Out of Sight

There was a movie about the newspaper business that I saw once. All I remember about it was a tagline that went something like, "Every single day we start over from scratch."

Sometimes that's what my social life feels like. I contact people, initiate plans, we negotiate, carry out said plans. Then it starts all over again the next day or week or weekend.

Last week I had tons of stuff going on. Five days of tennis. Hanging out with family, friends, and girlfriend. Running all those errands that I had put off til my vacation.

Then I hit the second week of my vacation. I've caught up on most of my chores. I was sick and didn't play tennis for almost a whole week. I've been preoccupied with house-buying stuff (more on that later) and forgot to plan out my social life. Everyone left town. (AG is in New York, my brother + wife were in New Orleans celebrating their 20th anniversary, my two other local friends were out of town.)

I've had two solitary days this week: Two entire days (Monday & Thursday) where I didn't see or talk to another person. I'm a solitary person, so I enjoy the occasional orgy of solitude, but two entire days in one week is a bit much. On days like this I usually go to bed feeling like a loser and wondering what the hell I'm doing with my life.

I can see very easily how people who live alone end up being the eccentric neighbor. Solitude makes you crazy.

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I'm buying a house. Last week I got a realtor and a loan pre-qualification letter, looked at 40-50 listings online, then compiled about half of those into a spreadsheet of my own design, ranking my top 14 choices.

I saw nine houses on Tuesday and five more on Wednesday. Trying to balance all the different things to think about (design, location, upkeep, renovations, yardwork, neighborhood, etc.) among 14 choices turned my mind to goo. Despite this, I had narrowed my choices down to the final three.

Then I freaked out.

I'm feeling a time crunch, since I have to be out of my place in early July. Which doesn't give me much time to decide on a house, make an offer, and push through all the administravia involved in buying a home. I came home on Wednesday feeling in way over my head. I needed to call someone. Who could give me the advice I needed?

There was a voicemail waiting for me. My mind was swimming with homebuying stress when I heard AG's voice on my machine. Oh yeah, I thought, I have a girlfriend!

What a weird sensation. Throughout the ordeal of making one of the biggest decisions of my life, my new girlfriend was not foremost in my my mind. I called her back, and although she wasn't able to offer any practical home-buying advice (she's never bought a house), she did help me keep things in perspective. And said she would help out in any way that she could.

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I'm feeling really unfocused this morning. I really want to post this blog, since I've neglected it for over a week, but I'm having trouble concentrating.

This afternoon I'm taking my brother + sister-in-law to look at my final three house choices, and then I'll have to decide how to proceed. (Make an offer? How low do I go? What's the process? Can that be done before I/my realtor go out of town?) I don't know if that's why I'm so distracted. Or if there's something else to it. I'll write more when my head is clearer.

Anniversary, Again

Over the past few months, any time I've been at a loss for what theme to take in a given blog post, I could always fall back on what I was doing a year ago.

Hence, another anniversary post.

A year ago today we executed the Marital Settlement Agreement. It was the last time I saw or talked to her in person. Since then there's only been very brief email communication.

On that day a year ago, we met at the credit union, did our business, then I went and had lunch with my brother and sister-in-law at a new Greek restaurant in town. It was the start of my first summer vacation.

A year later many things are different and many things are the same. I'm three days into my first summer vacation. I returned to the credit union, the scene of our Marital Settlement Agreement, but this time it was to look into getting a loan to buy a home. Like last year, I'm meeting my brother and sister-in-law for lunch, but the Greek restaurant has closed. Afterward, we're going to look at houses. SnarkEx is the last thing on my mind.

Yesterday AwesomeGirlfriend and I spent an awesome day at a state park about 1.5-hours' drive from here. We drove, hiked, had lunch, hiked some more, then drove home. It was our first trip together. The scenery was gorgeous and the company was great.

