Monthly Archives: September 2013

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Brain Tumor Drama

My sister has been slowly navigating the waters of her divorce and handling it quite well.  She is spreading her wings in her new found freedom and hasn’t really looked back.  There have been a few obstacles here and there though.  I think we all go through those in a divorce and they usually help reaffirm why the hell we are getting a divorce in the first place.  At least that is what is happening for her.

If you are going through a divorce let me help give you a laugh.  Her soon to be ex-husband sent her enough texts professing his love one moment and threatening/verbally abusing her the next minute that she went and got a no contact order against him. She is one tough cookie, she hadn’t responded to one of those texts.  We know he left the rehab facility that he was in against doctors orders and we hadn’t heard from him in sometime.  He even cleaned all of us family members out of Facebook.  Except…he kept making comments on pictures that I had posted of their cats.  Yes, cats.  My sister’s cats are her children. Period.  In fact, she doesn’t want kids.  Ever.  Just her cats.

It seems the soon to be ex suddenly has an interest in catnapping.  Like kidnapping, but with cats.  He sent her a text and faked that he was going in for surgery, on a Saturday, for a brain tumor and he may die.  He needed to see the cats one last time for therapy according to his doctor.  You know, in case he dies.  She could just meet him in the parking lot of the hospital and do a cat swap and he would get the cats back to her IF he survived.

The tough cookie she is, she didn’t answer.  Instead she shot his Dad an email seeing as he has power of attorney over him and she mentioned she could not fill his request but she hopes he comes out for the better.  Long story short, there is no brain tumor and her ex is so upset she broke the news to his parents when he hadn’t had time to tell them.

The divorce papers were finally signed by him the next day. Faking a brain tumor to kidnap cats is a new one by me.

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We Made It

We made it.  We closed on our first home together.

It was a bit more of an emotional moment than I thought it would be.  After so much fighting and stress that came with this I was surprised at the quick bit of release I felt.  The knots that had been in my stomach for months, loosened.  The weight that had been on my shoulders, lifted.  The strain on my face, relaxed.  I almost felt the need to cry when we walked out of there.

There has been this dark  cloud following us for some time on this home.  Our lives have been uprooted and changed so much with the move.  Nothing has been normal and there has been no routine.  For the first time I think we allowed ourselves to exhale.

This past weekend I took the time to balance myself.  I read a book, watched Lifetime movies, spent too many hours on Pinterest, drank wine on the deck till the wee hours of the night with my husband, and took a nap.  I didn’t slam in some work out time here and there but I did work out and lost myself in yoga.  I felt the sweat in a way I hadn’t in sometime.  I found the positivity in my life again. I found balance.

As a couple we are back on track to find our new routine and our new normal in this new  chapter in our lives.  I’m telling myself to slow down and not rush so much.  We have done that since the day we met and I suddenly feel like we should pause a little bit as summer turns to fall and just enjoy it all more.  We have worked towards these goals for so long so it seems fair that we should sit back and relish in it a bit.  Unfortunately we do live in a world that is always heading to the next thing and it is so hard to just pause in the morning when you walk out the door and acknowledge the sunrise.  Yet, here I am, giving just that a try.

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We are so close to closing

Come Monday we are closing on our house.  With fingers crossed, prayers, a visit to a priest, candles lit and whatever else we come up with for luck-we will close.

Last week I was talking to a friend of mine who happens to be a psychic.  Yea, the real kind.  He reminded me that sometimes things are just meant to push us to the edge to remind us just how far we can go.  He told me to push one more time.  Be assertive one more time.  Hold on, that it would all work out.  So we did.  I threw out one more email, my husband made one more phone call.  When the push back and fights came from the builder we chose to be zen and hold onto faith instead.  You know what?  It worked.

We finally felt those scales tip in our favor.  Just enough for us to grab a hold and pull, no thanks to our builder.

After 11 months from the Hubby breaking ground and a month after moving in we will close on our first home.  The funny thing, Monday would have been my ex-husband’s and I’s 7th wedding anniversary.  The Hubby and I find this a bit amusing.  A new way to celebrate that day with a positive spin.

Send the good juju my way.

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Secondary Plans

Several months ago the Hubby and I decided we needed to re-evaluate our life insurance situation pending the new house and such.  We discussed amounts needed and so forth and what if, God forbid, something happened to one of us.  It sounds morbid I know, but these conversations eventually happen and I am a realistic person-I’m not going to live forever and I could easily be hit by a bus tomorrow.  We would still have a mortgage either way and right now we depend on a dual income.

This conversation of how to proceed without our significant other started out as most would. I could never live without you!  Followed by, life goes on and please pay off the mortgage and truck.  Now, what followed is perhaps where couples vary the most-would you remarry?  I know some have strong feelings that they would never want their spouse to remarry but I hope that mine would if he found the right person.  Let’s be honest, a man has needs.  In turn the Hubby hopes that I would do the same, no matter how young or old.  And so it went from there….

The Hubby expressed concern that I would perhaps marry one of my dear friends.  He said no matter what he wouldn’t want me to marry him because he doesn’t think he could give me everything in life I need.  Instead the Hubby picked out the man I was actually dating before I met him, one who is still a dear friend of ours.  We shall call him Oklahoma.  We actually ended up going to the bar later that night with this friend and he filled in poor Oklahoma on this “if anything should happen plan.”  Oklahoma was game.

In turn I had to choose a “back-up” spouse for him.

