Yes, Ma and Pa Fish have had another bucket of fry. And there are new dynamics in the tank. Pa Fish has gone insane. He won’t let any of the fish, including Ma, get anywhere near the fry. He even bit the tail off of one of the other fish. Let me remind you that the other fish are his offspring. Ma Fish has taken to hiding behind the heater pump. Pa circles the tank like a maniac on a rampage and never rests. I’m wondering if this is because all of the fry from the last batch were eaten and he’s pissed off, or if he’s just pissed off and this behavior seems like an appropriate vehicle for his rage. Um, do fish think? Whatever. Pa Fish is clearly the patriarch in this town, and watching what goes on in the tank reminds me of some unpleasant memories of my marriage to someone who raged. It also makes me feel grateful that I don’t deal with that anymore. But I feel sorry for Ma Fish and her children right now, despite the fact that Pa seems to be doing the right thing by his fry.
LA dog life June 2, 2010
I would like to thank Don Cheadle and his two dogs for tiring out Reuben at the dog park this morning. His husky/shepherd mix puppy took a liking to Reuben, wrestled with him and chased him silly, while Cheadle and I talked dogs for a bit.
My doppelganger? May 11, 2010
Last night the guys behind the prepared food bar at Whole Foods wanted to talk to me.
It’s hard to avoid the prepared
foods at Whole Foods, especially if you’re a nice Jewish girl who doesn’t cook (but, for the record, I have evolved from cooking none to cooking some) and especially on the nights Toby isn’t with me and I’m spending the evening with the dog and good TV.
So I see these Whole Foods guys fairly regularly. They’re both in their 50s, I’d say, both with beards, both looking like they do something else for a living and just happened to have gotten stuck momentarily behind the food counter. They are pleasant, they smile, they say things like, “you have a good one,” but they look like they can’t wait to get the hell out of there.
Last night one of them says to me, “decisions, decisions” as I surveyed the offerings of roasted brussel sprouts, orzo with chicken, marinated kale and assorted gourmet salads. And then the other one looked me over and said, “you know who you look like?!” Suddenly I pulled my head out of the salads. Why are they paying attention to me? And I rarely am told I look like anyone, a celebrity, although it has happened a few times–and it’s always the same person.
Very excitedly the guy exclaims, “Bonnie Raitt!”
I consider it a compliment because I happen to like Bonnie Raitt. And I sorta see the resemblance. The Whole Foods guy certainly meant it as a compliment. He likes her music, he’s a “jazz man,” he said.
Here’s the thing, though. The the last time a guy told me I looked like Bonnie Raitt was in graduate school, when we made out on the lesser of two creepy couches in my sublet and then he called me at midnight the next night and begged to come over, said he “had to see” me, couldn’t wait. He was cute. And super smart. And then he came over at midnight and we made out again, and things got a little more heated–and then he flew off the creepy couch with his belt unbuckled and blurted, “I have to go, I have to go, sorry,” and ran out of the door. It was the week before semester’s end. I never saw him again. Weeks later I ran into his good friend, who also told me I looked like Bonnie Raitt, and he said, “did ya hear about A.? Did he call you? He wanted to call you.” No, I said, what happened?–because clearly something happened. “Oh, he joined the Jesuits.” Was it me? Or Bonnie Raitt?
I’m not going to bitch May 3, 2010
This post is about how I’m not going to bitch and whine about my Ex. I’m not going to focus on what’s wrong or on how I want to send him an angry email right now. Or do something deliberately to make his life difficult. I’ve often thought of egging his car or slashing his tires, but this post is about how I haven’t done that and won’t do it. (I won’t slash his girlfriend’s tires either, because she doesn’t have a car. Or a job. But apparently she did have a few too many drinks at Toby’s grandmother’s birthday party–I know because Toby told me so, which means he now knows what a 25-year-old drunk girl looks like. But I’m not writing about that.) Nor will I spend my morning crafting the civil email explaining to him that I’m upset about a co-parenting issue and asking that he handle things differently in the future. I have done that. But I’m not doing it today. Instead, I’m writing this post. Slowly over the past two hours the anger has receded and I am going about my morning and by lunchtime I will be whole. This post is about how even though It’s Final, I still will be dealing with my Ex and our co-parenting differences for years to come. And it’s about how, after sixteen years and many of the most horribly emotionally turbulent, breathtakingly devastating events and thousands of dollars on therapy, I finally do truly understand that I cannot change him, nothing I do or say will change or control him or make him consider me or things differently, and I am left simply to deal with myself–I can only control me, my reactions, and take care of myself and Toby. Shit, I sound like fucking Stuart Smalley. But you know what? Stuart Smalley is a fucking U.S. senator! So, with this Daily Affirmation, I Move On!
