like sands through the black hole…

i got up today and actually got out of the house and took care of some things, even though it was in the low to mid 30’s. i drove down to clear lake and went to my credit union there. i have been needing to close a second savings account i’ve had on my account. i created it the day after tamara told me she was having an affair. i was in shock that she would be doing that, and i was concerned if she could do that and was telling me, that she would then take money out of our accounts. because, hey, if she could commit adultery and was acting like a completely different person, why should i have any belief that she would have respect for my money? and i say mine because in our marriage what was hers was hers, and what was mine was ours. (which is how the divorce went too.) she had a bank account i had no access to, and never asked about. i had no idea how much or little money was in it. her checks for work were put in there. how she spent it was her own deal. my money, on the other hand, went into two joint accounts. anyway, all that to say, i was the primary breadwinner, and if she wanted to commit adultery and treat me like sh!t and leave me, then she had no right to expect access to the money that i provided to our relationship. so i had driven down to clear lake and taken her name off of all of the accounts, atm cards, visa cards, etc. i couldn’t take her name off the primary savings account though, and i didn’t really want to close it and have to get all new checks, new visa card, new atm card, etc. since all accounts were tied to it. so what i did was open a sub-savings account in only my name, then transfer all of the savings account money into it. (i had to keep the minimum in the primary savings for it to stay open, which was like $5 or $20 or something.) that said, a few years later, sometime after the divorce was finalized, i was able to get her name taken off the account completely. but later when i went to collapse the sub-savings back into the primary savings, it turned out i had to be there in person to do it. so i’d just never gotten around to driving down there to do it. so i did today. but i also went down there so i could tell them i am leaving the country for a couple of weeks and will likely be using my credit card.
driving down there is always kind of odd, since i have a lot of memories tied to the clear lake area. buildings that were there are razed, businesses changed, new large apartment complexes up, new overpasses and road changes. the diedrich’s on bay area is now a darque tan. in the credit union i ran into a guy that i worked with at lockheed martin (at least i think that’s where i remember him from). we made extended eye contact and i smiled, but he didn’t seem to show any signs of recognition at all. i didn’t talk to him. (that’s a good analogy for that part of my life in general as it relates to me now, actually.) i drove bay area, saturn (which goes near the apartment tamara lived in when i met her), and nasa road one. i ended up going by the bank of america, which reminded me when tamara and i were in there, desperately trying to figure out how to get access to the money for our house closing, which was in a couple of hours (the only time i was ever in that bank). i went by jsc. i saw rocket park. i thought about the buildings i worked in at jsc, the people i worked with. i drove up to the lockheed martin building on nasa road 1 i spent the first four years of my “professional” career in. i saw the convenience store we used to walk to for afternoon breaks. i saw the cheap two-story parking garage beside the building and remembered parking my car and pickup and motorcycle in/on it. i remembered the first time i ever drove down nasa road one, going to my friend tom’s apartment so i could “interview” with lockheed. (they were desperate for people and i already had an offer, i was just checking out the place and the people and such.) i remembered the time i spent at coffee oasis with ash, and other people, and meeting tamara for the first time. going to the waffle house. going to denny’s. and more recent things too, like when i was dating jennifer, or when i’ve had to go down there to do stuff at the credit union, or when the hrc and i went down there one time.
all this crap, stored away in my brain somewhere that i hardly ever think about. and i realized just how much i’ve completely forgotten, that i know must have happened but i can’t recall. i spent about 4 years living down there, and about 6.5 working down there. i drove those roads hundreds…thousands…of times. i ate out all the time. i did everything in that area. and most of it isn’t even memories anymore, it’s just ceased to be.