Nick & Jessica’s divorce

I’ve never figured out who Jessica or Nick is but they appear in the news and tabloids quite often. I consider it a blessing that I have escaped knowing them. Today I went to the attorney’s office and signed my own divorce papers in order to expedite my home refinancing – which after today needs to be expedited. Orleans Sheet Metal showed up – T with the beautiful mouth, who has taken over his daddy’s business after the old man died last January.

While I was waiting for T and company to arrive, H from around the corner on St John Court appeared with her son J and she asked me how it was going and I said, “well I expect to be in before the end of the year, but that might be optimistic.” And she said, “You see that house over there across the bayou from yours, the one with the four crepe myrtles in front of it? that woman is 91 years old. She was born in that house and so it goes to show you that living on the bayou makes you live longer.” People say a lot of things and some of the times the things they say are true or at least do give you comfort and you want them to be true.

I brought K and N to the Parkway for catfish sandwiches after the Orleans group left. It was bustling in the Parkway, which having seen photos of how high the water got, is a good thing to behold.

Last night when I got home, I knocked on J’s door to get my package. She said how are you Rachel? And I said a little road weary. She hugged me tight with all her body and said in her soothing (ex-nun) voice, you’ve been through a lot dear, you deserve to rest. That too was a comfort. So when I was at Whole Foods today I picked up some flowers for J. The woman behind the flower counter said, “those are nice” and I said yes, they are. I’m getting some for me and my neighbor. She went into a story about how she bought some for her daughter but had her son give them to her and she was so thrilled that her older brother would get her flowers she squealed and I said, well I waited a long time for flowers until I finally got it – buy them yourself! We laughed. I appeared at J’s door with the flowers and she said, “how beautiful. but why?” and I said “because you deserve flowers” and she hugged me again, tight, full body hug.

Between house meetings and client calls and getting back my New Orleans legs, I decided to call an old friend for dinner but the conversation – again as it has done of late – spiralled into a quagmire of misunderstanding – E warned me about this – people who have known you a long time get used to the fact that you have no boundaries or you make no demands – so when you get healthy they don’t like you – it happened when I was young – my brothers used to cajole me into making their beds and doing things for them and I lovingly did it, till I found them making fun of my acquiescence one day behind my back and I stopped – and then suddenly I was a “bitch” when I refused to indulge them – it’s similar to what happened with S, when I made demands our life changed, it is happening with my friends, first L, who I set boundaries with and he crossed them, then N, who tried to trap me in her own web of self pity, today the conversation just left me feeling raked so I opted to spend the evening alone – solace is sometimes the best comfort. I walked along the bayou to the LaLa and K and N were still there working on the house.

I went in because Arlene was pulling there and it became apparently clear after we went over a lot of issues that the three 11 x 4 windows that caused my first miscarriage as we salvaged them from the warehouse EHDD had been in for 20 years, which we dragged from place to place, are not going to work in the addition – they are the weak link. So now, step back, and rethink the whole enchilada. When K pointed out that the flood light was in a bad place, I told him I was filled up with things that need addressing and couldn’t work on the flood light position tonight. The Bean and I walked slowly back to the Can in the gloaming, in the sultry breeze that made the air delightful. I thought not of all that needs to be done, but of all that has been done.

I would say I have gone through a door – I don’t know when, I don’t know where, and I wish I did so I could have brought ceremony to that moment – but I feel the least co-dependent I have felt in 23 years of marriages, and I feel the best I have felt in 23 years, and my thoughts are on the now. My buddy J who I am going to Nantucket with at the end of July wrote about our trip – I had just seen B in NY – I told him that my life forward is about being around positive people who bring love into my life – and they are those people. Blessed is all I can say.

You don’t come to blessed accidentally. Who are Nick and Jessica? No one wrote in the tabloids today that Steve and Rachel’s divorce is imminent – just waiting for Steve to sign. And if they did, who would care? E in R’s office, the attorney, said, oh my, so many divorces – and I said excuse me, thinking she was making a personal reference to me, and she said no, I mean we have been doing so many divorces since Katrina. And I said well there has been other things as well – babies conceived during Katrina, people reconnecting – it isn’t all rent and asunder – there has been some mergers and acquisitions as well.

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