1:22 p.m. - 2013-02-12
blizzard '13
A off meds is more fun than A. on meds. She asked me if I noticed a difference and I told her that the only differences I've noticed are that she laughs more and she obsesses about her pe11et stove less, although I would have no idea if she's scrubbing her kitchen floor with a toothbrush or flashing her boobs at the mailman when I'm not around.

She assures me that she is neither toothbrush-scrubbing her floors nor boob-flashing her mailman.

After spending the Blizzard of the Decade with A, I am more sure than ever that I have got myself into a very good thing. By Saturday morning we had at least three feet of snow (unheard of in CT) and it was still coming down. A still had to go to work, because she works at the hospital and sick people still need medicine when there's a blizzard. The cross-street to hers, which intersects about four houses down, was plowed, but her street wasn't. We shoveled her driveway, which took over an hour; then, when her road still hadn't been plowed, she said she was going to walk.

It's a couple of miles to the hospital and it was bitterly cold, snowing and very, very windy -- absolutely nasty. A was in the throes of That Time of the Month and miserable; just prior to announcing she was going to walk in, she was throwing up. I told her walking in was bullshit and she should call and see what the situation at the hospital is, patient and medication-wise. While she was trying to find a live person, I went out and started shoveling from her driveway, down the road, toward the next plowed street.

I figured if I shoveled two paths the width of her car's wheelbase, and removed some of the three-plus feet of snow between them, she ought to be able to get from her driveway to the next plowed road. By the time she came out I was more than halfway done with this project, so she joined me and eventually we had a covered-wagon-style track, between two six-foot-high snowbanks, running from her driveway down to Mechanic Street. She made it out on the first try -- she is, after all, from Alaska.

By the time she got home from work I'd shoveled the rest of snow off our "wagon trail," so she had a clear, "plowed" road from Mechanic street, past four houses, to her driveway. Actually, I'd shoveled it four times, because the wind filled it in once and some *&#*(#&$^ private plow drivers dumped other people's driveway snow in it twice. But that's another story...

The city didn't plow that road until late Saturday night.

At about noon on Saturday I talked to M and he informed me that he didn't think he could come get the kids because he had three feet of snow behind and on top of his car. I had just finished shoveling B--- street for the fourth time, and I was not sympathetic. I told him that I'd just shoveled 800-plus feet of ROADWAY four times, but I fully expected that I'd be keeping the kids another night because three feet of snow on top of his car was too much for him to handle.

Amazingly, three hours later, and after calling me AGAIN at one point to tell me he thought he was having a heart attack, Matt managed to shovel three feet of snow off his car and show up to collect his kids. I refrained from asking him whether he'd been shoveling with a garden trowel or a soup spoon.

Poor Matt. The entire time he was with/married to me, I was the one who shoveled out his car. He hates being cold and I don't mind, so I was happy to do it. Nobody knew that Mr. Wunderchild Executive's 100-pound wife shoveled out his car in bad weather (and drove it up to the end of the driveway, something he could never figure out how to do on ice). But he left me for some nasty, crazy syphyllitic homewrecking whore, and now he has no one to shovel out his car. Poopsie.

The fact that he has the gall to COMPLAIN to me about having to shovel out his own car is somewhere around appalling, insane or hysterically funny, depending on my mood.

You have no idea how glad I was to see A, when she came home after work about an hour after Matt left with the kids.

"He said WHAT?" she says, when I tell her about Matt's three feet of snow, his having to shovel it himself, and his supposed near-heart attack. (I also told her -- didn't mention earlier-- that M also told me his car was super-buried because snow had slid off the roof of his house onto it. That is complete bullshit because his roof slopes the other way -- it is physically impossible for snow to end up on the cars. He got extremely pissy with me when I pointed this out to him.)

A just laughed nonstop and told me, "I can't BELIEVE you put up with that."

Me either, actually.

I love A. because she is way tougher than pretty much anyone I've ever known -- definitely tougher than any man I've ever dated. I used to like that I wore the pants our couple, me and M I mean, but I think I like sharing them with A. better.

I also love that she and I have the same slightly bizarre sense of humor and off meds she is even more fun bizarre-humor-wise than before. We can talk about things that are serious or sad one minute and be laughing so hard it hurts the next minute. I like that a lot.

Every time I imagine what my future would have been if Matt hadn't cheated on me and left me -- I would have been married, faithful, loving, accomodating, tolerant, forgiving and a complete doormat until death -- I feel like a driver who's just narrowly avoided a head-on collision.

I'm not about to thank Matt for anything, but I think I'm getting to a point where I'm pretty grateful to a higher power.

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