Maura's Illuminated Manuscript

From the Dept. of Delayed Divorce, Ex and I finally got around to splitting up the cell phone bill. All three of us used to be on one bill, which Ex (!) was paying. Now, more reasonably, the kiddo & I go on one and she's off on her own. I forgot that we were paying for two tablets that we don't use. Oy. They get cancelled tomorrow.

And on a related note, if you remember almost exactly a year ago, I agreed to have m'boy at my place on weekdays and send him to Ex on the weekends. That hasn't been optimal for quite a while - since July, says the Wendling - because he now works much closer to Ex's place than mine. And once he restarts school, getting there is also easier from her place than mine. So, starting next month, my son will be with my ex on days when he's working, which are usually but not always weekdays, and with me the rest of the time. I've warned him that he may hear lesbian sex if he's here on the weekends, and gotten the predictable cringe from him. Just kidding: I would subject neither him nor a date to that if I could help it. But hey, if they were copacetic, you're reading the words of someone who's had sex in a room full of third parties. A lot of third parties.

I'm not sure whether I'd rather have him here on weekends or weeknights. On the one hand, if he's here less, that's less stressful on me, and he isn't commuting his life away. On the other hand, Ex isn't that good at launching m'boy when he needs to be launched. Given the lack of social action (apart from m'boy) in my apartment lately, that aspect is probably a wash. I note that Brown Eyes doesn't seem to mind driving anywhere anytime, and sleepovers at my lake place are impractical for the Tickler.

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While we three were driving around today, m'boy found a months-old voice mail from Exdad wishing him happy birthday. Exdad, if you'll recall, has been dead for about six weeks. Poor Ex started crying as she drove. She'd mentioned earlier that losing him had been hard, messing with her daily life. I couldn't help reminding her that she used to tell me to, in essence, just get over my own father's death because it was so long ago.

"That sounds like something my mother would say," she said. Yup, it sure is. That's usually not a good sign, and Ex knows it. She points out that she's no longer the person I was married to, for better and for worse, and my criticism of her past self is a trifle unfair. Yeah, I guess it is, but I can now say that I'm not mad at her for it anymore. She acquired some empathy for me in about the worst way she could have.

Today is the anniversary of my divorce hearing. I'd been planning on wishing Ex a happy divorciversary, but she beat me to it over on Zuckerberg's data mine. That was sweet of her. But she spelled it "divorce-aversary", which I think is wrong, and yet another indication that splitting up was the right thing to do.

Life is waaaay better now that I'm not saddled with the mortgage for the house in Kirkland. Yeah, I'm still paying maintenance and our gorram kid doesn't want to launch*, but I'm actually saving some money, not driving over floating bridges regularly, and living my own life to a much greater degree than I was this time last year.



*Ex has agreed to have speaks about the Wendling early next week. Between her dad's ongoing scrape with death and her recent infusion of socko-pow arthritis drugs, she's just not there yet.

Now that I'm divorced* I finally got around to updating my will. I went to the fellow who thewronghands recommended over in Bellevue. He does seem very knowledgeable, especially about poly-related issues that don't (yet?) apply to me. I also didn't get the slimy feeling that I got with the last guy who did a will for me. (Thanks, Microsoft!)

Seeing as how I now have neither a spouse nor real estate, it was pretty simple: m'boy gets everything, no trust, and funerary costs are to be kept to a minimum so he gets more dead presidents from his dead M. If there's to be a wake, sorry, I'm not paying for it. Ex is first in line to be an executor**, but she's not a beneficiary.

There's only one weird thing about my will: I asked that my ashes be scattered, if legally permitted by the BLM, in the Black Rock Desert. Aw, rats. I just remembered that I have an iTunes playlist for just this occasion. Ah well, it isn't long enough, and I hope I'll have time to expand it.

This is going to cost... a bit more than I'd hoped. It still needed to happen, though. Now that I'm going to have a new, pricey divorcée's will, Murphy's Law dictates that at least one Ms. Right will sashay into my life.

