Small, Medium, and Weird: Secrets To A Successful Relationship

I was asked today just how it was that I was so committed to my relationship of the last four, almost five years. What in the world, I was asked, made it so solid, so unshakeable, and was this kind of love and devotion possible for anyone to find or had I just been singled out by the universe for the best thing you could ever hope for next to calorie-free Ben and Jerry’s ice cream?

Big question, so I responded the only way I knew, which was to lay out the absolute, if odd, truth:

There was something about her face, probably the fact that you couldn’t see most of it, you could just barely make out the eyes beneath all that wild ash blonde and copper color ‘hair’, the nose perfectly and purposefully sticking out from between them, that won me over from that very first time I saw her. My heart melted like a stick of butter in a microwave, only faster. It wasn’t so much love at first sight, it was more my heart was taken hostage with the unspoken understanding that there would be no negotiations toward its release, period.

We’ve been together every moment since that day.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking: That’s not healthy. Even in a committed relationship, there should be some amount of personal space. You can’t be together every minute, you can’t share every experience together, you can’t make the only time you’re not together the time you’re working away at your job, and even then you’ve got her pictures plastered to your desk blotter and running as a slideshow on your computer monitor. That wouldn’t be right. That would be sort of…well, weird.

So call me weird (it wouldn’t, come to think of it, be the first time I’d heard it), that’s my relationship with my dog Basil. I can’t completely explain it so allow me to say if you don’t understand it, you’re not a true dog person.

You might be a Faux Dog Person (aka A Small Capacity Dog Person) and you probably are if you have a dog but it lives outdoors and sleeps in one of those all-weather, vinyl, indestructible and, in the eyes of your dog’s canine friends and neighbors, embarrassingly low budget ‘Dogloos’ into which you’ve shoved the bedspread you loved years ago but disregarded because it clashed with the new paint you put up in the master bedroom last spring, or even worse – a bale of hay you actually believe the dog would rather sleep on than your Sealy Posturepedic. Believe me, one ‘people year’ is equal to seven ‘dog years’. They’ve had a long time to get familiar with thread counts and they’re not fooled. Next time you’re forced to nap on a bale of hay, see for yourself how comfortable it’s not.

No, A faux dog person wouldn’t understand at all.

A Medium Capacity Dog Person would understand partially, but not completely. Medium Capacity Dog People are those who have a dog, and it may be allowed to enter the house and even to sleep in the house, but only upon it’s own designated dog ‘furniture’, stuffed faux lamb’s wool foam covered squares that are placed in strategic places such as wedged between an end table and a wall in the living room, or placed at the foot of the bed, on the floor, in one of the kids’ rooms. Medium Capacity Dog People buy the heavy plastic water bowls and food bowls you find at the grocery store for $2.99 and which coordinate with the colors of the laundry room, which the dog is supposed to consider a real ‘dining room’. For the record, the dog knows better and can tell a solid fluorescent light fixture from the ornate crystal chandelier that should properly be hanging over the table, if there was a table and there’s not, another dead giveaway. Medium Capacity Dog people go on family vacations and leave the dog behind, generally in the care of the canine equivalent of San Quentin or Alcatraz in its day, hopelessly mis-named something like, “Sunshine Kennels”, or “Dogcations”, where they’ll while away their own vacation days missing their people and becoming so sad they actually miss that prickly pile of hay and quickly fading bedspread. Finally, Medium Capacity Dog People buy dog food based on what’s on sale at Costco. As if it’s fun for the family’s most loyal and devoted member to re-adjust their gastrointestinal system every forty pound bag.

