The Daily Chai is Ambivalent

Today's Chai Latte is perfect. I have nothing else to say about it except that my entire day has been made because it started with the perfect drink. Sweet, simple things people, enjoy them all!

Mixed emotions last night as my real estate agent came to take pictures and measure rooms so she can list our matrimonial home. We've been here for six years and I never wanted to move again, but here I am, planning, once again, to move. Balls. God, I hate moving.

We bought this house sight unseen while we still lived in Germany. Lots of people went to look at it for us, but the first time we saw the house was on our final inspection right before we moved in. The bedrooms were a little smaller than I'd imagined, but all in all, I was happy with it. It's an old house in an old town and I loved it. It has some good character, like transom windows above the bedroom doors and some of the original trim has survived. There are windows everywhere and on sunny days it is filled with lovely light in every room. It has a finished attic family room just like the house I grew up in and a creepy old cellar with a working cistern that I have never been fully convinced does not house a crocodile. And I SWEAR I have heard children laughing and running when mine have been fast asleep. Maybe just a trick of the house creaking in its old age, but it doesn't bother me, it just reminds me this hundred year old house has history.

We will leave some of our own history here to carry on. There has been love and laughter in this house and it is the house I brought Anna home to when she was born. It is the house that Kate has grown up in and the only place she remembers as the memories of Germany faded for her. I spent almost two years here as a stay-at-home mom, raising my girls and the happiness of those memories will last me forever.

But it is also a house that has many sad memories for me and my family. By the very virtue of its age and character, it has caused us both stress and in someways, that stress played a part in destroying our marriage. Last spring, I thought if we moved to a new house, a house that we would both love, the stress would melt away, but that is like having a baby to save a marriage. It's a pretty big commitment for a bandaid solution. When I thought about buying something else with my ex and being as house poor as we were planning to be, I backed off the idea. It was yet another indication that my marriage was crumbling. People in a healthy partnership do not worry that buying a house is going to tie them more fully to the other person, they reveal in the happiness of the commitment.

And so, a chapter of my life comes to an end. I am excited about it as well as sad. Last week, I was having a few low moments and I asked a friend to remind why I was doing this again. To remind me the correct path is not always the easiest or the happiest. To remind me that sometimes the things of the greatest worth are the hardest to achieve. He came back with this:

So I, like everyone around me, weathers the storm. I'm even learning to enjoy the storm because I never know where it's going to take me next and I'm always up for an adventure.

The Daily Chai is Hungover

Today's Chai is still at Starbucks and I'm lying in bed hoping it will magically appear at my bedside. No such luck.

Last night was a trip. Managed to drink enough wine that I got to see what it looks like coming up the other way. My buddy said, "Note for next time, stop about halfway through the big bottle instead of drinking the whole thing."  My reply, "Ha! Maybe I should stop halfway through a small bottle. That would be even better." Anyway, it's been a month or two since I indulged and I came out relatively unscathed. A little hungover but basically all in one piece. The last time I almost broke my nose when I tripped over my own winter boots and face planted in the icy snowbank. Nose bled for an hour and I cried to my bestie for longer because...oh, for so many reasons. Questioning my choices, worried about my kids, wishing things were different. I was in shock because the ground rushing at my face was reminiscent of my bike accident in May when I broke various parts of my body, including my face, which I'm rather fond of, so the experience was traumatic. 

