How To Knit

I've been thinking about knitting again. I used to knit when I was a kid -- my mom taught me. Here's a French site that tells you how to knit and comes complete with peppy music to knit by. The French are such good knitters. Here are some old French knits for kids.

Guy In A Skirt -- I Don't Think So

This piece in The New York Times about a guy in a skirt ... I don't know. Just kindof grosses me out. I mean, isn't a big part of the skirt thing looking at sexy legs ... are men going to start shaving their legs too? No offense, but men's hairy legs under the hem of a skirt ... not exactly eye candy.

Hershey Kisses Hangover

Halloween was really really fun, but I am really really tired. Naptime.

Speaking of Pirates -- What's Up In Russia?

The stories on the front page of The New York Times today and yesterday about the Russians putting oil billionaire and YUKOS boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky in jail and ultimately on trial, look like strange anecdotes that won't have much to do with our lives -- WRONG.

The Piratization of Russia: Russian Reform Goes Awry by Marshall Goldman is a must read. Economics Professor Marshall Goldman at Wellesley spoke earlier this year on CSPAN about his new book, and I found his presentation absolutely riveting. If you thought the Enron boys were a bunch of crooks, you won't believe what's going on in Russia. Take a peek at this synopsis of the book from Amazon.

In 1991, a small group of Russians emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union claiming ownership some of the most valuable petroleum, natural gas and metal deposits in the world. By 1997, five of those individuals were on Forbes Magazine's list of the world's richest billionaires. These self-styled oligarchs were accused of using guile, intimidation, and occasionally violence to reap these rewards. This revelatory work examines the structure of the Russian economy and considers why it collapsed in 1998 and why it began its recovery in 1999. It also provides a close examination of the Russian oil industry and the oligarchs who control it and who have now decided to go "legitimate".

It's hard to imagine a few nobodies, or should I say, thugs, going from rags to the Forbes 400 list in six years. I expect we'll be hearing a lot more about this.

Pirates of Penzance

These lyrics came to mind while writing the post below. They are from Gilbert & Sullivan's great operetta Pirates of Penzance where the king of the pirates explains why it's just so much more fun to be behave badly.

His pirate comrade, Frederic, finds that his indentures to the pirates are over at age 21 and asks his friend to join him in the world of respectable people, but the Pirate King explains it just can't happen.

KING:
No, Frederic, it cannot be.
I don't think much of our profession, but, compared to respectability,
it is ... at least ... honest.
No, Frederic, I shall live and die a Pirate King.

SONG - PIRATE KING

KING:
Oh, better far to live and die
Under the brave black flag I fly,
Than play a sanctimonious part
With a pirate head and a pirate heart.
Away to the cheating world go you,
Where pirates all are well-to-do;
But I'll be true to the song I sing,
And live and die a Pirate King.

For I am a Pirate King!
And it is, it is a glorious thing
To be a Pirate King!
For I am a Pirate King!

We're Having Great Weather

I tell you, we are so lucky with this almost-Indian summer here. These are great, clear, warm autumn days. I was thinking yesterday as I wandered in and out of the shops in Portland, noticing great wooly sweaters, ski hats, mohair shawls that the winter is about to get us, but meanwhile, enjoy this great end of fall.

Candy Ass

Hey folks, listen, it's Halloween and it's going to be really tough to avoid all that candy in your office, candy in your house, candy at your kid's school, but there is a sure fire method I'll share with you today. Take a minute to check out your butt. Does it really need to get a little bigger, a little broader, a little flabbier?

Work out today. Avoid the sweets. You can do it.

Riding The Train

Heading out with a great bunch of adventurous women to explore Maine. This train station at Woburn is so convenient and cool -- and as you'll notice-- has an internet terminal! Terminal with a terminal -- we love that!

Daytripper

Out of town today. Have a good one. Nice fall weather here -- I'll send a postcard. Heading up to the great old state of Maine.