Then we have the High Capacity Dog Person, who has a dog, and the dog is allowed unencumbered use of both the outdoors and the house, subject to the dog’s whim of any given moment. The dog may sleep wherever the dog would like to sleep, including your side of the bed. No furniture is ‘off limits’; and shedding is not a problem, just a situation requiring an altered perspective: It is not an animal problem, it’s a vacuum problem. Simply obtain one which performs better and gets the fur off the sofa. High Capacity Dog People read the ingredient listing on the dog food bag with the same intense scrutiny the Gluten-intolerant person reads ingredients on anything carrying them. Price is not a concern, the concern is that the primary ingredient entail ‘real beef/chicken/fish’ and not – under any circumstance, ‘animal by-products’ or corn in any form. The High Capacity Dog Person will go on a vacation, but only if the trustworthy, well vetted Dog Sitter, whom they will prodigiously overpay, is available to assume care of the dog and remain equally available for regular, sometimes hourly, cell phone calls ‘just to check in’.

The High Capacity Dog Person comes closest to understanding the phenomenon of my relationship, but isn’t quite truly there yet. To truly comprehend, one must be what I am myself:

The Weird Dog Person.

Weird Dog People share most of the same traits as High Capacity Dog Person, it’s just that those traits are now on steroids. Weird Dog People will purchase a home with a lovely French door off the master bedroom leading to the deck and backyard. They will admire its fabulous view and immediately have it replaced by a standard door offering no view at all but a structure that will accommodate the installation of a ‘Doggy Door’ which gives the dog complete freedom of choice in whether it is indoors or out. Weird Dog People not only allow their dogs to be on the furniture, they actually purchase furniture with the dog in mind, foregoing anything fabric-covered in favor of leather which is not only fur-proof, but more to the dog’s liking. A Weird Dog Person would completely understand my impromptu Saturday afternoon junket to PetSmart, in the midst of a spring blizzard, with all the car windows down so that the dog, whose walk had been cut short due to her paws getting cold in the snow, needed a favorite activity in its stead and nothing says dog joy like hanging your head out the window of a moving vehicle. Weird Dog People not only sleep with the dog in their bed, they find it difficult to sleep if the dog breaks routine and moves to the couch, a situation which causes the Weird Dog Person to leave the bed at two, sometimes three in the morning in order to retrieve the dog and lug it back to the bed where it belongs. Weird Dog People understand thoroughly that a dog’s mouth has more natural antibiotics than ten pallets of Neosporin and therefore is always welcome on a dinner plate or saucepan before it’s placed in the dishwasher. Weird Dog People get it that a dog’s intelligence is far beyond the average person’s, and that dogs absolutely comprehend everything you say to them, not just a few words like ‘sit’, and ‘stay’, and ‘shake’, words which are so simple and ridiculous that when the dog doesn’t respond to them it’s only because they get lost in an intelligence so vast and are, strangely, incomprehensible to them. What is comprehensible to them are those long talks you have after work, recounting every detail of your day, and your running commentary about whatever HBO movie or special you’re watching together on TV. The Weird Dog Person isn’t interested in any vacation location that won’t allow the dog, as well.

I could go on….but if you were going to understand it, you did before you reached the last paragraph. And besides, the dog looks like she wants to take a walk, and I don’t want to keep her waiting.

Lucky People: In Memory of Trent Babcock

Sometimes life throws you a series of incredible moments that morph into days and blend into weeks and turn into months that without your giving it conscious thought for even a moment become a life in which you are more than occasionally overwhelmed by the true depth of your own personal happiness and the underlying inviolable conviction that things are just as they’re supposed to be.

This is wonderful to experience.

Then you get an email that should never have been. This is not wonderful at all.

I got my email this weekend, arriving as all emails do, with the constant flashing “Read Me” light on the top of the Blackberry announcing its presence. Expecting some mundane work-related request, I opened the mail icon and stared blankly for several minutes at the subject line, knowing I didn’t want to open the message.

To: MaddyB@greatmail.com
From: Brent.Babcock@ElectriWorldwide.org
Subject: Trenton

My brain did the math pretty quickly and told me not to open the message at all, because it wasn’t going to be good news: Ex-Husband Emails On A Sunday Morning And The Subject Is His Twin Brother’s Full Name. Not Trent, not Trenty, not T. None of those, but the full name. A little too formal verbiage when talking about your other half.