I've turned the tide on the Acne Wars. After much whining and persistence, I finally got an appointment with a doctor, who took one look at me and pronounced it a bacterial infection and prescribed antibiotics. I noticed a difference almost immediately after taking the pills. It doesn't look great yet, but the maddening itching has stopped and it's starting to clear up. I've stopped obsessing about it.

I've got 2.5 weeks left of my vacation, and I plan to use it to find a house and buy it. I have lots of other fun plans, so I don't intend to be bored. Tonight the summer outdoor tennis league starts, and I'm really looking forward to that. It will be the fifth time I've played tennis in one week.

Vacation rocks!

Gossip

I'm not having a very good week.

I found out I'm getting kicked out of my home, which puts me under a lot of pressure to find a house in a short time, something I wasn't really prepared to deal with right now.

My face is a battlefield of Acne Wars, which makes me embarrassed and self-conscious when I'm around other people. Last night I spent half an hour trolling the face cream aisle of the drug store, trying to find the right combination of creams, ointments, and soaps that will a.) make it go away, b.) not turn my skin into sandpaper, and c.) soothe the maddening itchiness. It's to the point that I can't sleep because of the itching. This morning I decided, fuck it-- I'm going to a dermatologist. I don't care how much it costs, I want to be rid of this. Besides, it's time that I started taking care of my skin. It's the largest organ in the body.

Monday I went out with AG to meet some of her friends for drinks. I'd never met them before, but I don't think I made a very good impression. I was in a bad mood, wasn't feeling well, it was a work night, and I had to bow out early. I think I disappointed her.

I caught a bug, totally unrelated to my recent plagues, that manifested itself as a sore throat/flu on Monday night. That along with the cats hissing, growling, and chasing each other through the apartment at 3:00 am kept me awake much of the night. I would have called in sick to work the next day, but I had a library tour I needed to give.

That night I had plans to play tennis with a friend, but had to cancel because of my flu bug. It turned out to be the only day this week with favorable weather for tennis. I haven't played nearly as much as I've wanted to lately. It feels like forces are conspiring to keep me away from tennis. But that will just make our love that much stronger!

The next two days were gloomy and rainy, culminating with a hurricane-like storm last night that rocked my bedroom window. So I didn't get much sleep again.

I've got way too much to do at work this week before the semester ends on Friday. That stresses me out and makes it harder for me to concentrate on what I need to get done.

I've felt uneasy and anxious all week-- not at peace.

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On top of all that, I heard from one of my spies that SnarkEx has changed her status on Facebook to "In a Relationship." She has a new boyfriend.

This is not how it was supposed to go. She's supposed to be lonely and miserable. Even though I'm in a new relationship, I still don't feel that she deserves one. My attitude is not fair, I know, but I guess divorce adds an extra level of bitterness to any breakup.

Her new boyfriend is some guy I've never heard of who is rumored to work at a software company. Here's hoping he's a huge dork who will drag her to Renaissance Fairs and sci-fi conventions and uses Klingon for pillow talk.

Although she was looking for jobs out of town, it turns out that she'll be staying in town and going back to school to get a library degree. This is distressing news for all my friends and family who were hoping that she would get the hell out of town. She still has this bad habit of cornering people who don't want to talk to her.

During one fellowship hour at church recently, she made three (3) attempts to hit on the same guy. He was disgusted by her advances. Does her new boyfriend know about that?

Meet The Parents

It's funny how these things just kind of snowball. It starts with a plan to "travel together" over our respective vacations. In trying to figure out a time when we're both available, it becomes apparent that there's not enough overlap time to take any longish trips.

She's visiting her parents in New York for two weeks during my upcoming semester break. I suggest, off the cuff, that maybe I could visit New York for a few days while she's there. I've only been to New York once and would like to see it again.

Before I know it, I'm booking non-refundable plane tickets (the only kind I ever buy) to Newark International Airport. Her parents would be offended if I didn't stay with them, so I guess it's time to Meet the Family.

Now I'm feeling like it's too soon.


