And Such Small Portions

Just after my ex-husband and I split up, several friends -- all of whom, not coincidentally, are writers -- advised me to start a "divorce journal" to write down all of the chaos in my life. Perhaps they envisioned a book that would rise up like an angry, spiteful phoenix from the embers of my shitty dead marriage -- an anti-coffee table book full of harsh invective and scathing expose. More likely, they were just sick of hearing me uselessly and endlessly bitch about how my ex didn't appreciate me, blah, blah, blah..., hoping I'd exorcise myself of the need to complain by writing all that shit down.

Much of it *was* useless, because what's the point of complaining about someone who doesn't appreciate you, when you've already decided to be done with him? It reminds me of that old joke about two Jewish grandmothers going on about a bad restaurant. "The food was just terrible," one of them complains. "And such small portions," irrelevantly piles on the other. Who would want to eat large portions of terrible food?! And yet, I could not stop complaining about not feeling appreciated by the guy I didn't want anymore.

I recently paged through my old divorce journal, a euphemism which extracts any whiff of untamed, raw emotion and makes it sound much more civilized and antiseptic than it is. "Bitch Book" is a better name for it, since it's mostly filled with my pissing and moaning during that very turbulent period in my life, the first six months after my ex and I broke up. Most of it would not be interesting to anyone other than me, the same way someone else's vivid dream combining the oddly random with the mundane is only interesting to the dreamer. But I did come across two things worth mentioning. 

One was the title of my divorce journal, "F*ck You, NPR," which I hope to use as the title of a book I write some day -- even a cookbook. Especially a cookbook. I remember how annoyed I was after listening to some overly earnest, overly educated NPR newscaster trying to sound folksy to take the edge off the latest dismal news about the wretched job market in America -- the worst since the Great Depression. As an unemployed stay-at-home mother facing an already uphill battle to elbow my way back into an unforgiving job market, that was the last thing I wanted to hear. Thus was born "F*ck You, NPR," a phrase that *still* delights me whenever I say it.

The other notable thing was a list of all the qualities I was looking for in a guy. Over the course of a few weeks, I came up with 85 things I wanted in "my next boyfriend." Some of them were inspired (e.g. someone who smiles at me when he sees me), others prosaic (e.g. someone who likes to watch crappy tv with me). Most were things I felt were missing from my failed marriage.

Out of curiosity, I went through the list and discovered that my boyfriend has 82(!) of the 85 qualities I wanted back then in my next boyfriend. Not even my beloved crush Ryan Reynolds would be able to outscore Frenchy. When I told him that he had scored so highly (96%) on my 85-item wish list, Frenchy pointed out to me that I had creatively visualized him by writing down very specifically the kind of man I wanted in my life. In essence, I thought about him, and the Universe delivered.

Powerful stuff or magical thinking? Not really sure, so I'm going to try it again. This time I'll write down the 85 things I want in a career and see what the Universe provides. I'm crossing my fingers I won't end up working as a televangelist, a rodeo clown or an unctuous newscaster on NPR.