The First Visitation

This past weekend marked the very first weekend visitation I had with my girls.  Since the wife (or the ex…or soon to be ex?  I’ve seen people use the abbreviation of SBTX but I don’t care for it…I need a unique reference to my ex…some heavy thought will be given to this topic).  Anyway since SHE moved out last week, we started on the documented procedures set forth in our settlement agreement with visitation, child support and all that.  I have the monthly amount worked out for child support and I created a Google calendar for the visitation schedule straight through until they both turn 18.  This way we both know the schedule and can make and document adjustments as needed.  My hope is to never have to actually look at the settlement agreement again.  We are both adults and should be able to work out whatever we need to work out.  If we can’t, then we’ll pull out the agreement and if that doesn’t settle it, I guess we pull out the lawyers.

Normally, I will get the girls starting on Friday afternoon through Sunday at 6 pm but I kept them over Sunday night this past weekend.  Like I said, my ex and I are adults and we’re okay with adjustments…especially when those adjustments mean I get the girls an extra night! 

In some ways, that first weekend almost didn’t count because I was still at our old house which was mostly empty since the Ex left.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I had nothing but three people’s worth of stuff out of a house that held four makes for a mostly empty house.  The only room that was pretty much untouched was my office.  Still, I had a couch, the big TV, dining room furniture, a bed and dresser.  What else did I need?  Well, turns out an inflatable bed was necessary for the girls to sleep on.  They’ll have their own beds in my new house but for this weekend, the girls slept in the middle of the living room on an air mattress (a big, queen sized one).  They loved it and after they were asleep, I went up to my room.  They slept through the night without any problems.  I was expecting some crying in the middle of the night but, for the most part, my girls are troopers or just heavy sleepers. 

Friday night was spent going to the grocery store and getting supplies for a movie night.  I didn’t have a TiVo/cable box due to a mix up in the moving but I did have a PS3 console so I could stream Netflix through it (this will be a blog topic coming soon).  We set up the living room to be as comfortable as possible and the girls fell asleep watching Stuart Little.  As I got up to go to bed, I discovered that the couch I was going to use in my new house was not so great for my back.  It was the same couch I had before I got married and either it got old or I did.  Either way, a new couch was needed.  Possibly an orthopedic one if they happen to make such a thing.

Saturday morning was spent getting the house cleaned in case anyone wanted to come see it.  It was up for sale although the only way you can tell is by the sign in the front yard, not the steady stream of people looking at it (fail). My Ex and her mom came over to help with the cleaning while the girls played.  Once we were done and I took a shower, the girls and I headed out to lunch and then a movie (Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days).  We played a couple games in the arcade at the movie theater and had a good time.  My girls love to go to the movies, which is great because I do too.

Afterwards, we did what all kids love to do, furniture shopping!  Since I knew their attention spans were limited, I grabbed a salesperson and had her walk me through all of their couches at a Usain Bolt-type pace.  Luckily there was a special event going on in the store which included a guy playing piano for the customers.  The girls hung around him, asking a million questions and did a little dancing to the songs he was playing.  I felt sorry for the piano player but his loss was my gain. They were occupied.  In about 15 minutes, I narrowed my choices down to two couches and ten minutes later, I was out the door with a receipt for my new couch to be delivered on the Wednesday after I moved in. It felt good to get that done as quickly and as efficiently as I did.  Maybe I should take the girls with me every time I go furniture shopping? Hmmm…probably not.

It rained when we got home, so Saturday evening was dinner, some game playing on the PS3, and another movie (the Eddie Murphy version of Dr. Doolittle).  Sunday morning was a bit lazy as it looked like rain…a little TV watching, a little breakfast, some blog writing, and a round or two of the card game War with my oldest (she loves the game).  Then it was off to run some errands.  The list of things I needed for my new house was growing.  With the Ex and all her stuff out, I could more easily see what I needed.  When I was at my niece’s wedding, my family threw me a Divorce Shower just like the one I talked about in Bed, Bath and Bothered, so I had a handful of Target gift cards to use. 

Once that was done, we went back home just in time for a terrific storm to hit.  It got so bad; we went down into the basement.  My oldest daughter is petrified of storms while my youngest would probably go do cartwheels in them if I let her (I didn’t).  When it finally blew over, we came up from the basement and checked the outside.  A tree blew over and another tree shed a rather large branch…all missed the house, thank goodness. 

