When I got married, I knew that Skaja and I would be taking our two separate lives weaving them into one. That we would become accountable to each other and that we would have to communicate and work out our differences, but there were other things that took me by surprise. It demands more trust than I ever thought I would extend to any human being other than my parents. It has meant that there’s another person with more influence over me than I thought I would allow anyone to have ever. It’s led me to tolerate and deal with issues that I thought I had refused to ever allow into my life again. It has given me a new perspective on me and forced me to see some flaws in my character that I’ve been more than willing to pay any price to ignore until I finally learned that when someone loves you and you do something wrong, they pay the price when you do something wrong. I hope to be able to apply that lesson to my relationships with other people I love.

I try very hard to not take it for granted that she’ll always be there no matter what and to not lose sight of all of the things that she brings into my life. I try to make sure that I’m always finding things of value to offer her and that I’m making myself into a better partner for her and myself. I hope that as we change, we’ll be able to keep communicating with each other and making the best of the circumstances that we find ourselves in and that we step forward to meet our life; building and shaping it to make it our own.

It turns out that while the the location we’d driven to is listed on google maps, it had closed quite a while ago. I decided not to let that stop the two of us from enjoying tasty Chinese goodness so I searched for the next nearest location and dialed the number to make sure that it was open, it wasn’t. The next listing, while an open restaurant with people answering the phones, was too far to drive so we would go somewhere else. We would go to Einstein’s Bagels, where I hadn’t been in a very long time and we could settle for a while to talk out some things that are going on in the studio.

We went into Einstein’s, decided what we would have, and learned that we couldn’t have it, they were out of plain bagels and panini bread. We made substitutions, got our drinks and learned that they were going to close in ten minutes, so they would pack our food up in a bag for us so we could eat in the parking lot. Awesome.

So one might think that I would know a thing or two about handling liquids in a car properly. Ha! Actually, it seems that I’m destined to douse the interior of each car that we own with a different sticky liquid. Today, that liquid happened to be root beer. Seriously root beer, fuck you. What makes you think you can spill all over the place like that?

That moment turned out to be a transition from bad to good oddly enough, because while I was sitting there in my car with the stuff drying out on me and getting sticky, I just had to laugh. I laughed harder than I had in a long time and the swearing in the car tapered off to a normal level.

It’s all because I made a wrong choice a long time ago. Instead of being willing to take risks and push myself to reach further, I chose to make myself comfortable, to be safe and sensible. I thought I was well behaved and smart, but really I just didn’t understand that for every risk that I took along with a chance for something bad to happen, there was a chance for me to learn something new and challenge myself. I let my life shrink around me until it became so small, there was no room around me to breath.

I want to do something better for myself than that. I want to act, to leave something behind me after I leave, hopefully something of value. It’s not easy to make that choice to expend the effort from one moment to the next. to risk trying things for fear that I won’t be good at them, but each time I do it, it gets a little easier. I find myself getting absorbed and wanting to elaborate more on what I’m trying to say. To be more specific, more persuasive in my message. I want to write words that will make people sit up, act, think differently and just maybe take a few actions of their own so that they can share this feeling of being at the wheel with me instead of just following directions.

Dot kept me on my toes though. I know the sound of her little footsteps approaching the folding sofa very very well and I can go from resting to on guard in the fraction of a second between the moment that I first hear that sound and when she pounced, I was ready to dart out the other side and start the chase. Sometimes we’re playing. Sometimes we start out that way and we wind up really going after each other. But whatever happens during that time, we always wind up back at our status quo. A fragile state of armistice between us that usually falls apart after a while, but forces us to understand each other and ourselves well enough to function as siblings.

With my ex-husband.

Today marks three years since our divorce was finalized. It’s taken a lot of effort for my ex and I to maintain a friendship. I suspect there are many people who know him who would ask him if he’s crazy. After all, the split was really initiated by me.

Only he can really answer that question, but I do know that I value him as a person. And he wouldn’t remain my friend simply for kicks.

Maybe it took a divorce to make a friend. It took a divorce to get me on the path to Sam. There’s been a lot of hurt and tears. And laughs and understanding.

I think my fortune cookie from yesterday’s lunch sums it up perfectly:

you may now refer to sam and me and Mr and Mrs Wills.

it’s true we had planned our wedding for October. however, while we were here for my sister’s wedding, sam and i had a chat and decided to just ‘take the plunge,’ as it were. wedding was May 23rd.

back to your regularly scheduled Monday.