From Insomnia to Pissiness

Last night I played tennis for the first time in 11 days and it felt great. It was like seeing an old friend again and picking right up where I left off. I didn't know how much I'd missed it. I worked up a sweat, got a fix of adrenaline, and played pretty well. My ribs/back muscles are still a little tender, but not enough to affect my game too much. In fact, I didn't have to take any drugs when I came home. Sunday I play in the annual Labor Day tournament and I'm really looking forward to it. I haven't played in a tournament since last summer (2007).

After tennis I watched Obama's nomination speech from the Democratic national convention. I stayed up past my bedtime, but it felt like a historic moment that I didn't want to miss. (I hope to blog about it on my public blog soon.)

When I finally tried to go to sleep, I couldn't. Lately I haven't had any problems getting to sleep, so I don't know where this sudden bout of insomnia came from. I thought about all the things I have to do. I've been really busy the first week of the semester and there's a lot of little start-of-semester things looming over me that I'm not getting done, which bugs me because it's also keeping me from all the emails and blog posts I want to write. (None of which included writing this post.) I also thought about Snarkwife. The friend I played tennis with works in her office and he was able to feed me a few tiny scraps of gossip about her, enough for me to obsess about while I tried to get to sleep.

It was humid in the apartment but I didn't want to turn on the air when it was in the low 70's. I put a fan in the window, but then a thunderstorm came and I had to shut the window. Then the thunder, rain, and lightning kept me awake. I did eventually fall asleep, but woke up this morning unrefreshed.

I came to work feeling the burden of all the things I want to get done today and this weekend, and thought that maybe it would be best if First Meeting (TM) Lady wasn't able to meet this weekend. Even so, my heart was pounding in my chest when I went to check my email. Did she respond? What's her answer? So far, her pattern of responding to my emails has been very consistent: she always sends a message two days after I write her-- that would put her on schedule to respond to my First Meeting(TM) request last night.

But there was no response. This is not a rejection, but since I had proposed we meet tomorrow (Saturday), it looks unlikely to happen at this point. Already in a pissy mood for lack of sleep, I log on to the dating site and stare at the depressing list of Active Matches who appear to have dropped me: no response in 18 days, 7 days, 3 days. I look at the New Matches list and start "archiving" (i.e. rejecting) a bunch them. It all feels so futile. The best matches they can come up with are Christian women with two kids who live two hours away from me? Whenever I check other dating sites, the same profiles keep coming up again and again. Profiles that just don't fit.

I'm too old for this. Snarkwife was the rare profile that fit all my demographics. We had a great email rapport. Physical attraction and intellectual compatibility. She laughed at my jokes. We wanted the same things out of life. (At least at first we did.) But in the end it wasn't perfect enough. If I can't even make it work with her, what chance do I have with the rest?

Now I've wasted the first two hours of work, and I still have a bunch of Shit to Do.

First Meeting (TM) Lady

There's a famous statistic that people have a greater fear of public speaking than they do of death. I agree that public speaking is scary, but it pales in comparison to asking a girl out. Nothing gets me sweating and fretting as much as having to ask for a date.

A year ago I thought I'd never have to go through that again. But, as you may have read on this blog, recent events have re-singled me.

Admittedly, online dating has made it a lot easier to ask women out. I've always been comfortable expressing myself in my writing, so it's easier for me to make my move over email. That's probably why my last few relationships were started online.

Last night I made a move on an online dating site. It was a spontaneous decision, not something that I'd agonized over for days, which is my usual M.O. I was emailing one of the ladies on my dating site, and realized that I have a three-day weekend coming up, so maybe I should see if she wants to meet in person. I tacked on a quick invitation at the end of my message, and only agonized over it for about half an hour, which is a lightning quick move for me. I finally sent it off because I was ambivalent about her anyway. I knew if I was making a tactical error, it wouldn't matter, because I didn't feel like we had a great email rapport, anyway. But maybe I would like her better in person, and if not, nothing lost.

The dating site I'm on has certain stages you have to walk through, and I decided to move on to First Meeting(TM) with this lady. I swear to God they've trademarked the phrase "First Meeting." Fortunately, they haven't trademarked anything beyond that like Heavy Petting(TM) or First Fight(TM).

