Sugared Harpy

I almost used InterLibrary Loan to send a book from one college I work at to the other. Because all the rest were going there.

That, my friends, is lazy.

One of the things I adore about NB is that he has many long term women friends. Friends he is close to, whom he loves, and with whom he routinely spends his time. Kick ass, strong women friends I also happen to adore.

Sometimes when we go out, it’s the two of us. Sometimes it’s three or four or more of us.

Also relevant to this story is the fact that the two of us are slowly incorporating our children. We used to only go somewhere with kids if any of our friends were going to be there, so they didn’t feel weird with just us. So WE didn’t feel weird.

Normally it would be something like NB, his daughter, Friend K, and me. Or, NB, Friend J, and then my children and me. See, always with the friend buffer. If there was no buffer, one of us would back out.

But in the past few months, here and there we starting doing things without the buffer and sometimes with the buffer. And then over a month or so ago, we went out with all three kids, two partners, and no buffer. The five of us. It was, interesting. I mean it went beautifully, but I think we were both a little nervous. Okay, maybe I was nervous. I like to think and think about these things.

He’s a dude.

As the weeks progressed, there’s been a bit more life with the kids around. Be it him, daughter, and me or him, me, and my children, the kids know we’re dating, like us, and seem fine. So, we’re fine.

But you know, the buffers are our friends. So they aren’t gone, naturally. Last night, we went to see The Spiderwick Chronicles.

(I’d like to tell you we only went to this for the kids, but we’ve been known for going to kids movies without kids around. Also, this movie, is eh, fine. Your kids will love it, though.)

Okay, movies last night. It was NB, me, my children, and friend Julie. NB came to my house, hung out here for a bit, then the four of us headed to the theatre to meet Julie. Where my boyfriend then proceeded to get involved in a heated air hockey battle with Brett.

We meet up with Julie, get our snackies, and make way to our seats. When Brett decides he wants to sit next to Julie, our seating looks like this:

Brett~~Julie~~NB~~Me~~Daniel.

At some point, I kind of start giggling to myself. It looked like NB was the Man-King-Husband, Julie and I were his co-wives, and we were each sitting by our respective children.

Y’all don’t see a lot of pink hairs around here, do you.

*Where I’m undertaking research work, thanks to Mama Theresa!

When you do choose to cancel classes on my birthday, please send the message out say, more than five minutes before my class starts.

Not that I was going to make it anyway. But you know, maybe I wouldn’t have tried to drive on the stupid roads.

I love love love teaching. My students sometimes drive me to drink, but I love the reactions and discussions. Today I am subbing for my friend’s class, as well as teaching my own, creating a day that starts at 8am and ends around 9:30…with loads o’ driving in between.

However, I’m totally cool with it because as a narcissistic beeyotch, I can’t wait to talk to more people about this:

Muscley, kind of dirty, bound slave.

And then, this:

That’s one dying slave who is hot to trot, if you know what I mean.

I also have a strong NEED to talk about this:

Mainly because of these:

I’m so sorry to leave you hanging. Life got super busy, good busy, but oh baby busy.

Carrying on…

So, boyfriend, me going crazy, yadda yadda yadda. I am also suddenly a jealous person.

I have NEVER been a jealous person. Ever. Boyfriends, husbands could say whatever they wanted, ogled all they wanted because I never felt threatened somehow. Hell, the boys’ dad moved a woman into the house when I was eight months pregnant. His girlfriend. I was his very pregnant with his second son wife. I wasn’t jealous, pissed at his asshatness, but not jealous. She could have him. I didn’t care, didn’t bother me. Now, it does. Ack.

Seriously, this poor boyfriend can say a woman on TELEVISION is cute and I feel suddenly sad and jealous. What is this shit? She is a picture on the screen, who is probably cute, and who is not going to show up in the living room and steal the boyfriend away. He’s around lots of attractive women in real life, he’s still here by choice.

