 

Since I was on my own I didn’t need to be concerned over what the MMC (Mother of My Children, please see What to Call The Woman Who Is No Longer My Wife or in the side bar for more info on that) wanted to watch and I only need to be mildly concerned over what the girls wanted to watch when they came over.  We generally stick with movie nights and maybe TV in the mornings as they wake up and we get the day rolling. 

Even though I had become more of an occasional TV watcher, I was still a big TiVo fan.  Recording the shows I really did want to watch (mainly Modern Family, The Big Bang Theory, The Daily Show, Storage Wars and Mythbusters) always meant I had something to watch at any given moment.  But since this has been the Summer of Divorce, most of these shows weren’t first run so I burned through them rather quickly during the rare moments that I actually wanted to watch TV and even during those times, I was only half paying attention. Thus when it came to making the entertainment choices for my new house, I pondered the latest thing in television technology:   On-demand.

During the time that I had control over the devices to feed my need for entertainment, I’ve experienced the Atari 2600, Nintendo, a VCR, cable, DVD player, the aforementioned TiVo, the Wii, Xbox and my latest device, the Playstation 3.  I got the Wii and Xbox mainly for the games … some for me, some for the kids but I discovered the other options available to me:  Netflix, Hulu, Amazon On Demand and a plethora of other assorted services.  We got Netflix at first as our on demand movie choice but I was always frustrated with it because there would be a movie I wanted to watch but it was never available on Netflix.  I found Amazon On Demand to be a much better choice for movie rental or purchase.  I also found it inconvenient to use Netflix because you had to add a movie or TV show to your queue on your PC or smart phone application and then fire up Netflix on your desired device to actually watch what you selected.  During the separation, I either discovered the functionality or there was a functionality change that allowed you to start selecting movies directly from the Netflix interface on the PS3.  This made Netflix a lot better in my oh-so humble opinion.

With this discovery and the fact that Netflix had a Kid option, the girls were able to browse through the movies and TV shows to select what they wanted to watch.  Of course, after watching a Disney movie called Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure sixty-eight times, I'd like to know if there is a way to block certain selections.  

On Netflix, I did find several TV shows that I either stopped watching or have never watched before.  It was magnificent and furthered my desire to go only on demand in the new place.  There was a period a time after the MMC and the kids moved out when all I had was my PS3 to get TV and I started watching episodes of The Office since I stopped watching it a few years ago. Again, I was thrilled and I started thinking, “Man, I should just do this all the time.”  More reasons started to collect in my head:

·        Money savings – We were paying for the premium cable package with HD channels that went up to around a $125 a month, although that included the internet connection.  I still needed that but I figured I could cut the cost in half by not having the cable channels.

·        Not paying for something I wasn’t watching – Related to the money savings is the fact if I’m not watching the TV, I’m not paying for it (well, not as much at least).  With cable, if I didn't turn on the TV for a month, I wasted that month’s cable bill whereas with on-demand, I would be paying much less but have a lot more available to me at any time I wanted it.

·        Always something to watch – Whether it’s seeing some old movie I forgot about (a lot of those I have rediscovered thanks to a buddy’s blog, Tales from the Queue) or watching the entire run of Cheers from the beginning, it didn’t seem like I could run out of things to watch.   Add into the fact that I also had the other outlets like Amazon On Demand, Hulu and stream directly from web sites, my viewing platter was full and never ending.

So when the day came to get connected, I called the cable company and I said I wanted internet only!  Unfortunately, THEY said, I needed at least the local channel cable option along with the internet connection.  They also proceeded to go through the other packages and by the time I got off the phone, I had the cable plus package along with internet.  I couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t pull the trigger to go on demand only.  I thought about sports that I would miss and how I would get two TVs running under this system.  You see, I had a TV in my living room and one in the basement.  No, I didn’t have one in my bedroom.  I hate having a TV in the bedroom and especially going to sleep with it on. This was a difference between me and the MMC and could very well be the main reason we got a divorce (I mean, I really don’t know other than what I have speculated on…again, go back and read my other blogs for more information on that).  If the girls wanted to watch TV in the basement, I needed a device to stream the on-demand content and I know there are plenty I could get but when it came down to it, I just went with cable. 