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When I went to book my tickets to New York, I logged into Expedia for the first time in over a year. I wasn't even sure I could remember my password, but I logged in successfully after only a few tries.

SnarkEx's name was still listed under "other travelers" in my Expedia account. I deleted it, but not before I reflected on how hard it is to eradicate someone from your life. Here was another example, over a year later, of her showing up in my shit.

The last time I flew was over the Christmas Season, 2007. It was with SnarkEx, when we visited her parents in South Carolina. On the way home, we had a stupid fight during a layover in the Atlanta airport. We ended up sitting apart from each other for two hours while we waited for our connecting flight. We resumed our relationship when we boarded, and I thought the fight was behind us. Chalk it up to travel stress.

The fight must have really taken its toll on SnarkEx, though. Four weeks later she told me she was thinking of leaving me. Several weeks after that, we were still talking out that fight in couples therapy.

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Some people, when they get divorced, struggle with what to do about the ex-in-laws. It's hard to give up ties to people who you consider family and who are innocent bystanders in your breakup.

But I didn't have that problem. I don't miss my in-laws at all. We had what I would call a "cordial" relationship. I think they liked me, or as much as they could like someone who had stolen their daughter away from the Catholic Church.

When they found out that we weren't getting married by a Catholic priest in a Catholic church, they withheld money they had planned to give her for the wedding. Her father was so distraught he had to go get counseling from a priest. Then they treated the wedding itself as a distraction: arriving late, leaving early, and not even attending the rehearsal. SnarkEx was upset and disappointed by their lack of involvement, which just made me mad at them. How could they not see that this was one of the biggest days in their daughter's life?

(They did the same thing at her brother's wedding a few years later. During the rehearsal, it fell to me, the fucking brother-in-law, to ask where the groom's family would be sitting. The bride looked around and said, "Oh yeah, where are your parents?" The groom, SnarkEx's brother, said softly, "They left." I felt so sorry for him.)

Despite all this, there was never any true animosity between me and the in-laws. At least none that came out publicly. I think they warmed up to me as the years went by. SnarkEx and I came from very different families, but I was committed to getting along with, and being a part of, her family. But I haven't had any contact with any of them since she left.

I'm really curious what they thought about her abandoning her marriage, although I'm sure she spinned it in such a way that made it look like it was mutual. During our final breakup conversation, I asked her if she had told her parents about us, and what they thought of it. The tone of her answer was defensive, "They were surprised, but they support me."

Well, of course they support you. They're your damn parents! But what do they think of you leaving your husband? They may be disappointed that you married a heathen, but do they at least respect the sanctity of marriage? But she was tight-lipped about that.

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Parents usually like me. I have a non-threatening look. I'm well-mannered. I'm pretty good at making conversation. I make goofy jokes. I'm an entertaining drunk (as one parent of a good friend noted once at a cookout.) I generally make a good impression on the parents of my friends and lovers.

But I'm not sure I'm up to meeting AG's parents yet. Despite all my jawing about going slow, it feels like maybe this move was too impulsive, too soon. Being divorced comes with all this extra baggage, and it's not the kind of thing that impresses parents. But the tickets are non-refundable, so what can you do?

Homeless

One of the dozen or so errands I had on my list of things to do over spring break was to renew the lease on my apartment for another year. I never got around to it. It wasn't until last Saturday that I finally went into the leasing office and told them I wanted to stay. They told me that my apartment has already been rented out for next year. Well, fuck me!

I want to be angry at the company that is my landlord, but I really have no one to blame but myself. I was supposed to renew the lease by March 15. I ignored their letter because I was still thinking about buying a house. After dabbling in the housing market, I decided that I wasn't ready to be a homeowner just yet. I wanted to wait another year to build up my nest egg for a down payment.

I'll renew my lease over spring break, I told myself. But spring break came and something held me back. I had this little niggling fear of commitment. Did I really want to commit to an apartment a whole year and a half into my future? So I waited. Last year I waited until May to renew my lease, so I didn't have any sense of urgency. I turned my attention to other projects. After spring break I waited another four weeks.