My brain, as it turns out, does excellent math:

I wanted to let you know that Trenton has passed away. He’s been struggling with depression since his return from Iraq and decided to take his life. I’m going to be out of touch for quite some time but feel you needed this information. The family is doing well under the circumstances…the funeral will be later this week ..bdb

I’d be lying if I said this was information easily processed, because it wasn’t. It wasn’t just disturbing, and sad, and shocking – it was surreal. Trent Babcock was the best brother-in-law anyone could ever hope for, and one of the most genuine human beings I’ve ever met in my life. He was the perpetual kid, the boy with a practical joke or twenty up his sleeve, Mr. Glass Half Full No Matter What’s Going On, and he could get more enjoyment out of the simplest things in life…walking the dogs, spending time with his nieces, listening to music, watching any TV series involving Emergency Rooms or car chases…than anyone I’ll ever know again. He had blue eyes I referred to once as “Santa Claus eyes” because until I watched them when he was laughing, I’d always thought the whole, ‘…and his eyes twinkled’ thing was a bunch of literary hooey that didn’t hold water in real life. His eyes truly did twinkle, and he had the spontaneous, barked-out-from-the-gut laugh and giggle you usually only hear from kids. Where Brent was over-stressed and taking life far more seriously than it warranted, Trent was a calmative. He could make his brother laugh. He could make his brother play. He could make his brother have fun when his brother thought he’d never find time in his life to do that again, ever. It took Trent to show him that there was always time, and the time was right that minute.

Trent shared a house with Brent and I when we moved to Colorado, and while I could have made, and probably did, a laundry list of irritations inherent in that (he paid his portion of the rent when he felt like it, he ate more groceries in a week than Brent and I generally ran through in two, he insisted on playing the same CD over and over again until I wanted to scream every time I heard its selections, and he left a perpetual line of scuff marks on the white linoleum kitchen floor from his work boots that somehow he never ‘remembered’ to clean), the benefits were there, too. My husband, stressed under normal circumstances, became increasingly difficult to live with – or even be around for more than ten minutes – as the stresses of his new job position mounted. If it hadn’t been for Trent, I may have gone the entire year without hearing a simple, “How was your day?,” a much-appreciated, “you look nice today,” and the tiny but huge, “Nice meal,” after dinner. Trent wasn’t a meddler, but he wasn’t stupid and he certainly wasn’t deaf. He knew how hard that year was on Brent and I both, and he brought more than a little comic relief to the household because of it. One afternoon, stepping into the parking lot after leaving my office, I saw him parked in the lot, our dogs Grudie and Flags hanging out the windows.

“They wanted to see where Mom worked,” he said, and it seemed to make perfect sense. It was also a great end to my day, and something only someone like Trent Babcock would have thought to do.

If Trent hadn’t been our ‘roomie’ that year, we’d both have missed a lot. The almost constant aroma of Pillsbury orange rolls he seemed almost addicted to, and the way he’d make a big production of licking the tops of the best ones as they cooled, just to prevent his brother from taking them. The Matchbox cars hidden in the mixed vegetables which rendered them ‘inedible’ and excused both brothers from actually having to eat them with dinner. The strands of pasta half stuck and half dangling from the ceiling because I’d left them alone with the boiling pot for more than a minute and a half and that was, according to them both, ‘the way to see if it’s done’. And I’ll never forget the entire kitchen cabinet which mysteriously removed itself from the wall and repositioned itself in a different location in the time it took me to run to the grocery store, all with neither brother apparently knowing a single thing about how that could have happened.

Grudie and Flags reaped the benefits, too. In all the years they lived after he moved out, they never came close to matching the number of car rides, and I’m betting not the number of Milkbones, either. He loved animals and they loved him back, and whole-heartedly.

The last time I saw Trent, he was about to deploy to Iraq. He and Brent came by my condo and I don’t know who said what, but there was that laugh I knew so well, and Santa behind the eyes. Even moving forward in different lives, Brent and I shared the concern that no matter what else happened, Trent make it home safely. I wasn’t there to hear it from Brent when it happened, but I can pretty much guarantee you we both let go a big sigh of relief when that day came.

