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April 29, 2005
"How would you like to be me?"
That's what my Aunt Eleanor used to say. It was her stock response to anybody else's tale of woe. Naturally nobody had it as tough as she did. God, she was miserable. She was an alcoholic. She's dead now.
Moo has strep throat. I brought him a bowl of homemade chicken soup and some asiago cheese bread for dinner. "Eat it while it's hot," I said. "It will feel good on your throat." He sighed. He had wanted macaroni and cheese. I came downstairs after about 15 minutes; the bowl was empty. "Do you want some more soup?" "No." Another sigh. He didn't even turn his head to look at me, he was so disappointed. Yeah, tortured by being forced to eat decent food. Tough luck.
Herself is at a Brownie function. I got home after struggling through the usual Friday gridlock just in time to load her into the car and get her there. When I dropped her off at the high school parking lot she said to the troop leader, "Are there going to be snacks? Because my mom didn't make me anything to eat and I'm starving." I had to put my hands behind my back to keep them from wrapping around her neck and squeezing.
Shit, it's been a lousy week. Every day held some new and mostly unpleasant surprise.
The plants my neighbor asked me to water that I killed instead. The Other One's phone call on Monday night. The burned-up clutch on The Husband's car that cost $800 to fix. The crack in the windshield that appeared yesterday morning, shaped like a fish hook and now inching its way inexorably from one side to the other. The note from the school asking me if I am "aware" that Herself has missed 15 days of school this year and to please keep in mind that absences could affect her grades. The third-grade luncheon that I couldn't go to, earning me disdain from the teacher and wrath from Herself. Moo's strep throat. George Bush on the television last night instead of The OC. The letter from the homeowner's association telling me that I have until June 27 to get a new roof and put some "large numbers" on my house "that can be seen from the street." (This is a mystery. There are "large numbers" on the mailbox, which is on the street directly in front of the house, which is about 15 feet back. Listen, if you can't make the connection, you're too much of a dope for me to want you to come over anyway.)
I tell myself to look on the bright side--it's Friday, at least I have a home, at least I have a job, at least I'm healthy (but how do I know that?)--but the rah-rah's are listless and right now optimism just seems like way too much effort. Maybe the ghost of Aunt Eleanor and I should just go upstairs now, have a martini, give in. We can compare sad stories about our sad lives.
Posted by JudyLa at 07:10 PM | Comments (0)
April 28, 2005
7 becomes 4; delete 5; 9 becomes 6;
I'm working at home, working in a file with footnotes. I am editing the file and removing great chunks of text and I am noticing ...--well, one thing about the kind of stuff I edit is that there are always a lot of lists. The people in my company are list happy. Why stop with just one example when you can have fifteen? Why name three organizations when you can name all sixty-five? Okay, people; it's not like you get a better grade if you have the most bullets.
But anyway, I am editing this file, which has footnotes--and not the Word-generated kind, either. Manual footnotes. So when I delete a few paragraphs of text, there go the references. Then I have to go footnote by footnote and renumber. One stays one, two stays two, three stays three, seven becomes four, four becomes five, five becomes eleven ... you get the idea. It takes a while and I am staring at the screen and scribbling numbers on a piece of paper. I'm on page 35 of a 70-page file, about a billion footnotes behind me and a billion more ahead.
Spike comes in. He has a water-bottle cap in his mouth. He jumps up on my desk, drops the cap. Sits down and looks at it. Looks at me. I pick up the cap and toss it; Spike leaps off the desk and fetches. Fetches like a dog. Brings the cap back, drops it. Looks at it. Looks at me. I throw it again. We keep this up for a little while. Jump. Drop. Throw. Fetch. I wonder how long this will interest him; it's already gotten old for me. Jump. Drop. Okay, let's stop now. This time, though, when I throw, Spike runs across my keyboard and ... zap. The screen freezes. Word errors out. Good-bye.
Oh, for-- I shout at the screen. Spike looks at me then turns, jumps up onto the desk opposite me. Positions himself in front of the other computer screen and gets up on his hind legs. Paws at the screen like he's digging a hole. Does he think his reflection is another cat? Does he like the way the screen feels on his paws? Does he know he's in trouble?
He gets tired of playing with his reflection, yawns. Settles down on the keyboard with his front paws tucked under him, just like a real cat. He's growing up. He watches me, eyes green slits almost the exact color of the grass outside. I can hear him purring.
"Word has recovered your file." Hey, thanks, Bill Gates. But now it's time for lunch. And a bottle of Deer Park.
