And of course they have. Intellectually I know I am not alone in this. Statistics show that some 50% of all marriages end in divorce. And still, no one ever imagines themselves on the precipice of such a colossal failure. If we could even conjure a picture of our future selves living in separate homes, contacting attorneys and real estate brokers, divvying up the furniture and the pets… well of course no one would agree to marriage in the first place. There’s no temporary happiness that can justify this type of pain. We all really, really mean it when we say “I Do.” Until we don’t.

Admittedly it’s been hard to focus on the dreadfulness of this situation as I am currently exhausted due to the frenetic pace that this life change has ushered in. I have temporarily taken work as a painter/renovator for a friend who buys multi-family homes out of foreclosure, slaps on a fresh coat of paint and changes some switch plates and proceeds to rent the places out for outrageous prices. It is depressing and mindless work but she pays a generous hourly rate and I can come and go as I please. I keep reminding myself that it is only temporary. I am rushing home from my painting job to meet the kids when they get off the bus. I am managing homework and bathing and dinner and house keeping. I am meeting real estate brokers and tracking down the right therapist for the kids. I am keeping the walkways to the back door ice free which means I am shoveling and scraping and salting as necessary. I am typing up resumes into the wee hours of the night. I am looking for a full-time gig, one that tickles the mind, pays adequately, offers benefits and a growth opportunity. I am trying to schedule a service appointment for the car. I am trying to squeeze in quick trips to the gym even if then kids need to come and do homework while I plod along on the treadmill. I am ordering a new Canine Fence Company collar for the dog since she’s broken the old one and keeps skipping the yard for greener pastures (who can blame her?). I am not sleeping well because there is laundry to do and I should really get one more resume off and there’s school snacks and lunches to pack and dishwashers to unload before it all starts again tomorrow.

The kids have been sort of swept along in this eddy of activity and coping and seem to be doing much, much better. This improvement in their mental state comes just in time for their father’s return home for the weekend which should set them back to square one by Sunday evening. But this is the best we can do right now. And that has to be enough.

O took the news stoically at first and tried to inspire his sister’s smile by making goofy faces and performing antics with the pizza crust in his hand. His efforts were in vain. She retired to her room to weep and process. The sounds of her sobbing called into question the whole damn thing for me, the selfishness of two parents parting. But O remained tear-free for hours. He has seen and heard this coming for miles. He has witnessed our fighting. We have addressed the fact of our conflict and the possibility of our separation as a solution with him. He has had time to cry about this already.

In hindsight, I wish we had handled the parting differently. While there was no way to make it easy, we could have been more thoughtful. In the effort to explain his leaving, their father mentioned the word “months” which instantly sounded like an eternity hanging there in the space between us. “Months” in the life of a child is something akin to forever. I so wish we had said, Dad is leaving for the week and will be back Saturday, no more – no less. This is the truth. They probably don’t need to know much more beyond the week to week since we don’t know much more ourselves.

In hindsight, we should have made certain his departure was during school hours. We should not have made them witness to our grief. But My Better Half was anxious to get the show on the road. Living here with the knowledge he’d be leaving eventually was wrecking its own havoc. And it must have been torture – this imminent departure from the people he loves all in the effort to find a way back to them – permanently. I think he wanted to begin the process of settling into a new purgatory while waiting for things to magically heal, while hoping for some sort of divine intervention on our family’s behalf. No one ever imagines slipping so far down their own life that happiness is suddenly out of reach. How could it have gotten so beyond us? So beyond me?

And what’s the old saying? When it rains it pours -pours down waste pipe overflow from the second floor bathroom through the light sockets in the first floor office, soaking the rug, flooding the basement on the night two parents decide to part ways. It was almost biblical, the timing of this plumbing failure. O and G and I, stood watching the deluge. And O, as if inspired by the waterworks, finally gave in to tears. He let the crying take him where no nine year old should think to go, My life is terrible, I want to die, everything is awful…my house, my parents, my lack of friends. G piggybacked on this profound depression and began to agree that her social life at school was sub-par, that her life at home was unacceptably sad without her parents being together and happy and living in the same house with working plumbing and shared bedrooms. She rejected the possibility of two homes in close proximity, equal visitation, Daddy-days and Mommy-days, she rejected this quaintly presented notion outright. She could see immediately that nothing this complicated could turn out so easy and sunny and sweet.

