Monday, March 27, 2006

The Beginning of Some Ends (part 2)

I realized after posting part 1 of this explanation of how I got divorced twice, I was going into way too much detail. Maybe part of that is I don't want to really relive it all minute by minute, but anyway, I've decided to condense a bit more.

Well, I found out I was pregnant. The first person we told was my brother, as he was also our roommate. Then I called my Dad. Well Dad called the airlines right then and had a flight to come in the next afternoon. We had a weird weekend. Dad seemed okay about it, but my brother was FREAKED. So just before Christmas, we came home one afternoon and my brother had moved out without saying a word. And he took the couch. Well Husband #1 or H#1 did not have a job, (we were living off his inheritance) so he began job hunting. He was an EE and soon got a job at TI. He was to start work on a Monday in early January, so we realized we needed to get married before he started work. It was all last minute, and we were going to get married that Friday, then realized it was a Friday the 13th, so we went for Thursday the 12th. We decided this on Wednesday the 11th. The very next month, we moved to an apartment in a suburb just north of Dallas. We lived there until I had Kate. I don't know what you may know about stress, but I can tell you that it is not a good idea to move to a new house while you are in the hospital giving birth. I was in the hospital 5 days and during that time H#1 moved us into a nice little rental that belonged to his aunt.

I should mention here that the day I left the hospital with my new baby girl Kate was August 28. That was just over a year from meeting H#1 at the river. In other words, things had moved VERY quickly. We settled in and were doing okay, but wanted a larger place of our own. About a year later we bought a house. It was a fixer-upper starter and we spent a lot of time working on it, between that and taking care of Kate there was not a lot of free time.

I can't pinpoint a day or a thing, but suddenly I found H#1 very icky. He did that snot snort/hock/spit thing that I found overwhelmingly repulsive. His laugh made me want to gag. We had only one bathroom and he would come into the bathroom and poop while I was taking a shower. It's hard to feel clean when you smell poop. I noticed that although he was very nice to me, he was VERY rude to other people. Including my Mom. I think the clincher was when we were visiting his grandmother and he stepped out the back door onto a newborn kitten and killed it. I KNOW it was an accident, but it seemed so pointless and stupid on his part. Who doesn't look down when they step out of a door? Our sex life became horrible. One Saturday afternoon, I walked into the bedroom after having a shower, Kate was in the front yard playing with the neighbor kid and he said, "Kate's outside and you're naked, let's do it." I said, "Is that your idea of foreplay?" I was disgusted. Shortly thereafter I read a magazine article about sex and foreplay. It said to approach the subject when nothing is going on. On a nice weekend afternoon I said, "I want to talk to you about something." Then I very calmly said, "I would really enjoy sex more if there was some foreplay." He said "YOU,YOU, YOU. It's always about you!" I was in shock. And pretty much decided that was the end of that.......

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Classified Ass

We interrupt my new series on how I managed to get divorced twice with the following post on treadmills:

Okay, it's not no much about treadmills as it is about classifed ads. More precisely, about my dealings with the classifieds while looking for a good used treadmill. I got the paper on Sunday and found the section titled: Sporting & Exercise Equipment. There were five ads for treadmills. I numbered them (1 through 5), and numbered a sheet of paper to take notes. I wanted to know A) the brand; B) model number; C) if the owner still had the manual. I figured I could then look up more information on the internet.

On Monday I called #5 as it was the only one that said "excellent condition." I got a recording that said, "If you're calling about the treadmill, call this number..." I thought that was goofy. So I called the second number and got another answering machine with the exact same voice saying to leave a message. I left a message. I also called ad #4 and talked to a foreign lady who knew nothing about the treadmill as it was her husband's. She did look on the thing and gave me a brand and model# although I could find nothing on the internet corresponding with what she told me. Meanwhile, I had found enough information to know that I did NOT want the treadmill in ad #2. I figured I would call ads #1 & #3 today.