Posted by JudyLa at 09:18 PM | Comments (0)
April 26, 2005
I need a sign to let me know you're here
All of these lines are being crossed over the atmosphere
I need to know that things are gonna look up
'Cause I feel us drowning in a sea spilled from a cup
When there is no place safe and no safe place to put my head
When you feel the world shake from the words that are said
I'm calling all angels
I'm calling all you angels
I won't give up if you don't give up
I won't give up if you don't give up
I won't give up if you don't give up
I won't give up if you don't give up
I need a sign to let me know you're here
'Cause my TV set just keeps it all from being clear
I want a reason for the way things have to be
I need a hand to help build up some kind of hope inside of me
Train, Calling All Angels
Posted by JudyLa at 08:00 PM | Comments (0)
April 24, 2005
rocks and sticks
How did it get to be Sunday evening already? The weekend, which stretched in front of me endlessly on Friday noon, accordioned into a jumble of errands, stoplights, snatched meals, not enough sleep, not enough done, not enough time off, not enough anything. And here we are, practically at the end of it. Is Sunday night anybody's favorite night?
I took Moo to his lacrosse game late this afternoon. It was a strange day, weather-wise: more like fall than like late April. Dark clouds, the threat of rain, windy, chilly, virga in the distance that turned into a cold shower once it reached us. Standing on the field as the teams began to play (Moo's team is the Lizards--who on earth felt that naming a team after cold blooded, mostly somnolent animals was a good idea?), I could almost imagine going home to Thanksgiving dinner after it was over.
I followed Moo up and down the field, freezing, watching them play. Herself ran around picking dandelions to make a bouquet. I have no idea what lacrosse is about other than two teams chasing a ball and whacking each other with poles that have mesh baskets at the end. Whacking being the operative word here. I watched Moo smack the shit out of some other kid and waited for the referee to blow his whistle--nope. Apparently smacking the shit out of the other players is the point. What a great game!
The Lizards lost, despite their enthusiasm for inflicting pain on the other team. Seven to nothing. Seven to nothing has been the score for the last three games. If they can keep it up until the end of the season--keep on getting the same score--it will be a record, of sorts. But I refrained from pointing this out to Moo or his friend Mark, both of whom compared wounds on the drive home but didn't say much else, preferring to swig Gatorade and stare out the window while Herself sang along with the radio.
Traffic was light and we flew down 95. The clouds broke and a hint of a setting sun shone in the west. The end of the weekend. The end of a lost game. The end of warm weather for a while. Jack and Spike were waiting at the door when we got home. Omelettes for everybody. "Mom," Moo said to me confidentially as we cleaned up the kitchen, "Let's you and me take tomorrow off and go see Sin City."
Posted by JudyLa at 07:44 PM | Comments (0)
April 22, 2005
the quiet earth
It's Earth Day. It's raining. Pear tree blossoms covered the steps and were nubbly to walk on this morning when I went outside at 5:00 to get the paper, also wet.
A couple of days ago I read a blog that opined you don't have to sacrifice to be a good person. I guess the point was that "thinking good" is the same as "being good" is the same as "doing good"; and that "sacrifice" means denying yourself. About sacrifice, I agree--kind of. For example, if you recycle soda cans instead of throwing them away, you deny yourself convenience. You have the discipline to carry the empty can around with you, or keep it in your car, or at your desk at work, until you can find a recycle bin to toss it into. It's a pain in the neck to have to look at it, or store it, or carry it--but if you recycle it, you know it's not going to go into a landfill somewhere, just one more piece of disposable crap in a disposable-crap-filled world.
Where I work we have bins for recycling all over the office, but hardly anyone uses them. "Oh, I don't even think about it." What about at home? "Oh, I don't have any room for that bin." What about keeping cans and bottles in a bag? "Oh, I don't have room in my kitchen." And so on.
People don't deny themselves convenience, but they deny the chance to do something good--for themselves (develop discipline) and for the earth (don't toss more crap onto it).
Why do they--why do we--why do I--do it? Or not do it? Why do we fail again and again to do the right thing, and why do we tell ourselves "this doesn't count," and "next time I'll be better" and "when I talk about being a good person, I'm only talking about this, not about that." Even if the thing we don't want to do is the thing that will be good for us--good for us, good for others, good for the planet--even if we know what is right and what is wrong and what we should do, we don't do it. Why is that? Because we want to deny ourselves the chance to think, do, be, good? To be true? To be accountable? Because we love ourselves, but not in a way that nurtures us, or other people, or even our planet? (sorry, J.; I guess I'll never let that one go)
The air is dirty, the landfills are full, the ozone layer is diminished, the ice fields are melting, the seas are rising. We invaded and destroyed a country for a lie. Lies. We murder each other. We're angry. We don't stop. We prevaricate. We hedge. We rationalize. We allow ourselves to live venal lives and we tell ourselves we are spiritual and good and right. But we aren't. We aren't.