The Dating Game May 2, 2010
Dating, after not dating for 16+ years, is, in a word, weird! And Internet dating is weirder. I was never a big dater, in general, and the Internet exploded around the time I met my ex, so both “dating” and “online dating” are unfamiliar and awkward territories in which I now find myself. And nearly every time I’ve had a date, I’ve wanted to back out at the last minute. Endlessly negative thoughts ranging from “this will be a complete waste of my precious free time” to “he’ll never be attracted to me, what’s the point,” to “he’s probably a psychopath” convince me I should stay home.
But my shrink told me that’s a no-no; no catastrophizing, no canceling! (Ok, another confession: I have a history with canceling–we’re good, old friends–canceling always makes me feel better in the moment.)
Gotta go out once you make the date, shrink said, because “you need the experience and you need to get out of your comfort zone.”
So, since the beginning of the year, I’ve had more than a dozen dates. A drink here, coffee, dinner there.
There was The Investment Jew–the only one I dated more than once–who intrigued me and made me laugh and was a decent, if mysterious, fellow, but the fact that he’d never had a relationship longer than 2 years, had more to say about our dogs than about Toby, was a hardcore NYer, and leaned to the Right politically just sent me away in the end.
The Parisian Jew who checked his watch and his phone and wanted to leave the minute I walked into the coffee house (apparently I wasn’t the drop-dead gorgeous, flat-stomached blonde he thought he saw in my online pictures).
The Marathon Dad I was really interested in but who had his eyes on his crackberry for the entire coffee.
The Therapist Jew, who was just about the most full-of-shit, self-important dude I’ve met! (what I loved most about him was that he’d never been married, had no kids, was Narcissus’s chief rival, and was a marriage and family therapist.)
The Triathlete Jew, who took me to the best sushi in LA and who never asked me a single question about me–and I do mean never.
The Guy With the Dying Mother (she died while we were e-corresponding) who was just plain strange and who also seemed to take offense to my calling Roman Polanski a child molester.
The Israeli, who told me many times how insane his ex was.
The guy I wasn’t attracted to in any way and whose soon-to-be-ex was still living with him, I learned at our drink.
And, finally, the Electrician With the Dog, whom Reuben (dog) and I met on a walk in the neighborhood, and who seems, at seven years younger than I!, the only one very interested in me. And perhaps that, along with many other issues that deserve a post of their own, is why I am running very fast in the opposite direction.
The shrink says “good!” to this dating journal and insists that this is all a necessary learning experience, training, a dusting off, a tune up–and then one day, she claims, I’m going to meet someone in line at Starbucks. But what does that mean? Meet someone I want to date? Someone to have a “relationship” with? Someone I want to get naked with? Someone I want to marry? Therein lies the rub. I don’t think I’m ready for ANY of this. 
I don’t know what I want–I simply know what I don’t want.
Wait! That’s not true! I DO know what I want–I want to get naked with Peter Krause (he’s “Adam” in the new TV show Parenthood, formerly “Nate Fisher” in “Six Feet Under”)!!! I usually don’t fantasize about celebrities. Really, this is true. But Peter Krause has inspired and unleashed the GIRL in me. I’ve told everyone I know about my crush and have even gone so far as to tap my industry connections. No luck. Yet.
Fish Fry April 25, 2010
A month or two ago Toby and I finally thought the fish babies were big enough to leave the nest. Somewhere along the way we noticed that there weren’t 25 young fish but maybe only 10 or so. Not sure what happened to the other 15. A mystery.