This isn't the first time I've pursued someone since Snarkwife moved out. Of course there was TennisGrrrl, who I never officially asked out but kinda sorta did. And since I joined this dating site two and a half weeks ago, I've made my interest known to three women. (The first rejected me outright, the second is First Meeting(TM) Lady, and the third appears to have dropped me since I told her I'm not a very good uncle. (She talked about how she loved being an aunt, and I suspect she really wants to have kids and doesn't have time for a bad uncle like me.)) But moving toward the First Meeting (TM) feels different to me. It feels like a new stage in my post-Snarkwife life. I keep moving further out there.

I have a friend who ended a long-term relationship a few months after Snarkwife left me. His immediate reaction after the breakup was that he didn't want to date anyone. He had no interest in being with anyone new and needed time to heal. Meanwhile I couldn't wait to start dating. Since that time, my friend has dated three different people and even broken it off with someone. And here I am, four months later, celebrating the fact that I've finally asked a girl out.

Even though I tell myself I don't care about First Meeting(TM) Lady, I'm nervous as hell about checking my email, to see if she responded to my request.

Regardless of how interested you are in your quarry, getting rejected still stings. Even worse, what if she says yes?

Divorce Empowerment

I've spent a lot of time reading divorce blogs, stories, and websites over the past few months. There's one attitude that I keep seeing in many discussions that is unsettling.

Some people "celebrate" their divorce-- even have a party like an anti-wedding. They use phrases like "happily divorced" and talk about their first marriage as a "starter" or "mini" marriage. I understand that a lot of this is just an effort to empower yourself during a traumatic time. But it bugs the shit out of me.

Anyone who uses the phrase "starter marriage" should not be allowed to marry. I know I'm coming dangerously close to the homophobic conservative tactic of defining marriage for other people, but I feel strongly that people should keep their commitments. If you make a vow to stay with someone for the rest of your life, you should honor that, or at least take it seriously.

Like snowflakes, every divorce is different, but when I read all of these different divorce stories, a lot of the ingredients are the same. As one person said to me the other day: here you are going through the most horrible, painful, gut-wrenching experience of your life, and then you come to find out that it's so common, it's practically a cliche.

But one thing that hasn't come up much in all the reading I've done is the regret at breaking a vow. This is probably the most shameful thing for me about my divorce. I made a promise and I failed to keep it. I've always been rule-oriented (my family hates playing games with me because I'm such an anal rule enforcer), and it bugs me that so many people blithely break the rules of marriage without a second thought. They second guess the divorce for other reasons, of course. And I don't expect people to keep their promises in the face of real physical (or even emotional) danger, but it just feels like to me people don't take their promises seriously. It's the least of their considerations.

It may very well be that my divorce turns out to be a blessing in the end. I'm fundamentally an optimist, and believe that things usually work out for the best. People are survivors and can put a happy face on any disaster. But I will never, ever, call my marriage a "starter marriage." It was intended to last forever, and it failed.

I can learn from my failures, and even come out of them a better person. But I don't celebrate them. And I don't trivialize them with cutesy names.

The Sixth Nonsense

I see happy marriages. They're everywhere. Most of them don't even know they are happy.

As it turns out, my sixth sense for spotting happy marriages only exists on Bizarro World. In the real word, marriages are crumbling all around me and I can't see it.

Aside from the steady steam of stories I hear from friends and family (like my mom telling me which cousin just got left by her husband), there have been two jarring examples of this in the past month.

When I went out to dinner with some work colleagues last month, I had to tell one of them that my wife and I had split up. He seemed surprised, saddened, sympathetic, and embarrassed for bringing it up. (He even apologized to me for "prying." In these situations I often feel like I end up being the one to console them: "No, really, you didn't know, and it's a perfectly natural thing to ask about my wife.") Later on in the evening, after a few beers, I told him more of the details of our separation and impending divorce. I could see he was genuinely concerned for me. He's married with a kid and told me how his daughter was "the best thing that ever happened" to him. I had this nice image of a happy family.

Three weeks later, it was his turn to shock me. I heard from another colleague that he had moved out of the house-- he's getting divorced.

I received another shock this week-- a close friend of a close friend is also moving out of the house he shares with a wife and children for a few months. To respect his privacy, I don't want to go into any details (even on an anonymous blog), but this separation will affect me (and hence this blog) in one important way: He'll be moving into my spare bedroom while he and his wife try to work things out. I really hope they can reconcile.

I take no solace in welcoming new members to the "D" Club. This is not a case where misery loves company. I want to believe in marriage-- I want to believe that people can live happily together, and can work out their differences. I need to believe that we can depend on each other. Each time I hear of another struggling marriage, it chips away at that belief.