Maybe someday I will live the on-demand dream but for now I’ll just the change channels until I find something I want to watch.  Truth is, I still have access to on-demand so I can finish off the episodes of The Office I haven’t seen. 

And as I write this, I see that all that is on regular cable right now are infomercials and ESPN Sports Center updates I have already seen twelve times.  Hmmm...maybe I should have just made the switch to on-demand after all.

Then again, I could just stream Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure one more time...

Next time:  The small moments

What to Call the Woman Who Is No Longer My Wife

For those who are regular readers to my blogged babblings, I have been struggling for some time now on how to refer to the woman who is no longer my wife.  I’m sure it must seem silly to spend as much thought on this but as I have committed myself to writing this blog; I am stopped down each time I needed to make reference to her.  I have made it a point to not write out her real name although a good portion of my readers know it. This blog is about me and my feelings and while I need to talk about her, I don’t need to personalize it by including her name and thus I have kept it out.  I also think that at some deeper level having a pseudonym for her helped me to not get too emotional while writing these posts.

Maggie Stiefvater wrote in Lament: The Faerie Queen’s Deception:  “Names are a way to keep people in your mind.”  It may not seem it considering how much I write about her but I don’t want to really keep her in mind so I don’t want to state her name.  A name gives someone life and feeling and within these “walls” I don’t want to give that to her.  I’m not trying to be mean; I just would prefer the “distance.”  Using a name is too close.

Calling her my wife certainly didn’t fit any more even though at the time of this writing, the divorce was not officially final.  Others have used the acronym STBX which stands for Soon To Be Ex but what do you call them once they are no longer “soon to be?”  Plus I didn’t care for the sound of it.  “Stabuhex.”  Sounds like a creature from the Lord of the Rings.

The other option and one that I have been using is “Ex” or “the Ex.”  I’m also not crazy about this endearment either as it sounds too menacing: “Enter: The EX!”  Another problem I have with simply referring to her as the Ex is the negative connotation it has on me. I mean, I get it already! 

I have “struck out” once again in marriage. 

“X” marks the spot of failure. 

“Cross” another one off the list. 

I know it’s supposed to refer to her but it also acts as a constant reminder to me.

A friend on Facebook posted: “How about the “X-Wife” since she’s the super villain in this story?”  I’m not saying my wife (or ex-wife or soon to be ex-wife…see why I need a specific term??) and I are great friends right now but I don’t like referring to her as a super-villain (although X-Wife does have a certain amount of flair to it).  Another suggestion was the Evil Queen but again, “evil” is a bit much. 

No, she’s not a villain, she’s not evil and she’s not a Tolkien creature. So what to call her?  I didn’t know but then inspiration hit me when I read this blog: 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/adam-gilad/ex-husband_b_1762302.html

You can read the blog yourself (after you finish mine, natch!) but basically the guy writing it has been divorced for several years and bumped into his former wife at a party.  She kept referring to him as his Ex.  “Here’s my Ex!”  “That’s my Ex!”  He got perturbed by the term being applied to him as much as I don’t like applying it to my wife.  As he stated:  “I do not identify myself as her ‘ex.’ … I feel, in all ways, utterly current.”  He went on to write:

Let's all let go of the past, as surely as the future will let go of us. I, for one, would rather be introduced by my name, with an addendum, that "we were married once." Or as "the father of our children."

And there it was.  While reading that, I realized that the best term, the most accurate term I can use to describe my Ex, my STBX, my X-Wife and Evil Queen is … “The Mother of My Children” or MMC for short.  It fit.  It felt good writing it.  It wasn’t negative and 100% factual.  I mean in some weird soap opera twist it could come out that one or both of my daughters were not biologically mine but since I’ve been the only father they have ever known and my name is on the birth certificate, they were still mine.  But you can’t say she wasn’t my daughter’s mother.  I was there.  I saw their birth.  I held her hand as she had each one and complained about how badly my feet hurt from standing there the whole time like she was perfectly comfortable the entire time.  So, she IS the Mother of My Children.  She is the MMC.  No doubt, no denial, no problem using that term from here on out.

Still, I have some regret not being able to use a Tolkien reference but maybe “My Preeecciousssss” would have been a little too creepy.

