Category Archives: Days in My Life

I don’t just sit around and watch TV.

Things That Made Me Happy, April 20, 2013

Posted on by
Comment

On the downhill glide from a nasty cold, life is good.

Here are a few things that made me happy today:

  • Really enjoying — for the first time in a few days — not one but two cups of morning coffee. #DamnedCold
  • Talking to an old friend, for the first time in over a year, who was even more outraged about my marital woes than I am. He really fired me up and gave me new energy to fight for what’s right.
  • Realizing that the killer headache I’d been suffering with for more than 24 hours was finally gone.
  • Watching Penny the Tiny Dog play with a dog cookie as if it’s a live mouse she has to catch and kill before she eats.
  • FlowersFinishing up a bunch of things on my to-do list, including one I’d been sitting on the fence about doing since September 2012.
  • Seeing Penny the Tiny Dog play with a pair of full-grown black labs. (I’d have video, but I got a phone call just as I was prepping to shoot it.)
  • Seeing high desert hills blanketed with tall green grass and bright yellow wildflowers.
  • Being greeted enthusiastically by friends I forgot I had.

The New Blog

Posted on by
9

A fresh start on a new life.

I decided to start a brand new blog today — a place where I can document the new things in my life: my new home, activities, friends, and lovers.

I won’t be abandoning this blog — I’ll keep posting about the usual things. But I will use the new blog to post information about the new things I’m doing to move forward in my life as I finish up my divorce and leave behind the man I loved for 29+ years.

The new blog will remain pretty much private until the divorce is finalized. A few of my close friends will get the URL. If you want the URL, contact me.

I’m looking forward to working on this new project and documenting my new life. I hope you’ll join me there.

The Loneliest Days of My Life

Posted on by
5

No, it’s not when you’re thinking.

I’m finally in the home stretch for my divorce proceedings. It’s been a long, hard road, made harder by my heartache and the constant state of disbelief that the man I loved and spent more than half my life with could do the spiteful and vindictive things he’s been doing to me since May.

The topic of loneliness came up in a Facebook discussion with some friends. I had commented about how I loved the spontaneity of my life, being able to turn a day trip into an overnight stay. I mentioned how nice it was to be able to say YES to an invitation without asking someone’s permission. One person commented:

Being single has a lot more perks then people think. Oh sure, it can be lonely, but if you got good friends, and an active life, the feeling of loneliness is rare.

I replied:

I seldom get lonely. I can stay pretty busy.

Another person said:

In my previous marriage, I felt lonelier during its disintegration than I ever felt afterwards, happily on my own.

And that got me thinking about when I did feel lonely. It wasn’t this week or last week or even last month. It wasn’t really during any time since I left him behind in Arizona on a late April day in 2012. In reality, it was before that — in the final months leading up to my seasonal departure to Washington. As I commented to my Facebook friends:

I never felt so lonely as those last few months before I went away for my summer job in 2012. I moved to Phoenix to be close to him and he was as distant as ever. I should blog about this — I think it’s the only time in my life that I’ve ever felt lonely for an extended period of time.

And that’s true — I’ve never felt as lonely as I did during that 7-month period, from the time I returned to Arizona from my summer job in early October 2011 until I departed for the 2012 season on the last day of April 2012.

Moving into the Condo

It was a weird scene when I got home — although I didn’t realize it right away. My husband had visited me in September for a nice week-long trip around the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. It was the first thing resembling a vacation that we’d had in more years than I can count. It was a nice trip — at least I enjoyed it. I thought he did, too.

On that trip we talked about his roommate moving out of his Phoenix condo. My husband had had the condo for three or four years and his roommate had moved in right away. His roommate didn’t like me much and didn’t keep that a secret. When he wasn’t openly hostile, he was making cracks about the things I did or said, always trying to pick a fight with me. I’m not saying we were at war, but I certainly wasn’t very comfortable when he was around — which was every weekday evening and on some weekends. Watching TV became a community event. So did some meals — either that or smell the stench of whatever prepared food concoction he’d heated in the microwave. Not only that, but because I’m a early riser, I felt that I had to tip-toe around the place in the morning, keeping it dark so it wouldn’t wake my parrot. I can’t tell you how many mornings I sat in the corner of the red sofa reading a book on my iPad because I didn’t want to wake him.

We’d decided earlier in the summer that it would be better if his roommate were to move out. I’d move in with my office and spend each week with my husband — kind of like a normal couple might. (Imagine that!) So when I returned in October, the roommate was gone.

My husband and I filled the void left by his departure by buying new furniture for the condo. A new bedroom set with a king size bed like the one we had at home. We sold the old furniture — which had been a gift from my grandmother — to his roommate for his new apartment. We bought end tables and a coffee table. And a table for the big HD television he’d bought. And a bunch of dressers for the walk-in master bedroom closet, so we wouldn’t need dressers in the bedroom.