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Spent nearly all of yesterday at chez ack_yeahright talking, eating, and drinking way too much. Yes, I had other places to go, but I lost track of time.

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Oh: Zuckerberg's Data Mine informs me that the lovely woman from Saturday night is from Iran, which explains why I couldn't place her accent, and that she knows domestinatrix. World shrinkage!



*Yay!
**"Executrix" jokes from The Crying of Lot 49 go here.

The crud kept me away from work yesterday, which I spent most of in bed and asleep.

I did, however, find the time to drive to an escrow office near Northgate and sign the paperwork for the new Chez Ex down in the south end. I was thinking, 'Finally! Done!' when I got an email at 1700 last night saying I needed to sign something electronically. Luckily, that worked, because she moves in today and her moving truck comes tomorrow.

The kiddo has been pretty reasonable while I've been sick, putting things away when I tell him to. He even fetched some kefir for me last night, which seemed to help considerably. Tomorrow, though, he belongs to his mother.

Things I dislike:

1. My ex's tax accountant for not notifying us earlier than Friday that we needed to file singly because we were divorced for all of thirty-six hours last year. Because of this I just kited a good-sized check made out to Uncle Sam. Yes, Ex says she'll cover it with proceeds from the house sale - which I must pick up in Kirkland tonight - but still, this kind of tightrope-walking really isn't my style. For heaven's sake, the accountants are the ones who urged us to hurry up & get split up by EOY.
2. My son for general punkitude. Getting up in the morning, keeping my place clean, and eating regular, non-junk meals are not optional if you live with me.
3. The manufacturer of whatever tube I put on m'boy's bike. I think it blew on Friday night. Could 45 PSI have done it in?
4. Myself for screwing up a rollback on Friday.
5. Whatever germs make me woozy after dinner and then make me need to sleep for at least nine hours a night. It's hard to deal with the aforementioned punkitude if you're not with it physically; that's why my ex shipped him to me.
6. I still don't have a date for SEAF, to say nothing of being kinda sorta secondary at best for multiple women.

As I type - on my work computer, because I left my personal machine at my ex's by mistake - I have sore feet from yesterday at Emerald City Comicon (plus old injuries), and a sore back from last night's date. Let me take it from the top:

I spent much of Friday & yesterday doing paperwork and emailing back & forth to co-sign on the mortgage for Ex's new place. She needed me to do that, she says, because she's been (officially) getting maintenance from me for less than six months; apparently the threshold used to be three months. She promises to re-fi as soon as she can, which would be July, and get me off the hook.

I'm deeply grateful to Mr. Right Now for being the muscle that got her ready for her garage sale. She made $1000. I delivered lunch and picked up son (who slept so late he was useless) to go to...

...Emerald City Comicon! I saw, well, everybody: cupcake_goth, minim_calibre, theda, speedie316, intrepid_reason, tereshkova2001, Elder Goth, co worker E, and a few people who I'm too tired to remember and who are probably LJ unpersons anyway. Impulse purchase: one of JSalvador's Super Emo Friends, namely a cartoon of Jar Jar Binks hanging himself. So wrong, and yet so right. The kiddo & I only lasted three hours, but hey, if he's happy I'm happy. We commuted over I-90, 520 being closed, via the mighty convenient Sound Transit 550 from Bellevue. Suck it, parking weasels!

Speaking of I-90, an accident thereupon convinced me to allow way more time than I ended up needing to get to a date with the Tickler. She did something uncharacteristic: instead of the agreed-upon fuck-first date, she took us to a romantic light dinner at Phoenicia (Way tasty!) on Alki and watched the twilight deepen over Puget Sound, and she put a pashmina around my shoulders when I inevitably got cold. Le sigh joyeau. Ahem ensued, but I don't think that was how my back got messed up; she has an unusually soft bed.

