Dirty boundary violator.

I'm reading the boundary book and, like reading medical texts, I seem to have all the boundary issues. I'm a compliant avoidant controller. This means I feel controlled and guilty by others and can't say no while at the same time I'm unwilling to accept help from others, plus I can't hear no and manipulatively violate others'  boundaries. What a piece of work.
I see now that I try to control people with my anger. Rats. This may be why Big Guns sometimes looks confused and will ask what he did. Nothing, really, that's just me trying to control you. Also why ex used to say our house wasn't big enough for me and my anger. Yuck. I'm disgusted with myself. Here's my family's motto:
Anger. It's how to make things happen.
Or:
I yell. You jump.
How did this happen? My parents, of course, not setting limits or being consistent during my rapprochement phase from 18 months to three years, plus my innate character traits (I'm soft on the outside but steely on the inside), depravity and resistance to humility. The perfect recipe. Self help books aren't much fun to read.

It's spring; things are happening in the garden.

 My back fence has been leaning for years. Ex propped it up with a 2 x 4 which kept it from falling onto a child. Last week I removed the boys' old play structure and the fence, it went. It looked like this:

I did what any grown woman would do; I called my dad. Now it looks like this:

My father is not a construction guy; he's a doctor guy. Mostly he's a do-it-yourselfer. When ex was here, my father expected ex to participate or at the very least be grateful for the help. It wasn't like that. Ex would rather hemorrhage his last dime than pick up a hammer. This project went so well without him. I helped. My brother helped. The neighbor pitched in money. I also got these out of the deal:

Voila!! A raised bed for vegetables! I've wanted one for years, maybe my whole life. After bed and before fence fixing, my baby mentioned wanting a tree house and 29 hours later we had this:

(It was my idea to use the trimmed branches for railings. I know--genius.)

Spring has been especially meaningful to me this year coming out of a hellish fall and winter. A winter garden is depressing and I'm just so pleased to see mine bursting into life now. I forgot what was there. All this work I've put into it in the past which lay dormant for months is showing now. It feels like a gift but it's not; it's a reward for my efforts. Behold the lilac bush:

I have waited and watched this bush do nothing for four years and this is the year it has chosen to bloom. Coincidence? Maybe.

At any rate, the whole garden is a good metaphor for the work I've been doing in my life. I don't see immediate results. Sometimes it takes years for the payoffs but I must keep laying the groundwork, fertilizing, watering, and weeding and sometime down the road the rewards, however small, may appear.

Inching toward acceptance.

Did you hear? I'm getting divorced. Really. I'm not in any great hurry -- no need to bleed out dollars at the mediators and finalize things (although there is this issue of the unresolved December bonus check!).

I have entered a phase of ennui. I'm moving forward, planting vegetables, baking cookies, plucking my eyebrows, acting as if I'm a well-adjusted, non-suicidal, happening single mom who shops at thrift stores because she's uber hip, not poor.

Movie review: I love you, man.

Watched this on DVD with my big boy and Big Guns. According to Common Sense, some website my baby's friend's mother uses to evaluate movie appropriateness, this movie is practically pornography and not OK for anyone under 16. Fortunately, big boy had already seen it at that unplanned sleepover ex didn't have a problem with.

Anyway, I thought the movie was funny. It's about a girly man who's getting married and freaks out because he has no friends and his fiancee has six bridesmaids. The guy is so socially awkward, Big Guns had to leave the room several times under the guise of having to pee. (He admitted later he was embarrassed for the character.) The fiance eventually makes a friend, more funny stuff happens, he breaks up with the friend, he gets married. There are blow job jokes and much bantering about sex. I watched big boy to see if he had any idea what they were talking about. It was hard to tell. Certainly I've never explained oral sex to him. Maybe his friends filled him in. Maybe that's what ex was hoping would happen on the "adventure."

On a different note, ex was a lot like this movie character. He had and continues to have no male friends. I had to whittle my bridal party down to two since he could only come up with his brother and my best friend's ex husband to stand up for him. Ex used to joke that he was a "male lesbian" and preferred women to men. Then again, he didn't/doesn't have many female friends either. And he doesn't keep friends. I collect people like I collect books. Once you're in, you just don't ever leave my shelf. Try it. I'll find you. And now that there's Facebook, no friend can hide from me.

Rent I love you, man. I think you'll like it.

Boundaries are a bitch.

When a gal feels buffeted about by life, rudder- and anchor-less, ineffectual and hopeless, that gal is having boundary issues.

My wise therapist suggested that I may have this problem and it might serve me to read this book -- Boundaries: when to say no, when to say yes to take control of your life.

