Happy New Year! Time for new resolutions. I decided to try Zumba.

You may have seen the new infomercials of the gyrating hips hopping their way to weight loss. Me too. My local gym added the class this week so I went. How hard can gyrating be?

Ask my stiff neck.

The music is fun, and the steps are easy to catch on to, But keeping up the pace? Let's just say the moves reminded me of some I may have attempted after a few cosmos late at night in some club once upon a time. (Okay — last week.)

Zumba without strobe lights and liquor? Whew! Tough sweaty stuff. Made me have new respect for those Dancing with the Stars people. Me, I was dancing seeing stars, utilizing muscles that apparently went into early retirement. In the mirror behind the instructor I watched myself do hip gyrations that would make my mother blush and my daughter leave town.

Zumba, my dear girlfriends, is the perfect workout for those of you just heading back into the dating game. Just be prepared for moves you haven't used in a while and get some Ben Gay. That's all I have  to say.

Attitude is everything!
Debbie

Leave me a comment or email me anytime at [email protected]

Oh the ups and downs of the holidays. In Portland we called the two week stretch from Dec. 14 to last Sunday Snopoccalypse, and those of us with small children at home and without big SUVs in the driveway? We became snow prisoners.

We pulled our children on sleds to the bus stop, and then through downtown streets and sidewalks to do the last-minute shopping. Those of us who shopped at all.

Okay, the sled detail was just Sam and me (but it sounds so Norman Rockwell and many people I know really did drag their kids to the nearest grocery store that way). Also, full disclosure, the 11th hour downtown shopping spree was more about getting out of the house than getting presents.

We're so broke we'd already agreed to exchange only a little book of the 12 things we would give the other if money and the time-space continuum were no objects. 

My Facebook status that morning after we trekked downtown on sleds said "Red Rum, Red Rum" over and over to the edge of the update space. One of my friends gave me a lot of crap about that. He said it was overdone and I needed to dial down the The Shining references.

He does not have hyper-active children. He was not held against his will by the weather for than a week with a six-year-old, a four-year-old, and a partner whom he recently reconciled with after a two-year separation and near divorce. He does not know. I was not joking.

That morning, and several before it, all I wanted in the whole wide, whited-out, world was my little apartment. And not for temporary refuge, either. Forever. I wanted it forever. I fantasized about being snowed in all alone, about being snowed in with just my kids, about being snowed in with anyone who wasn't Sam.

What does it feel like to cross the “three year” mark? As my darling Samantha Jones says, “Fabulous!”

For all the FWW’ers who are moving beyond divorce, I will say that the healing and subsequent happiness comes in yearly blocks. In September, I celebrated the three year mark. Three whole years without that person who berated me on a daily basis, three whole years without feeling less than. It is remarkable.

So, depending on the year you are in, I’ve divided the full divorce departure process thusly:

Year One — The Year of Uncertainty

How will you feel?
Awful. Sad. Lonely. Miserable. Fearful. Dark. Uncertain. Angry. Confused. Somewhat Suicidal.
How will you behave?
Irratic. Crazy. Reclusive. Spontaneous. Withdrawn. Paranoid. (And, crazy, did I mention, crazy?)
What gets you through?
Alcohol. Chocolate. Long baths. Naps. Sleeping late. Comfort food. Your children’s laughter. Your friends’ support (even if you call at midnight, drunk and crying). And in my case, the complete collection of Sex and the City (all six seasons). Movies. Music.
What is the end result?
You survive and move into Year Two.

Year Two — The Year of Assimilation

I have to admit, you have been a hard year to live through. I have felt more pain in your 365 days than I have in all other years combined! (Except, perhaps, for 1990… my freshman year in High school.) Although I grew a lot over the past 12 months and have many things to thank you for, I am quite happy to say goodbye to you. In these final days, I hope you don’t mind if I say goodbye to all the things I hope to leave behind as you draw to a close and a young and hopeful 2009 takes your place.

