Contestant Number One...

Miley was the first or second canidate I contacted. The first had great credentials, but wanted to bring the two year old she was committed to watching. Ummm, no thanks, I think my kids would strangle the little angel when push came to shove and there was an imminent coin toss to decide Barney v. ICarly on a rainy afternoon. And besides, who does that?

Miley responded right away. From her picture she looked like she could be Hil fast forwarded a few years. She is a college student, has great experience and is home for Spring Break (as opposed to topless in Ft. Lauderdale) next week. The only bummer is that she is really looking for more full time work. The hours each day are fine, but the off week is hard to forfeit from a college tuition standpoint.

I totally get that.

Time to face the inevitable phone call to Lars. Under the best of circumstances, with no issues on the table, and only some benign topic like "the kids both made honor roll" on the docket, conversation with Lars is bizarrely unpredictable. I ask Miley what I am about to approach Lars with.

I write, "If you are interested, I could approach the kids' father about you sitting for him on his weeks as well. What do you think?" I had already explained the custody arrangement in the ad. And the fact that I have a cat, just in case there were allergy sufferers who would otherwise be interested.

She thinks the idea is great. I suggest that if all goes well, we may be able to arrange for her to meet everyone while she is home on break.

And then I call Lars.

I am not sure what meds he's started taking in vast amounts, but he was unusually agreeable. I gave him a thumbnail sketch of my plan for the summer, letting him read into the whole thing the notion that I will NOT be splitting the expenses for camp, especially for camp the kids hate, and that I am not getting use of, and at the usual court-ordered 58% to his 42% split. He can go his way, and I mine. Miley not withstanding.

He asked about pricing and I told him. I will hit him up for half the pool membership and half the site fee later. He said that there would be no tax write off of the expense and I told him I'd considered that. He said it would be cheaper than camp and aftercare, except for Pat who could do some junior counselor work for free thing (no thanks). And then he said he'd be interested.

And once I recovered from fainting, I called Miley back and set up an interview. Things were looking good!

Which could only mean one thing. Some asshole was going to come along and screw up the whole deal. Some asshole whose name is probably Lars.

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle

Following a successful Driver Photo experience, Hil and I proceeded to the bank to open a bank account for Miley our babysitter.

Yes. I have hired a a babysitter. I have an almost 14 year old, and almost 13 year old, and now I have a babysitter, too.

I know. Seems like a overkill for kids who could clearly call 911 for any emergency themselves.

But as the summer approaches, I have been feeling guilty. Guilty that I have a job that consumes more time, energy and most of my pleasant disposition than is fair. Guilty that I have sent my kids to full day camp since they finished Kindergarten. And by "full day" I mean from 7:30 am to 6 pm just as though they were in school and aftercare. A long day of structured, planned fun with no down time, sunshine or rain, every day of summer that we a re not on a family vacation of some sort. Not much of a summer at all. Not like the summers Charlotte and I enjoyed at our swim club with our swim team and diving team and life guard class friends. No sleeping in. No lazing around. No neighborhood pick up games of whiffle ball, or touch football, or dashing through sprinklers.

So this year, without consulting Lars, who would surely object out of paranoia and cheapness, I enrolled on Care.com, composed an ad, and began reaching out to local college students who might be interested in a very part time babysitting job.

Four to five hours per day. I didn't need to pay anyone to watch my kids sleep nearly until lunch time.
Five days per week, every other week, due to my whack-o custody arrangement.
Must have own transportation and be willing to drive kids to activities (that I would pay for) including the pool. A car. Not a bus, bike or Segway.
And speaking of pools, they'd need to supervise at the pool, and should be comfortable with young swimmers. I would spring for the nanny membership. They need to spring for keeping them from drowning or drowning each other.
Not really babysitting per se, more ensuring that no one has ice cream for lunch and neither kid does anything that they would normally try to get away with if they thought no one would find out.
Primary goal is safety, and helping them learn to be responsible. Pick up after themselves. Not traipse though the living room leaving a trail of wet clothes and towels and other debris on the hardwood floors, for instance.