I don’t know if it was the storm or just being over-tired, but the girls woke up in the middle of the night screaming so they came up and slept with me…which was fine. Usually I don’t like it because they sleep in such awkward positions (as discussed in Making the Spare Bedroom Your Bedroom, Spare) but since we were down one person in the bed (re: the Ex), it wasn’t bad at all.  In fact, it was nice. 

So nice that when the morning came and I took them to my soon to be ex-mother-in-law’s house, I was sad.  I knew it would be two weeks before I could enjoy them staying the night again and the reality of the situation sunk in. That night found me sitting in the middle of that empty house wondering what went wrong once again as a depression storm took down my relatively sane mood much like the rain storm took down the tree in my backyard. 

I took some deep breaths and tried to get past it because that’s all I can really do.  In Parents Inc., I wondered what type of dad I would be now and how I would handle my time with my girls when I had them.  I’m still not sure I have that answer but I think it’s something close to what we did this weekend.  Activities we can do together but nothing too spectacular.  Just spending time with them and giving them as much attention as I can. 

It wasn’t like it was all butterflies and rainbows while they were here.  They’re still children and children can be a bit frustrating at times but that frustration goes away quickly when you know there’s an even bigger frustration just waiting for you when they leave:  The frustration of being alone.

Next time:  The big move!

Priorities

I don’t spend a lot of time in this blog talking about specific problems or issues my wife and I had. I prefer to touch on my thoughts, feelings and observations without airing any of our “dirty laundry.” Allow me to make an exception with this post but I promise this won’t become a habit. This topic, however, is one I feel strongly about and I need to process it on digital paper.

During what I would consider the beginning of the end of the marriage between my wife and me, it was brought to my attention that I was putting work before my family.  While I was surprised to hear this, I could also see that it was true. I was traveling a lot and even when I was home, I wasn’t “at home;” my mind was often on work matters and not family matters.  I have no excuses for it.  I should not have done it but once it was brought to my attention, I took strides to change and I believe I did (just too late, as I’ve stated before).

During this time I began to think about how I was feeling when I came home from a trip.  A lot of times, it was like I was just a roommate in the house.  I wasn’t in with the routine, they would have plans I didn’t know about and if I tried to discipline the girls for doing something wrong, I was either told to calm down or my wife would just take over as if I didn’t have a say in the matter (not always, but enough times that I noticed it). 

It all kind of boiled down to my wife putting the girls before me.  I didn’t like the way that sounded though…I thought I was being a bit selfish.  After some introspection, I came to the conclusion that, on a broader scale, my wife was putting our children before our marriage.  This fit better.  It was rare we ever had a “date night.” Any conversation we had was about the girls and not about us.  When we would try to have a conversation, the girls would often interrupt and she would tend to them.  Once they were settled, though, we never went back to what we were talking about. 

Still, I felt guilty about thinking this.  Shouldn’t she be putting the girls first?  Shouldn’t I for that matter?  Confused, I consulted my therapist, Dr. Google and was surprised to find that this conflict: “What should be first, the marriage or the children?” is a common one.  I was also surprised to find that the majority of the articles about it were in favor of putting the marriage first and the children second.  Heck, the first 20 results were all in favor of putting the marriage first. 

The bottom line message to all of the articles I read (which must have been about fifty of them), is that when you work on the marriage and the marriage is strong, the children benefit.  It really makes sense. The children see their parents in a loving relationship and feed off of that.  The family unit is stronger and thus your kids will be stronger because of it.  Here are some quotes I found to back this up:

“We believe firmly that raising and nurturing Clara to be a happy and secure child lies in the strong foundation of our own relationship,” says Janine. “The stronger our marriage, the easier and more joyful it is to be a family.” 
(Which Comes First: Marriage or the Kids?)

"Psychiatrist Michelle Goland agrees: "The mistake many moms make is they believe that if they are a good mother, their husband will be fine and he will understand, but in reality, the husband may feel pushed out of the parenting role and begrudgingly gives up trying to have a relationship with his wife."
(Stop Putting Your Kids First)

"I would even go as far as to say that you are raising your kids with some serious deficiencies if they are the center of your universe.  If you don’t show them what a healthy marriage looks like, where will they learn it?  If dad doesn’t make it a priority to spend time with mom, then why would your kids do anything different?  Our kids need to see that our marriages carry the weight of the family.  If that fails, then the family fails."
(What comes first? Kids or Marriage?

