'Tis The Season I've Been Dreading

Oh. Joy. The Holidays are upon us. Deck the halls with fear and trepidation.

Ever since the separation and divorce, I have targeted the holiday season as being a particularly bad one. Not only was I concerned with being alone at times but also that my daughters’ holidays would be ruined with the breakup of their family. I feared eating alone on Thanksgiving since the girls would be with their mother. I worried about feeling guilty about taking my daughters away from their mother on Christmas since they were scheduled to be with me. I despised the notion of decorating my new house because, really, what was the point? And wouldn’t that just make me feel worse?

I envisioned late November and all of December to be decorated with doom and gloom, not boughs of holly. I saw myself sitting lonely in my house longing for the times when I was with my wife and girls, decorating the Christmas tree and singing Christmas carols. In fact, I thought it would be so bad for me that I only took a very small amount of Christmas decorations when I moved out. I thought it would be better for the girls to have them all so they would have the decorations they are used to and I would probably not decorate anyway.

Thanksgiving was either going to be spent down at my parents in Texas or by myself. I thought back to when I was single and was alone for one Thanksgiving due mostly to not having the money to travel anywhere and all my friends having prior plans. I made a turkey dinner for myself. It was sad and pathetic and I assumed that's what I was in store for this year.

Then it occurred to me that none of the above HAD to happen. The type of holiday I was going to have was to be determined by me and how I approached it. If I approached it with the above thoughts, then yes, it would suck. I would be depressed and would be starting 2013 in the worst light possible. I had control over this and I decided I was going to do my best to prevent depression and disaster.

The first thing I did was see if I could spend Thanksgiving with the girls. This, of course, meant having dinner over at my ex-wife’s house. This was something we had discussed early on but I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it back then. However, both my ex and I are very mindful of our girls’ feelings about the divorce so we wanted the holidays to be as normal as they could be which meant both of their parents needed to be in the picture. So I am going to have dinner with my ex, my daughters and the people who used to be in my family. Will it be awkward? I suppose it could and probably still will be at least initially but again, the amount of awkwardness is controlled by me. If I want to be standoffish and not talk to anyone and bemoan to myself on how it used to be, then the awkward rate will be high. If I choose to have fun, enjoy the company and most importantly, be with my girls, then it doesn’t have to awkward at all.

And if it started to get that way, well, I’m bringing the wine. 

For Christmas, I am scheduled to have the girls the entire week of Christmas and since Christmas falls on a Tuesday this year that meant I could have them from the weekend before to the weekend after. My plans were to take the girls down to see their grandparents (my parents) and their aunts, uncle, and cousins. I knew my ex wouldn’t be happy about it but it was my right and I couldn’t be concerned with how she felt.

That didn’t last long.

Regardless of how I may have been distant during the last year or so of our marriage, I am generally a thoughtful guy. I try to take other people’s feelings into consideration and I began to do that not only with my ex-wife but with my girls. Separating them from their mom on the first Christmas after they no longer have two full time parents didn’t seem right. I discussed it with my ex and we decided that the girls would spend Christmas Eve with her and that I would come over early on Christmas morning, hopefully before the girls woke up, so both of us could enjoy watching the girls open their presents. Then, the girls and I would head for Texas.

As far as decorating my house, I am planning on doing something. Even if I wasn’t doing it for myself, I needed to do it for the girls. They are over here often and not having any decorations up for them would be unfair. It won’t be as extravagant as years prior, but they (and I) will know it’s the holiday season. I can’t put up a big tree as the only place where one would fit is in the basement or in the dining room. Neither of those spots is very visible so I am putting thought into what I will do. I do know that the outside decorations won’t be as big as before. I won’t be lining my entire roofline with lights but I will put some up. The bottom line is that I need to start building my own set of holiday decorations and new traditions for me and the girls as we move on to our next destination.

I'm sure next year will be different.  An entire year will have passed and who knows where I or my ex wife will be on our journeys but I suspect it won't be as easy to make sure we are all together.  I am totally expecting that and it will be a bridge we will cross when we get there.  For this year, however, focus must be on removing the sadness from the holidays.

