Auf Wiedersehen, June

With this post, June is my busiest blogging month of the year. If you look at my Blog Archive list in the left-hand bar, you'll see that June has 16 posts, edging out February and March (each with 15), solidly beating April (10), and crushing January (6) and May (4).

I used to believe that, in general you can measure my mood by the number of blog posts in a given month. I blog more when I'm upset or agitated, and when things are good I don't have much to say. Happiness tends to be boring, at least to my readers. For evidence of this, see February 2009 (23 posts), when I was obsessing about asking out TennisGrrrl, and then went into a tailspin of depression when she shot me down. Or October (22) and November (21) of last year, when I was pursuing Dimple, then K, then FL, then K again. Nothing brings out my anxiety like asking out and first dating someone, and those two months there were three of them. Conversely, my lowest blogging frequency was March through July of last year (avg. 6.8 posts per month), when I was happily dating AG and busy buying a house.

But does that mean that June was a difficult month for me? Not as far as I can tell. I'm not sure why I've blogged so much this month. Obviously, I blog less when I'm on vacation, because I'm not tethered to a computer eight hours a day. But I didn't work the first week of June, and I still managed a lot of posts. In fact, earlier in the month I contemplated retiring this blog because I didn't have much to say. I certainly got over that.

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This morning I was looking at the calendar on my wall and realized it was the last day of June. My first impulse was to say, "good riddance!" That was a strange reaction. Why would I think that? June was a good month. I had a week off, I played tons of tennis, I got to see K. It's summer, my favorite time of the year! Why would I have that reaction?

I'm cranky this morning. I haven't been getting enough sleep lately. I have too much to do and not enough time to do it in. Starting this Friday, I will be away from home nine out of the next ten days. This weekend I go camping with K. I come home next Tuesday, work one day on Wednesday, then on Thursday I leave for Snarkfest, my family's annual reunion. I need to get my guest room ready for a friend who is housesitting while I'm gone. My TiVo is filling up and I'm under a lot of pressure to watch stuff before it stops recording new things. I have two league tennis matches I need to make up, but those will have to wait til after my travels.

I am incapable of playing a tennis match that is under two hours. My style of play is such that all my matches last forever. I've been described as a wall, because every shot my opponent hits comes back to them. I don't hit it hard or place it very well, but I keep hitting it back until they make a mistake. I wish I could be more aggressive, but everytime I try, I lose. Last night I played for 3 hours. I lost in heartbreaking fashion, after having two chances to win the match (two "match points") late in the third set. I blew them both. I lost 7-6, 4-6, 5-7. The guy who beat me is a super nice guy who plays really well and I wish him the best. (He's no Brent.) But it hurt to put in three grueling hours, to be so close to victory, and then lose. I also went to bed late because the match lasted so long, so I'm sleep deprived today. On top of that, I have another league match tonight, and I'm hoping I won't be too sore, beat up, and tired from last night.

So I think my reaction to June ending was just a result of my lack of sleep. I can usually tell when my body is not getting what it needs, and that affects my mood. This is probably one of those times.

So, June, thanks for being so good to me. You're nothing like February, that miserable bag of frozen boogerpoop. I'll see you again in eleven months.

Cliche Alert Revisited

August, 2001: I was in an auditorium-like lecture hall, sitting in the raised seats in the back corner. From my vantage point, I could see the main door down below as grad students streamed into the room. It was our first day of library school.

One girl in particular caught my eye as she walked in. She was very short and very cute and very oblivious that I was staring at her. She was definitely the cutest girl in the room-- a room full of 100+ wannabe librarians.

That girl was K. And that day happened to be her birthday, but I wouldn't find that out til eight years later.

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I've always been on the lookout for cute girls. Like a dog who has no choice but to chase squirrels, I cannot turn off my lust for... well, lust. I don't know if all men are like this, or if women also constantly notice attractive men, but all my other priorities stop when I see someone who turns me on. Here's one of my deep dark secrets: I will, on occasion, change my course as I'm walking through a store to get a better look at a hot woman. I am not proud.

Even when I was married, I couldn't turn off my attraction to other women. There's a Corona commercial where a man and woman are watching the beach, and he man's head turns to watch a hot girl walk by. His woman then squeezes a lime on his face.



I probably did the same thing around SnarkEx at times. I hope I wasn't too obvious about it, but it's hard for me to hide my thoughts, so she probably noticed. It's not like I ever intend to do anything about my attraction. I'm just looking. I completely understand the difference between fantasy and reality. (Unlike SnarkEx, I didn't suggest that I have lunch with the person who turned me on, with the lame excuse that getting to know them better will get me over my crush... But that's another story.)

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What I think is amazing about being with K is, she is that hot girl! The one who turned my head on the first day of library school. It just seems too surreal for words that we are now dating, in love, and doing stuff that had heretofore been relegated to my wildest fantasies.

Two years ago I wrote on this blog about how the whole divorce thing seemed like a bad dream:

When I think about how fast all of this has happened, how a mere three months ago I was a happily married man, sometimes I imagine that this whole thing has been a [cliche alert!] surreal dream that I'll wake up from any day now. How can I be getting divorced? Other people may get divorced, but we have a happy marriage!

Now it feels like a dream of a different sort. How can I be dating K? Other people may be so lucky, but I never get the girl of my dreams!

Out of Sorts

I was out of sorts all of Sunday. I was grumpy and agitated and couldn't decide what to do with myself. I think I may be coming out of it today. A busy day at work will do that. But just in case, I want to apply some blog to it.