 

 

Next time:  What’s on TV?

The Next in Line

And now let me enter waters I shouldn’t even go into…

I don’t know if it’s too early to think or worry about when the “next in line” comes along.  You know, the next date, lover, fiancé, and/or spouse.  Oh and just so we’re clear, I’m talking about my ex-wife’s next date, lover, fiancé, and/or spouse, not mine. 

There’s a part of me that’s saying, “Uh, Kevin?  Do you really want to put yourself through this type of torture?”  And since I’m writing this, I guess there’s another part of me answering, “Yup!”
 

Here’s why this topic is somewhat heavy on my mind.  I still don’t know the exact length of time my wife was checked out of our marriage but I guesstimate about a year or so; possibly a little less time but not by much…eight months maybe.  So, it’s somewhat natural to think that she would be ready to enter the dating scene much sooner than me.  I am only two to three months removed from the realization that my marriage was over.  She’s had plenty of time to get used to the idea and move on.
 

Stupid side note: “Guesstimate” did not come up as an error on my spell checker which means it’s an actual word.  When did that happen? Can I get on some distribution list when words I thought I made up became real Webster-qualified words?  Just asking…
 

For all I know, she’s already started dating.  I mean once the divorce was officially filed, what would there be to stop her?  I know that, for the most part, this is none of my business anymore and I’m not bringing this up because of jealousy…well, maybe not entirely. I’m primarily concerned for my kids.  I don’t know what mind-state my ex is in but I have seen all too often the recently divorced woman who starts going party crazy:  out at bars every night, applying more make-up than they had previously, dressing a little more “showy” than they were before, and cycling through boyfriends like they are changing channels on the TV.  I’m not saying my ex will do all or any of that…those traits don’t really fit in with her personality but I didn’t think giving up on a marriage fit in with her either, so what do I know?
 

In the interest of not sounding like a Rick with a “p”, let’s put aside the possible “party girl-ness” of my ex and take a look at some statistics.  I read that the majority of people who get divorced get remarried within ONE YEAR!  One year!  Can you believe it?  I know I can’t.  What makes that statistic even worse is that more than half of those will end in divorce (because more than half of all marriages, whether it’s the first, second or otherwise, end in divorce).  Go marriage!

I can only assume this part of the population is glomming onto a new love because they just got out of a particularly bad one.  I just wonder how much thought is given to what they are putting their children through.  These poor kids have just gone through the experience of their parents splitting up, living in separate houses and them being shuffled back and forth according to the “visitation schedule.”  Now they must endure someone else stepping in as the new man in their mom’s life (or a new woman in their dad’s life…hey, I can take on some of this).  Even though my kids were made aware of the divorce early on and that Mommy and Daddy wouldn't be living together anymore, just recently my oldest daughter made reference that Mommy was my girlfriend.  They still don’t completely understand.  It astonishes me that people would then knowingly make it harder by bringing in the replacement partner/parent too early.

 

 

When we were working on our separation agreement, I came across something called a “Paramour Clause.”  No, this isn’t a sexy Santa but rather a statement that could be put into the agreement that stipulated neither spouse was allowed to have a romantic partner stay overnight with the children present for a specified period of time or even open ended…no real stop date.  I think having that in there forever is ridiculous but I considered adding the clause to prevent it for 6 months to a year.  To be honest, at first it was mainly out of the jealousy of my wife being with someone else and here was my chance to try to sabotage that.  Then it became consideration for the girls’ mental wellbeing.  Ultimately though, I decided not to include it.  How would I prove such a thing other than hiring a private investigator to sit outside her house all the time or, even worse, grill my girls on it when they were with me?   I think my ex and I have done a pretty good job at keeping the whole divorce process civil and, more importantly, keeping our kids out of it.  The last thing I needed to do was ruin it by manically questioning them on who Mommy might be sleeping with. 
 

Even if I was independently wealthy and could afford the private investigator, what type of penalty could I impose on her?  A deduction in child support?  Take full custody of the girls?  No.  Those penalties strike at the girls as well as my ex.  When we started the divorce process, I always knew the girls would stay with their mother.  It would have been cruel to them to do it any other way.  I still believe that.  Regardless of how crappy she was at communicating and keeping up her end of the marriage, she’s still a good mother and the girls need that. 