We brought my office furniture — or most of it — down from our Wickenburg house. I set up my office in the roommate’s old bedroom. We also swapped the queen sized bed we had at the condo for a full size bed we had at home. That went into my office as a guest bed — as if anyone wanted to visit us. We also bought new blinds for that room. It had two sliding glass doors and the old blinds were ugly and in poor condition. By the time we were finished, the place was looking like a home.

A second home.

Life at the Condo

Throughout the autumn, I lived there with my husband, our dog Charlie, and my parrot Alex.

In the morning, we’d have breakfast together like a real married couple and he’d go to work. I’d go into my office and do some work for a while. Just before lunchtime, I’d put Charlie on his leash and we’d walk to the stores where I’d buy food for the night’s dinner (if we were eating in) and maybe some lunch out. We never missed a Wednesday farmer’s market. In the afternoon, I’d take Charlie to one of the dog parks I’d found in the area — the one at Indian School park was closest — where I’d let him run with the other dogs or chase balls. On other days, I’d take him out to the tennis courts near the condo parking lot and throw balls with him until my husband got home. We’d have dinner together, either in or out, and sometimes would see a movie. Otherwise, he’d park himself in front of the television and I’d usually get comfortable somewhere with a book.

Sometimes I flew. The helicopter was based part-time at Deer Valley Airport, which was closer to the condo than our house. I’d get a call for a flight, book it, and head up to prep. Then I’d do the flight and, with luck, be back at the condo before he got home. Sometimes it went long, though. That’s the way my business is.

On most weekends, we’d go home to Wickenburg. It was a bit of a pain in the neck — having to pack our things and load up the truck, then make the long drive — about 70 miles that took nearly 90 minutes — and unpack once we arrived. Often, we took two cars — after all, he worked about 1/3 of the way home and it didn’t make much sense for him to drive that distance twice. We’d spend the weekend doing stuff around the house — including catching up on TV car shows he’d DVRed — and maybe getting out in the Jeep. We had a nice hike in the desert out behind the house once. Then, on Sunday (if we’d taken one car) or Monday (if we’d taken two cars), we’d pack back up and move back down to Phoenix.

I say “most weekends,” because it wasn’t every weekend that we went home together. Sometimes, I had to fly. It made no sense to go all the way back to Wickenburg and then drive all the way back to Deer Valley the next day. So I’d stay in the condo and either come home after the flight or just stay there. And, of course, since my office was in the condo, I had to be there to get any work done. I worked on a book that autumn and that kept me in the condo on a few weekends.

Understand that this was not the kind of life I liked. While I realize that I do spend every summer away from home, at least I’m sleeping in the same bed for weeks at a time. Bouncing back and forth between these two homes was bothersome, to say the least. It didn’t make things any better that the condo was dark and cavelike from about 11 AM on, there was no privacy with the blinds open, and noisy neighbors woke us up more than a few times. The only thing the condo had going for it was its proximity — walking distance — from so many shops and restaurants and the fact that it had pretty fast Internet.

As for Wickenburg — well, the house needed a lot of work. My old office was a disaster area, but I was never there long enough to put a dent into the big job of cleaning it up. (It took weeks this spring to finally get the job done.) The yard needed some work and we actually did do some of it in January and February. But, overall, I felt that we were neglecting the house and wasting too much time on those long weekly drives.

The Winter of his Discontent

Sometime in the autumn, I realized that my husband was unhappy. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I honestly believed it had to do with his job.

The way he complained about his job, I have to assume he hated it. What else could I think? He complained incessantly about his boss and I had to agree — the guy was being a dick. He complained about not being able to sell because his boss refused to give him the price cuts he needed to clinch the deals. He complained about his boss micromanaging. Even after we’d treated his boss and his wife to a helicopter dinner out — do you know what that cost me? — he continued to treat my husband shabbily, like a second-class citizen. And his work conditions? He was in a tiny cubicle crammed into a tiny office with another guy. This was not the kind of office you’d want to go to every day.

I also knew that he was unhappy with his financial situation. He wasn’t making as much money as he needed to cover the condo mortgage and its absurdly high monthly maintenance fees. I told him to sell. He refused, saying that it was under water. It was only under water about $20K, though. I told him to sell and take the loss on his income taxes. He refused. I told him to sell it to me for what he owed and that I’d sell it and take the loss. He didn’t want to do that either. He just wanted that albatross hanging around his neck.

To top things off was the way he responded to me when I told him I wanted to do something that he apparently didn’t approve of. Rather than speak up and tell me what the problem was, he’d fix me with a disapproving glare and say something like, “Whatever you want,” in a flat tone of voice. He never got enthusiastic about anything. He never seemed happy. Even on the few times we went to concerts and the like, he didn’t seem as if he was 100% there with me.