K and I talked late Sunday and sorta got over our misunderstanding. She thought I was checking up on her too much, when I was just trying to figure out when she would call. I think we're over it. But it was an odd conversation because there was an unusual number of lags where we ran out of things to say. That never happens. I chalked it up to us both being tired. She was on the train going home and I hadn't slept well the night before. Also, the one time I tried to nap the phone rang. (Whenever I want the phone to ring, all I have to do is try to nap.) Maybe this is just a natural ebb in our relationship. You can't have fireworks every day-- you'd be exhausted.

Last February I felt like our relationship was ebbing because we hadn't seen each other in so long. I thought we really needed to see each other to recharge our relationship. But we just saw each other last weekend, so that can't be the case now. Yesterday I ended our phone call by saying, "You need to go so you can miss me." She liked that.

We're going to see each other again this weekend. Yay. This will be the shortest turnaround time we've ever had: 12 days between visits. We're going camping, which will be a new experience for us. I'm not much of a camper, but I can endure it occasionally. I do like hiking and the outdoors, and trying new things, as long as there's not too much nature (bugs, heat, rain, lack of facilities) to inconvenience me. Hopefully I won't whine too much. The good thing is I'm going with K, who is not only sexy awesome hot, but also sexily awesomely organized. Today she sent me a list of all the things I'll need to bring.

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The Hair Issue Returns

Last October, the day K and I met in person for the first time in 7 years, I got a haircut. I wanted something new and different, and then immediately regretted it. It was embarrassingly short and showed way too much forehead. Since then I have gotten used to, and made some minor adjustments to, my new hairstyle. For a long time I've been happy with it.

A week before our Vermont trip in May, I got it cut again. At the time it felt much too short and I worried that it was terrible timing right before our trip. After a few days, though, it looked fine and the hair did not, in fact, ruin our vacation. Dodged a bullet there.

You see a pattern here? So why do I keep pushing the hair envelope?

Last weekend I got another haircut. Just a trim. I wanted it to look exactly as it did, only shorter. But the guy who usually cuts my hair wasn't there, so some old guy did it instead. He did a good job, except that it felt like the bangs were disproportionately long. Everything else looked fine.

Once home, in the mirror, the bangs felt way too long. Did he even cut them at all? In a moment of supreme and total stupidity and hubris, I thought, "Well, I can just trim the bangs myself." Snip, snip.

Now it looks horrible. Even worse than last October. Seriously, I look like I should be on Star Trek. Or at least at a Star Trek convention.

I'm so unhappy with it, I keep trying to fix it, which may or may not be making it worse. I know it will probably be fine once it grows out. It always does. But I only have four days til I see K. And this trip doesn't just involve her, but a bunch of her friends, too. It's one thing to ruin my own camping trip, but what if my hideous haircut ruins the trip for everyone?

This is why I hate going to the barber. It seems that every time I go, it ends in disaster.

Let Yourself Feel

A single friend of mine was telling me about a new acquaintance she'd made. I asked her if she was attracted to this person. She said they were dating someone, and she doesn't let herself like someone if they're not available.

That was a strange attitude to me. I've met lots of people I had a crush on who were otherwise unavailable (married, dating a good friend, etc.) If we had both been single, I'd have been all over them, but I could also acknowledge that they were off limits to me at the time. I don't consider it dangerous to know what I like and what I don't. It's nice to know there are people out there who do it for you, even if you can't act on it.

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There was a story on This American Life a few weeks ago about a guy with a rare neurological disorder. He would have these episodes where he would become paralyzed and couldn't move his body. It has to do with the part of the brain that shuts down your body when you're sleeping, so you don't actually act out all the things you dream about. This part of his brain was on the fritz, so it would shut down his body at random times when he was awake. What he noticed, however, was that the episodes were more common when he would feel a surge of positive emotion.

So any time he felt a rush of love for his wife or kids, he'd get paralyzed. At weddings, birthday parties, and during intimate moments with his wife, he was likely to loss all control of his muscles and go limp. The only way to prevent this, was to simply NOT allow himself to feel these positive emotions. To suppress love.

I can imagine surviving without a lot of things in this life. If necessary, I could probably forgo my favorite foods, a lot of creature comforts, my cats, even sex. But I can't imagine what kind of hell it would be to not allow myself to feel love or extreme happiness.

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Barring neurological disorders, most of us don't have much problem letting ourselves feel happiness. But anger is a different story. We love to suppress our anger. Last night I think I had a breakthrough, because I allowed myself to get mad at K.

For several days we'd been trying to figure out how to get our weekend phone date in. She's traveling to a wedding this weekend, and we'd been planning to talk Saturday after she got to her hotel. I had a tennis tournament to play in, and I didn't know what times I'd be available. It all would depend on whether I win or not, which is something you can't predict.

When I won my first match in the morning, I texted her to tell her when my next match would be, so she would know not to call then. She responded and asked if she should call tonight or tomorrow. I told her what times I would be available in the evening (ie, 4pm to 8 pm.) She didn't respond, but I figured she would call sometime during that window.

Meanwhile, I was trying to make plans with my brother and his family. We had tentatively talked about hanging out Saturday night. When I called him in the afternoon, he wasn't sure what they were doing, but said he'd call me when they had a plan.