The list of local sitters and their price ranges came up as soon as I placed my ad (and paid my first payment of $35 with my credit card) I skipped over the ones that were more than a couple of miles away. They'd eventually get tired of spending an hour's pay on gas just getting to my house. I vetoed the grandmotherly ones; J's mother had forever prejudiced my kids about sweet looking little chubby old ladies who were really just as mean as spit when it got right down to it. I panned the stay at home moms who would bring their children to my home or happily sit for my kids in theirs.

No. This summer would need to be custom designed to cater to my kids. I'd be willing to wait for just the right person.

Enter Miley.

Tell Me Mirror, Mirror

Oh there is work to be done and I have no idea what I am doing. Maybe Scott does.

And magically, he calls me from the road on his way to my house one Saturday about this very thing. He says the forecast is for rain and would I be able, in my travels with Hil, hither and yon on a Saturday morning while Pat sleeps, to stop into a nursery and pick out a few shrubs. Preferably those that a) won't grow to a height that makes them visible from space, and b) are ble to stand 6-8 hours of direct, scorching, punishing sunlight. He'd like to get them in the ground and let the rain give them a good soak.

I agree to do just that after Hil and I have gone and done the all important business of opening a bank account for our new summer babysitter, and getting my drivers license picture taken.

This is a special license. The last license I had made was just days before my divorce was final. Had I known, I would have waited. My lawyer was so excited about the judge's ruling, she broke her own tradition and called me rather than let me get the joyful news in the mail. Truly, I'd felt like celebrating, though most people aren't quite sure how to respond when you fill them in on that big news.(However everyone in my office practically turned cartwheels they were so overjoyed at my unburdening). But my one disappointment was in the timing. My license was due to expire any day, and had I known I'd be free of my was-band AND my heinous, boring last name, I'd have held out. The judge had been kind enough to grant my lawyer one last motion and had relieved me of 180 ugly pounds and the bitter reminder last name in the same stroke of the pen. Yay me.

But for 4 years I walked around with a license, and, as we do in Pennsylvania, a little typed yellow and white flimsy, folding card that indicates a name change. Which wouldn't be half bad if it said something explanatory and validating above where your name is like: "Divorced the ugly old asswipe and will now and forever be known as Miss Fabulous Blahblahblah, Saint."

But no. You were this and now you are that. No indication about how much time, money, blood, sweat and tears you expended becoming THAT again.

I got up early. I washed my hair. I artfully applied makeup. Hil checked it before I sealed the deal by curling my lashes and applying stage amounts of mascara so the camera will love me.

I used high end products in my hair and tousled it just so, drying it at a glacial pace on low heat. I chose a flattering photo-friendly ensemble that would coordinate nicely with my hair and makeup. I whitened my teeth. I ditched my Invisalign for the morning.

Hil and I are the first ones in the lot of the Driver Photo ID place. Before we step out of the car I check my hair and face and then double check that there is no lipstick on my teeth. That would suck.

Hil picks up on the fact that I am more concerned than usual about my appearance and gets my attention as we walk around the car to the door of the place. "Mom," she says. "Even if you had a live monkey on your head, Scott would still say you are beautiful."

My child. Better than any mirror I could buy. She is the fairest of them all.

Won't You Bee My Neighbor

So I step out into the jungle that I call a yard to survey the "opportunities" up close. I have one dead not-so-evergreen bush creating a fire hazard next to a much taller evergreen and some peonies. I can hack away at that for fun, but I'll need Scott's big manly truck and hitch and whatever other magic tools he has to get the stump out of the ground. With my luck, the stump is so deep it has grown under the house, which will probably cave into the hole I leave behind. Oh good. More to look forward to.

The lilac "tree" looks like it might actually muster the strength to bloom this year. It has been either too weak or too pissed for years now. The summer before my divorce having been the last time it flowered and filled the air with fresh fragrant loveliness. Lars decided it was "out of control" (as if that weren't the pot calling the kettle black..." that year and hacked it to collops one day while I was at the pool with the kids daydreaming about murdering him in his sleep while I worked on a savage tan. I've heard lilacs hold a grudge. Grudgy Wudgy hasn't bloomed since, but it appears to have buds. Maybe if I pretend not to be overjoyed it will go through with it.

My magnolia tree is lush and green. The unseasonably warm weather and lack of frost has forced it to bloom well ahead of schedule, but it is in full leaf. It has bloomed, wilted and dropped its petals all before April began. I have photographs of the kids on Mothers Days past that picture the tree in glorious full bloom. In May.

