Hey, look!  I’m still standing . . . to quote Elton John and his big goofy glasses.  Try not to pay attention to the fishing line wrapped around me, holding me up.  If it LOOKS like I’m standing, it totally counts. 

Earlier in the week we received approval from our first mortgage company (CitiMortgage) on the short sale.  The second mortgage company - who happens to be SunTrust - has been nothing but a pain in the ass since this all started.  Who can blame them, really?  The first mortgage company gets a chunk of cash, not to mention the gajillions of interest charged for the past 4 years.  SunTrust will get nothing.  Not a dime.  They could try to sue us - and maybe they will - but what are they going to sue us for?  A rental apartment?  A farting labrador?  Maybe a 401(k).  Still, our first mortgage company has told us we must close by June 3.  Happy to do that, but we can’t until SunTrust decides what they’re doing.  So now our realtor has to go back again and negotiate an extension for us. 

Frustrating as well because SunTrust is local, but has been impossible to reach.  Their customer service is, well, lacking at best, nearly criminal at worst.  Some departments only allow you to communicate with them via fax.  They apparently haven’t heard about telephones.  Or email.  Or they’ve heard of them, and have decided, “Meh.  Why bother with those when we can hide behind a fax machine?”  CitiMortgage on the other hand has been efficient, polite, easy to reach, and did I already say, efficient? It’s a much better organization and structure for this kind of unpleasantness. 

Our most fabulous (and incredibly patient) realtor asked me today if I was hanging in there.  Yep, I said.  I am.  But I am definitely getting to the end of my rope over here.  Between a divorce, packing this entire monstrosity alone, the emotional toll, caring for my children, dealing with a couple of friendships that really need to change or end, and my job (which suddenly is going nuts - yay money, boo timing!), I am truly very tired now.  I had a medical procedure done earlier in the week.  Normally I’d be bouncing off the walls by now, but it threw me for a loop.  I am still tired, cranky, sore, and unable to be excited about anything.  Forcing myself to run or swim laps is as appealing as scrubbing grout on my hands and knees, or listening to another Junie B. Jones book. 

I try to look around me and see progress.  But right now, as I look around, I realize that I’ve forgotten to take that picture down, or that I really haven’t cleaned out my closet, or that I’m going to find another unpleasant surprise in a drawer somewhere (like when I found my husband’s wedding ring shoved into a toothbrush holder and thrown into a drawer).  There are little “Fuck You’s” all over the house - excuse my French, but that’s what they are - and I don’t blame him.  Packing up and tearing apart is hard enough.  The FU’s are, as I enjoy saying, the cherry on my shit sundae. 

I’ve hired a moving company, gotten all of the utilities set up at the rental house, bought all of the paint, coerced, begged and threatened every person I know within a 50 mile radius into either helping with the kids or picking up a paintbrush or scrubbing a floor, packed about 1/4 of the house, sorted and sold over 150 books (and there’s still an attic full of them), removed all of my yard stuff that I can, and begun sorting the garage.  I’m making progress, but for someone who’s mantra has always been “just get it done”, I’m really not getting it done.  It’s May 6, and I am moving.  I am not ready. 

I’ve got two very difficult discussions scheduled for the next week.  I don’t want to have either of them, but I must.  Since I am always saying 2010 is the year of honesty, I also have to admit that 2010 is the year of admitting when enough is too much, and when I have to draw the line between being supportive and loyal and when I’m hurting myself by doing so.  Honesty is great in theory but it sucks to implement. 

In the meantime, if any of my readers are in the SunTrust short sale department, could y’all please install that crazy thing known as a telephone, and could you also light a fire under your ass?  We’re dying over here. 

Hi there!  Welcome to my new house as of June 1.  I’m calling it the Brady house; we are the dysfunctional version of them.  And there’s no Alice doing the cookin’ and cleanin’, unless you count Nikki.  And I don’t think she’s very Alice like, thank god - nor is she dating a butcher named Sam.  (that would be kind of cool, I admit) 

Nikki took a bunch of pictures while I was signing a lease.  I’m going to give you some comparisons below before you get to see the whole glorious set, but keep in mind:

1.  The renters in the house are older, and they have a TON of furniture.  Grandma furniture.  They have twice the amount of furniture the house can really hold.  And two dogs.
2.  There is some work that needs to be done before we move in.  Like peeling paint on the bathroom ceiling.
3.  Look beyond the clutter to the potential that is this sprawling brick rancher on a fabulously calm and unpretentious street, in a fabulous school district.  That’s what I’ve been doing.