So hey, you have to start someplace, right? Start by recycling. Do some good.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
April 21, 2005
they were expendable
I ate a salad of baby lettuce and bleu cheese dressing while I watched CSI Las Vegas, or whatever it's called. After it was over, a few minutes ago, I took my dishes, Herself's socks, my shoes and my glass of wine upstairs to the kitchen, and I made coffee and ate a piece of stale french bread with faux butter. I stood in the dark kitchen, chewing and scraping the roof of my mouth raw on stale-french-bread-crust, and a thought came to me: How long has it been since somebody really wanted to kiss me? I mean really wanted to. Really. Wanted to.
I don't know the answer to that, in spite of. All the rest of it. Oh, for heaven's sake. But forget bed for a while. I'll write a blog entry.
The house is silent. During dinner, their dinner--I was on my way to work and didn't want to eat--I was on the phone with Citibank. Citibank should give me my own extension, I'm on the phone with them so much. But anyway, I was on the phone and there was naturally some kind of disturbance. I can't have a phone conversation, haven't been able to for almost 15 years, without a child catching on fire in the same room where I'm trying to talk.
Herself got up from the table in a huff. "I'm not eating any more because Moo spit in my dinner." He spat in her dinner? For the past couple of days what's come out of her mouth has been a surprise. He spat in your dinner? "She started it!" Moo says. He is 14.5 years; his sister is 9.9 years. "She spit first." They spat in each other's dinner? God, that's disgusting. Okay, dinner is over. "I'm still hungry," says Moo. Of course he is. "Good," I say. "Both of you go to your rooms. And stay there." For how long? "Until I tell you to come out." Some things every parent says.
They go upstairs, downstairs. Stereos blare. I leave for work. I barely get there when Herself is on the phone. "I'm really sorry that I--"
I drive home; I get there in time to watch almost the beginning of The OC. The house is quiet. Not even the dog meets me at the door. Where is everybody? I go upstairs. She's asleep in her bed, fully clothed, under the covers, with Spike.
I go downstairs to Moo's room. He's asleep, under the covers, with Jack. It's very quiet. So I guess it's me, wine, stale bread and a salad and my favorite night of the week and the couch all to myself. Sweet.
And now I'd like to say good-night and leave you with tonight's theme song:
It doesn't hurt me. Do you want to feel how it feels? Do you want to know, know that it doesn't hurt me? Do you want to hear about the deal we're making? You, you and me.
And if I only could, I'd make a deal with God and I'd get him to swap our places. Be running up that hill, be running up that road, be running up that building. If I only could.
You don't want to hurt me, but see how deep the bullet lies. Unaware, I'm tearing you asunder. There is thunder in our hearts. Is there so much hate for the ones we love? Tell me, we both matter, don't we? You, you and me. You and me won't be unhappy.
And if I only could, I'd make a deal with God and I'd get him to swap our places. Be running up that hill, be running up that road, be running up that building, with no problem.
You. You and me. You and me won't be unhappy. Come on, angel; come on, come on, darling. Let me steal this moment from you now. Come on angel, come on, come on, darling, let's exchange the experience, oh.
And if I only could be running up that hill, with no problem.
Kate Bush
Posted by JudyLa at 10:11 PM | Comments (0)
April 20, 2005
"We are creation's property, its particles, its clay as we fall into this life, agree or disagree."1
Fifteen years ago this date I was four days pregnant. I remember--do most women remember? I don't know.--the day I got pregnant: Easter Sunday. We had an Easter dinner party and a good time--we always seemed to have a good time back then--though what we ate for dinner has escaped me, as has most of the company except for my friend A. and his boyfriend R. I remember later on that warm San Francisco night and the open window. I remember what the husband said (not the husband yet)--"What are you doing?" as if he didn't know--and what I said, and the stars that turned into fireworks behind my closed eyes and wow.
Four days in, already sushi gave me indigestion. Cramps kept me up at night; I swallowed six Advil just to get to sleep. I felt different but no different at all. I had no idea what was coming, something I didn't want and hadn't planned and, had I known, would have done my best to prevent.
And here I am 15 years later, and Moo sleeps in the other room and upstairs in her little bed is Moo's sister and I love them more than I knew it was possible to love anything or anyone. And would I change things, if I could go back? Would I change my past and their future?
Yes.
1Jane Kenyon, Winter Lambs
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
April 19, 2005
meanwhile, out on the moors,
Tuesday afternoon, an endless commute. Traffic and rain, and then no rain but still the traffic, and finally home. 25 miles or so, an hour and a half. O, discordia.