I tried to talk to my wife about this but I failed at conveying what I meant.  Because I was stumbling around the topic or just poor communication skills in general, I think what came out was that I put her above the girls.  That the girls were always second place in my book.  Not exactly what I was trying to say and I can see why she may have lost respect for me by hearing it like that.  What I meant was that we needed to put ourselves and our relationship before the girls because a lasting relationship can only be beneficial to our children.  If we don’t have that, we end up…

…well, we end up with a blog like this and a family broken apart.

The point of this blog isn’t to say that I was right.  The point is to send a message to those who are still married and might need this information to help guide you.  I wish this was something I had thought of and researched more thoroughly early on in my marriage.  It’s an easy thing to think that children should be first.  What else would they be?  I prefer to think of putting the marriage first more in line with putting your family first, which includes your children but also includes your spouse. 

Next time:  My First Time

The Emotional Forecast

“…And that’s why you should never mix gardening with nude acupuncture!  Ha ha!  Now let’s turn it over to Kevin for the 5 Day Emotional Forecast.  Kevin?”


“Thanks, Chip.  Well, folks, after a series of nice days, it looks like we’re in for a day or two of deep depression and why wondering.  After that, we’ll see a clearing of false hope followed by a bout of ‘I’ll never marry again.’” 



Ah, if only we could forecast our emotions like this.  Going through the cycle of being okay to depressed to really depressed to feeling pretty good can be exhausting.  If we knew it was coming we could at least be prepared for it.

Initially, my depression days were pretty much every day.  On a graphical representation of my moods, dark clouds with lightning bolts would have been heavily used for at least the ten day forecast, if not the extended one.  I don’t believe there was a sunshine icon used until a month or so after the decision to get a divorce.

Beyond then, it seemed like every other day was a down day and then that turned into every three days, then four, then weekly until finally I was at a point where I would have a morning of depression every couple weeks.  I chronicled the last one in The Healing Walk.  It was during that walk that I thought maybe there was a pattern to my emotions or maybe to everyone’s emotions.  If I could figure out how that pattern worked, document it and then publish that baby, I would make a quadzillion dollars in no time.

Initial analysis made me think that the emotional downbursts were a buildup of sadness over time.  At the start, there is so much sadness that it’s always raining.  Later, as the soul starts to heal, a weak acceptance high pressure system helps to block out the depression but that depression continues to build as its fueled by questions and memories of the good times until, at some point, it pushes out the system that is keeping you moderately sane and hits you like a tornado hitting a trailer park.  Then, like the tides, it ebbs away leaving clear skies of moderate happiness or at the very least, overcast skies but no rain.

The general pit in your stomach that pretty much doesn’t leave for a long while is kind of like the humidity of your pain.  It’s there and it’s bothersome but it doesn’t stop you from living your everyday life.  Unfortunately, that humidity is just the precursor to the sadness storm that’s coming.  I think until you get rid of that constant humidity, you are still in the depression cycle.

If I was more conscious of this while going through it, I would have logged my emotions each day or maybe several times a day just to see if there was a pattern.  It would have been hard to translate, though, since, just like the weather, my emotional state was fairly unpredictable.  I can’t tell you the number of times I felt somewhat normal only to see a picture or hear a song that brought on an emotional outbreak like an afternoon thunderstorm in the Spring.  Having a log may have helped me to track my emotional states so I could see when a downward spiral was coming and then I could batten down the hatches and put plywood up on the windows of my heart.  For me, that would have been putting on my walking shoes and shorts and hitting the pavement.  Walking turned the tumultuous storm into a steady rain and then to a sprinkle and then to complete sunshine.  The longer the walk, the better the outlook.

I’m sure there would be no way to accurately predict when the emotional bad weather would hit much like there’s no way to accurately predict the real weather.  There are, however, people getting paid big bucks to try to do it and they use a model to follow so why not me and the emotional forecast?  If I had an emotional forecast model, I could provide a personal service to help someone each morning predict just how crappy their day is going to be.  Wouldn't that be a nice service to have? 

"Back to you, Chip."

Next time:  Which came first? The marriage or the children?

And Now She's Gone

(Once again, I interrupt the regularly scheduled blog for something more "in the moment")

Yesterday, my wife moved out of our house.

Since they only moved a block away, the girls will probably bounce back and forth as they want until I move out 10 days from now but the person I thought I would be with until I died is now gone and I’m still alive (here’s hoping it stays that way for a while).

I thought this would end up being harder than it was. I thought an extended Healing Walk was going to be needed or fresh box of tissues or, at the very least, a big long hug from someone (although I probably would’ve needed to pay for that service…what’s the going rate for just a hug from a hot prostitute?  I say "hot" prostitute because, really...who wants a skanky one?).

