I received a call from my lawyer yesterday saying she had good news for me. I was legally divorced.

She seemed surprised that I didn’t greet this news happily.

The truth is I have no idea how I feel.

I know I don’t feel happy. I think I don’t feel sad. If I were to examine my innermost thoughts, something that this blog forces me to do almost daily, all I feel is shock.

I emailed dave yesterday, at my lawyer’s request, telling him that we are officially divorced and asking for his address in Japan so she can send him the papers.

His answer, “As I expected, I don’t know what to say. I will have my ring cut off tomorrow.” Then he wrote his address.

Actually, I was surprised that he was still wearing it.

I think he’s going to find what I discovered when I stopped wearing my wedding rings a year ago, that when he cuts that ring off, the indentations from wearing those rings during 38 years of marriage don’t disappear.

Mine are still there.

I just read that over and said to myself, “What the fuck does that mean? That I still have dents in my finger? Big fuckin’ deal. Let him wear a band aid”

Sometimes I get carried away with the drama.

I’m legally divorced.

What’s new with you?

Yesterday was David’s Memorial Day BBQ.

He really fussed. Prepared his burgers and sides in advance so he could give his guests, his son Graham and his girlfriend, Valerie, Me, his friend Fehmi and his wife and 2 of his children, the full impact of his sparkling personality.

The  invitation said to come between 3 and 4.  Graham and Valerie came right on time. Naturally so did I.  Fehmi rolled in at about 5:30 and his wife, a tall, thin ravishing blonde arrived at close to 7 with texted instructions from the cab to put her burger on so it would be ready when she got there. the kids were a no show.

David is always insinuating that my friends are a bunch of dumb peasants while he and his are real high class intellectuals who have the inside track on what’s going on in the world.

When Fehmi got there, David intelligently showed him the switch blade knife that he had bought in Santa Fe.

Fehmi couldn’t have been more delighted. He never let go of the knife for the rest of the evening.  He was flipping it open to punctuate every sentence, while intelligently noting what part of whatever democrat being discussed he could cut off with such a perfect weapon.

It lost a wee bit of it’s power because his ability to complete a fluid motion was limited by his constantly having to check that he didn’t open it the wrong way and cut his wrist off.

Then his beautiful wife arrived. When I say beautiful, I’m not understating it. This woman is a knock out. I’ve heard she’s of German descent but you couldn’t tell by me. She only spoke a few words before sitting down and eating more food than I would imagine a sumo wrestler would consume before a title match.

Immediately after polishing off her third piece of pie, totally ignoring Fehmi’s offer to slice it and feed it to her with his knife, she stood up, kissed everyone and went home, I assume to take an alka seltzer.

Graham and Valerie had long ago left and Fehmi decided to stay and chew the fat with David. I left them to it.

Oh and did I mention that throughout the evening David and Fehmi smoked cigars, I think because they were afraid that any fresh air  would ruin the ambience.

I gotta say, David’s correct. This was a real Algonquin Round Table, with shivs.

My world is going crazy.

First a bum pays my bus fare. Then David offers to take me to get my nose job.

Since he’s always made it clear that a bruised bagel was the extent of his largesse I made him repeat it just to make sure I heard him correctly.

I thanked him profusely but told him that both Julie and Stephanie had offered and Julie was taking me since you can’t leave the place without someone to hold your nose up until it gets it’s bearings.

He seemed really sad that he couldn’t be there for me. At least that’s what I assumed when he said “Great, I get the credit and I don’t actually have to do it.”

I got a new i phone yesterday. I only upgraded from 4 to 4s because I wanted Siri so I could voice dial when I’m driving.  I’m a stinky enough driver without having to dial a phone number at the same time.

My iphone 4 had voice dialing but every time I told it to call Steph it would dial Steve Gadd, the world famous drummer. It was only a matter of time before Steve’s wife, Carol, noticed all those calls from me and picked up on something that I’ve always known which is that Steve is really hot for me.

That would be no big deal if dave was still around but you know how married women are about divorcees, something I will be any day now.

So in the interest of my not wanting to see another marriage go south in addition to not wanting to die on I95 I upgraded.

When I got to the store they told me that though my present phone had 32 wigs or gigs, my new one will only have 16.

