Approximately 1.8 billion people, including children and infants, live without indoor plumbing, and the water source that they may have is often as much as a mile away.

I'm not getting up on a soap box; but this fact is important when you are trying to explain to your 12- and 13-year-old kids that our pipes breaking and being without a commode or bath for two days is a minor setback in the grand scheme of things.

Our plumbing broke, and there was no male counterpart to even pretend that he might be able to fix it. It was my problem. I called the plumber, but it was Sunday. He came Monday afternoon. We went to my brother's home to bathe, but as far as that other necessity, well, let's just say we improvised. 

No man. Well, there are many, many things I can think of that are much, much worse, in the grand scheme of things. And, on those rare occasions when I find that I actually have time to share with someone, over the age of 30, I'm so exhausted that it's a fleeting thought at best.

No man to fix my plumbing in my house, in my soul, in my body. And, that's alright. It may turn out to be alright for, well, forever. If men are only useful for plumbing and auto mechanics and, if you're lucky, garbage detail, but are not going to soothe your forehead when you are sick or rub your feet when you are tired or make dinner or run a bubble bath or buy some flowers, then to hell with it. 

So, I'm alone, like so many of my fellow FWW'ers. And, it's okay. Sometimes it's wonderful. Sometimes it's incredible. Yes, I wish I had a full time partner to share my life with, but I don't. However, what I do have is indoor plumbing, so I'm headed to the shower to bask in hot, running water, soap, steam, and my life, which, for the most part, is a very good life. 

"Love actually is...all around." When Hugh Grant's character narrates the opening of the movie Love Actually, he admits love — the love in evidence at the arrivals gate of Heathrow Airport — is not particularly dignified. It's awkward and pedestrian. But it's pervasive.

Shot after shot of homecomings and reunions reveal something profound in everyday love. Siblings, grandparents and their children, and old friends reach out for each other, smiling and crying. They hold each other dearly.

By nature love is exponential. It multiplies to the beat of a steady drum. It keeps families together, protects us, and makes the world go round. It is quiet and vital.

Love actually is also...terribly hard work. Things get in the way — like thinking love should move me and elevate me to star status. For years I suffered under the girlish delusion that love means having it all — drama, attention, and romance. Even older and wiser I haven't truly let go of what I think love should be long enough to see what love is.

Instead, in my head I created the perfect man by adding bits and pieces of memory to a smattering of emails from a former beau halfway around the world. I haven't seen him in 15 years, but on the skeleton of a boy I once knew, my imagination draped all sort of grown-up traits, creating a man who would put me first, would match my intellectual curiosity, and who would attract me and play with me exactly how I wanted him to.

But that man didn't really exist. And as I dreamed of him, of how being with him would change my life, I missed out on what I already had: Rob. He's imperfect, unspectacular. To be sure, ours is no dramatic romance. But it's comforting. 

Love actually is...all around. But we must wake up — grow up — to see it.

Last time I told you about my new ambition, to become a grocery store cashier. Maybe you want something like that, too, for the health insurance that goes with the position, as well as the wee stipend for stuff like rent, pet food, and gas for the car.

I was surprised to find no line of hopefuls wrapped around the store when I arrived shortly after sunrise, but a steady stream presented itself: men as well as women, some my age, some young enough to be my children.

I found myself hoping that the polite young man who got there just as I did would get the job, or that it might go to the young woman with the beautiful smile who held the heavy door back for us to enter as she exited. These kids need a good job with benefits, I thought. It could be a great start for them.

Maybe that's why I, uh, forgot to mention my previous cashiering experience on the application. Or maybe it was because I really just don't want to be a cashier again.

Imagine.

Never expected to be doing that now, as a 48-year-old divorcée. Never expected to be a 48-year-old divorcée.

Silly me.

The representative said I'd hear from the company in a week if they had a place for me. So if my phone's going to ring, that should happen any time now.

I'd prefer to be waiting for word of my ascension to a full professorship, or that the syndication deal I'd been working on has come through.

Those calls may come, someday. For now, though, I'd relish the safety provided by a little job at the grocery store.

And if I don't get it, I'd be really happy to see the face of that young man, or that young woman, when next I approach the register with my bananas and sparkling juice in hand. 

For as many years as I can remember New Year's Eve has been an evening of excitement, good times, laughter, and anticipation for me. Ranging from small to large get-togethers with good friends to standing in Times Square, shivering and waiting for the ball to drop, it's always been a joy. I can remember that feeling of newness and starting fresh surging through me for weeks after New Year's Day.

This year however, was different. In all honesty, it just kind of snuck up on me. And, with Adrian's birthday, the anticipation and stress of Christmas, and the subsequent sigh of relief after it was all over, it's no wonder New Years wasn't doing much for me this year.

I had to work on New Year's Day, so going out the night before wasn't the most realistic of options anyway, but as it turns out, even if I had wanted to go out, babysitters charge a fortune on New Year's Eve.  It just wasn't worth it to me.

My best friend is also a single mom. "What are you doing New Year's Eve?" she asked me. "Nothing." I replied.

She wasn't doing anything either, so she invited us to her house for dinner and suggested that we could watch the ball drop on TV that night.

So, that's what we did. It was a windy, freezing cold night in New York on New Year's Eve. We went over to Rachel's house and had a fabulous dinner. Adrian played for a few hours and was the first to conk out around nine. Then Rachel and I then climbed into her comfy bed and popped in a Desperate Housewives DVD (I'm getting all of my friends hooked on that show) with plans to turn off the DVD and switch to the Times Square coverage a few minutes before midnight. We were both asleep before the first episode was over.

I slept, for a solid eleven hours for the first time since Adrian has been born. I awoke feeling rested in a way that I never thought I could feel again. A new, rested, ready-to-go me in time for the New Year.

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.