After two grueling tennis matches under a blistering hot sun, I was exhausted and sore and threw myself onto the couch. This was the conclusion of my busiest tennis week of the year: three league matches and then two tournament matches in one day. My muscles ached all over and the sun had sapped all my energy. K texted me at 4:30 to tell me she was at the train station I'd been stuck at during a snowstorm during my first trip to see her. The station reminded her of me. I told her I was home and would be sacked out on the couch for several hours. (Implication: call any time.) I also asked her when she expected to get to her hotel.

The next three hours, I didn't hear from anyone. By the time my brother called, at 7:20, to tell me they were going bowling, I was too tired and sore to go out, especially to bowl. Plus, I still hadn't heard from K, and I thought we were supposed to have a phone date. So I stayed home. At 7:30 I texted K again: Are you at your hotel yet?

She responded and the subsequent exchange is what annoyed me. She said she didn't feel like talking, she just wanted to read. That's fine, but it would have been nice to let me know that. She seemed surprised that I was so "eager" to talk. I just wanted to know what was going on. I'd been trying to plan my evening around her phone call. Our entire exchange took place over text messages, which doesn't do a good job of conveying nuance. It's hard to have a meaningful discussion in 80 characters or less. So that probably added to the miscommunication. What angered me was how she implied that I was being needy. Maybe I was being needy, but I think it's perfectly reasonable to expect to be kept in the loop. If you don't want to talk, then at least tell me.

Suddenly, I was needy. Both of my evening plans had fallen through, and I couldn't decide what to do next. Watch TV? Watch a Netflik? Browse the web? Play SimCity? I was restless and couldn't decide what to do with myself. I was still sore and tired from all the tennis, and hadn't been able to tell anyone about my matches. It was one of those times when I was suddenly tired of living alone.

During our text exchange I tried to downplay my annoyance at K. I included lots of xoxo's and smiley faces to let her know that I wasn't upset. Why did I do that? I was upset. Just because I adore her and feel lucky to be with her doesn't mean I'm not allowed to get angry. And getting angry (or having her be angry at me) doesn't mean it's the end. We are committed to each other. It was a victory against my insecurity that I could let myself get angry at K. I was confident enough that my anger would not hurt the strong bond we have.

The old me may have played it cool and pretended that nothing was wrong, because I didn't want her to know I was upset. Instead, I took a tentative step and texted her that I thought she wanted to talk and I had planned my night around that. She said she was sorry and felt bad for the miscommunication.

More smiley faces and virtual hugs and we left it at that. I know that we're going to have to talk about this the next time we talk. I'm going to have to tell her I was upset, and why. Anger, disputes, and arguments are part of every relationship. No two human beings can interact intimately without some conflict. The key is how you resolve the conflict.

If I don't talk to K about this, the next time something like this happens I may explode disproportionately. My marriage ended, in part, because SnarkEx suppressed all her unhappy feelings and then let them all out at once with ,"I'm thinking of leaving you." Much better to acknowledge the anger now, let it out in little doses, talk through it, and resolve little issues before they become big ones.

I still love her and adore her, but I'm also letting myself feel angry.

Embargo

In the librarian world, there is a concept that academic journals use when they publish their content in an online library database. They will often have a one-year or six-month "embargo," which means you can't get the full-text of their articles online for six months to a year after they publish it in their print edition.

So for example, if you subscribe to the New Zealand Journal of Squid Eyeball Research, you can read the articles as soon as you get a paper copy of it delivered to your office (supposedly a disgusting office that smells of squid), but if you tried to look up the articles in a library database, you would only get the abstract and would have to wait six months to read the whole article. They do this to encourage people (ie. squid eyeball researchers) to subscribe to the print journal.

I have decided use this concept to introduce K to Snarkbutt Divorced. I'm sending her posts that are more than six months old. This seems to be a good compromise. I still get to show off the blog to her, she still gets to read my stuff, and I can continue to write without feeling like she's looking in. After all, what I write today won't be seen by her for six months, and by then, I will have moved on to completely new issues. It doesn't bother me for her to know what I was dealing with six months ago. That's old news.

The first post I sent her was the very first one in which I mentioned her. It was about night lights and feeling lonely, and during my meandering thoughts I made a passing reference to this obscure acquaintance:

I recently "friended" someone I knew from grad school on Facebook. (She's actually someone I went out with a few times, but she wasn't interested in me "in that way.") She's single, and according to her Facebook updates, she leads a fabulous single life. She's always going out of town to some music festival or camping trip, or doing activities like contra dancing and cooking class, and inviting friends over for dinner. Maybe she's not as happy and fulfilled as she presents herself on Facebook, but I envy her life. I envy how she seems to make being single work for her.

I ended the post with my fear that winter was coming and I was expecting it to be rough on my mental state:

I think I'm going to need more than just a night light.

When I sent that post to K, she responded with an email with the subject line, "More Than a Night Light." It's amazing to look back at that moment and see how the solution to the "night light" problem was buried earlier in the blog, in passing, about my FB friend with the fabulous single life. I never ever imagined when I wrote that how those two things would fit together!

So K is excited to be getting daily installments of my blog from last year. She said she likes reading my life as as story. And it will be fun to show her how I was feeling about her as we first became friends, and then more. Some of it may be embarrassing, but she already knows me pretty well. I don't think any of this will shock her.

Anybody But Brent

When I showed up for my league tennis match last night, I saw that we were playing Brent's team. I sidled up to our captain and said under my breath, "Anybody but Brent. I'll play anyone, I just don't want to play that motherflipper* again."

Brent is not his real name. His real name isn't Asshat Guy, either, although that's what I've called him on this blog before.