It has also sprouted new branch growth. Some of which I am not thrilled about due to how low the branches are. I can just see clotheslining myself while mowing my lawn. One branch has fallen from the tree entirely, and I am almost compelled to preserve it for the memory it holds. It is one of my favorites.

When Hil and Pat were very little, maybe two and three years old, Lars and I took them outside to play in our little sandbox under the magnolia while we did a little manual yard work. No mowing or leaf blowing. Raking and weed pulling. Lars was never voluntarily going to buy a piece of equipment that would do what his wife could do for free (Now, that didn't sound right at all.) Anyway, gardening gloves on, we were busy raking while the kids made sand castles and rubbed sand into each other's scalps.

Lars kept stopping and asking about some buzzing sound he was hearing. I on the other hand, heard no buzzing. I never even looked his way the first few times. But he kept stopping and asking, like a raving lunatic, "Don't you hear that buzzing sound?"

Finally, I responded by looking up and starting to say, "Maybe you need your head examined," and I saw it.

"It" being the basketball-sized wasp nest dangling from the low branch of the magnolia a mere 12 inches above Lars' head. I looked at him for a moment, soaking in the scene. It was like those National Geographic still photos of the shark flying out of the water with his mouth open and teeth showing and just a split second from chomping down on the poor unsuspecting seal.

He looked at me quizzically. The wicked part of me wanted to suggest that he do a few jumping jacks to clear his head and make sure he rigorously clapped his hands above his head. But for the children's safety, and a need to avoid eternal damnation, I refrained. Reluctantly.

I very quietly told him to just slowly walk toward me and to pick up one of the children while I picked up the other and walked toward the entrance to the house. I told him not to look back, for fear that he would Lot's Wife and turn to salt or stone or some other immobilized thing and become a meal for 1,000 wasps.

But he did, and freaked out. And scared the children. And to this day Hil has a mortal fear of bees. Or anything resembling a bee. Even if it is just an airborne dust bunny. Such is the permeating overreactive paranoia that is Lars.

But now Lars is gone and the tree remains. No wasps having come home to roost since.

I suppose they are building a nest at Lars's house. Just for fun.

The Whole Nine Yards

And so while I wait for Charlotte to have 30 minutes in a row free to enjoy a glass of wine and simultaneously enlighten me about what I need to do to get my kitchen transformation to become more than a twinkle in my eye, I attempt to transform the outside of my house. As in the shrubbery.

I say this like they do on Monty Python's Flying Circus. As in " A shrub-bah-ree!"

My yard nearly 14 years ago when Lars and I bought the house, was actually one of the selling points. OK it's an odd shape, triangular, with 300 feet of sidewalk to contend with (which Lars was never thrilled with) but the sellers, who before they were the sellers were the owners for 43 years, had had the yard beautifully landscape designed and planted.

As I'd look out my front door and down the steps to the yard, I could smell the two boxwoods that flanked the walk at its entry, sitting in rock formations surrounded by daffodils and tulips. I love the smell of boxwoods. To me they smell like coffee. It is one of the prevailing opinions on boxwoods. The other is that they smell like cat pee. I think it is a matter of perspective. I like the glass half full with coffee as opposed to half empty with cat pee.

Along the right side of the yard were holly trees and evergreen shrubs that grew tall and lush and were artfully planted to entirely obscure the hideous chain link fence separating the property from that of the neighbor. Good thing. The neighbor also parked a full sized RV in the yard and ran an underground dog kennel/breeding mill for yappy little cat-sized dogs who crapped on every square inch of the yard. And the owners, bless their hearts, left the turds to fester and smolder in the noon day sun, often sending a tantalizing aroma of half-baked feces wafting toward my open windows. The shrubs did an admirable job of concealing the Addams Family estate from view, if not entirely from smell.

There were also mature azaleas and rhododendron planted on all sides of the house, that bloomed at different times as spring progressed and provided gorgeous color throughout the season. Fragrant lilac and spice verbena competed with the scent of crap next door. A large flowering bush in the corner of the yard was the hot spot for the burgeoning avian social scene. Day lillies and irises and hydrangea and peonies filled beds around the property. Lily of the Valley and vinca grew beneath everything, including a weird orange flowered fruit-bearing bush we never could identify.