Brent keeps me posted, which I appreciate, on news of relevance about people in our long history together. Bill’s happy retirement, the sad death of Gina from an over-fondness for prescription pain pills. And one day or in one conversation, I think I’d called to locate some document or other he had filed away, he let me know that Trent was struggling with depression since coming home from Iraq, but he was doing well. He was going to be OK. I digested that because the idea of Trent ever being anything other than OK was, again, surreal.

Sometimes life throws you the surreal when you least expect it, and that’s where I sit with Trent’s death. Talking with Brent, I could only say what I’d emailed him earlier: The Trent who came home from Iraq wasn’t the same Trent who deployed to Iraq. Trent wasn’t so much gone now as he was just taking some time off to hang out in heaven with Grudie and Flags. “I hope,” Brent observed, his voice breaking again, “he remembered to pack treater bones.” “They have an endless supply on hand,” I assured him. I’d tell you my heart broke for Brent right then, but I’m not one for understatement. It more or less shattered, then reassembled itself just in time to shatter again, and repeat the process over and over and that’s just the way it is. I’ve seen siblings who care for each other. I’ve seen siblings who love each other. Until I met Brent Babcock and was able to watch his relationship with Trent, I’d never seen the kind of love that made two brothers pretty much one person, just in two different bodies. Unconditional love and acceptance and just a huge amount of, “Hey, I like this guy!” that was always amazing to observe. They perfected the Mutual Admiration Society, no matter how ‘different’ they were, or non-similar their lives.

Death has a unique way of rendering those left behind exactly helpless, especially those who were ‘family’ at one time and who, at the time of the loss, are peripheral, ‘once associated with’, so when I told Brent if there was anything I could do, to please let me know, I didn’t think he’d take me up on it. I was gratified that he did. Seemed he needed an email he could send to friends, just to let them know what had happened. Parts of the email were incorporated into Trent’s obituary, so if I was able to help even that much, it’s the most important writing I’ve ever done. And proof positive that I actually CAN multi-task, having managed to shed a few tears and type at the same time.

Brent said there’s really nothing to be done now, you just have to move forward, and really the only thing I could do was to mourn Trent in my own way, and as anyone who knows me knows, that’s going to involve a keyboard or a notebook.

If they’ve got treater bones in heaven I’m quite sure they have the Internet too, so when Trent’s reading my blog with Grudie and Flags, I think he’ll understand what I’m trying to say. Which really, in a nutshell (or a dog bone) is this: Trent Babcock was a real gift in my existence, and a completely great guy. I know he touched my heart in only fifteen years, so you can imagine the effect he’s had, the joy he brought, to those who had the pleasure of knowing him always.

I keep a magnet on my fridge and of course, off the top of my head I can’t remember who authored the quote on it and I’m too lazy to get up and go check, so allow me to punt here: It says something along the lines of, if you grow a good garden, or touch the heart of one human being, you may consider your life a success. There’s another quote, and again I couldn’t tell you who said it, but it said to live on in the hearts of those you’ve met is to never die, and with that in mind, Trent’s life was a monumental success and to top it all off he’s immortal. The guy’s going to be around forever, in a whole boatload of hearts.

So here’s to you, Trent Babcock. You’re the kind of memorable even an Alzheimer’s patient couldn’t forget, and everybody who knew you, including myself, may absolutely consider themselves some pretty lucky people.

What Came From Book Club

Book Club on Monday night was a little more interesting than usual. Having already read Meg Wollitzer’s “The Ten Year Nap”, a novel about a group of stay-at-home mothers in New York and it’s suburbs who abandoned careers in their late twenties and who, in their early forties, were in various stages of angst about whether or not that had been the correct decision and generally struggling en masse to figure out how they could collectively “Make A Difference,” “Add Something To The Universe” and in what leisure time remained, hold their marriages together and prevent their rear ends from sagging, I had a few more comments than most, having just read the book a second time.