Coding Ladies

I'm loving reading the blogs of different women developers like Julia Lerman and DataGridGirl aka Marcie Robillard. They were both at a "Women in Technology Luncheon" at the TechEd Conference. They're also attending Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) this week in LA.

Listen to what Julia says about being able to hang out in the room with other women coders:

"I sat right up front of course. I looked around to see hundreds of women filling up the tables. I just wanted to go to every single table and say "wow! are you a programmer? I am too. That's so cool!" but I restrained myself.

The meeting started off with Tamara suggesting that while we ate, we do a networking exercise. Each woman at the table shared the best piece of business advice that they have received with their other lunch companions. What a great idea that was. Sitting at my table were a woman who has been a technical trade magazine editor for many years, a woman who was in I.T. (first infrastructure person I think I ever met that was a woman) and another woman who heads up the web team at a huge corporation. Most tables had about 6 at each - but you know how people are about sitting up front! So that was a good mix when adding in myself, an independent contractor who is a coder. I thought the best thing I heard at my table was "take care of your boss". But I had an odd perspective on that advice since I work for myself. It actually made me think about the fact that I haven't been taking care of myself lately - so it was actually good advice for me because I really do need to think about that!

After lunch we shared some of our lessons with the room. The most memorable one I recall was actually from Sara Williams (who is full of these great quips) - "Praise publicly, criticize privately".

And Julia mentions her friend Marcie is in the room. When you follow the link, you end up at DataGridGirl's blog where she makes a funny reference to her recent wedding anniversary. Being a total geek girl sounds fun: "September 20th, Eli and I celebrated our one-year wedding anniversary. What's it like being married to another .NET programmer? I think it's a great joy---some couples finish each other's sentences, we get to finish each other's code. "

Sorry Steve

I meant to blogroll your new blog address sooner Steve McLaughlin, but things have been busy around here at Halley's Comment Central. I like what you write about Nick Denton's new site called Fleshbot very much. Let me quote:

Nick Denton is a genius and appears to have the attachments to go with it. The president of Gawker Media, and the man behind news service Moreover, gossip-blog Gawker, techno-blog Gizmodo, and the super-secret Lafayette Project, will unveil his latest creation next week called Fleshbot. Simply put, Fleshbot will be a pornography review in blog format. (Something tells me Andrea Dworkin just went to DEFCON 2.) ...

The Internet is an electrified reflection of the disparate world we live in. I am sure that many people will object to Fleshbot's content and I want to read their side of the story as well. I also think where Denton is going with his microcontent model is more gripping than the actual content. Stay tuned...

This is a lazyman's pull-out quote, with none of Steve's cool links -- so go read the real thing at his site.

It's All About Carly

I posted a piece over at Misbehaving.Net about Carly Fiorina. I posted a photograph of her that was chosen with a great deal of intention. Check it out. Is a CEO who looks so good an asset or a liability?

Power and Time

The Fortune Magazine cover story a few weeks back called WOMEN IN POWER with the subhead "Condi, Carly, Meg and Hillary on playing, winning and redefining the game," got me thinking. One comment made by one woman in particular got me thinking.

Karen Hughes who used to be Bush's main communications person, but stepped down to be with her son and husband said, " ... I have much more control over my time -- which is the ultimate form of power." I wondered if men would agree with her. Is control over your time the ultimate form of power?

Sun Shoots Wad

Apparently, that Alpha Male of all heavenly bodies had a coronal mass ejection this morning. We'll wait and see what it all means.

Dia De Los Muertos

The day of the dead, or more accurately, the days of the dead, are November 1 and 2. When we lived in LA, it was always fun to go down to Olvera Street and see what was shaking. The whole notion that it's okay to integrate death into life is so UN-American. I wish our death-fearing culture could take a page from the Mexican's book and understand it's the most natural thing in the world.

I still don't know what happened to my little wooden diarama with the Day-Of-The-Dead Mariachi Band in it. It's just about the best Halloween costume I can think of -- black tee and black jeans with white skeleton bones glued on -- big Mexcan sombrero -- big mariachi guitar.

