I haven’t written for awhile mainly because nothing of note has happened to me, that is until yesterday.

Let me give you a bit of history.

The new methods of communication have made it unnecessary to leave your house and has put skills that used to be only in the hands of professionals at the fingertips of anyone with a bit of money and some time.

I saw it in the music business first. dave, may he rest in peace, was primarily an arranger. If you wanted to record , even a commercial demo, you would have to hire someone like him to hear the music in his head and put it down on paper so that the musicians could play it.

Once synthesizers and digital recording came along any shlub with no training but a good ear could tinkle around until he or she came up with something pleasing and slap it on a cd.

I could go on with downloading music, movies, books but I won’t.

I’ll just tell you my little story.

dave never wanted to go to the movies so one of the first things I did when he left was go see a flick.

It was a big disappointment. The movie was good but the screen wasn’t that big and the image wasn’t so great.  I have a 46″ HDTV in my bedroom and I sit in a comfortable easy chair. Why would I pay so much money to squeeze into a seat and watch something that would be clearer and more comfortable at home?

The answer? I wouldn’t.

But it seems that some theater owners have done what the music business hasn’t. They made going to the movies a treat.

Yesterday Julie and I went to see “The Heat”.

When we walked into the theater I almost fainted. The rows were about 6 feet apart and each seat was a big velvet lounge chair. We watched the movie with our feet up and our seats back.

BTW the movie was hysterical and if it hadn’t been for the ass wipe sitting next to Julie who sang along with the theme song and explained what was happening on the screen to his half wit girlfriend it would have been perfect.

Of course there is also the 8 dollar box of candy but that’s nothing that anyone with a bra two sizes bigger than they wear and a hand full of peanut m & m’s can’t get around.

Remember when I said I was getting a new personality? Well I think I did.

Whenever anyone says “Do you want to….”,  my immediate answer is no.  I always need to plan things in advance.

But twice this weekend I went to Brooklyn on a dime. And the earth went right on spinning.

There’s no telling what adventures are in store for me now that I’m “devil may care”.

Here’s some good news. Miss Liz and Rupert are coming home next week.

Last night David said he would like to take Lizzie out of town while she’s here and leave Rupert with me.

“You can go anyplace you want but you’re taking Rupert with you.” I had just told him how footloose and fancy free I’ve become so I can’t be tied down in any way.

Here’s something that will make you really hate David. He never mentions Rupert without using the term “yappy little weasel”.

“Oh we aren’t taking him. If you won’t mind him we’ll put the yappy little weasel in a kennel”

“Go ahead”

He started to laugh. “I’m calling your bluff.  I know you’d never let him go to a kennel”

He’s right.  Stephanie used to say that she just asked me if I would mind her dog, Willa, as a courtesy  because if I said no she could just drop her off with my doorman and not only would I mind Willa, I would be good to her and I wouldn’t even hate Steph for more than a few days.

But that has nothing to do with whether or not I will mind Rupie or if David and Liz are going away while she’s in town.

Do you know the expression “Man plans, God laughs”?

Well David plans, Liz laughs.

I have decided to have a different personality.

Here’s what writing down everything that happens in your life does to you. It makes you see how stupid you are.

I’ve been talking about all this pension stuff and the emails going back and forth. Even though each email is costing me money because my lawyer charges me, I really want it  finished so I’m accepting it.

I also felt that maybe the worst of it was over with dave. I was less angry  and even feeling sorry for him.  I actually spent time talking to my accountant and lawyer in an effort to save him from serious financial penalties. I was thinking that maybe in some distant future we could be friendly if not friends.

Two things happened yesterday that made me realize the impossibility of that..

Number one, dave was snotty to me and number two, at around 2 in the afternoon (2  in the morning to him) he said he had to go to bed and he’d get back to us in the morning.

I immediately pictured him getting into bed with this stranger and I felt a pang. I wonder if he told her to “scoot over” to make room for him like he did to me when he came to bed late.

I am clearly not over this. I forget sometimes that I’m mad so I slip back into my old persona but the new me is not going to let that happen any more.

I’m not going to say that I will stay mad, that would only hurt me. I will just have no contact with or about dave that isn’t necessary to my life.

I won’t even write about him unless he’s arrested for something interesting like murder or drunk and disorderly or some kind of cross dressing offense.

Wait, I can’t totally eliminate using him to make a point in a story so I guess I will still write about him. I just won’t talk to him or look at him or think about him.

