Category Archives: divorce

Official

Posted on by

I got an email from my attorney a few minutes ago that I am officially divorced.

It feels weird that I didn’t have to be there for it. I had all these little fantasies about how this would play out: I’d show up at the courthouse in a fancy dress and tiara, and write “Just Divorced” in soap on the back windshield of my car as I drove away.

But none of that was necessary. My attorney went to the courthouse for me, she handed the judge the decree, the judge signed it, and that’s that.

Pretty anti-climactic, no?

I had planned to meet up with Laura this evening to get pictures taken of me and the girls. A mini-celebration of our new little family unit, just the three of us. It felt appropriate.

Then Lucy crashed on her tricycle at daycare. The director told me she had “a little boo-boo under her eye.”

Ummm…

Well, we WERE going to have family pics done tomorrow, until someone fell off a tricycle & got her first black eye.

This picture doesn’t do it justice. Girlfriend has a full-on shiner now. I feel like I need to put a sign around her neck that says, “She’s just an accident-prone toddler, nobody is abusing her at home, I swear.”

And then Catie got sick with a cold. She’s had the sniffles for a while, but it got really bad last night. Bad enough that I let her stay home from school today, and she’s currently laying on the couch watching some random dinosaur cartoon on Netflix.

Honestly, it’s kind of nice to have her around.

This day feels so weird. I am happy that it’s done. I really, really am. This process was so ridiculously long and drawn out, I feel like a weight has been lifted knowing that it’s done.

It’s also a little surreal, and I think it might take a while for it to sink in that it’s finished.

But black eyes and sniffles and canceled plans notwithstanding, it’s a good day. It really is.

And P.S., a heartfelt f*** you to the state of North Carolina and their ridiculous mandatory waiting periods. This whole process was made so much more agonizingly painful than it needed to be. As much as I love everything else about this state, that’s really the only advice I have from this whole thing – don’t get divorced in North Carolina. Ever.

visitation

Posted on by

(This post is a little rambly. Sorry I’m having a hard time collecting my thoughts lately.)

Dave flew back to Seattle on Sunday. All things considered, his visit here with the girls went exceptionally well. He texted me pictures of them when he took them out places (even the grocery store).

Girls take the wheel(s)! Look out!

In fact, one evening he came to pick up the girls a little early, and I had ordered pizza for them for dinner (because I thought he wasn’t coming until later and I knew they’d be hungry). So he hung out and we ate pizza together, and we talked about our kids and the upcoming election.

It was easy and familiar and completely freaking weird, all at the same time. I’d like to think that it’s the start of a trend, but I also worry that the other shoe is going to drop at some point. (It usually does, right?) But in the meantime, I have to think that it’s good for the kids to see us being pleasant with each other, so I’m hoping that we can keep it up.

On the nights Catie spent with him (we both agreed that Lucy is too young to spend the night away, she needs her crib and her normal bedtime routine), I made a point that I wanted to have a few minutes to either visit with Catie in person or Skype with her each day that she was away. It worked out really well.

————————————————————————————————————-

One time after spending 2 nights in a row with him, she started to whine that she was homesick, so Dave brought her home to hang out with me. This just happened to be on Friday, which was my mom’s birthday, so she and I put on our matching aprons and made Mimi a birthday cake.

me & my girls on Mimi's birthday
Ignore the fact that I’m a sweaty mess in dire need of lipstick. Look how proud of herself she is!

Oh, one more unnecessary picture because it cracks me up.
Happy birthday, Mimi!
That was taken while we were singing “happy birthday” to Mimi. The WTF-ness on Lucy’s face just slays me.

(And yes, the cake looks pretty awful. I am not a very good cake decorator under the best circumstances, but with my tiny sous chef, it was even more challenging. Doesn’t matter, though, because it was DELICIOUS.)

————————————————————————————————————-

So, that was Friday. Saturday, I took Catie to her cousin Elizabeth’s birthday party, and then the girls hung out with Dave for a few hours so I could take a nap (which was blissful). Saturday night, I had them both back at home because his flight left at 6 a.m. on Sunday.

————————————————————————————————————-

At this point, I know I don’t really have to worry too much about how Lucy handles things because she’s still so young and oblivious. She won’t be soon, and believe me I know that.