Truthfully, the idea of the Paramour Clause and me even writing about this to begin with does lie in jealousy, but not of my ex being with another man; it's with my girls being with another father.  I worry that whoever is next in line will be a better dad than I am or that the girls will like him more than me.  Is this a silly fear?  I wonder how other divorced dads deal with this situation.
 

In the long run, I guess there is nothing I can do about it other than try to be the best dad I can be and hope that my ex doesn’t position Mr. Next in Line as being the better choice.  I do think it will be challenging but having children in the first place has been challenging; realizing your spouse no longer loves you has been challenging; going through a divorce has been challenging…  It’s just another challenge in the long string of challenges that make up our lives.

 

 

I just hope this one turns out to be a very small challenge and not a big one.

Next time: What's in a name?
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Moving Daze: Part 4

Previously on Went From Being Married to Single:

As exciting as it was to have a new place to call my own, I would trade it all in to go back to the life my wife and I once shared... 

I was just going to have to face them as I was and hope it wasn’t some hot chick standing at my doorstep.

Seems like it had only been a week or so since my wife moved out.  Oh wait.  It was only a week or so ago.

I was never going to ask her to marry me nor was I instantly smitten with her but I couldn’t help but have these racing thoughts as I met her. 

In a way, your life is like a movie and the people you meet and become friends with are cast members. 

After my first meeting my new neighbor and the somewhat imagined anxiety that came with it, it was back to the business of moving in.  I spent the first Friday, Saturday and Sunday moving my personal belongings over to the new house. That basically amounted to five trips with my truck packed as high as I could safely manage. 

For the most part, I stuck with my plan of unloading, putting the boxes in the rooms they should be in and unpacking before getting the next load.  The exception was with the items going into my basement.  For those unfamiliar with the term “basement,” it’s like an attic but below your house (and for those unfamiliar with the term “attic,” it’s like a basement but above your house).

Some houses have what is called a “walk out” basement which means there is a door (be it French, sliding or standard) that gives you easy access to said basement.  Most, however, only have access through what is called a Bilco door.  This is basically a double door attached to the back of your house positioned at a slant going down a set of stairs to get to the basement.  Think of the scene in The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy’s aunt and uncle, much to the dismay of Child Protective Services, went down into the basement without taking their neice with them when the twister showed up.  Those doors Dorothy was banging on were Bilco doors (which is the actual company name that, like Jell-O and Kleenix, have become uniquely associated with the product).  Unlike running down them when a twister is approaching, it isn’t as easy to take a load of boxes and furniture down them.  Thus, my items have collected (and have stayed) in the garage until I can muster up the energy, desire and need for garage space to move them.  Meh.  Maybe tomorrow.

Speaking of moving, the movers came on Monday to get all the furniture I couldn’t get on my own or wanted to bother friends with to help me move.  Let me tell you, hiring professional movers is certainly the way to go (short of buying all new furniture, I suppose).  I went with the four hour minimum plan with my movers because the entirety of the furniture I had to move equated to a small one bedroom apartment.  That had to be enough time to get everything over to the new place.  Just to make sure, however, when the movers arrived and started working, I started a timer on my phone so I could keep track of their progress. 

Within an hour and a half, they had everything loaded which included several items I didn’t point out a week or so previously when the moving company sales rep came by to do the estimate.  I was still concerned on time, though, because the driveway leading up to my house was the shortened equivalent of climbing Mount Everest…or at least that’s what it feels like.  I thought if they had to park at the bottom of the driveway and cart/carry things up, it was going to take a lot longer because all three of these guys smoked and their lungs probably couldn’t take hitting that incline too many times with the weight of some of my furniture.  I imagined long breaks with a lot of wheezing in them.

Luckily these guys were professionals and they were able to back their big truck up the driveway and keep it from rolling back down the hill.  Awesome!  They got everything unloaded and put in the proper rooms in the time allotted.  I just knew I was going to have to pay extra but I didn’t which was a good thing.

On a side note, I know I was paying these guys but when they were huffing and puffing over a particularly heavy item and asked where it needed to go, I felt guilty about saying, “Um…down in the basement, please,” (see aforementioned dissertation on the basement and bilco doors).  I have one of the last big tube televisions in existence that easily weighs 250 pounds and I know from experience it’s a bitch to move.  This TV is one of the primary reasons I got movers so my guilt didn’t last too long.