My Pumpkin

I have this great pumpkin a friend talked me into buying the other day. It looks big and round and orange and for some reason, I absolutely do NOT want to cut a face into it or make its nice strong green grey stem into a cute little hat. It's slightly smaller than a beachball. It's heavy. This pumpkin has a great more dignity and gravitas than some goofy pumpkin with a toothy grin and a stupid hat. This is one serious pumpkin.

It's outside my front door, standing proudly in the face of torrents of rain, shiny and whole, uncut, uncensored, roundly celebrating the season's harvest on my bricky red stoop, together with fallen leaves of ochre, red, tan and brown, like royal attendants at a courtly ceremony bowing before it.

Hell Fire And Brimstone

Doc is not missing one bit of this weird and wild Halloween week firestorm of earthly fires and extreme sun flares. What is going on?!

Who Lives In Those Other Worlds?

PBS is presenting a great NOVA program this week and next about String Theory. If you missed the first part, they are rerunning it this week and don't miss the second part. It is very far out in terms of how we see the world -- more like a sci fi program, than a science program -- but Brian Greene, a professor of Physics and Mathematics at Columbia University is such an excellent presenter and the way they make visual the complicated theories of physis is so good, you'll find it very accessible.

Start here on their website. The program is based on the book by Greene called The Elegant Universe.

Here's a conversation with Brian Greene that should give you a flavor for it.

Also, other physicists weigh in, some in support of string theory, some clearly critical of it.

The mind-blowing idea is that we've been shortchanging the universe, giving it hardly the credit it deserves for being a lot more than meets the eye and that there are many more dimensions than three. The 3-D world plus the fourth dimension -- time -- is about to go away as a concept -- to be replaced with perhaps as many as TEN dimensions.

This link may help you get your mind around the idea of a 10-D world. One of the physicists in the program asks casualy, "who lives in those other worlds?"

Total Loss

I don't think anyone can imagine what it's like to watch your house, all your clothes, all your books, all your papers, maybe all the photo albums you didn't snatch in time -- all of it go up in flames. I was going to say, only the people who've gone through such a devastating fire can understand it, but I don't even think THEY can grasp it.

As we see reports this morning -- this mourning -- out of California, our hearts go out to our friends, neighbors, sisters, brothers, cousins -- which is to say -- our hearts go out to perfect strangers, as they contemplate their total loss. We pray for them and hope they remember there is hope. Some how we find a way to rebuild. God knows how.

Bricklin's Bootleg VisiCalc

David Weinberger points to Dan Bricklin's very ironic comments today on his blog about having a copy of VisiCalc which Microsoft used to demo w/Longhorn.

Despite the fact that Dan co-authored, VisiCalc, he ONLY had it, because someone happened to have made a bootleg copy of it. Go read him. Also read his piece Copy Protection Robs The Future which couldn't have been more right on -- and in opposition to Microsoft's views on digital rights management. Funny that they were able to rob the past, thanks to someone's bootlegging efforts.

All Dressed Up, No Place To Go

That's a funny expression, isn't it? I was thinking of it vis-a-vis blogging. I was thinking of the simple not-dressed-up graphic style of a blog versus the very professional overdressed style of a corporate website. It's about graphics but it's also about language.

Look at this: Official PDC site talking about the fires in LA which delayed planes for attendees and their assistance to PDC'ers.

Now look at this: Scoble's blog and his real live human reporting of the insane problems everyone was having trying to get from home to airport to LA or San Diego or Santa Barbara or whatever.

Which one feels REAL?

Which one feels trustworthy?

Happy Birthday Bill

Did I get it right? Isn't this your birthday, Bill Gates? So you have about 10,000 people over for cake and ice cream. You sure know how to throw a party.

Enron End Run By NRun

Can't wait to hear this ex-Enron employee's rap album about Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. The guy is calling himself NRun, but his name is actually David Tonsall. Sounds like he'll be kicking some serious white boy ass and telling the truth about those two crooks. It's been two years and they still haven't gone to jail. The wheels of justice move too slowly. Let's put them on vinyl and give the boys a spin on the turntable.