First I got hot under the collar about the idea of trading in for a lesser phone but then the girl told me that I didn’t even use 5 of the ones I had.

This  information solidified my decision to ignore all the advice that the men I know gave me which was to upgrade to an iphone 5 because it has a better camera and more advance technology and instead take Julie’s take on it which was that I don’t know how to do most of the shit the phone does anyway so save a few bucks.

I had a lovely evening with my niece Julie last night.

In order to get home I have to take 2 buses. There is a small supermarket near the second bus stop.

The bus wasn’t there and I needed milk so I went in.

There was a bum holding the door and a paper cup for the in and outgoing patrons with a friendly, “Have a nice day”.

I don’t want any lip about calling him a bum instead of the more pc “homeless man”. I have no idea whether he’s homeless or not and I don’t want to label him as such. Besides, ever since the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to LA I use the word “bum” whenever I can.

I thanked him on the way in and bought my milk. I had 53 cents change and I put it in his cup on the way out.

I saw that the bus was arriving and I started walking quickly towards the stop.

He, the bum, yelled to the bus driver “Hold the bus” and ran ahead  of me. I told him not to worry, that I’d make it in time.

He reached the bus and got on.

I felt a little silly because he was clearly holding the bus for himself, not me.

(I’m using the word “bus” a lot aren’t I?)

He put his metro card in the slot, turned around and got off the bus while saying to me “I paid your fare”. He walked away before I absorbed it.

I told 2 people about it last night. Julie whose reaction was a shocked “Hey are you a bum or aren’t you?” and David who believes he was put on this earth to make me feel bad who said that the guy was probably trying to shame me for being so cheap not to give him a dollar.

Speaking of David, I have to go now. I just heard a thump. I think he threw a bagel at my door.

Does anyone get cataract surgery who isn’t old?

I’m pretty sure not so I’m going to tell everyone that I’m getting a nose job. What with people giving me seats on buses, that cataract thing is one more nail that I don’t want to hammer into my age coffin.

They tell me that I’m going to have to wear a clear patch on my eye for a week. I’ve decided that the way I’ll explain that is by saying that the doctor is afraid my unusually long eyelashes batting against my nose might negatively effect the healing of my new snoot.

I had to go to get a pre op exam at my regular doctor yesterday. You know, for my nose job.

You’d think he’d know by now not to ask me any personal questions because my answers are always lies but this guy just keeps forging on. It’s actually kind of cute.

“How often do you drink?”

“Maybe a small glass of sherry once a month to take my heart worm pill”

“Do you exercise regularly?”

“Well the winter has put a crick in my 10 mile, 3 times a week run. I’ve only been able to safely complete 8 miles at a time what with the ice and stuff but I have added 30 pull ups a day on my hall closet bar. Thanks to that, my guns are like steel.”

I figure that should keep him off my back until I do my other eye. Did I say “eye”?  I mean chin implants.

I am a creature of habit. I hate change of any kind. That could be one of the reasons why my marriage broke up. I love the familiar and dave loved the unique.

“Have a bite of lizard, dave?”

“Sure”

Me? I’ll stick to Spaghetti-0’s.

So many changes have been forced on me lately that I’m in a constant state of willies.

Instead of falling apart I’ve decided to embrace it.  I just did something so scary. I changed my email address from AOL to Gmail.

Well “changed” might be overstating it. It would be more like I “tweaked”my email.

I wrote to my family and told them to write to me on Gmail. Of course I won’t stop AOL because there wouldn’t be enough crazy pills on the East Coast to get me through that.

I think I feel a little liberated though.

Next, I’m going to stop wearing galoshes to sleep. Not every night but definitely on weekends.

Baby steps.

I know I come off as suave and a self confident,  but let me tell you that the truth is no where near that.

When I’m uncomfortable I ramble.  I am terrible at meeting new people and when I’m around people I know that I am intimidated by don’t ask about the nutty things that come out of my mouth.

I SAID DON’T ASK!

Well I now have to work very hard to pull myself together because I’m having a big time visitor spending the night in my guest room.

It’s Miss Lizzie’s father, Dr. Tom.

I’ve spoken about him before. Forget that he’s world famous as a plastic surgeon and has spent a large part of his life fixing the faces of little African children, so he’s a good person as well as charming and really comfortable in his skin.