Monday night, around 7:00, the phone rang. It was the voice from ad #5 (both answering machines). The only way to describe this old man's voice is that it sounded like someone with a thick Texas accent talking with a mouth full of mucus and marbles. First he said he had FOUR treadmills. That was a red flag, because to me that meant he was a junk dealer or something instead of just a regular person trying to get rid of a treadmill they don't use. I asked him for the models. All I heard was garble garble garble Proform garble garble garble. So I said, "What was that first one again?" I still couldn't understand his mucusy marbley speech and he spelled it for me. I wrote it down. Then I said, "What were the last two, because I know I don't want a Proform." In an irate voice, he said, "You don't want a Proform?" I said, "I've been looking on the internet and I don't want a Proform..." And was in the midst of again asking for the brands of the other two treadmills when he shrieked,"You don't want no treadmill!!" and hung up on me. Yep. He hung up on me.

Cut to 9:00 am this morning. The phone rings. I look at caller ID and it says "(something) vacuum" but I happen to recognize the phone number as the first number I had called to Mr. Mucus Salesperson of the Year. Of course, I didn't answer. I check the voice mail, and he's left this nice message. My Sweetie's voice is on our message, so he's all sir this and that about finding the number on his caller ID and was it about the treadmill yada yada. So I laughed and promptly forgot about it. Well okay, I went back to sleep, same thing. So this afternoon I'm dust/vacuuming the back of the TV and the phone rings and it's that guy again, so I answer it. I'm thinking A) this is the third time he's called this number, does he not recognize it? and B) I wonder if he'll recognize my voice. But after my hello, he very politely goes into his spiel about finding the number on his caller ID and was my call about the treadmill? So I said, "Yes, I DID call this number and was directed to the other number. I called that number and left a message. You called me back last night and hung up on me." And then I pressed "Off" on my phone. Somewhere between "...left a message. You called..." he started to speak, but I kept talking and then hung up. It was SWEEEET!.

You'd think that would be the end of this story. Oh hell no. So this evening I call ad #3. I said, "I'm calling about the treadmill." The man says, "We already sold it." I said, "Oh, well, I'm sorry to have bothered you then." He said, "Thanks for calling." End of transaction. I called ad #1. Again, "I'm calling about the treadmill." A woman basically shrieks, "I can't imagine why!!!" I said, "Excuse me?" I'm thinking here that I accidentally called some sort of group home. She goes berserk saying, "Why would you call today!!?? We put that ad in Friday!! We sold it the next day!! I said, "Well I got it from Sunday's paper." and while I was saying that she was still berating me. She said, "Well you should only call the day of the ad!! We sold that the very next..." I pushed the "off" button again.

I'm never using the classified ads again. I'm going to go to ebay now and look for a local used treadmill.

Friday, March 17, 2006

The Beginning of Some Ends

I used to read the blog of a young girl - close to my daughter's age. I would link to it, but she has since gone private. Apparently someone went off on her about something. Politics maybe. The reason I bring her up is that once she said something to the effect that she thought people were weak for dissolving their marriages. Apparently she was not over her parents' divorce. Her sentiments were sweet yet very naive. Well sure you could stay in a marriage if a gun were held to your head. I wanted to address my two divorces because in a post some time back, I may have come across as cold-hearted and flippant.

When I was 22, for some reason, I started thinking it was time to get married. I wasn't one of those girls that just dreamed of marriage all my life. As a matter of fact, I had turned down 3 proposals by this time and was living with a guy that I knew I did not want to marry (I guess that would be proposal #4 now that I think about it.) Yes, I know that one should not look for a husband while living with a guy, but that's what I was doing. I met a guy in a very random way.

It was 1983. Our neighbors across the way had always been friendly, but after my brother moved in with us, the wife became VERY friendly. We were invited to join them for a day of boating on the river. They had a fancy speedboat, I always thought it looked like a white shark's tooth. It only held four people - like a small car. The trick to this river place was that you could only get there by water. We all parked on the river and then went by boat to this special spot. It WAS a really nice spot, with feral horses constantly grazing nearby. We ended up setting up next to some people with jet skis. I went over to ask about them and that's how I met husband #1, or H#1.

For some reason I gave him my business card. He kept calling me at work. I was in outside sales, so these calls were just slips of paper to me. Finally, the secretary made an odd comment which led me to think I should call this guy just to tell him to stop calling. Well, what happened was, he invited me to a David Bowie concert. And this was 1983. I HAD to say yes. I didn't lie to the guy I was living with. I mean, it was David Bowie. On the night of the concert, I drove to a girlfriend's apartment that was just off the highway to Dallas and had H#1 pick me up there.