I find myself, however, moderately okay. In Making the Spare Bedroom Your Bedroom, Spare I suggested against staying in the same house with your soon-to-be ex-spouse because it was/is extremely uncomfortable. I am tempted to rescind that piece of advice, though. Not the part about it being uncomfortable. Oh, it was uncomfortable. There was no getting around the built up tension between the two of us on some days. I’m talking about the living together post separation part being the advice I would rescind.

Having to stay with the woman I suddenly found out was no longer interested in keeping me as a husband became like an intense detoxifying program. I was constantly exposed to the reality that we would no longer be together. Day after day, I was slapped in the face with the reality of divorce. That kind of accelerated the healing process. That probably sounds a little weird, doesn’t it? I will try to explain but I was kind of surprised by it myself.

I believe that if I had moved out immediately and went into seclusion (which is what I initially told my wife I was going to do); I think it would have been a harder and a longer process to get over the relationship. My state of mind would have been frozen at the point of realization that my marriage was over and the love for my wife would have been trapped in emotional amber, not being able to dissolve itself. The buzzing of questions on “Why?” and “What happened?” would have taken longer to go away because I would have only been able to focus on those questions in that point of time, searching for those answers and nothing else. Since we were financially and thus physically bound to be together, however, the time made me continually face the fact that I was getting the divorce. Seeing my soon to be ex every day forced me to realize it was over and I found the love I had for her slowly draining away through tension, opened eyes and cold reality.  I had to confront the hard feelings and deal with them immediately. Sure, this meant a lot of depression, crying, and rendering of garments but now that we have reached this point where we are physically apart, I feel that I am emotionally apart as well.

Other than just facing up to the hardship, I also took a lot of deep breaths and counting to ten when I felt like blowing up at her. We had to live together along with our children so getting into a clash every time she left a pile of dirty dishes in the sink or when I thought about why she gave up on the marriage would have made a difficult situation completely unbearable. So, I swallowed my pride (and a fair amount of anger) and turned the other cheek…not always, but a lot. I think this helped me to accept the reality of the situation; to understand that there wasn’t anything I could say or action I could take to change the road we were on. The intersection that may have allowed that was long and far away in the rear view mirror.

Thus, I reached a point to where I simply didn’t care about answering those ever-buzzing questions. It was like I had become immune to the pain or more accurately, I no longer had the pain. I believe I reached that mindset much quicker by living with her than I would have by being alone.

Does this mean I’m completely healed? That I’m cured of this disease called “divorce?” No, I don’t think so. I’m sure there will be relapses and times where conflict will overcome the peace. Those times will most assuredly happen when my daughters come to visit and then leave but I think I’ll delve into that in a separate blog.

For now I will breathe in the silence and the emptiness of the house but feel that everything will be all right. I have already fought the battle of being alone by not being alone. Now was the time to live it.

My wife physically leaving isn't the end of the story.

It’s just the beginning.



Next time: What is the Emotional 5 Day Forecast?
_______________________________________________________________________________

Soul Music

When the problems with my marriage started to become more reality than paranoia, I began to get fearful that it would affect my music.  Weird statement? Perhaps, but read on, true believer…
I love music.  I love to listen to it.  I love to sing it.  Many a concert has been given for none but me in my living room.  I believe songs are the placeholders in our lives.  As we go through significant periods in our life, the music we listened to during those times become associated with the memories.  A sound track, if you will. 


For me, I’ll hear a song from the early 80’s and instantly be transported back to my high school days.  I think this probably happens to everyone.  You have songs associated with each girlfriend (or boyfriend), proms you went to, break-ups you’ve had, even new jobs. 


So I was afraid of two things:  new music I was listening to during my divorce becoming associated (and forever tainted) by the divorce and music I listened to when my wife and I were first falling in love becoming too painful to listen to now. 


For today’s music, that isn’t too hard because there have only been two new albums I’ve listened to since this started:  Counting Crows Underwater Sunshine and Train’s California 37.  I was more concerned about Train because that’s been a band both my wife and I have liked and listened to together quite often.   I guess only time will tell if I associate the songs from those albums with my divorce but there is one off California 37 that will probably touch me in the future,  When the Fog Rolls In:

I take a deep breath with my hand on the door
Afraid 'cause I'm not gonna see you anymore
These were our tender years, this was our street
All of our stoplights and all our concrete
Now it's all somebody else's to take
Until the fog rolls in

Oo oo oo and now we're through

I am happy to report that, so far, the songs I was listening to when my wife and I got together haven’t been impacted by the divorce…well, almost.  There are two songs that I cannot listen to yet but hope to in time.  One was our wedding song, Don Henley’s For My Wedding.  As I have expressed before, Don Henley is one of my all-time favorite artists and having to avoid something from his body of work will be a crime.  I’m sure I’ll be able to listen to it again as some point but for now, I’ll leave it as a blog quote (from Open Letter to My Niece).  