And so the three of us fell asleep in my giant bed, trying to find some comfort in the proximity, alien and empty, listening to freezing rain lash at the windows, a sound quite like loneliness.

I wish I didn’t feel the need to tell the kids that each and every Santa we come across can’t possible be the real deal. I wish I could just let them harbor this seasonal deception. Why do have to get all cynical, smacking my lips with disapproval. “Get a load of that one kids? Look at the black, greasy hair beneath the wig. Smell his Bourbon breath. Mark my words, the real Santa is far too busy this time of year to be drunk at noon on a weekday.” My O and G have learned to out the fakes. They play coy games with the Santa stand-ins, “If you’re the real Santa then YOU can tell ME what I want for Christmas.” There is a moment of uncomfortable chuckling followed by a hostile silence. O and G slowly slip down off of Santa’s lap. Photos seem entirely beside the point. You can practically hear the shop girls sheepishly dressed as elves thinking – HATERS.

This year I have even given up on outdoor lights. It just seems so beside the point. The front of our house cannot be seen from the street yet each year I feel compelled to string the white bulbs on the dwarf spruces by the front door and march out of the house each evening at dusk to plug the damn things in for the pleasure of the one neighbor with whom we share the drive and who hasn’t hung even a wreath four years running. Not this year. No way. You can’t make me like Christmas. I just won’t. Wake me when it’s over and we’ve safely avoided spending thousands of dollars we don’t have. Wake me when I no longer have a wheat allergy and I can actually partake of the Christmas cookie buffet. And not a moment before.

Last night, before bed, I had put newspapers down in anticipation of the mess, having spent the day before dodging doggy-do and mopping the floor with Tilex. Still, the dog managed to hit the few spots that were un-papered – remarkable aim considering the dire circumstances that must have compelled the beast to soil the house in the first place.

What’s wrong with the dog, what’s making her ill, you ask. My answer - I don’t give a shit (I realize this is a pun, one I intended). I’ve given her half a bottle of Pepto Bismal and stern talking to about the consequences should she defecate even one more time inside the house.

I know the old adage, feed a cold, starve a fever. And feel, somehow, betrayed that the old, wise folk who develop and deliver such truths forgot to generate any catchy saying pertaining to a house-pet’s GI distress. So I’m going with the starving bit and have decided not to feed the damn dog until I observe a noticeable weakening in the shit storm.

For those of you who’ve been wondering why it’s been taking me so long to publish my next post, just imagine me down on my knees, holding my breath while dabbing ineffectually at the god-awful mess my dog has left me. Imagine how it is to be so lightheaded and exhausted from all that scrubbing and lack of oxygen and the effort expended swallowing back your own vomit, that you have no choice but to return to bed immediately after cleansing the mudroom. It’s like a swoon, an enduring faintness that really fucks with a person’s motivation and eagerness to meet the day. Imagine me hanging the Gone-Back-to-Bed-Because-This-Morning-Is-Unbearable sign on the door knob and forgive me the spotty blogging.

(Just a little part of me is currently dreaming that this bout of tummy trouble just might usher in a doggy-ending. I can hear myself saying, Natural causes. Couldn’t be helped. Doesn’t the house stay clean a lot longer without our canine friend who we remember fondly but, on days like today, could probably live without?)

As evidenced by all the leaves in this picture, I have tried a different approach this year. The close your eyes and pretend there’s not a thing wrong with the lawn approach, the hold your breath and hope someone else finds this leaf mess intolerable and eventually borrows the neighbor’s gas blower. The Who, Me? approach seems to be working so far and every other weekend the yard is restored to temporary tidiness by My Better Half who has thankfully settled in to his role as temporary but constant gardener.