Aside from his antisocial tendencies, I have no fun when I play Brent. Win or lose, the matches are no fun. He takes forever to serve. I have to stand there and wait, all tensed up, while he composes himself as if he's Rafael Nadal. Half the time he doesn't like his toss so he catches it and starts again. He has a blistering serve-- when it goes in. But more often than not it doesn't, so either I stand there and watch it go by me, or watch it go out. It's tense and boring at the same time.

His shots are like his serve, very good, but terribly inconsistent. My strategy is just to keep the ball in play long enough for him to make a mistake. So I'm constantly on my heels, and my only chance of winning is giving him enough rope to hang himself. Even though I beat him more often than not, I don't like being so out of control like that. It's frustrating when he smashes balls right by me. In the mixed doubles league I'm in, he does the same thing to the middle-aged women, obnoxiously blasting balls by them. He only has one speed.

The worst part of it is that I keep having to play him. He's in all three leagues I'm in this summer. In the USTA league, where we play as a team, I keep getting paired up against him, even though the pairings are relatively random. (The captains don't know, for example, who's playing in what position from the other team, so it's not like they're pairing us up intentionally.)

*Not the word I actually used

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So guess who I played last night? Brent: the one person in all of Snarktown I didn't want to play. I just played him three weeks ago in this very same league. And I'll be playing him in a few weeks in my other league. And I'm sure he'll be playing in the tournament I've signed up for this weekend, because he's more of a tennis junkie as I am. (I suspect he has no life outside of tennis.)

This is my busiest tennis week of the year. I'm playing in all three of my leagues (Mon, Wed, Fri), Wimbledon is on my TiVo, and I'm playing in a tournament this weekend. There are only three tournaments a year in my town, and I usually only get to play in one or two a year, so this is an unusal event.

On top of that, thunderstorms keep hitting Snarktown. We've had like a dozen of them over the past two weeks. They keep disrupting my tennis plans. And they've led to a perfect storm of tennis stress. Brent and I were in the middle of our first set last night when the sky turned navy blue, the wind picked up, and the air got very cool. We all had to stop playing and go inside the tennis center. Any other week, our league can use the indoor courts as backup, but this week they're having a tennis camp for kids.

The director of the camp kept telling us they only needed the courts for another 5-15 minutes, then we could have them. Half an hour later, at 9 pm, we were able to resume our match. Because Brent is so interminably, ungodly slow, by the time the tennis center needed to close at 10, we were only halfway through the second set. All the other matches between our teams were long over. I was losing (6-7, 3-4), but I hadn't lost yet. I was angry at Brent for being so slow, and at the weather for being stormy yet again.

But then I met a new Asshat Guy. The captain of Brent's team made us stop, but then asked us what day we could finish up the match. (I guess that captains can't enter any of the team match scores until all the matches are finished. And apparently we have to play before our next match, which is next Wednesday.) Any other week this wouldn't be a problem, but Brent and I were both booked solid this week. Brent has another league match on Thursday. On Friday is mixed doubles. Saturday and Sunday is the tournament. On Monday I have a night class at work-- my only night class of the summer. On Tuesday I have to makeup the league match I'm missing on Monday for work. Then on Wednesday is our next team league match.

When Brent's captain heard all these complications, he blew up. He implied that our other commitments weren't as important as this one. "You made a commitment to this team," he said. I didn't take kindly to him lecturing me on commitments. "I was here all night," I said. He stormed off and shouted as he walked away, "FINISH IT!!!!"

Wow, what an ass. To Brent's credit, he didn't like his captain's boorish behavior-- he'd exploded like this before-- and Brent said he planned to quit the team after this match. It's funny how all my annoyance at Brent suddenly was directed at his asshole captain.

So after planning, Brent and I have scheduled a time to finish up our match. I'm not happy about having to continue on another day, but I guess it's better than losing to Brent. Anybody but Brent.

Oh, and by the way? The team score is currently 2-2, which means that Brent's and my match will decide the outcome of the whole team. My team's fate rests on my shoulders. Nothing like a little added pressure.

She Already Knew

That 20-minute window security risk I was so terrified of last week? K saw it. She knew exactly what it was.

And she didn't use it. She had the resolve and discipline to NOT read this blog. Because she knew I wasn't ready to show it to her yet. I was very impressed. Later she said she didn't understand how should could be so disciplined about not reading my blog, and yet so undisciplined about food. She's funny. And smart.

It turns out she had found my blog before. She's a librarian, after all. So she used her mad research skillz to googlestalk my blog. But like a fisherman who catches and releases, once she proved to herself that she could find it, she didn't read it. Again, that is some serious disciplined resolve.

Earlier in the weekend, before that revelation, there was an awkward moment when I wanted to check my email. I knew I might have messages in my inbox that had "Snarkbutt" in the subject line, and once she saw those she would know my rather distinct divorce blog pseudonym. So I said something like, "Uh, I need to check my mail, and uh, there might be message about my blog..." After a second she realized what I was saying and said, "Oh, so you want me to leave the room?" I felt terrible, because it made it seem like I had something to hide. Also, I just don't like it when she leaves the room. (But I love to watch her go-- wink, wink.)

But after we talked about her discovering the blog, it felt like a weight had been lifted. I told her that lately I'd been writing about whether I was ready to show the blog to her or not. She was surprised that I would consider it so soon, after only dating six months. That was reassuring-- she understands my fears. It was nice to be able to talk openly about the things I don't want her to read. Since I know that she knows who/what Snarkbutt is, I don't have to hide that from her anymore. It's liberating. As nerdy librarians, we even talked about other theoretical strategies she could have used to find the blog.