I thought it was his job. I thought he was at the end of his rope with the situation. I thought that he was jealous of me having so much free time to do what I wanted to do between books and flying jobs. I thought he’d begun to resent my freedom — freedom I’d offered him so many times and was waiting for him to grasp with me.

How could I think otherwise? He never told me what was wrong.

One day in the winter, he emailed a close friend of his back in New York, telling her, “Maria is driving me crazy.” But he never said a word to me. I still don’t know what I did to prompt that complaint to a woman I’d met only a handful of times, a woman he obviously felt better about confiding to than me, his wife.

Much later, in September 2012, after introducing my replacement to his friends at his mother’s birthday party, he told a mutual friend that he still loved me but that when he’d come to see me on my birthday in June 2011, I didn’t tell him that I loved him. He was carrying around crap like that for over a year. But he never told me how he felt. He never made me feel as if he cared about how I felt for him.

He just complained about me to his friends.

It should come as no surprise that they cheered him on when he decided to search for my replacement. Maybe they even suggested it. It seems like something his roommate might do.

The Loneliness

The loneliness came over those few months. Living with a man so distant, a man I couldn’t reach, a man who wouldn’t tell me what he was thinking or feeling. He wasn’t the man I loved. He was the empty shell of that man.

How many times did I go into the bedroom with a book, hoping he’d turn off that fucking television and join me?

How many times did I wish he’d speak up when he wasn’t happy about what I was doing or saying? How many times did I wish he’d put his foot down and take control of the situation and show me the man I fell in love with all those years ago?

How many times did I wish he’d just shed the possessions and debt that was making him a slave in a job he hated?

Too many times.

I retreated into myself and my work. I came out when he suggested a marriage counselor and I really thought we could make things work. But he still wouldn’t talk and I was still alone. And then it was time for me to go back to work.

By then, of course, he’d given up on me — although he didn’t tell me that, either. He waited until he’d found my replacement, then ruined my birthday by asking for a divorce. Was that revenge for me not telling him that I loved him the year before? Probably.

But at least the loneliness finally ended.

Things That Made Me Happy, April 17, 2013

Posted on by
1

Overall, life is good.

Here are a few things that made me happy today:

  • Seeing how cute Penny looked standing on the front passenger seat with her front legs on the window sill as the police officer assured me, through the half-open passenger window, that the 55 mile per hour sign did indeed apply to me.
  • Not getting a ticket from the police officer mentioned above, despite the fact that I admitted driving 70 miles per hour.
  • Seeing herds of wild horses grazing on surprisingly green high desert grass.
  • Getting a Mexican ice cream pop when I stopped for gas.
  • Seeing giant windmills in a row, spinning in unison against a blue sky.
  • Driving a long distance, despite having a cold, and arriving at my destination — a place I love but haven’t been to in a long time — with enough time to settle in for the night.

The Divorce Book

Posted on by
20

An opportunity to earn back the money spent on my divorce…and refresh my writing career.

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook or are a close friend, you probably know by now that I was contacted by an acquisition editor for a publisher on Friday afternoon. She told me that they’re interested in me writing a book about my divorce ordeal based on my blog posts and tweets.

Holy cow! That’s what I tweeted only minutes after getting that call. I’ve been thinking about it a lot since then — indeed, it’s difficult to think of anything else.

I thought I’d take some time to blog about how all this came up and what I think about it. Blogging helps me organize my thoughts and this whole thing definitely needs to be organized in my mind. Ironically, if I decide to move forward with this project, this blog post will become part of the book.

About the Blog Posts

The Divorce-Related Blog Posts (so far):

I started blogging about my divorce back in July 2012. My husband had called me on June 30 (yes, my birthday) to ask for a divorce and, in all honesty, I didn’t think he was very serious about it. I thought that once we’d talked in person and I’d had a chance to show or tell him about how I thought we could move forward together, he’d realize that what we had was too good to throw away. I while I waited for him to come see me — I was stuck on contract in Washington state — I wrote “29 Years Ago Today,” a narrative history of our relationship since the day we met on July 10, 1983. I wrote that as a tribute to our relationship, as a reminder to him of what we’d been through and what we had.

We met in mid July. I did a lot of crying and he did some, too. He claimed he still cared about me. He assured me that there wasn’t another woman. But when I took him to see the 10 acres of view property that I hoped we’d build a summer home on, I could see in his eyes that there was something else he was more interested in. Something that wasn’t in Washington. Yet I believed him. I trusted him. When he told me he wanted a fair and equitable divorce, I believed him. When he said he wanted to stay friends, I believed him.

I was a fool to believe him.

But how could I blame myself for trusting the man I’d trusted with my life for 29 years? Especially when one of my close friends was assuring me that my marriage could be fixed if I worked hard on it when I got home? I didn’t know that this friend was one of several friends and family members my husband had called to tell that he still loved me and worried about me. My friend thought that meant he wanted reconciliation and he pushed me to believe it was possible.