And to be perfectly honest this laissez-faire attitude I have adopted is not entirely due to a new and more laid back me but more to the fact that I have serious wrist and forearm problems stewing and can proudly declare myself a winner of several fine diagnosis – De Quervian’s Syndrome, Wortenberg’s Syndrome, the beginnings of tennis elbow – all of which are orthopedic euphemism for, “Wow, your hand-wrist-arm apparatus is really fucked up. Let me give you a Cortisone shot and hope for the best because if that doesn’t work we’ll have to consider amputation.”

Simple tasks like raking, flipping pancakes, vacuuming, scrubbing the tub and folding laundry have all become excruciating antagonists to the things already gone wrong in this skinny arm of mine. And so I’ve been sidelined from some of the more banal but necessary tasks in life and, like anyone riding the pine, I’m anxious to participate. But I’m also enjoying the imposed break, nothing like a little doctor’s note to help a person settle in to a sabbatical from household chores. There is something liberating about letting things go just a little longer than I would usually. It’s so unlike me. I could get used to this slovenliness.

But then there’s the difficulty and attendant pain associated with tennis. And we all know how unlikely I am to give up the game. So I’m icing and pumping the NSAID’s and fully committed to getting this thing healed up so that I can continue to work on my court skills. And if amputation is necessary then I will be forced to play left handed. It worked for Nadal. No reason it can’t work me, right?

I soothe myself with Ron’s suggestion that, really, only the bare minimum is required at this stage in the game. After all, he has reminded me, my readership is non-existent now that I’ve been off the grid for so long. It doesn’t matter what the hell I write today or, ya know, EVER, because my following, while once an impressive 12 readers deep, is now down to 1 or 2 rubber-neckers who check in every now and again looking for an obituary notice. I think what he’s trying to say is that I’ve forced the bar on this blog thing very, very low. So here I am, back from the grave, at least today, can’t promise I’ll be here everyday, or the day after that, but today is a start.

So first a bit of business…Many of you have been kind enough to stop by and inquire about my return to life as a landscape designer. As my last post indicated I returned to design in May and, since then, have knocked out three design projects. It’s a bit like riding a bike, this design thing. Once you’re up and speeding down the hill, that hill could be in Zone 6 or Zone 11. It turns out that there’s not much difference once a person gets a handle on the twelve most important plants in the local landscape while cruising, break neck speed toward career-oriented disappointment.

After a few short weeks of careening down the hill of my new enterprise, feeling the surge of hope, the satisfaction of accomplishment, like wind in my hair, practically singing into the breeze of my own projected success, Weeeee, I can do this because I am good at this and people like me, I hit a rather imposing wall that I’ll refer to as the faltering economy but may, in fact, be more the stuff of bad luck intermingled with a few bad characters.

One project went smoothly, the design was well received, the contractor paid me for my time but the earth remains barren, not a plant has been installed. I’m thinking the homeowner is hoping that Spring will usher in the resurrection of his mutual fund but I’m just guessing. Another project, the one I did for free while hoping my generosity would lead the back door neighbor to cover up the chain link fence that went up around the enormous hole in the ground that they call a pool, well, that design and attendant plant list was completed in mid-June and I’m still looking at bare dirt and a long stretch of metal fencing along the western property line. I’m thinking it’s another garden laid victim to the volatility of the NYSE, but I’m just guessing.

And the third project has officially lurched off the tracks into train-wreck territory. The plans have long been finalized and delivered but I still haven’t been able to track down a check for the remaining design fee, a check which represents 50% of the design costs, my entire month of September, not to mention a few tense weeks in October. So small claims court here I come.

There’s no bit of comfort I can take away from this triptych of disappointment, no successful project or happy homeowner waiting to be my first success story as a landscape designer in the Northeast. There is only a long, ominous stretch of nothingness, a total void of landscape design jobs now that it’s almost November and the snow will soon begin to fall and most people are intensely focused on continuing to pay the mortgage and the heating bill while watching their stock portfolio bottom out a few weeks before Christmas.

