Today is a big day in the lives of school aged children.  Picture Day.  At our house, it’s been on the calendar since the first day of school, and we have spent at least 5 car rides discussing the outfit, the hair, the wake up time, curling iron vs. flat iron, matte vs. gloss, and several other very important details.  

I think this is probably a pretty universal thing.  I remember the stress and anxiety of picture day well.  If you’re a tweenage girl who has a history of being incredibly un-photogenic*, there’s a lot riding on that 10 seconds in front of the camera.  That’s your student ID, your yearbook photo, your sheet of wallets to pass out to friends...And the camera guy does not give a rip if your photo is worthy of catapulting you into a lifetime of popularity, or relegating you to the lonely cafeteria table next to the garbage cans.  (Probably because the camera guy sees how adorable every single one of those kids is, and knows that their school photo is not their ticket to greater social standing.  But he is not a middle school aged girl who knows in her heart that she is on the cusp of becoming the next Molly Ringwald if ONLY her school photo could capture the essence of who she really is.)

*I’m strangely unphotogenic, not my gorgeous daughter who has had a camera in her face since the moment of her birth.   In fact that whole paragraph was total projection.  She wants to be Meghan Trainor.  She doesn’t even know who Molly Ringwald is.  Anyway…

Back to my original point.  Picture Day = big deal.  Now add that for my two little Catholic School sweeties, Picture Day is one of the only days during the entire school year when they can choose to wear whatever they want* to school.  

“Whatever they want” is not actually whatever they want.  There was an edict about proper “free dress” attire that came home earlier this week - no jeans, no tank tops, no athletic wear, no short skirts, no rips or tears...you get the idea.  But the point is, this is their one chance to use fashion to express exactly who they really are inside.  Underneath all the chinos, polo shirts, and plaid skorts are short humans with hopes and dreams that can only be expressed through jewel toned skinny pants and ironic t-shirts.  It’s like that Eminem song -  YOU ONLY GET ONE SHOT to let your classmates who have known you since pre-k see the real you.  True, it’s the same you they see every weekend and all summer long.  But this is a Wednesday.  In September!  Don’t blow it.

The net result of all this buildup is as follows:

1. After much panic yesterday I drove to Gordman’s at 8 p.m. and bought everyone a new outfit.  
2. Sweet Pea woke up almost 2 hours before we needed to go and began a grooming ritual worthy of a Kardashian.  She even let me help with hair, which I am rarely allowed to do.  When she was done she looked stunning.  And also 17.  Well, what the 17 year olds would look like if they didn’t all look 25.
3. I’m having chest pains.  
4. Sweet William on the other hand refused to get out of bed until the last possible second.  He took a shower, but didn’t even get his hair wet.  He was happy to wear the new shirt I bought him last night, but told me at length about the injustice of the “walk and talk” recess they would be forced to endure this morning so that they didn’t get dirty. His parting words, “Mom, wouldn’t this picture be better if I looked like I was actually having fun?  And when I have fun I usually get dirty, so….?”

   

Happy Picture Day.

~Clover

For 18 months I’ve been walking through what is easily the biggest shitstorm of my entire life, but outside of my inner circle, I haven’t talked about it much.  Lots of reasons there.  Some healthy, some probably not.  But the end result is the same.  It’s not common knowledge.  And that’s fine.  I don’t need it to be be broadcast.  But you know, it gets weird sometimes.  We’ve been separated for a year now, but people still ask me all the time how he’s doing, where he is, etc. etc.  So you end up telling people that you’re getting divorced while you’re doing things like attending back to school night or standing in line at the grocery store, which has caused at least a dozen people to burst into tears.  And then I feel personally responsible for making them feel better, which generally makes me burst into tears, and ugh.  

So yesterday I got an email from the mediator saying that the judge has signed the papers and I am officially divorced.  Mixed emotions about that for sure.  It just happened that I was having lunch with two girlfriends who have been absolute rocks for me though all of this when the email came through.  How serendipitous is that?  I am grateful for sure.  It was a momentary punch in the gut to see those words, but it didn’t take me very long to realize that it’s Ok.  I’m Ok.  I’m better than Ok, actually.  I really like my life.  And I am so proud of myself for how i have moved through this.  My kids are happy.  Our home is peaceful and secure.  I’m financially stable.  We have a lot of joy in our lives that we were intentional about creating.  I can see very clearly that my life has infinite possibilities.  So even though I’m sure I’ll always be sad about my marriage ending, it’s not my life ending.  

So I posted to Facebook saying as much.  I tried really hard to just let it be a fact.  No commentary.  No big emotional vomit.  Just, “the end of a chapter, the beginning of a new chapter.”  It was absolutely exhausting thinking about walking through another year, or month, or minute of pretending.  So I quit pretending.  I was kind of hoping that no one would comment.  What has happened instead has been incredibly humbling and overwhelming.  So many people have said kind and encouraging things.  I have a good tribe.  My life has so much joy in it.  