But in all fairness, I usually have more comments than most, no matter what the subject is. Sometimes, like Monday night, I even say something I need to hear.

“The problem with the book for me,” I said, trying to hide the fact that as I spoke I was feeding Basil yet another piece of Babybel cheese and ‘accidentally’ dropping a Wheat Thin chaser to the rug for her, “is I could never get to suspension of disbelief, so a lot of it just fell flat.”

As flat, apparently, as the Wheat Thin, which lie salty side up on the rug. Basil glanced at it disdainfully, turning her attention back to the remaining cheese on my napkin. I tried to ignore both her and Julie, who was casting me one of those looks only people without animals can give. People who would never own a dog, who would limit themselves to a cat or a parakeet (she had both) and who therefore held an unspoken disdain for the whole, ‘feeding them people food and ruining them thing’ and its attendant evils. I couldn’t blame her, honestly. Until I’d started seeing Roy, I’d never been one to give Basil people food of any kind. Let’s just call the fact that I was then feeding her cheese straight from my hand just one of many things he’d changed in my life. I wasn’t convinced it was such a terrible change.

“So you couldn’t take the characters seriously?” This from Anna, who’d folded herself into a semi-Lotus position on my red and white trunk, cradling a glass of wine in both hands. “That, I don’t understand, Madeleine. I mean, if you look at their situations – they gave up careers. They invested everything in staying at home with their kids, and the kids are at the age, you know, starting school and everything and they don’t need so much from them as a parent anymore, and…”

“…And they’re all just turning forty,” Sara broke in, looking around my living room at where the six of us were variously situated, “so I guess I don’t see either why you’d have a hard time not getting into the story, or believing in the characters. Seemed pretty real to me.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t get into the story,” I said, “I just felt like they created a lot of drama where it wasn’t necessary. I think they were at a certain time in their life, and the questions they were asking themselves, all this stuff about what they wanted to do, what they’d left undone, what their ultimate goal in life was – I just thought that stuff was ubiquitous, I mean, you’re going to feel that way whether you have kids or not.”

“I thought they were all pretty submissive,” Julie piped in. “I mean, it was like their husbands made every decision on everything….”

“…And if they had been really good women all day and run the vacuum,” Rita added, “they got to take the minivan out to that café where they all met for breakfast to bitch about life in general.” She laughed, and waved Basil over for a bite of cheese, which I appreciated because it gave Julie someone else to raise her eyebrows at.

“I did feel the husband characters were more than a little invisible,” I agreed. “So yeah, I had a hard time understanding all their concerns about saving their relationships when the only thing you got to know about the husbands was they were overworked, overpaid, and not home very much. I wasn’t seeing a whole lot of relationship to even be concerned about.”

“OK then,” Anna said, pouring herself another glass of wine, “I guess we’ve heard from the single women side of the fence. Of course they were concerned about their marriages,” she finished, taking a long sip of wine. “I mean, I’m concerned about my marriage. Just like you,” she gestured to Anna, then to Jessie, who nodded in assent, “worry about yours. I mean, if you don’t worry about it every once in awhile, the whole damned thing can fall apart when you’re not looking…”

“Which could be,” I broke in, but not unkindly, “not a bad thing, depending on how you look at it. And I’m speaking only for myself,” I added, not wanting to turn the Book Club into one of those ridiculous consciousness raising sessions like those held by the women in the book or a debate on the relative merits of single vs. married, as we had such a nice balance of both in the room and nobody truly cared about that, anyway. “It just seemed to me, these women held onto a whole lot of the past, and there just comes a time in life when you have to decide what you really want, and be honest about what’s really just baggage you’re packing around.”

“Like cleaning a closet?” This from Julie, who was pointedly ignoring Basil, now seated at her feet by the ottoman, giving her best rendition of Piercing Dog Stare Which Will Not Be Broken Until I Receive Cheese.

I shrugged. It was as good an analogy as anything.

“So you’re saying these women packed around too many regrets?”