Compared to the guy I was living with, this guy seemed to have so much going for him, he was manlier, more confident, more mature, and had an engineering degree! My little 22 year-old brain was blinking "husband material" over and over.

My brother, live-with-guy and I were all smashed into a one bedroom apartment. We had already been apartment hunting. Finally, I just told live-with-guy, "Hey when my brother and I move out, you're not coming with us." I was much nicer than that and told him he was too good for me and all that stuff and what a great catch he would be for some chick. He wasn't thrilled, but when I spoke to him a few years later, he told me it was the right thing for us.

Basically, my brother and I moved into this new apartment with H#1 being there most of the time although he still had his other place. This was August of 83. In mid December, every time I jumped up from sitting, I had an awful pain in my abdomen. Finally I went to the doctor. I was pregnant.......

Monday, March 13, 2006

More on the New Kitty / Duke #1

Rufus has been a pretty good kitty. We took him to the vet on Saturday for shots and to have him checked out. That pretty much put him out for the rest of the day, but today he was all happy kitty again. In the middle of the day we let him out to meet the other cats. Apart from a few hisses from the older cats, there's been no real interaction. Mostly they just watch from a distance. Rufus has his comfort zone, certain areas of the house where he feels comfortable. Jake has mostly seemed a bit miffed at us for the whole thing. Lilly seems curious but also a little timid. She'll get close to Rufus for just a bit, then run off. Rufus seems to have a very healthy respect for both cats, which is kind of odd. I remember years ago introducing a new kitten to older cats, and he just wanted to play. The vet thought Rufus might be about 5 months old, which is older than we all thought. He loves to play with the mouse toys. He can play with one of those little mice for 20 minutes straight and he will bring it to you to throw. I think he's a happy kitty.

March madness is upon us and I was tickled blue when Duke was given the top seed for the NCAA tournament. Also we won the ACC tournament today. It was great but kind of emotionally wearing to watch Duke games 3 days in a row. Now the real madness starts on Thursday and I can't wait. Go Duke!!

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Rufus Poopus

I usually like to post about my Meals on Wheels Wednesdays. I went to Italianni's for lunch and I was complaining to everyone that MOW went so smoothly, that I had nothing for my blog. What's that old saying? Something like "be careful what you wish for...?" I stayed at the bar until about 4:00, then ran some errands.

(Warning: Major Digression and back-tracking)
I took both rolls of film in so we could pick them up on our way out later. And man I am worse than I thought I was. There were pictures from my daughter's birthday and that was August 23rd! There were Halloween pictures, our anniversary, Christmas pictures, Valentine's Day flowers pictures. I really need to get a digital camera. Oh also my before and after painting pictures, but the after pictures were weird and the paint looks black. I'll just fix them on Photoshop and post them later.

Anyway, today was My Sweetie's niece's birthday and we were all doing the cake thing at my in-laws' house at 7:00. Our original plan (as we are late eaters) was to do the birthday party thing at 7:00, leave just after 8:00 and go to Red Lobster. Well, what happened was....

Okay one of the kids kept yelling about "the cat." My in-laws hate cats and have trapped many feral cats and taken them away, so I really wasn't paying that much attention. Well this was NOT a feral cat. The sweetest little black kitten was in their back yard, desperate for attention and trying to get in the house. And this cat was not even afraid of those loud kids. My brother-in-law had tried placing him over various fences to send him back on his way, but he would have none of it. I'm not sure if I've mentioned Sammy before, but he was my beloved cat that we had to have put to sleep in January of 2004. Sammy was all black with just a few little hints of white spots. Well, so was this kitty.

I took it as a sign. My Sweetie said, "We can't take this cat, it's probably someone's pet." Well what sort of pet owner has a very skinny bony cat desperate to get in someone else's house? If the kitty looked well fed, I would never have considered bringing him home. Well this was NOT a well-fed cat. This was a hungry cat. Not anymore.