My current master bathroom:

My new master bathroom:

My current kitchen:

My new kitchen:

My current dining room:

My new dining room:

My current family room:

My new family room:

I kind of love the house.  I love that it’s smaller and I can clean the whole thing, from top to bottom, in less than an hour. I love the big garage with the storage space, the huge yard, the porch and the patio.  I do not love the master bathroom or any of the closets, but Sara will tell you that downsizing can be a great way to get rid of stuff you don’t need.  I will miss my sunroom and I will miss the pond, but I will not miss the mortgage, the majority of the neighbors, or the 4th graders being told to bring smoked salmon in for a Thanksgiving feast in the local neighborhood school.  I will miss the kitchen - a little bit. I won’t miss seeing the granite that every other West End mom has in their stainless steel kitchen.  I like that my friends will come to my house and be comfortable, and won’t feel like they are stuck with someone who is stuck up.  I like that my house will be cozy instead of sprawling, and best of all, I like that my new home will have character.

The girls seemed to like it, though they don’t really get it.  They spent most of the time on the screen porch jumping on a mini trampoline.  On the way over, Lily asked again about schools. I broached the subject of her changing schools next year - the school near the house is within walking distance and excellent.  She immediately started crying.  I told her we hadn’t made any decisions yet, but personally I think it would be easier for them to switch schools now instead of waiting. That way, Arden can start at her new school and not have to switch in first grade, and Lily can get her feet settled in 2nd grade.  It makes me sad that Arden won’t have the same Kindergarten teacher Lily did, but there are more - way more - traumatic experiences in life than that one.

The house is a big change for me.  Hopefully it will less for them.  They are excited about having bunk beds and sharing a room. I’ll put their pretty beds into storage, and repeat the mantra that this is a temporary thing for me.  I’m going to enjoy the ride.

I love the cheesy phrase “Is that the light at the end of the tunnel, or just an oncoming train?”  It sums up any kind of journey, or deviation from how your life was supposed to look. 

So, I’m not sure what the light is right now.  My heart tells me it’s the end of this particular tunnel, but I’m not dumb enough to assume that’s the only tunnel.  The dark parts make the light so much brighter. 

The house sold.  We are now waiting on bank approval for the short sale.  Our first mortgage company will probably grant it; the second, well, who knows. They aren’t going to get paid at all.  President Obama recently announced a new program that is supposed to help people in our exact situation, where the 2nd mortgage company holds up the short sale.  Not sure it’s going to be really underway in time to help us, but hopefully it will help others.  Today contractors are being deployed to look at a “huge crack” in the garage floor.  It was there when we bought it, but our home inspector never said a word about it.  I just assumed all garage floors cracked over time.  Stupid me. 

I know the people buying our house.  Their daughter is a good friend of Lily’s.  I haven’t gotten around to telling her that in all probability, her friend who has spent the night here before, may be living in “her” bedroom.  I had a mini-pity party yesterday as I looked at the first rental house on the list.  It was quite undesirable.  Arden’s first words as we pull up to the house:  “This house is HIDEOUS, Mama!”  Lily’s words, a few minutes later, “What is that SMELL?”  followed quickly by a whispered, “Mommy, I don’t want to live here.  This house is scary!”  Scarring my children by looking at random weird houses is really not fun.

It was a cross between the homestead on Little House on the Prairie and a crack house.  $1200/month I might add.  Pass.  Next.  Looking at 3 more today and one tomorrow.

The Property and Settlement Agreement (a nice way to say, All The Crap We Agree To Before We Can Get Divorced) is signed.  Neither of us got everything we wanted.  Actually, Mike wanted none of this entire thing, so he really got the short end of the stick.  I am still trying to figure out how I’m going to live on my monthly allotment.  When I heard the papers had been signed, I was on my way to Yorktown to visit Anja and family.  I cried in the car.  I was careful not to get snot on the interior, however. 

A few people have made it clear they have no sympathy for me.  I don’t want sympathy so that works fine for me.  What these people don’t get is that even though this was my “idea”, it’s still hard. It’s hard to get your marriage boiled down on 17 pieces of paper with neat paragraphs and lines dividing your assets and debts, dividing the two of you.  If marriage is an unnatural state, as many have asserted, divorce is a genetically engineered goat with 5 heads. 