In an odd way, this hits right in the sweet spot of the discussion I heard last night at BU. Tom Peters loves to say "We're in a brawl" to describe the business environment now. That's for sure. He was talking to the WITI last night about how we can change the rules -- how we MUST change the rules in business. More on that later.

Here We Go Again

As Gary Wolf writes his article for Wired about Howard Dean, he asks at least 7 men and no women what they think is going on in the Dean Campaign.

Gary, please read my comment in your comments. If you aren't interviewing women and quoting women and asking women what they think -- simply as an "unbiased" journalist you're falling down on the job -- but if you expect to understand what's going on in the Dean campaign at all without talking to us -- it's completely crazy. If he gets elected, women will be the reason.

Or maybe we don't have the right to vote. Did they take it away while I wasn't watching?

Pink Wig

Okay, I broke down and got a Halloween costume yesterday when I went to get my son one at Party City -- we had a blast. I couldn't resist. Pink wig like the girl singing karaoke in Lost in Translation, but I figured a black velvet hairband with pointy black velvet pussy cat ears and a long black velvet tail were just the thing to round out the outfit. Black leotard, fishnets, heels and ready to roll.

I have a lot more parties and stuff to go to this year than I expected. I remember the 2001 Halloween after 9/11 -- a very somber time if I recall correctly.

Definately ... I Mean Definitely

A reader mentions for the 400th time -- and I do appreciate it , really, I'm just teasing him and making fun of myself -- that I spelled definitely wrong. Again. I don't know what it is about that word, but I have a real block about it. He asks if I have something against spell checkers and the answer is YES, since I've had real serious screw-ups using spell checkers when I'm a little tired and I let them correct something like blogging and it turns into flogging or some insane thing. So I'll try to both learn how to spell DE-FINITE-LY and also remember to use the spell checker a little more often.

Stroke Me

I'm learning to use TypePad on the Misbehaving.Net site and it's very interesting to me. Let me say up front, that I am the most impossible customer in the world. If something doesn't work the first time or maybe the second, I'm instantly bitching and moaning.

Now the problem is, of course, I am the one defining "work" -- that is, if you user interface guys put a button in a place that you think is reasonable and I think is stupid ... I say "It doesn't work." I guess I mean "It doesn't work for me."

So here are some simple ones. And I plan to kick Blogger in the ass just as much as Typepad here. So here goes.

Blogger just to clean up some unfinished business. What the HELL is the story with the absolutely microscopic SIGN OUT x button up there in the corner? When I used to do a lot of blogging at work, the one thing I really needed to find fast was the SIGN OFF button. It used to be bigger. Now, it's much too small. If this were a car I was driving, the driver's door (the GET OUT button equivalent) would be the size of the gas cap cover door and the interior of the car would be as big as an 18-wheeler. What gives? When I want to get my hands on the GET OUTTA HERE BUTTON -- I want it big and I want it obvious!

Meanwhile, TypePad's type font is too small all around for me -- even with my good eye, I don't want to be reading the frigging Rosetta Stone to find things. So many little words.

Here's what I mean by the title of this post -- stroke me. It doesn't mean whatever you thought it meant. I was thinking about User Interfaces in general. When I learn a new UI, which you can assume I DO NOT WANT TO LEARN BECAUSE MY LIFE IS COMPLICATED ENOUGH, why do I have to spend any time learning it, why isn't it learning ME ... in other words, as I start using TypePad and I keep hitting certain buttons on a regular basis, or stroking certain keys, why doesn't it make those keys grow larger? Just like WORD remembers the last documents I was working on and has them in the bottom of the file menu -- can't a good UI learn me and remember what I do? Come on UI guys and gals, take a cue from the natural world. God's a fine designer. He came up with a great piece of hardware that gets bigger when you stroke it.

