Sugared Harpy

As NB and I continue on this little journey and sometimes discuss what’s next, we have noticed something. Our kids have a lot of unexpected siblings.

Daniel and Brett have Sister 1 and Sister 2 at their dad’s. Add in NB’s daughter, E, let’s say. Even if we aren’t living together *yet* nor are we married *not even discussing at this point* they are spending time together and will continue to. If we live together, that solidifies that relationship more. And, if Mike has kids/stepkids, they would most likely count too.

Now include E’s siblings: Sister, Brother 1, and Brother 2 at her mom’s. Also, Step Sister 1, Step Brother, and Step Sister 2 from her dad’s late wife. That gives my kids three unexpected siblings and possibly more by extension of E’s siblings, depending on how the kids later define family for themselves and who they actually spend time wth. E gets eight clear siblings.

The million dollar question is: Is this a problem?

On the positive side, not really. My kids have benefited GREATLY from having my niece Ashley around, as close as a sister, because man oh man is she making them better men for learning how to talk to, not be afraid of, enjoy, laugh with, and learn the sweet and toughness of girls. As for their own sisters, they frustrate them sometimes (to the point of tears for Daniel) because they are LITTLE girls with big ideas about touching not-their-toys, but they also cherish those siblings to pieces. Daniel is an amazingly patient young man with little kids.

As for adding another sibling-like person into their life, well, she’s here. They adore her. They think E hung the moon. Of course if they live together full time they will at some point, argue. So what? Learning to argue is a skill, a valuable skill we all need a lifetime to figure out. But for now, they just like having her around when she is. She seems to enjoy their company as well. All three don’t seem to be as worried about this crap as maybe me or NB.

On the other hand, it could. That’s a lot of people with whom they have to get along. They have to decide at some point who they consider family, since as older kids, they may or may not include who I think they will. It’s more time that is potentially taken away from them. It’s more together time that includes more than just mama and them. It’s more figuring out where they fit in their own family.

You know what though, I can’t say I think those are strong enough reasons to worry to the point of not continuing the relationship or stifling where ever it leads. And seriously, I’m a worrier.

This is all in my head as we discuss where we are going with this thing we have.

I am not interested in marriage at this point. I just need a lot more time before I want to commit myself financially, really, to someone else. After my divorce, I really struggled when I read my credit report. After much letter writing, all is well again. But to feel you didn’t exist for ten years really stings. To know that even stuff, like CARS, you bought alone didn’t make it onto your credit report until you bitched…well, it’ll take some time to make that plunge again.

I could live together, I could go through the hassle of legally making sure things are what you want (such as property issues), but it will take some time to dunk myself into such a bullshit patriarchal system. And, hey, no one will berate me for not changing my name as it won’t be expected. Not that I don’t love when someone gets married or is married or that I won’t get married again someday, by the way, I just wish it wasn’t so intrinsically fucked up for women.

I do wish that couples with children who are committed to each other, whether or not they are “living apart together” or cohabitating, got similar respect as married couples. Because honestly, no matter how someone slices it or what people tell you, hetero-normative style marriage does not equal a more committed relationship (see: True Wife Confessions or you know, talk to a committed gay couple of forty years.)

And not being married doesn’t mean your kids won’t see you as family anyway. Which is probably the part that freaks us out the most :)

It sucks.

I hate living without a partner.

I realize that so much of this is because I DID live with a partner for my entire adult life. Except that one time.

When the boys’ daddy and I divorced a thousand years ago, I was so happy to be free of him and his Nintendo playing non-diapering the babies ass that I reveled in it. I nursed our baby alone watching ANYTHING I WANTED on tv. I let the toys pile up in the living room until I felt like dragging them up the stairs of our townhouse to the kids’ room. I had leftover kids’ dinners for my dinner a lot of the time and just enjoyed being a single mama because the weight of living with that man was too heavy.

He’s not a bad man. He just wasn’t my man…well, he was nobody’s man since he still had at least five years more growing up to do. And hmm, he was also everybody’s man since he sure did like to sleep with the ladies. Did I ever tell about you about that one time he moved his girlfriend in our house when I was 8 months pregnant with Brett? It’s a good one.

So when he finally moved in with his sister, I didn’t worry about being alone. I was like, oh my god, the house is cleaner and I suddenly have more money despite the loss of an entire income.

This is different.

I loved being married to Mike, for the most part. Obviously, things weren’t all that they seemed because we aren’t married now. But I did like partnered living. I liked having a spouse. I liked living with someone. It’s hard to get used to now, even after nearly a year of not living with him full time. It’s weird to even type that.

I think our different upbringings forced their way into our marriage and broke it apart. We were raised wildly differently, with two sets of problems that never could figure out how to handle each other.

And here we both are. Living alone for the first time in a long time. Having the kids here helps. I would sleep in their beds if I didn’t think THAT would scar them even more. Scoot over, Junior, Mama needs a good cry! Mind if I bring these Twinkies in here?

