The other woman

Zoe's dad bought a house in North Carolina. We've been talking lately about him seeing Zoe more... the drive will be about eight hours away from Pittsburgh, give or take.

I am excited about this! I think Zoe might be a little bummed, since Daddy won't be near the beach like he used to. But I'll let him deal with that.

The interesting twist here is that Bob has a girlfriend who is moving to North Carolina with him. I'd guess they've been dating for six months or so, and she's taking the leap... I give her a lot of credit. I haven't met Joy, nor has Zoe, but she's going to embark on this journey with Bob...

GOD HELP HER.

Bob is pushing for me to meet her. Which is fine. I mean, I have to, right? I'm that bitch she thinks about as she goes to bed some nights, wishing I didn't exist. Bob says she's jealous, but really, Zoe and I are just the unknown. I'm sure once she meets me and realizes I couldn't care less about her or her stepmom potential, she'll be fine. And once she sees what a great kid Zoe is, maybe she'll even be a little happy that Bob is capable of producing such lovely offspring.

I swear, when Bob and I first broke up, I thought, NO OTHER WOMAN WILL EVER HELP RAISE MY CHILD. Five years later, I'm thinking, "Will some other woman PLEASE GET THIS CHILD OFF MY HANDS for a couple of weekends a year and make sure Bob doesn't let her guzzle paint out of a five-gallon bucket?"

Not to mention, Bob has been there for me through so much lately, practically cheering for me through my pregnancy with Jacob when no one else did, so this is not a big favor for him to ask, to meet this poor soul who has fallen in love with him.

I just wonder what I would say to her. "Don't worry, the thought of me ever having sex with your boyfriend again completely repulses me." Or as Bob puts it, he and I love each other, "but we can't stand each other."

Or maybe I'll take her aside and just tell her to never let Bob grow his hair long again. It gets all stringy and greasy and it's not very becoming on him. Or I'll tell her, yeah, it's unusual that Bob and I get along, sorry you didn't get to experience one of those crazy biological moms...

OR....

I'll tell her that if she has kids with him, to get a PROFESSIONAL to install all the safety latches if she can't do it herself. To demand that Bob keep all the power tools out of reach... as well as the caulk guns. And the garbage bags.


And urge her to get Bob to call Zoe more often.

She misses him all the time.

Buds

Someone special

A friend of mine sent me a link to a personal ad, asking if Joe was 57, because this ad from a 57-year-old sounded exactly as I described Joe to her.

He's not 57, but I do agree that it sounds like Joe. I mean, down to the language and nuances and everything! I could dig up emails from Joe that follow the same timber of this ad, and while I don't think he's posted this, it is TRULY SCARY that there are others out there like him. And people like me to fall for them.

Oh, the things I wish I knew then.

I'M LOOKING FOR SOMEONE SPECIAL. - 57

Reply to: pers-340736551@craigslist.org
Date: 2007-05-29, 5:57PM EDT

I’m looking for a woman. But you knew that, from where this ad is placed. In the tradition of ads searching for men, I’m listing what you must not be or do.

1. Don’t have a dog. I’m not interested in anyone who needs affection so desperately that they choose to get it from something that can’t judge whether or not affection is deserved. I prefer cats, but my real pet is a plastic dinosaur.

2. Don’t chew gum. That you do it tells me that you need some sort of stimulation all the time – don’t expect that from any relationship that isn’t pathological. Besides, it looks low-class. I will not be associated with anyone low-class.

3. Don’t smoke. Smoking is an addiction, just like any other drug. I have no desire to deal with someone who needs to have reality chemically modified. I don’t smoke and I don’t use any drugs.

4. Don’t be fat or dirty. You’re going to gain weight as menopause progresses, and you can’t do much about it. If there are rolls of fat, forget it. I have a little extra weight, but there are no rolls of fat. Also, I shower every day, and I don’t coat myself in perfume.

5. Don’t be uneducated. Education involves more than trendy sex fiction, or books on horror, fantasy, or self-help; I don’t read any of that and I won’t start reading it. I read mostly history, engineering, and sciences. I can discuss a lot more than my reading list suggests, and I will learn about whatever fascinates you.

6. Don’t be “politically aware.” We’re just going to fight, and no woman is worth it. Women tend to be liberals, and I’m not; I don’t pay attention to politics.

7. Don’t tell me you’d like to travel and go to concerts. Tell me where you want to go, and that you’ve done it before. Tell me what kind of music you like. I want to go back to Britain (I have friends there), and I can be convinced I need to hear Fleetwood Mac once again.

8. Don’t tell you like CSI, Lost, American Idol, or whatever TV show is trendy today. I have no desire to follow someone else’s imaginary fantasy life, and I’m certainly not going to pretend it’s important to me. You’re not going to convince me to waste my time with it. I watch movies at home.

