Did you say “Furnace Filter”?

Posted on April 14, 2012 by winesoakedramblings - The Blog of Vickie van Dyke

Sometimes I wish I lived in a hotel room.  You know, nothing to worry about, nothing to be responsible for. If something breaks down, just call the front desk and it all gets magically taken care of.

Of course for me it would have to be a hotel suite with a full kitchen because I love to cook.  And a baby grand of course just in case I was overcome with an urge to tickle the ivories and warble a tune.  But that’s all I’d need – truly.

It turns out, however, that I live in a house.  A house I bought with my ex-beau.  An old fixer-upper which has now been fixed up marvellously but you know what?  The old part remains.  This is my first time living in a century home, single or coupled.  And I’m pretty sure that with old, things just might break down far more often than with new.  This seems to be the case with me so I reckon it’ll be true for other old things.  I’m a little worried.

See, it looks like I’m going to win the house in the great dissolution of our relationship.  At the very least I’m going to win the living in the house and the maintenance of the house and the upkeep of the house and all of those other house responsibilities while I wait for the house to sell.  This may be awhile. I live in a small town and the market is pretty soft right now.

The big problem here is I have no idea how to change a furnace filter.  I’m pretty sure that up until five years ago I didn’t even know a furnace had a filter.  I probably didn’t even know what a furnace looked like.  Isn’t that a guy thing? So now I’m going to have to learn not only how to change a furnace filter but when to change a furnace filter.  And here’s the real kicker – the furnace is, as it turns out, in the basement.  In the basement of this old house.  And I’m not really a big fan of going in the basement.  I mean I will, to file boxes of Christmas decorations or fetch an old photo album, but who the heck knows what is lurking in the old basement of this old house?

Which brings us to my arch enemies.  Mice.  I have a ridiculously juvenile, stupid-girlie aversion to Mickey and his pals.  Especially when they opt to cohabitate with me.  In my old house.  The worst part is I can’t set a trap because who is going to empty it upon success?  Not I, guaranteed.  At my old (new) house, my dog once brought in a dead rodent to show off to mama and proudly dumped its slobbered-upon carcass on my kitchen floor.  I screamed very loudly for a very long time, all the while attempting to sweep the beast’s body back outside. Yet even while I was sweeping and screaming, there was a little voice inside my head whispering “Vickie, you are an idiot.”

Yep.

My musophobia (really, that’s a word. I just looked it up) is deep-rooted.  In my childhood at the cottage we heard them running the rafters at night. I was always terrified one would land on my head.  Ah yes, childhood terrors.  Seriously, what are the odds?

Well … years ago, my ex-hubby and I built a house from scratch, and since he was doing a lot of the work himself (bless his handy heart) there was a “hole” in our ensuite wall for quite some time.  A hole which lead to the great outdoors.  Or more succinctly, invited the great outdoors in.  I  swore I could hear those critters dancing up a storm in the tub every night.

But hubs said I was nuts.  Yes, maybe, and that can be up for discussion in another blog.  Suffice to say here, one early morning I awoke to a somewhat wet and furry  greeting and assumed it was my dog, nosing me awake.   Nope.  It was a mouse.  On my FACE!

So … here I sit in my old house with no guy around to check traps and protect me from terror and you expect me to go into the dungeon to change the furnace filter?

Then there’s the yard.  It’s kind of big, which is great for my dog but he hasn’t quite mastered the lawnmower yet.  Am I supposed to push that damn thing around once a week, all summer long?  And come winter, shovel the snow out of the 4-car driveway?  Me with my poor compressed neck discs and aching back?  Are you feeling my pain yet?

We still haven’t discussed the hot tub. I do love this luxurious vessel of tranquility but I have no clue how to shock it or bleach it or season it or even empty it for that matter. Heck, I was doing all the cooking and dishwashing and food-shopping and laundry and stuff like that. I figured the least he could do was cut the grass, shovel the snow and shock the damn hot tub.