I realized last March, around the one-year anniversary of SnarkEx moving out, that I had lived in my apartment alone longer than I had lived there with her. It really is my apartment by now. So why didn't I stake my claim on it?

Now they're giving my apartment, MY HOME, to some other douchebag. That pisses me off. I keep looking for reasons to be pissed at them, but I know it's my own damn fault. It wasn't their responsibility to keep calling me to ask if I was staying. I should have told them I was staying when I made the decision. I sat on the pot and someone took a shit right under me. (Beautiful metaphor, isn't it?)

I like signs, and this feels like a pretty clear sign that I'm meant to buy a house now. I'm getting kicked out, I have to move, and if I have to move anyway, I might as well make it a house. And even though I consider the apartment my home, and as apartments go, it's an awesome place to live, maybe getting out of there will give me further distance from my divorce. So I'm able to look on the bright side.

Sometimes.

But I don't know if I have the energy for a move right now. Even though I'm the Friend Who Helps People Move, I hate asking other people to help, and I've already leaned on people too much over the past year. When SnarkEx and I moved into our current place, we had an army of help, but half of them were SnarkEx's friends. In fact, SnarkEx is the one who found the apartment. I'm not mentally prepared for a move right now.

My lease ends in exactly two months, so I'm going to have to haul ass to find a place. That might not even be enough time to buy a house, even if I find one that I like today.

Even though it wasn't (technically) the landlord's fault, I refuse to move into another apartment in the same complex. Fuck them. I was a great tenant: always paid rent on time, clean, quiet, didn't bother the maintenance people. If they're going to kick me out of my apartment (which was the best one-- corner unit, overlooking a lake) then they're not getting any more of my money.

Shit.

Plagues of Divorce

I get the feeling I'm in some weird Biblical story where something akin to the ten plagues of Egypt are imposed upon my body.

It started with a pain in my abdominal area. Then came the pain in my groinal area. Then my jaw. After three specialists and countless tests, they couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. For the most part, those conditions have slowly receded into the background.

They were replaced by Raw Nostril Syndrome, where my nose was tender and hurt like hell every time I blew it. It felt like I had kidney stones in my nose, but every time I would blow one out, another rocky, jagged stone would replace it. I bought a vaporizer for my bedroom and squirted sea salt into my nose, in an attempt to heal whatever it was.

As my RNS started to fade, the latest ailment hit: Acne Wars. My chin and neck are breaking out in ugly, painful, angry pimples. Whole colonies of them. It's never been this bad, not even when I was a teenager. Last week I went to the store and looked for acne cream-- something I haven't bought in 20 years. I didn't know if there was some new euphemism for "acne" that I wasn't aware of, but I was embarrassed and frustrated because I couldn't find the stuff to treat it. Here I was a 37-year-old man cruising the aisles for lotions and creams usually reserved for 14-year-old girls.

I bought a cream and a special soap and have been slathering them on. The soap felt good at first, kinda tingly, but then the acne fought back. I could feel it screaming in pain as it dried up, but it wasn't going down without a fight. It itched like crazy, but scratching only made it way worse. (I'll spare the details.) I'm going 3-4 days without shaving, trying to hide the acne behind my stubble. But then the stubble looks bad (and unprofessional) so I have to shave it off. I'm probably damaging my face with all this medicine- it's making my skin extremely dry.

I would go see a dermatologist, but the plague has also hit my checkbook: last week I got the bill for all my visits and tests last month. I owe about $400. The total costs were around $5,500, which is ridiculous and indicates to me that we seriously need health care reform in this country, but luckily I have good insurance who paid most of it. Not everyone is that lucky.