Enough with the bleak landscapes and the obscured horizons, I’ll sign off wishing a Happy Day to all who have ventured over to Madmarriage after such a pregnant pause. And if any of y’all happen across a landscape contractor who calls himself Jim and speaks with a lisp and fancies himself a black belt in karate and apparently signs contracts without reading them, do me a favor and swerve in his direction. Just once, this once, I think the Gods might forgive a hit-and-run. I know, I know, this Jim character will get his, someday, somewhere, but I’d just like to be close-by in order to to bear witness.

I find myself uttering the hackneyed phrase you don’t know how lucky you are, daily, sounding like my parents and their parents before them and wondering when I turned into my Nana, convinced that I’m but moments away from donning a bathing cap and doing the breast stroke in the lap lane. And, like all children the world over, since time began, my children successfully ignore my reprimands and scolding, my attempts to remind them that in other parts of the world, hell, in other parts of town, whole families live in tents and share bedding with their sisters.

It strikes me that lucky is a relative concept. There is always bigger, better, more and until a person experience smaller, worse and less, true understanding is just not possible. And so it is that I am contemplating developing a Fresh Air exchange program in which we invite lower-income children from Detroit, Trenton and the Bronx to come to our town for the week and work on their butterfly kick, their golf swing and the proper construction of a sand mansion while my kids take their places in their inner-city neighborhoods, delivered there by Greyhound with only a knapsack and twenty dollars stuffed in their pockets. There they will learn about dodging street fire and they will come to know the stench of urine in the stairwell on a humid summer afternoon. They will play among the shards of glass and look forward to neighborhood children yelling ‘Narcos’ whenever the police ride ’round the block to hassle the petty dealers. There they will learn to associate the summer evenings with the sounds of sirens and car alarms and the occasional domestic dispute that has spilled out into the hallway. Maybe then, when I get them back, a little strung out, sleep deprived, a whole lot wiser, will they get what I mean by lucky.

Tonight was book group night and a flock of female friends descended here to discuss everything but the book I’d chosen for this month’s read which is an excellent book, a fucking masterpiece but decidedly not a beach read and therefore was neglected by most in the group who gave up on all near-serious literature back in early May. I loved, loved, loved Gilead by Marilynne Robinson and could have underlined and highlighted and swooned over every damn line in the book but chose to really hyper-focus on one important passage conveying the true and consuming conflagration of new love,

“…there she was again. I was miserable with relief, afraid I might laugh for no reason, afraid I might look at her too long, trying to remind myself she was a stranger, though she had been my dearest, most inward thought for weeks, and that I might startle her with some unaccountable familiarity. I had been to the barber and I was wearing a new shirt, since it seemed only prudent to suppose that my constant, passionate, and most unworthy prayers might be answered. And I made a little experiment with hair tonic…and I thought, What an utter and transparent fool I am…If I had the same experience earlier in life, I would have been much wiser, much more compassionate. I really didn’t understand what it was that made people who came to me so indifferent to good judgment, to common sense, or why they would say, ‘I know, I know’ when I urged a little reasonableness on them, why it meant ‘It doesn’t matter, I just don’t care.’ That’s what the saints and martyrs say. And I know now that it is passion that moves them to their prodigal renunciations.”

The fact that this soul-slaying description of one man’s utter devotion to a total stranger was written by a woman shouldn’t surprise me. But it doesn’t much matter who wrote the novel, man, woman or extraterrestrial I will be reading it over and over again in this lifetime just to occasionally connect with the single most significant passage of romantic literature that I’ve ever read. And each time, I’m sure, I’ll throw my head down on the pillows and inwardly wail, If only someone, once, just once, ever felt that I was “the only true friend they ever had on earth,” then all this other stuff, this preparing brown bag lunches and selecting foundation shrubs and changing the oil and remembering my mother’s birthday and weeding the front walk would all make sense, or better yet, will all just become the pleasant backdrop to the pleasing complexity of my own true love story.