We took out four or five (keeping several) and delivered them to the guy at the fish store (not Jeff Spicoli but one of his colleagues). A couple of weeks later I finally cleaned the tank. I’m surprised any fish survived in the pool of poop and debris. I exhausted myself cleaning it as best I could — scraping the algae off the sides, removing and thoroughly cleaning the gravel, emptying half of the water and replacing clean water and gravel. It looked very sparkly when all was done. And I guess the fish were happy because, not long after, babies were on the scene! Just as Spicoli had warned. I had asked Fish Store Guy if we could bring him the mom or dad, since I didn’t want more babies to care for, and he said, “I don’t think you have to worry about anything–the other fish will just eat the babies. They’re just food.” Oh, ok–so the hungry, big brothers will eat the fry. Understandable in some circles I guess.
Except we’ve seen at least two “litters” since then and it wasn’t Big Brother we witnessed eating the babies. Nope. It was Mama Fish. Tonight Toby and I watched her gobble nearly the whole batch of fry in lightning speed. I’m guessing the rest will be gone by morning.
Mystery solved. Toby looked shocked. Mama Fish has needs, I told him, and then I growled and told him to get his tush in bed or else.
It’s final April 23, 2010
So it’s final. I had January 23, 2010 locked in my head for six months, because I filed for divorce on July 23, 2009. For those of you who’ve been through it or are going through it, you know that the divorce is not formal or legally recognized until six months to the date of the filing. This gives you six months to meet with your attorneys and pay them thousands of dollars to sit in a room with you and your soon-to-be ex and hash through your earnings and assets and debts and furnishings and lives and custody schedule and paper after paper after paper of tedious detail on the state and disrepair of your former union. Trust me, even if you go the way I did–the route of collaborative law, where everyone sits together in a conference room and smiles and laughs and meets and discusses as if life is grand and we all love and are civil to one another–you will still spend HOURS and THOUSANDS to get to those final pieces of paper requiring your signature, the declaration of the dissolution of marriage and divorce judgment. Those documents then get filed with the court, and wouldn’t you know it–in our case at least–all of that took . . . six months! In fact, it took us 7.5 months. We signed those final documents on March 21, 2010 and the papers were sent to the court on March 24, 2010–almost exactly 7 months from the date I filed.
Each time a meeting with the lawyers was postponed (for valid reasons) I struggled with a rush of disappointment. I had that date fixed in my head! Almost as if it were . . . a wedding that was being postponed! Seriously, once I had gone through the life-altering, mind-numbing process of accepting that my marriage was finally kaput and life as I knew it was drastically, fundamentally changed, I wanted to know when it would be formally, legally final. Over. Done. Past.
The date was merely symbolic, sure. No more anniversary date or the date of our first date or or the date we decided to get married or the date he told me he didn’t want the baby or the date I found out about his affair or the date I kicked him out.
Now, and hereafter, it’s the date I was divorced.
I needed the closure. Who wouldn’t?
More to the point: I did not need closure so I could grieve. I’d already done a good bit of that and, I suspect, have plenty more mourning and wallowing in my future (as the shrinks would say: it’s a process). I needed a date to fixate on as a time, occasion, excuse to publicly celebrate and move on. At first I’d thought of having a “ceremony” to throw our wedding bands into the East River. Because I don’t much care for the East River; in fact, I don’t really like the east side of NYC. But I sold the rings for cash (I picked them out and paid for them, so getting some cash for them seemed like the only appropriate thing to do)! So I planned to have a party. But would I have the party in LA or NY? Or both? There were lots of fun possibilities, but first I needed to know the date when celebration would be in order.
First it was January 23rd, then February 23rd, then, very reluctantly, March 23rd. I finally accepted March 23rd and began concocting ideas for celebration. But the final meeting with the lawyers dragged on for 3.5 hours and, at the end, we were not done; although I knew I was one detail and one signature away from being legally single, I could not and did not feel celebratory. And then there was the issue of furniture and “household items” that my ex and I had not yet hashed through (you’d think all those thousands of dollars spent in meetings with our “mediators” would have taken care of that, but, lo and behold, at the final meeting my lawyer said, “you can do that together, it will be much easier than you think.”).