Fortunately, none of the ailments have been dangerous or bad enough to affect my everyday life. They're just kind of onerous or inconvenient or icky. But none of them have been things I've suffered before, so it's a weird mystery. I'm a problem solver, so I like to figure stuff out. Where is all this coming from? Is someone torturing me with a voodoo doll?

And what's next? Tree sap leaking out of my pores? A loss of my sensation in my uvula? Waffletoe? Meerkat cough?

The Replacements

Women grieve, men replace.

I don't know where I heard that, but it's an interesting idea. Probably posited by a woman trying to denigrate men, but whatever. I'm not here to argue whether or not it's true. I just want to talk about the idea of "replacing."

In the past few months I have a new girlfriend and a new cat. On some level I have "replaced" SnarkEx and SnarKitty. There are now new entities to fill the role in my life that they once played.

It's true that I tried very hard to replace SnarkEx as soon as possible. My first attempt at dating happened about a week after I first learned that it was officially over. It wasn't for lack of intent that I spent a celibate year. I'm just not the kind of guy who can find and attract women very easily. As I've said many times before, some people are able to jump from fling to fling without ever having to hit the cold hard ground of loneliness. I'm not one of them.

Many people like to use the word "rebound" when someone starts dating too soon after a breakup. If a socially acceptable amount of time hasn't passed between breakup and a new affair, the new one is flippantly dismissed as a "rebound relationship." With the exception of a few isolated cases, I don't much believe in the Rebound Theory.

I've heard lots of stories. Some people meet their soul mate immediately after ending a long relationship. Other people immediately hook up with someone who's even worse than the one they just left. No formula works for everyone. To my mind, it feels like every relationship after the first one is a "rebound." You never really get someone out of your system until you meet someone new. Hence, you replace. Or I do, anyway.

Whenever I play a sport or learn a new skill, I've never really been much of a fan of practice. I want to jump in there and learn by doing. So I can talk all I want about correcting the mistakes of my past relationships, but the only way to really put those new strategies to the test is to start a new one.

I have a bad habit of comparing and contrasting each of my lovers. Maybe we all do it, but it's probably not fair to the people we're comparing. For me, I think it's a side effect of being overschooled. In academia you're always being asked to compare/contrast something. Which of your girlfriends were "high maintenance?" Which were "low maintenance?" Please support your answer with examples from the text. I already notice differences, both positive and negative, between AG and SnarkEx. I'm writing that essay in my head, even if I'm not turning it in.

I'm not the only one who does it. Some of my friends & family have met AG, and the results have been relatively positive. Some have even said, "I like her better than SnarkEx." It makes me happy to hear these things, but I don't know how much weight to give them. After all, I think most of my friends and family liked SnarkEx at first, too. (Or pretended they did.) It's way too soon to tell how AG compares to SnarkEx in the long run.

All I can say is I really like AG and I really like my new cat. For now.

SnarKitty II and Breeding

Yesterday I adopted a new cat. Over the past few weeks I have scoped out several candidates at the local shelter, and finally decided on the one who reminds me the least of SnarKitty. He's a beautiful black long-haired male about three years old.

It remains to be seen if NewKitty will become my new primary cat, or if AuxiliaryKitty will step up and take on that role-- and make NewKitty her minion. Since they're both adults, I have started the long and complicated process of introducing them to each other. This involves keeping them in separate rooms for several days to let them get used to new scents and sounds, then I will switch their rooms so that they can sniff out each other's turf, then finally let them meet face to face.

It's not nearly as arduous as dealing with a new baby, but it may be about as close as I'll ever come to that.

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SnarkEx and I were ambivalent about having kids. Our plan was always, "Not right now-- let's look at it again in five years." But we thought about it a lot. We read articles with titles like "To Breed or Not To Breed" and discussed the pros and cons of child-rearing.

I am the youngest of five kids and all my siblings have kids of their own. I have eleven nephews and nieces, most of them born within 2.5 years of each other. I've spent a lot of time around kids. And they don't really do it for me. I think it's very telling that if I walk into someone's home and they have a child and a cat, it's the cat that I try to play with.

