The Stages of Divorce - Two - Happy Days Are Here Again

It is such a relief to have the staticky dysfunction gone. The contrast between the high-drama last few months of a dying marriage and the new life you gain is palpable. You can eat in peace, sleep in peace, watch whatever you want on TV, and use all the hot water. The world is full of opportunities. And you're sure, absolutely sure, things are gonna be better from now on. It's like that old rock song, "And I'm prob'ly gonna feel a whole lot better, when you're gone!"

I remember my first little post-divorce apartment—I called it "Little Land of Happy." The cats relaxed. I relaxed. My sense of humor came back. I started laughing at things on TV. And my appetite, always the first thing to go in a tense situation, came back in the slyest way. I tried to eat my little six-bite suppers, and I was still hungry. One evening in particular, I had to get up and re-plug-in the George Foreman Grill and simply make myself more food.

I threw a little dinner party, all divorced women. And I met my neighbors, one of whom turned out to be one of my former, favorite students from when I taught college. I found a whiz-bang divorce support group and changed churches. Found a friendly little gas-and go mart that sold Sunday papers. Found the Y's Buys second-hand shop across the street from my new apartment, and every payday, I bought the nicest piece of dove gray clothing I could find. I went to my grad school graduation in a dove gray, secondhand dress. My friend Theresa remarked on my rather-instant transition from Yuppie Homeowner to Broke Divorcee. She called me the most alarmingly downwardly mobile person she knew. And I remember telling her, "As long as ramen is 12 for a dollar, I don't have to go back to that man."

My pal Barbara invited me to join her group of friends on that first on-my-own Fourth of July, for a big outdoor Pointer Sisters reunion rock concert and fireworks—bring your own lawn chair. I had to buy a lawn chair, but I showed up. Barbara stared in wonder at the chair, "You know," she told me, "that right there is nicer than anything your ex-husband ever bought you." And she was right. The music was wonderful, the fireworks were wonderful. Barbara's husband went and bought us all gloriously salty and hot and greasy cottage fries, and I was so happy. I had a real sense of getting to do something that made me so happy without having to (a) drag an unwilling spouse along, or (b) go alone and then (c) paying for every ounce of happiness the minute I got home from going out without him.

Have there been hard times? Yes. But they are few and far between. And I have coped—without my Ex—through them all. And there have been many, many occasions when I went through something breaking, something gone wrong, something awful, that I thought, "Gee, this sure is easier without the Shame and Intimidation Monday Morning Quarterbacking Spin from a bad spouse."

And sooner or later the euphoria wears off and The Urban Grind wends its way back in. But I still am very (VERY) happy living alone and the peacefulness of it all. I tell people, "I was married for 11 years and then a nice judge gave me time off for good behavior."

And enjoy this time for what it is—a gift. Don't be rushed into anything, not even a new hairstyle. Just take your time. This is part of your healing, a time to do the emotional processing you need to do, not a time to jump into a new relationship or a 30-year mortgage or a navel piercing. They tell those'uns at A.A. to wait a year before entering into any kind of new relationship. That's an excellent rule of thumb for us all.

The Stages of Divorce - One - A Calmer Place to Sleep

My friend Beth thought she had the ideal marriage right up until her husband came home and told her that he was in love with somebody else. That if Beth truly loved him, she would want him to be happy.

The problem was, he would not Establish Separate Residence. He kept his clothes at Beth's house. He came over once a day, around 5 a.m., showered, and changed clothes. This was lawyer-advice for holding on to the financial asset of the house. (When I got divorced, the lawyer told me to move my clothes out last, the very last.) He also had the receipts for his new Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous goings-ons mailed to Beth's house. And it all had the effect of making Beth even more miserable. She was stuck in a very early stage of divorce – that place where you hurt so much, so often, so actively that you feel like you're being peeled by the world's largest potato peeler. And all you want is a little something pleasant and familiar and good and not-not-sad.

Divorce is a form of processing. You move through the stages, maybe at your own pace, but you do move through the stages. You have to, to stay healthy and actively involved in life and to keep from scaring your loved ones and boring your friends.

The first stage is often a dichotomous blend of abject calm and abject misery. This is because as your physical and emotional surroundings calm down, your mind starts to process. At its worst, this can take on a form similar to Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. At the best, the former spouse will get out of your life enough to let you start processing. You will come back to equilibrium in your own time.

