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My Profile
She blinded him with whiteness - 2008-07-25
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10:59 a.m. - 2008-03-26
Seems impossible, but Friday is the one year anniversary of the day Mick and I met. The weird part is I can't decide whether that seems long or short. In some ways it feels as though we've been together for decades. I know a lot of that is simply because I've been married for longer than all my time as a singleton (including my 9 months in utero) added together. The husband may be a wonderful new upgrade but I'm ever and anon a wife. Ditto my not moving to a new house. Mike out. Mick in. Same old. Same old. I still make my tea on the same stove in the same kettle and drink it from the same mug from the same cabinet. Of course some things in the house have changed. Mick's stuff is around, his Dali print hangs in the stairwell, there's a big bookcase full of VW and conspiracy theory books in the foyer where Mike's clock used to be. More than stuff though, the very air in the house is different now. It feels healthy in here. No more simmering tension. No constant undertone of fear. For all its tidiness the house is far more alive now than it was before Mick. Plants are flourishing, something yummy is always bubbling away in the kitchen, heck even the windows seem sunnier. I'd like to think guests can feel what a happy house this is. BIL seemed to be saying that on Sunday when he complimented me on what an interesting and homey home I have. I'm not being bitchy here when I say having seen his place I knew exactly what he meant about mine. BIL's place is huge, it's full of expensive nice things, the view is terrific, but man, it's cold in there. Lifeless. Unloved. This seems endemic to the McMansions. BIL's is one of the nicest I've seen, not as cookie-cutter as most, but it's still boring. Then again I have a real prejudice against new houses. They always seem empty to me even if they're full to the gunnels. Though mostly they are not. Having broken the bank buying the humongus house and the humongus flat screen TV and the humongus lawn tractor and the humongus SUV, most McMansion dwellers have contented themselves with living in echoing mostly empty rooms with naked walls still covered in contractor flat white. There's no money left to finish and furnish the place. Sadly these days there's even less money than they thought. An awful lot of those 4-bedroom Colonials (with granite kitchen and bonus room!) are sporting For Sale signs already. The Endless Credit Rave is over, my friends, and the bill for the DJ has come due with a vengeance. Whew, when I go rambling I cover some distance! Anniversary. Right. A year seems short when I think about how much living we've crammed into it. And how much Mick has changed. His priorities and thinking, I mean. Mick is still very much the same gallant good guy I met when I thought I was meeting him for a quick "Thanks, but no thanks" coffee a year ago. (snort) His essential self was always good stuff, but I'll admit that the Mick of a year ago was a guy with some skewed thinking and a chip on his shoulder the size of Texas. Anger and a whole lot of contemptuous cynicism in play there too. Hey, the guy was a cop. Deal with dregs, liars, thieves and assholes day in and day out and pretty soon everybody looks like a low-life loser. It's not right and it's not fair, but it happens. Unless he's very careful being a cop also inflates the ego in some pretty ugly ways too. When you've got the gun and the badge you're right no matter what the truth of the matter is. You're right and you will get your way. That's the reason cops are notorious spouse abusers and kill their women at nearly 8 times the rate of non-law enforcement men. I knew this going in and don't mind admitting I had some reservations when I saw Mick had a pretty bad case of cop-itis. For however dopey and giddy I sounded at the time, I did some serious thinking too. But Mick blew me away (and not with his service revolver) when he showed me just how open he was to new lines of thought and how willing he was to see where converting to LAism would take him. According to Mick it's taken him to a very happy land indeed. He delights in how empowered he feels these days. How much it's his choice about how his day goes and how he's feeling. He never knew how to do that before. That lifelong struggle to control others so they would reflect back his rightness about things is long gone. Mick understands the only control he has is over himself. He's also learned the Zen of Smart and Selfish. Yeah, it's basically The Golden Rule, but the Zen of Smart and Selfish acknowledges you are doing unto others because you want to get it back. Example: Before I leave the house I decide I am going to have a pleasant day. I know it's on me to make it happen. So I go about my business with a smile and a kind word for everybody. This works. Damn if I don't mostly get the same in return. As for the dullards and grumps I might encounter, they get a double bright smile and an extra kind word. Twofold benefit with that. One, a little extra zing often snaps them out of it and they shape up and be pleasant. And two, even if they don't I'm rather protected from taking their ickiness away with me because I'm extra happy in a Disney princess sort of way. If life were really like the movies I'd forever be traveling with a pack of tweeting birdies and choreographed forest creatures. "Tra la tra la la la! Life is beau-ti-ful! Oh yes it is! Would you like to dance with my chipmunks?" Tell you what, you get hit with that shit from a 6' tall menopausal madwoman with an all black outfit and pink pointy hair and it will dink with your head. Just ask Mick.
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