I was a fool to believe him, too.

Although I’d told my husband that I didn’t want to talk about the divorce until I got home, he pressed me several times after our meeting about a settlement. I was trying to finish a book and my state of mind was making work nearly impossible. (I finished the book two months late — the first time I’d ever missed a deadline on that title — and lost out on $5,000 of advance money.) I couldn’t understand why he was in such a hurry when he’d told me we could wait. I responded angrily and he cut communication not long afterward, going completely dark. I blogged about that on August 8 in “How I’m Doing.”

I later found out that behind the scenes, the woman my husband had been sleeping with since June was already pulling his strings, emailing him lists of divorce lawyers to call with instructions to call as many as he could so I couldn’t call the same ones. When I emailed him in August, telling him when I’d be coming home, he began plotting with his lawyer to get exclusive use of the house, effectively leaving me homeless when I returned. When I learned about his girlfriend and saw the lingerie photos she’d sent him as part of her seduction routine and realized that he planned to keep me out of my own home, I reacted by (finally) filing for divorce. I discovered that he had already gone through my personal files and given copies of my tax returns and investment statements to his lawyer. Clearly, he didn’t care about me at all and was planning to use my delay to maximize the amount of cash he could claim under community property laws. After all, I make 80% to 90% of my income during the summer; every time he forwarded my mail with a check from a client, he was likely thinking about how half of that check would soon be his.

From that point forward, my blog posts were explorations of my feelings about what was going on, trying, for the most part, to remain upbeat and positive. “Freedom without Guilt” discussed one positive aspect of cutting ties with my husband: I was finally free to do what I wanted without having to deal with his attempts to make me feel guilty for making the most of my life. “My Experience with Aging, Weight, and Medifast” talked mostly about dieting and didn’t really discuss the divorce at all. By that point, I’d lost 28 pounds. (I wound up losing a total of about 45 pounds by mid October.) But the post is remarkable because I posted my own version of a lingerie photo, which, admittedly, was pretty lame. (I’m not stupid enough to put a photo of myself in lingerie online — or to email it to a married man.) In all honesty, I think I still believed that if my husband and I could sit down and talk again, we’d be able to patch things up. (It was — and is — very hard to let go.)

“Early Morning Helicopter Flight: Wenatchee, WA to Hillsboro, OR” briefly mentioned how I wished I could share the joy I felt from an amazing dawn flight over the Cascade mountains with my husband. It was hard to believe that I’d never go flying with him again. “Boating without Mike” talked about a boat ride Penny and I went on at the end of August. It was my last ride in the boat for the season; I sucked up some milfoil (weeds) as I returned to the dock and the engine wasn’t running quite right. I was lucky to get it back on the trailer. (I’m not looking forward to getting that fixed when I get back.) In that blog post, I listed many of the boat trips I’d been on with my husband over the years. It was one of many reminiscent posts, things I wrote that I hoped he would read — possibly to jog his memory about everything we had that was so good. To shake some sense into him.

But as I learned more and more about what was going on at home, I began getting angry — which is actually good for me. “The Pain of Betrayal” introduced readers to my feelings about discovering my husband’s lies without actually mentioning his affair. Thinking that my husband had left me for a younger woman — the woman in the lingerie photos — and knowing quite a bit about her financial situation, I wrote “Gold Digger.” At the same time, I was overcome with pity for my husband’s decision to turn his back on the amazing lifestyle we could have had together. I wrote “Pity for the Foolish” to express my personal joy at watching a beautiful sunrise from my doorstep and my remorse that my husband had trapped himself in the “box” he couldn’t think outside of.

By this time, I’d realized that a lack of communication — mostly on the part of my husband — had caused all of our marital problems and the breakup. “Communication Breakdown” presented my thoughts in a hypothetical situation. It was the closest I could get (at that point) to letting the world know that my husband left me for another woman. Most of my friends were able to read between the lines and understood what I was saying.

