Islay Girl

Out of context

What was said:

Islaygirl [complaining about consultants]: This thing is really driving me nuts. On the one hand I don't want to deal with them, on the other hand I'm like, 'OK, I need to find a way to deal was this.' I was even thinking about it in the shower this morning. [Islaygirl mimes shampooing hair] 

Thinking Fashionista: This isn't your problem. So you're in the shower this morning thinking, 'What am I going to do with these guys' when what you need to do is tell [other consultants] to deal with it.

What co-worker heard 

(I would swear he's my long-lost younger brother. We'll call him SMEAD.): 

"So you're in the shower this morning thinking, 'What am I going to do with these guys?' "

Smead [calling from other office]: I've got to stop coming into these conversations halfway through.

Refocusing.

1. I didn't go on the date. Whatever. I had seen enough.

2. I've been listening to a lot of Bach lately. Specifically the Concerto in E Major for Violin and Orchestra and the Concerto in C Minor for Violin and Oboe. But ESPECIALLY the The Concerto in A Minor for Violin and Orchestra  and the Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins and Orchestra. 

I tend to listen to Bach when ... well, actually, if I'm listening to classical, it's probably Bach, but I listen to Bach when life is just too knotty to deal with. When I'm not exactly sure what's going on and think that letting it stew off to the side is the best course of action. I'll be over here, listening to Bach. The winter of 1996 I listened to the Bach Cello Suites almost nonstop. 

3. It was 118 today.

4. i quit one of my online things. I'll keep the blog, but something else has to go. 

5. I'm going to see The Love Guru tonight. I'd like to see something silly, and that definitely qualifies.

Weenie.

I'm really (stupidly) struggling with the HH having a girlfriend, and i KNOW i don't want him back, i think i what i want back is the possibility of what our life together could have been, and seeing him dating just dredges everything up. 

last night i had a dream that we were getting back together, and then something happened and i realized we weren't (not too differently from when i thought we were trying to work things out and i discover the Little Internet Problem) -- and i woke up and just felt horrible, like it had all just happened all over again.

i know that i wasn't living in reality before, and i know that things were seriously bad for a long time, but i remember the good stuff and really, really miss it (not so much with him, per se, just to have it at all). 

i'm a big weenie. it just makes me feel like i've learned NOTHING to even be having these dreams, you know? Like clearly somewhere I haven't accepted that this didn't work. 

it's just so frustrating. and part of me thinks i could move on if i would just meet someone and blah-de-blah, but I don't really want to meet anyone. In fact, I'm supposed to be going on a date tomorrow night, no pressure, and I don't even want to go in the slightest bit. I thought I did, and there's nothing wrong with the guy, but even the beginnings of the whole mating dance just make me want to back away and not even go there. 

Which of course begs the question, am I just gun-shy and do I need to get out there, or is this something I should leave alone until I'm in a better place? Or am I just setting myself for what I imagine as some sort of Valerie Harper in the 70s-like existence where i'm The Single Mom and Dedicate Myself to Work and Children and every now and then have a date? 

But honestly (and my sisters will vouch for this) this is the first time in my life (well, that lasted longer than a week or two) when I don't feel like my sole goal in life is to find a husband/boyfriend/lover. Yeah, I'd like to be with someone, but not like I used to, where whoever it was was Mr. Perfect because I was going to tie myself up in knots until i made it perfect.

Of course, this could all just be an extended narrative to talk myself into getting OUT of that date tomorrow night.

Why I hate banks.

So, today, I finally cancel my BillPay service at Wells Fargo, because they charge me $6.95 a month for something B of A used to do for free (never mind that B of A screwed up in so many other ways). 

I cancelled this in part because I really only used it for one bill (the car payment) and also because it just pissed me off to pay for the service. 

So last week I register on the Chase site (they hold my car loan). Today, (*stupidly*) I cancel the BillPay and then go to Chase to pay my bill. Where I am informed of a TEN DOLLAR charge to pay online. WTF? 