"Hi, I'm home," I say, and Spike and Jack run to meet me. Spike only comes because he wants to try to sneak out the door before I have a chance to close it. Herself hops down the stairs. Moo drags his carcass up to the living room like it weighs three thousand pounds and throws it down on the couch, exhausted from the trek. What's for dinner?
The inevitable thrust and parry: Yes, there will be dinner; no, not until I get back from the gym. What are we having? I consider my options. Chicken? Macaroni and cheese? ugh. ...Hamburgers and french fries? That's easy, and bad for everybody.
Okay, says Moo, and herself says I Don't Want a Hamburger; I'll Just Eat French Fries.
Oh, whatever.
I go into the kitchen to look at the mail. She follows me for some How Was Your Day conversation.
"I saw Kelsey again this afternoon. She looked at me," she says.
"Oh? And did she talk to you?"
"No."
"Good," I say, "we hate her anyway."
I stop. Did I just say that out loud? I need to get to the gym.
"We didn't have recess today," she says. She sits down at the kitchen table.
"You didn't? Why not?"
I'm reading a letter from a federal investigator. Apparently our neighbor is a person of interest.
"Killer dogs," she says, matter of fact.
I look up from the letter. "Killer..."
"Killer dogs. You know, the black ones. The ones without collars."
Oh, those killer dogs.
"I saw them, mom."
In spite of myself, I look out the window. White blossoms from the pear tree drift like snow onto the lawn. In the back of my mind, something howls. Something without a collar.
Posted by JudyLa at 08:04 PM | Comments (0)
April 18, 2005
It was a weekend of heartbreak and regret.
On Friday night at keno I couldn't win one hand. Time after time I was one chip away from victory, only to lose to another member of the Catholic Mafia. They were good company and there was a lot of rich, probably-bad-for-you food and some good Reisling, but still. Being an egalitarian group, they make sure everybody gets a prize even if they don't win and so I got a prize but. But I didn't win. Which for some reason reminds me of a conversation I had with W. a couple of months ago. Me: "I've always felt kind of lucky, you know?" W.: "Really? Because you're not."
On Saturday night I saw a play called The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? It was written by Edward Albee, who also wrote Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, so I guessed that marital discord was on the menu and I wasn't disappointed. The Goat is about a man who falls in love with and has an affair with, yes, a goat. An actual love affair with everything a love affair entails, including ... well, sex. He loves the goat and he loves his wife as well, and she is understandably, and hilariously at first (she gets most of the best lines), distraught. But the play turned out to be less about how odd it is for a man to have fallen in love with a barnyard animal and more about how we love each other and what love means, what it does to us, how it can lift us up while it destroys the people around us, and destroy us as well.
On Sunday I met D. and D. and had lunch and a margarita and a movie. Talk at lunch inevitably turned to men and the lack thereof and, or at least the lack of any "good men--whatever those are--and D. (or was it D.?) said
"Well, it doesn't matter if I'm not dating because I haven't got anything to offer anybody anyway."
... What do you mean, nothing to offer? Nothing?
"Nothing."
Nothing at all? You have nothing to offer anybody, anywhere.
"That's right."
Well, shit, that's frightening.
After this revelation we went to see The Upside of Anger, which is a movie about a woman whose husband runs off with his secretary, leaving her and their four daughters to try to cope. The woman (played by Joan Allen), immediately turns to vodka and wearing nightgowns all day long and letting things (i.e., the house) generally go to hell. I thought, now that's how I should have done it, and how does she still look so great while she's drinking all that Gray Goose day after day? Anyway, she gets a boyfriend despite being drunk and angry, even though he's drunk and angry, too, and they help each other.
And at the end of the movie one of the daughters, in a voice-over, talks about how empowering anger is because once you aren't angry any more you are ... I don't know, better. Along the lines of "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" and all.
On the way home I thought about poor Stevie, Martin's wife, whose rival was a goat, and Stevie's anger, and what she did with it. After she washed the blood from her hands, her hair, her clothes, what happened to her anger and her love?
And then I was pulling into the driveway and there was the husband, installing speakers in his car. After you wash the blood from your hands and put the vodka away, what happens to your anger? What happens to your love? "Stay out here and talk to me," he said. And I did.
Posted by JudyLa at 09:10 PM | Comments (0)
April 15, 2005
I see you shiver with anticipa
Okay, so it finally happened. I made my therapist yawn. Oh, God. I knew it was coming the very first time we ever met. I loved her at first sight, which made me happy and nervous. I thought I love you so much I could eat your hair--and you love me too.
