Mr. Wolfe, I Beg To Differ

Last Saturday night, I saw my mother and my son sit side by side at Delassandro's, the Philly cheesesteak bistro of choice on the maternal side of my family. I ate those cheesesteaks with my family when I was my daughter's age, sitting around my grandparents' circular kitchen table after we drove from Richmond to Philadelphia for holiday visits.

Walking back into their same duplex, I inhaled its particular scent (part mothballs), a distillation of my childhood, and marveled at how exceptionally fortunate I am, to still be able to walk back into a place I knew when I was two. Four. Fourteen. To be able to bring my children inside that green front door and have them get to know their great grandparents a little bit.

On Monday I saw my paternal grandmother for quite possibly the last time. In fact, I never expected to have the opportunity to see her again due to time/money/job/kid constraints. She was always my favorite grandparent, the most dynamic and vital person in any room, a widow (my grandfather died when I was six), who went on to travel the globe with the Navy League and play bridge in MANY countries. She brought me dolls from Spain, Portugal, Norway, New Zealand, an Amish doll with no face, a Native American mother with a papoose on her back. Her silver rings, bracelets, and necklaces still clash & jingle.

Now I've had a few days here in Richmond with my mom & dad. Dad's fixed breakfast for us every morning: Belgian waffles, French toast, turkey biscuits with eggs and cheese. Last night Mom watched Barbie: The Magic of Pegasus with Lynda and then Dad and Zac enjoyed a prolonged Get Smart marathon while I headed out to Capital Alehouse to meet up with Nicki, my best friend from kindergarten!

So, maybe it's not a trip through a time machine to the exact, specific sights, sounds, and smells of the past. Maybe it's different, but better. Memories to give my kids.

Love don't cost a thing...(but damn, Black Friday is a whole 'nother story!)

The Turkey Was Hung By The Stovetop With Care

in hopes that St. Martha soon would be there....


After dinner, the highest ranking female in the family (the only one with the craft and experience necessary to produce a moist, delicious Bird), collapses on the couch, stunned by tryptophan, leaving the lesser female to scurry deliriously about the kitchen with leftover green bean casserole in one hand and half a baked sweet potato in the other, facing the really tough question: Where the hell are all the Tupperware lids?

We Made It!!

If you had any doubts (I had plenty of doubts).

Also, I can now cross this item off my To Do Before I Die List: make it to Concourse A in the Detroit airport, jogging all the speedwalks, in four inch heeled JSimps (the silvery grey croco embossed style with the black platform).

AND I survived Sunday's Historic Walking Tour of downtown Philadelphia's Bathrooms, courtesy of Bookey. Visit during carriage ride, check. Prolonged visit at the Betsy Ross house, check. Another visit three minutes before the Preservation Society's Tour, check, check, and CHECK.

By the time we made it back to Grandmom & Grandpop's late Sunday afternoon (just in time to start getting ready for dinner at the Springhouse Tavern), I was beyond worn out. My mom told me, "I have some Adrenal Pep for you that will fix you right up!' I looked at her with bleary, pleading eyes, and asked, "Is that like cocaine?"

Passing Panic and Heading Towards Collapse

How the hell do I make it on a plane, locked, loaded, and packed for one adult (HA bloody HA) and two demon spawn, I mean, children, in less than twelve hours?

One of the worst, I mean, best things about having a blog for so long is being able to click on the archive link to this month last year. Or the year before that. Or the year before that. Or right after we exited the Ark when that damn dove finally flew back.

And every year, it is the same thing: sick, tired, unprepared, overwhelmed, looking forward to vacation and seeing family and being off from hell, I mean, work, while at the same time trying to get all the prep work for said vaca done while still shouldering the rest of my responsibilities (you know, Mother Teresa only thought SHE was busy...)

I am beginning to suspect myself of malingering. Either, that...can it be possible that life is not FAIR??? Next thing you know some kindly well meaning person will attempt to explain to me that putting out does not get you love and there is no Santa Claus.

Must. Collapse. NOW. Will begin fresh cycle of panic followed by frantic blogging in the AM.

It Is Time To PANIC!!!‏

I'm working my accustomed 9 AM to 6 PM Monday through Friday this week (2 hours off Monday for court so have been coming in early & doing half hour lunches to make up hourly-wage-slave-time).

Then I have to be at the airport with two kids by nine AM on Saturday. Notice I do not specify MY kids. At this point it is entirely possibly that I will leave them with my best friends and take my best friends' kids INSTEAD. Just to make a small attempt to preserve my precarious sanity.

Did I mention I do not have a dryer? And that I was only able to wash & dry two loads of clothes this past weekend and that is barely enough to put clean socks on Zac's feet all week?