Sometimes, he is a very public ogler for the express reason to be funny and irritate me. So, OOOOHHHH LOOK AT THAT TALL HOT BLONDE!!!!!! Followed by a glance to see my face and a laugh to bring it back down. Always a goddamned blonde, I would observe. Always a tall blonde, who is nothing like me you ass hat, refiller of the douche bag, whore.

A few months ago I took a deep breath and had to share words with him that I feared. I had to tell him why the tall blonde thing wasn’t funny so much to me. His former wife was a tall blonde. I felt every time he noticed a tall blonde he was fetishizing her. I know, in my heart, that she was not a tall blonde Playboy bunny, she was a taller than me normal looking pretty woman. But my brain elevated her to this other level. Talking to him cleared that air. He said he did that about tall blonde women because he got a reaction to that more than anyone else…YEAH, I BET YOU DID. He said that yes, she was a completely normal person and that he didn’t realize I was going there with it. It helped, but oy, my brain still wants to do this.

Presents.

Holy fuck was Christmas a blast this year. He didn’t want to do presents, hates Christmas and the gotta buy attitude surrounding it. I love to give gifts and get them, thoughtful presents though, could have been handmade and cost a penny and I would love it. I got upset though that he didn’t want to, and then didn’t, do the present thing.

Because he once said that he loved buying gifts for his former wife.

I didn’t let that go. My brain kept is safe and repeated it constantly. He loved buying gifts for her, not me. I am not his wife, he is not on par with the husband I had for almost a decade. I get that, embrace it because of my own life and past. This is its own new emerging and growing relationship. But. Oy. I kept it and rolled it around. Again, talking. Crying. Feeling shameful for feeling this way, but mad that he could act that way.

If I have never felt competition with his former wife, these two things kind of did that. Not wholly, but enough.

Talking, talking, talking it out. Valentine’s Day and my birthday are getting celebrated. Commercialized to not, he had no idea I was feeling that way and never meant for THAT to come across.

I am also quite needy. Of his time, his attention, his words. Seriously, it’s a problem because I feel like a whiny little crybaby for no reason. Spending nearly every day with me is somehow not enough? Calling me every day, not enough? That is fucking crazy talk. The man is attentive and present. What is my problem, then?

I think it’s because he is pretty normal. I’ve never had pretty normal. I’ve always had partners who were obsessive and possessive. Someone who would drive through a blizzard to spend five minutes with me, possibly spending those five minutes criticizing and possibly wholly adoring me, but still just to be with me. This boyfriend, no. He will stay home in a blizzard, dangerous and all. He’ll call and talk to me, more than once if I’m huffy, but he will stay home. And I, yes, get huffy and pissy.

I want a man who knows when to put me first, and when to be smart and put himself first. It’s what I need to do better for myself. It’s what I think all of us should do to be healthy and happy. Then I got one. And now I’m irritated. Because I have never had normal. Obsessive, possessive, THIS I can do well. Normal makes me whiny and passive (hah! maybe not so much passive) aggressive.

I’m working on it. I’m trying. I could (and well, can still) feel when I was going into hyper sensitive mode and I kept asking WHY WHY WHY are you feeling so crazy?

My sister sensed it and asked me one day:
Do you have love or do you have baby?

Well, I know what my problem is. I am beginning to have love, good normal happy love.

Happy Valentine’s Day :)

Note One: This is pretty much stuff regarding to my boyfriend. Yes, I have talked to him about these things. Yes, I’m positive he loved talking about it. Until the wee hours of them morning sometimes. With me crying. Sometimes huffing and puffing. He thought it was charming.

So, I’ve got a boyfriend. And for the past few months, apparently this makes me batshit crazy.

I’ve never been the needy girl (Okay, I’ve been needy but not the kind who fawns on her man’s every action where have you been mister! needy). I’ve never needed lots of closeness and togetherness and usually felt quite stifled by partners. But this relationship is messing with me. Lordy, is it MESSING WITH ME.