9. Don’t expect me to support you. If you have mental problems, see a shrink. Lacking confidence is normal in woman, and I can handle that. If you have huge debts that you want me to pay, forget it. I can support myself, and you should be able to, also.

10. Don’t expect me to repair your children. If they have problems, I refuse to inherit them. My children stand on their own, and they come to me for comment rather than for making their lives perfect.

11. Don’t expect me to become mindlessly enthusiastic about organized sports. I’m not interested in pretending to be a part of any team.

12. Don’t tell me that you love candlelight dinners, museums, antiques, romantic walks on the beach, and honest intimacy.

You might be a redneck...

If you use bedding for window treatments.


"She's gonna make it through the night."

-- Blinded by the Light, Manfred Mann's Earth Band



It seems every morning, a little bit earlier, God comes to greet me. A bright light shines through my naked window, bestowing upon me the virtues of another bright day. Well before my alarm is ready to go off.

We haven't had rain in weeks, which means I haven't even gotten the benefit of an overcast morning. EVERY DAY, a blinding reminder that I have to be up in 45, 48, 57 minutes. With NO snooze button.

So, I took care of business. I'm just not at a point in my life where I want to be reminded of the greatness of nature in this way every day.



And tonight I was sitting on my bed/futon in my bedroom/living room, as the sun was setting, and I looked out upon my neighbor's roof, and I thought... Why didn't I think of this SOONER? Why have I let myself wake up to half-naked roofers every morning?

So I made quick work of it.



I have a good idea of what I want for window treatments... real wood blinds, 2-inch slats, dark wood, cordless. These are not cheap. Nor are they easy to find in the size of my tiny windows. The width is hard enough to find... and by width, I mean when you measure all of my windows that APPEAR to be the same size, add them all up and divide to get the AVERAGE width. Not a single window in my house is exactly the same size, though they all put on a great facade as if they at least tried.

When I have found them in the semi-right width, they only come in lengths of, like, 92 inches. These could reach into my basement if I so desired.

I imagine I'm going to have to get these custom-made... so I'm looking at a couple hundred bucks a window.

But you know what? I'm going to be in this house a long, long, long time. I've lived in enough places and had enough vinyl blinds to know that I'm going to do it right this time. I know if I look at pillowcases tacked to my windows long enough, I'll be motivated to replace them. But stick in some $5 vinyl numbers, however "temporary," and I know they'll still be with me when the grandkids come to visit.


This must have been the weekend of redneckedness for me, as I planted all my flower beds in an attempt to work on this year's farmer tan:



Before anyone screams "sunscreen" at me, this was with SPF 45 on. They don't come much whiter than me. You should see the stripe of sunburn across my lower back; I didn't realize my ASS was hanging out all day. (Which explains all the neighbors stopping by to finally introduce themselves.)

And I'd like to note that with all the tugging and pulling I do to get my bra to stay in place at work -- where the bulk of my movement is the 10 paces I make to the printer every so often -- I find it remarkable if not peculiar that it appeared to stay in place during an entire day of physical labor.

Speaking of labor...

Can you resist this bundle of joy?

The art of translation

Zoe had a round of days off school recently. The center she goes to has a park in their complex, but to keep the kids busy, they walked them to a different park. Zoe came back with blisters on her feet, and when I came to pick her up, she hobbled over to the car.

"I have splits all over!" she squealed.

I understood that she misunderstood someone who told her she had blisters. Later that night after a painful bath, ointment and Hello Kitty bandages all around the perimeter of her feet, I corrected her. "Not splits. BLISTERS." If we're gonna whine about it, let's get it right.

I tried to get her to wear slippers to the center the next day, but she wouldn't have it. OH, the peer pressure! What would the kids think! So, she struggled with a different pair of shoes and came home just a little more sore. More Hello Kitty bandages. We ran out of the small size and moved on to the big-kid size.

Over the weekend, we were out planting our flower beds, and she kept coming outside without shoes on. I kept shooing her inside, and 10 minutes later she would sneak back out barefoot. Yeah, kids, it DOES all come back around to bite you in the ass when you're a parent. My dad absolutely LOVES to sit back and chuckle and tell me, "See? See what you were like?"

So, after Zoe was outside for about the seventh time, barefoot, and complaining that she was stepping on something in the yard she found objectionable, I finally screeched at her: "You NEED to GO IN THE HOUSE and PUT YOUR SHOES on RIGHT NOW."


"But Mommy... I keep telling you... my bleachers hurt!"

Oh for cryin' out loud

This was my view this morning.