As for whether or not to "let" her read it now, I think I'm going to take a suggestion from one of my new blog friends. I'll send her individual posts, maybe some of them from the beginning when I first started mentioning her here. It will be a nice, slow transition to opening the blog up to her. Since our whole relationship has felt like a nice, slow transition, that will be fitting.

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Last week I wrote that this was our fifth super date weekend, but it actually was our sixth. Here's a summary:

1. Travel Day from Hell (December)
2. MLK Weekend (January)
3. Spice Alphabetization (March)
   
4. Spring Break (April)
   
5. Vermont! (May)
6. Disgustingly In Love (June)

It's interesting to compare those posts and see my attitude after each visit. The balance between excitement and insecurity shifts ever so slightly with each date weekend. At some point I keep expecting things to slow down and get boring. Instead, we just keep getting more and more into each other. We never have enough time to do all the things we want to do.

Yesterday in the airport, she hugged me and reminded me that this was our six-month anniversary. We both agreed that we're happy where we're at. Seeing each other once a month. Email, phone, chat, text, Facebook. Living our own single lives in separate cities. I don't feel the need to move things any faster or slower.

It's all good. Peace. Joy. Love. Happy summer.

Admit It

Scene: K is holding Monty, the stuffed moose I bought her in Vermont. She brought him with her to visit me this weekend.

K: Monty tells me you love me.
Me: I do love you, and I know that you love me, too...
K: I do.
Me: ...even though you don't like to admit it.
K: [laughs] "admit it"?

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I love her with all five of my senses.

I love how she looks.

I love how she sounds: the sound of her voice, the things she says, the other noises she makes.

I love how she smells.

Taste? I'm not going there.

And it should go without saying that I love her touch.

I was so happy when I came home from dropping her off at the airport and discovered that she had left her pajamas in my room. (She claims it was by accident. ) They smell like her, so I will keep them close and let them tell me that she loves me, just like Monty does for her.

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I think this blog has just crossed the line into Disgustingly-In-Love-Guy-Who-Overshares territory.

New Friends

Yesterday I was thinking that maybe it was time to let K see this blog, and wondered if maybe that meant it was time to wrap it up. Or at least take it in a new direction. Maybe this divorce/therapy gig has run its course.

Since then, I've had three new readers heap very generous praise upon the blog. In two days. I don't think I had had three new readers in the previous six months, and now this flurry of activity. Very weird, but inspiring. I think it's all due to making friends with the popular girl in the divorce blogging world. Thanks, Jo!

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If all goes as planned (flights on time, no weasel attacks during the night, etc.) I'm twelve hours from seeing K for our sixth super date weekend.

I'm also crazy in love.

That's all.

Security Risk

There's a moment in the original Star Wars movie when Luke Skywalker is examining the slaughter of a band of little Jawa people. He figures out that the slaughtered Jawas were the same ones who sold him his robots, and that stormtroopers had killed them because they were looking for his robots.

He says, "If they traced the robots here, they may have learned who they sold them to. And that would lead them... home!" Sheer panic and terror grips him as he connects the dots. Imperial stormtroopers may already be attacking his house! (In the next scene Luke encounters the gruesome corpses of his aunt and uncle outside their smoldering home.)

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Luke's moment of recognition and terror came to me yesterday, when I stupidly sent K an email with a link that, if she went to it at the right time, might have led her to connect the dots to this very blog. I can't really go into details without creating another security risk, which was plugged after about 20 minutes.

So there was a 20-minute window where K might have been able to find Snarkbutt Divorced. The first 4 minutes of that 20-minute window were the most dangerous, as it would have been obvious how to find this blog. After that I changed something, so the rest of the time would have made the connection a little more obscure, but she could have found it with a little digging. She is a librarian, after all.

So a huge four-minute window followed by a much smaller 16-minute one. Whether she saw it depends on the following factors:

1. How soon after I sent the email did K read it? (>20 minutes and I'm okay.)
   
2. It was another of my huge emails, and the link was one small part of it, near the end. Did she click to the link immediately? (>20 minutes and I'm okay.)
3. If she did go to the link during the "window," was it during the first four minutes, which would have clearly lead her to this blog, or the second 16 minutes, which would have taken a little more digging?
4. Even if she did find or suspect she'd found a link to my blog, did she still go there? She knows I have this blog, and she knows I'm not yet ready to show it to her. Would she be able to resist reading it? Could she really turn her eyes away from this gold mine? (If the roles were reversed, I don't know that I could!)

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But this near heart attack brings up a much larger issue. Maybe it's time to let K read the blog. I know she wants to. When we first got back in touch last year, she went through my public blog and read every single entry from the beginning. She appears to enjoy reading things I write. I've told her about this one, because it's impossible not to talk about such a big part of my life. It is my best friend. Lately she's made a lot of comments about how curious she is about it.

I want to show it to her. I really do. Someday. In some ways, this blog over the past six months has been a very long, detailed, neurotic love letter to her. I'm sure there are lots of parts that would flatter her, and would reassure her that I really did mean all those things I've told her in person.

But I would also like to make sure that we're at a certain point before she sees it. I don't know what point that is. (In the beginning I joked, only after we've been married for 10 years with three kids.) As long as I still feel the need to process out things, I guess I'd like to keep this separate from her. But that could take forever, couldn't it?