The second song I won’t name here but it was a special one my wife and I shared and I really don’t think I will ever be able to listen to that one again.  That’s sad because it’s a good song but there are too many memories wrapped up in it from the time we were falling in love.  The song even has lyrics that apply to our current situation, which taints it even more.  In some ways, I feel like I’m losing just a little bit of my soul by not having that song in my life anymore.  Yes, it held that much weight. 


There are others that make me pause when they start playing but I’ve been able to listen to them.  One I mentioned in The Discord of the Ring, The Heart of the Matter, also by Don Henley.  Since the divorce, I haven’t been able to get through that one without tearing up.  It’s been a while since it’s come back up on my shuffle playlist and I’m hoping I’ll be okay when it does rotate through again.


Even though I thought it would be tough to listen to my music for fear of dredging up sad emotions or tainting it, I forced myself to do it and I’m glad I did.  Albert Schweitzer wrote:  “The only escape from the miseries of life are music and cats…”  I don’t own a cat (yet…potential blog topic, btw) but I do own music.  The music did help me escape and at the same time cope with what was going on. 


I’ll end this with yet another quote from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K Rowling : 

“Ah, music!  A magic far beyond all we do here!”


Magic indeed.

Next time: What’s the emotional 5 day forecast?

The Two of Me

For me,  the idea of divorce at first was a hope that the threat of it would bring out counseling and therapy to help save the marriage.  You see, I was the one who asked for the divorce, not my wife.  This may not have been clear in my previous blogs.  As I have written before (most notably in Why? and Relationship Update), I could tell she no longer loved me.  We already had one incident some months back where we said we would work on what we were doing wrong in the marriage.  From my perspective, that really turned out to be just me working on what I was doing wrong (working too much, traveling too much, not being there for her and the girls).  I’m not sure what she did during that time but truth is she was already gone by that point. 

Anyway, I popped the question of divorce hoping it would kind of slap her into the reality that she was letting her marriage slip away. 

By the way, you never see videos of people asking for a divorce.  Once again, we are inundated with videos of men asking their girlfriends to be their wife but I don’t remember seeing one where a couple is at a game and on the Jumbotron the husband asks his wife to not be that anymore (or vice versa).  Another service for the Divorce Shower, perhaps.

Back to me asking for the divorce:  Maybe if I had done it a year earlier, it would have helped, I really don’t know.  When I did ask, she was initially shocked but never fought it.  She basically said OK and off we went.  It was at this point, the “First Me” came out.

First Me was a sniveling, selfish, whiney, “Why me?” wreck of a man.  For the first two weeks after, there wasn’t a day he didn’t cry.  He spent time shouting at his wife wondering how she could have done this.  It wasn’t his fault they were where they were, it was hers.  There was one time First Me was on the phone with his wife and insisted she tell him what he did wrong even though she was with their youngest daughter at the time. “So what?” First Me shouted and was, rightly so, hung up on. 

First Me was also the one who came up with the brilliant idea to just move away.  Again, this was all the wife’s fault.  She didn’t want to work on the marriage so naturally, he had to move back to Texas where he used to live because he moved to NEPA for her and the girls and now that was all gone so why stay?  He had friends back in Texas.  He needed those friends.  He was leaving and it was her fault he would never see his kids again.

Sigh.

I deeply regret ever becoming First Me and I would apologize to my wife for the way I behaved but she has told me she doesn't read this blog, so instead, I will apologize to myself.

<Side Note>  If I knew my wife was writing a blog about her divorce experience, I would be reading every last word of that thing and trying to read in between the lines to find a hidden message.  I would even read it backwards to see if there was something subliminal in it just like they did back in the day with record albums. </Side Note>

I suppose, though, when faced with this type of life changing event, it’s somewhat natural to lash out.  Perhaps it’s even healthy to a point.  Still, it bothers me that I fell so low.  But when you reach such a low point, all you can do is go up and that’s when Second Me came out. 