Hermit Week

My back seems to be getting worse every time I play tennis, so I've decided to lay off tennis for a few weeks and let it heal. There's a Labor Day tournament I really want to play in, and I want to be healthy for it. I went to the doctor and got some muscle relaxants and some advice for quick healing. Since the pills make me really drowsy, I can't really drive when I'm on them, so I've lived like a hermit the past week: sitting at home and watching movies or playing on the interwebs. I've gone whole days without talking to another person. And I haven't played tennis in five days.

It hasn't been too bad, actually. I've gone stir crazy a few times, but then I just go for a walk and I feel better. I'm learning to walk by myself again, and enjoying it.

Since I don't have much going on, I'll probably do drugs all weekend and concentrate on healing my back. I thought about maybe trying to set up a date with one of the online ladies (I'm in email contact with two of them), but something is holding me back. I feel like maybe I'm not ready to date yet. I'm afraid of going out with someone and really liking her, and getting sucked into another relationship. For the first time in my life, I don't think I'm looking for that. I don't want to be tied down to any one person. On the other hand, I also don't know if I'd be any good at playing the field. I'm not very good at multitasking.

I keep imagining how a date would go, and in these imaginary dates, I catch myself mentioning "my wife." Like, for instance, "Oh, yeah, my wife read that book." Then I have to catch myself. She's not my wife, she's my ex-wife. Or my future ex-wife. Or something. And talking about your wife during a date is probably a mood killer.

So I haven't made any moves yet. I'll just crawl under my shell like a hermit crab, take some muscle relaxants, and veg-out for a few more days.

The Waiting Is the Hardest Part

So last week I was mildly preoccupied by a nibble I had on an online dating site. Someone had "Noticed" me, so I indicated my "Interest" in her, and since then we've been moving up the ladder of mutual interest. This site tightly controls contact between people, working your way through "relationship essentials" and "short answers" until you're allowed to email the other person. I'm starting to wonder if the site purposefully makes you wait a whole day before it reveals someone's answers. Either that, or the woman I'm pursuing is really slow at responding.

When you log on to this site, it lists people who are "Interested in You", people you've "Been Noticed By", and "Active Matches." I don't know what the difference is between people who "notice" me and people who are "interested" in me. I imagine it's a matter of degrees. Perhaps "noticed by" means they looked at my profile and didn't reject me out of hand. "Active Matches" are people I've indicated an interest in. They will stay there until they reject me (or I reject them) as we move through the different phases of communication.

The waiting has been nerve-wracking. I submitted my "short answers" to her late Friday night, but didn't get any response on Saturday. I was checking the site so often that I finally had to make myself stop. Everytime I logged on to the site, I would see the depressing words: "Interested In You (0 new)." In other words, "No one is interested in you." I decided that I would NOT check the site until 8:00 pm Sunday.

At 7:30 on Sunday I had some downtime, so I decided to blog about my week. (See previous post.) I really wanted to log on to the dating site to see if she had responded, but I was strong in my resolution to NOT check it until 8:00 pm. I became superstitious and decided that if I did check it before then, there would be no response.

As if to reward me for my patience, when I did log on Sunday evening, I had TWO updates. One was from the one I'd been waiting for-- she'd submitted her "short answers." A week after I'd first expressed my interest, I could finally send her an email (through the site) and actually start a conversation. So I did.

The second update, however, was someone who was "interested" in me! My first one! I looked at her profile and it really excited me. Not everything was perfect, but she seemed like a really good match. So I immediately indicated my interest, and now another waiting game starts.

I'm still trying to get the hang of this site, though. One woman who "noticed" me was totally wrong for me: she's a three-hour drive away and only had one sentence in her profile, and it states that she wants a man who is "God fearing." I tried to reject her, but instead I accidentally indicated my "interest" in her. NOOO!!! Now she's on my list of "Active Matches", and even though there's a little tab to remove someone from this list (i.e. reject them), my "not interested?" link for her doesn't work. I suspect it won't work because I just selected her, and the stupid, controlling site is making me wait a certain amount of time before I can change her status. It's frustrating.

Meanwhile, match #1 has still not responded to my first email, which I sent Sunday night. But match #2 did send me her "relationship essentials," and we match up almost perfectly. So I'm on step #2 (short asnwers) with her and on step #3 (email) with the first woman.

Two irons in the fire and the waiting continues...

Straight-Up Boring Event Report

I haven't blogged in a while, which usually means I'm having a good time. It's been an eventful week, lots of ups and downs, and there are way too many things to report in one post.

So I'll try to hit the highlights in my favorite format: Bullet Points! If I don't get this stuff down now, it will probably be lost forever.

