failure weblog

i found out on thursday the attorneys set up a mediation session to see if we could settle things before the court day (june 27). originally set for wednesday morning (june 22), it’s now tuesday afternoon (june 21). so i get to have my 7 year wedding anniversary on june 20 (7 being a holy number), then go to divorce mediation the next day. the only thing better would be if the mediation was actually on the anniversary date, but this is good enough to make its point.
in other news, jennifer broke up with me last night. i won’t say that i didn’t see the signs that such a thing was possible at any moment. but i sort of hoped her actions were over things that could be dealt with and worked through. it sucks since i have had such strong feelings for her for so much of my life, but we pretty much reenacted most of our high school days. except this time i had the guts to tell her how much i cared about her. so in some ways i’m glad i was able to deal with those regrets, and know that even now — years later — it was still an unequal situation with me being in the bad corner as regards unrequited emotions. but at least this time i said something and left little doubt as to the outcome of the situation.
in an incident that in my mind further validates the existence of a higher intelligence, while also proving He has a wicked sense of irony, after the breakup speech i went to use the bathroom. on the sink in the soap dish was a brand new, perfectly formed, realstic looking, pink pig soap. jennifer doesn’t like pigs. she doesn’t have any pig items in her house. when i talked about it she said she ran across it in some box somewhere (that i think was someone else’s) and decided to put it out. so what are the chances that at that perfect moment in time, when it’d never been there before, right after she told me she shouldn’t date me any more, i go in there and find the single most relevant symbol i relate to tamara, who i am about to be divorced from and am feeling emotional pain over, and this is my first attempt to move on? (she loved pigs, i bought her pig stuff, we had two pot bellied pigs, she thought she was a pig when she was little, etc.) i mean, really, what are the freaking chances? i mean, if that were to happen in a movie the audience would balk at the lack of realism of such a perfect symbolic moment. lucky me.

you know, i really love the movie true romance. i’ve always identified with aspects of christian slater’s character. at least early on before he starts talking with his “mentor” and kills drexl and goes to california to sale a bunch of cocaine. (maybe that’s later in my life.) and i can see a lot of my relationship with tamara in the movie too, even with her being like alabama. i don’t think she was ever a call girl though, even for just a few days. unfortunately, like the original script — and unlike the tony scott film version — our true romance ended poorly. it’s funny and i guess maybe a bit ironic that a weird major event in the early part of our relationship centered around me playing a song that loops alabama saying “you’re so cool” into tamara’s answering machine. so i don’t get the happy ending with me and tamara and our child on the beach. i also don’t get a crazy whirlwind romance that ends with me getting shot in the head by a cop and mourned over by the girl i loved. instead i get to see the person i loved and devoted my life to fall away from me as our relationship disintegrates, cheat on me behind my back, be unwilling to try to work through it after i decided i could try and she asked me to, and then take me through the court system and attorneys instead of trying to make it as simple and painless as possible. some aspects of which explain why i find the movie eternal sunshine of the spotless mind so intriguing and compelling. more identifying with the two characters, but a somewhat more accurate depiction of the disintegrating nosedive of our relationship.

well, it finally happened. at exactly 10,800 miles i dropped my bike. fortunately, there was almost no damage at all. i was riding back to my hometown (brady, tx) with my brother and in llano we decided to stop at crissy’s bakery (it was mentioned positively in texas monthly recently). as i turned into their sand and crushed rock lot, i thought i’d pull under a shade tree, then i decided i’d back into the shade so i started to do a u-turn. the lot was mostly flat but sloped at a decent angle near the tree, which i’d already gotten close to since i was originally going to pull straight in. i got about halfway through the turn when i lost too much speed and the bike starting tipping. because it was on the slope the distance to the ground on my right side was further than usual, then the bike started slipping on the sand/rock. then my bike was laying on its side and i was standing up. *sigh* it scraped the front brake lever on the ball and moved/scraped the mirror a bit. i was able to loosen and reposition the mirror at my parents’ house, so no bending of metal occurred. my beautiful pipes were barely scratched at all, i think due to the driver foot peg and my day bag strapped onto the rear luggage carrier.
so all in all, things worked out okay considering my state of temporary driving stupidity. of course, i then felt stupid for doing such a boneheaded thing. my brother was joshing me during this episode saying “i’m a real biker! no, really! i’m cool!” so i rejoined with “i’ve been riding for years! this isn’t my first road trip or anything! really!” my bike took a bit to restart, then it died right before i was ready to pull out into traffic. *mumble*

a couple of weekends ago i went with jennifer and her kids to the george ranch south of sugarland. they were having re-enactments of the runaway scrape during the day, then in the evening the failed mier expedition and black bean incident. (“what’s all that then?”, you ask — time to bone up on your Texas history, you cretin.) the day was beautiful and there was a lot of open land and the 1930’s george ranch house had a great two-sided wrap around screened porch. a lot of it reminded me of my grandfather’s house in art, Texas (except my family was a lot poorer than the george family so the house is much smaller and only one story). it really brought back how nice it is to sit on a porch on a nice day looking out at trees and fields and just doing nothing. i need to help get that house fixed up. then i need to figure out how i can live there or at least live closer to it so it’s convenient to visit. anyway, here’s a song that sort of fits in with all of this…