There were a lot of people who commented and liked the post who will remain friends with both my ex and I.  I wouldn’t want it any other way.  We are amicable.  I don’t want anyone to feel like they have to choose sides.  And I hope that the people who assign themselves more to his camp than mine understand that wishing either of us well in our journey toward healing and rebuilding isn’t disloyal.  In fact, it’s probably the most loyal thing you could do.  Our separation was sudden, and unexpected.  We’ve both been sad and angry at times.  But even so, it hasn’t been an ugly divorce. There hasn’t been a lot of blame assigned.  We worked hard at that. We both deserve to be whole and happy.  I hope there’s not anyone out there who feels otherwise.  I suppose time will tell.

~Clover

In two days I have to take a court ordered parenting class that will be the final step in my divorce.  All the papers are filed, and signed.  My understanding is that once the Judge sees that the class is complete she waves her magic wand, and *poof* my 17.75 year marriage to the man who I thought was my everything is dissolved.  

So.  Yeah.  

I’m in a pretty good place with this actually.  As good a place as anyone could be I think.  I’m downright happy with my life.  There’s a lot of beauty here, and in many ways I can tell that I am happier than I have been for a long time.  It’s really strange how those little realizations sneak up on you when you never thought of your marriage as an unhappy one.  Maybe I wasn’t unhappy, but I can see now against this new backdrop of happiness many times when I was lonely, or resentful, or just trying to hold things together when in hindsight they were very gradually falling apart.  

I can see that now.  It still takes my breath away though.  The way when it finally unravelled just how quickly my life as I knew it came apart.  I don’t want my ex-husband back.  I really don’t.  As painful as that admission sometimes is.  I don’t love him anymore.  

I don’t love him anymore. Wow. Don’t I? No, I don’t. I will always love who he was.  What we were.  Everything that we could have been.  But no, there is nothing like love between us anymore.  I’m working daily on showing mercy and kindness toward him, but even though we have been so intentional about remaining amicable for our kids, we’ve thrown too much salt on the ground for love to grow.  

Wow.  That’s sad.  I’m wrecking my makeup right now, and I know for certain that it’s not about him.  It’s that pesky mourning of the life we had planned.  The life I thought I was so carefully building for us and my children.  The part of this that I will never understand is how we walked away from that before we really even tried to salvage it.  It’s easy to say that maybe it was more important to me than it was to him, but I’m not sure that was true.  I just don’t get it, and I probably never will.  I guess part of my journey is to come to peace with that.  

Anyway...kind of melancholy.  But I suppose it would be strange if I wasn’t feeling that way.  

I'm overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude for having a life that once included a marriage so beautiful that it’s really hard to say goodbye to.   

Staying strong.

~Clover

I did this really crazy thing.  I put a hole in my face.  On purpose.  I think that this is my midlife crisis.  Maybe stranger, but definitely cheaper than a convertible,

I have wanted to pierce my nose since I was about 14 years old, but someone or some situation was always telling me no, it's not a good idea.

Nobody tells me that anymore.

It makes me feel kind of edgy and sexy.  And holyshit, if there is ANYTHING in this whole wide world that a newly divorced 42 year old woman needs to feel, it's edgy and sexy.

Flying my flag...
~Clover

Doing laundry sucks.  Not like root canal suckage, but the kind of never-ending, weekend-killing monotonous suckage that drains the soul right out of you.  So if you are a human who is old enough to cook up a box of mac and cheese or have your very own Instagram account, and you do NOT have to wash your own clothes, then you need to adopt an attitude of gratitude real quick.

Along with that, I need us to agree to the basic terms and conditions for “someone does my laundry for me” privileges, with the full understanding that non compliance will result in your personal launderer/laundress going on strike and giving zero you-know-what’s when you run out of clean underpants.  ZERO.