I cried again last night while eating cheap Mexican food with Robey and Nicole. It’s easy to point to my hospitalization as the reason for my divorce.  Writing me off as crazy is a quick way to say, “She’s stupid, and doesn’t know what she’s doing.”  I personally believe that my visit to CrazyTown was the end result of not being crazy, and not the other way around.  There were some factors that finally pushed me to separate from my husband, and those factors pushed my brain to separate from my body.  If it makes it easier for others to write off my behavior as irrational and bipolar, I’m okay with that.  It fits into a nice box and is easily dismissed. 

That is not what happened, however. 

The factors that led me to the place where I realized how it really was for me are hard for me to look at now.  I don’t want to be reminded of anything that resembles the hospital, the music I was listening to at the time, the smell of the ambulance, or my lack of sleep.  Something happened last week that reminded me of that time in my life, and it threw me for a huge loop.  I couldn’t figure out why at first.  Robey kept poking at me last night, asking questions, digging.  She knew I hadn’t figured it out yet.  Turns out I associate many of those things with the end of my marriage, and looking at them even months out is very, very painful.  It was truly the worst time of my life.  I was weak, I was needy, I was exhausted, and I wasn’t rational.  It is an understatement to say that I wasn’t acting as I normally did.  No one wants to look at that kind of stuff again, once you are past it.  Being forced to look at it wrecked me for a couple of days.  I didn’t even bring it up in therapy.  I promise to next week. 

There are many endings happening right now, followed closely by beginnings.  I’m started to feel less like I’m living in a nightmare and more like I’m living in a resigned state.  Resignation by its very nature is not a negative state.  It means finished and accepting.  I am resigning from my old life, and starting a new one.  It may not be the prettiest year of my life in terms of finances or high end furnishings, and unless Robey can get me a big discount on designer jeans, it won’t be a year of dressing well either.  It has been harder than I’d like to admit letting go of the house and the suburban perfectness that is Wyndham.  I hate it, but seeing my kids looking at me with big eyes made me want to crawl under the Lexus SUVs in the carpool lane at school and end it all. 

(reality:  kids are resilient, and pretty bedrooms don’t equal happy children)

(reality:  i am not going to shrivel and die without a sunken tub or a screened porch or grass to cut)

For now, one major obstacle is over.  We wait to sell the house; I wait to sign a lease.  After that, there is a wait for the divorce to be final - which will be at the end of August.  And after that, I find out if it’s a train or a beautiful blue sky with lots of sunshine. 

I’m sitting here staring at would could be possibly the biggest pile of clean yet unfolded laundry I’ve ever seen.  What do I do when confronted with laundry?  I blog. 

I also had to go to Walmart today.  I couldn’t believe how easy it is to shop there - at 8.30 in the morning.  I had almost escaped without any Walmart experiences (you know, like seeing a child beaten in the toy aisle, a baby running around barefoot in a dirty diaper, really fat people in spandex - you get the picture) when while checking out, I caught sight of a woman pushing a child in a shopping cart.  The little girl was cute and probably about 3 years old.  And what was she eating for breakfast?  The breakfast of champions:  a Coke.  A regular Coke in a plastic bottle.  Okay first of all, hello caffeine - what 3 year old needs it?  Second of all - well, I don’t even need to discuss the nutritional value of a Coke for a toddler.  My head said, “Don’t Judge!” but it was too late.  I can never escape Walmart without finding SOMETHING or SOMEONE to judge. 

Mike is spending the week out of the house. I made it through last week.  It was odd that the only horrible night I had was during the week.  I think that had more to do with recovering from what could be described as the world’s most intense 12 hour stomach flu (the house was nicknamed “The Vomitorium” because with the exception of Mike, we all had it).  Every time I’m sick, I have one bad day during recovery where I just am depressed and cranky.  I was dreading the weekend and while I missed the girls a bunch, I was very busy.  I also spent a lot of time working on the room, hanging curtains and bringing pieces of furniture back so that the room feels less like a place to crash and sleep and more like a place to hang out.  I also met the downstairs tenant.  Her name is Kristine and she’s fun, nice, and we have a lot in common.  She was kind enough to invite me to a movie with another friend of hers, who made delicious tilapia and acted like it was no big deal that a complete stranger was horning in on her evening with Kristine. 

This week, I’m enjoying being back home with the girls.  I’m not enjoying the housework but as Ethan Hawke said, “Reality Bites”. 

That’s all this blog is going to be about for now. I hope you like rainbows, because you’re going to be seeing a lot of them. 

By the way, I wanted to find a cool geeky image of a rainbow.  Instead I found this one. Hopefully you find it as entirely disturbing as I do.  It’s a unicorn peeing a rainbow.  And that, my friends, is what I’m all about.