In other words, why doesn't Typepad remember I keep embedding pix and I want to remember how to do that and so make that button bigger? Make it grow when I stroke it.

Or at least store my stroke info and at the end of the session, show me what my personal UI would look like (buttons I use a lot bigger, buttons I don't care about , the same) and let me choose whether to use that new UI or not. There may be times I really don't want a certain button enlarged. There may be times I do. Why isn't it anticipating my needs as well, like Amazon does ... "other users who liked to use the embed image key, also found this HTML cheat sheet handy, want to check it out?"

I know some products do this TOO much and they can be annoying, but I'd like to have Typepad start morphing to fit me. Think natural world again. My shoes do that after a few wearings. They know who's boss -- my feet. They don't insist on fitting every other human's feet -- they're MY shoes.

[UPDATE or should I say footnote, speaking of shoes: I got email from a very helpful TypePad person pointing out that there is a CUSTOMIZE button on the lower right-hand corner to do many of the things I'm talking about here. Duh, opps, thanks. Still, I'd love to have Typepad make those suggestions and changes for me -- or at least offer to make them without me having to think of it.]

One other Typepad thing I find really disconcerting. I like the two screen interface of Blogger -- simple and obvious. Upstairs I'm building a post, downstairs I'm getting the WYSIWYG of it. I see the building area. I see the preview area and only after all that, I can PUBLISH. [This is all about me being a visual learner, as I'm sure you have guessed by now.]

With Typepad, I see the building area, AND THIS FREAKED ME OUT THE FIRST TIME I DID IT, I saw the button called SAVE, I thought I wasn't PUBLISHING, but just SAVING the text somewhere ... but I had PUBLISHED. Wow! I didn't feel very safe doing that. I didn't realize what I wanted was PREVIEW. The meaning I associate with SAVE is to "put away". Save money in the bank -- put it away. SAVE a file, put it in a safe place. SAVE face, retain dignity. I do not associate SAVE (a hiding away motion) with PUBLISH (a putting out there in the world for all to see motion).

Perhaps I'm just too used to Blogger, which feels sturdy and safe to me, but with Typepad I'm having trouble knowing where THINGS ARE GOING ... by seeing all my posts in the window below, this feels like I have my blog right there to hold onto. With Typepad I feel like my blog isn't within arm's length. It's a bunch of little pieces (the list of titles of posts) and I want to feel I have control over it. I feel it's more of an abstract idea, than a realworld billboard with stuff I'm slapping up there and hammering to the wooden backing with a nail at each corner of the post.

Still with Blogger I don't know what the hell there's a "POST & PUBLISH" button up there on the far right for. I get POST and I get PUBLISH, bright orange, middle right, but I was very thrown off in the beginning with "POST & PUBLISH" -- honestly, I still have no clue what it means and never use it, unless the orange PUBLISH button is totally messed up and invisible -- which happens, I have no idea why -- and then I just start clicking any key I can get ahold of.

Other things I love about Typepad -- learning to post pix and realizing how easy it is has been incredibly fun. I love the color scheme of the UI. It has a simple design (but still too many words I think). It feels cool.

Over There

Sometimes I'm over here. Sometimes I'm over there. I'm trying to decide if I should post to both places simulanteously. I've been posting over at Misbehaving.Net a bunch today. This morning I posted a piece about ... well, go over and check it out. It's called Re-imagining Our Lives. It argues that if we aren't using technology to make our lives as parents more integrated with our work, our kids, our men, what the hell are we bothering for?

Smokin'

Hoping the best for the folks in Southern California tonight with those terrible fires raging. The day we moved to LA back in 1990 there were fires burning wildly and amazing heat -- we had to wonder if we had made a big, big mistake. To make things worse, as my husband tried to load our bags into the rental car which I was driving, I ran over his foot. Whoops! Just lightly, no damage done. I won't even get into that story. The heat was making me a little loco.

But I know how terrifying the fires can be. Hope all you PDC'ers are safe and sound. This will be one helluva conference. Robert, this PDC conference is so hot, it's a conflagration -- simply smokin' seems to me!