And then I realized You love me too, right now. Right now I'm not even a person, psyche in pieces; I'm probably fascinating, but just wait until I don't fall completely apart every session and see how long you stay interested, bitch.
I guess yesterday was the day I lost whatever cachet I had all these months. I just happened to look up in the middle of my sentence and she was ... she was ... and her hand was over her mouth and she was ... I don't even remember what I was talking about ... see? I even bored myself. Oh, I don't know what to do. It's tricky trying to keep your therapist interested in you (J. says his used to play computer games during sessions). If you're too convincing with your tale of misery, you'll just bring a lot of crap into your life. For example I thought about telling her about my almost overwhelming desire to down half a bottle of Tylenol PM, but then realized she'd be on the phone to 911 before I finished the sentence.
So the key is to be miserable and interesting, not just miserable, and not too miserable. Even husband said about this blog "I get bored reading about unhappy stuff all the time." Sure, easy for you to say, you bastard. You've got great stuff to feed your therapist for the rest of your fucking life! What have I got? The usual tale of the suburban marriage that wasn't and blah, blah, blah. Oh, oh.
I need a hook. Something unexpected, something that will make her look at me with new and wary interest. Something serious and complicated but not immediately life-threatening... Bulimia. Shoplifting. Mania. A sudden unhealthy fascination with Moo. Cross-dressing.
Oh, anything, anything but boring, average neurosis. Anything but getting better. Anything but that.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:19 PM | Comments (0)
April 13, 2005
one to a customer
My friend C. asked me "Are you ... starting to look around?"
Like, for a new guy? No.
"Good. Because it's my turn. You've had two and I haven't had any. You're done."
Done?
With husbands, I guess she meant. What, I've had my quota? Or I guess one more than my quota. Hey, it's not like I'm not throwing them back! They aren't chained in my basement or moldering under the sod in the back yard or walled up with a cask of Amontillado--they're free agents, out there playing the game, having cut their milk teeth on my heart.
In the 60's my friend J's Aunt Margita married a guy because they dropped acid together. And while I can appreciate that, or at least appreciate the experience, Being One With The Universe (and a spouse) takes quite a bit more effort when you're sober--and it was probably sobriety that led to the inevitable divorce a few months later.
So, did that guy count against Margita's quota? If you get married when you're high, does it count? Or is it just practice? I've had a few friends make testy remarks about my perceived "luck" with men, which is that I have them and they don't. Hello, two marriages and two divorces is not luck--not good luck, anyway. I don't get how getting my heart broken twice, really badly, means I have somehow given up my chance to be happy. Really. It seems to me that if I've filled any kind of quota, it's the heartbreak kind.
I mean come on. Sometimes I feel like my purpose in life is to show men exactly what it is they do not want. When do I get to the part where I get my quota of love and happiness? What about my quota of romance; who's getting that? Where's my quota of normal men? I demand a recount.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
April 11, 2005
Once there was a thing called spring
It is finally, determinedly, actually, positively Spring. Birds start singing as soon as dawn touches the horizon and keep it up all day long until dusk. The pear trees are in full blossom and glow like lamps against the sky. Bees hover over every flowering bush and plant. et cetera. I am so happy to have made it to this point, to the thaw, to the warmth and sunlight and lots of it.
I have been doing some reading and have learned something about the husband and something about myself and something about the past and something about the future and something about what the almost-15 years of my marriage were for: maybe nothing. At least that's according to Sam Vaknin, author of Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisted and self-described narcissist, whose book is "the documentation of a road of self-discovery. It was a painful process, which led to nowhere. I am no different - and no healthier - today than I was when I wrote this book. My disorder is here to stay, the prognosis is poor and alarming."
Great! And about the poor unfortunates who have the bad luck and ill timing to fall in love with, cohabit a house with, marry, and bear the children of a narcissist? "... to invest in a narcissist is a purposeless, futile and meaningless activity. ...Abandon him and go about reconstructing your own life. Very few people deserve the kind of investment that is an absolute prerequisite to life with a narcissist. To cope with a narcissist is a full time, energy and emotion-draining job, which reduces people around the narcissist to insecure nervous wrecks. Who deserves such a sacrifice?"
Who indeed. This is how Dr. Vaknin sees, and wants me to see, my life: ...humans are specks of dust in a totally indifferent universe, ...playthings... And ...finally their pain means nothing to anyone but themselves. Nothing whatsoever. It has all been in vain.