The opposite of Love is not Hate. The opposite of Love is Indifference. Hate takes tremendous psychic energy and eats you up inside. And, as Mark Twain said, "Always be pleasant to your enemies. It costs you nothing and it annoys your enemies." You don't have to be a doormat, but just refuse to participate in any type of dysfunction. Then you will have a calmer place to sleep.

And remember, getting out of a bad relationship is like throwing out old underwear. It feels so much better when the creep is gone.

Watchin' The Indian

My beloved Minnesota Public Radio did a report earlier this year on how nobody knows how to be bored anymore. Everywhere we go we have music, phone service, coffee in dandy to go cups, and advertising. And those advertisers have had to go from 60 second commercials to 30 second commercials to 15 second commercials as the national tolerance for Attention Span Theater has dropped straight into the cellar. We need to be bored, we were taught when we were young, so we could learn what to do when we are bored. 1950's Zen, but Zen, n'est pas?

Us kids, in my mother's huge Victorian house, used to get up early on Saturday morning and wait for the TV to come back on. We would curl up in my mother's soft blankets, with bowls of cereal and the front parlor TV on with the sound turned completely down, watching for the test pattern to turn into the Mighty Mouse cartoon show. We were allowed to do this because all the adults back then, including the adults in Mama's house, considered this placid waiting charmingly goofy and filled with self-entertaining boredom-dealing that was considered a virtue in those days. Back before cable TV, little towns only got TV signals between about seven a.m. and midnight. The rest of the time, they put up a test pattern, with a profile of a very politically incorrect Indian on it. We called it "Watchin' The Indian."

There used to be huge stretches of great gobbly boredom built into this society. We were raised to tolerate boredom. Remember visiting elderly friends and relatives of your parents? You were expected to sit on the secondarily nice furniture and behave yourself by being politely and quietly bored out of your mind. Sermons were 90 minutes to two hours long. Special events often involved speeches. Big. Long. Speeches. Sometimes one right after the other.

School used to incorporate boredom as a social skill. And the art of entertaining oneself, once again very quietly, in queues and waiting rooms, was the stuff of legends. When all we had was one another, the braver ones of us interacted with each other. I was in a Carlos O'Kelly's waiting area when an impromptu spelling bee broke out. I have been at a big outdoor concert where a series of objects for a homemade wine and cheese sampling were passed down the long, long rows of audients. And my pal Andy, the absolute King of Boredom Management, can recite whole movie plots from memory in the most fascinating way. He is the absolute best companion in the world to fall into a good two-hour wait with.

All this came to mind because I was in the girly-girl scary waiting room of the Mammography Unit at the big, downtown St. Paul hospital yesterday early. They took away our purses and cell phones and water bottles, put us all in matching mauve kimono tops and put us in this waiting room. There was a very elderly Hispanic woman with a hospital translator, a woman who was crying, a very quiet obviously lesbian woman, a teenager, and me. When i realized that they were going to take everything away from us, I very quietly kept my newspaper with me. I learned in grad school how to read the daily paper in about five minutes flat, and I knew I could get rid of the paper before I got busted. I sat down between the lesbian and the crying woman. Minnesotans can be a very preternaturally quiet, self-contained bunch, but the next woman that came in said, "Let's read the newspaper together." We got the crying woman to stop crying and start talking about the obituary pictures. We got the lesbian to show us how she had smuggled in her cell phone in her cargo shorts. And we made fun of our mauve tops and got the teenager to giggle for us. It was just a little bit of Watchin' the Indian but it surely was nice. In such a scary situation, with nothing but ourselves. The Cameraderie of Boredom.

It Takes Two

There is a calmness that comes after a divorce. It can be rather immediate. Sometimes all it takes is finding a calmer place to sleep—what the lawyers call "Establishing Separate Residences." Sometimes it takes getting through to the other side of the un-co-mingling of the family finances. Sometimes it just takes hanging out with enough Normals to where you get where you trust your instincts and your feelings again.

Dear Abby last week had a letter from a young woman who found out that her father was binge-drinking again. He started up when his wife, the writer's mother, went away on a vacation with her sister. The writer wanted to know whether or not to tell her mother. Abby told the writer that the family dynamic was this – Husband was punishing Wife for going on vacation. It was a startling thing to read in the newspaper in the broad daylight—that people who love you so much that they went and married you could punish you. Oh, what an Elephant on the Sofa Moment!