I know, I know: it will be different when I have my own. This is what people tell me, anyway. I think the problem is that, like religion, I take parenting too seriously. I've seen what it's done to my brothers and sisters. How stressed they appear to be. How their schedules are completely dominated by their children. How impossible it is to have an adult conversation with kids around. How much work it is to be a good parent.

SnarkEx once had a friend who was pregnant who made some comment like, "I'm not going to let this baby change who I am." When SnarkEx told me this, my response was, "Then she shouldn't be having a kid." Because once you decide to breed, you better damn well be ready to make that kid your top priority. Every decision you make should be made for your kid's sake. Parenting is not only hard- it's all consuming. It better fucking change who you are.

I think it was after visiting this friend's baby that SnarkEx came home and said, "I want to have a baby." Since this was the first time I'd ever hear her say it, I tried to talk her down, "No, you don't." Okay, so this was horribly dismissive of me, but in my defense, this is the same woman who frequently told me, "Let's never have children" after spending an afternoon with my family. (Whenever she said this, I'd fall in love with her all over again, which was another sign that my heart really wasn't into having kids.)

A week before the shit hit the fan, SnarkEx told me, apropos of nothing, that she would never leave me because I didn't want kids. Since I was a cluelessly happy married man, I didn't think much of it. Oh, okay.

A week later, she told me she was thinking of leaving me. But at least I knew it wasn't about her wanting kids. So I had that going for me.

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I still struggle with the babies question. It's kind of a moot point now, since I'm single. Despite one fleeting thought I had last summer that I could guarantee never being lonely again on a Saturday night if I had a kid, I know that I will never decide to have (adopt) children on my own. So it will depend a lot on who my partner is, and whether she's intent on having them. I could probably be persuaded to have children by the right person, but she will have to be pretty convincing.

So for now, I'm content to have cats as my surrogate children. They're much easier to take care of, and they never grow up to be cowboys or mimes or spammers. They're easier to contain. They clean themselves. And they're just so furry.

I'm looking forward to seeing my new bundle of fur tonight.

The Public Face Returns

Last year I struggled a lot with what I called the public face of divorce: how to tell people, especially casual acquaintances, that I was getting divorced. People would ask about my wife and then I'd hem and haw and admit, sheepishly, that we were separated. There was even a surreal conversation with my six-year-old niece.

I thought this issue was behind me, but every once in a while it jumps up and bites me.

Last night I attended a social event for all the tennis players in the area. One of the guys there was Fahad, who I hadn't seen since last September. AwesomeGirlfriend and I both know Fahad in different contexts: I played tennis with him and he was a professor of hers. (It was one of those conversations where she says, "I studied Blah." And I say, "Oh, do you know Fahad? He's a professor of Blah." And she says, "Yeah, I took a class with him! He's great!")

So when I saw him, I thought of his connection to my new girlfriend, and the first thing I blurted out was, "Hey, I know someone who knows you! AG? She was a student of yours?"

"And how do you know AG?" he asked.

"I'm dating her!"

It was at this point that I realized I walked right into an awkward moment, because the last time I'd talked to Fahad about anything outside of tennis, I was still married. It was a new spin on an old dilemma: how do I talk about my new girlfriend to someone who doesn't even know I'm divorced?

I hoped he wouldn't remember that I had been married. But he did, because he said something like, "Oh, when did you separate from your wife?" D'oh!!

Over the past year I've had a lot of time to polish a stock answer to this, so I said, "Last year...It was a rough year. I don't recommend it." It's my breezy way of saying that divorce is hard, without getting all weepy and melodramatic.

He asked me if getting divorced is what led to my improvement in play last fall, when I won the 'C' league. He's a very competitive tennis player and I could see him considering divorce if it improved his game.

I said that winning the league was the one bright spot of the year, and then added that I don't recommend divorce, even if it makes you a better player. I don't want to be responsible for breaking up his marriage.