I used to think that having boundaries made me appear inflexible and -- horrors! -- selfish. I used to think it was just saying "no" all the time and that people would -- horrors! -- NOT like me if I didn't always give them what they wanted. So, every request from every person -- including my cats, I kid you not -- takes equal precedence in my head. It's very loud in there. I can't hear myself think. Then I get angry because I like my own thoughts. According to the book and the author's example of a stressed-out mother of two (coincidence?), this is text-book boundary trouble.

I can't tell you what boundaries are because I haven't finished the book but clearly it helps to have them. People appreciate it when you give them limits. It helps your children be able to delay gratification when you don't give them what they want -- RIGHT NOW -- so that they will stop talking at you and you can get back to your own thinking.

I'll keep y'all posted.

Must never call ex.

So I called ex (his title doesn't get an article anymore) to give him first rights of refusal for watching our baby (who is 11.) Ex answered his phone (an amazing first) and refused ("I have plans"). This upset me. Why? Of course he has plans. Hopefully they include an enema and deep tissue gum cleaning and they could. He doesn't say what he's doing, I just assume it will be something more fun and fabulous than my need to work at the school's rummage sale in order to complete the volunteer hours required at the baby's school. (Hours which ex says I should be responsible for "as long as I'm not working." He thinks I do nothing but blog and eat bonbons all day.) Oh, my plans also included a drive to Big Guns' to return his phone charger that he forgot at our house. That's my glamorous life. Tomorrow I get to clean the guinea pig cages.

Discoveries at the discovery shop.

This has been a terrible week -- ping-ponging around the grief cycle from sadness to anger to acceptance to sadness. I've had a few snotty cries in the car. I tried some retail therapy yesterday and hit a few thrift stores looking for a mirror for Big Gun's new place. I'm kind of a snob re: buying clothes at thrift stores. Furniture? Yes. But stuff that's been on other people's bodies? Ew. At the Discovery Shop in Menlo Park I walked past a rack of really cute stuff with the tags still attached from an expensive boutique up the street. For instance, a baby blue, butter-soft Escada leather jacket, a Betsey Johnson suit, Nanette Lepore tops, etc. Most were my size. Here's what I bought.

This Nicole Farhi dress (got home and realized it's linen, which I hate but it's so cute, very Audrey Hepburn, full skirt, cinched waist):

This Mexx sweater:

And the piece de resistance -- these really cute flats:

The damage? $90. I think I paid too much for the dress ($50) especially since it's linen. The sweater was $20 and the shoes $15. Inspired, from there I headed to Afterwards which is a consignment shop where women sell their Chanel and Dolce Gabbana from last season, but after the thrift store the prices seemed too dear for this cheap skate. I'm working my way down the retail chain from Forever 21 to Goodwill but up the environmental chain since I'm keeping this stuff out of landfill, right?

Split: Book Review

I just finished Suzanne Finnamore's memoir of divorce, Split, and I liked it. I should say that many years ago a friend gave me Finnnamore's first published book: Otherwise Engaged, which was a bestseller and which my friend loved. I didn't. I had just quit my job to stay home with my second baby and was having an identity crisis, mixed with an intense fear of going on food stamps, topped by severe, prolonged sleep deprivation. Finnamore, on the other hand, was writing about falling in love with Mr. Perfect and days of wacky wedding planning. Furthermore, she was an advertising copywriter like I had been but way way WAY more successful. Honestly, I loathed the book. And her.

But Pollyanna has no role in Split. Mr. Perfect has left and Finnamore has written an honest, gripping account of divorce. The memoir covers her first, pre-loved year and half. During that time, she dissects the emotional process they go through to peel themselves apart. (This includes cheating on Mr. P's new girlfriend with each other, late-night phone calls, and prolonged visits under the pretense of dropping off/picking up their child.)

Of course I compared my situation to hers because if I'm good at anything, it's comparing myself to others. I realized that after my ex left, he didn't look back. He was here, then he was gone. Poof! I know, I know, there were those years in marriage counseling but I was focused on staying together while the ex was using the time preparing his leave of me and the boys. By the time he signed the lease on his apartment and packed up the Le Crueset, he was gone. Bye bye. Don't call; I won't answer.

I got gypped on my transition period. This blog is a poor substitute, although it's a lot like the marriage: one-sided and silent.

The what ifs.

For days now I've been afflicted with the what ifs: what if I'd gotten sober sooner? Would I still be married? And then my former fiance showed up on FB and I wondered what if I'd married him? Would I still be getting divorced? Or what if I'd never stopped dating Big Guns and married him? What if it's the universe's plan that no matter who I married, it was decreed that I'd be divorcing at 46? What if I screwed the universe and never married anyone? Then, because I hate change more than anything, I started wondering what if the ex just moved back home and we picked up where we left off like none of this never happened? What if?

I think I've been sitting in a Federal court room for too long. The Judge said she expected the trial to be over tomorrow, three days early; she is the Judge, after all, and rarely wrong so I should be back to my "normal" routine by Thursday.