I talked to Mom at the usual time from inside my car, parked in front of the Tickler's. (Of course I told her that.) She's back from a week in Acapulco and not much the worse for wear. This is a bigger-than-usual relief because a) I saw how addle-pated she now is in France, and b) she had neither her phone nor her computer. Not much the worse: she had a nasty encounter with unfriendly Mexican microflora.

And now, Much Younger Woman wanted to go for a hike this afternoon. My body is telling me that's not a good idea. I hate to let people down that way, but.

My ex got the house she was bidding on. This is a huge relief, because it means that a) she and my son have a place to move into now that she's sold the old place, so b) I won't be essentially paying for three residences, even for a short time.

From the Dept. of Hilarity: the new place is in the same ZIP code as Mistress Matisse. If they ever meet, they'll annihilate each other in a hail of gamma rays.

In classic ex fashion, she's found a way to rain on my parade: she's looking forward to shipping my son off to me during the weeks instead of (most of) the weekends. I'll be keeping way more of the cash if I have to feed my teen. He will so very be helping with laundry & housework. I give him a month, outside, before he's begging his mother to move back in with her. I'm not even sure if he'll be taking any classes next quarter, but one way or another he'll be doing something constructive outside the apartment.

"St. Patrick's Day pre-funk" with People in Black in North Greenwood. There was beer, mean things done to attractive women, and way too many sesame-covered almonds. Not bad for a Tuesday night.

Dinner with m'boy as usual last night. He's still a punk, but perhaps less of a punk than last week. Ex is freaking out about not having a place to move into yet now that she's sold the one she's in, but she has yet to transmit her freakout to me. Oh by the way, her drier has just given up the ghost and she's got a ton of fabric, notions, and sewing supplies that she got from her hoarder stepmother that she'll be selling over the weekend. Watch this space for a sale announcement.

My ex informs me that she's tentatively accepted an hour on the house which contains an "escalation clause" that raises the price by 3%. That's nearly $747K if it goes through, scheduled to close on April 7th. That's fabulous news for me, of course, and it'll eventually be fabulous news for her, too, but she first has to find a new place. The ones she was looking at last week have of course sold. Welcome to Seattle! I'm sure she'll make it, though; she only wants to move once.

I can't help but wonder if the weekend of staying at my place, away from the old place, and the looming move have contributed to my son's recent punkitude. He skipped class today, and he's started putting sugar in everything again. He at least attempted to vacuum up what he left in my carpet - I know because he didn't put the vacuum away quite right - but it was still all over the coffee table & cabinet.

From the Dept. of Irony: The worst traffic bottleneck in the state of Washington is the State Road 520 bridge, a concrete pontoon engineering marvel* that connects Seattle to its northeastern suburbs. I've driven that bridge hundreds of times to get between my current place and the old one. The new 520 bridge is scheduled to open on April 2nd, less than a week before I don't need it nearly so much.



*Built in the '50s, it has a draw span that used to open to permit pleasure craft through, the lake having de-industrialized shortly after World War II. The draw span also opens during high winds to prevent damage to the bridge. The new bridge has no need for such moving parts and much longer rises at the ends.

My son is in my apartment as I speak. I have... informed him of the recent error of his ways and the gravity of the situation in which he has placed himself. My ex & I are, unusually, in perfect agreement about that. Poor Mr. Right Now got to listen to me install in my son a new rectum. May he never need to do so with his daughter.

We had lunch at Red Mill as his first meal of the day and my second, and I watched him take 80 mg of Vyvance. The pills were in his hands and there they weren't. I hope he didn't hide them under his tongue.

Oh: the dryer at the old place is out of commission just in time to start showing the house next week, of course, so I've been doing three loads of my son's laundry here, which he gets to fold. Ex has her own laundry hung up at the old place, which is why I'm doing m'boy's here. I'm pretty sure we'll be ready in time, though. C'mon, baby, sell, and sell high. Mama's got bills to pay.