But now he ain’t here.  And I am, and no doubt will be for awhile, responsible adult that I am (trying to be).  So I will have to learn how to change the furnace filter, mow the grass (yes I will try) and if I’m still here when the snow falls, I will hire someone to clear the driveway. I will learn about the hot tub and deal with it, indeed I will learn about this old house and deal with whatever it offers up as best I can.

I am woman.  I am strong.  Hear me roar.

But I’m going to tell you right here, right now, that if Mickey and his pals show up, dead or alive, there will be no roar.  There will be a lot of screaming in this old house.  Because yes, I am still an idiot.

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When exactly does love end?

Posted on April 10, 2012 by winesoakedramblings - The Blog of Vickie van Dyke

It’s been exactly two weeks and four days since we broke up.  No, I’m not counting hours and minutes too.  I actually had to stop and access my fingers to come with these numbers.  Because also no, I am not wallowing in misery and my own snotty tears on the bathroom floor, crushed with heartbreak.  I am mentioning this timeline as a statement of fact simply because time figures prominently in what I am about to ask:

When does love actually end?

I mean there you are, rolling along merrily (and then too often not so merrily) for well over two years, professing love on a pretty much daily basis. The L-word shows up in texts, emails, phone calls and face to face encounters.  It exists because maybe three weeks into the relationship, on a romance-drenched (and probably horny) evening, the magic words were spoken.  It has existed ever since.  Honest, there has never been one single moment where one or the other fessed up and said “Know what, Putz? I don’t love you anymore.”

Nope.  It’s been hovering around the entire time.  Love, love love … lots of lovely love.

And then we break up.  We decide it just isn’t working.  We are too different, we want different things, we make different choices and we differ far too often.  It just isn’t working.  And so we break up quietly, gently, even sealing the deal with a final hug.

Two weeks pass  and I finally call, realizing that not only do we have business to attend to, but it’s weird.  It’s just plain weird that we haven’t said one word to each other in two weeks.  It’s not like there were bullets flying as he backed out of the driveway.  It’s not like we screamed and yelled and called each other ugly names.  I can appreciate that a certain amount of distance is necessary (indeed prudent) off the bat, just to digest and process.  I wasn’t, however, thinking fourteen days …

And so I ask him.  Why so long?

A bitter chortle escapes his lips as he replies “Because we broke up!”

Yes, I remember.

But, continue I cautiously, I love you.  I plan on always loving you. I plan to treat you lovingly for the rest of my days.

There is a pause.  And so I think.

Just because it isn’t working doesn’t mean the love has ended.  It just means that romantic love doesn’t seem to be our destiny.  Passionate, sexy, till-the-end-of-time love (and all that comes with it) is apparently not what we do best – with each other.  Yet love remains.

Finally he says “I don’t know if I would call it love, but I do care about you.”

Ta-da!

There you have it, folks – the death of love.  Love has morphed to care.  Next it’ll be Yeah, you’re okay and finally What was your name again?

Perhaps I doth exaggerate some (been known to happen) but my question (once again) is – when did his love actually end?  Was it something that evaporated over weeks and months?  And if so, during that time was he kinda fibbing when he said I love you?  When we shared a blissfully romantic moonlit sleigh-ride no less than a month before we parted company, were all those love words a lie?  Or did his love magically – no wait, magically is the wrong word, does it have an opposite? – disintegrate at the exact moment that we decided it wasn’t working?  Did he walk out the door, hop into his truck and drive off into the night thinking “Well thank goodness I don’t love her anymore?”  Is that when it ended for him?

Or maybe it breathed its last hurrah in the ensuing days?  Those days of silence; those incommunicado weeks.  Maybe that’s when love turned to caring.  Maybe when you don’t profess love regularly, you just stop feeling it?