After the movers left, I continued to empty the boxes I had, find places for various items and enjoyed the fact that I could finally sit down somewhere besides the floor.  Of course now that I had this comfort, I didn’t get any hot chicks coming to my front door with various forms of house warming gifts, but that was okay.

The next few days were mainly spent doing the following:

·       Putting together the girls’ loft style beds I talked about in Bed, Bath and Bothered.

·       Figuring out which power cord powered which device.  Excuse me, electronic companies?  Is it too much to ask to put the names of the devices said power cord is supplying power too on the actual power cord?  I am not so organized that I labeled everything (mental note for next move: label everything).

·       Constantly trying to turn on the water in the kitchen by flipping on the sprayer.  The faucet knob and sprayer are in opposite sides from my previous residence.

·       Looking at the garage with all the basement stuff in it and going, “Meh. Maybe tomorrow.”

·       Celebrating each successful trek up my driveway.

·       Moving a pile of stuff that I didn’t know where to put from one place to another place.  I think this gave me the feeling I was accomplishing something but in reality I wasn’t.  That pile also grew bigger each day.

·       Five trips to Lowe’s!  I forgot what a pleasure it was to have a brand new house rather than one that is used.  At first I didn’t have the right connections for hooking up the water to my refrigerator (three trips to Lowe’s just on getting that done).  Then I changed the shower head in the master bedroom (needed one that actually went above my head) which required Teflon tape and another wrench to get the old one off (two trips to Lowe’s for that task).

·       A lot of pondering on whether I should paint some of the inside walls or not (I haven’t).

The bottom line is that while I am all moved in, I am not completely settled in.  I am probably farther along than most would be but I hoped to be completely done by now.  As I sit here writing this, however, with the piles of files, books, various cords and computer devices littered about me in my office, it’s very apparent that I still have a long way to go.

Maybe I should get this stuff organized now…or maybe I should move the stuff out of the garage and into the basement?

Meh.  Maybe tomorrow.

Next time:  Pondering the replacement.

Moving Daze: Part 3

Previously on Went From Being Married to Single:

As exciting as it was to have a new place to call my own, I would trade it all in to go back to the life my wife and I once shared... 

The place I called and reserved my 14’ truck said “No problem!” but U-Haul Inc. called Friday afternoon to inform me, “Problem!”

“Nothing like a good set of bungee cords,” I will now be saying to my children every chance I get.

I think I ended up with the ergonomically un-sound “kitchen work trapezoid” but that’s okay.  I got everything as organized as I could.

I was contemplating a nap when…the doorbell rang.

I sprung up from the floor and reached frantically for my ball cap, which was covered in sweat from moving all day.  In fact, my entire body was covered in the byproduct of spending the day in the heat and humidity: namely sweat and stench.  I didn’t have time for a shower and hiding in the bedroom probably wasn’t too neighborly like.  I was just going to have to face them as I was and hope it wasn’t some hot chick standing at my doorstep.

I made my way out of my room and went down the wrong hallway …stupid new house and not being fully comfortable with the layout yet!  A quick turnaround and I was at the front door.  I have narrow windows on either side which I could have used to see who was out there but I thought that might be rude.  I adjusted my hat and hoped the stink from moving wasn’t too bad.  I opened the door.

Next time:  I talk about who was there!

Nah, just kidding.  At the door was a small dog with an owner attached to it.  The owner was a young woman…younger than me at any rate which isn’t saying too much.  I would say around 30 or so. She had just come from the beach at the lake we have in our community.  She presented me with a card, a bottle of wine and welcomed me to the neighborhood.

At that point, time froze.  My mind started fast forwarding through the various ways the next few minutes could play out.  She had brown hair and brown eyes and was very attractive.  Could this be the next woman in my life?  Already?  How could that possibly be?  Seems like it had only been a week or so since my wife moved out.  Oh wait.  It was only a week or so ago.  I couldn’t figure out what was happening.  More importantly, what was my next move?