But I primarily have to keep a close eye on Catie’s stress level. I’ve figured out a lot of her stress indicators (crying frequently, getting physical with Lucy and pushing her, etc.), and I try to be sympathetic while not letting her get away with too much crap. I mean, hey, I get that you’re upset that you haven’t seen your dad for a few months, but that doesn’t give you the right to shove your baby sister to the ground, you know?

I’m also trying to get her to talk about her feelings more. One of the things she frequently and randomly bursts into tears about is because she claims she misses Teenie, our cat who passed away in February. And I’m sure she does miss Teenie, but I don’t think that’s the whole issue. The last time she had one of these outbursts, I said, “Baby girl, are you crying because you miss Teenie, or because you miss Daddy?” She cried, “BOTH!!!” And sobbed harder.

It’s so hard for her, and I try to make it easier where I can, but we have moments like that where she just breaks my heart and I don’t know how to comfort her because I can’t fix it.

————————————————————————————————————-

I knew it was going to be bad when he left, so I randomly said, “Hey, you know what? I know you’re going to be really sad after Daddy goes back to Seattle, so I think we should think of something REALLY SUPER FUN to do after he leaves, and I think you should pick what our adventure will be.”

She thought about it for a few minutes, and said she wanted to go see the dinosaur bones at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences. She went there recently on a field trip with her daycare and she loved it.

Did I mention that admission to the museum is free? DONE.

Catie & Lucy at the NC Museum of Science

Almost every picture I took turned out blurry because both girls were having so much fun that they never stopped running the whole time.

I did, however, get one picture of my girl sitting with a dinosaur footprint.

My future paleontologist poses with a dinosaur footprint.

This is sort of how I see her as an adult, since she’s so adamant about wanting to be a paleontologist when she grows up. I can imagine her 30 years from now at a dig site in South America or God-knows-where, sitting just like this next to some brilliant discovery she’s made.

As far as distracting her from Dave’s departure? It kind of worked. She’s mostly been fine for the past couple of days. Maybe it’ll be a delayed reaction, I don’t know.

————————————————————————————————————-

Last night, she said that she wanted to make Daddy a card. I gave her one of my blank note cards, and she asked me to help her spell out her words. (We’ve been doing this a lot lately since she’s been practicing writing at kindergarten. I help her sound them out and try to help her figure out the next letter herself.)

She wrote on the card:

“I miss you Daddy. Love Catie and Lucy.”

Then she covered it in stickers and asked me to mail it. Even though seeing those words printed out in her little 5 year-old handwriting made me want to hold the card to my chest and cry, I put it in an envelope, stamped it, and shipped it off.

I have no idea if it’ll break his heart like it did mine. I guess that disconnect to each other’s feelings is just one of many reasons we aren’t together anymore.

random Monday thoughts

Posted on by

My head is kind of a mess of different things right now, and I feel like I should blog since it’s been a week. (I know y’all probably don’t care, but when I look at my archives and see barely anything written, it tends to be because those are the times when my brain was too preoccupied to say anything.) So, a few random things happening here.

————————————————————————————————-

* Dave is in town for a visit. He hadn’t seen the girls since March, so I wasn’t sure what to expect and I was quite honestly a knot of anxiety about the whole thing. Six months is a long time, especially when you’re a little kid. So far, it’s going pretty smoothly. Catie is obviously thrilled to see him. And Lucy didn’t really remember him, but she warmed up to him quickly, probably (at least partially) thanks to sibling rivalry. (Catie is sitting on someone’s lap? Lucy wants to be on that person’s lap too, dammit.)

So, it’s fine, but it’s also a weird topic that I don’t really feel comfortable talking about here. I’m bracing myself for next weekend when he leaves, because that’s essentially when I have to go into grief counselor mode for Catie. It’s going to suck, but it is what it is and there isn’t much I can do about it, other than to try to keep her routines in place so she feels as safe and secure in her world as possible. Which is what I do anyway.

[Ok, fine, here’s where I’ll be snarky and admit that when he texted me to tell me that he took both kids to IHOP yesterday and the food took an hour and both kids had simultaneous meltdowns in the middle of the restaurant? Yes, I did derive a tiny bit of satisfaction out of that. If that makes me a petty, horrible person, so be it. Also, later on, Lucy puked on him, but it was at my house and I had to clean up the floor, so that was less funny. Still, it did feel a little bit like, “Oh hey, welcome to MY world, buddy!”]