“Julie, I’m just saying I think they had way too much time on their hands. I think everybody thinks about the stuff they thought about, but I’ve never met anybody who actually had the time to think about it so much, or make such a big deal out of it, or be so angst-ridden over it. I guess,” I said, finishing my own wine and putting the empty glass on the end table, out of reach of the dog, “I think if they were all so allegedly intelligent they could have come to a few decisions, maybe taken a few steps toward being honest about what they wanted and what they wanted to do, and the whole book would have been five pages long instead of three hundred.”

“So if you had to take one thing away from the book,” Rita asked, what would it be?

“That’s easy,” I said. “Other than five dollars from the price, I’d say if you need to make a decision, make one, and then get on with your life. And if you’re surprised by a kid who grows older and gets less dependent on you as a parent as part of that, I guess you’ve forgotten that you were ever a kid and did the same thing. And,” I added, “if you’re forty – or even close to it, and you’re surprised that you’re asking yourself questions like are you really happy and what do you really want to do, and what do you need and what don’t you need, that’s odd. It happens in every book, every movie, every soap opera, and in everybody’s life. It’s not that tough to make a decision that yes, you want this or no, you don’t want that.”

Sara started to say something then, wound up looking at her watch instead, and finished her wine. “Well, we don’t know how it ends yet,” she observed. “I mean, even if we’ve read the whole book…” she broke off long enough to give me a sharp look but not an unfriendly one, “we could all still be surprised at the ending. Maybe they all get fearless in the end, and really do something.”

I supposed that was true, and started gathering empty wine glasses, carrying the nearly devoured cheese tray to the sink, well out of Basil’s reach, making a show of covering it in Saran Wrap even knowing full well it would become dog treats before the night was over. It was just a few minutes after nine and we were doing as we’d always done, finishing up the evening exactly on schedule. One of the reasons I’d always enjoyed Book Club as much as I did is the fact that we weren’t lingerers. We allotted an hour and we took an hour. No matter, really, how interesting the conversation was or not when the hour was over. You could always continue it on the phone later, if that’s where your heart lie.

“Well, you know what they say,” Sara said, the last to go out the door, “maybe you’ll like next month’s book better.”

“There’s always that.” I waited just a few seconds after closing the door, then unveiled the cheese and held a piece in one hand, dangling it over Basil, waiting for her to do the ballerina-esque twirl she did for Roy. I waited. And I waited. She remained firmly seated in front of the fridge, dog eyes lasering me with the She Who Must Be Fed Cheese stare until I gave in, and let her have the cheese.

I showered, and moved to the couch and HBO, turning it off after only a few minutes and opting for an Oprah magazine, then picked up my phone and looked at that, too. In particular at the text message from Roy that had come in earlier, the one I’d never anticipated, having been completely convinced the last I would ever receive from him was the one sent on Sunday, declining to allow me to return a vase and anything else of his I had. Even as verbose a personality as myself couldn’t formulate anything remotely resembling a response to that, so I hadn’t made one.

I had, though, been honest in my text back before Book Club. I’d told the truth and the whole truth about how damnably difficult it had been, since Saturday, to string together more than two minutes without thinking about him. How, regardless of Lainie’s contention that nothing lasts forever, not even heartbreak, (“especially,” she’d added, “when you’ve gotten a lot of practice at it”) and regardless of my own often proved true theory that losing someone was nothing a couple days of comedic movies and maybe a furniture painting project or two couldn’t fix, it was what it was, and what it was is that I felt like I’d lost a huge part of my life, and one I hadn’t wanted to lose. Much, I realized, like it would feel if I’d lost Basil.

Every so often, she gets an impulse seemingly from nowhere, when we’re out on a walk, or patrolling the Designated Dog Area on the south end of the condos, and does something I’d never understood. There she’d be, two feet or less from the human who loved her, who catered to her, who thought about her all the time, and who wanted to spend every minute possible with her (except, in all honesty, for those times when the human just needed time to herself and therefore thanked every star in the heavens for Doggy Day Care, no matter how overpriced), and for no reason I could understand, I’d take a step toward her and she’d run.