Yesterday in the late afternoon I stood on the deck in the sun with a glass of wine and watched the world turn green around me and listened to the birds and the kids and to a faint piano tune from somebody's house and to a muted conversation coming from two people fishing off one of the docks and to the voice inside me that said love doesn't die, ever, no matter what, and I didn't have to but I believed it, and believe it in spite of how futile my love might be. But I can forgive myself for that.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
April 07, 2005
journeys end in lovers meeting
This is, more or less, how the end of my vacation went:
I wake up at 3:40, hear the rain on the roof. Dammit. Get up and dress, wish for coffee. Wake up the kids, tiptoeing down to the basement where Moo sleeps under his electric blanket with Jack; then back up to the bedroom where Herself slumbers, half on and half off the aero bed. Get up, get up, it's time to leave. The house is silent except for my sister talking in her sleep, Jack's claws on the wood floors, and the sound of the rain.
We gather up the detritus of our five-day visit--the Easter candy, the camera, the bags, the suitcases--pack the car, open the garage door. Moo and I in front; Herself in the back, already half-asleep with Jack. Good-bye.
Stop in Madison to get gas, listen to WCBS (traffic and weather on the 8's) and so know to avoid New York City in favor of the Tappan Zee. Down 95 to 287 to the Thruway to the Garden State to the NJ Turnpike once again, through the rain and the rush-hour traffic and everybody in the car but me asleep and snoring.
Breakfast in Delaware, fill the tank with cheap(er) gas, fly down the highway toward home, home, home. The rain coming down in sheets, flooding the road but not slowing anybody down, including me. Thinking about my bed, thinking about home, thinking about being back in Connecticut and how surprised I had been when sorrow hit me like a brick in the face once we were there, woke me up at night, invaded my dreams, made me cry in spite of myself--what was it?
I'm tired, and I want to sleep.
It's been seven hours since we left my sister's house, seven hours of driving in the driving rain, and I say to Moo as we turn on to our street, "I'm not even going to unpack; I'm going right upstairs and go to bed." I park in our driveway; Herself leaps out of the car. "Spike! Spike!" As I come down the walk I see him in the window. He sees us and goes nuts. Herself tries the door; naturally it's locked, but the key is under the mat. "The key is under the mat," I say. But it isn't. And isn't. I keep looking, not convinced.
I realize after a few minutes that husband must have taken the house key with him the last time he fed the fish, turtle, cat, and it is still with him, wherever he is. Where is he? Work? And the missing key is, unfortunately, our only house key, mine; husband having lost the other one when he left his keys in his apartment door and someone stole them. Our neighbors, who have a spare, are in Puerto Rico for a month. I go to my friend R., who has a spare, empties out drawers and boxes and envelopes searching for it when I show up at her door. No spare. No key at all. I go back home. Every door is locked, and by now Spike is climbing the blinds and meowing at us through the window.
I call husband. Phone is off. I call again. Phone is off. I call The Other One. One ring, voicemail. I call again. One ring, voicemail. It starts to rain. Shit. I call work, talk to ... somebody. "Haven't seen him today," somebody says. I think, What if this was an emergency? And then I think, We're locked out of the house without a key and I don't have any way to get in. This is an emergency.
Something happens in my head, then, some kind of shift. This is an emergency, and what if Moo or Herself or I were hurt, or at the hospital, or dead. Phone is off. Whereabouts, unknown. Husband is, in fact, oblivious to me, and Moo, and Herself getting rained on. I call The Other One's phone and leave a pissy message, which I immediately regret but it's too late to take it back.
Two hours later, just as the locksmith arrives to get us into the house, phone is answered by husband. This is probably my fifteenth call. By now, naturally, I am pretty well past furious and into rage. "You took my house key, and why was your phone off?" "Because I was with people and we were asleep." What? I want to have a fight, I want to pull hair and punch somebody in the nose. Preferably husband. Too bad I don't know where he is. "We need to talk about this," I say, and husband says, "I'm not going to talk to you now. I'll call you later. I'm about to have lunch." About to have lunch? We were out in the rain for two and a half hours. Nobody had lunch. Herself ate so much Easter chocolate while we waited for the locksmith that she gets a migraine the next day, but that's tomorrow and it is still today, and meanwhile I am so angry with husband.
While I am on the phone with him saying just that there's a knock on the door: the locksmith. He hands me a bill for $453.00. I look at the bill, convinced it can't be real. What? I have no idea how I am going to pay this bill, or why it is for $453.00. The locksmith is implacable. Pay. Now. Do you have cash? You can have 5 percent off.
I call husband again and cry, boo hoo. The crazy wife, again. I don't get a lot of sympathy. I hang up. The locksmith sits at the kitchen table. He won't leave until he gets paid. He won't take a check. He won't tell me who I can call to talk about why it just cost me almost $500.00 to get into my house. I don't know what else to do. Husband is angry with me and not available. Sniffling, I pay the locksmith, who is a young, very handsome man from ... some middle-eastern country. I want to ask him but don't. Too bad he's a bastard, I think.