Radical Clockotomy

Well, I did it ... wandered around the house turning the clocks back. But I did more than that, I finally took the radical step to put them all on the EXACT time and not the ill-conceived mis-set 10-minutes ahead ones in the bedroom and bathroom, to try to keep me from being late and the ones in the rest of the house reasonably on time.

This mess of uncoordinated clocks was getting me down. I never knew what the hell time it was -- except by looking at my Sprint phone with its satellite spot-on time. The whole silly idea that I'd avoid lateness by tricking myself has just gotten too ridiculous. Who's kidding who, I'm always late.

So, time to turn over a new leaf. No more fudging it -- just give me the right time right now and I may actually be able to simply kick my butt out the door on time.

Really Really Fine Blog

I hate it when I forget how good someone's blog is and I don't read it often enough.

But I love it when I go back and it's right there ready to read and it's really really fine.

If Everybody Had An Ocean

[Wow! I had no idea this was written by Chuck Berry and Brian Wilson ... I'm gonna go check to see if this is correct. Meanwhile, you'll see over here why I have surfing on my mind.]

The Beach Boys - Surfin Usa
(written by: Chuck Berry - Brian Wilson)

If everybody had an ocean
Across the U.S.A.
Then everybody'd be surfin'
Like Californi-a
You'd seem 'em wearing their baggies
Huarachi sandals too
A bushy bushy blonde hairdo
Surfin' U.S.A.

You'd catch 'em surfin' at Del Mar
Ventura County line
Santa Cruz and Trestle
Australia's Narabine
All over Manhattan
And down Doheny Way

Everybody's gone surfin'
Surfin' U.S.A.

We'll all be planning that route
We're gonna take real soon
We're waxing down our surfboards
We can't wait for June
We'll all be gone for the summer
We're on surfari to stay
Tell the teacher we're surfin'
Surfin' U.S.A.

Haggerties and Swamies
Pacific Palisades
San Anofree and Sunset
Redondo Beach L.A.
All over La Jolla
At Waimia Bay

Everybody's gone surfin'
Surfin' U.S.A.



Everybody's gone surfin'
Surfin' U.S.A.

Everybody's gone surfin'
Surfin' U.S.A.

Everybody's gone surfin'
Surfin' U.S.A.

Everybody's gone surfin'
Surfin' U.S.A.

Everybody's gone surfin'
Surfin' U.S.A...

In God We Trust -- Maybe

I've been thinking about divorce and why it's so difficult, so painful, so destructive, especially why it takes so long to simply do -- the time between separating and actually being legally divorced is much longer than anyone starting the process ever anticipates -- and takes so long to recover from. There are some good things to be said for divorce, but I don't think it's easy to remember them when you are going through it. It's all about a complete breakdown in trust and a long, gradual rebuilding of that trust. And that is really hard work.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting in a ice cream shop with two friends -- they are married, both work, they have one son who's pretty much my son's closest friend. This boy and my son were squirmy and they wanted to run outside at night and play on the siidewalk now that their ice cream was done. There was a big glass window so we could see them, but still I hestitated. We had had dinner in our local town at a nice Italian place and walked down the very pretty, safe, clean street to this shop. It was a very safe place and the other parents were semi-pushing me to let them, not to be so overprotective. They are 8 years old for goodness' sakes.

I agreed that the boys could go out and play on the sidewalk, but only as long as they stayed right in front of the shop so I could see them. There was a toy store down the street and I knew they really wanted go look in that store window, as well as play outside the ice cream shop. I agreed that we would all go look there later, but first they could be on their own outside, only as long as I could see them.

I know the other parents thought I was overdoing it. But I finally got the words straight to explain my position. "You know, with both of you here, if your son got hurt or a stranger talked to him, or something weird happened, you each know you were both being just as vigilant as possible and even if something bad happened, you'd both understand the circumstances. I don't have that luxury anymore. Imagine my kid fell and broke his arm or something far worse. Since he's on my watch and his dad is not here, his dad would never know if I was really being careful or if I was negligent. I can't be casual about his well-being ever again. I have to be overprotective as we rebuild trust between us all."