So we now have our spousal back ups.  Just like that.  It has basically become a running joke amongst our friends or when we don’t want to do something.  I.e. “Call your back up husband to OCD clean with you!”  It is equivalent to “the list.”  You know the Friends episode where they have the list of famous people they can sleep with?

God willing we won’t ever need our back ups but we may need to turn to the list….I could really use some hot sex with Kenny Chesney on a yacht.  Just sayin’….if the situation comes up.

Do you have a back up or a list?

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What doesn’t kill your marriage makes you stronger

Before we began building our house people would tell us how they would never build with their spouse again.  They would say how much they would fight over hardware and tile selections, how it would make them crazy and about killed their marriage.  Somehow we came through without those major hurdles that others seem to have.  Perhaps we were just riding the wave of our dream.  Until this recent situation came along and knocked us on our asses.

I have to say out of everything that has happened I’m truly grateful for the fact that we have a strong marriage.  There have been times when the husband has lost it and I have held him up and brought him home oreos.  There have been times where all I could do was sit in a heap and cry while he found positive words and poured me wine.  So far we have yet to lose it at the same time.  If there was a situation that could test your marriage, this is certainly it.  I could see how easily it would be for couples to turn on one another at a time like this but we have turned and leaned on one another even more.

We have no normal right now in our marriage.  We are exhausted everyday.  We eat dinner late, if we even eat together.  We are constantly trying to not forget the basics to get through the day.  What used to be second nature to us now takes thought in our everyday life and that can be time consuming.  Forgetting to set the trash out can cause meltdowns if one isn’t careful.

But we realize things could be worse.  Originally Husband was scheduled to  be on active duty for the month of August.  I could not even imagine going through the past month with him thousands of miles away.  That baby we have been wishing for? Well, had we gotten pregnant right away we would have a newborn thrown into this mix.  I’m sure we will look back and see how everything worked the way it has for a reason.

So at night I could go to bed angry at everything but I still thank God for the husband.  I thank God that I have support and someone to lean on.  I’m grateful that I have a husband that will take over when I just can’t make another phone call or send another email.  That is what being married is all about though, right? A teammate in life.  I friend to hang in there with you.  Someone to hold your hand when there are really no words left to say.  Because at the end of the day we may not know where we are living in 12 days but we do know we are living with each other and that is a start.

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As they say- If it can go wrong, it will.

Oh, hi little blog of mine.

I swear I didn’t forget about you.  I have thought about you over the past several weeks.

This should now be the post where I write about the big move into the house we have spent months building.  It is supposed to be a great, big, happy post about this next chapter in our lives and perhaps that is the exact reason why I haven’t written,  besides the lack of time, this has been the most stressful and least happy moment for us.

I could write out the story for you with all of the details but in the end I hate repeating the details.  Every little thing added up from the day we started building to only explode in front of us 12 hours before the movers were to show up.  We were given an all clear during our walk through with my the builder when in fact we shouldn’t have.  You see, there was an issue that we were told was cleared up, that only the builder could clear up, when in fact it hadn’t been cleared up and we could not get permanent occupancy to close.

We sat, surrounded by boxes in the apartment 12 hours before movers showed up and I saw my husband break down for the first time.  For the first time I worried about his sobriety when he told him it took everything he had to not drive directly to the bar instead of to the apartment.  The builder and him had an explosive argument on the phone and the builder crossed enough lines that my Husband was not even going to move into the house.  In that moment we were going to beg the apartment  complex to let us stay on a few more days while we found somewhere else to go.  We ended up moving in the house the next day anyways mainly because we literally had nowhere to go.

Boxes were moved, utilities turned on, appliances delivered and one issue after another happened.  The painters were still painting the front door but the movers need the front door off the hinges.  One truck  was stuck in the mud outside while the phone guy was complaining because he was told lines would be buried.  The husband had to work that day and all I could do was direct the craziness while my sister and another dear friend tried to help.  It felt like we were trying to put out a forest fire with cups of water only.  The whole time I was waiting for a call from the builder.  Something to let me know it was all a mistake, something with an apology, something that gave us a glimmer of hope and to this day it hasn’t come.

That night, once we were all  moved in, we opened a bottle of wine I had saved and it just didn’t taste right.  There was no exciting Facebook post, there was no first time home pictures, and there were no papers signed.  We stood with all of our stuff in a place that suddenly felt foreign because we now faced a horrible reality.  We may have to move out of this house.

The weekend continued into one horror after another to end with someone trying to break into our new house while I was home by myself.  I learned it takes the police 12 minutes to get there and even longer when the 911 sign hasn’t been put up.  I had to quickly remember where the guns were.  We were at the end of our rope and now I was afraid to be in my home.

We have spent the past three weeks in this house and seem to grow more disconnected to it each day.  We refuse to hang anything on the walls and we have a contingency plan put into place if we don’t get to close.  The only thing we have heard from our builder is that he wants us to pay him rent on our own house because we couldn’t close on an issue that is all his fault.  Quickly our rate that we have locked in will run out and then, well, insert plan B.  Move again. Find somewhere.  Hire a lawyer.

Our lives have been completely on hold while this fog of stress looms around us.  We are afraid to breathe or move forward.  We don’t have anything to move forward to actually.  It is a weird holding place.  We are consumed with the little things we are to do right now-watering the sod, emptying the Husband’s other home, and trying to organize our boxes without unpacking everything.  So we wait and pray.  We dig deep for hope and try to keep hold of what little faith we have left in anything possibly going right with this house because not a single thing has.  Perhaps 2 years from now this will all be a distant memory and a hard lesson learned.  For right now, it is really fucking hard.