Second Me was the much more thoughtful and reflective side of my post-divorce persona.  Second Me realized that while she had a fair share of blame, he also had responsibility for things getting as bad as they did.  The divorce wasn't this one thing or that one thing, it was a combination of different things that wrapped itself around the marriage until it choked the life out of it.

Second Me also spent time not as much wondering why but wondering what’s next?  The Second Me started this blog to help cope with what was going on in his head.  He tried to be as civil as he could when around his wife and also tried to spend as much time as he could with his children since he knew that time would end up being limited very soon.

Confident that his life wasn’t over was another trait of Second Me.  Finding a house, knowing that he will still be a father to his girls in the best possible way he could, and establishing a new life as a single man helped get Second Me through each day.

Unfortunately, there were times when First Me made an appearance and took down Second Me (one such time detailed in The Healing Walk).   I think back to the Incredible Hulk TV series from the late 70’s/early 80’s.  First Me was my Hulk and I needed to find a way to control the raging spirit that dwelled within me. 

So far, I think Second Me is maintaining control.  Even if First Me comes out, I know how to deal with it to put him back inside.  I don’t begrudge First Me.  He was a part of the process but he was the first part…I’m now in the second part and looking forward to the third, and hopefully last, part of the ordeal where First Me is but a memory, Second Me is a comforting friend and Third Me is the one the world sees. 

I look forward to meeting the Third Me.  Hope everyone else will too.

Next time:  I didn’t have to throw away my iPod

Packing It In

I really hate to pack.

If only I had come up with my Pre-Boxtial agreement (as described in Storage Wars: The Divorce) before we moved into our house.  The packing wouldn’t be so bad.  Alas, I did not so hand me that bubble wrap, would you?

Who came up with bubble wrap anyway?  I have this giant roll that I paid $15 for and once I’m done unpacking, I will no doubt throw it away (okay, maybe after I spend 45 minutes popping the bubbles).  Is that a good deal?  I guess if all of my stuff makes it over to my new place without being broken; it will be a good deal.  I think the items I am wrapping in the $15 bubble wrap are worth more than that…collectively at any rate.

When I bought the bubble wrap I was hit once again with the “consumer choice” dilemma:  Do I get the small bubbles or the big bubbles?  Do I buy the small roll or the big roll?  Do I want it clear or  green or blue or red?  Although now that I think of it, having the color coded bubble wrap would fit in nicely with having the husband’s stuff separated from the wife’s stuff.  I must make a note to update my legal document.

Armed with bubble wrap, boxes (which also aren’t cheap) and tape, I started taking down pictures, getting stuff out of closets and cabinets and drawers and from the various places we put stuff.  The late, great George Carlin once said: “A house is just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff.”  That is no more apparent than when packing your stuff.   We did a darn good job in going out and getting more stuff.  I wonder how many more times I can stuff the word “stuff” into this paragraph?

The other part of this particular packing event was the fact that I was only moving 20 minutes away.  My wife was moving less than 2 minutes away.  Did we really need to go crazy with all the packing?  Experience says yes.  My luck travels along the path of whatever can go wrong will go wrong…I think it’s like a law or something.  So while I may think I can stack up all my framed pictures, put them in the back of my truck and get to my new house without any problem, the truth is I will get to my new house with a million shards of class and ruined pictures.

Thinking I was making things easier, I got one of those tape dispensers that allows you to apply the tape in one deft motion across the box and then cuts the tape cleanly and quickly when you are done.  Yeah, right.  That works about once every three attempts.  Most of the time, the tape doesn’t cut and you have a rolled up, stuck together tail of tape hanging onto the side of the box.  Either that or the tape sticks to the metal guide.  And when I say “sticks” I mean bonds like a leech to the soft underbelly of one of the stars of “Swap People.” 

Since I’m not physically moving for another couple weeks, I have been storing my boxes and some of the furniture I’m taking in the garage.  This meant I parked my truck out on the driveway and my side of the garage slowly filled up with possessions being moved from one stage of my life to the next stage.  Actually, it’s interesting because a good portion of what I am taking away from the marriage is stuff I brought into this marriage. 

I guess that’s somewhat fitting, isn’t it?  I’m traveling this highway of life with certain possessions and even though I may take an exit that diverts me for a while, I return carrying much of the same stuff I had before. 

Except for the bubble wrap.  Always get new bubble wrap because if you don’t and it becomes a while in between exits, you’ll essentially have only wrap with no bubble.

Next time:  Two Face