Yes, I noticed that the $6.95 was less than the $10. And both of them are less than the $20 late fee I'll get if i send the damn thing through the mail. (You remember the mail, right? The guys in blue with the little Jeeps and the steering wheels on the British side?)

So. The least expensive option is to re-register for BillPay. You're killing me, people. 

And yes, I know i cut it a little close, but it was either mortgage or car payment last paycheck, and you can guess what won.

Good/Bad

Good: Season 2 of Mad Men starts this summer

Bad: It doesn't premiere until July 27.

Most. awkward. conversation. ever.

Asked the HH if he was going to introduce his girlfriend to the Wee One, because she's been talking about it, etc.

HE DENIED HE HAS A GIRLFRIEND.

Of course, too late, I thought of what I should have responded: "Well, The Woman Whose Bed You Can't Be Bothered To Crawl Out of To Answer Your Phone When Your Daughter Calls."

or even better,

"I wonder how she'd feel to hear you say that."

But instead i just uttered the all-encompassing, "Well. Whatever."

By the end of the conversation he had (as usual) backtracked and contradicted himself three or four times (It's just a friend. She's just someone I see. It's not serious. I wouldn't call her my girlfriend.) and said that maybe he would introduce them.

I said that i was only bringing it up because the Wee One was talking to me about it, not because I want her to meet the girlfriend. He spluttered. Idiot.

The upshot though, was that he agreed to pay for whatever babysitter I deemed necessary. Bring on the nannies.

Time to put on the big-girl pants

The HH is such a ~convenient~ target when I'm feeling pressured that I made myself sit down this morning and I drew up a little graph with these headers: 

What's Bothering Me?

When Is This Likely To End?

Possible Solutions. 

So I wrote down everything that was stressing me out, from dissatisfaction at work to one rather long entry that began 'pissed off in general.' 

Then I tried to quantify how long these pains in my bottom were likely to be around, and are they worth my stressing? 

Then, the aptly titled Possible Solutions included everything from daydream-like homicidal incidents in the HH's parking lot to getting up early to work a bit before taking the Wee One to camp.

When I was done, I felt much better. I just kept telling myself (through teeth that really ought to be gritted to nubs right now) that I needed to focus on what was best for the Wee One, and that I needed to ask myself what I wanted to get out of any of these possible confrontations. 

So after all my self-righteous (thought not entirely unjustified, come ON) whinging and whining the past couple days (read: years), i thought I'd take a fresh look at the financial landscape. 

The family courts here have a convenient little support calculator where you just plug in all the variables and it tells you how much child support each party is responsible for. I just redid the calculations, just to see if we were still in line, and even if he gave up ALL time with her (noncustodial parents get credit for time the child is with them) I'm still coming out better off under the current calculation than if we went and refigured it with today's numbers. (Not sure why, but this is a case where I won't be asking why.) 

Morally, i feel like he should help out more, just because he's her father and i'm staying in this God-forsaken state because of him. But legally, i suppose i'm coming out ahead and i just need to suck it up. 

And if money is such an issue, the obvious thing is to take her out of private school, and we all know i'd scrub floors before i put her in a kindergarten in the Phoenix public schools. 

I just need to pretend he doesn't exist. That i'm stuck in Arizona because of the economy and not because of the divorce decree. 

Whenever I'm struggling, I go to him (mentally) and enumerate the ways he's a shitty parent, and (usually mentally) demand that he fix it. And when I'm not struggling, I'm happy for him to be an uninvolved parent, because I don't want him around, and I'd prefer that he just disappear. 

Of course, all this helpful self-discovery doesn't solve the problem of tomorrow at 2.30 when I need to leave work 2 hours early to go pick up the Wee One, but I'll worry about that later. 

In the meantime, I'll be over here. Growing. *

*Ubiquitous "When Harry Met Sally" reference. 

Oh, God, I just couldn't do it.

OK, so I tried to stop the blog. I tried.

But you know, all week i kept thinking BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG.

And people would talk to me and it would sound like BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG.

And i'd sit at my computer and every click would be BLOGITY BLOG BLOG.

So i'm back. 

