Skirt | Shoes | Blouse | Sunglasses
Yesterday afternoon, I sat in my lawyer's office with a huge stack of papers in front of me. I signed, flipped. Signed again. Flipped again. I did this until I'd reached the bottom of the stack, then handed them over, and all of a sudden it hit me:
Wait. I asked her. Was that the thing that people in movies are always refusing to sign and crying about? And usually the person crying and not wanting to sign but signing anyway is played by Diane Keaton?
A few days ago I asked you guys for reader questions over on IG and...ahhh...let's just say there was a theme. Some of the questions (where are you going to live? Where's K going to live? How are you all handling the separation?) I simply can't answer now, either because I don't know what the answers are, or because they're just too sensitive to touch.
Something that's been fascinating to me ever since this process started is the sheer volume of women who've written to me, saying that they're in various stages of the separation process, or saying that they feel like they need to separate from their partners, but don't know why, exactly, and definitely don't know how.
How did you know? they ask.
California sunrise via
I woke up this morning cold. Not just "annoyed that I had to get out of bed and abandon once and for all the chance that I might be able to sleep until the point where I actually feel rested" - that hasn't happened in a few months, and I don't see it in my near future. Like, freezing. Teeth-chattering.
(Yes yes, the former Boston/NYC-dweller in me is rolling her judgy little eyes. Whatever, my body is set to California now. I'm cold.)
Fact: When life gets tough, kittens help.
Weirdly enough, I haven't been crying much about moving - the actual fact of leaving this house and going to another one. Don't get me wrong: I've been crying about other things - oh god, so much, to the point where I wake up at 2 o'clock in the morning and have to mainline six glasses of water because my body is fresh out of fluid - but about the house itself, I've tried to be relatively all-business, all-the-time.
I mean, we're in escrow. I have solar panel lease transfers to sign. Boxes to pack. Schools to notify. Children to keep safeguarded from everything that's swirling around them. We have to be out of this house in three weeks.
Our house went into escrow last night. We have thirty days (give or take a few, depending on various logistical complexities) to vacate the house that started out as just the place where we lived, and that has since become our home.
I have thirty days to find a mover, pack up three human beings and three animals, coordinate a 350-mile move to an as-of-yet-unknown location, negotiate leases and school enrollments and doctor referrals and internet hookups, figure out how to handle the fact that I have a business trip scheduled to begin on the day that we are scheduled to move (woooops), and theoretically maintain...you know, like, normal life. Or an approximation of it.
So you know what the first thing I did when I woke up this morning was?