Here are my two main fears about giving her access to Snarkbutt Divorced:

1. She may be upset at things I reveal about her on this blog. Although I've tried really hard to respect her privacy (this blog is about my issues, not hers), sometimes there are grey areas. I hope she wouldn't be upset that I say anything too private about her.
2. This blog is my dark little room of neuroses. She may see all the insecurities that I have, which I've been trying to hide-- or at least tone down-- from her. In other words, I hope she wouldn't be upset that I say anything too private about myself.
   

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If I opened up this blog to K, it may mean the end of it. Certainly, it would change the content and tone, as she would have to be added to the list half dozen people I write it for. Maybe that's not such a bad thing.

But am I ready to take that step? Am I willing to risk the end of Snarkbutt? Do I even have a choice?

Belong

As a social human animal, I feel that my life is one long constant struggle to belong. But as I've written about before, I'm not a joiner. Every time I try to join a group, I don't feel like I'm a part of it. I don't belong. Relationships are complicated and hard. And group dynamics become exponentially more complicated with each additional person.

I think this may explain why I'm a duovert, and, in turn, why I'm so fixated on having a single, primary partner in my life. Because a group of two is the easiest group to belong to. I never worry about whether I belong when it's just me and one other person, because there's just two of us. If I'm not there, then the group doesn't even exist! How more essential could you be than that?

Not much else to add to this. Short post today.

Borderline

The captain of my tennis team told me that I have "mental toughness," which is why he had me play in the #1 singles position. I didn't let him down, pulling out a very close three-set victory, 10-8 in a tiebreaker.

I've received a lot of compliments in my life, but I don't think anyone has ever credited me with having "mental toughness" before. I guess it's true that, in some cases, I don't choke as bad as other people. There certainly are matches where I crumble too. For example, I still can't beat my oldest brother, despite the fact that I play 2-3 times a week, and he only plays once a year-- against me. But I guess outside of my little brother issues, I win enough close matches in league play to have earned my reputation for mental toughness.

If my tennis captain ever read this blog, he may change his opinion about my mental stability.

In so many ways I feel like I'm borderline. I have OCD tendencies, but I'm not really OCD. I have depressive tendencies, but I don't really suffer from Depression. I have mood swings that some may characterize as bipolar, but clinically I don't qualify for it. Sometimes I even think that I might have a mild form of Aspberger's, since I'm so anal about following rules and focusing on numbers and I can be very antisocial.

But when I read books about these conditions, or hear accounts from people who have them, I realize that I'm not really that extreme. Perhaps I'm just a psychological hypochondriac, always thinking I have this or that disorder.

I don't know what it is. Maybe I just have a simple case of Normal Human Emotions. Maybe everyone lives on an emotional roller coaster, I just scream the loudest on mine.

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Speaking of the roller coaster, I had a great weekend once I realized that K and I were not fighting. For about a day, I wasn't sure, because we had to abruptly end a FB chat when she had to catch a train, moments after I had made a joke that she said was offensive. Due to our very busy schedules, we weren't able to talk til the following afternoon. I didn't know if she was mad at me that whole time. So of course I kept imagining breakup scenarios.

If she was mad at me, she got over it. As luck would have it, the day before the offensive joke I had ordered a stuffed bear and flowers to be sent to her place. (The bear was to be added to her "clemenagerie." For the purposes of this blog, imagine my real first name is Clem, or an equivalent name that ends in "m". This is the fourth stuffed animal that I've given her, so she said she had quite the "clemenagerie" going. I'm starting to think I should pace myself with the stuffed animals, though, because at this rate, if we really do date for 5 years, she'll have a clemenagerie of 40 animals. And I'm not really a 40-stuffed-animals kind of boyfriend.) She was really happy to get the package, and then we talked for two hours.

Another crisis averted. But why do I immediately jump to thoughts of her dumping me any time there's any stress or discord in our relationship? What is wrong with me? It's got to be borderline something.

She's coming this weekend, so yay for me.

Gossip?

K and I have been having an ongoing discussion about gossip lately. She says she doesn't like to gossip, and I love to gossip. And yet, when I think I'm gossiping and she thinks she's not, we both enjoy the conversation. So maybe there's a disconnect in how we define the word.

Gossip to me is a valuable social tool that keeps people from violating social norms. For example, if you're afraid that everyone's going to talk about your scandalous affair, maybe you'll be less likely to have one.

But more importantly, I'm interested in stories of the human condition. If I want to tell an interesting story about someone I know (or don't), and the listener stops me with ,"That's none of my business," I want to respond with, "What's none of your business? Being a social creature among other humans?"

Of course, everyone has their own level of what they consider inappropriate. One man's "stories of the human condition" is another man's gossip. Some people won't even allow you to complain about a mutual acquaintance in their presence. (I hate people like that-- they probably have ugly ear warts.) Where I draw the line is when the gossip becomes false or speculative. If someone is spreading things that are untrue, or that they merely assume based on flimsy evidence, that annoys me. I like to know stuff, but only if it can be confirmed. I'm not a fan of urban legends told as truth.

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Anyway, K and I were having this ongoing discussion when I received my own piece of shocking gossipy news.

A friend of mine is splitting with his wife. He was my last friend who was still married to his first wife. I had no idea they were even having marital problems, but he's already sublet an apartment and moved out.