RULES TO LIVE BY IF YOU WANT ME TO WASH YOUR DIRTY, STINKY, SWEATY CLOTHES

1. I wash the things that are in the laundry basket.  Not in the laundry basket?  Not in the wash.
2. Check your pockets.  We all know I’m going to check your pockets too, that’s like OCD 101.  But if I find something I will know that you did not check your pockets, and you will be subject to the rant about how “one pen/lipstick/hershey’s bar/piece of gum can ruin an entire load of clothes, and you don’t have enough money to replace all this stuff.”
3. I do not stick my hand inside other people’s dirty socks in order to turn them right side out.  Inside-out socks can go into the wash, however, inside-out socks - especially the ones that are rolled into little sock doughnuts - don’t get clean.  Your input, your output.
4. When you get out of the shower, you are clean.  So there is no need for you to use a clean towel every day.  Also, I am not fooled by your complicated “body towel/hair towel” rotation system.  2 towels per week is plenty.  If you insist on using 14 towels a week, you will be washing loads of towels.  
5. LIkewise, you do not need to change your clothes 6 times per day.  But I’m willing to overlook that, if we can all agree that a shirt you wore for 5 minutes goes back into your closet, not into the laundry basket.
6. I wash the clothes, I dry the clothes, I fold and hang the clothes.  All I ask is that occasionally you help a little bit by putting the clothes away by the end of the day.  Failure to put your clean clothes away will result the rant about how “I wash the clothes, I dry the clothes, I fold and hang the clothes.  All I ask is that occasionally you help a little bit by putting the clothes away by the end of the day.”
7. DO NOT EVEN be so lazy as to take your clean clothes that have been neatly folded and placed on your bed, and put them back into the dirty clothes basket rather than put them away. Not only will laundry privileges be revoked, but this week’s dirty laundry will be piled on your bed in protest.  
8. This.  This is grounds for immediate revocation of laundry privileges.
   

   
9. If you are asked to help out by moving a load from the washer to the dryer, please do not act as though you have been asked to harvest your organs.  
10. A little “Thanks Mom” goes a long way.  

I just got back from a conference in Boston.  What an amazing city!  Boston you stole my heart.

This week was the first time in a really long time that I was relatively anonymous.  Other than my two coworkers who traveled with me, no one knew my story.  No one felt sorry for me.  It was pretty freeing.

I met this really cute guy there who flirted shamelessly with me.  I flirted back a little, because why not?  It was weird.  Really, REALLY weird.  But it was also good.  I think more than anything it was a reminder men are going to be interested in me, and one of these days I'm going to be interested right back. I really think I had convinced myself that I would never feel attractive or attracted again.  I was ready to order the Crazy Cat Lady starter pack.

(And now, because I'm still a good little Catholic School girl at heart I feel the need to make it very clear that nothing happened beyond flirting.  I'm not ready for more than that just yet.  But you know what, if I had wanted to make out under a full moon in Boston I totally could have.  So there.)

Anyway.  Thank you Boston.  I think you helped me find my mojo.

I’ve been blogging for a long time.  I started Clover ten years ago actually.  That was before blogs were cool, and also after they weren’t that cool anymore.  (I blame Facebook/Twitter and our inability to generate new ideas or read more than 140 characters without getting totally bored and overwhelmed.)

I haven’t been very prolific over the last few years - mommy blogging is definitely something that was easier to do before I went back to work full time.  I still love my little corner of the internet though. There has been a lot of life recorded at Clover, and that’s a good thing.  But my world has changed pretty dramatically over the last few months, and I needed a new space.  I’m not the same girl.  This isn’t the same life.  

I’m not going to write about what caused my separation and imminent divorce.  This project isn’t going to be about the past.  I realize that I can’t go back, so I really have no choice but to make this the best damn thing that ever happened to me.  The only way to do that is to live this dark chapter of my life with authenticity.  Easier said than done.

There’s no getting around it, my heart is broken.  Most of the time I feel like I am walking around with a hole right through me.  It is so broken that sometimes, if I am not careful, I start to believe some pretty ugly things.  I start to believe that I am not enough.  That I can never be enough.  And that I will be broken forever.  That’s the kind of crap that makes you want to start drinking vodka from a big gulp cup at 8AM, or tricks you into thinking that it’s no big deal to sit in the middle of your kitchen floor scarfing down an entire gallon of salted caramel ice cream.  

If you’ve done those kinds of things in an attempt to heal that hole right through your heart, I get it.  I really do.  I hope that if you find yourself doing those kinds of things regularly, that you will consider finding a therapist you love and trust.  (I LOVE my therapist.  LOVE HER.)  As tempting as vodka breakfast shakes sound on occasion, I am choosing to handle this heartbreak differently.  I hope, in a healthy way.  There are a ton of reasons for why I’m trying to walk through this with some grace.  The two most important are sleeping down the hall.  

So I’m going to be writing about grief, and how I’m dealing with mine.  I hope that writing about it helps me, and I think maybe it will help others too.  I know that there have been many times over the last year and a half when reading about other people’s journeys with grief have helped me get through some dark days.

That’s not all I’m going to write about.  Pretty much I’m going to write about whatever the hell I want.  But this is your heads up that it’s not always going to be funny stories about my kids, pictures of art we make, or Pinterest nails and fails.  Sometimes it’s going to be vulnerable, and sad.  I’m sure it will even be a little angry at times.  That’s life.  Real life.  And my real life is really messy right now.  

This is my comeback story.   I hope it's a good one.