phatDonna

OOOH! I had the weirdest night tonight.

First, I met this very cute boy who was wearing a Dr. Who scarf and reminded me of Colin Firth in a little way. But I lost track of him.

Then! I met this guy who I could have SWORN was Grant. Grant was one of the two guys I was dating when I met The EX. I was 25, Grant was 36. Grant told me he wanted to have an affair with me. I was a bit confused because I always assumed one person had to be married for it to qualify as an affair but I didn’t care. He was so damn cute. I had to give Grant the talk when I fell hard for The EX and then he moved to Austin. (I’m sure those two things were not related at all.) My mystery guy tonight turned out not to be Grant, but it did bring back some fond memories. Grant is probably married with 12 kids now, but I’d look him up if he didn’t have such a common last name. Hindsight being 20/20, I wouldn’t have given him The Talk back in 1999.

I guess it goes without saying that this was not Grant.

(I’m just tired, not drunk, I promise.)

(Sorry Mom and Dad for the TMI about my former love life.)

(Not sorry I used to have a love life.)

This kid is trying to kill me with her big brain and is processing things way faster than I am ready for her to.

So tonight as I was putting her to bed, she asked me as always who was picking her up from school tomorrow. I told her that it would be Daddy. She got whiny about it saying she hadn’t been with me for very long, which is also normal. I told her that Daddy and I get to share time with her because we both love her so much.

The she said, “Well since you both love me so much, maybe you and Daddy should get married!”

blink blink blink

I said, “Well, Daddy and I used to be married but we aren’t anymore.”

This apparently blew her little mind, even though she knows from old photos that we all used to live together. It never dawned on me that she didn’t get that we had been married.

She said to me with wide eyes, “But when you get married you are just married forever.”

At this point in the conversation things started moving in slow motion for me. All I could hear in my head was “Don’t fuck this up. Don’t fuck this up. Don’t fuck this up.” How do I explain this to her? How can I tell her about the concept of divorce without planting a seed in her head that Daddy and GF might not be married forever (which I absolutely do NOT want to do)?

Then she reached up and tickled me and told me that I should get married so she can have a Step DaDa.

Thank you, dog, for that exit from the conversation. I swear sometimes that kid can read my mind. Maybe she could tell that I was not ready for this conversation and was letting me out of it easily. I have a rule that I will NEVER lie to her so I try to be honest with her about everything, but sometimes it’s a struggle to be honest and also keep things on the right level for her maturity. I also want to use the “you’re too young to understand right now” answer sparingly. Something tells me if she had pushed me on the topic, I would have had to pull it out tonight.

I swear, if a glass of wine weren’t four Weight Watchers points, I’d be drinking one right now.

Some days I think I’m a reasonably intelligent person and then there are days like today.

So we all know heat rises, right? If you don’t know that, I can’t help you anymore. So it’s winter. My upstairs is nice and toasty warm, but my downstairs can be a bit chilly because my air vents are in the ceiling. That means that the hot air just hangs around at ceiling level and it’s damn cold down here on the couch.

Except ceiling fans are amazing things! They have this wee switch that changes the direction of the fan blades. And when it’s cold outside, you can switch that and it pulls the warm air down and you no longer have to sit there and freeze your unmentionables off.

Lately I’ve been having this overwhelming feeling of… happiness. I’m not sure when it happened or how it happened, but it has happened.

I really don’t mean to be all unicorns and rainbows on you all. I still get mad sometimes, I still get scared. I have no idea how I’m going to support myself financially in eight months, or what I’m going to do with my life. But I feel confident the answers will come. They always do. I won’t let it keep me up at night right now.

I think maybe this is what is helping me stay so motivated with my goal to run the half marathon and to finally lose this weight I gained when I ate every feeling I had about my divorce. It doesn’t seem like a chore. It doesn’t seem like something I’m trying, hoping it will make me happy. It feels like taking care of myself. It feels like taking responsibility for my future health – I WILL fight my family tree and not end up with Diabetes. I’m able to do it because I’m happy.

I’m also accepting things about myself that I always thought were crazy or just silly. I used to feel silly admitting that I need copious amounts of sleep, especially being around people who brag they function normally on six hours. I used to joke that sleeping is my biggest hobby. Maybe it is, but like a hobby, it makes me feel good.  And if I need a nap to feel better, I won’t give myself hell for being lazy. I will recognize it for what it is – taking care of myself.

Are you all vomiting now? Sorry for that.

No one take away my happy pills, though, ok? They are key.

Today on the way to school, Bridget asked me if I had a boyfriend.

We’re both lucky I didn’t crash the car, such was my shock at this question.

I asked her if she thought I did and she said yes. When I asked her why she thought that, she said that we had dinner with “that man who had the Barbie game on his phone.” She was talking about my friend J, with whom she and I had dinner back in November. I explained to her that, no, he’s just an old friend of mine and that he is married with a little girl at home. Then I died a little because I never thought to explain to her that she wasn’t meeting a possible stepfather that night. But it’s nice to know that she likes him enough to approve of that scenario.

The conversation then turned to the fact that she is going to have a stepmother soon and how she wishes I would get married so she can have a “step-DADA.” I tried to get her to explain to me why she wants one of those, and the best she could come up with was that she liked having other people around. So basically she’s not so much a fan of me and The EX and wants other people around to amuse her.