Really run.

I’d call her, give her the tried and true “Wait” command, and she’d be gone. As time goes by she does this less and less, her last incidence being at Roy’s and that, I supposed, was because she was in unfamiliar territory. That time, found by a woman who really only half-heartedly wanted to call the number on her collar and return her home, coming that close to losing what we had irrevocably, I think she got the message. She and I were just supposed to be together. Maybe that explains why, since that day, she’s not only never bolted, but makes it very clear at all times that she needs to know where I am, that I’m still there, and that I still love her.

“Why would you ever run from someone you love so much, anyway,” I said to her, settled in on the ottoman across from me. “I’d think you’re smart enough to know what you want, and you sure don’t want to belong to someone else. It would never be the same.”

I hate to say this because it sounds so cliché, but maybe that’s where clichés come from, anyway – real life. I had then what felt like one of those “Aha!” moments Oprah writes about, and realized maybe my dog and I were more alike than I realized. I looked again at my phone. I looked at my phone and told myself what I needed to do was go to bed and call it a day. It was after ten. I’d already texted him that Basil missed him, but had enjoyed the evening.

Or maybe, I thought, I needed to do a little better than the ladies in the book I’d just been discussing, and if I knew something needed to be done, I’d just do it and I wouldn’t dodge around it, I’d just put it out there for what it was, and not bog down in how it would be received or not because it was just something that needed done. I really didn’t, at that point, have anything to lose, and I had mores to say to Roy than what I’d texted.

Maybe he wouldn’t understand it, or maybe he’d misinterpret it, but at that moment none of that really mattered. What it came down to is cleaning the closet, as had been said earlier, and just moving forward without letting the past hold you back, spending all your time trying to figure out why the past went wrong so you could get the future absolutely right. Sounded like a valiant goal, except I had a sneaking suspicion that once you accomplished that and had the future lined out, you’d be too old to have much present left.

Maybe there comes a time you just have to jump in the pool, or wake up and realize you’re already in the deep end of the pool, and so you just hope you’re a better swimmer than you remembered.

I texted Roy:

“Speaking for me now that Basil has been spoken for, I miss you, in that I have to make a conscious effort not to think about you otherwise I think about you all the time. And I love you and feel like if you’re not in my life a pretty integral part of my life is missing and that sucks. And in all honesty that scares the crap out of me because I never really thought I’d encounter that again and likely explains why I keep sabotaging it – that and for an intelligent woman I’m not always ‘the brightest bulb’ and for some reason think love is best run away from before it surprises you one day and evaporates on its own. And as this is longer than any text ought ever be and more honest than anybody – even Basil, probably – has time for, I am going to step away from the phone, and go to bed…”

Which I did, and did knowing I’d gotten more out of that book than I’d realized.

(In Response To Emails): Amenities Deprivation Cured…and Other Observations For The Thursday Night Group

Apropos of nothing….I finally got my key to the pool. I got the key to the pool by persistently calling the HOA, and lo and behold, eventually was contacted by a real human being, who took my old key and exchanged it for a new one. So I am now once again pool-enabled, which is a nice thing to be in the summer time. And against my better judgment and because I am nothing if not a pushover, a.k.a., someone who is always going to extend the olive branch and see the best in a person even if they do insist on holding romantic dramas in stairwells and otherwise disturbing my own domestic peace, I loaned the key to Chad to have copies made, so that my neighbors might bypass the bureaucratic b*llsh*t I had to go through to get a key in the first place. Days went by. No key returned.

Lainie called me this morning. Chad dropped the key copies by last night. I am now again, as I said, pool-enabled. So once more my faith is restored in people in general. Either that or it’s as simple as that once more I made a gesture I shouldn’t have, and dodged a bullet by having it come out well.

Amenity Deprivation cured.

