One wedding and a salad

I know.. talking about salad on a saturday night is not the most scintillating of topics, I know. However this ain't no ordinary salad.. no sireee Bob. This salad came out of my first ever vegetable garden. Only a few short weeks ago I was tossing in seeds and not that confident anything was going to come of this endeavour. And there's been hits and misses for sure, I think I accidently dug up the Ice Berg lettuce and the chives look like the most anemic skinny things I've ever seen. However the surviving lettuces of many varieties and the spinach are growing like gangbusters! I cheerfully went out this evening and snip snip snip, I have my organic salad in a bowl. Which was costing me about $5 at Safeway and would usually coagulate into a liquid form in my crisper before being tossed out. I prematurely pulled a bunch of radishes so I'm calling them "baby radishes". Once I saw the little red tops poking out of the ground I couldn't help myself. The baby radishes are in the salad too. I didn't feel confident or knowledgable enough to plant tomatoes, maybe next year when I'm a seasoned veteran. The satisfaction of eating my own home grown food is pretty cool!

Friday I attended my Ex-husband's wedding. I suspect that somewhere in some dusty old rule book section 105 article 37B appendix F, there must be something written that states we must hate, dislike or at the very least feel sad or indifferent towards our ex-spouses. And it would appear that the majority of society follows this edict for a variety of reasons. Darren and I on the other hand actually still like each other. Of course the question arises "Then why aren't you still married?" I don't feel compelled to answer that question. Hell, we all know that relationships end for a good reason other wise they wouldn't end at all. What the rule book suggests is it's way easier to end a relationship on a bad note when there have been hurt feelings, dashed expectations, lies, broken dreams etc etc etc. Maybe so, but not mandatory.

One of the strengths of our 18 year relationship was our friendship and even when we knew our legal union was coming to an end we both agreed that we wanted to try and keep the one thing that had sustained us through the ups and downs of our lives which was this friendship. It wasn't easy and both of us at various times put up with phenonmenal shit from the other. We had our share of screaming matches over the phone and angry letters left in the mail box. But somehow we would come to our senses and find a way to work it out or at least agree to disagree. When Darren met Crystal he was non-commital about it for the longest time but I knew it must be special. I knew he hadn't dated much, but that on some level he's hardwired for relationship. Darren has a finely honed intuitive sense of people so if Crystal was in his life she must be special. And it turns out she is.

I'm sure both her and I were nervous to meet at first. I didn't want to act like an idiot and yet I really did want her to know that Darren and I were only friends and I was completely harmless. And she was nervous that I knew Darren so much better than she did. I was also very relieved to find that I did actually like her. Now don't get me wrong, we aren't all some freaky bestfriends or anything. You won't find us on the Jerry Springer show anytime soon. But on occasion I have enjoyed a glass of wine with them in the backyard. Their dogs know who I am. I was touched to be invited to the wedding, that they were willing to ignore convention and some dissaproval of others enough to have me take part in their day.

I brought my good friend Mick as my date. Not only because he is exceptionally good looking, younger and looks FABULOUS on my arm (evil grin) but because I was nervous about going and I needed someone I trusted in my corner. A friend who could back me up and knew me well enough that if things turned horribly awry he could help. Turns out my fears were groundless. I doubt Crystal's family or friends had any idea who I was. I didn't notice any stares that spoke "What is SHE doing here?" I was very happy to watch one of my best and longest friends stand up and commit himself to a great woman who looked at him like she just won the lottery.

Sometimes we find ourselves in unique situations. Last week I was supporting friends in death and yesterday I had the priviledge to support friends in their new life. When I left the evening I gave Darren a big hug and told him I loved him. He smiled his big grin accompanied by his bear hug and said the same back. I guess that stupid, dusty, old rule book doesn't have a provision for that.