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A Day Off

Episode 59 of Sarah's vlog

Posted to House Bloggers on Thu, 08/28/2008 - 5:04pm

It's the last days of Summer. I have been so busy I haven't even noticed it fly by! So... I am taking the opportunity to take back some "alone-time". (My husband always hated it when I declared I...


OK — it's the dreaded last week of summer...and we all hang on to it like a dog to the pant leg of a postman. This might be a good thing since everyone I know has gained weight since it began.

What's up with that?

Bloated single moms everywhere are racing around getting their kids ready for school. Booting up for back to school is "tums"-ultuous when you're a single mom. It's a frenzy of exhausting checklists, kids need everything, and you are a human money pit.

Going away, if you can swing it or a few more rule-free days, is a good thing...staying home and puttering around is also a good thing.

There's nobody to do business with...or make an impression upon.

Nobody cares...well almost nobody.

If people owe you money, you cant get a hold of them.

If you owe people money, they're away and you buy a few days.

The mythical end of summer will confuse you next week because you pull back the curtain and it will still look and feel exactly like summer, only you are not supposed to be having fun anymore.

So — whatever is going on with you this week, make sure you try to maximize any and every last window of opportunity of guilt-free summer pleasure for yourself.

You know you deserve it, and goodness knows next week is going to feel a lot different...even if it looks the same.

My father showed up at my house yesterday. In case you don't remember, this is my father's story.

Along with being my father, he is also a drug addict and master manipulator. Until yesterday he was living down south, in and out of homeless shelters, in and out of psych wards, in and out of various churches and occasionally he slept on the street.

I have tried, and my family has tried, to help him several times; each time, we got screwed over.

Upon seeing him this time, I got such an instant headache that I thought my head was going to explode. I sort of just stood there with my mouth hanging open.

He explained to me that he was there because he wants to get help. He asked me to help him get help.

I called my mother and told her what was going on. (They divorced when I was a baby.) She was very short and obnoxiously said to me, "The only reason that you would do anything to help him is because you want attention. He has other people to help him, let them do it." I told her I had to go.

I was stunned by the way she treated me; by the tone of her voice, and by what she said. I tried to let it go but it kept creeping back into my consciousness as I was taking my father in and out of various doctors' offices.

I realized that I think my mother may feel guilty. I'm sure if I chose a total jerk to be the father of my child (which, actually, I did) — a total jerk that can't get his life together and is a huge burden on me — I'd feel badly about it also.

I wonder if this is a common problem for divorced parents. Does anyone else have any experience with this?

What do you do when your best isn't good enough?

I have asked everyone in my Rolodex of life whom I suspected might be capable of giving me an insightful answer. They all replied, "You keep going."

No shit, Sherlock — but how?

No one seems to be able to tell me how I'm supposed to go about this. In theory, I understand this rationale completely, but in practice, this proves to be much more difficult.

Of course, the cynic in me also has to wonder whether these people would be able to persevere themselves, should they happen to lose their entire foundation while having to complete a 180-degree life change.

They're all in very comfortable niches in one form or another. Many of them have admitted to never facing a set of circumstances as dire as mine. It's not every day that one's entire life changes virtually overnight.

I never thought that this would happen for me, but I am beginning to lose faith. Unfortunately for me, that's about all I have left.

I took introduction to psychology in college so I have a general idea of what the term "passive aggressive" means. It wasn't until recently, however, that I really got to witness it in person.

Apparently my husband has decided that this is his newest way to complain about the things I do without actually complaining about them.

Here are a couple of examples, which could easily be compiled with a slew of others for a "passive-aggressive husband reference manual":

The other day my kids and I went out to lunch with a couple of other moms and their kids. I don't eat out for lunch all the time, and this was an impromptu get-together. I had packed my husband a lunch that morning for him to take to work so he had leftovers. When he gets home he tells me this: "The guys at work said, 'Let me get this straight...she gets to eat out for lunch and you have to eat leftovers? Man, that's messed up!' Ha-ha!"

Translation: He's ticked off that I got to eat out and he had to eat leftovers.

My husband recently did some volunteer work with the guys at church that involved a lot of physical labor and when he got home he said, "Bob told me he was so glad that his wife and daughter were out of town because after we finished up he was going to go home and take a long nap without interruption. Ha-ha!"

Translation: He wants to take a nap but knows that we already agreed that he would take the kids so I could get some work done. He's hoping I suggest he takes a long nap and I'll just stay up until two in the morning working.

How do I know it's all passive aggressive? These comments don't even go with the flow of conversation. They come out of nowhere, and he gives a long pause afterward as though he's waiting for me to fall to my knees and beg his forgiveness for going out to eat with my friends/not offering him a four hour nap/whatever else I do that ticks him off.

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I feel as though I should have been saving up something deeply profound to say here — something that will mark this, something that one might print out and post on one's bathroom mirror. Something deep. Something meaningful. Something universal and marvelous that will affect and impress everyone.

Yeah. I've got nothing.

When I started writing for this site, I had visions of a hilarious series chronicling my forays back into the dating world. This will be delightful, I thought. I'm in my 30s and have been married most of my life. I have never dated as an adult. I have no idea what I'm doing.

Turning the odd and the icky into a column will make the merely awkward hilarious, and what a comfort that will be. A bad first date will have some purpose. I will try many things in the name of research. I will be Carrie Bradshaw, only without the shoe thing.

It was an excellent plan. I had been dating for a bit, so had some stories saved up. I had no desire at all to do anything beyond casual. You couldn't beat me into a real relationship with a stick.