• On Monday I moved my bed to my second bedroom. It used to be Snarkwife's office, but since she moved out there's just been one lonely desk sitting in there. I moved my bed because I wasn't sleeping well and the early morning sun kept waking me up. The second bedroom is on the west side of the apartment, so I only get the sunset. Also, I just wanted a change. It's another way that I'm turning the apartment into a post-relationship living space.


• Wednesday & Thursday I visited a friend in my old college town. It was an okay visit, but disappointing in some ways. My ex-girlfriend, who I hadn't seen or talked to in four years, lives there and I met up with her. It was good to catch up with her, but she's still kind of crazy and she didn't spark any of my interest.
  


• Thursday evening I attended a local writers group meeting for the first time. It was me and 13 women, which I suppose was a good thing, but I felt a little uncomfortable being the only guy. It was good to get out of the house and meet new people. It also inspired me to work on something that I'd been sitting on for about nine months. One of my goals this week is to finally send it off for publication. I got some good feedback from the group and, after working on it this weekend, I think I'm ready to send it off.
  


• I've tried to play tennis twice this weekend, but I'm too injured to play well. I bruised my ribs tubing at the lake during Snarkfest, and I keep aggravating the injury by playing tennis. The pain is in my back, and it seriously affects my consistency, speed, and power when I'm on the court (the first two of these are staples of my game.) It's frustrating when I'm not at my best, and on Friday I got my butt kicked by a guy who's never beat me. I know what I really need to do is take some time off to let it heal, but there are two tournaments I really want to play in in the next three weeks, and I don't know if it will be healed by then. [Sigh]


• Friday night I had dinner with my mixed doubles team. Once again, it was good to get out and be around people. TennisGrrrl was there, and I have no feelings for her whatsoever. It's gratifying to be over her.
  


• I've had a nibble on one of my online dating sites. It's a site that tightly controls the meeting process, so we have to jump through all these hurdles before we can contact each other directly. So far we've reached stage 2 with mutual interest, and that has been a good distraction. But she hasn't responded in almost two days, so now I'm getting paranoid that she's not interested anymore.


• I'm getting lots of errands done during my vacation, which always feels good. I love crossing things off my list.
  

The Final Act

As I was about to leave the house to go sign my divorce papers, I felt like I needed to change. I was wearing my comfy casual sporty charcoal shorts and a white t-shirt from the tennis center. It didn't feel like the right outfit to get divorced in.

I rummaged through my t-shirt drawer, asking myself, "What's the right t-shirt to get divorced in?" I chose a black one that with the word "imagine" on it that Snarkwife had got me when she visited New York. I also put on jeans, because that feels slightly more formal than a pair of shorts. Yeah, a black t-shirt and jeans felt about right to get divorced in.

I didn't have time to really reflect on the magnitude of this Life Moment, because I was late getting to the lawyer's office and stressed about that. Can you be late to your divorce? I was about five minutes late to my meeting with the lawyer, which, in retrospect, maybe sent a message that I was not totally on board with this.

I spent a total of 15 minutes with the lawyer. He was a nice enough guy. I noticed he had a wedding ring on. He answered some questions and explained the process of Snarkwife going before a judge and testifying. I only had to sign three things, but there were four copies of each, so there was a lot of signing.

Even though I had to sign a waiver of the two-year waiting period, that didn't mean I could have made Snarkwife wait two years. It just meant that she would have to change the grounds of divorce from "irreconcilable differences" to "mental cruelty", which is ambiguous enough that it allows anyone to get divorced at any time for any reason. In fact, even the six-month separation we're doing could be circumvented. That's ridiculous to me.

The only part of the settlement agreement that really bothered me was a statement that "all efforts at reconciliation have failed." That's a complete lie. All efforts have not failed. We didn't try everything. We tried a few things, but nowhere close to everything. I know it's just standard boilerplate divorce legalese, but who can really, honestly say that they've tried all efforts at reconciliation before they get divorced? What bullshit.

I won't be officially divorced until "mid-September", when the lawyer and Snarkwife go before a judge. The lawyer asked me if I wanted to know ahead of time when they get a court date. I said no, just send me the papers when it's all over.

My part is done.

I'm Out There

I took the plunge on Saturday night.

I turned my ad on a dating site "public", paid $50 to join for a month, and indicated my interest in one of the ladies.