NB is awesome. So freaking awesome. But he doesn’t live here. Nor will he, because my boys have no need for another daddy type. And his daughter doesn’t need another mommy type, having lost her stepmom, NB’s wife, three years ago to breast cancer. He gets being alone more than I ever ever EVER will comprehend. And yet, neither of us want to live together at this point. If we ever will, I don’t know. See where this thing goes first, I imagine.

I do know that on lonely nights, it’s awful. And on nights I spend not alone, much better. So much better.

But I need to do better than that. I need to get better on my own two feet and learn how to embrace this situation for fuck’s sake. Embrace that there is no one here to tell me to pick up my socks off the living room floor and stop eating those damn chocolate covered raspberries and for the love of Athena quit being so damn argumentative with the television.

My divorce was final yesterday.

I colored my hair again. Using Manic Panic.

Oh yeah, Manic Panic is awesome.

I bought this:

Manic Panic comes in jar and is a cream. You would think this is messier than a squirty tube thing like most hair colors you are used to. Well, now, you would be WRONG.

I bought one of those hair color applicator brush doohickies for about 59 cents. Pure dumbassery on my part has never let me think I needed one of these. If you are like me, and think you don’t need one, you are again WRONG. You do. Life is better, bluebirds sing, and the sun peeks out behind the clouds.

That brush thing makes life a thousand times easier. Sprucing up my fading or gone pink color could not have been easier. I shampooed my hair with a cheap Suave clarifying shampoo (it’s ph balanced, the Manic Panic people told me that matters). I did not condition my hair but just towel dried it. I used claw clips to hold hair where I wanted it and just dipped that brush right into the jar of color and painted my hair.

This was supa easy.

I left it all in for about an hour. Manic Panic isn’t a chemically kind of dye and doesn’t damage hair so you can leave it in all you want. Some people sleep with it in, using a shower cap or something to protect their sheets.

After a bit more than an hour, I rinsed it out and voila. Awesome pink hair again. But BRIGHTER. It also glows under a black light. I needs some black light.

As you can see, I missed a few spots in the back and the next day Daniel just dipped that brush again into the jar (brush was easily rinsed out the night before) and painted the color on my dry hair. It worked just the same as far as I could tell.

A plus for Manic Panic versus my salon color is that the MP stuff didn’t make my shower look like the scene of a clown massacre. There was some pinking of my shampoo but it didn’t color everything within a three mile radius. (Since apparently I throw my hair every which way when I wash or something.)

Another plus is that MP is gentle to the hair, easy, and washes out. Now my “permanent” salon color washed out in about three to four weeks so I’m going to just go nuts and consider that wash-out color too. That cost a bit more than $5.99.

The moral of the story is: Buy you some hair color.

I went to a salon for the pinkening. Because I am a pansy who has never touched a bottle of hair bleaching anything before. That is probably wayyyy less cool than doing this at home with a bottle of Boone’s Strawberry Hill like all the young whipper-snappers are doing.

But, still. Awesome.

Despite how much I can’t stand the pinkification of all things marketed to women, I do own a pink camera and just dyed portions of my hair pink.

The pink camera is something I despise but it was the right price at the time. It works like ass. Like I expected it to. Because it’s pink and the manufacturer probably thought its pinkness would be all it needed to do to serve womankind.

The pink hair? Sanity is nice. Sanity is sexy.

I could have gone with blue or green but a reddish something works best with my skin and dark hair, so pinkish or a vibrant red were going to suit my need for fun, wild, hotttt, and yeah, distracting and sanity-saving.

I picked something called Atomic Red or Pink or Something ridiculous like that.

June has been hard. Ask NB about who has been crabby and needy. Of course, if he’s a smart NB he’ll say NO ONE. He’s still around so kudos for him.

June has seen a difficult birthday, Father’s Day, and a wedding anniversary with the man I’ll be divorced from in a month. The kids went away to Florida for a week with their dad. I now have less distractions than a usual semester brings.

I am also getting tired of all these god damned life lessons.

Lesson 4215:
Learning how to receive affection that is not of the obsessive, co-dependent variety.

Tis hard, I say. Hard.

So when a girl has been thinking about doing something fun and kicky for a while, and she’s off for the summer, and hell, she works in an ART department anyway, she might as well pay her gazillion dollars to the nice stylist and get herself colorful and happied up.

I’m calling it self care.

Other people exercise and eat healthily, I sit in a chair for a few hours while someone washes my hair and rubs my head.

Oh hey, by the way. That shirt I’m wearing (without a bra) in these pictures? It’s from the Arch Rival Roller Girls of St. Louis. Go see them. Seriously. Anyone whose acronym is ARRG is a friend of mine. I like all things pirate-related, so it seems. And buy one of their shirts because they make your NB’s eyes pop. Not because the sexy pin-up logo, but because your breasts will look amazing.

And great hair and awesome tits are apparently all I need to take care of myself. Dear fucking god.

This one is totally gratuitious because I see I have a waist. This pleases me.