I have no idea.  I will never understand the male brain.  Heck, I have a hard enough time understanding my own.  All I know is for me, real love does not vanish.  It changes, it reconfigures, it redefines itself to the circumstance.  It does not disappear.

I have never stopped loving my ex-husband, not for a moment.  I still feel huge love for past beaus – even the one who hurt me profoundly.  Love is not a commodity in short supply in these here parts.  Or should that be in this here heart?  I have an endless fountain of love at my disposal and I have every intention of sharing it freely.

Honestly, I think I would worry more if I didn’t keep on loving.  What would that say about me and my choices?

However, I guess when you break up you lose your vote.  I no longer get to vote on his life or his feelings, nor does he on mine.  We have voluntarily removed ourselves from the electorate.

In my own little kingdom though, where I shall forever be queen, I shall always vote for love.

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Limbo … or lazy (how long should I wait)?

Posted on April 6, 2012 by winesoakedramblings - The Blog of Vickie van Dyke

Who would ever suspect, how quickly we could disconnect.

Every now and then I write a lyric.  Sometimes that lyric never finds its home in a song; it’s just a lonely lyric.  If you’re a songwriter, please feel free to steal it.  Right now it’s not really sitting happily in my heart.

So yeah, we broke up.  Exactly two weeks ago.  After almost two and a half years of LOVE (which seems somewhat monumental to me for some reason) we decided it wasn’t working (mostly because it wasn’t).  And since that time we’ve had only one brief email exchange.  He wished me happy birthday.  I said thanks.

Okay, it wasn’t that cold.  Actually his was very sweet and mine was very sad.  My point is that’s been it – that’s been our only communication in two weeks.

How does that happen?  How do you instantly go from having someone in your life every single day to nothing, nada, zippo, complete silence?  Even when my ex-husband and I split up we talked every day.  Heck, we saw each other every day and usually wept a few gallons of tears over wine and beer.  So how exactly do you go from an undramatic, dare I say loving farewell to all this silence?

I dunno.  I’ve never exactly been the silent type so it sure as hell beats me.

The funny (not really) thing here is that I’ve been okay with this quiet.  I reckoned it was a good thing.  A good thing for valid reasons.  A chance to let the dust settle and the reality sink in.  The reality that it wasn’t working, most likely can never work and separate paths is the only answer.

Patience, thought I.  I am a facilitator through and through and I am desperately trying to alter my modus operandi.  No, really.

Last summer, after seven years of separation and 6.8 years of him loving someone else, my ex and I decided we should probably get a divorce.  I agreed to look into it.  And then I stopped.  I stopped and thought No honey, you do it.  I was responsible for our union’s demise; you take responsibility for its ultimate dissolution.   And he did.  It only took him six months but he finally got her done.

So now, think I in my current state of solitude, perhaps I need do nothing?  Perhaps I can just ride this gentle wave of limbo until he decides to do something.  I mean, it kind of works in my favour. We own our home together and as far as I know he’s still paying his half of the mortgage.  He’s just not living here (he always kept a place in the city).  So what’s not to like?

Limbo.  Limbo is not to like.  And my question tonight is – when does patience turn into limbo?  When are you no longer being all Zen and you’re just spinning your wheels … in lazy- limbo land?

Again, I dunno.  What I do know is that forward motion is only facilitated (there’s that damn word again) by backward closure.  Sometimes ya just gotta tie up some loose ends in order to move-the-fuck-on.

Even my ex-hubby got this. We signed off on a separation agreement about 37 minutes after we split.  My lawyer counseled This is crazy – you’re giving away the farm (and future hourly rates)!  And I responded I don’t care.  This sure as shootin’ ain’t about the money.

But it kinda was.  Because as ex-hubs so poetically put it – she needs money and I need closure. 

So I’m sort of thinking on this Good-yet-Lonely Friday evening that I probably need some closure too.  I may not need to know where I’m going (no clue, thank you very much) but I probably need to know if my current home factors into the equation or if I’m moving again.