I explored the topic of my problems with self-esteem during my final months with my husband and the breakdown of our marriage, still not mentioning his affair, in “On Broken Marriages, Self-Esteem, Divorce, and Victoria’s Secret.” My emotions were all over the map. I was home at this point — after having had to break in while he was away because he’d changed the locks — living in the home I’d shared and built with my husband over the past 15 years. I kept expecting him to walk in the door and life to go on as usual. As I did things alone that I used to do with him — soak in the hot tub, enjoy breakfast on the back patio, look for satellites and shooting stars from the lounge chairs on the upstairs patio — I felt his absence sorely. I thought a lot about him doing the same things with his replacement for me. It hurt me deeply and I couldn’t understand why it didn’t hurt him. But, at the same time, I simply could not get over the change in my appearance because of the weight loss. The master bathroom in my house has big mirrors along one wall. Ever time I stepped out of the shower and saw my new, youthful figure, I was amazed. Seriously amazed. (It took months for me to get used to the sight of my new, slim body.) A new wardrobe, Victoria’s secret, and a later makeup consultation at a Clinque counter completed my transformation from dowdy, middle-aged woman to the new attractive, active person I’d become. So I was amazingly upbeat, despite my feelings about being home alone. Any damage my husband had caused to my self esteem was completely repaired, just by my own actions and being free of his disapproving attitude. The blog post also, again, voiced my pity for my husband, who I was convinced was going through some sort of midlife crisis, possibly triggered by hormonal changes — a sort of male menopause. I mentioned his irrational behavior, but at that point I still didn’t know what was driving it. I thought it was a purely psychological problem. I’d learn the truth a while later.

“How to Tell if the Person You’re Dating is After Your Money,” was an exploration of what I hoped my husband had considered when developing his relationship with the other woman — again, without mentioning the affair. I’m not sure why I was still keeping it under wraps.

On October 3, my husband and I testified in court at a temporary orders hearing. That’s where he made some outrageous claims about me, under oath, in an attempt to get me kicked out of our house and the hangar I’d been leasing for my business for more than 10 years. Seeing and hearing him on the stand was profoundly painful to me. He was not the man I knew; he was some cold monster who tried to do everything in his power — including lying and stretching the truth beyond all recognition — to hurt me both emotionally and financially. He was living with his girlfriend (and our dog) in Scottsdale and had a condo in Phoenix, but he still wanted to keep me out of my own home. I was reeling with pain and anger during the proceedings and relieved beyond belief when the judge found in my favor and allowed me to stay in my only home.

I wrote “The Man I Fell in Love with is Gone” the next day. It was my attempt to convince myself that my husband was as good as dead to me. My loss was affecting me emotionally in very negative ways and I’d soon begin seeing a grief counselor to help me get through it. I found it extremely affective to imagine that he was dead and that I was mourning that death. The post refers to his desire to seek revenge for “imagined offenses” — indeed, at the court proceedings he made a wild claim about me preventing him from buying the company he worked for 12 or 13 years before. (I had no idea what he was talking about at the time and my testimony put my understanding of the matter on record; I now think this delusion is what he’s using to try to justify his recent treatment of me.) This was also the first post where I openly stated that my husband left me for another woman and that he planned to put that woman in my place in our home.

“Saving the Cape Honeysuckle” was a reminiscence of planting these bushes in the back flower beds before I’d left for my fifth season in Washington state and my desire to maintain the few bushes that were still alive. He’d neglected the house over the summer, leaving behind an overgrown vegetable garden that was mostly dead because the irrigation system had been shut down.

I didn’t blog much about the divorce for a while, but I did write “Grief Counseling: A Note to Friends.” This was my attempt to communicate to close friends that I needed their understanding and support. I cried an awful lot in those days — I still do — and it was making some people uncomfortable. I needed them to understand that my grief was something that wouldn’t just go away and that I needed their support.

“The Woman Scorned Playlist,” shared two embedded music videos with songs that applied to my situation. I had just heard Adele’s Rolling in the Deep for the first time and I couldn’t believe how the song so perfectly voiced my anger and sorrow. Like Adele, I felt that my husband had thrown away our life together when we “could have had it all.” I still can’t even think about that song without crying. Hit ‘Em Up Style is a lighter song that makes me laugh — except one line: “There goes the house we made a home.” (Damn! I’m crying again right now.)

I was going through some old papers while packing and discarding my things when I came upon a birthday card my husband had made me in June 1998 when he was 42 and I was 37. I included a photo of the card and my thoughts about it in “What Happened to this Guy?”

“Life Lessons” talked primarily about a blog post I’d read about things people learn too late in life. In it, I talked about how some of these lessons applied in my life, including the differences between me and my husband.

On November 30, I saw my husband again. We had to swap trucks and although we didn’t talk, he left copies of email messages I’d written as long as four years before in the truck for me to find. “Communication Breakdown, Part II” discussed my anger and frustration about how he’d chosen to communicate with me and my thoughts about it. I still couldn’t understand why he now apparently hated me. What had I done to him to deserve such hatred? This post marked a turning point in the way I talked about my situation. From that point forward, I had no qualms about talking opening about his girlfriend in my blog posts. I was beginning to see the big picture: she was calling all the shots for his divorce. She had begun communicating directly with his lawyer, providing him with inaccurate information about me, my actions (based on her paranoia-driven misunderstanding of my tweets), and my possessions. She was telling his lawyer what actions to take against me. (How I know this is not something I can share because I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, but I have two good sources that I trust.)