So, I left the table with the signed documents and walked away feeling a fair amount of despair. Because had I a date and an event–yes, like a wedding–to look forward to, I might have walked away rejoicing in my new freedom, happily focusing on how much better my life now is. Unfortunately, those more positive thoughts eluded me at the time because it all felt so . . . not final.
Then, last week, one day after my birthday, one day into my 45th year, I received a thick envelope from my lawyer. Inside were copies of those final documents bearing a stamp from the Superior Court of California County of Los Angeles, April 08, 2010. I was restored to my single identity six days before my 44th birthday. A strange birthday present, and anticlimactic. A piece of mail.
But I am free at last. Free at least, free at last, thank god almighty I am free at last. Go shorty, it’s your birthday, it’s your birthday . . . We gon’ party like it’s your birthday.
I didn’t celebrate, I didn’t party. But there is time. Indeed, there will time.
American Idol April 17, 2010
American Idol often makes me cry. Sometimes it’s the contestants’ stories; sometimes it’s when someone sings a particularly moving song; sometimes it’s when someone leaves the show and they (and we) watch the reflection montage of their time on Idol while crying; sometimes it’s Kara DioGuardi crying that makes me cry.
Since I’m apparently all about the confession, I will confess that I cry very easily, so there really is nothing extraordinary about shedding tears over American Idol. Except that lately the tears have been a bit stronger and pouring forth even more readily. No surprise, most would say. But they give me pause. They have come with an intensity, a gurgling, gasping intensity in my chest. It’s not often, not constant, but when it happens I have to deal. What am I crying over, for, about? Not for the Idol contestants.
We’ve all been there: a sad moment in a movie, tv show, or book triggers our memories and emotions, whether or not we identify with others’ sadness or joy.
I used to watch Idol with the ex. And we actually cried together over the contestants’ stories; we would usually cry at the same time, about the same thing.
I’m not crying now because I miss crying with him. But I am crying tears of loss. People will tell you that “divorce is up there with death; it IS death, death of a marriage,” blah blah. The phrase had no punch for me, because I have dealt with the death of dear loved ones, including best friends who died at very young ages, and handling the loss of their presence in my life is a grief altogether different from the chaotic dissolution of my marriage and expulsion of my supposed lifetime partner. But as hard as I want to fight any feelings of tenderness about my marriage or my ex, I have to acknowledge that I shared a life with him, an intimacy and togetherness I’ve had with no other human being and that cannot be replicated if only because what we had was unique to us. I do not miss him. But through these tears I’ve reluctantly had to admit that I do, at times, miss the good of what we had and what we shared; and I have to admit that it is gone. And “gone” is a concept that just sometimes makes the well of tears bubble.
I’ll be back soon February 5, 2010
Toby in his cool pose
I have a lot I’d like to blog about but, fortunately, a steady flow of deadline work has prevented me from writing. Between work and Toby–and, oh yeah, my new dating life–there is little time for anything else (except squeezing in a workout here and there because I have even more motivation to get my core in shape). I’ll be back soon with stories and reflections.
Pause January 6, 2010
Events of the past 
two weeks have halted blogging: the holidays, a trip to the snow, a sudden and overwhelming obsession with JDate, and now work. Happy to be back amongst the palm trees and settling into my new year, new me. When the deadlines are met I will be back with JDate tales. In the meantime, I will leave you with this: I have not “dated” anyone since 1994–more like 1993, since 1994 was Ex Dearest and we only had one date before rushing full throttle into our union (therein lies one of the red flags, you say).
So, I haven’t dated in more than 16 years–and I was never much of a dater to begin with–and now I’m being bombarded with emails from the likes of Seinfeld’s Newman, yet with three more chins and a truly frightening smile, asking me why I ignored his Instant Message and whether it was “bad timing” or “is it just me?”
Is my obsession with JDate time well spent? Will all the suitors be like Scary Newman? To be continued.