So today is your first installment of how nucking futs I’ve become.

A big part of my most recent crazy has been my change in how I feel toward certain things. For instance, I’ve been seeing this man for some time now. At that post, we had moved to the girlfriend/boyfriend point for about a month. Obviously, we had been seeing each other before we accepted that label.

But a few months ago, I start becoming hypersensitive to what I can see in his closet and the stuff I just feel is in the second drawer of the bedside table and what I feel is looming in spaces all over the house, particularly the bedroom. Really, I think it’s the stuff in the bedroom. Huh. Just worked that out. But it bothers me now, just lately, but not before.

I’m pretty sure my boyfriend doesn’t wear pink baseball caps.

No, he’s not cheating. He is, however, a widower. That is a hurt I cannot fathom. A loss I have no way to understand. I don’t try, I am sympathetic and saddened at such a terrible loss, but I can’t pretend to know what he’s gone through. Not during her illness, not through her loss, and not having to learn life after. There is so much that goes into something like that, I will never ever be able to understand the tiniest fraction.

I love that he loved his wife. He is a good man. I am happy he had that life and as much as I adore him in mine, I wouldn’t have wished that on him. Just like I wished I had never been divorced, but I am happy to have this relationship now. I don’t fret about the idea of her, necessarily. He doesn’t live in the past, he seems to feel comfortable talking about that part of his life the same as any of us would do about our own previous situations, he doesn’t make me feel any less or that I’m in some weird competition with who she was. I feel like he enjoys me in a unique way that doesn’t undermine her, or undermine me.

From what I understand, the house looks very different now.

I sleep in their bed with him, the bed I know he’s had longer than our time together. At first it was weird, felt odd, sort of. Not too much really, since it had been just his bed for a few years by that point. The sheets were new, I learned that later. And now there are even newer sheets on the bed; I was there to help pick them out. The bed, eh, it doesn’t bother me for some reason. The house and the bed, just feel like his. I didn’t know him with her.

There is a small picture of the two of them on a high shelf over the closet in the bedroom.

THAT doesn’t bother me. I adore who he is and I fully understand that she is part of who he is. And I’m grateful for her part in his life, because I like him as he is now. The picture, in the bedroom, doesn’t irk me in the slightest. One teeny snapsot of them together is a memento, not a shrine and it feels fine and appropriate. I am acutely aware that his marriage didn’t end by choice, and perhaps this would seem weird if he had merely divorced. Not that he needed my permission, but it’s perfectly fine with me to keep it where it is.

Hats, pink.

The are sitting in the closet. In the closet that is closest to the side of the bed I sleep in, when I stay the night there. Which you know, is pretty much when the kids aren’t with me and his daughter isn’t with him. So in the light of the morning, I can sometimes see into the closet (a mirrored closet…not as sexy as one would lead you to believe…damn 80s design). Several women’s hats hang in there. No other clothing is in there, but the hats are clearly not his. Lately, THEY have been bothering me. I think it’s because they are so personal. Personal effects not seemingly serving as keepsakes. I really think he just didn’t think about them, rarely thinks about them now, and there they still are. Where I try not to stare at another woman’s belongings when I spoon with my boyfriend.

The bedside table has two drawers. One is cleared out for me.

It’s the other one that is bugging me. He sweetly cleared out the top drawer one day as “my” drawer on “my” side of the bed. But there are two. I can’t seem to put handle anything in there because I wonder if the bottom drawer is full of the things that used to be in the top drawer. I wonder if it looks like mine at my home, filled with very personal items like birth control pills, glasses, nail file, ouchless ponytail elastics…personal personal personal.

When it was over, he said he didn’t know what to do with some things, so he “shoved them in places.”

