Grim Is My Middle Name

So there you are, your hands still puckery from all those dinner dishes, doing laundry at 9:30 on a Friday night. There's never enough time--or a babysitter--to go out and see friends, or a movie. And there's never enough money to waste on an overpriced coffee at Starbucks. Your whole social life is the yearly parent-teacher conferences.

You walk around so tired that it hurts to lay down in bed and try to fall asleep. When you jolt awake, in the moonlight, four hours later, everything's still, and the only sound is your teen-aged son snoring in the next room.

You didn't think there'd be this much homework, this much reading, this many papers. But you're gonna finish this degree if it kills you.

You can't remember the last time you walked around an art museum, met friends for sushi, heard any kind of live music. You simultanously disdain and envy your single friends who manage all these things.

Grim has come to live at your house.

You may still be bitter from your divorce. You may feel as if you have absolutely no time for friends and fun. You may be dead set on finishing up your school. You may be totally, steely dedicated to holding down full time employment and 24-7 Motherhood. And these are not bad things. What you have to monitor is your attitude. If you have been divorced 12 months and have not developed your own, new social life, then it is time. Buy a newspaper. It will tell you what movies are showing, where the local Strawberry Festival is this weekend. What the book club at the library is reading. Where the next fund raiser for the Humane Society is. If you are sitting there, shaking your head no, then it is very definitely time. You may be holding onto your old life a little too much.

The new rule is that you can meet anybody for coffee. Anybody. Try it. You'll like it.

Stages of Divorce - I Got A Lot A' Livin' To Do

So you get someplace else to live, and you get new towels and drapes and the cable TV hooked up. A big box of Cheerios and six Lean Cusines. And then you cannot stand to be there.

Sooner or later, you meet someone else who cannot stand being at their home either. And you run. Run, run, run. I met the girlfriend of one of the guys in my theater group, and she was freshly divorced too. We went out dancing, dancing, dancing, usually till two in the a.m. Which is remarkable, being as how I can usually go asleep at about 8:30 p.m.

It doesn't have to be bar-hopping. You can get super-involved in almost anything. Volunteering, lawn work, tailgating. Even errands. There's just a restlessness to it all that draws you out, out, out of the house.

It doesn't last forever. And it's not all bad. It teaches you things, about how very little the pick up lines have changed, how exillerating it can be still, at your age, to neck like a banshee. How guilt-riddenly late you can eat supper, how big the dust bunnies under the piano can grow.

And it teaches you, in a physically exhausting way, how to be comfortable in your own skin. That's important work, so that you don't fall right back into a new but awful relationship.

Just remember, it does no good to sew your wild oats if you have to pray for a crop failure afterwards.

It also teaches you, in a very visceral way, that you are out of the old relationship and that you have the freedom to charge straight forward into a Brave New World.

Travellin'

Washington, DC, is a magical place. It reminds me of Paris, with the spoked street layout, the circles, the public statuary, the monumental buildings, the trees and the park-like areas.

This trip I stayed at The Ritz. Now, when I was in Paris, when I was 40, our group managed to pass The Paris Ritz about once a day. And I always thought, "Someday, I'll stay at the Ritz." Well, someday came in spades. The desk clerk memorized every guest's name, even the snacks were magnificent, the bathroom had solid gold fixtures, and the view was what every middle-aged person loves to see -- a 24-hour Walgreen's. I went Christmas shopping there.

I was bowled over by The Lincoln Monument on my last trip, and had planned on reconoitering over to The Roosevelt Monument this trip, but my hotel room safe was broken, and I did not want to haul my laptop around The Mall. So I settled for heading out to the airport early, for an earlier flight home. Always glad to come home.

My next trip, as far as I know, will be a big conference in June, in Minneapolis. I want to go back to my favorite antique store up there, see my pastor, and my friends, and go to IKEA and to Candyland. http://www.candylandstore.com/ Other than that, I am quite content in my Little Land of Happy, in the far North corner of The South.

Next post will be another installment of the stages of divorce. Happy Valentine's Day tomorrow, and be ye kind to yourself.

Janelle