...maybe I'd never forget.
Each time I reach for this forgotten blog, this poor unopened corner of the Interweb, I enjoy the thirty seconds of lightheadedness I get while I blow the dust off and reread tiny snippets of my past. It feels good, like an old cd found between insurance papers and outdated vehicle registrations, one that still plays well and it all comes back, the skip 37 seconds into the 4th song, etc.
Last time I wrote, the baby was 9 weeks old. Now we're approaching the seven-month mark. My seven-year-old starts second grade tomorrow. The diamond ring you read about has been upgraded, although the engagement hasn't. Nothing personal: we're simply waiting on legal advice before we proceed. Sounds complicated, sure, but it's never really complicated when you've got a rock-solid foundation. I love this guy. I do. :-)
I met his family last week, and they are every bit as terrific as I'd dreamed they would be. I should've met them a year ago. Did I ever tell you about the psychic? Just a quick tale and I'll be off to bed and out of your hair, like every good wife should be on a Sunday evening.
In February of 2010, this random Facebook stranger (with whom I shared 33 mutual friends) asked me on a date to a funeral. It was so off-the-wall, I couldn't help but play along. It turned into an interesting friendship, to say the least, but alas, I'm getting ahead of myself.
On Valentine's Day, he proposed we go have our palms read at a 5-dollar psychic, but when we got there and saw the psychic's menu, he upgraded our futures to a 60-dollar-a-piece tarot reading. Now listen: I already HAD my life planned out. I didn't need to give someone 60 dollars to tell me where I was going: I already knew. Son number one was five years old. I was back in school, future uncertain, but I knew I was headed toward some type of degree in either education or, well, education. Maybe English. Whatever, but that wasn't important. What was important was that I was in control of my own destiny.
He upgraded both of our readings. Whatever.
The psychic takes him in first, while I sit in the "lobby" (aka - space smaller than my bathroom) reading one of those free local newspapers, filled from front to back with silly advertisements and such. Hell, I'll bet the psychic had even advertised there. Anyway, maybe 15 minutes later, out comes my pal, and we switch places.
I sit in the chair when asked, and the psychic lady tells me to relax, take deep breaths, clear my mind. If she were psychic, she would've known how on the brink of sleep I was, considering the Dive Bar Crawl we'd done the night before, shutting down the biker bar around 3am. Following my cut, she begins dealing out the cards, and the reading begins.
Small talk first, sure, but then she begins asking me about a trip I have coming up, one of which I'm completely unaware. I had absolutely no plans of any sort of vacation. Does this lady even realize I'm a single mom? Who is she kidding? Whatever. I play along. No, I'm not aware of any sort of vacation. She presses further, telling me that there is going to be a trip coming up, which I'll be taking with two other people, one which I know, and one I don't know so well. Hmm. Interesting. I haven't been on a vacation in five years, and suddenly according to her, I'm going to be invited on a vacation. She goes further: this will be happening in approximately three and a half months. I nod my head. Okay, I'm game. Vacation. I'm now having Seinfield flashbacks with George and the jellyfish.
She continues: I HAVE to go on this vacation. At some point, I'm not going to want to go, but I'm SUPPOSED TO GO. Playing Devil's Advocate, I'm wondering what will happen if I DON'T go? Will an anvil fall on my head? A two-ton piano? What's the catch? The catch, she tells me, doesn't exist. If I don't go, eventually everything will happen the way it's supposed to, but if I do go, things will be better faster.
Okay, now my head is spinning, but she's not quite done with me yet. She says she's sees a huge conflict in my life. She sees me as being very confused, and she gives me her business card. She makes me promise I will come back again and see her, as in "come back again when you're alone." And I don't mean it in a sexy way, I mean it in a creepy way. I was wondering if she'd used the same scare tactic on my friend currenly waiting in the lobby.
When we left, of course we compared notes, but there was no talk of conflict with him, and no invitation to return. No business card, no look of worry or concern in her face. She told him, rather unexcitedly, that he'd be getting three business offers in the mail. By letter. Like, the old pony express. Who does THAT anymore?
I'd like to go back and visit that psychic again. I'd like to tell her that, shortly after she read my cards, I met someone else. I'd like to tell her how I got pregnant at the end of April, and how he invited me to go to North Florida on vacation with his family, but I didn't go because he was too afraid to tell his dad that we were pregnant, and I was already starting to show by June, when they'd reserved the timeshare. I'd like to tell her how his leaving to take that vacation without me turned my world upside-down, and how I could never imagine picking up the pieces and putting them in any sort of order that would ever make sense again. I'd like to tell her, then, how I eventually realized I didn't want to be without him, and how I worked harder than I ever have to change the things that were wrong inside me, to become a person capable of "happily ever after." I'd like to tell her how, months later, I remembered our conversation that day, and put two and two together, and wondered if everything she'd talked about had really come true. I'd like to tell her all these things,...
but she probably already knows.
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