Goodbye profound sadness! I have felt you seeping away little by little as visions of the future start to overlay snapshots of my final days with Ahmed. You have been a noble yet predatory emotion. You pounced on me in the strangest places: in movie theatres and subway cars, in the shower, in the mirror, and in the bed right before I fell asleep. You always seemed to catch me off guard, but I don’t resent you. You are a measure of how much I have loved and how much I will miss certain aspects of my marriage. Your painful grip on my heart has reminded me that I am alive. Still, I am not sorry to see you go… you are meant to be vivid and brief. I hope we will not meet again for a good long time…

Goodbye uncertainty! I have chosen my path now! There is no need to linger any longer. You have been dismissed. I won’t miss you and, although I am sure you will continue to pop up intermittently in the coming years, I doubt you will have such an impact on my other endeavors. You may take your two-headed loud-mouthed cacophony elsewhere. I can’t hear you now.

I don't drink. It took a long time and some hard knocks to teach me that I just ought not consume alcohol, because my life is better when I don't.

But New Year's Eve is a good time for me to remember that.

It's pretty simple. I know there is nothing I can't make worse by adding alcohol to it. But the idea that one doesn't drink, ever, can be really difficult for people to grasp because drinking is such a huge part of life in these United States.

Big events are easy. I secure a glass of ginger ale or cola as soon as I arrive. When I have something in my hand, there's no reason for anybody to try to put a drink there, and I've never had anybody make a big deal of the fact that I'm abstaining from alcohol.

When I attend a more intimate affair, I bring sparkling cider or juice so I‘m sure there's something I‘ll enjoy.

But at either type of gathering, if the nonalcoholic drinks run out, if the shenanigans of the drinkers get to be a bit much, or if I find myself wanting a drink, I thank my hostess and leave.

Those who drink alcohol can be curious or unsettled in the presence of those who don't. Often people who have a problem with the idea that someone doesn't drink have an alcohol problem of their own. Others may simply be unused to the concept, just as it can take a while for some people to understand that "vegetarian" means not eating flesh at all, not even turkey or fish.

I've tried to assure the people I care about that they needn't worry about drinking in my presence. My alcohol issues are mine, and I don't want anybody else to get caught up in them.

The best way I've found to do that is not to take a drink. And so I will not be having a drink on New Year's Eve. Or, I hope, any other time.

Here's what's funny. I don't remember what my husband and I did on New Year's Eve. I suppose we were at the ski house one year, or went to some party, maybe just stayed home. The point is: It doesn't matter what you do when you're married. Because you're married.

I do remember my husband's friend telling me her parents always played tennis on New Year's Eve. They reserved an indoor tennis court, played doubles with their best friends, then broke out chilled champagne and went home.

I was impressed. It sounded so civilized.

I don't remember what I did the first year after I was divorced. What I do remember of my dating years on New Year's Eve was anything but fun. I remember standing freezing in a slinky dress and high-heeled shoes, in slush in a New York street with my boyfriend, trying to catch a cab.

I remember another boyfriend, another time, getting caught between parties at midnight, trying to catch a cab.

Then there were the years I didn't have a boyfriend, plenty of them. Some years I gave a party, alone, and tried to get my guests to skip the kissing-at-midnight part. One year I stayed home alone, and got a surprise midnight phone call from a drunk-dialing ex-boyfriend.

I eventually learned that the worst part of New Year's Eve in New York City is transportation, so that eliminated going to the West Village or Soho, and forget about Brooklyn or the Bronx.

So I went (alone) to parties on the Upper West Side, walking distance, and tried to leave before the midnight kissing part.

My favorite neighborhood party was at a Victorian house near Central Park. The host was a college professor, the wife a painter. The guests were smart, funny, older, knew how to drink without getting drunk. Many of them abstained until midnight, at which point they stripped down to running clothes and hit Central Park for the four-mile road race.

The most honest holiday card I received this year started out with a bit of Christmas blasphemy: "Bah Humbug" it read, followed by a litany of recent woes:

"I went Christmas shopping today and a woman backed out of her parking space and whacked my car...Billy broke his ankle skateboarding. It required an operation and two screws. That's the good news. The bad news is that he's still skateboarding...Cal lost his job last March...We lost half our life savings in the stock market. Now when people ask my kids, 'How's your mom? They reply, 'She's never going to be able to retire.'"

A pretty bleak picture indeed.