SnarkEx and I were becoming friends with him and his wife when she left me. Then last year, some close couplefriends of theirs got divorced. I didn't know their friends very well, but I was nevertheless shocked to hear they were splitting. I even blogged about it. At the time, I remember my friend telling me how upsetting it was for him and his wife to have so many couplefriends getting divorced. It prompted them to examine their own marriage, and they decided that they were doing fine.

That was last August. Either they weren't doing as fine as they let on, or their marriage took a serious nosedive in less than a year.

At the time, my friend talked about how divorce seems like a disease that spreads from couple to couple. Their friends who got divorced also had a set of long-term couplefriends who split around the same time.

And now my friends have just caught the divorce bug.

I don't know why I'm always so shocked to see another married couple come down with it. You'd think I'd be used to it by now, but I'm not. Another one bites the dust.

Green Dot of Love

Yesterday I said I didn't have enough to write about on this blog. (Then proceeded to write 884 words.) Today I have too many posts backed up in my head.

That's the first thing I need to contradict from yesterday.

The other thing is my feeling of confidence toward K. I knew as soon as I wrote it, I was tempting fate. I went home last night with an attack of insecurities. Maybe it was because I feared I'd gone overboard gushing about K. Or maybe because I hadn't "seen" K all day.

There are several ways that we have daily contact. We write long emails to each other. We send short messages (but that's less common.) We comment on each other's Facebook pages. We chat on Facebook. We talk on the phone. We text.

But even on those days when we don't do any of those things, we still "see" each other on Facebook. I'll see that she's posted something or that she's commented on one of her friend's pages. At the very least, I'll log on to FB and see the little green dot next to her name and icon that indicates she's logged on, too. I've developed a conditioned, happy response to that green dot. I know that she's online and safe and not trapped in a ditch somewhere underneath a bus.

Yesterday was unusual because there was no evidence of her having been online all day long. She didn't post anything. She didn't comment on any other pages (that showed up on her profile-- friends with higher security settings won't show up.) And of the dozen or so times that I logged on to FB, I never saw her comforting green dot.

So, of course, my overactive imagination started picturing all the grizzly things that might have befallen her. Maybe she's been kidnapped, or attacked, or hit by a bus and is unconscious in the hospital. Or maybe she's staying offline because she's trying to decide how to break up with me and doesn't want to "see" me online. This is all ridiculous, I know. I always have to remind myself in these situations: the simplest explanation is the most likely. She's away from her computer. Maybe at a meeting. Maybe she's writing a really long email to me but keeps getting interrupted by work. These are much more likely than her getting eaten by a bear in downtown K-tropolis.

I want to assure those of you shaking your heads and thinking, How does this guy even function? that these episodes have become much less frequent as time has gone on. These imaginative attacks of insecurity don't happen nearly as often as they did at the beginning. So I'm getting better.

As I left work yesterday, I sent her a quick text where I noted that I hadn't seen her online all day. She didn't respond for a few hours, because she didn't have her phone on. In those few hours I concocted countless scenarios of how this was all going to end badly. (See above.) I prepared myself for the worst. All the time, I kept assuring myself: the simplest explanation is most likely.

Here's the punchline to my whole stupid attack of insecurity: She emailed me last night before she saw my text. In it, she used almost the exact same line that I had texted her: I didn't see you online all day today. She missed my green dot as much as I had missed hers! It appears that we both kept logging in, but at different times, so we kept missing each other's green dots.

Isn't there a poem about lover's green dots on Facebook passing each other in the night? There should be.

More posts later, including some shocking news...

Lips and Assholes

I've been at a loss lately for what to write about on this blog. The divorce is behind me, and as K and I get closer, I have less of a need for this therapeutic outlet. This blog may not be my best friend anymore.

I don't have a whole lot of themes to write an entire blog entry around. Instead, there's a lot of little things, odds and ends, lips and assholes (as they would say in the hotdog world), that I could write about here.

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For example, last Friday night I finally ate a bag of frozen vegetables that had been left behind by SnarkEx. You know, when she moved out over two years ago. I know I didn't buy them, so they had to have been in my freezer since then. Since I've been dating K, who eats much better than I do, I decided I should have some vegetables with my leftover roast chicken for dinner. So I finally nuked the 2+-year-old veggies and had them as a side. I am not proud. They were passable.

The frozen veggies are part of the dwindling list of items in my house that point back to my life with SnarkEx. As time moves on, more and more things get thrown out or replaced, and that life fades a little more.

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Someone asked out K and she turned them down. She told them she was seeing someone. [Me!] She said she wasn't really interested in this person, so it's not clear whether it was convenient to have me as an excuse, or if she really is turning down dating opportunities to be with me.

I got a slight tremor of insecurity when she was telling me about hanging out with a newish friend of hers. Let's call the friend X. I don't have any evidence that K would be interested in dating X, but she once told me that X's ex-girlfriend was a lot like her (K). The old Snark would probably come right out and ask, "Are you attracted to X?" But the last time I asked my partner (SnarkEx) that question, it lead to my divorce. So I think I'll just let it be.

Here's my attitude. If K is going to leave me for someone else, there's not much I can do about it. Or, rather, all I can do is make sure that things are good from my end-- that I'm attentive and kind and loving and provide the kind of dog-like devotion and adoration that she can't get just anywhere. So I will do that. If despite that, she still decides to leave me, I'll know I did all I could. So instead of jealously viewing new friends of hers as a potential threat, and trying to figure out if she's attracted to them, I'll just take it at face value that these are her platonic friends. She'll tell me if that changes. Why jump off that bridge before I come to it?