I”m going to think exclusively about puppies.

Anything to rid my mind of the image of the video of that big fat yellow snake that can open doors and slam it’s body into the room to the words of  “good job” from it’s owner.

And I don’t want to think about dave either.

I was going to write a blog called  “Ouchy Ouchy Ouch Ouch” but something better came along.

I’ve mentioned that dave and I have had some problem dividing our pension.  There have been emails flying back and forth between my lawyer, our accountant and the pension guy with little satisfaction.

While I was in the hospital yesterday waiting for the doctor to gouge a hole in my eye I received an email from dave referring to the pension guy saying :

Mattie,
Fuck this guy. If he cannot divide our pension asap, can we get someone else?

I told him I’d look into it tomorrow.

This morning I got another email from dave saying:

Dear Jim;
Please forgive the unprofessional, inappropriate and insulting language in my last email.
I had had a little bit too much Japanese sake, and I was frustrated about what I perceived to be the slow pace of the QDRO proceedings.
I am quite aware that you are a professional, and are taking care of this issue as quickly as is possible.
Please accept my sincere apology.
David Matthews

I looked back at the original email and saw that dave had sent his first note to everyone and only discovered that when one of those automatic emails came saying that the pension guy, Jim, would be out of the office but would answer the email on his return. I can only imagine how he felt.

I have to admit that I took pity on him and sent a letter to all saying:

Am I to gather from this that Dave’s  last email went to everyone ?
Please forgive him. He’s got some fidelity issues but he’s not a bad person.

Thanks, Mattie

It was so nice to see that for once, dave was the one with the willies.

When my father died  we found the following letter on his desk.

I’m writing this as the closing comments after I finish as much of my autobiography as I’ll be able to.

You’ve all grown up (when I say you, I mean Iris, Phyllis, Marcia and Mattie) to be the greatest things that could happen to anyone.  I am so proud of all of you that I burst with happiness.

And your children, my grandchildren, Barry, Randy, Stephanie, Laura, Eric, Craig, Jon, Jimmy, Brian, Matthew and Julie – I think that’s all of you, have all become people that anyone would be happy to claim as theirs.

And then there’s Bernie Snyder, Jim Grigor, Paul Klam and Dave Matthews.  My hat’s off to you for being the people you are. I’m also amazed that you have accepted not only the virtues they inherited from their mother, together with the minimal faults that they might have acquired along the way, but  also the idea that they are princesses as they’re all descended from royalty on their mother’s side.

Now the new crop is growing. The great grandchildren, at this point I count 24 with one on the way, who knows what the future will bring. However from what I have seen so far I don’t think they’ll be any problem.

As far as I’m concerned, all I want is to be able to continue these relationships from here on in.

I love you all.

This was the kind of thing my dad did. He not only took care of us when he was alive, he made sure he gave us some peace when he left us.

There have been some changes in the make up of the family since he died  but I’m glad that he saw us the way we were in 1997.

Happy Father’s Day Daddy. We love you too.

I got an email from David this morning saying that he almost went to the hospital during the night because he was in so much pain.

I immediately called him and he told me to bring my coffee over and he’d tell me all about it.

This is not unusual. Most Saturday or Sunday mornings Liz, David and I have coffee together. When Lizzie isn’t here it’s usually just me and him.

When he described the night it was clear that he had passed a kidney stone and when that was over he was fine so we just chatted.

I mentioned that I was feeling sorry for dave because there were some pension problems that might result in tax penalties for him and I could tell that he’s really upset by it all. I said that I was trying to help him by calling people and asking them what he should do to minimize it.

“Why are you doing that? Let him figure it out himself.”

“I don’t want to kick him when he’s down.”

“Are you nuts? How is he down? He’s in Japan getting his dick sucked.  Poor dave, yeah he’s down”.

I didn’t want to talk about this any more so I changed the subject. Besides how do you explain to a chimp the color blue or that after 40 years dave being scared still touches me.

“I hope you didn’t take any aspirin last night. You were only supposed to take Tylenol.

“That was ‘before’ the procedure”.

“No it wasn’t. The guy specifically said that you weren’t to take any aspirin products for at least 48 hours.” I had to go and get the instructions that they gave him when they released him to prove it to him.

You could have knocked him over with a feather when he read them over.

I wasn’t a bit surprised that he didn’t remember any of it.

The whole time the male nurse was giving him instructions he was looking at his phone. He even started speaking to a passing woman while the guy was going over everything.