And who does he hang around with? Not people like me I’ll tell you that. He is friends with movie stars, Shahs and Presidents, real Presidents, not like Presidents of the Bronx . He and Robert Redford know each other’s phone numbers BY HEART.

I’ve spent some time in his company and I never come away feeling good about myself. Every time there’s a slight pause in the conversation I babble to fill the void.  I remember once I told him that I bragged to all my friends that he and I were so close that he never makes a move without checking with me first. He just smiled kindly but there was clearly a bewildered look fleeting across his face.

Now he’s going to be sleeping in my house. Liz mentioned it to David first asking if he knew if anyone in my family would be staying there then and he said

“Are you kidding? What does it matter? She’d throw any of them out for him”.

I gotta say he’s right. Would I tell Obama “Sorry no room at the inn?” No I would not.

I’m sitting in my guest room right now checking it out. There is a comfortable bed and lovely sheets. He’ll have his own bathroom.  Both rooms need painting but no time for that and I figure if I sleep on the floor outside his room I can get him anything he needs during the night, a snack or some juice.

What I’m going to have to do is work on my patter.

David has said that I can always resort to the lame shit I always talk to him about, trying to pump him about all the celebs he knows but I get the feeling that he’s just setting me up to look stupid. He’s like that.

I’m thinking I’ll try to meet him on his own ball field. I’ll bring up stuff that WASPS like to talk about, Like cricket and Jesus.

I”m feeling more confident already.

Oh, there is one more tiny thing. Just before he comes I’m getting cataract surgery in my left eye and I’ll be wearing one of those clear plastic eye patches.

My niece Stephanie had a suggestion that I paint a winking eye on it.

Sounds like an idea. It kills 2 birds with one stone.  It will make me look more “devil may care” plus it’s a great conversation piece.

And I thought I didn’t have this aced.

My sweet sister, Marcia, who is slowly recovering from having her knee replaced. DID Y OU HEAR ME PEOPLE? REPLACED!  NOT PATCHED UP ! REPLACED!

In spite of this she dragged herself to a meeting of the Library for her town. Since I don’t consider any town other than NYC a real town, it is in my opinion a fictional town.

Now my darling sister, who’s always been known in my family as the “sweet” sister, (I’ve told you about her before. She is always trying to save the world and keep the earth clean)  has donated her time to this fictional library in this fictional town. She has lugged books and gone to meetings and worked at functions to earn money so that the people in her “town” can have access to books and computers.

So how is she repaid? She went to that meeting last night. Did I say “went”?  What I meant to say was she limped to that meeting last night and some fucker yelled at her.

It upset her so much that she didn’t sleep all night. She felt a little better when she spoke to her friend Patty, who also works at the library. You remember Patty, the sucker who returned $11,000 to Brinks when it fell out of their truck.

You can see that the kind of ne’er do wells that work in this place deserve to be abused.

I”m sure it will all pass and if the person that yelled at my sister, probably for being too pretty, gets what he deserves namely a fat lip, I know I’ll feel better.

Since I am a person that uses everything as a learning experience I will take what I can from this which is don’t do nuthin for nobody because it will bite you in the ass.

I feel like I was put on this earth to make the people I care about feel better when they’re upset.

“Your sister in law is crazy. Why wouldn’t you wear peddle pushers to a Bar Mitzvah?”

“No, your house doesn’t smell like dog piss”

“No one heard you fart. With that Muzak you can’t hear anything in an elevator”

“I not only pee when I sneeze. I frequently vomit.”

Today I got a tough one.  My friend Ronnie called me from her car and asked me if I had ever driven with the “check engine light” on for any length of time.

I had to examine the pros and cons of my answer.

1. Her mechanic is in New Jersey.

2. She is leaving for Texas tomorrow to visit her brother.

3. She and I had plans for lunch (this was a big one)

I know it’s one thing to make someone feel better after the fact but it’s when the truth will prevent them from getting in trouble? What to do? What to do?

“Ignore it. It’s just a suggestion. Mine’s on all the time. If you’re near a gas station in the next month or two have them give it a gander.”

When her car breaks down on the way to the airport tomorrow I’ll tell her it wasn’t her fault.  They should have said “No kidding, you really should check your engine light.”