And then of course there is that other nagging doubt.  You know, the one that suggests that maybe we’re not really done?  Maybe all this silence is our way of working our way back to one another.

Ya think?

I’m not holding my breath but I will also state here and now the one solid truth that I live by.  As a matter of fact, it is the only truth I live by:  Never say never and never say forever.

So … what do I do?  Do I make that first call?  Or do I hang on till after this long week-end, hoping that he might decide there is stuff here he needs and just show up?  Because that’s the other thing.  This house is full of his stuff.  Clothes. Shoes. Weights. Motorcycle helmets. Pool tables (just one).  I can’t even look in the garage.  Motorcycle, snowboard, kayak, tools, boy stuff.  His boy stuff.

I’m at a loss.  Mostly because I am tired of being the facilitator and much like with my ex-husband, I’m more than ready for the guy to take the wheel.  Man-up, as we say (and holy cow, do guys ever hate that!).

And then there’s that ever-present “what if?”.  What if a few more days/weeks/months will provide us with clarity and increased love and we somehow find our way back together?  And WHAT IF me jumping the gun totally screws that up?  Because as it turns out my impatience has been known to screw up a thing or two.

Stay tuned …

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When long week-ends are just too long …

Posted on April 5, 2012 by winesoakedramblings - The Blog of Vickie van Dyke

Long week-ends are a source of joy. Whether you’re religious or not, an extra day of rest/fun/different is much anticipated and most often greatly enjoyed.  Family, friends, festivities or just sleeping in – long week-ends are a source of joy.

Except when you’re newly single.  When you’re newly single they’re kind of a mixed bag of what-now? And what-the-fuck?

It’s Good Thursday evening, which by all rights should be like a Friday evening except … my driveway is decidedly one vehicle shy of a party.  Tomorrow is Good Friday, a day that might have in past years seen egg-colouring with my son, a matinee in the den and perhaps a friend or two for dinner.  Except my son and I now live two hours apart, he’s too old to colour eggs  and I live in a new town (enough said).  Saturday would just be, well, regular Saturday fun and yes, thankfully, I’ve been invited to an afternoon social in my new town.  And then it’s Easter Sunday … with baskets of goodies, egg hunts, ham with family and chocolate for dessert.

Just not for me.

I mean, I could have ham and chocolate with my sister and my mother a 2-hour drive away but honestly, I’m pretty sure I would feel pathetic.  I’ve done this solo-holiday-tango too many times to believe being a smiley good sport can end well.  With my son at his Dad’s and me, the newly spinstered (again) fifth wheel  putting on a fake happy face, ham and chocolate have suddenly lost their appeal.  I love my mom and my sis but I just saw them last week for my birthday and frankly that’s enough familial tears for one month.

So what’s a girl to do?

Most days, I’m pretty cool.  Renewed spinsterhood was my idea and so, although lonely, I’m not wallowing in broken-heartedness.  There’s always an errand to run, a road trip to make, yoga to share, wine to pour.

Except tomorrow – Good Friday – there is nothing but big fat nothing.  I’ll tell you, the weirdest feeling in the world is looking forward to a day of big fat nothing.  The kicker here is that most people covet these days, they dream of them, they long for them.

But for me they are quite simply – nothing, magnified.  And I’ve got plenty of nothing already, thanks for asking.

However … without many other options,  I have decided to embrace nothing tomorrow, whatever that means.  It might suck, it might be splendid, I might sleep all day or I might start drinking and writing before lunchtime.  On Saturday I shall briefly socialize and then on Sunday I shall damn the tradition torpedoes and eat a Spanish feast with friends in Toronto.  My guess is we will drink cauldrons of wine, say Gracias too many times, I might sing an acapella version of Besame Mucho just for kicks and I will break with all tradition and spend Easter Sunday doing something I’ve never done before.

Because as they say – if you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.

