dannyman.toldme.com

Quiet Weekend

Hello,

So, my friend Jessica crashed at my place over the weekend. She’s getting past a failed engagement, so we are in a similar place. She also wanted avoid the heat wave of Mountain View. Somehow even without A/C my apartment isn’t so bad. I had promised her a leaky air mattress but that went with the ex-wife. So, she contented herself with the couch.

We went to the Crawdad Festival up north somewhere, me and three single Asian ladies. Well, it wasn’t that spectacular. The food was decent but the ladies couldn’t take the heat. Oh well.

We also spent some time checking out apartments in Oakland. Best as I can tell, I need to just give my thirty days notice and then cruise Craigslist every day, and pound on the first awesome deal I can score.

Today we saw a really nice place a little into the Berkeley hills. Nice nice nice just off 13, but, well, a mile and a half to Rockridge BART is pushing sub-optimal. Dang this lame commute!

In other news, my beloved grey/black fedora was not to be found at the Tunnel Top in San Francisco. Bummer. I left it there some weeks back when people were intent on getting me drunk on the occasion of my divorce. That hat had sentimental value . . . I got it in Italy and we’ve been halfway across the world together. But as I remarked to Clara, a pretty young lady who was at the bar and said she had lost her sunglasses the same way, sometimes you gotta let go and move on in life, ya?

Today, at church, I voiced my first “joys and concerns.” This is a ritual the UUs do at the beginning of services. Since it was Father’s Day, I talked about how Dad had had a stroke, but he’s young, and he’s getting better. Then, my second . . . . . I like to think I’m handling this pretty well, and my burden is light, compared to many, but when it came to dropping a load on a bunch of parishioners . . . . . I choked . . . . and, in a very shaky voice, confessed to a group of mostly strangers that I was getting divorced.

It was a good thing for me to do. Good for me. I felt a little selfish . . . I always feel . . . but, the people were of course, good. And supportive. After the service people approached me and told me of their own experiences. One man was divorcing after thirty years of marriage. Thirty years! Someone else had divorced and re-married the same woman then divorced again. There were those with kids. I said, sure, my little 1.5 years shouldn’t be such a big deal, relatively. But, no, it is never easy. Never.

Tonight, I started a tally of the community property . . . the big question mark is what date do you use to calculate the balances of accounts. Anyway, there are some other complications as well. There may be some need to consult lawyers. No word from the ex-wife. I hope this doesn’t get messy, but if it does, well, no regrets.

I’m also looking to get some therapy. I’m mostly okay, but as friends bid me “don’t think too much” and the poor little brain goes spinning off more frequently than it should, seeking to understand things that I am not entitled, well, maybe I am entitled, but, things that I must accept that I may never understand, about what happened, what her intentions were . . .

“She will have to prove to immigration that she married in ‘good faith’ except that she couldn’t stay faithful for even two years.”

That sort of thing.