If you stay in a dysfunctional marriage long enough, you begin to self-monitor yourself to avoid this punishment. You will, literally, catch yourself being happy and check yourself, knowing what will happen later on. I have always gone through life lucky—things just happen to me, good things, happy things. And the saddest part of my life was being married to a man who resented any happy thing—and I mean anything that could put a smile on my face—that did not come from him.

I remember taking him along to my Senior Convocation, when I got my bachelor's degree at age 40. My voice teacher had urged me, "Bring your husband," and I remember having a little mental blip of "Why would I do that?" It turned out that I was the only triple-dipper, the only triple honoree. It was more than my husband could stand. And then, afterwards, over by the red-punch-and-cookies that the nuns supplied in endless quantities for all Catholic college occasions, people came up and hugged me, told me congratulations, told my stoic husband how proud he must be of me. My teenaged daughter could see him getting tenser and tenser and then start to twitch ("like a popcorn machine, Ma."). He could hardly wait long enough to get to the car, where he turned to me, still with the three parchment certificates in my hand, and sneered, "You just think you're such Hot Sh*t."

I remember thinking, "I do not have a normal marriage."

There's psychology behind all this—Google "abandonment-engulfment cycle" sometime, or "Narcissism." But it mainly amounts to hostage taking. You are punished for being a "Bad Hostage, Bad, Bad!"

My neighbor lady works two jobs to support a husband who will not hold down even one job if it gets in the way of his drinking. He punishes her for working that second job by doing things like letting her beloved little dog out loose, cooking up all the meat in the freezer and gobbling it down in her absence, and—just last week--getting her little car impounded when he went out driving at night, with no valid driver's license and his third OMVI, and he got a mandatory four days in County Jail. She did a very brave, un-Hostagy thing—she did not go down to Payday Loans and get the money to bail him out. She, instead, had four days without him. She told me, "It's so-o peaceful." Yes, Dear Heart, it is.

Janelle

The Middle Aged Travellin' Mack

It's a whole new ballgame travelling for business at my age. Half the hotel room bathroom counter was taken up with all the homey, Walgreen-y purchases that it takes to keep my antique body up and at 'em. You don't want to have to find all that crap out on the road. My fellow Middle-Agers found that out. One guy had to go out about ten a.m. in a strange city and buy Dr. Scholl's insoles for his tired feet, and then was totally bereft of a pair of scissors, in the middle of the meetings, to trim them to fit. Two women got sick (one from bad restaurant choices and one from good old upper-respiratory crud) and both could have kept on going if they had had a little Kaeopectate and a couple of antihistamine pills.

It's very tempting out in The Great Land of Expense Accounts, to pretend you still have the digestion of the Sweet Young Things around you. That you can eat what they eat, scarfing down greasy lunches and big suppers. The great truth is that your stomach is your stomach no matter where you take it, and if you can't do pepperoni anymore at home, it's not going to work a thousand miles away from home.

So here's the travel lessons I learned mostly, believe me, the hard way:

1. If you have to travel Business Casual, go for the most comfortable Business Casual clothes you own. And don't wear dressy-dressy, uncomfortable shoes until you hit the meeting room door. You can wear yourself out in modern airports before you even get on the plane. You're going to walk much, much more than you usually walk, so plan for comfort.

2. Plan for hurry-up-and-wait. Bring along a paperback and quarters for the newspaper vending machine. Carry a bottle of water with you whenever you can (that being before and after airport screening). If you don't want to chat on the plane, buy one of those blow-up neck support pillows and close your eyes. Even a 40 minute flight can be a 40-minute-long, refreshing nap. The worst you could miss is that 2.5 ounces of pop they hand out.

3. Right before I went to Europe, somebody told me to lay out all the clothes I thought I would need and all the money I thought I would need on my bedspread. And then to take half the clothes and twice the money. The point being to (a) underpack—you will thank yourself over and over again, and (b) plan for contingencies, and Laws-A-Mercy, will there be contingencies! I got this trip down to my two smallest rolling suitcases, and I checked both suitcases. Then I went through the airports with a big, silvery, oversized travel purse and a girly-girl carry-all with my reporting orders, my paperback book, my water bottle, and my knitting.