Lars and I added to the greenery by hedging in the yard with Chinese Elm hedges. We also planted English Hedge Roses at the point of the triangle. Gorgeous.

But that was all a very long time ago.

The boxwoods suffered and died after two winters with 30+ feet of snow. Scott replaced them with two lovely replacement shrubs last year, which promptly died in the wicked drought a few weeks later.

The bush that the birds loved was the first to be choked by the neighbor's ill-fated attempt at landscaping, which resulted in Morning Glory, rampant, predatory, killer Morning Glory attacking my plants and choking them in their sleep. A few years later, when Lars had left, I planted a Pink Smoke tree. It was tiny but I was patient. I put a little wire fence around it and when my brother came to mow my lawn, I'd left him a note warning him that it was there. Not to mow over it. I'd even drawn a diagram. He chucked the fence aside and mowed it down. That and the hostas I'd planted along the sides of the porch steps.

The rhododendron, also choked by the Morning Glory, began to die in large dry, rotting sections. Scott and I systematically removed the dead parts leaving a spindly little flowerless tree that drew attention to the air conditioning unit instead of concealing it.

The Chinese Elm hedges were now more like trees. They grow several feet in a week. I bought my first saw and hedge trimmer with my first post-divorce-settlement pay check. But still, they are out of control sections at a time. I cut a section, a section whose size is determined by the battery strength of the trimmer and my arm strength only, and by the time I've finished the entire project, it needs to be started again. At once.

And now that my home's interior is showroom perfect, except for the kitchen and bath, (OK, maybe "showroom" is an exaggeration!) it is my yard that screams of neglect.

I put on my gardening clogs and step out to survey the damage. Or rather, with an eye toward the glass being half full with coffee, to seize the opportunities that lie before me and my clippers and shovel.

Someone's in the Kitchen with Liza

It's time. I am going to boldly go where I have not gone before. Well maybe not so boldly. Not exactly peeing my pants, but not at all confidently.

I am going to get my kitchen redone.

Gasp.

My house is about 100 years old. It has all the charming features that an old house has, and even a few modern upgrades. I have beautiful mahogany inlay floors. But I have reached the maximum roof capacity and when I go to have it replaced, they will have to strip them all off...right down to and including the cedar shake, which is not even an approved roof material anymore. I have marvelous radiator heat, but I also have high velocity central air conditioning. When I stripped (some of the most uncommonly ugly) wallpaper from every wall in the house, we got down to the original unpainted plaster. I put the first coats of paint on the 80 year old virgin walls. However my kitchen was last remodeled in 1980 and so was the bathroom. And even though I have dutifully replaced appliances and the toilet and the bathroom sink, both rooms desperately need an upgrade.

I even have a very good idea about what I'd like the finished rooms to look like. I've torn out pictures from magazines and learned about what features appeal to me and can even articulate some of it quite competently.

The problem is, I have no idea where to begin. I don't know who to articulate it to. And am having an inferiority complex about it. And a general sense of mistrust about contractors.

Is it wrong to have a firm budget for something like this? I imagine myself talking to a contractor and him shaking his head like I am an idiot when I say I'd prefer to go with the subway tile backsplash instead of the individually hand-cast Aztec artifact-inspired tiles. Or refuse to have the window that faces the patio removed and replaced with a smaller, better positioned one to give me more counter top mileage, because my budget doesn't have room for reconstruction of a window space and plastering and stucco and exterior paint and a whole new window to replace the relatively new window that's there, just so I can roll out gingerbread men with room to spare at Christmas. Will he think I'm a silly little numbskull when I don't want to change the footprint of the room, when really, it is smaller than my office, or I want to keep my 10 year old appliances, because they work and they fit and I can't begin to imagine knocking down walls and expanding into God-only-knows-where? If I had the money to do all of these things, wouldn't they be done by now, or wouldn't I have moved? I imagine the contractor walking away muttering obscenities to himself and swearing at me for wasting his time.

This scares me. I don't want anyone thinking I am a cheapskate or stupid.

But before anyone can even have an opportunity to think those things I have to get started. And I have absolutely no idea where to start to even begin to invite the insults. But I do have an idea where where the warm-up circle is.

Charlotte.