After he has my money he leaves. I sit at the kitchen table and cry for real; the kids escape downstairs. It's raining. I have to go to work in two hours.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
April 04, 2005
he said I was the type that was most inclined when out of his sight to be out of my mind
So Aetna called me today. Or should I say a representative of Aetna called me today, to talk to me about ... depression. Specifically, my depression. I guess if you see a therapist, like I do, that must mean automatically that you're (or I'm) depressed. What if I'm not depressed? What if I'm just, you know, nervous? Although I wondered if Aetna somehow knew how many Citibank employees heard me cry last week while I tried to figure out the hideous mess that company had made of my finances... [Which reminds me, my mother used to make up batches of martinis and keep them in a bottle labeled "Mother's Nerve Medicine." My nerve medicine of choice these days is Regaia Montepulciano d'abruzzo. Yum.]
Anyway so this rep was actually a therapist--just like the one I talk to in person every week--not merely some Aetna customer services lackey, and he had a kindly, middle-aged, fatherly voice and sounded like he was really interested in me, which was interesting since he has no idea who I am. I'm trying to remember the point of his call, since it was kind of forgotten while we talked about other things--and he kept saying, a la the guidance counselor on South Park, "mmkay," which made me want to laugh--specifically we discussed my "situation," which led him to make pronouncements like: "Sometimes when people say they are doing the 'right thing' it only means they are doing what they want to do, which is not necessarily 'the right thing.' "
Gosh, ya think? It just might be that has already occurred to me. Mebbe that's what got me depressed in the first place, doc. Not that I'm saying I'm depressed, necessarily. I prefer "happiness challenged." But thanks for pointing that out. No, really. At any rate, apparently Aetna has a new follow-up program for depressed people and they're calling us up to see just how depressed we really are.
Or something.
I think.
Since I had to take Moo to lacrosse practice I had to hang up and we never actually got around to why he called in the first place. But I expect he'll get back to me later in the week. I wonder if he's single.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
April 03, 2005
"it's terrible to see your own confusion"
Who are you? I'm a middle-aged woman with children, a dog, a cat, a turtle, some fish, and a lizard. And a husband. I don't really consider anything after the word "children" to be mine; the animals belong to the children and the husband belongs to no one.
What about you? You mean what do I do? Like, for a living? Yes. I'm an editor for a small company located in "our nation's capital." And? And I really like my job. Or ... I really like words and it makes me happy to bury myself in them all day. And? And what? Oh. I also work part-time at a little gym in my neighborhood. A few hours a week, the occasional Saturday. I like that, too, because I get to work out for free, and I get to be away from all the words for a while.
So what's your story? That's a funny question, isn't it? Do you mean what is it in my life or about my life that makes me want to write a blog? Yes. Oh. Well. Well... Seven months ago to the day, my husband of 14 or so years told me--well, he didn't really tell me, I told him ... told him ... well, let's just say my life changed. Changed! Let's just say my life blew up. Fractured. Caved in. Went spiraling out of control. Veered off into the unreal. Can we try to avoid hyperbole here? Yeah. Sorry.
Seven months ago my husband of 14 or so years left me to live with somebody else. And although the somebody else wasn't to blame, still ... it was somebody else. I thought I would die. Hey, watch it. No, really. Die, or go crazy. I needed to talk to somebody, so I started therapy, but it wasn't the therapist I needed to talk to. I needed to talk to my husband, who was in absentia by then. He writes a blog and I thought, I could do that; I could write about what's happening to me and talk to him at the same time. He helped me set up this online journal--though I don't think he knew the form it would take--and off I went. And the rest is history. Hardly. Well, my history. I started writing because none of what was happening to me seemed real. If you really want to know, none of it seems real yet. No kidding. I mean, look at you. It's been half a year, for God's sake. As your sister said, "Get with it, girlfriend."
Jesus, give me a break! You first. Anyway, ask me something else.
Whom do you love? No one. Oh, well, I guess I have to say "I love my children," and I probably do--I mean, I do--but I don't feel that love right now. Mostly I feel exasperated and a constant, desperate desire to be left alone. Left alone to...? Left alone to be alone, what do you think? How do I know "to..."? Garbo and I, we both want to be left alone. What about... you know? The husband? What about him? Oh, well ... he leaves me alone. I get all the alone-time I could ever want, believe me. You know what I mean. Yeah. I love him all right. I love him like a junkie loves the needle. Actually I can't figure out if it's love, or the desire to be punished, or codependency, or the Stockholm Syndrome. But whatever it is has hijacked my every waking moment all these months, and before these months.