I thought back to when I was getting the house inspected. The original owner was there and we were talking about the neighborhood.  I jokingly asked in my best douchebag voice, “Any single chicks around here? I’ll be in the market, y’know.”  He said a couple houses down lived a single lady.  Could this be her?  Did he mention me to her and now she was checking me out? 

That made me feel a little awkward.  Was this the first time she saw me or has she been hiding in the bushes while I was unloading my truck?  Heck, there were plenty of trees and bushes to hide in.  Maybe she had been spying on me.  What if she’s some deranged lunatic who wants to get me into her house and then tie me down like that guy in Misery?  What if she thinks her dog is her brother or something? Or worse, what if her dog WAS her brother?

I needed to slow down.  I was taking this in all too fast.  Even if she was a deranged lunatic, she was a hot deranged lunatic so that accounts for something.  As I’ve said before, everything is better with Super Models and while maybe she wasn’t a super model, her looks definitely made things better.

My looks at the time, however, did absolutely nothing positive to the situation at all. Sweaty, stinky with scraggly divorce beard in full glory and hair that was due for a cut sticking out the sides of a mangy looking ball cap.  If first impressions meant anything, my first impression was that of a homeless person who just ran a 5K. 

I thought I should ask her in but she had her dog and may have felt uncomfortable bringing him/her inside my house and as it was, what was I inviting her in to?  A mostly empty house with a few dozen boxes strewn about?  I didn’t have any place to sit and there was a good chance my body odor would be more prevalent in an enclosed space. She was standing out on the front porch in the open air so it’s possible she hadn’t noticed it yet.

As my mind raced, I realized that time unfroze and I needed to say something.  “Thanks!  That’s great to have such a nice neighbor.  What’s your dog’s name?”  Okay, that wasn’t too bad.  There were worse things I could have said like “Hamburger popsicles are good for the teeth, don’t you think?” or “Will you marry me?” but I held it together and started off with a decent question.  She told me the dog’s name and said if I needed to know where anything was to just ask, she would be around or “Bob” (name changed to protect the innocent) would be around too. 

Bob? 

“Uh, Bob?” I stumbled. “Your…husband?” 

“Maybe someday,” she replied.

Ah.  Reality restored. 

Let’s be honest here. I was never going to ask her to marry me nor was I instantly smitten with her but I couldn’t help but have these racing thoughts as I met her.  I was entering my life of being single, in my new home and here was an attractive woman at my door. How could I not have thoughts of “What if…?” even if for a fleeting moment? 

The truth is, even if she was single, I was not in an emotional position to pursue any type of relationship.  It would be like having your hands crushed and then immediately sitting down to play the piano.  It didn’t make sense and would probably be extremely painful.  And let’s continue to face it, even if she was single AND interested in me, would it be an even remotely good idea for the first person I go out with after my divorce be my next door neighbor?  What if it doesn’t work out? Can we spell awkward?  (According to my spell check, yes.  Yes, I can).

The real point of all this babbling is that I am simply happy to see that I have a really nice neighbor and I look forward to becoming friends (yes, FRIENDS) with her and her boyfriend/fiancé/significant other.  I just left a neighborhood where I had really nice neighbors and while I hope they will still be a part of my life, I want and need to establish relations with the people in my new neighborhood.  In my old job, I travelled a lot and didn’t have many opportunities to become closer with my neighbors.  I felt guilty that I was gone all the time and wanted to spend it with my wife and daughters.  Lately, however, I was able to establish better friendships with them and I hope to continue them even though I am not living in that neighborhood any longer.

In a way, your life is like a movie and the people you meet and become friends with are cast members.  It becomes a large, ensemble cast over time and it’s important to remember when they said their first lines.  That’s what I am trying to capture here.  I hope that the brief exchange I shared with my new neighbor isn’t a scene that ends up on the cutting room floor but rather becomes an integral part as we transition into Act Two of my life.

….or is this Act Three?  Four, maybe?  I’ve lost count. 

Next time: More stuff on moving

Moving Daze: Part 2

Previously on Went From Being Married To Single:

All moves into houses start with one significant event: the closing…

So, if all of this is required to get the loan and I want the loan, why can’t I just sign in one place and give me the damn keys, already?