It’s funny how I have done an almost complete 180 on my viewpoint for the holiday season and I’m glad I’m forcing myself to make this turnaround. It’s a known fact that the holidays cause depression rates to go up and I firmly believe that is something we can control…or at least I will be making the attempt. Do I think I’ll sail through this time of year without any sadness or feelings of forlornness? No, I’m sure I’ll have my moments, but if I don’t want to forever stain future holidays by letting the 2012 one suck beyond all manner of suckiness, I have to rely on myself to make it right. I think too often people in my situation let their depression get the better of them when it doesn't really have to. It’s not easy and I may find myself writing a blog about how my whole plan failed miserably. I hope that doesn’t happen and if I keep the right attitude, it won’t.

I write this post not only for myself but for others who may be in the same situation. Just because our lives may not be where we thought they would be this time of year doesn’t change the fact that the holidays are a special time. It’s a time for charity, happiness and seeing the world through the eyes of children. To miss out on that because you are basically feeling sorry for yourself is doing a disservice not only to you but to those around you. Forget about the heartache you’ve suffered and go look at Christmas lights. Abandon the thoughts of loneliness and go volunteer at a soup kitchen. I think you’ll find there are others in a lot worse shape than you. If your children aren’t around, “adopt” one at church or a local charity. Buy them presents and know you’ll be making their lives brighter. It’s not in what we do for ourselves that makes the holiday special, it’s what we do for others. I’m choosing to focus on my girls and not on me and I think that will make the season a merry one indeed.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to find a Christmas tree I can display in my smallish living room.

 

Hall Of Fame

When a professional sports player retires and if he or she is of significant caliber, there is always discussion amongst those that follow sports on if the player should be inducted into their chosen sports Hall of Fame. Players at the upper echelon in their sport, your Michael Jordans, Emmitt Smiths, and Joe Montanas are no-brainers. They are going in first ballot, no questions asked. But when you have someone who may have good stats, but not great stats, the discussion intensifies.

The one really good rule of thumb I’ve heard over the years was “If you have to think about it, he doesn’t go in.” There may be debates back and forth on it but when two parties can’t decide, it’s clear that there’s too many questions on that players eligibility and until those are settled, generally by length of time since retirement, that player is out.

I bring this up because recently a good friend said that they had a friend who was also divorced and wondered if I would be interested in having a blind date. They even provided a picture so it wasn’t even a true blind date. With this information this really should have been a simple yes or no, but I stopped to think about it. Was I interested?

Then I thought about a question put forth to me by another good friend who I had the pleasure of having dinner with the other evening. I was talking about my limited adventures in online dating. Mainly just swapping emails with a scammer in Nigeria who tried to get money out of me and “window shopping” to see who was out there (see Scam and Eggs ). At one point she asked me, “Are you ready to date? I mean, do you want to?” I didn’t have an answer and I wondered about it over the next couple days. If I wasn’t ready to date, why did I have online profiles and checked the emails that were sent with various winks, flirts, and “scientific” matches?

Now I had the opportunity to go on a date with someone who wasn’t from an online gallery. A real person known by someone I knew. The opportunity I was actually hoping would happen one day…only maybe not today. Or should it be today? Should I take to this like ripping a Band-Aid off all at once or be concerned that perhaps the wound underneath wasn’t completely healed?

And if I went on this date, what kind of date would I be? The dinner I had the other night with the aforementioned friend was mainly a reuniting with someone I hadn’t seen in over 15 years but she was someone I used to have feelings for, so there was still a real date aspect to it (for me, at least). The next morning, however, I was in a bit of a funk because all I could think about was my recently failed marriage. It struck me that going on a date (or the prospect of going on a date) emphasizes, at least right now, more on what I lost and not on what I could potentially gain from a date. The scales are tipped too far over on that lost side for me to feel comfortable with myself and if I’m not comfortable with myself, we go back to the question that opened up this paragraph: What kind of date would I be? I would surmise a terrible one and let’s forget about me for a second, is that fair to the person I’m going on a date with? Doubtful.