Continue reading “you can take the boy out of the country, but…”

friday i was getting nervous i hadn’t heard from my attorney about the court date monday (like…you know, what to wear or not wear, where to go, what to do, what to say or not say, etc.). so i was about to call him up when my phone rang and it was him — turns out tamara’s attorney called him and wanted to move the court date because she/they want to try and come to an agreement before going to court. i’m not sure what caused this to happen or what’s going on with tamara, but hopefully it’ll bode well for me feeling like i am coming out of the situation treated fairly as far as money goes. who knows?
it also appears i may be a vigilante. i was unable to get my taxes filed on time. first, i learned i couldn’t e-file because i live in a community property state and was married filing separately. second, after printing everything and writing the check out and putting it all in the envelope, i learned the automated postal system at the post office by my house was temporarily out of service. not knowing where another post office was, i went back home and decided to call and pay by phone while filing for an extension. unfortunately you have to know your adjusted gross income from the last year, and all of my documents are at the lawyer’s office. so then i went to usps.gov and looked up locations and drove to a place where i didn’t find any post office. so then i tried to go from memory to another one i saw on the website, which i couldn’t find. defeated, i went back home. i decided to call and file for an extension and pay $0, which means late fees and interest penalties. but i got a confirmation for an extension…not sure if that matters or not since i’ll be paying fees anyway, but i got one. *shrug*

the court date for my divorce hearing is set for april 18th. i don’t really understand why nothing has happened between the attorneys. i know i’m ignorant of legal crap, but it seems like they should have done – or at least initiated – something by now. you know…mediation, discussion about settling, something. but when i talked to the paralegal, she made it sound like it’s no big deal and things could happen or not happen at any moment. and the court date could be just the beginning instead of the final date. excuse me if my concern is heightened because it’s my money and my life and all, and seeing nothing happening as the date approaches seems odd and scary. of course, i guess it probably won’t matter because unless my wife and/or her attorney decide to be fair about the situation i’m going to get reamed by the legal system anyway. yea, me! i guess love isn’t about being treated fairly anyway, is it? ha.
on sunday i went to church (which i do on sundays other than easter, thanks). i was feeling kind of like agonizing over being left and all alone, but i got talked into going to the house of some friends of friends. unfortunately, i was surrounded by married couples with small children…not exactly the environment to get my mind off having my roles as husband, provider, and future father stripped away from me. i guess since i was already kind of tanking on that subject i would have been mentally beat up by it anyway. at least the pain and mental nosedives don’t seem to last that long these days. i’m not sure if it’s healing or numbness, or maybe some of both. i am still at such a loss to understand why tamara felt like the only option she had left was to cheat on me behind my back. i feel sorry for her, even when i feel rage at her for what she did. she was better than that. i deserved more than that.
in entirely happier news, i dropped my motorcycle off on friday to get the 8k maintenance done and to get some new pipes put on it (which i had ordered a week or two before). when i get my bike back later this week it should look cooler and be a lot louder. and i’ll be putting on a passenger backrest so i can take the mythical old lady with me on my rides. if i have to feel like i’ve been torn up and spit on by life, at least i can find some pleasure in a fast loud bike and an open road.

on saturday (feb 19) someone broke into my house. fortunately for me, about all they took was 13 dvds and my ipod. (at least so far that’s all i’ve figured out they took.) considering the things they could have taken, $600 or so of stuff isn’t bad. i am concerned they probably got a good look at the things that were in my house though, and may decide it’s worth coming back again…perhaps with help. i hope that’s not the case, but there isn’t much i can do about it if they decide to. what a wonderful feeling of helplessness.
but, all in all, this is just one more thing to pile on the stack of crap that’s been happening in my life for the last couple of years. not that everything in the last two years has been bad, but i’ve had an incredibly difficult time coping with my wife’s decision to have an affair, the end of our marriage, and her decision to seek separate legal counsel and force us to go through lawyers. she doesn’t seem to care and treats it all like some matter-of-fact circumstance where we just didn’t work out and no big deal. but this stuff cuts me to the core of who i am, and hurts me in areas i never thought opening myself to her would cause me to be hurt. i find it really difficult to do anything, to get through the days sometimes. at least it’s been better for the last six months or so. but even when things are going okay and i feel alright, i know that everything is still there, waiting to overwhelm me yet again whenever it comes to the surface.

jamie is forcing me to blog while i’m at the geek gathering at kaveh kane’s. i don’t really have much of anything to say. but then i’ve not had much of anything to say to my blog in a long time.

first posts aren’t nearly as exciting when you’re the only one who can post in the first place.

so i recently realized that my ancestors may have arrived in Texas while it was still the republic of Texas. i started poking around in some books, online, etc. and figured out the male immigrant leifeste i’m descended from arrived in galveston on jan 10, 1846. while the offer to join from the US, the legislative RoT approval, the vote of the people, and the acceptance by the US all happened before then — the actual, official, flag-changing entry into statehood didn’t occur until feb 19, 1846. thus i am a descendant of citizens of the republic of Texas. and i am eligible to join the sons of the republic of Texas. which is pretty damn cool in my book.