————————————————————————————————-

* I took advantage of the kids’ time with Dave this weekend to try to reorganize the house and clean out my office. That was possibly the most gratifying thing I’ve done in a long, LONG time. I made about 6 trips to the recycle bin and hauled out a couple of giant lawn-size hefty bags of trash. It felt so good to unload all of that stuff. I keep looking around my office and feeling like a weight has been lifted off of me. I can now watch “Hoarders” without nervously looking around my own house. It’s very freeing.

————————————————————————————————-

* Lucy. My god. This child.

She is how I know without a doubt that I’m done having babies, because I am quite certain that I would never survive another toddler. The tantrums and the drama, plus the fact that she still doesn’t consistently sleep through the night, and she howls every time I try to put her in her car seat… it’s like somebody crossed a newborn with the terrible two’s and came up with this hellspawn hybrid demon baby-toddler.

But then, you know, she’s also a toddler, and therefore completely hilarious.

Someday she is going to outgrow that tummy. And I will cry.

I took this picture because I wanted to capture THAT TUMMY. Which I kiss about a million times a day. And when I say, “Lucy, where’s your tummy?” She pulls up her shirt and rubs her little Buddha-belly like she’s all proud of it, and it makes me sad that we don’t keep those body image ideals as we get older. She’ll outgrow that tummy someday, and I’ll be heartbroken when she does.

Also, one of my friends pointed out that in that picture, she looks like a tiny David Lee Roth. And she totally does, except I think Lucy might have more hair on top than ol’ David Lee has these days.

————————————————————————————————-

* On a sad note, my great uncle Numa passed away last week. It wasn’t a surprise, and we’re all relieved that he isn’t in pain anymore. I don’t really have the words to sum up my uncle Numa here. There’s a really nice obituary that covers what an amazing career he had. (How many people can say that the guy who played Newman on Seinfeld played them in a movie? Random, right?) I knew him as the guy who was completely smitten with his wife, my great aunt Connie, even after 50 years of marriage. He was hilariously funny and told the greatest stories.

He had been ill for a very long time, and he hadn’t wanted visitors around when he was sick, so I hadn’t seen him in a long time. I remember in 2004, when Dave and I were still just dating, we were in New Orleans at Christmas, and I called Numa. I don’t remember why I called him, I think I was asking him for a restaurant recommendation. But that was the last time I spoke with him. At the end of our chat, I remember him saying, “Darlin’, if you get into trouble in the Quarter tonight, just tell the cops my name and they’ll take care of you.” Always good to have a name you can drop when you get arrested for drunk & disorderly on Bourbon Street, right?

He was a wonderful man who’ll be very missed by so many.

————————————————————————————————-

* It was 50 degrees outside when I woke up this morning. The high today is 72. Hey there, September, you’re looking lovely.

On anger

Posted on by

It’s 11:30 at night, the girls are asleep, the dishwasher is running, clothes are folded and put away, daycare bags for tomorrow are packed. I should be sleeping right now.

Yet all I can think about is this rage I feel swirling around in my head, and I don’t know what to do with it.

I’m not generally an angry person. I don’t like to hold grudges. That’s not how I want to live my life. I don’t want to be one of those angry, bitter people. (You know the people I’m talking about. Everyone knows at least a handful of them.)

Lately all of my anger is aimed at Dave. Other than the obvious reasons, I can’t exactly pinpoint why. Generally we’ve been ok with each other lately. We’re civil, anyway.

But then I have a day like Monday – and of course, even though I texted Dave to let him know we were at the ER, I still had a lot of that resentment, that “your kid is sick, you should be here right now; or at the very least, you should be taking care of your other kid while I take care of the sick one” feeling.

I’ve also felt that way a lot over the past couple of weeks, when I’ve been having problems getting Lucy to sleep. Because yes, as it turns out, I do kind of need another adult in the house who can take over at 4 a.m. when I’m at the end of my rope.

I’m guessing it’s natural to feel that way when the father of your children lives 3,000 miles away, and is no longer a regular physical presence in their lives.