Going to the pool right this minute would seem like a tremendous idea, and one that I would like to pursue. It’s just not going to happen because in ninety minutes, I’m due at work. Originally I was due a half hour ago, but I changed it, realizing nothing happened until this evening and I might as well stave off the chaos and the running around one more hour if such a thing was possible and it was. I talked with Holly and she is pretty much holding down the fort. Which is good because it enabled me to take an extra long walk with Basil, and run some errands, and basically take a slower approach to starting the day which worked out well for me because --- and I will only note this because it might explain why I may miss, as I did last week, a blog post or two (and really peeve my writer’s group in so doing. You can forget to bring something to eat to the meeting. You can forget to bring something to drink. You can not forget to write something, or post something, or even to attend altogether, which was the egregious error I committed on Thursday, being otherwise occupied with a relationship which as of last night appears to be over. You can do that, and you will get emails. Emails wanting to know what the heck is going on and why are you missing Thursdays? Do you really think Grace Metalious ever missed a day at her typewriter putting together Peyton Place? Do you think Irving Wallace ever let the personal encroach on the writing?).

It’s odd to note this, but I really don’t have anything to say and yet I have to say something because I’ve really peeved my writer’s group. I have nothing to say except that, in ninety minutes, I will be at work and I will have big smiles for everyone and everything, and this is what we do. This is the nature of the industry. The industry that can be and is subject to change at any given moment. The industry that says – and we happily comply – that no matter what else is going on with your life, in ninety minutes or five minutes or thirty seconds, you will be there, you will be ‘on’ for the client, and a good time will be had by all.

I really don’t have anything to say, but in the interest of pacifying those members of my faithful Thursday night writer’s group, have to say to them, “You’re right. I should have been there.” And possibly to the ladies of my one time Monday book club, you’re right as well. I should have been there. I wasn’t, because I went off in pursuit of something that just frankly was wonderful and will always be in my heart, but here’s the thing. Here’s what’s equivalent to the small print at the bottom of every offer you ever receive in the mail, every ‘too good to be true’ that floats your way through the universe. Here’s the ‘price for life’ I got on my Internet service that was truly (had I read the fine print) only good for 24 months (damned short life, I thought):

I think everything happens for a reason, in life.

OK, trite, stupid, and mundane, but it is what it is. And it’s what it boils down to, and it’s what I was thinking at 8:30 this morning when the calls from work started, and I realized that no matter what was going on in my personal life, I still had to be ‘on’, it was terribly important to be so, and I would be. I am the less than intelligent one who was less than intelligent enough to allow myself to fall in love with Roy, and ….well, for reasons there’s no reason to delve into, that isn’t going to happen.

You might want an explanation for that, but you’re not getting one. I have my hands full explaining it to Basil. That, and reinstating myself with her as somebody it’s still worth having wandered into their life five years ago.

I’m not rescinding, for the record, the “I love you”. As for anybody who really knows me, it’s hard enough to get one of those in the first place. That’s something I’ll always have. What I don’t have, apparently, are the things I would need to make something like that work. I don’t have a predictable schedule. I have friends who are single, and many of them are off the wall, and I have a few very close friends who are married, but unhappily so. I work in a pressure cooker so I require flexibility in my schedule and time alone. Much as I’d like to say I’ve had only one romantic tryst in my past, I’m not saying it and frankly, at my age – it would be more sad than virtuous if that were the case. I’d like to say I will only say what people want, or can stand – to hear. But, as M. observed after dating me for two years, “You just don’t edit yourself, do you?” and the truth is, I don’t.
And taken all together, it’s not really something that mixes well with another person.

So I accept that.
And if something was meant to be, it will be.
And if it’s not, it won’t.
And I was married once, for a long time, so I can’t say I missed out on having had a long term relationship. A lot of people go through life without ever having had that once, so it is, if you think about it, a bit presumptuous for me to consider having it twice.
And that’s all I have to say about that.

And to the Monday night book club, I will be there, even if you have chosen Wollitzer’s “Ten Year Nap”, which I’ve already read. And as to Thursday night…I’ll come up with something.

And as to Basil….
I’ll make it up to you, sweets.
Two extra blocks, I promise. Every single day.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to put my personal life aside, and go to work.