Rufus is now laying by my feet. We're going to start him out here in the bar room. There are French doors into the living room, so Jake and Lilly have seen Rufus. And Rufus has seen them. There's been some hissing through the glass and a lot of under-the-door sniffing. I AM going to check the paper and internet every day for the next two weeks. If someone is looking for Rufus, they are going to have to drive all the way over here to get him. I have a feeling that as skinny as he is, no one is looking for him.

Okay, I left out the hideous part. Rufus started out a bit jumpy in the truck. It's about a 30 minute ride. He settled down after about 5 minutes, although he did poot once and man, was it stinky. He spent most of the ride just laying in the space behind the driver's side. Well when we got to about 5 minutes from the house, he climbed into my lap and and perched on my left thigh. I was thinking how calm he was. Then I thought he pooted again. THEN I felt a hideous warmth on my left thigh. Yes, Rufus pooped on my left thigh. The smell was horrific, but the concept of it was worse. I grabbed some paper towels, rolled down the window and lit a cigarette. As soon as we pulled into the driveway, I said, "Grab the cat!" I jumped out, ran in the house and threw my jeans in the wash. I washed my hands 4 times and Sea Breezed my leg twice. And then I smelled some coffee. (In case you didn't know, smelling coffee will get any nasty smell out of your brain and nose.) Yep. as Bob from "Survivor" would say, "Rufus 'dropped a deuce' on my leg." YUCK! But if you think about it, it's a lot easier to put your jeans in the wash, than de-funk your truck's carpet. I guess he did me a favor. Sort of.

Anyway, he is the cutest thing ever. Now I need to get film to take pictures of him. And I'll try to get them developed before Halloween.

Friday, March 03, 2006

The World's Thickest Wall

The reason I have not posted in a while is because I have been painting. And of course, it seemed like a small job. When I was thinking about doing it I mean, not now. Square footage wise it's probably only. . . , well actually I suck at that type of guesswork. Anyway, it's just one wall and it's not even a full wall. It's a strip of wall over the inset wetbar and built-in bookcase (or in our house, a videocase), the two strips of wall on the sides of the wetbar and the backsplash behind the bar and under some cabinets. It doesn't sound like much, but what happened was...

Well, I decided to paint over the existing grasscloth wallpaper, as I thought it would make for an interesting texture. To paint over wallpaper, one must use an oil-based primer. Oil-based stuff terrifies me. Oil-based stuff is FOREVER. So that first night, with the first coat, I studied my entire surroundings after EVERY SINGLE brush stroke. And when I say first coat, I must mention that I did not consider it that at the time. I just thought I was doing the primer. The next morning is when I fully realized that it was the FIRST coat of primer. That grasscloth is quite the thirsty vixen. That next day, I decided to use the 3" roller instead of a brush and that part wasn't as bad. So 7 or so hours later, I'm all ready to roll on my first coat of Glidden's Deep Garnet. A lovely deep dark red.

I, of course, knew that painting the deep red over the white primer would take two coats, but at least now I was working with water-based paint. When you splatter that, you can clean it right up with a paper towel and a little spit. (Trust me, spit works better than water for that.) I did the second coat (except the edging) Tuesday night.

Well here it is Thursday night and I have some more spots that are lighter to touch up. I'm going to do that just as soon as I hit the "Publish Post" button. I seriously thought I would have this completely finished when My Sweetie got home from his business trip Wednesday night. Nope. But I have decided, that no matter what, I am taking all the blue masking tape down tomorrow and cleaning up all this mess. If there are still some slightly lighter spots I will just learn to live with it.

Meals On Wheels: Only one interesting thing happened Wednesday. This was with the lady that I've only mentioned as being the lady that lives in the gated apartments with the crappy security keyboard system. Well I've never really spoken to her. So this time I asked about her dog. She said it was a Shih Tzu. So I was telling her that my mom had one and she closed the door. She. Closed. The. Door. In my face. Right in the middle of a sentence. Yeah, that was different. I went back to Italliani's for lunch and Bobby grilled me as to where I had been the last two weeks, so I just told him that 2 weeks ago I had overslept and was too grungey to come there and that last week I had a craving for ribs. Both of those were true, just not 100% of the truth.

Okay now I realize that I am just putting off the painting. Tomorrow, I will take my after pictures and hopefully get my film developed this weekend. Still putting off the painting. Okay. Time to paint.