I explained to her that maybe one day we’d find somebody super special like GF that we would want to be with, but it couldn’t just be anybody. She accepted that and then asked if she could listen to The Lion King soundtrack.  Then I threw up in  my mouth a little.

Again, I don’t want to say never, but I really can’t see the appeal of getting married again. And certainly I’m not going to be pressured into it by a five year old. But wow. I never thought she even gave any of this any thought at all, but this is the second time she’s brought this up. I feel like my answer is sufficient and it’s all I’ll probably ever give her on that topic.

I’m still gobsmacked. Dating pressure from my five year old daughter.

Another topic we covered was that boys could have boyfriends and girls could have girlfriends. She said, “They CAN?” and I said, “Yes of course. Boys can even marry boys and girls can marry girls.” (I didn’t want to go into legality and civil unions. She’s only FIVE.)  And she said, “That’s good.” Hopefully that lesson will stick with her and she’ll always feel that way about it.

Last night, I was moved by an episode of Parenthood to the point of insomnia as I thought about it. In the episode, the patriarch of the family forces everyone to take a lengthy roadtrip to celebrate his mother’s 86th birthday. The mother is a very unlikable person who has judged and belittled everyone in the family their whole lives.

It struck a chord with me because I know so many people who continue in toxic family relationships despite getting nothing out of the relationships at best, and at worst being basically emotionally abused.

Why do we do that? Why do we allow family members to treat us in ways we would never allow a friend to treat us? Does being blood related give someone the right to treat you however they want to?

In my world, the answer is no. But then again, I’m lucky. I’ve had only one family member in my life that I decided to discontinue relations with. Now, it’s not absolute because I do see this person from time to time but only when I can’t avoid it without putting other people I love in uncomfortable positions. But when I lived in Dallas with my family, this person was not allowed in my home, which kind of worked out for me because I never had to host Thanksgiving or Christmas.

I know it’s not so easy for others. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to sever ties with a parent or a sibling, no matter how badly they have used and/or abused you. But isn’t there a line in the sand? Isn’t there one thing that you simply can’t tolerate and would cause you to walk? Or does the cosmic accident of sharing DNA with someone absolve them of all responsibility for their behavior towards you?

To my mind, love and respect are earned. They don’t just get handed over because of shared blood.

I fully recognize that my views are based on the fact that I was raised pretty much solely with my nuclear family. We weren’t physically close with the extended family on either side so we forged our own way together. We didn’t have to put up with a lot of dramatics at family reunions and I never witnessed a relative behaving badly and expecting it to be ok. At least not until I was an adult.

That leads me to another question. When the actions of these toxic people are called into question, you often get the “Oh, it’s just his or her generation.” Or “They can’t help it, you should see how they were raised.” At what point do you stop getting to use that as an excuse? At what point do you have to take responsibility for your own life and actions? I don’t care that you were raised in the south in the 1920s. Racism is wrong and anyone with a single brain cell should know that. I don’t excuse or forgive your racism. I’m horrified for you that you suffered in the Holocaust. But that doesn’t absolve you of guilt for terrorizing your family for the rest of your days on the planet.

What say you? Would you or have you cut ties with a toxic or abusive family member? What did it take to make that happen?

Wow, I really haven’t written in a while. Let’s blow the dust off this sucker.

I am not a resolution maker because I always break them. But earlier in the fall I decided I was going to get back into running after a four year hiatus. I needed it for weight loss and for venting of frustrations. I met some lovely ladies who also run and they have inspired me to do a 5K race in February. Then I decided that a 5K is a good goal for where I am now, but I want to really push myself. I decided to do a half marathon. I found one in Chicago in July which will be perfect because Chicago is a great city, and in July will hopefully not be balls hot like it will be here. It also starts at 6:30 in the morning so that will help. I’m a little scared about this but when I start to freak out I tell myself this:

You have given birth. And you survived your husband walking out on you at a very vulnerable time. Running 13 miles is really cake after those two things.

To make this goal more do-able, I decided to join Weight Watchers. So yes I will lose weight, and I will train for the races. But given that I started this endeavor before the holidays, I am not really counting this as my New Year’s resolution. That’s my goal.

No, my New Year’s resolution is to stop pretending that I cook. Every week, I buy a crap ton of groceries and then throw most of them away. There are a few reasons for this – our weekday schedule is such that by the time I get Bridget home from school, dinner has to pretty much be immediate if we want to have any time together before bath and bedtime. So unless dinner can be cooked before I leave to go get her and then finished up or reheated when we get home, it just takes too long. And the things that can be prepared that way are typically things she doesn’t like and won’t eat. So it’s a waste of time and money. Not to mention how frustrating it is to go to the trouble to prepare a meal that she either has liked before or that I feel sure she will like, only to have her turn her nose up at it. Then it gets thrown away after spending a lot of time AND money on it.

(As an aside, our rule is that I prepare her a meal and she can decide whether to eat it or not, but if not, there is no more food until breakfast. If she’s hungry she’ll eat.)

I can still give Bridget a healthy, balanced meal without preparing a whole big dinner. We don’t eat out that much or do takeout, but even when we do, it’s more cost effective than throwing out the groceries I buy. A restaurant meal for the two of us will almost always result in leftovers for Bridget that I can heat up the next night with some broccoli and she’s good.

So I am done pretending to plan elaborate meals and then throwing away the ingredients. If there were more than just the two of us in the house, it might be different. But that “traditional” family dinner just doesn’t work for us, and I’m tired of trying to make our life fit into that.