I love my son, I love my family, I love ham and chocolate and I even love my ex-love.  There will be other opportunities (I hope) to share love with them all.  But on this long week-end I have decided it would be wisest to love myself.  Love inward, so that outward love will again be possible. So I’m gonna do exactly what I wanna do. Given the options.

It’s Good Thursday evening and my driveway is one vehicle shy of a party.  This long week-end may well be the longest on record.  I’m already counting minutes.

That’s okay.  You never know what good a Good Friday could bring.  Maybe it’ll be Great Friday?

Bring it on, bunny.

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Which way ya going, Vickie …

Posted on April 4, 2012 by winesoakedramblings - The Blog of Vickie van Dyke

“Don’t look back. You’re not going that way.”

I love this quote.  Simple and succinct.

And yet, man oh man, do we ever spend a lot of time looking back.  Especially when we are recently single.

Why?

Why do we feel the need to rehash old mistakes (when we’ve probably just made a huge pile of new ones) but more importantly, why do we feel that crazy pull of “what if?” or “maybe this time?”  You know, that niggling hope that an old love just might rekindle magically and save us both the bother of starting from scratch … yet again.  Because of course we’re old now, and a little tired, especially if you’ve done the dating-dance as many times as I have.

My problem (or perk, depending how you look at it) is that I tend, or at least try, to stay “friends” with my ex-beaus.  Some of them were flings, some were brief interludes, some never even truly materialized and some were full-fuelled affairs.  The commonality here is that I’m still in touch with them all.

So, think I in my winesoaked state, what if one of those past paramours is finally ready for me?  What if last time it was just wrong place, wrong time and now, a few hundred gallons of water under the dating bridge later, our right time has arrived?  What if?

Well let’s see.

M and I have stayed in touch – sporadically – but he is delighted to hear from me, excited to hear about my new life and as it turns out now involved in an on-and-off-again 3 year romance.  He and I are also entirely different religions, mine being highly personal and his being highly Jewish.  Combine his relationship status with that pesky old religion thing and methinks the chance of us ever being anything more than “friends for life” (his term) is slim to anorexic.

Then there’s J, who was actually a date or two before M.  J was quite the wild intellectual ride, a whirl of a wind which was facilitated on the other side of the country (where he lives).  Combine geography with my latent realization that he was a stepping stone and I have long since stepped, and I haven’t even contacted him.  I will, don’t get me wrong.  I’ll reach out as a friend for sure.  But that love boat sailed years ago … and hit a rock.

What about S?  Also on the other side of the country and one of those flings that fizzled before it ever flourished.  Except for when we saw each other (as friends) years later (when I was involved) and the sparks were flying like the marshmallows were already skewered.  Hmm, I ponder.  Maybe this is our time?

Notsomuch.  S now has a new goddess by his side, a writer with such lyrical wisdom and intelligent beauty I wish I was a lesbian because damnit I’d want to be with her!  So much for S.

Then there’s D who was a short-lived yet all-consuming dalliance.  Problem was I was the only one who was all-consumed.  He was still fishing.  Yet we stayed in touch, laughed on line, promised drinks on patios and now … well, he has apparently reunited with one of his post-me tunas.

Or is she just for the halibut?

I am so very, very  sorry.

But I do know that any future interaction with this particular fisherman can only flounder.

(sorry again)

This brings us to G.  The one, the only G, who I truly believed was the love of my life.  So much so that I turned my life inside-out and upside-down to actually make a life with him.  Except that wasn’t quite enough so he dumped my ass four times and finally left my life for good.

What are the chances of us ever forging something long-and-life lasting?  Trust has been eradicated.  Time has eroded ardour and affection.  We are a barren wasteland of nothing, he and I, and most probably destined to remain so.

Where could we possibly go?

Nowhere.

Probably.

Which is why looking back is dumb.  Lazy and dumb.  You want to bet all your coins on nowhere, probably?