Luckily, when I got home, I saw SHINGLES. The roof on my side of the neighbor's house was nearly done.

I will never think about roofs -- or pants with belt loops -- the same again.

Everything old is new

"My heart hit a problem, in the early hours,
So I stopped it dead for a beat or two.
But I cut some cord, and I shouldn't have done it,
And it won't forgive me after all these years,

So I sent it to a place in the middle of nowhere
With a big black horse and a cherry tree.
Now it won't come back, 'cause it's oh so happy
And now I've got a hole for the world to see."

-- Black Horse & the Cherry Tree, KT Tunstall



I love the Mac vs. PC commercials. I got my MacBook in November, and I have been so very tickled to have it that it's become an appendage. Last week I hooked up a wireless router, which I had to splurge on because there were no open networks in my new neighborhood to infringe upon, and now I'm spoiled as all hell again.

I don't think I've turned on my old iMac since I got the laptop, except maybe to make sure it still worked or to get an occasional file. Tonight I turned it on with the intention of looking up some old bookmarks that I couldn't remember the URLs for, and in the process I opened up the past. I stumbled across a lot of sites that my friends no longer keep up, a lot of broken links to stuff I used to be vigilant about checking, some content that I question why I bothered to bookmark at all. (Some of the notable sites I rediscovered I've added to "Sites to see" in the rail at left.)

It propelled me to do a little digging into the files saved on the hard drive. It started with a file called "Things to blog about," and suddenly I was interface to interface with how quickly things seem to change in my life.

For instance, two years ago at this time, I was sitting in a newsroom in Fort Lauderdale, probably designing the Palm Beach County edition of my old newspaper. And loving it and the people I worked with! A year ago at this time, I was still in my first trimester with Jacob, already showing, and embarking on my first visit back to Florida.

During that trip was the FIRST time Joe told me he wanted me out of his house.

As I was telling him about a spat I was having with Zoe's dad, I remember what Joe said, as if he had said it yesterday: "If your daughter is so important in your life, you don't belong in mine."

For some reason -- at the time I'm sure I had my reasons -- I saved a snippet of an email from him from mid-June of last year:

If you like, I'll move the rest of your things to the
garage. It'll save you making multiple trips up and
down the stairs. Let me know when you plan to pick up
the stuff -- I don't want videos and clothes to get
ruined in a hot garage.

How nice of him.

More recently, I have been trying to let all this go and encourage a more healthy communication with Joe, but reading some of the stuff I wrote while I was living with him -- some blogs I never posted because they were just too painful -- make me wonder just WHAT THE HELL I WAS THINKING.


FOR A YEAR.

Nowhere to hide

"My, oh my, you sure know how to arrange things.
You set it up so well, so carefully.
Ain't it funny how your new life didn't change things.
You're still the same old girl you used to be."

-- Lyin' Eyes, The Eagles




Zoe brought home a note last week about enrollment for next year. I pondered it for a few days... it meant disclosing my new address, or sticking with my old one. Showing I moved to a new school district, or pretending I was still in the one she was attending.

Telling the truth, or lying.

I held my breath and did the right thing.

I got a letter in Zoe's bookbag Friday, followed up by the same note in the regular mail that was sent to the old address and forwarded, as well as a certified letter to the new address, which I assume was designed to see if I was residing here so they could promptly boot my child from her school.

That's pretty much what the letter said: Come withdraw her. I imagined a bunch of rent-a-cops posted at the front door of Zoe's school with mug shot of her because "that mother of hers keeps sending her even though we've sent a dozen cease-and-desist letters, your honor."

In one fell swoop, trimming and polishing my toenails this weekend lost all its importance.

I thought about it all weekend, mostly how I would appeal to as many administrators as possible with the saddest story possible... get a waiver or offer to pay tuition or WHATEVER, whatever I could do to minimize this disruption in Zoe's life, and all of a sudden I concocted the perfect story: We haven't yet put our old home on the market, so we were still paying taxes to her school district. But we ANTICIPATED living in another school district, that's why I filled out that enrollment form as such.

This seemed to work. I got a note back from the registrar wishing us the best of luck next year, but to come withdraw her anyway so her records could be forwarded. Which is probably all they intended to do all along: Let her finish out the school year.

And it is driving me nuts that ... I am lying. On behalf of my kid. What a role model I've become. Why don't I just start smoking crack and get it over with?


To top it off, I asked Zoe -- in anticipation that it might happen -- how she would feel about starting a new school with only a few weeks left.

"YEAH!"

But, it would mean all new friends, new teachers. YOU'D BE THE NEW GIRL.

"YEAH!"



Perhaps it would have helped my conscience -- and my work schedule and sleep cycle -- if I had had this conversation with her earlier.