It was around this time where it became impossible to pretend my husband was dead. When I refused to accept his absurd and financially damaging settlement proposal and he refused to consider my counter proposal, he and his girlfriend went on the offensive and began a campaign of harassment that continues to this day. My lawyer received a stream of demanding letters — some of them quite threatening — and outrageous claims from his. Then he changed lawyers and they went on a new campaign of terror, beginning with an expedited hearing in front of the judge (by phone) that wrongly accused me of disposing of and destroying his personal property. All this was based upon tweets I’d shared about scanning and shredding my own personal documents and giving away two fish tanks I’d purchased prior to marriage.

This is when they made the first big mistake in their strategy. While they apparently thought they could “wear me down” by subjecting me to a constant stream of harassment, all they really did was make me angry. When we failed to reach any agreement at mediation — for some reason, it was “all or nothing” for him — I hunkered down and prepared for our appearance before a judge, originally scheduled for January. Their lawyer subsequently had the court date pushed back to April — I think they mistakenly believed that their harassment campaign would succeed if I thought it would go on until April. I still have trouble believing that my husband could make such a mistake — where did he think I would go if I gave into his absurd demands? I had no other home and was in no hurry to leave the one I was able to live in for free. But perhaps he wasn’t the one doing the thinking about this.

In the meantime, I did see my husband again and did get a chance to speak with him alone. It was when I was permitted to retrieve some (but not all) of my possessions in the condo he had gotten exclusive use of in Temporary Orders. That’s when he accused me of not allowing him to buy out that company he used to work for and owned a piece of in the late 1990s. He was absolutely convinced that I had prevented him from making this important decision for his life — a decision I honestly knew nothing about. How could I not remember this when it was a life-changing decision? The reason is easy: I had never been part of the decision-making process. My recollection is that he was not given the opportunity to buy the company, that the other buyer was a done deal and he was forced to sell his share. Whether that was true or it was just something he told me at the time was unclear at that point. I realized then that he was truly delusional and was basing his hated of me on something that had never happened. I sobbed for the entire the two hours it took to gather and pack my possessions in the condo. He was justifying his infidelity and his treatment of me with a lie. I touched upon all of this is “What is Truth?.”

I went to Florida to stay with my family for the Christmas holiday. It was great to be away from home for an extended period of time. I got melancholy, though, and wrote “THIS is What Life is All About.” The post mentioned that July flight to Oregon and my sorrow (and pity) for my husband’s decision to live inside the box he’d built for himself when there was so much more to life. “I Love My Life” was a similar post, rejoicing about the lifestyle I’d built for myself, recounting how I’d gotten where I was in my career, and lamenting about my husband’s broken promises and failure to get with the program that would make his life just as good.

In January, I found an old journal from 1991-1993. In “Found: Journal from the Past,” I blogged about one of the entries that hinted at the problems I was already having with my future husband. The journal will be a gold mine for future blog entries about my life back then. I even prepared for the series, although I set the book aside for a while.

“Lost in the Desert” was mostly about a search job I’d done with my helicopter. In it, I lamented about how my client had lost a husband who loved her and I was being tortured by a husband that hated me. Why couldn’t my husband be the one lost in the desert?

The shit hit the fan at the end of January after I made a very brief visit to my husband’s condo and found both him and his girlfriend there. I spent less than a minute trying to talk to him about a telephonic court appearance he’d missed earlier in the day that had cost him more than $3,000 in legal fees payable to my lawyer. When I discovered he knew nothing about it, I left. But that was enough to trigger a fresh assault of harassment against me. My husband complained to the Phoenix police that I was harassing him. (Keep in mind that I hadn’t seen him in nearly two months or attempted to communicate with him for over a month.) That sent a Wickenburg police officer to my door the next day. My evidence clearly showed that there was no harassment and they dropped the case. They even apologized for bothering me. But the next day, my husband and his girlfriend had the nerve to show up in Wickenburg at a restaurant where I was meeting friends for dinner. Turns out, they’d come to town to bring an Injunction Against Harassment that his girlfriend had managed to obtain at the beginning of January. They’d sat on it for three weeks and then decided to spring it on me when his harassment complaint failed. I was served a while later. The officer told me that she’d tried to get the court to force me to stop tweeting and blogging about her — I think my “Get your own life” and “#DowdyBitch” tweets had gotten under her skin — but this is America and speech is protected. What she did manage to get was a court order for me to destroy the photos. Another mistake. She should have let sleeping dogs lie. Not only did I decide to fight the injunction, but I brought the photos to court. And even though they showed up with their lawyer, I won. That must have been a pretty costly experiment with the justice system for them.

Her birth date on the injunction is where I learned the truth about her age — she was 64 years old. That’s 8 years older than my husband and 13 years older than me. Hell, it’s only 6 years younger than my mother! Suddenly, it all made sense. My husband, a weak and confused man going through a midlife crisis, had been captured by a desperate old woman who would do or say anything to avoid spending the rest of her sorry life alone. My husband hadn’t left me for a younger, sexier woman. He’d left me for a dowdy old witch who had become his mommy. What did that say about him?