Instead, I will wake tomorrow, slightly hung over and entirely irritated with my children who refuse to abide by the sleep-past-six-summer rules. The morning will be sad and stale and same. I will make myself rise to the smallness of my life, vowing to drink less, to run the dishwasher before going to bed at night, to write thank you notes and wash the dog and try to remember that life, true life, does not resemble a novel, even a novel perversely devoid of plot,a novel full of religious connotations far beyond my secular grasp, a novel of ‘life sucks, you finally fall in love and then you die’. Because real, non-literary life, though just as tragic, is no where near as succinct. There’s so much wandering and muddling through between here and there that doesn’t make for clever commentary or character development. And this is something I’m just getting used to.

It is officially the first day of Summer in that there is no need to be out of bed, no bus to catch, no snack to pack or lunch money to remember and yet my kids are up with the sun and the birds and the damn waste management team, which hasn’t tailored the trash pick-up schedule to accommodate children and mothers who might like to sleep past day break if just to shorten the otherwise interminable day.

I hoped this day would have a lazy start. We were at the Red Sox game last night. The kids were over indulged. They had Cracker Jack and Italian Ice and Soft Serve ice cream and watched a little baseball in between stuffing their faces. G fell asleep in the eighth inning, just when the entire park began chanting Manny, Manny, Manny, banging arms against Fenway’s green wooden siding, clapping hopeful hands, rhythmically urging on the designated hitter, trying to will a win for the home team. She was right to give up right then and there. Manny was caught out, hopes faded and the line to get out of the parking garage rivaled the queue hopeful pilgrims encounter when trying to catch Mass with the Pope in Vatican City in July.

We were home some four hours past their usual bed time and still, still, the kids were awake this morning before sunrise.

How do you do it? You with the kids up your arse and the lawn needing mowing and the bathtub black with dirty footprints and new landscape design project added to the mix? How do you keep on blogging when taking on the neighbors backyard pool project, trying to design a garden using Zebra Grass and Japanese Lilac Trees and Weeping Maples when really you have no idea what to do with these plants since they distinctly deciduous and decidely un-sub-tropical and the entire project will require your faking Zone 6 expertise? How do you keep writing when there are latin names like Pennisetum and Miscanthus and Syringa reticulata to master?

What I’m essentially getting at is that I’m back at work as a landscape designer (it’s casual, it’s the neighbor’s project, yet it’s scary and overwhelming and complete change of pace). What I’m getting at is that my kids need me to drive them to swim team and tennis and the occasional golf lesson as that’s all I’ve got planned for them for the next ten weeks of their freedom. What I’m getting at is that I’m going to try and continue posting, I swear I’ll try, but I’m making no promises as I see my life sort of lurching away from me for the next little bit. And we all know how that worked out for me last summer, even without the pressure of design work. I think I posted once in early June, slipped off the grid and returned in September. I promise to try and do better. But I can only do what one woman can do and I bow down to those of you who somehow manage to keep up the writing energy when there are kids up your arse and the lawn needs mowing and the bathtub is black with dirty footprints and the children and the backdoor neighbors’ with their landscaping needs have high-jacked your Mom-life.

I’m also behind on almost everything else. There are outstanding bills left to pay, the bedrooms haven’t been dusted and vacuumed in over a week and the downstairs, while clean just last Sunday, is already sullied with the clutter of school papers and muddy rubber boots and pet hair and the grime of three meals a day at the bottom of the kitchen sink.

Our dear friends who moved to California last summer are back to town for a brief visit. They will come for dinner tomorrow. I have a meal to plan and prepare. This weekend we are off to Cape Cod and I’ve agreed to handle Saturday’s cook out, steak and Italian chopped salad and a birthday cake in celebration of our hostesses’ 35th birthday. And MBH and I will have been married eleven years on Friday and, of all our eleven years, this month just happens to have been our hardest yet, leaving us both unsure about whether to celebrate this one or just ignore it. And I’m in charge of planning third grade field day which falls on Friday of next week. And, did I mention that I drank way, way too much wine last night and have all this to tackle while trying to keep my head from wobbling off my fragile neck.

Forgive me the lame post. You know what I’ll be doing today. Wish me great efficiency. I know I’ll feel better when the fire-breathing to-do list has been slayed.