4. Get to know the hotel staff. If you have a concierge, consult that person about restaurants, public transportation, amenities, extra pillows, where the spa treatments are, et al. Our hotel this trip was the big, swanky Marriott in Atlanta, and the amenities were wonderful. Two of my compatriots asked for refrigerators in their rooms and they got 'em. We all had European-style, pillow-top mattresses with duvets and good pillows. We had a big indoor-outdoor rooftop pool and a full-sized Starbucks.

And tip the maids, tip the bellboy, tip the courtesy shuttle driver. Those are the people who have saved my bacon over and over again. I cash out a couple of 20-dollar bills into ones before every trip, and I tip people. I have gotten wonderful, hospitable things done for me for those onesies. You never know what can really make a difference. So spread a little graciousness around.

5. If you regularly can't sleep through the night, plan for it. If you aren't sleeping at home, then it's statistically probable you aren't going to sleep through the night in some strange hotel room. The world won't stop because you're awake at two a.m. One tip is to turn the TV on sleep-timer with the volume down just to a mumble-minimum. It acts like white noise. Or run a little hot water through the coffeemaker and use that chamomile teabag you brought from home.

6. Plan for stress release. On longer trips, I look in the Yellow Pages under "Yoga." If I can't find a yoga studio, then I go to knitting shops or bookstores. The last time I was stuck in Atlanta, I went on a big Grayline bus tour one weekend, and I joined a group going to Stone Mountain the next weekend. I got to see the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra Triple Beethoven season opener and the Science Museum's James Bond traveling exhibit. You got to have balance, good work-play balance, even if you are living out of a suitcase.

7. Celebrate coming back home. I did my favorite little chicken meatballs for my first supper back home. I went over and talked to my favorite clerks at the huge Goodwill store. I got down on the floor and played Catnip Mouse with the cats. It's good to be back home in my little treetop studio apartment.

We are all, Babies, gonna be working a whole lot longer than we figured on. And sooner or later we are all gonna be loping down some skyway with an E-ticket. We are all gonna be told to hike to a business meeting "just six blocks away." I saw big groups of sales teams, all in matching polo shirts and big matching binders, galumping around the hotel and down Peachtree Avenue, and they were not slowing down for the middle-aged ones. We had to hike to a business center every morning, and climb stairs to get to the tower elevator. We had to walk to lunch and run for the Marta trains. And after the meetings, we all wanted to do fun things that involved, yup, walking.

At the very end of my trip, on the big shuttle van home, I met a fellow middle-ager who is working delivering cars. He drives new cars to new owners and then flies back home. He says they pay him just about enough to eat at McDonald's. But he's working. We are all gonna be working. This is not the life we planned, but it's the live we got. Here's to us.

And here's those Chicken Meatballs:

Mince about 3 Tbl. of sweet onion and mix with
1 Tbl. parsley
1 tsp. minced garlic

Crumble in one-half pound of ground chicken
1/4 cup Italian bread crumbs
2 Tbl. grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 tsp. salt
dash pepper
1 egg

Mix well, and shape into eight small meatballs.

Brown in 2 Tbl. oil. Then add 2 Tbl. water and 2 Tbl. red wine
Cover and simmer for 20 minutes.

Take meatballs out of pan and make pan gravy:

Measure juice in pan and add water to make 1 cup liquid
Add a beef boullion cube and a capful of Kitchen Bouquet browning agent

Make a roue of 1 Tbl. flour in 2 Tbl. water. Add to gravy and stir to blend and thicken. Reintroduce meatballs to pan and heat everything through.

Serves two.

And Speaking of Macaroni....

This is a true story. It happened to a friend of my friend Annie.

Annie's friend took her only son up to college. Took him to the bookstore and got his books and a college sweatshirt. Got him unpacked in the dorm room. Went down and bought him a cafeteria card. And then she hugged him and handed him a small amount of cash. She told him, "Now, Daddy and I have talked this over and we can send you this amount of money every month, but no more. So you're gonna have to budget. But you've got your room and your cafeteria pass and you should be OK."

Eight days later, Son called home. He said, "I need more money."

"For what?" his incredulous mother asked.

"Food."

"But you've got your cafeteria pass."

"I sold that. I don't like that food."

"But you have your cash allowance."

"I bought everybody pizza. And restaurants are expensive. It's gone."

"I'll call you back," his mother said. She did better than that. She drove up to the college and she handed Son a big bag of macaroni.

"What's this?"

"Macaroni."

"Why are you giving me macaroni?"