I am becoming highly aware of this. I know pretty much what he kept, from heres and theres of various conversations. Things kept for her children when or if they want them, usable items of the shared house that there’s no reason to toss, I’m sure there are family pictures to doodads to highly precious objects important to just him and her that I don’t worry about…feeling those are private. But I wonder more about the other things. The things he didn’t know what to do with, shoved in a drawer, things I might bump into accidentally and not know what to make of them. I fear them and my own feelings.

I don’t want him to do anything about these things, per se.

I mean, hey, if he wants to move them for his own sake, I will feel probably feel relieved and less anxious. HOWEVER, and this is big, I am not asking him to do so. I would not, could not ever ask someone to potentially go through something painful to ease my mind. It’s just not on the same level, to me. Nor would I appreciate someone asking me to do the same.

The problems I’m having are my issues. He’s done nothing inconsiderate to me. He’s done nothing wrong or even new. He is certainly not handling anything inappropriately. My feelings have been pretty bland on the matter until fairly recently: not worrying or caring about any of this. My reactions have changed and I have to deal with it. I’m dating a widower and I intend to do so for a bit longer. Just like he is dating the newly divorced and has his own issues, these are mine.

And they are making me crazy lately :)

More tomorrow…

Super sharing starts Monday.

But here is more nonsense…Kind of scary nonsense.

What Melissa Means

You are confident, self assured, and capable. You are not easily intimidated. You master any and all skills easily. You don’t have to work hard for what you want. You make your life out to be exactly how you want it. And you’ll knock down anyone who gets in your way! You are friendly, charming, and warm. You get along with almost everyone. You work hard not to rock the boat. Your easy going attitude brings people together. At times, you can be a little flaky and irresponsible. But for the important things, you pull it together. You are relaxed, chill, and very likely to go with the flow. You are light hearted and accepting. You don’t get worked up easily. Well adjusted and incredibly happy, many people wonder what your secret to life is. You tend to be pretty tightly wound. It’s easy to get you excited… which can be a good or bad thing. You have a lot of enthusiasm, but it fades rather quickly. You don’t stick with any one thing for very long. You have the drive to accomplish a lot in a short amount of time. Your biggest problem is making sure you finish the projects you start. You are the total package – suave, sexy, smart, and strong. You have the whole world under your spell, and you can influence almost everyone you know. You don’t always resist your urges to crush the weak. Just remember, they don’t have as much going for them as you do. You are usually the best at everything … you strive for perfection. You are confident, authoritative, and aggressive. You have the classic “Type A” personality.

Depraved and immoral…great. The thing is, the questions for this are things like: Do you like Oprah Winfrey? Do you feel old?

You’re Lolita!
by Vladimir Nabokov
Considered by most to be depraved and immoral, you are obsessed with
sex. What really tantalizes you is that which deviates from societal standards in every
way, though you admit that this probably isn’t the best and you’re not sure what causes
this desire. Nonetheless, you’ve done some pretty nefarious things in your life, and
probably gotten caught for them. The names have been changed, but the problems are real.
Please stay away from children.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Be prepared, y’all. I’m dipping my toes in next week to write about my crazy and my feeeeeeeeeeeeelings.

Until the very moment I filled in the bubble next to the candidate’s name, I had no idea who I was voting for.

I knew this much: Democratic, Clinton or Obama.

I liked certain parts about each candidate. I disliked certain parts. I sat here the past few days and reread over their voting records and stances on issues, etc. etc. blah etc. And I was completely torn, but yo, I had to pick. So I did.

You should vote, too. For, you know, somebody.

(Maybe not Huckabee, mkay? How is he WINNING caucuses?!)

On to other things:
I have most recently (the last few months) been going bananas. Crazy. Looney Tunes. There are a few things in particular that my brain just can’t put away and relax.

I REALLY NEED MY BRAIN TO SHUSH.

There are no problems. Life is generally good. I am the happiest I’ve been in a long time. But there is a certain change in the air and my mind likes to deconstruct it to bits and spew it out for interpretation.

I am thinking about talking about this here. I may not. I’m torn on that one too…