Check out Ms. Picket’s post and video.
I played that video and then felt like I barfed my heart out onto my keyboard.
But in a really, really sweet way.
Enjoy.
November 10, 2008
October 31, 2008
And then they lived happily ever after.
On a bitterly cold day in February, I suddenly found myself with 2 tickets to see The Donnas, and no one to go with. My friend (at the time), Barb, whom I usually went to such things with was going to be out of town in Chicago for the weekend.
“Take my friend, Kory!”, she said.
“WHAT?“, I said, “That guy I met over the fence?”
Because a few months before that, after seeing a strange and wonderful mixture of a show that included “The Trachtenburg Family Singers“, a reading by Dave Eggers and a performance by They Might be Giants, she wanted to stop at Kory’s house and show him the cool signed poster she’d gotten of TMBG because she and Kory were huge fans and had actually traveled around Britain to see in concert…
And he had a bunch of friends over and we all gathered at the fence and shared pleasantries that can only happen over fences in Minneapolis at 1am. The only thing I really remember is telling my future husband that he looked a bit like the lead singer from Offspring. And I was totally right, by the way.
<-Lead singer on the left.
<- Dude I met over the fence.
ANYWAY…
I sent him an email and asked if he a) remembered meeting me over the fence and b) liked The Donnas and c) would possibly, maybe like to go as friends with me to see them on February 13th.
He responded back to my email that a) he did in fact remember me and b) he did actually like The Donnas and c) was actually free that night … and then ended his email by saying that in the spirit of getting to know one another, would I be willing share a very personal thing with him?
Oh fuck.
This is the part where I have to tell him I’m divorced.
No, oh christ… he wants to know my weight… oh just shoot me now…
He wants to know if I have kids. I’m going to have to tell him that I have an 11 year old son…. oh dear….
It’s very important to me to feel like I know someone and their values and priorities, he said, … so, can you tell me…
your favorite cheese?
I think, possibly, I started falling for him right then and there.
Time passed, we drank bloody martinis and chocolate kisses… we watched pretentious indy films and he makes me chocolate mousse. I introduced him to my son. He survived. He introducedd me to his parents. I survived. THEY survived.
A year later, one cold February night, we sat outside and in the course of polishing off two entire bottles of red wine, I basically told him that I was:
A) too old for him
B) too divorced for him
C) would probably never be able to give him his own children
And that for the sake of him getting a young, unsullied, child-bearing woman and pleasing his family and living the life he was supposed to live, that I thought we should just break up and move on. I pushed him as far away as I could and then I cried and cried and barfed up red wine and cried some more. He said..
I don’t care that you are divorced, I don’t care that you have a child – I LIKE your child, I don’t care if we never have kids, I don’t care what my family does or does not think… all I want is YOU.
I pushed him out the door and lamented my martyr’s life:
She who saves young innocent men from herself…
I won’t mention, ok – I will, that the man was so flummoxed by me that he posted the whole situation on a woman’s advice bulletin board and received something like 70 responses from women all saying that I was a selfish, foolish, stupid and probably ugly bitch from hell that doesn’t deserve him… and when people make comments about how women throw one another under the bus for a man, I always think of that lovely bunch of women…. anyway…
We survived.
And one day in April, after my son and I had moved into his house, I came home to this:
12 dozen long stem roses….
Twinkling Christmas lights….
My smiling beloved… and my smiling son….
Oh, and a diamond. A beautiful diamond.
And suddenly, life opened up like a flower… and promise was everywhere.
We cried.
A lot. A whole lotta lot.
And then… after much preparation and freaking out and ordering things on ebay and checking off boxes and making plans, one October day in 2004 we did this:
and this…
and we left the chuch through a sea of bubbles and raindrops and laughter…
and took a limo to our reception with our entire wedding party…
Where we ate, drank, danced and celebrated.
I randomly walked around and frightened people with my cleavage.
I know, right? I’m surprised everything stayed in place, but then I was in 49 different things with snaps and zippers and buttons and squeazy things. Really, if I’d caught on fire that night, I would have been DOOMED.
We sliced some cheesecake…
We danced…
And then we honeymooned…
Fast forward 2 years and we got one of these:
Fast forward 2 more… and we have another on the way…
We survived, baby.
But more than that, we flourished.
Happy 4th Anniversary, my love.
Thanks for not listening to me that night all those years ago when I said we should not be together. Thanks for listening to me every time mostly since then.
You won’t hear me admit it often, but… you know, you were right all along.
We always were meant to be.
October 22, 2008
Dropping the bomb.
