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.

Moving Daze: Part 1

All moves into houses start with one significant event: the closing (unless you are just renting, then it’s mainly pick up your keys at the office).  I have been to four closings in my lifetime and I generally dread them.  My first one took three hours because some of the paperwork was wrong and needed to be corrected and while my second and third went relatively okay (especially the third…when you are having a house built, the closing takes almost no time), I was still dreading my fourth.  Leading up to the closing, all of the work was done through e-mail.  I think I actually spoke to my mortgage company three times on the phone over the 45 day process.  Don’t get me wrong, I loved that.  Give me an online option over an in person or phone option any day of the week.  Still, with something as big as buying a house, I trepidatiously entered the closing expecting the worst. 

I shouldn’t have worried though; I was in and out within 40 minutes with only a slight cramping of the right hand from signing the phone book…I mean the pile of papers for the loan.  I do wonder when we will get to the day where all of this will be on an iPad-like tablet and all you have to do is sign and initial once and those will automatically populate to the places they need to be.  I swear a lot of the forms were introduced to me as “And again, this is just to say that you confirm you are buying the house as-is with no warranties.”  Again?  Did I already sign something to this effect?  I was dizzy from paperwork so I couldn’t remember exactly but if I did, why am I signing it again?  I did ask after the 40^th signature if anyone ever refused to sign any of the forms.  The closing agent and my real estate agent just laughed.  “If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be getting the loan!”  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?

I really shouldn’t complain, though.  It went by very smoothly and my closing costs actually ended up way cheaper than originally estimated (although by their own admission, they over-estimate the closing costs so the buyer is prepared.  Fine with me!  I would rather be surprised in not having to pay as much as opposed to having to pay more).

With the closing completed and me armed with a file folder full of mortgage documents as well as a small catalog of the bylaws of the community I was moving into, I took my new set of keys and garage door openers and bolted to my new house.  I had a busy day and it already started with having the girls in the morning and then tending to them in the afternoon.  Even though technically the girls were supposed to be with their mother this weekend, she had her cousin’s wedding to go to and they did not allow kids at the wedding.  I thought that was odd.  I always thought weddings were fun for kids…anyway, I guess they thought differently.  Not a problem for me, by the way.  Even with everything going on, I’ll take the girls when I can.  I just needed to juggle the closing with picking up the girls, taking them to gymnastics class and being on a conference call for work.  Fun times for what should have been my first moving day.

I already had most of my clothes in the back seat of my truck.  I suppose that was opening me up for something bad to happen at closing but I took the chance.  Getting a sticker for my truck to allow me to get in and out of the community was first on my list and I got that marked off in no time.  When I got the sticker I also received yet another folder full of stuff about the community.  The reading requirement for living in this place was like studying for the SATs.  I drove over to the house, pulled into the garage after opening the door with my newly signed for garage door openers and discovered my truck doesn’t fit all the way into the garage.  The back end sticks out and would definitely prevent me from closing the door.  A bit annoying but I needed to trade my truck in for something smaller and with four-wheel drive anyway.  Living in Texas without four-wheel drive is okay but it’s been a struggle up in snow country and now that I have a driveway that has an incline as sharp as some New York Cheddars, I really needed something different (plus I no longer had the backup of my Ex with her four-wheel drive Jeep).  Add into the fact that the bed of my truck sticks over a foot out from the garage opening and automotive shopping was in my immediate future.

Undaunted by this discovery, however, I pulled out the various pieces of luggage I had my clothes hastily packed in.  Remember, I used to travel quite a bit so my luggage collection has grown quite a bit as well.  I threw all the suitecases into my master bedroom and then meandered through the house.  I had already been there once that morning before the closing to do a walkthrough…just make sure a tree hadn’t fallen into the living room or that the owners hadn’t decided a kitchen sink was no longer necessary…stuff like that.  It was a short visit, though, and it was with my real estate agent.  This time, it was just me and I walked slowly through each room, thinking about where furniture would go, how I would use a particular room as my office, this other as a guest room and that room would be where the girls would stay when they were over. 

I took some time to soak in the beautiful hardwood floors that were stained a deep cherry, the arched openings to the dining room and kitchen, the vaulted ceilings in just about every room and the unique light fixtures that were dotted throughout the house.  I sighed thinking this house was perfect for me and then I sighed again with a little bit of regret that I had to find the house in the first place.

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.  Not the life we’ve been living for the past year or so…back to when our second daughter was born and our first just became the “big sister.”  When we knew we were in love and we didn’t have to prove it.  When it was her and I and our girls against the world, living in a small apartment waiting for our house to be built and exploring the new area we had just moved to. Before work got in the way and before the reality and distractions of everyday life took that love away and we just became two people living together who happened to have children.   

Yes, I would gladly give up my new house, the nearby beach and lake, hiking trails, and all the other amenities the community provides to get back a normal, loving family; one that isn’t separated by plots of land and emotional tension.  I know it can no longer be that way.  We aren’t the same people we were and while I try to not think about why that is, significant events like this seem to bring that out.  I have probably written in this blog about a half a dozen sentiments that seem to bring a close to all of the sadness about this divorce but apparently it isn’t fully closed. 

It’s kind of like my truck in my new house.  I can get most of it in but not enough to shut the door. 

Next time: More moving stuff and I’ll try not to be so depressing about it!

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?
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