I actually had to yell at him to pay attention. “David the man is speaking to you. This is important.”

He pretended to listen then but he clearly didn’t because his reaction when he read over the instructions today showed it was all new to him.

“No alcohol for 24 hours? Glad I didn’t know that.”

David didn’t die. It’s possible he made a few enemies in the place just by being himself, but he didn’t die.

The procedure he went through was to zap kidney stones.

For you ladies and men with perfect kidneys out there, you may be as surprised as I was to hear that the doctor told him that he has to filter his sissy for the next week or two.

Since I try to expand my knowledge in every field  I innocently asked him if I could see one of his kidney stones if and when he pees one out.

He went nuts.

Rather than look at this simple request as evidence of my ongoing thirst for knowledge he treated me like some kind of pervert.

He just went on an on about it. He just wouldn’t stop. I didn’t want to watch him pee.  Jeeeez, what a hot head.

The rest of my day didn’t go so well either.

Divorce after a long marriage isn’t a one time blow. Every new thing that happens stings a bit until it doesn’t and then the next new thing comes along.

Yesterday dave wrote an email where he referred to me as his ex-wife.

It wasn’t a huge deal. Just another little bite.

But then I watched a video of a baby elephant going into the ocean for the first time and I was all happy again.

David is having a “procedure” this morning .

As he told his son, Graham, he needs a responsible adult to pick him up afterwards so he asked me. Graham’s response, “Close enough”.

He was not supposed to eat anything after midnight and from 3 o’clock on only clear liquids.

At around 8 last night he called me and said that since he’d come to the conclusion that white wine is a clear liquid maybe I’d like to join him for a cocktail.

I knew he must be nervous because he rarely seeks out my company that late unless he needs his cable or his computer fixed.

We sat out on his terrace sipping wine and I let him ramble on about which talk show host he wants to set on fire  (Bill Maher) and how stupid I am because I didn’t know that Ireland and Northern Ireland are two different places (Go figure) until he pointedly looked at his watch and then the door a few times so I knew he had calmed down enough to be rude and I went home.

I’m going to read Twitter now and see what’s doing in Hollywood via TMZ, EW.com and Celebitchy and then I’ll get dressed and go and pick him up.

I just wrote “If he pulls through I’ll write tomorrow. If not, the day after.” but I erased it (kinda) because it made me scared.

In an effort to earn money I submitted 3 pieces to a well known magazine.

Since you all know how clever I think I am you won’t be surprised to learn that as soon as I sent my stuff in I put a Chevy Nova and a pair of grey slacks on lay away.

You can imagine my surprise when they rejected my entries.

At first I was pretty sad.

But not one to give up easily, I realized that I must regroup.

I reasoned that even though that particular magazine didn’t appreciate my writing I wouldn’t let it get me down.

After all 271 twitter followers can’t be wrong.

My next plan is to bombard every magazine that strikes my fancy with my stuff. If any particular periodical hasn’t  published anything similar to what I write maybe some free thinker will want to think “outside the envelope” and expand their readership to include plucky losers .  I won’t leave any stone unturned.

Does anyone know someone at “Titanic Tits”?

Last night I had a dream that I was in the crowd yelling at Hillary Clinton for doing a commercial for some kind of anti aging cream.

I think that’s because my recent interest in politics, i.e. Anthony Wiener and wiretapping Americans, has brought my smart side to the forefront.

I say this even  though my nephew, who thinks because he’s a doctor and went to Cornell, saw fit to correct my usage of the word “effect” as opposed to “affect”.

I’m a forgiving person so I won’t mention that in the seventh grade he failed his bicycle test and had to walk to school while his friends could ride.

And even if he corrects me again I won’t mention the fact that when he was two he was so stupid that when I put a half slip on my head he no longer recognized me and thought I was the story princess.

Back to how smart I’m getting.

I’m a little relieved that I’ve become a political animal because up to now my attention was mostly taken up with all of the “Housewife” drama and whether Kanye will appear on next season’s Kardashian show etc.

I was starting to think that I’m vapid.

Now that I see that that couldn’t be further from the truth I am going to begin planning my future even though I, like Dudley Do-right’s girlfriend, Nell, for the present have one good eye.

I just have to figure out a way to make money.

Maybe I’ll run for Mayor.

I could take the Obama path and ask each of my Twitter followers to send in one dollar.

I’m sure a campaign chest of $271 would be enough to get my name out there.

And if not, I could buy myself a lovely sweater.