BRUH.

Just now, from the kitchen:

Middle (almost exploding): I have a tan! [pause] From the sun!

Youngest laughed.

Me (from the dining room): That's kind of how it works.

The Fries, by the very nature of their skin tone, have always tanned better than I do (um, don't), but Middle admittedly has the palest skin of the three.

Middle comes into the dining room and shows me her thumb, starkly pale above the second knuckle and brown all around.

Me: That's a tan, all right.

Middle: I can't believe I got a tan. Bruh.

Me: Maybe it's just dirt.

Middle: I can't rub it off! [rubs furiously at her skin] I can't rub it off!

Me: What were you wearing?

Middle: Bruh. Bruh! It's not coming off!

Me: A ring?

Middle: A band-aid. BRUH!

I laughed.

She ran back into the kitchen, howling at her twin.

Annnnnnnd...scene.

We're Having a Grape Time Tonight

So I'm sitting here in the dining room, trying to concentrate. 

There's a whoop from the kitchen, and suddenly Youngest says, "It looks like I don't have a lip."

This is, in my world, what one might call A Clue.

I also suspect that dinner might be done, so I get up and gimp into the kitchen.

Youngest is sporting a cloth bandaid over her lip. It does indeed look like her skin goes straight to her upper lip without stopping. More than a little weird, if you ask me.

Knowing I'm violating Rule #2 but feeling I need to, I asked, "Why do you have a bandaid on your lip?"

Middle answered. "Youngest had her mouth on my knuckles, and so I went to bump her with my fist, like this"--here she mimicked a gentle punch, if you can call it that--"but I really went like this"--she gestured a nice uppercut--"and I split her lip. I feel so bad!"

I avoided the question of why Youngest was apparently kissing her twin's fist and swiveled my head to look at her instead.

"I'm fine," she insisted, touching the bandaid centered neatly on her lip.

Oldest is trying to muffle her giggles.

Middle fetched some grapes from the fridge, which were quite tasty and had a pleasing crunch, as she then told us. "Youngest, you have to try one of these."

Youngest balked. "I don't like those."

We are a house divided when it comes to grapes: we all love seedless, but Youngest and I love green grapes, while Oldest and Middle will only eat the red ones. Middle was brandishing red grapes.

Middle selected a fat red grape and pushed it towards her twin's mouth. Youngest reared back. 

"No, they're really good. Try it!" Middle switched out the next grape she picked, which was smaller, for the monster she was trying to force on Youngest. Youngest gamely let her twin pop the grape into her mouth...but then couldn't close her mouth to chew without it putting pressure on the split in her lip.

Now everyone's laughing as Youngest tries to eat the grape without having to hold her lip in the middle.

Middle grinned at me. "You might as well have had boys!"

New Beginnings

May 22, 2024

I sat in the conference room of Lady Tiger's office. Ironically, it was the one on the opposite side of the building from where I'd been on my first visit to her office.

I felt a lot of the same emotions, and tears threatened. I blinked them back.

This time, I was here to sign documents. Five of copies of the same thing, to be precise: the Marital Settlement Agreement. It was finally back in Lady Tiger's hands after more than a month. More than a month and a half.

Lady Tiger walked in and greeted me warmly, and we got down to business. Each of the sixteen (16!) pages of each document had to be initialed before the notary would be brought in and I would sign each of those five copies in her presence.

It felt a little like signing a mortgage. But only a little.

The visceral shock of seeing Hubby's familiar initialing and signature on the pages hit hard. I thought I'd prepared myself for it. But there it was, on these documents that would help formally end our almost-29-year marriage. Familiar and beloved, yet at the same time...written by the hand of a stranger.

Lady Tiger brought in the notary once all of the initialing was done, and I did the actual signing then. After that, the notary had me swear an oath that every mark I'd made was true and correct and not under duress.

The whole thing took less than thirty minutes.

Lady Tiger explained that she would forward the divorce decree by email as soon as she received it, that they would keep my file for five years, and if I needed any help getting the car titled in my name, or with the sale of the house, then all I had to do was ask. She said the MSA would be filed in court the next day, and it would take a week, no more than two, for the divorce to be finalized by the court. We shook hands, and I left.

May 31, 2024

I'd been monitoring my email since Tuesday, which made me plenty distracted at work. I knew nothing would come then; the holiday would have slowed things down at court, so any work that normally would have proceeded on Monday was now happening on Tuesday, and so on, but still. I checked my email far more often than I normally would have.

Wednesday, I thought I might have a shot, and it was a lather-rinse-repeat of Tuesday, but the day went by with nothing from Lady Tiger.

Thursday passed in much the same fashion. I'd told the girls when we went out to dinner that night to celebrate Family Day that I was kind of glad nothing had happened that day; it could still just be Family Day, not the anniversary of my divorce too.

Math is not my strong suit.

Mid-morning, we had a lull at the clinic, which we never say out loud for fear we'll lose it, and I checked my email again.

There was an email from Lady Tiger. Congratulations! said the subject line.

I popped open the email. 

Sure enough, there it was. The divorce was final. As of the 30th.

My provider had stopped by my desk to chat, and leaned over my shoulder to read. "That is awesome," she declared.

And yet...while I felt relieved...I couldn't seem to feel happy. Inasmuch as I'd been alone for the last three years, now I was really alone. Yes, this was what needed to happen. For that reason, I'd wanted it. But for that reason only. As the lies had come out, and the wounds to the children, I'd wanted it because they needed to be believed and protected at all costs. But never had I wanted my marriage to die. Not to the man I thought I'd married. The man I'd actually married had morphed into someone I no longer knew, and this needed to be the choice I made.

It still felt like I failed.

It still felt like I'd been robbed of the kind of 40-year love story my parents had enjoyed.

And, in one single piece of paper, it was now all over.

I felt very grieved.

Still...I'd been waiting a long time for this. The year and a half Lady Tiger had initially warned me it could take had become almost three years.

I texted the girls. The divorce is final. Rita's tonight, to celebrate?

One of the lesser delights of my life is that I am now gluten free, which means I can eat the frozen custard at Rita's that I love, but I cannot have a cone. Let me tell you, a large chocolate/vanilla twist in a dish is much smaller than one in a cone. When I say I want a large, I have expectations. What I got was not it. Should have gone to the old river-side dive place I know back home. But that's six hours from here. The girls all got their favorites, and we made a dinner of it, despite Middle's (great) idea that we all have something healthy to spite him as our celebration.

Honestly, being free and being together was the best celebration we could have.