I was excited about it for the first few hours, but since then it's started to remind me why I hate dating. My plan was to join two or three different sites, since there were a couple ads on each site that I was thinking of responding to. But the first site was way more expensive than I thought it would be. And the second one kept having technical difficulties that pissed me off and delayed my profile from being made "public." (If I'm going to be "out there", I have to make sure the presentation is up to my exacting standards.)

I still am yet to join a second site, although I search and browse three different sites every day. The first ad I showed an interest in, the one that inspired me to subscribe in the first place, has already rejected me. I have no idea why she rejected me, but her profile is "no longer available" to me.

This awakens my anger toward Snarkwife. I think I'll probably get mad at her every time I get rejected. It's her fault that I'm in the position to begin with. I shouldn't even have to put myself "out there"-- I'm supposed to be married.

Now I'm checking three different sites about ten times a day, but I can't bring myself to respond to a second ad. All the momentum I had on Saturday night is gone. Maybe I'm not ready to date yet.

Freethinking

The summer semester ended last Thursday, so I have almost two weeks off. I have a lot planned for this break. In addition to small errands like getting my oil changed, my license renewed, getting a tennis lesson in, or signing my divorce papers, I have many social events planned. I'm visiting a friend out of town, I'm going to a social event for my mixed doubles tennis team, I'm diving into internet dating (more in a later post), and I've discovered a new social outlet.

I was at a cafe last week and saw a sign on a bulletin board about a "new friends meeting group." I was intrigued and thought, "Sure, I could join their cult." I took an information tab and looked them up on the web. It's an entire website of people who want to meet up. There are lots of differently-themed groups, so I joined three: the generic "friends" one, a writers' group, and a group of "freethinkers."

This last one, also known as secular humanists, brights, skeptics, or nonbelievers, is essentially a group of atheists. I was a little weary of joining them, because organized atheists scare me almost as much as fundamentalists. They're usually just as arrogant and dogmatic. But I've been wanting to meet people who are areligious, and I thought this might be a good way to do that. It couldn't hurt, could it?

The meeting was supposed to take place at 12:30 today at the local public library. When I got there, I noticed a large circle of people standing around in the parking lot. I tried to walk into the library, but it was locked-- it doesn't open until 1:00 pm on Sundays. Shit, I thought, I'll bet that group in the parking lot was my secular humanists. This wasn't what I had expected. I expected that we'd meet in the library, in a meeting room or something. Maybe there'd be a sign: Welcome Atheists! Why were they all standing around loitering in the library parking lot? Is this what they do? How do you go up to a group of strangers, who all seem to know each other, and ask them, "Hey, are you guys the 'freethinkers'?" I couldn't bring myself to do it. When I overheard one of them say something about Star Trek, I decided I couldn't do it. I got in my car and drove away.

(I did something eerily similar with the Unitarian church at the beginning of June. I see a pattern here.)

-------
I decided to go for a walk at the sculpture park where I used to walk with Snarkwife. This would be the first time I'd been there since she left. I'd asked TennisGrrrl to go walk with me there a few times, but it never worked out. So this would be my first solitary walk, signifying, like, closure & shit.

I took some pictures with my new camera phone, and visited with the big stone bunny. It was in front of the big stone bunny that I proposed to Snarkwife over four years ago. I even incorporated the bunny into my proposal, telling Snarkgirlfriend that the bunny and I "had been talking." Yeah, it was sweet and charming and she loved it.

Today, I told the bunny that she left me. He was stoic.


I imagined what I would do if I could go back in time and re-live that moment when I proposed to her in front of the bunny. I would like to say something like, "Well, I was going to propose to you, but since I know that, in four years, you will break our matrimonial vows and leave me, I think we should end it now."

How's that for "freethinking?"

Social Panic

My social life runs on a very thin profit margin.

One small event per day can satisfied my social needs, but if that social event gets sidetracked, I'm liable to take a bad turn.

I'd been doing really great lately. I feel like I'm in a much better place than I was in May & June, during my first summer vacation. I've been making lots of diverse plans, not solely depending on tennis, which can be affected by the weather and injuries. I have a Lot To Do over the next two weeks, and I'm looking forward to it.

I had what I thought were pretty firm plans to go to dinner tonight with a friend. In his last contact with me (over email), he said he'd call "midday" to firm up what we were doing. Knowing that I had a social outlet for Saturday night, I was able to stay in on Friday, when I was too tired to go watch a movie at my brother's. I knew I would get my social needs met the next day.