At the end of all this, I looked back on the Hall of Fame question: If you have to think about it, he probably shouldn’t go in. To put it in my situation, if I have to think about it, I probably shouldn’t date. Continuing the comparison, the player who may not be first ballot Hall of Fame generally gets in somewhere in the future so I apply the same to myself and dating, but the question is: when? Is it something I will just know or will have to have at least one date to know for sure? I think about the lyrics the great Don Henley sang in the song, “New York Minute:”

     What the head makes cloudy
     The heart makes very clear
     The days were so much brighter
     In the time when she was here
     But I know there's somebody somewhere
     Make these dark clouds disappear
     Until that day, I have to believe
     I believe, I believe

     In a New York minute
     Everything can change

So I assume my feelings on dating could change at any minute and I’m good with that. For now, though, when faced with a dating possibility, if I spend a fair amount of time thinking about it, I probably should let the opportunity pass and hope that I will get put on the ballot sometime in the future. 

 

Two House Blues

Travelling with me on the journey to my new destination is my new house but also tagging along is my old house.  It’s up for sale and people keep telling me the real estate market is improving but the lack of a “Sold” sign tells me otherwise.

This probably isn’t breaking news but having two houses is a pain.  Let’s put aside the fact that I am making payments on one house where nothing but air and dust currently live.  I mean I’m glad to give the air and dust a place to call their own but I’d rather they made the payments themselves.  The other pain is maintenance.  You’d think there wouldn’t be much since no one is living in the house but guess what?  Grass still grows even though no one is there.  Leaves fall, too, and plants die out because seasons still change even though you aren’t living there.

So who has to go over there and take care of the yard?  Me.

(…well, my ex wife does too, but she’s not writing this blog, I am so let’s put the focus on my woes.)

Last week I went over there and did, in the terms of my realtor, “some fall clean-up.”  I took a few hours each day to rake out the beds, trim back some shrubs that had overgrown and had begun to die out, and blow as many leaves as I could into the woods behind and next to the house.  Unfortunately, the lawn tractor we still have there has a rag tangled up in the mower blades and the only way I’m going to be able to get it off is to take the mower deck off the tractor and remove the blades.  I’ve tried cutting it off but it’s taking forever and since I had a limited amount of time, I put my energies into other things like leaf removal.  Luckily, I had my leaf blower so I put on my iPod and started blowing leaves. 

I started with a large bed in the front of the house.  This bed is a raised one with a grouping of trees that managed to stick around after the house was finished being built.  My old house sits at the top of a hill so those trees helped break up the slope but to help even more, a few years ago, I built a stacked stone retaining wall and back filled it with dirt.  I loved that wall.  It took a while for me to finish it but when I was finished, I thought it looked good and it certainly wasn’t going to go anywhere since I put cement along the rear of the wall to help keep it in place.  

Each stone in that wall was picked up, dug up or dragged over by me.  I got the rocks from my property and the surrounding lots.  It was a lot of work but it was worth it because that wall was going to be there long after I was gone.  I just didn’t expect to be gone from it so soon.

I worked my way up the hill and noticed the grass really needed to be mowed.  I was disappointed the tractor was temporarily out of commission because I loved to mow that lawn on the tractor.  Again, I would have my ear buds in and would work my way in circles around the lawn.  I tried to change it up each time I mowed because I read somewhere that was better for the overall growth of the lawn.   Back when my youngest was ….um… younger, she would sit on my lap and mow with me.  I wouldn’t go up or down the big hill when she did that, just did the lower part of the front yard and the side.  She loved it and I loved having her there.  One time she fell asleep while I was mowing which amazed me because the mower is so loud. 

I eventually worked a good portion of the leaves to other side of the driveway where we have yet another hill that was too steep to mow.  We called that hill the “Place where nothing grows.”  Since we couldn’t mow it, we tried planting ivy, shrubs, some type of cactus plant and flowers.  Nothing took for very long.  Finally my ex planted mint and that seem to do the trick.  Too bad we didn’t think of that shortly after we moved in, it may have fully taken over the hill (and probably a good portion of the woods the way mint grows).  It did well but we probably won’t see the full effects…well, at least I hope we won’t see the full effects because that would mean its spring and I still have that house.