"Because you don't have any more money coming in for 22 more days."

"But what do you want me to do?"

"I want you," his mother told him, "to learn to like macaroni."

What this country needs is about two million more moms like that.

J.

Seven Dollars A Day, My Aunt Fannie!

Ran across a blog called "Eating on Seven Dollars A Day." The author pulled his punches, however, declaring that the main ingredients for supper be seven dollars, for two servings, and then you cart the leftovers to work the next day for lunch. And wherefore art thou, breakfast?

I can do better than that. I eat on about five dollars a day, breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. And no, ramen noodles never cross my lips.

It's good, healthy eating, based on good nutrition and the things that got me my Lifetime Key at Weight Watchers. I did Weight Watchers, BTW, because you are never hungry-starving on Weight Watchers. I eat enviably good.

Repeat after me:

A normal, healthy adult only needs five to seven ounces of protein a day.

While it is fun to have a big protein-feed now and then, a diet focused more on vegetables, healthy grains and fruits will keep you spry. And who doesn't want to be spry? I have fruit and whole-grain bread for breakfast, or fruit and cottage cheese. I cook two or three entrees every Sunday (mainly chicken and fish and vegetarian) and I heat up a small serving of one of those entrees for lunch at work. Dinner is a fresh salad, a little more protein and good-quality skim milk.

Snacks are 33 cent mozzarella string cheese sticks, or carrot sticks (from a big 69-cent pack of carrots), or Wheat Thin crackers (bought on sale). My grocery store does a wonderful job of stocking fresh fruit in season, on sale. This week I got strawberries for $1.50 a quart and two tangelos for 50 cents each. I also got a big pink grapefruit, which I eat like an orange. My co-workers are positively fascinated with my snacks and the Sherman Tank Health level of an Old Lady like me.

Americans need to get over their obsession with meat. If your plate was the face of a clock, meat should take up no more than one quarter of the plate, the space from nine to 12 o'clock. It's better still to mix a little meat in with the other ingredients.

My vegetarian entree this week is what my Southern mother always called, "Snap Beans and New Potatoes." Fresh green beans were 69 cents for a two-pound pack this week, and I will cook them with the last of the new baby potatoes from the Hmong farmers at the Minneapolis farmer's market. Serve it up with sliced tomatoes, and it is a meal fit for a King. Or a parsimonious Divorced Lady.

Other dirt cheap feasts include:

Stir-Fried Cabbage, with sweet onion and soy sauce

A good old-fashioned chicken pot pie, (with the meat gleaned from backs-and-necks if money is tight), and a sour cream crust

Oven roasted baked potatoes, with The Brown Derby Restaurant's recipe for creamed spinach over the top.

Macaroni Anything. Macaroni has wonderful mouth feel, and a big bag of any frozen vegetables (my store's house brand is 99 cents) mixed with macaroni will keep you alive till next payday.

"But, hey, lady, I like meat!" you say? Then make friends with the butcher. If you go in early (I do mean early), you can get the markdowns from the day before. My last 6 a.m. foray to the grocery store scored me six pork chops for $1.99 and a four-pack of chicken breasts for about three bucks.

I also watch the sales on meats. I buy up ground chicken, or ground turkey or lean ground beef when it goes on deep sale. I divide it up at home into four-ounce freezer packs. Or I cook down huge turkey wings and use the meat for turkey and noodles. Or I wait for the big bags of Wisconsin cheese to go on sale, and make a big, baked macaroni and cheese.

I don't scrimp on quality skim milk, or yoghurt or cottage cheese or good whole-grain bread. I have a bad jones for Italian pasta. I eat out with friends, when there's coupons. I have been known to go to a bargain matinee and eat enough popcorn that supper is just a snack that evening. I ask for things like Italian expresso powder and Italian tomato-paste-in-a-tube for stocking stuffers.

Tomorrow I will cook my mother's macaroni recipe, with about four ounces of lean ground sirloin, stewed tomatoes, celery and Vidalia onion. Then I will oven-bake the last of a six-pound bag of catfish fillets I found at the grocery store for three bucks. Make a saucepan full of glazed carrots. Make some homemade biscuits for a not-so-sweet strawberry shortcake. And eat like a queen for another week.

Oh, and I also contribute to the food bank. So I feed myself, the cats and the food bank.

Seven dollars a day, my Aunt Fannie! That's for amateurs!