I pitied him even more.

For a month, I didn’t blog about the divorce. I shared the recipe for “Aunt Rose’s Dolmades” in a protected blog post. I found the recipe on a faded index card while packing and I wanted to put it in a safe place. What could be safer than the Internet? I protected it because I simply didn’t want my husband and his girlfriend to have it. (Petty, yes. But I think I deserve to indulge in pettiness once in a while. I look forward to making the recipe for my next life partner.)

The whole time, my husband’s weakness and the fact that he’d thrown away everything we had to spend the rest of his life with a vindictive old woman was nagging at me. I finally did something I didn’t want to do: I talked to my husband’s brother. I wanted to know if I was the only one who saw what was going on. I wanted to know if the family really thought this woman was better for him than I was. For 90 minutes, I sobbed to him about the situation. I got some confirmation of what I believed to be true. And my brother-in-law promised to talk to my husband, to ask him to meet with me and a mediator to resolve our problems. He called back a while later to report that he’d made the call. Unfortunately, my husband said he needed a few days to think about it. That meant he needed a few days to ask his mommy and a handful of friends who had likely encouraged him to leave me. It came as no surprise when the answer came back as no.

My husband was afraid to meet with me without his mommy to hold his hand. Although I didn’t think it was possible, I pitied him even more.

That marked the beginning of a new stage in my blog posts — from that point on, I would blog frankly about everything, sharing all of my thoughts and feelings about the situation and the parties involved. The posts would be painful to write but they would make my position clear. “Wanted: A Strong Man,” discussed my husband’s weaknesses in no uncertain terms. “My Desert Dogs” lamented about my dog Charlie, in my husband’s possession, living in a walled-in yard in Scottsdale and being boarded every time my husband and his girlfriend traveled. “On Marital Infidelity” talked about how my father’s and husband’s affairs had affected me and my family.

“On Right, Wrong, and High Horses,” was my response to a comment on the marital infidelity post that had been signed with my niece’s email address. I was shocked that my niece should make such a semi-literate and harsh comment — I hadn’t seen or spoken to her in years and I thought she was better educated than the comment indicated — and I was harsh. But when she responded with a well-written and rightly outraged comment, the truth came out. Her father had posted the comment with her email address. Yes: he’d dragged his daughter into the matter without even letting her know. I revised the post to correct the attribution of the initial comment and apologize to her. The rest of the text still applies. (I need to write a new blog post about the dysfunctional family I’m leaving behind in the divorce. Boy, have I got a lot to say about that.)

“Suicide, Revisited” talked about my August 2010 post, “Suicide,” and my new understanding of what might drive someone to take his own life. I admitted that the shock and grief I’d experienced over the past eight months had helped me connect the dots between misery, the desire for relief, and suicide. (Again, I need to remind readers that I am not suicidal; I just understand suicide better now.)

“Lingering at the Crossroads” presented several quotes from a book I’d just finished reading and discussed how they applied to my divorce situation. I realized that my husband had been at the crossroads of our relationship back in the summer of 2011 — without me. I lamented that he took his problems to a stranger instead of me. I also talked about my own crossroads.

“On Becoming Homeless” recounted my history as a home owner and my successful efforts to pay my current home off by the age of 50. I talked about financial stability and the freedom a person has when there’s no mortgage (or rent) to pay. And I talked about how I would be losing my home and possibly the financial security I’d worked for my entire life. Along the way, I reminisced about time spent working with my husband to turn our house into our home and the time we’d spent together there. I still can’t understand how it could be so easy for him to replace me with another woman there.

Although I haven’t blogged about it (yet), just last week, his lawyer claimed that they wanted to try mediation again. When I agreed, provided that we meet with our lawyers in the same room, they backed down.

He’s afraid to sit in the same room with me, even with his lawyer present. How can a man be so spineless?

Is he going to be able to face me in court? His mommy won’t be holding his hand when he’s sitting on the stand.

How can I not pity a man like that?

About the Call

The call came early yesterday afternoon. I was on my way home from a morning hike with a Meetup.com group. The caller was an acquisition editor with a publisher I’d heard of but never worked with. When I realized that the call had the potential to change my life, I pulled over to give the caller my full attention.

It was the “On Becoming Homeless” and “Wanted: A Strong Man” posts that triggered the call. The woman who called me, Jean, had been speaking with another editor I’d worked with in the past who was still a good friend. That editor had mentioned my divorce and blog posts. She said the post about losing my home to another woman was particularly moving. That got Jean to my blog. She read a bunch of posts. She shared them with others at their weekly acquisitions meeting. They liked my writing style, they loved my frankness. But what blew them away was the fact that my husband had left me for an older woman and that he’d stepped aside and was letting her direct his side of the divorce. She even used the word bizarre in our discussion — although she might have picked it up from one of my posts. And she said that based on what she’s read, this has got to be one of the “ugliest” non-celebrity divorces she’s ever heard about. (And she doesn’t even know all of the sordid details.)

