FRIDAY, which was a million years ago, had a plan: I get the check from the title company, then take it to a branch of our financial advisors for deposit. While I did this, she would walk Birch for one last time, and then we would fill out the divorce forms. She’s leaving Saturday morning and wants it done and dusted.
She came over, Birch was happy, off they went, and I headed to Great North Title. A lovely lady handed me a check, and I wished it was oversized like a gameshow payout. Off to the financial advisor’s embassy on France Avenue, where they told me they don’t accept deposits like this, so sorry, well, they do, but they just overnight to the Wayzata or Bloomington branches, and I could go there. So off to Bloomington.
The office was on the 12th floor of a bespoke suburban office park. ( The very late-80s front, above.) You can tell they have an upscale clientele, because it had a Nespresso machine that used a pod paradigm I’d never seen before. I was used to the ones that looked like little cups. Apparently when you get into the million-dollar accounts the pods are thin, and the machine gives you six options for what you want to do. The default was some Italian word that probably meant “hardly any coffee at all,” because exactly one (1) sip was delivered into the cup. I tried again, using the LUNGO option, and was duly rewarded with three sips. I was doing all this coffee business while young lady in charge of moving numbers from here to there talked to my financial people, assuring the money went where it was supposed to go. QQTBF was worried about this, about whether I’d put it in the right place, so I video’d the cashier saying that she had assured it ended up where it was supposed to go, and had talked to our people.
In other words, I had not screwed up. I had picked up the check and driven it to the proper place and put it where it was supposed to go. Hurrah for me. Gold Star.
The back of the office tower, by the way. Pure suburbia.
After this I found her sitting out back in a lounge chair on the Fred balcony, with Birch, enjoying the view. Note: the view is considerably less than it was before, but we’ll get to that later. It was expected that we would fill out the divorce papers, but she was tired and I was tired. I said: why don’t you come by for pizza around 7, and we’ll do it then. You know, Friday night pizza. Like we always do. She seemed surprised but liked the idea. It seemed to suggest I was going to be deucedly civil about all this.
She left. I took the first solid nap in two weeks.
I got the pizza from a place down the street in my new neighborhood, and it’s really good. When I priced out the delivery option, it was ridiculous, and I wasn’t going to pay six dollars for someone to drive it two blocks then tip an extra five. It seemed decadent and lazy. On the other hand - and this is how I think of everything - it’s a split cost, so it’s three dollars to drive and $2.50 to tip. But how petty would that be.
We thought the forms would take an hour or so, especially since we’d both worked on them, but then she found an online version, and we had to start again. It got more complicated. For one thing, the forms would not appear in the browser, due to some Acrobat / browser dispute. I tried it on all platforms. Did not work. Got this:
But. I tried opening it with the Acrobat app, and got it. We filled out a million fields. It took four hours. Natalie called in the middle to wish her a good trip the next day. I interrupted at one point to ask Wife about Question 47: “Are you pregnant? Okay.”
It was the last time she’ll talk to her parents together as such. I noted that, and there was a pang of sadness in her response. “We’ll still be a family,” QuiteQuicklyTBF reassured her.
Okay. Right.
We tried to file. It wouldn’t go. Timed out. Server said ix-nay. I’m wondering if this was due to the fact that I was doing it in Acrobat app vs. the browser version; probably so. What to do? We can’t get divorced because of browser issues?
I said I’d try tomorrow. We said our goodbyes, and about that I’ll say no more.
Thought that was it.
Of course, it wasn’t.
The next day I had to drive back to the old house because an Amazon subscription had shown up. Birch was excited because he thought we were going home. Alas. We made three other stops, and he had to sit in the car, of course. He cries if I leave him home. I have tried three times today and he barks and cries. A little less each time, though; there’s hope I can go to the gym again some day. He’s right by the door when I return.
Anyway, she came back on Saturday afternoon, determined to make this efile work. I said it’s not going to work as it stands now. How about . . . printing it off and mailing it? I know it’s like engraving cuneiforms on a stone tablet, but it’ll work. BUT. The PDF would not export. It just generated the same odd blank failure page. Brilliant idea: export as individual jpgs, combine into a PDF. This worked.
Success! Divorce achievement unlocked!
So that was it and we were well and truly done. One last walk with the dog. One last anguished conversation. I had to drag Birch away from her car. He watched her go and could not understand why he wasn’t going with.
I changed her text profile picture to a dandelion head whose wisps had all blown away, unpinned her in the message app, and wondered if it was really, really over.
Then I laughed out loud and thought I'm really slow to get the point, sometimes. Birch looked up as if wondering what we do next. We go to Target and get the envelope to mail the papers. Odd how it turned out, but it's on me to get them in the mail. Well, I hadn't pulled my weight in the final cleaning of the house for the new owners.
Mailing the papers, I suppose that's the least I can do.
In keeping with our Monday tradition, which became a "tradition" for reasons I can't recall and probably don't matter, we continue with our Monday trademark. For this year we'll do 1936.
I love the translation:
Annnnd there isn't much. You'll have to forgive me, but: Daughter called late and we had a long, long, good, tough, funny, heartwarming, sad conversation, and while I'd meant to put together a B&W World - a good one! - it didn't happen. Now I have a column to write, since that literally pays the rent.
Substack up around 11. Remember, Monday is free, so you can go get more ME ME ME there. If you must.
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