You guys are delicious, quite possibly tasting of chocolate and cream. Thank you for ignoring my COMMENTS CLOSED decision and emailing my sick ass anyway.

When I make posts such as the last one, they are really for me. This place was supposed to be my venting ground, my therapy. Sometimes, I just need to do that. Say my bit, my feelings in that precise moment. I do not expect anyone to do shit with it and I do not expect anyone to agree with how I feel right then either. I just have to write it so it stops repeating in my head. Which, does no good for me or anyone because inside the spaces of my brain it just grows bigger and badder and eventually takes over my gray matter, conquistador style. There are quite possibly flags claiming bits for insanity and flags claiming other bits for liquor consumption.

I am dealing with my marriage in the best way I can. From the outside, from people who I know love me, I’m hearing repeatedly that I’m doing it in unhealthy ways. And wellll, you know, maybe. Because I’m human. And this is HARD. I don’t know the best path yet, I am taking steps I need but they are steps. I can’t get from Point A to a linear Point B quite as fast as maybe another person but I’m doing what I can each day.

I’ve also been trying not to lose me in the process. In fact, I’ve found more of me than I ever expected in really really REALLY unexpected ways. But those things are not seen from outside my brain; people see me, they see me in what looks like sheer floundering. And a lot of times I totally am. But not always. I don’t always share and not many are asking me directly about it. It’s a depressing topic.

There are little kids involved. There are families. There are friends and loved ones but there is also this man and me dealing with it the best we are able. We’ve been dealing with our own shit for over a year, and people knew that, but they probably didn’t realize the depth of the problems because I don’t share all the time. I maybe need to share more but I have no idea if that’s better.

Knowing I am having big ugly problems are one thing but being confronted with the reality of it are quite another thing and it’s not easy for anyone. It’s hard to realize the people you love are sadly, only human.

In sum, the marriage is over. Total shit hitting the fan, mud-slinging commencing.

It’s horrible.

Thank you for all your kind comments and some day, hopefully soon, I can send out batches of super chocolate chunk cookies to each of you. Thank you so much.

There has been twittering around town about my martial problems and this blog. Okay, so the twittering is basically coming from inside my house, from my spouse, but whatever.

I feel pressured to tell you all, I am probably not worthy of the kindness you have shown me.

I am a bad wife. My marital problems can be laid at the feet of both of us and a need for privacy dictates why the entire story will not be on the business end of the “Publish” button. Yet the reason as to why our problems are being discussed right now is squarely my fault. Yes, I suck. There’s your truthiness for the day, as much as I can give in this very public forum.

But.

But. But.

But this is MY motherfucking blog and I’m telling my side, my feelings, my end of things. As much as my marriage sucking right now is my fault, it doesn’t mean I can’t be upset about it. It doesn’t mean I am not human.

If a less-Melissa-sympathetic stance is needed, go HERE.

I never expected this. A thousand times I’ve expected this.

But either way, here we are.

The boys and I are moving back to my mama’s house.

My mother is insane, fun, difficult to explain, loves questionable men (and not in the fun way), drinks her dinner every night, and loves the absolute hell out of me and the children.

It’s going to be interesting being in the same house again with the woman who not only notices that you lit a match at 7am, but who then screams at 6pm, “What the hell is burning?!”

It’s going to be interesting being in the same house again with the woman who vacuums the house before dawn to Prince blaring on the loudspeakers.

It’s going to be interesting being in the same house again, a house kept so cold frost has formed on the inside, in Lindy’s old room now painted bubbly pink, with my grandmother staring through the bricks into my soul.

And, I’m going to miss my husband so very very much.

A new Art of Motherhood is up.

Now, yes, we’re having serious problems. Like every marriage, these problems aren’t new but have been brought to the forefront and we have no choice but to deal with them full-force right now.

When I’m faced with something difficult, something painful, I have this defense mechanism I do. It’s not healthy, it’s not normal I’m sure, but it was born out of an extraordinary situation in the past and I’m too easily snapped into it.

I withdraw.

Mentally, I go away. Take a long internal walk through the fog and remove myself from the assness of the situation.

I want so very, very much to do that right now. I’m know, not giving any info, blah blah bloggycakes. I know that makes it difficult to follow along. But it’s a tough one and it’s awful for several of us right now. The withdrawing thing I do? It’s so appealing; the little pamphlets start running in my head.

Vacancy: Most Excellent

Goodbye, I’ll See You People Next Week

Withdrawing from the World: A Nice Idea

It’s Comfy in Here

What is that Sound? Oh Yes, Life

I’d Like a Double Shot and a Long Nap

My World is Quieter than Your World

Nah, Nah I Can’t Hear You Now Shut Up

I’ll Make That Decision in 2008 With The Other Ones

A New Duvet and a Bowl of Ice Cream Might Shake Me Out

The only things that keeps me out of it are good friends, my desire to have another drink, and down another handful of chocolate chips (which my god, thank you for your amazingness and chocolate, Sara you are a chocolate mistress and I worship you).