Meaning? Meaning that somewhere in our time together my world narrowed Irised in. Stop interrupting! ... narrowed until all I could think about was him, and what was happening to him, and what was happening to us, and why. Specifically, how could someone who kept telling me he loved me, that I was his soul mate, that we'd be together forever--how could that person be the same person who acted like he hated me most of the time? It was very confusing. It's terrible to see your own confusion; it's like being two people. Like being a prisoner. You see what your life looks like to the rest of the world and it's jarring, because it's just not real. But the life you are really living is so far removed from what you want that you can't believe that's real, either. So you end up spending most of your energy trying to get your outside world and your inside world to somehow match up. It's hard. No, it's impossible. How does someone who says "I'll never leave you" leave you?
Hello: the divorce rate is pretty much 50%--you think you're the only woman out there this has happened to? Happens to? No. Shit, it's not even the first time it's happened to me! But that's another story in another time.
So why hang around? Why hang on? Why not let it all go? Seems like you'd be celebrating his absence, not flogging yourself over it. What the hell? Yeah, if that's not the $64,000 question I don't know what is. I guess mostly it's the unreality factor. I mean despite everything, it's hard to grasp that he could do to me what he did. How old did you say you were? Well you asked the question--I'm just trying to answer it. Jesus. Okay, you know what it is: I don't believe he doesn't love me. Give me a fucking break. What? What do you want to hear? That's what it is! I don't believe it, in spite of everything, even though I know it. I don't believe he'll never be back even though I know he'll never be back. He doesn't know it--or he pretends not to--but I do. And it's hard to know what you don't want to know.
Yeah. Poor you. So what are you going to do now? Oh, I'm going to be a grown-up about it, I guess. I'm going to do what everybody has been telling me I should do, and hope that it works. Really? Did I tell you that I told him I don't want to, you know, hang out with him for a while? I'm going to take a break. How to save your own life, and all that. Now I don't believe you. Yeah. For a few months, anyway--just until I stop. Stop what? Until I stop. Just ... stop. Stop it. Stop not wanting everything I should want and stop wanting everything I shouldn't. I can't... I can't ... Whatever. So how's it going so far? [chuckles] Well, how do you think it's going? You know me as well as anybody. That badly, huh? The spirit is willing, etc. Only the spirit isn't--the spirit is just as cringy and groveling as ever. I'm afraid I won't be able to do it. I hear you. Well, good luck with that, okay? I'll be thinking about you. Yeah. Thanks.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
April 02, 2005
some days you're the bird, some days you're the grille
So walking back from the bank we spot somebody trying to park a car next to the curb, in front of Victoria's Secret. A Mercedes, a sporty little green thing, driven by a sporty little not-green-at-all woman. And in the front grille of that pretty little car is the poor, mangled body of a bird. I'm not sure what kind of bird it is, it's mostly mashed ... what I can see (the unmashed part) is gray. One outstretched wing and a bit of its body.
I wonder if maybe it was a robin. A harbinger of spring, cruelly cut down right at spring's beginning. Maybe it was in the road picking up a twig to build its nest. Yikes.
The driver must have seen our horrified looks, but we kept walking. After she got out of her car, I wonder what she did. Probably went around to the front to see what we had been gaping and pointing at... and then what did she do? Scream? Get a stick and pry the bird off her car? Just keep driving around for the rest of the day with a dead robin in the grille? Call her husband and make him wash it off when she got home?
I wonder how the bird got to be stuck in the car's grille. Seeing that bird makes me remember: flying down a hill in San Francisco in a rented car on our way to the airport. Early Sunday morning, no traffic, every light is ours. Whee. And at the bottom of the hill in front of the last light before getting on to the 101 is a flock of pigeons standing in the middle of the road.
We're late for the airport. I don't slow down. "Watch out!" you say, and I say "They'll get out of the way, don't worry." And they do get out of the way, except for one pigeon, which thumps on the hood and then thumps on the windshield. Thump. There's bird-dust on the glass and a few feathers are stuck in the wipers. I've killed it. I ran down a pigeon because I was late and it was in the way. It's horrible, and we laugh, horrified. But life goes on: we get on the freeway, drive to the airport, we catch our plane and fly back to Connecticut.
The next month my mother dies and I get pregnant with Herself. And the only time I ever think about that bird is when you tell the story of how I ran over a bunch of pigeons in San Francisco. Until today.
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)
April 01, 2005
April fool
What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust
TS Eliot
Posted by JudyLa at 06:00 AM | Comments (0)