But it really hit me hard this past Saturday. Why Saturday? Because I spent all day with the girls, just me and them. And yes, it was exhausting (my god, was it ever), but there were so many good moments.

And I just stop and think, god damn you, you’re missing everything.

He doesn’t know how Lucy asks for her bottle, what words she knows, her favorite foods, who her favorite person is (hint: my dad), or the little “jokes” she tells. (Slapping her forehead and saying, “D’oh!” is one guaranteed to make me smile every time.)

He doesn’t see the way Lucy’s face lights up every morning when she sees her big sister for the first time.

He doesn’t get to look in his rearview mirror and see the two of them in the backseat, and catch a glimpse of Catie reaching over to tickle Lucy to make her laugh.

He doesn’t know what Catie’s favorite bedtime book is this week. He doesn’t know the songs she sings along with on the radio.

He misses the bad stuff, sure – he never has to do the grunt work of changing diapers or reminding Catie again that she needs to pick up her toys. But he misses all of those amazing and precious moments too. It makes me so angry FOR THEM. They won’t get to have memories of their childhood that involve their dad. At best, those memories will be sporadic and fleeting.

We have a lot of mutual friends on Facebook (obviously, we de-friended each other a LONG time ago), so I hear things about how he talks about the kids. He makes it sound like he’s this super-involved and loving dad. I guess that’s what he wants his friends and family to think, because the reality of it is just so unbelievably shitty.

And he brought it all on himself. He chose to leave. There’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t force him to stay in North Carolina and be a present figure in his children’s lives.

I’ve dated/am dating guys who are divorced with kids. So far, all of them have joint custody and see their children on a 50-50 basis with their exes. I’m jealous of that. I mean, sure, I’m jealous that their ex-wives get a break, some “free” nights off here and there. But I’m mainly jealous that their kids will grow up with their fathers in their lives. I wish to God I could make that happen for my girls.

I can’t fix this. I can’t change what it is. I just have to figure out some way to work around this anger that I can’t seem to get out of my head right now.

catching up

Posted on by

So! My website was down for a few days because apparently spammers have nothing better to do than take over my measly little blog.

(Don’t ask me, I don’t get it either.)

Random stuff from this past week:

1. The yard sale last Saturday was good. We had a pretty impressive turn-out of people, made a few hundred bucks, and the rest went to Goodwill. All in all, a success.

During the yard sale, I set up a couple of beach towels on the front yard (picnic-style), and set Lucy down so she could stay happy watching all of the people come and go. (When she got bored & fussy, my dad walked her around.) A few people asked me how much I was asking for the baby. I told them to come back at 3 a.m. and I’d make them a really good deal.

Lucy models Mommy's headband.

Really. There are some days that I’d be totally willing to listen to anyone who’d make me an offer.

———————————————————————————————–

2. I had lunch with The Guy last week. We generally take turns paying for meals, because you know, I’m a liberated woman and all of that. He picked up the check for this one, and paid with his credit card.

When the waiter brought the check back to the table, he said, “Thanks for coming in today, Mr. and Mrs. [his last name].” He and I both choked on our beverages.

Moral of the story: CHECK FOR A RING, Y’ALL. It takes two seconds and spares everyone involved in a whoooole lotta awkward.

———————————————————————————————–

3. Is there anything else going on that I need to tell you? There’s a couple of things that are not bloggable (don’t ask), and other stuff which just sounds whiny and y’all don’t care, so let’s skip over that.

Really, who wants to listen to me moan about how much my kids wear me out?

———————————————————————————————–

4. Alright, they’re cute sometimes.

My girls are apparently riveted by The Fresh Beat Band.

They even make watching the Fresh Beat Band tolerable.

single parenting suckage

Posted on by

Ok, here comes one of those confessional type blog posts that I don’t normally write.

—————————————————————————————–

I’ve been on Lexapro since last year. If you were reading my blog when I was pregnant, I blamed most of my anxiety on the house break-in, but the vast majority of it was that my marriage was falling apart while I was pregnant.

I would go to my OB appointments and see all of these happy glowing pregnant ladies in the waiting room, and when they called me back to an exam room and asked how I was doing, I would cry. I felt awful because there was no sense of excitement or joy about my baby’s arrival. It felt like my due date was just going to kick off the countdown to the end of my marriage.