My girlfriend came by around 7 and we got right into it. She's more of a friend of a friend, but it was a good time and we had lots to talk about. Seems to be an epidemic of men who don't take their parenting responsibilities seriously. Men...take heed! It's easy to let you wife do it all because she will naturally take on each new task, feeling like it's her duty. But just because she does all those things with the kids, doesn't mean she's happy about it and you can sit around playing video games with your hand in your pants. A word of advice (I might still be married if I'd insisted on this): take your kid(s) completely out of the house for a couple hours EVERY week. I know, you might be thinking that is just a crazy fucking thing to suggest, but trust me.  I don't give a shit if you just drive around with them, take them to the park, the mall, to work, I really don't care, but get them and yourself out of there. This serves two purposes. 1) the obvious one is it gives your wife a pause in her busy life so she doesn't go on a psychotic break and drown all of you in the tub one day and 2) you will get to experience HOW MUCH FUN it is to wrangle one or more children in an uncontrolled environment like the mall. I liken it to herding cats with a string. And maybe, just fucking maybe, you will realize that hauling those kids around everywhere, all the time, isn't, like, oh my god, such a fun job!! It's stressful and people judge you in public if you aren't the perfect parent and your kids CONSTANTLY ask you to buy them things and you have to say no all the time and then you say yes and your mother looks at you and says, "You spoil those kids!" Even though you said no five hundred previous times and just had a tiny weak moment. Or you are at the pool and one kid is hanging off you like a koala bear the other one is shouting, "Look at me mom, mum, mum,  MOTHER! Look at what I can do!" EVERY FIFTEEN SECONDS. If men experienced that constant pulling in every direction for even a couple hours a week, they would be more sympathetic to their wives. 

So yes, in my humble opinion, marriages everywhere could be saved if men would just take their kids out of the house once a week. Oh. And without fucking being asked to do so. A little voluntary action on your part would be the bomb.  Pretty simple eh?

Anyway, last night I had a surprise visitor from my way back past which was amazing. Funny how 15-20 years can pass and you are still buddies the way you always were, no matter how life has changed you. And he's still the same good guy I always knew, tucking me in on the couch when I passed out! I wonder how many times he's had to do that? Not much has changed! Still sitting on the same couches in my mother's house, shooting the shit about fights and tattoos and our ridiculous mutual friends who have not changed either. The only difference was my mom wasn't there smoking with us and we had to go outside to smoke. Good times. 

The Daily Chai and Dealing with Disappointment

Today's grande chai latte tasted pretty good but sadly was not hot enough so I drank it in about five seconds which meant all the foam got left over and had to be eaten like whipped cream with a spoon. Fortunately, I like whipped cream so today was a good chai day. I liked it a latte. Did you see what I did there?

On to philosophical matters. I wrote recently that I've come to a crossroads. I took the left pathway and it's been a bit rocky. I've debated how much of this I can write about here as I have funny ideas about publishing deeply personal stories. On the other hand, a blog is just that, a public diary of sorts where others might find comfort in identifying with my struggles or laughing at my embarrassing mishaps. 

So here goes: four months ago, after months and possibly years of inner turmoil and debate, I decided I had to end my marriage. It wasn't a decision I came to lightly, but once it was made, I couldn't turn back. It was like trying to believe in Santa Claus again, once you know the big man doesn't exist, you can't retrieve that wonderment back into your soul. I wasn't in love with my husband anymore and we were both deeply unhappy with our lives, both together and as individuals. There is a lot of resentment and bitterness on my side that I work on every day to resolve. It's hard to be with someone for that long and not have those negative feelings build up when you are both shitty at communicating. Most of the time I was suffocating with words unsaid and I felt like I was drowning. You tell yourself that this is life, that this is marriage and it has its ups and downs. No one is perfect and as many beefs as I had with my partner, I know he had the same amount with me. So you let things go, you soldier on, you hope things will get better, you have good days together and you tell yourself that bad patch is finally past. Until the next time you are up all night crying and wishing for the strength to say you want a divorce. The thing is with those white nights, everything looks better in the morning. So you soldier on. You make school lunches, you help with homework, you count the minutes to bedtime, you look for the positive and suppress the negative. You compartmentalize until all the bad feelings are safely put away in the file folders of your brain, marked "Do not read." You tell yourself whatever you need to tell yourself to keep going. 

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing but caring for the man I shared 17 years of my life with, who I created the loveliest human beings with. I don't look at our marriage ending as a failure but as a journey that has come to an end. It's a sad end and there have been many tears in both sides about it, but what's the use of hanging on to something that no longer makes you happy? That, in fact, makes you unhappy? I look at the future as a bright possibility where we can both have the chance to begin something good, healthy and whole. Someone once told me that the easiest path isn't always the best one and that the harder the path, the better the rewards. That all this will be worthwhile. I hold on to that thought every day. And I soldier on.