Many of you already know… in fact, I waited so long to post here about it because I absolutely did not want anyone I loved to read about it here – because while you may be imagining that I handle sneering comments like, “Gee, so glad I had to READ YOUR BLOG to find out“, with diplomacy and grace… I fear, I do not.
I would respond by either going, “Tough shit, jerkface.” or immediately bursting into tears. Some people have fight or flight response, I have asshole or sobbing mess response.
That said, if I haven’t told you… please don’t think I don’t love you. I just finally had to get it out. I couldn’t wait any longer.
Here is a clue:
Now, we’ll play multiple choice!
The woman pictured above is:
a) Wearing a really badly screenprinted shirt
b) Evidently unaware that she is being attached by a giant leech baby
c) Shockingly alluring
d) Pregnant
If you answered d) Pregnant, you are right!
If you answered c) Shockingly alluring, you are my new best friend (and also probably a little drunk)
So… there it is. The Teen will be 17 in December. The Baby , I guess will have to undergo a name change at some point? The Toddler? I suppose she could be The Baby because the new one is still The Embryo, soon to be The Fetus – which sounds like a place to buy bongs, hemp jewelry and rare Clash EPs.. Anyway, she will be 2 next month… and this one… this little cupcake…. is due the end of May.
We have no place to put this new baby. I have a large shoebox from the boots I bought last winter and it’s looking promising. We don’t have the $2000 a month it will cost us to have both the kids in the Montessori/Reggio school we love. We don’t know how we will manage 2 little ones at once.
My OB revealed to us that the hernia (that wasn’t cancer balls) that I had surgically repaired back in June with it’s own little soccer net has busted back out, thanks to an expanding uterus.
It will need to be repaired again.
With a new soccer net.
She doesn’t know if I can go the whole pregnancy without it being repaired, so I get to see the surgeon again next Wednesday for a consult.
She said, “Boy, I’m surprised they did the repair surgery if you were going to have more kids!”
I said, “Well, we didn’t know we were going to have more kids.”
When I see the surgeon on Wednesday, he will probably say, “WHY DIDNT YOU TELL ME YOU WERE GOING TO GET PREGNANT WITHIN 3 MONTHS OF HAVING THIS SURGERY??”
To which I will reply, “Well, my goal in life is to eventually look like Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas. Also, we didn’t know we were going to have more kids.”
The OB investigated the patchwork that is my abdomen. She ran her fingers down each scar from each old incision. One.. two.. three… four… five… six…
She looked up at me.
“I don’t…. I…. I’m just not…. “, she stammered.
“Honestly, I don’t know where I can take this baby out.” (I have had 2 prior c-sections, so I have no other option)
“Maybe HERE…”, she said drawing an invisible line with her hand across the middle of my stomach, horizontally, dissecting my belly button.
Oh, goody.
Her plan is that she’d like to deliver the baby and then step out of the OR and have the surgeon step in, take me deeper on my anesthesia and repair the hernia AGAIN, all at once. Which to me sounds like a really complicated dance move. Will there be a nurse by the OR door wearing a Spice Girls headset keeping the show going?
AAAND… 5..6..7…8…. Cue OB! GO! GO! Let’s move it people. Baby is out. Repeat baby is out. Cue surgeon! And ACTION!.Annnd.. tell me what you want, what you really, really want!
The OB, I like her. She said, “This is it. No more births, ok?” … and I’ll admit it… I was scared.
Did we make a mistake? Was this the wrong choice?
We struggled for months to make the decision, Kory especially so. Weighing the good, the bad, the hard, the money, work, what’s best for the kids, what’s best for our family… and we decided, finally.
We decided we were done. No more kids.
And then…. we mourned.
A family with 2 only children, essentially…
And then we waivered.
Ok, Universe, we aren’t going to get all fancy or anything. We aren’t going to TRY, but we won’t PREVENT. For 6 months, we’ll live in this effortless zone of possibility. And you know, I’m overweight. I’m 37 years old. I have chronic anemia. It’s UNLIKELY to say the least, but we can live with it – because we’ll be able to tell The Baby that we tried. We’ll be able to tell OURSELVES that we tried… and that’ll be enough.
And two weeks later, I was pregnant.
You hear that sound?
That’s the universe laughing.
And in the spring, when the leaves are fat and green and the nights are just starting to buzz and smell like barbecue… when the kids are waiting for the last day of school until delicious summer break… when the lilacs start to bloom…
We will welcome our new love and we will marvel at how we could have ever imagined our lives without them.
We will kiss tiny feet, as they kick the air from their big DSW shoebox.