(And clearly I was right about that, since Dave and I split ten weeks after Lucy’s birth.)

So, yeah, I’ve been on an anti-depressant ever since then. I think for me, this whole depression/anxiety thing is situational and not physiological. There are occasional times when I feel like I probably don’t need it anymore, but since it’s not hurting anything, I’ve decided that I’m staying on it at least until my divorce is finalized.

Honestly, the idea of not taking it scares me, because I have no idea how I’d cope without it. Maybe I’d be fine, but god, what if I’m not?

And really, there’s only one unpleasant side effect of Lexapro: I can’t cry. Or, rarely, anyway. Sometimes it’s awful, because something will happen and I really want to cry, and I can’t. I get a lump in my throat and the stinging in my eyes, but it never breaks through. I’ll get a headache because I just can’t get that release to get it out of my system.

The closest thing I can think to compare it to (be warned, this is not G-rated) is the feeling like when you’re juuuuust about to have an orgasm and for some reason, you can’t get there. It’s frustrating, to say the least.

(Btw, I used this analogy to explain it to the guy I’m dating. His response was, “I understand that there are words coming out of your mouth, but they make no sense.” Typical dude, I’m thinking. He also said that if he had to choose between not being able to cry and not being able to have an orgasm, he’d be fine with never crying again. I’m guessing 99.9% of the males on earth would agree with him.)

So, it’s a bad side-effect, and an annoying one, but most of the time, I can live with it.

—————————————————————————————–

And then I have days like yesterday.

My weekend started off ok. I had a baby-sitter planned for Saturday night, but my date got canceled (emergency came up with his ex-wife and he had to take his kids; it happens, not a big deal). Catie was so excited about the baby-sitter coming over that I decided not to cancel, and instead, I went to the movies by myself.

(I finally saw the Hunger Games. I haven’t read the books, but I was curious about it. And I liked the movie, although I thought a lot of it was extremely disturbing. But I guess that’s the point.)

Sunday morning, when we woke up, Catie asked if we could go get pancakes. It’s rare that she asks me for something that I can say “yes” to, but that sounded do-able. We got dressed and went to IHOP.

While we were sitting at IHOP, Catie just very matter-of-factly blurted out, “Mommy, you love Lucy more than me.”

*RECORD SCRATCH*

WHAT?

I said, “Sweetie, that’s not true. Why would you think that?”

She said, “Well, Lucy’s cuter than me.”

I told her that was absolutely not true, that they were both beautiful and that I loved them both.

It bothered me, and I repeated it to her again later. Just sort of, “Hey, remember when you said that? Y’all are both my girls, and you are both beautiful, and I love you both the same.” She seemed to accept it, but man, that whole thing rattled me.

Really, if I look at it from a 5 year-old’s perspective? I get why she thinks that. I am constantly fussing at Catie to be gentle with the baby, share her toys with the baby, stop being mean to the baby, yadda yadda. But I don’t ever yell at Lucy, because, you know… she’s a baby.

And Lucy gets a lot more of my attention, because, again: she’s a baby. Catie is five and doesn’t need me to constantly watch her every move to make sure she doesn’t shove a choking hazard in her mouth or go tumbling down the stairs.

I don’t know how to fix that. It just is what it is.

—————————————————————————————–

Sunday afternoon, we hung out at my parents’ house for a while. Then I took the kids to the playground, and we came home to do the whole dinner/bath/bedtime thing.

Oh! Big milestone here! During all of that, Lucy took 4 steps on her own. Left, right, left, right, then she fell on her tush. She was so proud of herself, and afterward, she kept standing up on her own with this look on her face, like, “Hey, look at this new trick I learned!” So far, I think 4 steps is her record, but she took 1 or 2 steps a lot last night.

And of course, it’s been 4 1/2 years since the last time I dealt with this, so I forgot how every new developmental milestone totally screws up their sleep schedules.

So bedtime rolls around, and Lucy is nowhere near sleepy. I let her stay up a little later than usual, hoping that she’d burn herself out and eventually go to bed easily.

That didn’t happen. What happened is that I let her stay up just a little too long, and she freaking lost it. She was so past the point of exhaustion, she didn’t know what to do with herself. So she screamed. And screamed.