Whatever trust you had with a married partner, it pretty much goes out the window when you say, "I don't love you anymore" or maybe worse, do something, like fall in love with someone else that makes it painfully clear that "I don't love you anymore." If marriage is about anything, it's about the notion that the person you are married to loves you and puts you first -- surely above other partners -- but often above their own self-interests.

Divorce and separation make it clear that you can't trust in that anymore.

It's over.

So what are you then expected to do? Work on a financial agreement and a custody agreement (if you are lucky/unlucky enough to have kids -- lucky cause they're wonderful, unlucky because divorce is 100X more excruciating with kids involved) -- that is based on trust.

Let me explain it again. Just at a time when you have no basis for trusting that #$%@$& person who betrayed you at the most basic level, you have to write an agreement based on trust with the help of two lawyers who tend to remind you of all the myriad ways you can not trust the other person.

You have to trust that they will pay you support of a certain amount at a certain time (though your divorce may have been caused by hellish financial problems). You have to trust the other person will take care of your kids when you are not present (though your divorce may have been caused by poor treatment of you and your kids by your spouse -- and I make no assumptions here about moms vs. dads treating kids or spouses better than the other -- modern life suggests all bets are off in this department). You have to trust your partner to be fair and equitable in their dealings with you when you DON'T TRUST YOUR PARTNER AS FAR AS YOU CAN THROW THEM.

So drag in the clock. You cobble together some agreement and you start to test it and you can only test it over time. You can only rebuild trust over time. You can only know how the first Thanksgiving without your spouse will go by LIVING THROUGH THE FIRST THANKSGIVING WITHOUT YOUR SPOUSE. You can only know how the first Xmas without your spouse will go, maybe even without your kids, or maybe trying to share your kids by LIVING THROUGH THE FIRST XMAS, TRUDGING THROUGH A BLINDING SNOWSTORM ON XMAS MORNING TO PICK UP YOUR KIDS AT THE OTHER SPOUSES' HOUSE AND HOPING NOT TO FIND YOUR KIDS CRYING OR STUFFED FULL OF CANDY BEFORE 8:00AM OR WHOOPING IT UP WITH SOME SEXY NEW GIRLFRIEND IN HER FUR-EDGED RED SANTA BABYDOLL PJS. [BTW, none of these things have happened to me, but they have happened to others and your fears run wild with scenarios in the first few months when you're going on adrenaline, coffee, tears, no sleep and resentment. Oh, yeah, and on both sides, little or no money, half the time.)

You have to live through it. You have to take the time to rebuild trust. You feel like you have to see it to believe it. You have to see that you CAN live through it. You don't know what to trust. You don't know who to trust. You don't know anything.

So time goes by and time is highly underrated. Often one partner can't make time move fast enough -- the one who wanted the divorce in the first place. And one partner can't slow things down enough -- the one who did not want the divorce and goes kicking and screaming into a very dark uncertain unpleasant future. But like the song says, "Time ..... is on my side, yes it is." Actually time is on everyone's side. Because after a while, you start to see that you're still alive, you're still breathing and that you will continue.

Time feels long or short but it always creeps up on you all of a sudden and you notice -- "Wow, I'm renewing my lease on this place," and you've managed to be alive even a year after being separated. Or "wow, we're paying taxes again, but not jointly." you think and you note you're still breathing and probably managing better than the year before or at least managing. Or your kid brings home the school directory and both your addresses are listed this year, so they finally got it straight and you don't have to spend the whole year (as you did the year before) explaining, "No, he's at his dad's house this weekend. No, the number isn't listed, I'll give it to you."

And so who do we trust in? Well, I do happen to trust in God, but you needn't. You can trust in healing. You can trust in routine. And you can ultimately trust in time.