Charlotte has redone every room in her house. Some of them twice. She's even remodeled her laundry room, for Christ's sake. And I am fairly certain she didn't start out with more to go on than I have at the moment.

She probably just had a vision. Just like I have a vision. I will call her to see if she knows how I can begin to give my vision wings.

If I am to make my vision come to life, my super hero Charlotte needs to pay a visit. I'll invite her for wine. Nothing makes a vision come to life better than wine.

Now we're getting somewhere.

Happy Birthday, Tang and Cigarettes

Happy birthday to my blog.

Well, it was actually Friday, but I had a story to finish. So today I post the first blog in my third year of blogging. Faithfully, through thick and thin, through laughter and tears, through triumphs and defeats. Every day, Monday through Friday. Fifty-two weeks a year. Each day the same circus with an occasional variation on the ensemble of clowns, saving one, the clown in charge, me.

And how far we've traveled, you and I, in the past two years.

I remember the insanity of Chuck and Em's wedding bringing some things sharply into focus and actually giving life to this blog. It was as if I'd turned a stone in a lovely garden to find maggots and grubs and worms and toads. The experience had been painful for J. and me. I'd spared my kids the hurt of it, but there was more hurt yet to come.

In the year that followed I began to see J. with the same clarity. What he'd become. The lows he'd stooped to. The liberties he'd taken, and worse, the liberties he'd felt entitled to take. The worst were those he took and lied about, but I'd discovered anyway. The lying was defining for me.

I am not sure my exit from his life was entirely about his feelings for me (though the bizarre life sized, unauthorized tattoo of my Facebook profile picture on his scrawny little thigh sort of suggests that he was infatuated to a degree that surpassed mere garden variety insanity.) I can't even look at the actual photo, it creeps me out so badly. It's a shame. It was a most flattering shot of me, looking fine with all of my fine girlfriends on one of our Rock Star vacations to Arizona. I hope it isn't ruined for them too. But that would be just J.'s style. Scorch someone else's beloved "something" to suit his own pathetic interests.

But it could have been just one more of his outrageous grand gestures to prove to me that he was madly in love with me. ("Madly" doesn't even scratch the surface, frankly.) Just like driving two hours to show up at Girls Weekend or driving me to an interview in Harrisburg as a sign of support for my career.

But really, it was all just so that I'd stay close. Stay stupid. Stay in a state of unwavering willingness to help. To pitch in. To provide Christmas for his girls when he'd hit a rough financial patch. To help him move. To go against my principles and get roped into his insane schemes. To trust him when he demonstrated time and time again that I could not. Should not. I kept going back into the burning building over and over again, trying to salvage something meaningful, and getting scorched each time.

But I've happily, joyfully, left that in the past and have enjoyed falling in love and being in love with Scott. Our future is in Fate's hands, as all the usual pressures try to tear at the fabric of our relationship in spite of our devotion. But no matter where we take this road, I have learned a lot about myself and about love and about the goodness of other people. J. is an anomaly. A sad, pathetic, insignificant wart on all that is beautiful in this world. And I know I am deserving of so much more. Scott. His girls. His love and his kindnesses.

Scott and I have shared much, have enjoyed much, have adventured much. I am a happier, healthier, smilier, more boyant version of myself. He has shown me a way to take serious things seriously without taking it all too seriously. We've taken our overwhelming lives and put them in a much better perspective. I am more peaceful than I've ever been. And my kids have never been in better emotional health.

I have had not one, but two full on blow out rifts with my mother. Both around the holidays. The first nagged at me; implored me to mend it. The second was much more permanent in its finality. My mother wants me to be the subservient, obedient, controllable fool she has always thought my siblings and me to be. When I refused, she rejected me. And I her. Period. Nothing since has compelled me to call her or invite her back in to my life. I doubt that will be a door I'll open.

But compared to the beginning of the first and second years of my blog, I am in a place of realitive peace. And so as I start year three in the blogosphere, I realize that a life of near bliss and contentment is far less entertaining than one filled with chaos and heartache, but I am committed to sharing my musings five days a week, if only as a diary for my children to read one day. And of course for my own sense of sanity. Putting words to my experiences has always helped me make sense of them, even when they defy logic and intuition.

So happy birthday to my blog. Tang and Cigarettes, in many ways, you've saved me. Even if only from myself.