I tried everything to comfort her. For an hour. Finally I gave up and put her in her crib and figured she’d eventually settle herself down to sleep.

She didn’t.

[Aside: Somewhere during the screaming, I got a, “Hey, how’s your evening going?” text from The Guy.
I texted back: “Teenagers should be forced to come to my house right now as an on-site demo of why they need to use birth control.”
Him: “Oooh, that good, huh?”]

After listening to Lucy scream for another half-hour (so, 90 minutes of screaming total), I called my mom. Both of my parents came over.

Catie was still awake, because it’s impossible to put her to bed while Lucy is up (plus, how could I expect her to sleep with ALL OF THE SCREAMING in the house?). So my parents showed up, and my mom put Catie to bed, while my dad paced Lucy around the house until she fell asleep.

(And yes, I had tried that exact pacing trick myself, and it had not worked for me. But my dad is the only person that Lucy wants right now.)

I took a shower while my parents put my kids to bed, then I came downstairs, sat on the couch, and burst into tears.

So, apparently when things are bad enough, even the Lexapro can’t hold the tears back.

I just felt like the most epic failure of a single parent. My 5 year-old thinks that I don’t love her, and I can’t even comfort my own baby to sleep.

I don’t know if I have made it through an entire weekend, ever, without calling in backup to some extent, and it’s usually my parents. I feel like I dump my kids on them all the time, and even though I know that’s not really true, and hell, they moved up here for the express purpose of helping me with the kids, it still feels shitty.

So many people tell me that they admire how I’m handling being a single mom, or that I kick ass at this, or whatever, and I just don’t see it. My ex-husband moved 3,000 miles away. What choice did I have in the matter except to deal with it? It’s not admirable, it’s just basic survival. I feel like I’m half-assing it at best, and on days like yesterday, I’m white-knuckling it until bedtime.

I try not to use the f-word on my blog, but really? I fucking hate it. There are two of them and only one of me, I feel like I will never be able to be “enough” for both of them. I keep hoping it will get easier when they get older, but I also know that just presents a whole different set of issues, and I’m not prepared for any of it.

It sucks, basically, is what I’m saying.

—————————————————————————————–

I tweeted about it last night, and I got a lot of awesome responses because I have a fantastic online support system, and I cannot even begin to express how grateful I am for that. Really, you guys rock.

The Guy offered to come over and rub my feet, which was very sweet, but he lives a half-hour away, and no way was I staying awake that long.

I thought, oh, you know, it’ll all be better tomorrow after I get some sleep.

Then Lucy woke up 3 times last night.

Sigh.

I wish I had some cute, funny way to tie this up, but I don’t. I’m exhausted and I feel like hell.

I know it’ll be ok eventually. I know this. But for now, I’m bracing myself for another half-assed day at this whole single parenting thing.

seventh and last

Posted on by

Today is my last wedding anniversary.

I mean, the last one before my divorce is finalized. It would’ve been seven years today.

It makes me unbelievably sad to think about it. It’s not that I want to stay married to Dave. I don’t. Not anymore, I really don’t.

I guess it just makes me think about the actual wedding day, and how happy we were then, and how full of hope and promise and potential we were.

Poof. Gone.

I’ve been in a bit of a funk about it for the past week or so. Then I decided that I’d had enough of my stupid moping, and I was going to do something drastic to cheer myself up when the day finally rolled around.

So I texted my hairdresser and asked her if she was working today and had any openings. She did. (Have I mentioned that I love my hairdresser? I do. And I also love her teenage daughter who babysits.)

I decided that maybe a lighter hair color would lead to a lighter mood.

Keep in mind that I haven’t colored my hair in over 10 years. This was a very, very big deal for me to decide to do this.

Before:


(Ignore the frizz, I had just worked out & showered, so my fly-aways were out of control.)

…

…

During… And let me just say, that I don’t think there has ever been a sexier photo taken of me, ever:

Yeeeeeah, baby. You know that’s hawt stuff right there.

…

…

Aaaaaand, after:

I have to say, I really love it. The highlights are subtle, but they blend in my grays, and it’s enough of a change that it feels like a really big deal to me.

Overall, not such a bad way to spend my last anniversary. It was a nice distraction and has kept me from moping all day, so I suppose in that sense, it was a total success.