Even with everything going on, I’ll take the girls when I can…

... the bed of my truck sticks over a foot out from the garage opening …

As exciting as it was to have a new place to call my own, I would trade it all in to go back to the life my wife and I once shared... 

Regardless of whatever I was feeling at the time, I still had moving to do.  With the girls in tow, I was able to get one load over to the new house on Friday night.  This was mostly the items that went into the garage: tools, various boxes filled with junk I may never actually look at again, and more tools. 

My original plan was to rent a U-Haul on Friday night, start loading it until I could load no more, go to bed, wake up early on Saturday morning and continue to load until it was full or all of my stuff was in there, whichever came first.  Unfortunately, U-Haul had other plans.  The place I called and reserved my 14’ truck said “No problem!” but U-Haul Inc. called Friday afternoon to inform me, “Problem!”  There weren’t any trucks to rent at that time from that place.  “What times and places do you have?”  I asked, a bit perturbed I even had to ask.  Several options should have been ready to go. The only thing they could find was an office 20 miles away from my new house that had a truck that was only 10’ long without a loading ramp and I could only pick it up at 2 pm on Saturday for four hours.  That wasn’t going to work so I went with Plan B…once I figured out what that was.

Actually Plan B was what I did when I was single:  I loaded up my truck as high as I could and moved the stuff myself, taking several trips instead of just one.  Kind of fit, didn’t it?  I was single and thus I return back to the ways of the single man…well, almost.  I still had movers coming to get the big stuff on the following Monday.  I wasn’t that single. 

I decided to take the plan change in stride and made the most of it.  Saturday morning, while the girls watched TV waiting for their mom to pick them up, I loaded up my truck, covered up my possessions with a tarp because it looked like rain and bungee corded the hell out of it.  I mentioned in Packing It In that I wasn’t sure if the money I spent on bubble wrap was worth it.  Well, the $7.00 I spent on a new set of multi-length bungee cords was totally worth it.  Not only were they useful in keeping my stuff from flying out of my truck and along the roadways of Northeast Pennsylvania, they were also handy with my hand-truck in securing the heavier and bulkier items to it so I could move them around more easily.  “Nothing like a good set of bungee cords,” I will now be saying to my children every chance I get.

The truck was loaded but no Ex in sight, so I started to dismantle my office.  It was the only room I hadn’t done a whole lot of packing in since I work from home and I needed most everything in there.  My desk has a matching printer stand and a two drawer file cabinet and both of these have hutches with glass paned cabinets on the top.  I really like them but the hutches won’t make it into the new house.  The office there is one the previous owners built above the garage.  It’s basically a long, “A” shaped room.  It’s going to be a cool place to work but to use the hutches in there would mean putting the printer stand and file cabinet in the middle of the room since the walls start to pitch inward about 30 inches from the floor.  While I’m all for adventurous furniture placement (and who isn’t??), that didn’t seem too practical.

Anyway, once the Ex arrived and I said goodbye to the girls, I ran my truckload over to the new house. I decided to unpack what I unloaded immediately after I unloaded it.  In the past, I would have brought each load over, stacked it up in the garage and then went back for the next load.  Once everything was at the new place, I would then spend the next 14 months unpacking it.  Not this time. With the exception of stuff I was storing in the basement, I put each box in the room it should be in and then unpacked whatever was practical for me to unpack.  This mainly meant the kitchen which, let’s face it, is the most unpacking intensive room in the house.

I was faced with a quandary at this point: how to organize the kitchen.  Since my new house is quite a bit smaller than my old house, I don’t have certain amenities like a pantry so I needed to use cabinet space for my non-refrigerated food supplies. This meant a strategic storing of my dishes, pots and pans and plastic ware. Quickly, I devised a schematic that would incorporate proper storage and the ergonomically sound “kitchen work triangle.”  The schematic was perfect, the execution, not so much.  I think I ended up with the ergonomically un-sound “kitchen work trapezoid” but that’s okay.  I got everything as organized as I could.

That Saturday, I was able to make two big truckload trips, got several boxes unpacked and cleaned up the old house.  In the late afternoon, I was laying on the floor in my new master bedroom, sweating and exhausted from the frantic pace of moving.  I was contemplating a nap when…the doorbell rang.

I was about to meet my new next door neighbor.

Next time: I meet my new next door neighbor.