I completed my session of leaf blowing by pushing them past the swing set and into the back woods. The swing set was starting to show its age.  My ex-wife and I built that together in a span of about four days.  The girls were so excited to have it (you can see their reaction on this video I made and posted way back when:

 

My youngest had just turned one and I joked that one or both of them would have to get married in it.  Guess that’s not going to happen now…unless we keep in touch with whoever buys the house.  Maybe I can work that into the contract.

I finished up the bit of yard work I was going to do for the day and put the blower and cord back in the garage.  I stood there for a minute and looked around.  While the memories I have are good ones, I really didn't like having to revisit them just yet.  Being reminded of the good times I had at the house and the knowledge that those times are somewhat tainted with what has happened in the past year doesn't help.  My destination was somewhere else so why did I have to keep coming back to a place that should be in my past? 

I guess that’s just the way things go.  I'm moving forward down my new road and there are sites up ahead that I'm looking forward to but I still have to back up from time to time to settle things that  remain from the place I just left.

I guess it’s kind of like raking leaves.  You gather them all up and either bag them or blow them away but soon more fall and you have to go back and rake some more.  Maybe instead of just blowing them away, I should just pile them up and jump in the middle of them.  Perhaps that would provide a better perspective.

...or at least it would be a little bit more fun!

Paths

I’ve always believed that you should never have any regrets in life.  Where you are right now was from the path you walked on to get there.  There are times when we want to say I wish I never did this or didn’t do that, but that’s wasted energy.   You can’t help where you are now but you can, to a certain extent, control where you are going.

Another aspect to this is the belief (or disbelief) that your destiny is predetermined either by God or the Universe or a giant cat that lives in the mountains somewhere.  I’m not entirely sure if I believe this but there is some amount of comfort in thinking it’s true.  Why?  I think it comes out of moments of despair or when life takes you down a road of broken glass and rotting vegetables.  You think, “Why did this happen to me?” and you are told “It’s God’s plan” or “Life is like that” or the ever popular “Shit happens.” 

Shit does happen but we can sit there and smell it or we can move on.  I think it’s entirely too easy to give up or get depressed about your current state of life but the truth is if whatever problems you faced left you alive, then you’re probably going to be okay.  If you stop and dwell on what happened, you’ll get stuck like tires spinning in the mud.  Put that thing in four wheel drive and move out of the muck, man.  There’s a lot more road ahead.

Why am I starting my new blog with this?  Mainly because as of right now, 2012 will go down as probably the worst year in my life.  There are still two and half months to make up for the previous nine and half but I doubt a total comeback is possible.  I’m down 48 to 10 in my game with 2012 and I need more than a few Hail Mary’s to even the score. 

It’s funny because when things were better, I used to comment about some of the turns I took while growing up and what would have happened if I took a left instead of a right.  What if I had stayed in Arizona instead of moving to Texas in the mid 80’s?  What if instead I stayed in California instead of moving BACK to Texas when I did that in the late 80’s?  What if I had more confidence when I was younger when dating and pursued harder the woman who was then the woman of my dreams?  What if I never grew that porn-star moustache I had for most of the 90’s?  What if I never married my first wife? 

These questions were all put aside by simply saying, “Well if I had done that, I wouldn’t be where I am now.”   Those decisions led me to where I was as if it was all planned out.  When life is good, that’s a great feeling to have but when life is less than good, you tend to go back and wonder if you made the right choices. 

And therein lies the problem.  You can’t go back.  You can’t undo the decisions you made so no need to start wondering what would have happened if you made different ones.  Life is life and whether our ultimate destination is known or unknown, it really doesn’t matter because YOU don’t know what is going to happen.  Instead waiting for the sign to change from “Don’t Walk” to “Walk,” just go ahead and walk.

God, the Universe nor that giant cat up in the mountains won’t care if you’re jaywalking.