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Speaking of jumping off bridges, I'm firmly convinced that I will never find anyone who matches me as well as K. I think she may have ruined me for all other women. I seriously can't imagine ever being this crazy about, this enamored with, this turned on by, anyone else.

You want an example of how bad I have it? Whenever I try to fantasize about other women, K ends up barging into the fantasy. A guy is supposed to fantasize about a centerfold, or a hot actress, or that cute barista at the coffee shop with the tongue ring and the celtic arm band tattoo. But I can't stop fantasizing about my own girlfriend! She seems to tap into something in my reptilian brain that I can't explain or describe. Some aspects of my attraction to her I've felt before with other women, but I've never had so many great qualities together in one person. She's the total package. Intellectually, emotionally, physically, visually, communicatively-- I can't imagine connecting with someone else like that.

That's not to say my life would be over if we break up. After a suitable mourning period, I may even date again. But I fear that I will probably always look back at K as the ideal-- the one by which to measure all other woman. I think if I did find someone who topped that measuring stick, my heart would explode.

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As K and I slowly continue to intertwine our lives in more substantial ways, I notice that I'm relying less on my other relationships. This more-eggs-in-one-basket practice is dangerous, I know, but I just don't have the energy to devote to her and my everyday life and do all the legwork for my other friendships. So I've demoted some people who I thought were good friends to a lesser role. It's more of an attitude adjustment than anything else. I doubt those friends would even notice any change in my behavior. But I'm no longer going to stress about not having enough of a social life outside of K.

I'll continue to keep my eyes open for social outlets and live my happy single life and try to make new friends, but I'm also going to enjoy the benefits of having a fabulous girlfriend.

Vacation, Gossip, Kupdate

My first summer vacation this year has been great, but I'm starting to feel like it may be bad for me. Like, that I've been eating the leisure equivalent of junk food for too long. I've fallen so far behind on my blogging and blogreading that I realized yesterday: I need to be back at work, where I'm forced to sit in front of a computer and can't do anything fun.

At home, there are too many distractions. The French Open is on my TiVo, computer games are on waiting for me on my PC, and a lot of little housekeeping issues keep springing up. Yesterday I woke up determined to write one of the six(!) blog entries I have in my head (among three blogs.) But I just couldn't get it done. Finally, I said, "Fuck it, I'm on vacation" and settled back onto the couch. I didn't shower or leave the house until 5 pm yesterday, when I played tennis.

So perhaps the Universe was just giving me a nudge when a thunderstorm knocked out power to 899 area homes last night. When I woke up this morning, there was no electricity in my home. That seriously limits the amount of things I had planned to get done. Was the Universe telling me to get my lazy ass out of the house? I did just that, and came over to my brother's. Here, there's not much I can do but blog. And ignore a gaggle children running around.

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SnarkEx News

K thinks this is a funny story, so I will tell it here. For the most part, SnarkEx is no longer a part of my consciousness. I hardly ever think about her. But every once in a while some reminder of our life together forces its way into my brain. A few weeks ago I had to call my car dealership to take my car in for some service. As I've maybe mentioned on this blog before, I sound like a woman on the phone, because I always get called ma'am. As I gave the guy my car information, he looked it up on his computer and said, "Oh, yeah, Mr. Snark Butt. And Mrs. SnarkEx Butt." It's been two and a half years since we bought the car, but I guess I had never taken her name off the account. (I hardly ever take my car to the dealer. I hate the dealer, but that's another story.) I thought of asking him to remove her name, but I didn't want to get into that whole discussion. Then, at the end of the conversation, after I'd made my appointment, the guy ends the conversation with, "Thanks, SnarkEx."

He called me by my ex-wife's name! It's one thing to think I'm some generic woman on the phone, but to think I'm my own ex-wife? Oh, the indignity!

I think I might have seen SnarkEx a few weeks ago. I hadn't seen her for two years, since we met for the Marital Settlement Agreement in May 2008. I'm not completely sure it was her, but as I was stopped at a stop sign, a much fatter version of the woman who used to be my wife walked across the crosswalk. I'm about 80% sure it was her, although I didn't know why SnarkEx would have been walking in that part of town at 8:00 am. She didn't look happy, so at least I had that going for me.

A friend emailed me last week to warn me to stay away from a certain bar on Friday night between 7:00 and 10:00 pm. It seems that SnarkEx was having a going-away gathering, and had invited the entire Facebook nation. She has some sort of internship in California this summer, so she can be close to her troll-like skeez of a boyfriend. I know more than a few people in this town who share my refrain of, "Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out!"

I was hoping that only three people would show up to her going-away thingy, but really, I didn't care one way or another. During her party, I was having a 3.5-hour conversation with the newest love of my life.

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K News

Speaking of K, the July crisis has been averted. There's a camping trip she's taking with some girlfriends over the long 4th of July weekend that I kind of wanted to invite myself to, but she was cagey about it. It turned out she was waiting to talk to her friend who was organizing it. When she found out that someone else was bringing her boyfriend, so that I wouldn't be the only +1 there, K felt okay to invite me. Which she did, and just yesterday I booked plane tickets to K-tropolis. (Looking over my Expedia account, it's the fourth time I've booked tickets to that destination since December.)

So here's what the immediate future holds for K and me:

• In three weeks she's visiting me in Snarktown.
• Over the 4th of July weekend we're going camping with her friends.
• In August I'll probably drive out to see her again during my second summer vacation.

Beyond that, nothing is firm, but I'm confident there will be another super date weekend.