Joys of Single Motherhood

Even though it is now more than six months since the Mountain Mensch dumped me, there are still nano-seconds when I miss the physical intimacy we shared. A scent, a certain bird singing in the morning can conjure a day, a morning with the sun streaming into the room. Then I console myself with a list of the things I don't miss: The nagging --the constant prodding, pushing, unasked-for advice. The Mountain Mensch always knows what's best--always--about everything. Period. When his wife divorced him she cited his "know-it-all attitude" as one of her reasons. Constant disapproval of whatever it was I happened to be eating. Hmmm...see 'nagging' above. Religious differences  I think that a generally Western, evidence-based, double-blind approach to medicine and health is one's best bet for staying well.  I am in favor of science. I do not think that Western medicine is controlled by a panel of pharmaceutical company executives led by Dr. Evil.  That...

My marriage ended with a whimper, not a bang. He met his soul mate and it was around the same time that I became sick to death of his silence, his limited interests and lack of interest in broadening his horizons. The man never has learned how to swim and he can't drive a car with a manual transmission. We didn't like each other anymore--plain and simple. He sort of sidled out the door and into a new life and I was glad--mostly. The fact that I signed THE world's stupidest divorce agreement will always rankle but I've never faulted him for meeting someone new and moving on. Sometimes you meet your ideal mate when you're inconveniently married to someone else, it's a fact of life. He's a good guy and a nice person. When I hear about some other exes my friends have to deal with I feel a bit smug. At least I chose a good guy who loves his kids and takes fatherhood seriously. The woman he married is nice: hardworking, shrewd, intelligent and a good mother. S...

I laughed pretty hard this morning when I saw the headline: "Jehovah's Witnesses Reported on Loewen Court". That's right, one of our citizens called the police to report that a renegade pair of religious extremists had infiltrated our suburban heaven. You call it "religious freedom", we call it "sanctioned vexation." I say install some blinds. Whenever anyone we don't know rings our bell, we ignore it. The kids are getting too old to peek through the blinds so we don't even look out at the front stoop anymore. We don't call the police though. Kids in this small city are polite--painfully so. When I cover any sort of school event, getting lively quotes from the kids is torturous. They are just too schooled to make any sort of PR gaffe.  I ask probing questions such as 'What did you like the most about today's hoe-down?' Small cute child replies: 'The food was delicious.' I want the kid to say something like ...

I have a confession to make. I have a crush on a television character: Rick Castle. "Castle" is a cop show with a twist. The Castle character is a multi-millionaire 'writer' in the same genre as James Patterson. Each work day, Castle follows around a gorgeous, witty Stanford-grad who somehow decided to become a police detective. (Imagine that class reunion. "Billionaire high tech mogul, meet gorgeous police detective.") Every single woman over 50 should have a "Castle" in her life. He is 'ruggedly handsome' but he has a double chin that I find adorable. He is not 'ripped', has no washboard abs and in truth is kind of chunky. "Sturdy" is the word they used way back when, but "husky" is closer to the truth. Castle doesn't seem to spend a second exercising and he dresses beautifully so what if he does have a mushy middle, it doesn't show. He doesn't own a pair of Kirkland jeans. He has never even been...

I am procrastinating. I just realized that the last entry I wrote maligned my son's character. I am not particularly sorry but I suppose it wasn't very nice of me either. I wish I spent more time worrying about being nice or perhaps not. I am supposed to be writing a rather tricky story about the school district's bizarre attempt to expel a high school senior because they determined that she does not spend three school nights a week with her mother in this city. Instead, she stays those nights with her father in another town. The more I dig the more it becomes apparent that someone made up this rule and parroted it to the parent not realizing that they were dealing with an intelligent, well-spoken mother with lots of friends in our city. Whoops. And the district is saying nothing. Nothing. They don't want to throw the highly capable person who made up the rule under the bus but they know they screwed up. Why not just pick up the phone and apologize to this mother...