Attitude Adjustment, Aisle Five

The next day, as the running nose and cough due to cold begin to rear their ugly little heads, I prepare for my coaching session.

I have an executive coach. It requires time I don't have, but it is fun and demonstrates an investment in me. Who knows, maybe I'll learn something.

We are at the stage where I have to set goals. Development goals, professional goals, goals for my private life.

I had worked very hard on these and discussed the list with my coach a few weeks earlier. Oddly, one of my personal goals involved a plan for me and Scott. We'd known that marriage was unrealistic for the time; we both have kids that are blooming and growing in our respective towns. It would be years before we'd be able to combine our households and get under on roof.  But we were committed, we'd said. I wanted to iron out a road map for the next few years. Make sure we stayed on track.  Scott knew nothing of this. I guess that's obvious now.

But I sit with my coach and tell her we can look at one of my freshly minted goals one of two ways:

1. I am an overachieving pain in the ass and have crossed my personal goal off the list in record time. My plan with Scott is that there is no plan. Done. Finis. Kaput. Next!

or

2.  My goal was preposterous and I need a new one, with a firmer basis in reality.

She is very nice and very supportive and frankly amazed that I can speak about it all without crying.  I tell her some of the events of the humiliating story, and she is firmly on my side like any good coach would be. I tell her how hurtful it was to be unfriended on Facebook.  I feel a little guilty about having done an in-your-face status change that drove him to do it. She asks me which I think is the more obnoxious thing to have done, made my status "single" on Facebook, or making my status single in real life. Point taken.

She coaches me to "put myself out there" socially and give other people a chance to see how fabulous I am. I tell her Scott's daughter's advice to me has been to "never frown, you never know who might be falling in love with your smile."

She agrees and tells me to let myself shine.

OK, then.

On the way home from work I stop for groceries. I need some things for Thanksgiving at Charlotte's and some bagels for the kids and cat food. I'd normally have my groceries delivered but the cats will starve by then.

As I meander throught the unfamiliar aisles of the store that lies between work and home, I am the picture of misery.  Cold, tired, still in my work clothes, still in my cruel shoes.

I am in the cat food aisle looking at cans of poultry flavored mush when a man says something to me.  I look at him. "Pardon me?"

He looks at me and says, smiling, "The list says "fish" flavored. Do you think that means salmon or tuna?"

I say, deadpanning, "Buy both.  Why risk it?" and realize that I could not look or sound more miserable.

Here I am talking to a reasonably good-looking, nicely attired, personable, albeit clearly married man, and I have on my best "Where do they keep the fucking bagels" face.

Re-entry is going to be painful.