I believe in love.  And I believe in love for me.  Yes, ME!  Even at my advanced age I believe in love for me.

My past is chock-filled (apparently) with great guys.  They all brought great quantities of AMAZING STUFF to my table.  I am incredibly grateful for every morsel.  It was a damn fucking smorgasbord.

But now I crave just one perfect repast.  One that will delight me until the day I die.

And so … my life is all about looking forward.  Because that is where I am going.

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when love isn’t really … love.

Posted on April 2, 2012 by winesoakedramblings - The Blog of Vickie van Dyke

When is love truly love and when is it just – want?  Passion?  Laziness?   Or maybe … just the lonely talking?

How many times have you heard someone say “But I love him!”?

What’s with the “but” anyway?  Shouldn’t it just be “I love him.”  Period.  The “but” seems to suggest that he can do all kinds of dastardly deeds and although our feckless heroine (or hero) acknowledges his (or her) incompatibility , she loves him regardless.

Case in point – my friend R.  He tells me that he loves L with every fibre of his being.  With every millimetre of his soul.  The way she makes him feel is unlike anything he has ever known before.  Seriously, these are his exact words, in-touch-with-his-inner-poet my lovely he-man friend R is.  And yet he and L are no longer together. They break up all the time but this time it looks like it might actually stick (insert big fat maybe here).  Because they can’t go two weeks without fighting.  Without her giving him the silent treatment.  Without ultimatums and/or threats.  And he is tired.  Literally.

But he still loves her, says R with admirable (or is that pathetic?) and enthusiastic  conviction.

Bullshit, say I (tenderly).

You covet her.  You desire her.  Something in all this maelstrom totally turns you on, buddy.  This “want her/don’t want her/have her/can’t have her” ridiculously messed-up stew makes you crazy … with desire.  With fire.  With desire on fire.

Yeah, yeah,  I know you two have experienced monumentally phenomenal moments.  Moments when Niagara Falls flowed backwards and the sun circumvented the moon.

Whatever.

That ain’t love either.  That’s drugs.  Pheromones or endorphins or maybe too much wine.  Still, drug-induced euphoria does not equate love.  It equates … drug-induced euphoria.

So darling R – please don’t tell me that you love her.  In my definition (born of endless experience and countless heartaches) love is quiet.  Love is understanding, fluid, responsive, selfless, communicative and … well … loving.  Love and loving are (or should be) the same thing.  And your affair with L is not loving.

So here sit I, much like R, recently love-less.  Again.

And damn, I’m going to tell you it’s lonely being loveless.  And I’ll also going to tell you the lonely is talking loud and clear on this sun-drenched April Monday evening.  Summer is just around the bend.  You can smell it, you can taste it, you can almost touch it with your tongue.  And summers are so much better spent in love, no?

Yep.  I’ve had enough single ones to know they are better spent in love.

Add to my newfound singlehood  the fact that I am old(ish) and if mirrors don’t lie, may never be worthy of wanton, unbridled, unwrinkled love ever again, at least in this lifetime.  Fuck.

Okay, I’m a teensy bit dramatic but maybe you know how those “why the hell did I ever by a magnifying mirror?” moments go?

Regardless,  my winesoaked brain, coupled with the lonely talking, coupled with the seductive almost-summer dance the daffodils are doing outside (is that too many couples?) is playing funny tricks.

“But I love him”, say I, to no one but the dog (and even he seems bored).  “But he loves me.”

Yeah.  Kinda.  Except for all those times when we were not  quiet, understanding, fluid, selfless, communicative and … well … loving.

Love is a verb.  It requires that we “do” love.  We must act love.  Live love.  Love demands that we breathe it into every conversation, every argument, every full-blown fight, every discussion.  Love demands that we not just say it or feel it.  Love demands that we “be” it.

R – real love does not break up every two weeks.  Nor does it want to.  Real love wants to … love.

As for me, well, the winesoaked ramblings have just begun …

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