On Saturday I ran some errands, went grocery shopping, and then cleared out some of the stuff on my TiVo. I took a nap. By mid-afternoon my friend hadn't called yet, and I wasn't sure what to do. At about 4:00 I called him, got his machine and left a message. With the prospect of my one social event of the day falling through, my mood plummeted. I started thinking of alternative plans-- what I would do if he didn't call or had to cancel. I couldn't really make any concrete plans, though, because I was waiting for his call.

I started to obsess. Did I do something wrong? Was I supposed to respond to his last email? He said he could do dinner if I was interested. I didn't re-confirm that I was interested. But then he also said he'd call. I didn't think I needed to respond. I had a snack and tried not to think about it. I started to blog.

Like so many of the "crises" in my life, this one blew over rather quickly. He called, had a legitimate reason for not calling earlier, and we met for dinner. Had a great time. My social bank account is replenished, and my positive mood is back.

But it still reminds me how tenuous my grasp on happy sanity can be.

Sign Here for Failure

Next week I'll be on vacation, and one of the things I'd meant to accomplish during that time was to finally make an appointment with Snarkwife's lawyer to go in and sign the divorce papers.

The package has been sitting on my kitchen table for seven weeks now, but it was my intention to wait until my August vacation to take care of it. Now the time is upon me and I need to act. I can't just sign the papers and send them in-- it has to be done in the lawyer's presence.

I'm not comfortable with this level of participation in my own divorce. If I make the effort to go to a law office to sign something, I'm being proactive. The divorce is no longer something that's being done to me, it's something that I'm agreeing to. I'm an accomplice. I prefer to play the victim, so taking such an active part in the dissolution of my marriage is a difficult step for me to take.

There's no real rush, since we can't actual file the papers until we've been separated for six months, which will be in September. But I wonder what would happen if I just didn't sign them. How long would it be until Snarkwife, or her lawyer, contacted me to ask about the divorce papers?

One of the things I have to sign is a waiver relinquishing the right to a two-year separation. If I wanted to be a real asshat, I could make my wife wait two years before she can divorce me. But what would be the point of dragging it out like that? Spite? I've never really been very good at concrete spite. I prefer to just wish bad things rather than actually facilitate them.

So I'll probably go ahead and sign the papers. But I don't have to like it.

Stress-Free

This weekend was Snarkfest, my family's annual reunion. I spent four days with parents (divorced with new spousi) and my four older siblings with their respective broods; twenty-four people altogether.

I had a great weekend. It was one of the best Snarkfests I've had in a long time. My sister-in-law asked me if I was nervous about the first family reunion since Snarkwife left me. I wasn't. Why should I be? For the first time in four years I didn't have to worry about whether Snarkwife was having a good time or getting her needs met. Several of my family members mentioned last spring how it seemed like Snarkwife was always mad at me. I didn't really notice it, but I know I was more stressed out around my family when she was there. She didn't like the crowds, and in sympathy, I didn't either.

So I had a great time hanging out with my siblings, playing tennis, Wii, "cornhole" (Midwestern bean-bag toss game with an obscene name), poker, swimming, and skiing at the lake. I also got a terrible sunburn and came home sore and exhausted.

Over the weekend I slept okay, but not enough. I still haven't recovered from it, and last night I fell asleep in front of the TV at 7:30. Then I woke up at 3:00 am and couldn't get back to sleep. (I had a dream where Snarkwife was cheating on me with all these different men.) I woke up with a sharp pain in my back, as if I had pulled a muscle. I also felt like I'd hardly slept at all. So while I was getting dressed for work I decided to take a sick day. I only have three days left till my August vacation, but I also have nothing to do at work. I can blog at home just as well as at work, so I'm hanging out with the cats, watching movies, and copying CDs.

My sister called me yesterday morning and told me that I seemed so relaxed at this year's Snarkfest, more relaxed than I'd seemed in years. She's not the first person to tell me that. Several people have commented that I seem a lot less stressed since Snarkwife moved out.

There are lots of possible explanations for this besides the glaringly obvious one that maybe I wasn't as happy in my marriage as I thought. Here are a few theories:

• Like I said above, maybe I was always stressed in sympathy of Snarkwife. She couldn't take being with my huge family, and I fed off of that.
  
• I always felt like I could "be myself" around Snarkwife. But if my true nature is that of an asshole, then of course people would like me better if I were not "myself." Since she left, the asshole filter is back on.
  
• I need my family more now that I'm all alone. So I'm more grateful to be around them.

And even if I wasn't as happy as I thought in my marriage, I'm still not ready to accept that our breakup was a good thing. There's no reason we couldn't have worked on it. Except for the fact that she left me.