Then of course, I found myself in one, despite the kicking and screaming, despite refusing, for months, to give it a name. So this has become less about the hilarity of Watching-Alice-Try-to-Figure-Out-Dating and more the hilarity of Watching-Alice-Skid-into-Commitment. Which is constantly startling, really.

It has been a surprising help, these columns. Finding the right words for something here has often helped put things in perspective, or decide where to go, or just ease the feelings over something.

So, thank you, those of you who have been here with me, those that have commented, those who have read, and those who write along with me. I've very much appreciated your company, and look forward to bringing you along on future adventures.

If life is a journey, it's no weekend jaunt to the beach. It's an around-the-world expedition riddled with dangerous passages and course corrections.

My marriage is a journey, unfortunately quite a rough one of late. My relationship to my ailing father and my siblings who also help take care of him is always under construction.

Like many people, I also grapple with work-life balance: how much of myself do I put into my job or even any given project, and how much do I hold in reserve?

I've added another journey. Crazy, right? But stick with me...this one might be worth the added trouble.

I've embarked on a six-month yoga teacher training, and it's intense. The amount and level of physical, academic, and emotional study only seems to grow, week to week. At one point early on I said to a classmate that this might not have been the right time to engage in such a difficult program. Then we started our course of yogic philosophy.

Now I'm chartering more twists and turns in my mind than on the mat. While the training is physically challenging, this journey goes within, and the steadiness of mind I'm building benefits every part of my life.

So this one's a staycation. And there couldn't be a better time for it.

These last few weeks I've been reading and re-reading every word I've written in my journal since my separation. The thing I want most in moving back in with my ex is to hold tight to me, not forget one step of this journey or the tangles of Witches Broom I belly-crawled through to get here.

I moved out when Lila was 23 months old. In the early morning hours of her second birthday I did something huge. As I move back into life with her dad, the one thing I most want to keep is this:

21 Nov. 2006

It's warm tonight. Sweet condensation pooling on the windows. Moist chocolate smells baking in the oven. Home. Forty-one days out and 41 days in, this is finally my home.

I'm sitting in the same the spot I sat last night, back curved into cushy blue glider, feet on a chair under the table, one leg crossed over the other, keyboard on my lap, fingers on the keys, monitor claiming half the real estate on my kitchen table. Same as last night and the night before that and every night for the last five-and-a-half weeks. And, not the same at all. Everywhere I look, art and love and pieces of me collected on the journey color the walls with stories spoken across miles and years.

Decades.

A lifetime.

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During this, the final week of my solo month, there have been lots of opportunities to give up and run to a bar, or go to Fire Island for one last fling before the kids come home.

Instead, I've dabbled in cooking, reading, and sampling wine. I've become an expert in the latter. My friends have given up in frustration trying to set me up with dinner-party hotties.

I've resigned myself to the single life, for at least the foreseeable future.

Labor Day weekend will be my last shot at a three-day getaway. So I've been Googling activities that don't involve getting spruced up for the opposite sex. That means no going to a spa, or a resort, no facial peels or shopping sprees. Obviously alcohol and orgies are out.

Instead I decided to try a resource in the New York metro area that supports mental and psycho-spiritual well-being. There were plenty of opportunities not more than an hour from my home that offered to stretch and encourage my inner goddess.

There was the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health Center in Stockbridge, Mass., which says it aspires to "teach the art and science of yoga" and is a "place where people come together to deeply inquire into the core issues of life."

Kripalu has a radiant health retreat for women on Labor Day Weekend starting at $513 for classes, meals, and accommodations. It's taught by Sudha Carolyn Lundeen, a holistic RN who helps people discover their inherent wholeness.

Hey, if I discover my inherent wholeness, maybe that will do away with my focus on finding the next man in my life.

And if that doesn't pique my interest, Kripalu also offers rock climbing, yoga, and bodywork.

Also, in central Massachusetts is the Barre Buddhist Center, which specializes in meditative insight. According to their calendar, I could cultivate Inner Freedom and Nonreactivity with Michael and Naraya, just not on Labor Day weekend.

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Maybe I didn't have it all, but I had managed to build a life I wanted. I had a home and a family. (Well, I had a husband and a bunch of animals.) I had work I loved. It took my entire adult life to put it together.

And now it looks like my next task is to take it apart.

Typically, perhaps, I didn't give a lot of thought to what would become of me after Edgar. I was positive, though, that it wouldn't be good for me spend the rest of my life with someone who evidently could not stop drinking to excess.

So I plunged ahead and got him out of my house, mostly out of my life. There is the pesky little detail of actually divorcing him, but we're over.

Since I married late, at 40, I figured I'd just kind of go back to what I did before I had a husband.

Yeah, right.

Nothing is the same as it was, not me, not the economy, not the fields in which I have decades of experience. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Since Ed's been gone, I've found new homes for more than half of my pets, gotten a roommate, tapped my precious retirement account (and am about to do so again), and I failed to get jobs as a waitress (no experience), in retail (plenty of experience), as well as in public relations, publishing, and journalism.

So what am I to do? Something completely different, apparently.

Probably something I don't want to do.

I may have to find homes for the rest of my animal family. I may have to sell my house — if I can find a buyer. Either of those options is heartbreaking, but as my friend Curtis says, "It's all on loan."

Even if I manage to hold on, neither my dogs nor my house will go with me when I leave this life. But I will die knowing I was able to get myself out of a disastrous situation, even though it hurts a lot in ways I wasn't expecting.

Remembering that doesn't make me feel any better, but it does kind of put things in perspective.