But my friend goes on to say that her car is still drivable, Billy likes looking at the X-rays of the screws in his bone, Cal found a job in October, and her older son was transferring to an in-state college ("He always kind of wanted to go to UGA anyway"). And as for retirement, she is really quite thankful to have a job.

"Looking back on the year, it was a pretty good one after all," she writes, reminiscing about her son's high school graduation party, a visit to Nova Scotia with her cousin, a trip to Mexico with her college buddy (that would be me!).

"And I just finished decorating my tree. It's beautiful. Wishing you a wonderful Christmas, and health and happiness in the New Year."

I couldn't have said it better myself.

My neighbor and I were talking about our perplexing positions in life. We are both in the same boat, contemplating divorce for a couple of years now with young children involved. She revealed to me that her husband had been physically abusive to her a few times throughout the marriage and that he continues to verbally assault her in front of her kids on an almost daily basis. 

When I told her that I think my husband may be either cheating on me or planning on cheating on me, she said, "Oh, that's where I draw the line. If he cheats on me, I'm out of here."

This got me thinking about the different thresholds we all have as women. Before I was married I always assumed that my threshold would be "If I'm unhappy in my marriage, I'm out of here."  After we were married and we had kids my threshold evolved into something like, "If he ever lays a hand on me in violence, or becomes verbally abusive, or cheats on me, then I'm out of here." 

I would assume that most women in my position have similar thresholds, but talking to my neighbor (who has been married longer than I have), butapparently it's completely possible to have the threshold pushed further to "If he cheats on me I'm out of here, but everything else is just annoying."

Why do we allow the threshold to change?

It's almost as if we are numbed by situations as they come. My neighbor is pretty numb to her husband's verbal abuse. I'm pretty numb to the way my husband twists everything into being my fault, and I'm afraid I'm completely capable of becoming numb to worse things.

It was while wrapping Christmas presents that I thought of him. The memories tend to sneak up on me like that now; something unexpected will trigger this explosion in me and they come flooding back in.

I thought of our last Christmas together. The one where Adrian was just twelve days old. That one, where I was still white knuckled, sick to my stomach, clinging to the hope that he wouldn't do exactly what he's done: leave us. I did everything for him, his way, hoping that he would stay. Right down to circumcising my son (which I didn't want to do) and giving Adrian his last name (which I've come to regret more than you can know). I understand now that desperation will do these things to you; make you give parts of yourself that you otherwise would never consider.

I thought of that day, how stressed out my body was from just giving birth and the lack of sleep that ensued, but how in comparison that was nothing on how stressed out my mind was. 

I remembered how I tried to push everything away and fight the reality of the situation. How I tried to make myself believe that everything would be okay despite how wrong everything felt. Despite how it felt like my whole universe had come undone.

"That was two years ago," I said aloud to myself.

Wow, two whole years and sometimes it can still hurt like it was yesterday.

But the pain is different now. I'm no longer that tortured woman. Now I wish I could go back and shake that lady that was once me. "What are you thinking?" I'd say to her. "Can't you see this is all about him? Where the hell did you put your self respect? Why are you compromising yourself for someone who obviously doesn't love you?"

That's what two years gives you — a lot of perspective and enough time for a fresh start.

Dear Black & Decker,

Talk about the perfect gift for a divorced gal!

Congratulations for coming out with the Stud Sensor! OMG! I bought one for myself and can't wait to see how it works. Your packaging says it detects studs through walls up to 3/4-inch thick.

Whoa! I knew technology had come a long way but wow, this is really exciting. I didn't open the package yet because I am just not ready.

You see, I overate again during the holidays and there's no point hunting studs if you're not prepared to do something about it once you hone in.

So here's my weekend plan. I'm going to drink lots of water, workout extra hard, do my roots, get a manicure, and pick up a couple of AA batteries. 

On Monday I'm going to give my Stud Sensor a whirl.

I finally have room for it in my pocketbook now that I'm done with all those freakin holiday coupons — even if it is the It size of one of those old cell phones. Hey, it could be the size of a rump roast — who cares as long as it works. I'll let you know.

One question: Is there any particular protocol I am supposed to follow once I detect a stud through a 3/4-inch wall? Please get back to me before Monday.

Happy Holidays!
Debbie Nigro
Chief Executive Girlfriend
First Wives World
[email protected]