The long and the short of it is that they’re interested in me doing a book about my divorce with the blog posts as a sort of base. I suspect it will be a lot like what I’ve written above, with more details of the behind-the-scenes events intermingled with the blog posts and even — their idea — my tweets. (Jean was pretty amused by the fact that his girlfriend/mommy reads my tweets and submits pages of them as “evidence” in court.)

I have to admit that I had my doubts about the idea. Although a Facebook friend of mine had suggested a book (in a private message) less than a month ago, I didn’t really give it serious thought. But these people have. Very serious thought. They did preliminary market research based on what’s selling now — memoirs are big, online dating is becoming a hot topic, women overcoming life-changing problems has a strong niche market — and ran numbers.

They even brought their legal department into a meeting to discuss the legal aspects of my “tell all” account. Their conclusion? I can not only tell all — including names — but show all — including photos. And with the power of their legal department behind me, I wouldn’t have to worry about any lawsuits or legal action against me. They’ve handled — and deflected — challenges to other authors’ books like this.

She talked a little about promotional opportunities. Unlike my computer book publishers, this publisher has a very active publicity department that arranges author appearances on talk shows and at book signings. They even have a travel budget. A lot of their authors have appeared on NPR and they’re sure they could get me on there, too. She suggested a segment of how online dating is being used by men to cheat on their wives.

It was pretty clear, by the end of our 23-minute conversation, that they not only think the book could sell, but they think it could sell well. We’re not talking millions here, but even the advance she suggested would help cover some of my legal expenses for the divorce — expenses that have already drained my savings and are starting to eat away at my business reserves. This would help me get on firmer financial ground to help me keep my business alive and rebuild my life elsewhere.

Next Steps

To say that my mind is reeling from that 23-minute conversation is a complete understatement. There’s so much to think about here. But I still don’t have all the information I need to make a decision. That’ll likely come on Monday, when we have a conference call that includes the acquisitions editor, her boss, and the publisher’s general counsel.

At this point, however, I’m torn. While my friends are telling me unanimously to go for it — and are even speculating about who’d play me in the movie adaptation they’re optimistically predicting — I’m not quite as enthusiastic.

Yes, I definitely want (or need) the money the project will generate. Even if the book flops, the advance would be like manna from heaven. And if the book did well, the benefits would go beyond financial reward. The project has the possibility of reenergizing my writing career, giving me an opportunity to branch away from computer books and start writing about something more interesting — and more marketable in today’s Googlized world.

But, at the same time, I am concerned about my husband and the potential heartache he might suffer from the publication and success of a book that clearly identifies his shortcomings, bad decisions, and betrayals. Each of these blog posts get a few dozen hits a day — a book could have thousands of readers. Right before we split, he’d finally gotten his dream job and I assume he still has it. How would this book affect him and his future with that company? Or any other job he might want or get? I’m sure a lot of people would start snickering behind his back. Although I need to leave this marriage with what’s rightfully mine, I don’t want to cause him any more financial hardship than he’s already earned through his (and his girlfriend/mommy’s) own actions. As I’ve said again and again in the blog posts referenced above, I still love the stupid bastard. I feel sorry for him. I don’t hold him entirely to blame for what he’s done to us and to me.

But I have no such feelings about the desperate old woman who seduced my husband, fed his delusions about my intentions and our past together, and spearheaded their efforts to make my life miserable since July. Revealing her by name and sharing her absurd lingerie photos with the world would make me very happy indeed. The kind of revenge I’d only dreamed about now seems well within my grasp.

In the end, I have to do what’s best for me. As so many people have reminded me (again and again), my husband brought all this upon himself by failing to communicate with me as part of our marriage counseling efforts — efforts that he initiated! — and then using online dating to actively search for my replacement. He brought this woman into our lives, he allowed her to make decisions that would affect us, he allowed her to start the campaign of harassment that has made this so painful and costly to both of us. My friends keep telling me to stop worrying about him, to stop letting my pity keep me from doing what’s best for me.

And they’re right.

So I’ll listen in on that conference call on Monday and get all my questions answered. And I’ll talk to my lawyer to see what he thinks. I’ll also talk to him about our latest efforts at settling out of court to see whether he thinks there’s any possibility of my husband taking control of his side and resolving this fairly without a courtroom experience that’ll be painful and costly for both of us.

And then I’ll make my decision.

One thing’s for sure: I’m about ready for a new book project. This is one topic that is consuming me, practically screaming for me to write about every single day. It’ll be painful yet extremely satisfying to complete.