I mean, sure, everyone we are visiting will HAVE A DRYER. But that means I would have to pack...dirty laundry. And I just feel a type of inner-Martha-squalmishness at this concept (which will most likely be QUASHED by EXIGENCY around midnight Friday night as I lose all three pages of my packing list and begin to blindly toss everything in the abode into the suitcases--trash can, check! toilet paper, check! dog, check! I AM A PACKING GODDESS, check, Check, and CHECK!!!)

I have no fear of flying. I DO fear flying with my children. And introducing their sprouncy sassy selves to my grandparents whom they have only seen a time or three. I vividly remember MY mother watching and worrying as I interacted with HER father and TRUST ME, my stay at home mom was stricter with me & my behavior as a child than I have ever even contemplated being with my Short Ones.

How do you spell relief? S-H-O-P-P-I-N-G. I just spent lunch at Old Navy stocking up on tshirts to go with Natasha, my Russian mail order bride-jeans. And drooling over their on sale winter coats. Unfortunately, while I can justify the purchase of thshirts since I have, like, TWO, that I can pack (I doubt my grandparents would appreciate the wonder that is Happy Bunny stretched across my rack proclaiming in capital letters, Crazy Doesn't Even Begin To Cover It), I possess untold numbers of winter coats (okay, eight, so not untold but definitely too many to plunk down 65.00 for another one...even a fuchsia funnelneck or a bellsleeved winter white....sniff).

I will just comfort myself by snuggling up my new royal blue longsleeved tissue thin hoodie. Or this turquoise vneck. Perhaps the purple shirt cut down to Jericho that's going to require a mandatory camisole if worn anywhere outside the home!

How Did I Get Here???

I read the preceding post and the phrases buzz through my brain. Xhusband. Guardian ad litem. Court. Judge. DHR.

And I wonder, how the fuck, just exactly how the fuck, did THIS become my life?

I don't come from a background of abusive relationships. In fact, my ex-fiance, the man I was with when I met Xhusband, was a perfectly wonderful man and had an almost superhuman ability to get along with me for days, weeks, months without getting on my goddamn nerves.

Pardon my French.

No one's ever bruised my body (without my consent & a safe word firmly lodged in place) before Xhusband. I nurtured your 2 biological children in my body and you don't want to pay any child support??? I'm sorry, what universe do you live in again? Have the Mars colonization myths of science fiction already happened and I simply was not aware, like the characters that studied Greek culture to the exclusion of the modern world in Donna Tartt's The Secret History (must reread soonest) that were not aware of the United States moon landing?

I do not think so. I think that I married an asshole. Need to invent time machine (reread HG Wells soonest) so I can go back to 1996 and slap myself upside the head and out of bed.

That being said, thank God for DHR on my side. They recommended no visitation whatsoever and what they said carried weight with the judge. Also, the first words out of her mouth were, "Haven't you been here before?"

Why, YES, Judge, YES I HAVE. This time last year, to be exact. And PLEASE GOD not this time next year.

So, no contact. PFA upheld until February of next year, but he can file a motion on that after our court date on the assault which is December 7th. MERRY !@#$%^^IN G CHRISTMAS.

"My God, what have I done?"

High Anxiety

Except, of course, I am not high. Anxious? Most definitely. On a scale of 1 to 10, I am an eleventy hundred and twelve. My fingernails have been gnawed PAST the nub. In fact, it hurts to type, and possibly more than one of my cuticles is bleeding: okay, definitely more than one.

I have court in the AM on the PFA (protection from abuse order) against my Xhusband.

According to the kids' guardian ad litem and the social worker from DHR (the Bama version of Child Protective Services), the judge should continue the PFA until the court date on the assault.

That has a nice ring to it, in fact, it has a beat & I can dance to it. Let me clear off that table.

Will it be that simple?

The GAD and the SW are for the protection of my kids. And please for the love of God(dess) do not think I am trying to take away even one iota of that. They need everything a village can give.

But I will be the one sitting there by myself.

I haven't seen him since he grabbed me.

Even though we will be in a courthouse mobbed with officers and legal counsel, I'm afraid.

I KNOW this is ludicrous; fight or flight at its postmodern unnecessary worst. BEST case scenario, he would attack me in front of the judge or an officer. I wouldn't be hurt very badly (unless he's bought a gun I don't know about) and he would enjoy the generous housing of my tax dollars doing their munificently best work.

I'm terrified to go around that corner on the fifth floor tomorrow and come face to face with him.

Did Ann Landers ever cover this in her column? Does Martha or Rachel have magazine space outlining How To Act When Confronted With Abusive Xhusband?

I'm thinking not...