OK, so the HH texted me at 3.43 Sunday morning (i.e. late Saturday night) and asked if he could move the visitation for Sunday to later. The special Father's Day visitation that I had bent over backwards for the Wee One to be able to see him. 

I got the message at 7 the next morning and texted back, 'No, we can't move the time. Sorry.'

He doesn't show up or call til about half an hour after he was supposed to show up. I let him see her because she was so excited for Father's Day. He was clearly ready to skip the whole thing, when he called he said, "Oh, I'm sorry I missed you, I guess we'll just ..." and I cut him off and said, 'Oh no, the Wee One would have been so disappointed." 

And then I go into the master bedroom closet and read him the riot act about his social life interfering with visitation. Then today? When she's sick and can't go to camp and I text him to see if he can take her for an hour? Nothing. Nothing an hour later. Nothing an hour after that. Then I get a call saying, "Oh, wow, I can't imagine why I didn't hear your call ..."

Yeah, whatever. 

I'm going to hire a part-time sitter and get him to pay for it. This is ridiculous. 

Solsbury Hill

I just spent the past hour or so looking at photographs and drinking cosmopolitans (not a good combo, btw) and I'm just sitting here wondering what the hell I've been doing with my life for the past 15 years or so. 

I looked much younger and happier in 1994, people. I found the Iconic IslayGirl Picture of me and the HH and 1st husband and the HH's first wife, back when we were in the first round of marriage, before anything at all had happened, and I just think, man, i was young and stupid. 

And when I look at the photos of my house in 1993 compared with my house now ... I like my house in 1993 better. And all the books on the bookshelves seem to be the same. And my hair looks shinier. 

What ~is~ amusing is the technology. There's one photo of me at the end of college with my giant computer behind me on the desk, and the telephone (land line) on the desk, and the stereo components on the shelves ... now all that is one-tenth the size and essentially all sitting next to me as I type (macbook, ipod and treo). I still have the same wristwatch though. 

The only obvious change is that in 1994 there are pictures of me with HH's daughter from his first marriage, and now all the pictures are of my daughter. And in 1994 I hadn't been through 13 years with the HH. 

I keep thinking of the points along the way where I was ~handed~ the out. 

I could have left him the first time he acted insane, instead of thinking he was tortured and sad and needed me. 

I could have not gone back after we had been split up for a year. 

On our wedding day when I was almost throwing up with anxiety of what I was getting myself into, I could have called it off. When he told me he didn't want to have kids I could have left. 

When I caught him shaking the Wee One one time when she wouldn't stop crying I should have left. 

When I found out about the Little Internet Problem I should have left. 

When I found out he lied all through couples therapy I should have left. 

When he flipped out one New Year's Eve and destroyed the cutting boards in the kitchen with a Wusthof knife I should have packed up and walked out right then and not looked back. 

What's really frightening is that I waited almost a year after that incident before I filed for divorce. Almost. a. year. 

Horrifying, isn't it, what I did in the name of thinking i was just doing what I was supposed to if I was committed to the marriage. Committed to the asylum would have been more like it. 

I suppose that's the difference between now and 1994. It took a long, long time, but at least I know I won't ever, ever be in that situation again.

Unfit HH

I'll keep this simple. 

The Wee One fell and had to have neurosurgery when she was about 20 months old. She recovered completely and can do pretty much whatever she wants, but nothing involving stuff I'd probably veto anyway -- headers in soccer or powder puff football. 

I remember looking at her on the examining table and trying to imagine her coordinated enough to consider any sport, with those pudgy little feet. 

Today she told me that when she and Daddy play soccer he lets her try headers. 

This tells you exactly how little he's thinking. We had a little chat tonight and I explained that while doing them with her size 4 soccer ball was unlikely to cause injury, sometime he's not going to be around to bounce it gently off her head and it's not going to be with a baby soccer ball, and does he (HE'S A SPORTSWRITER, PEOPLE) recall the frightening statistics on kids and headers? 

And these are previously uninjured kids and headers, not LITTLE GIRLS WHO HAVE ALREADY HAD THEIR SKULLS DRILLED OPEN.

The man is an idiot.