Today Is Sunday In Texas

Another blue sky Sunday here in North Texas. Things green seem to be springing to life. Soon Texas will turn colorful for a month or two with the sprouting of wildflowers. And then it'll turn brown, for the most part.

Tonight is Academy Awards night. Last year I think I lasted less than a half hour before turning off the TV. I've not gone to a movie in a theater in this century.

The Academy Awards used to seem sort of like living history with all sorts of famous movie stars from as far back as the 1920s, alive and on display in their elderly form.

Only a few of the Hollywood Stars of Old are still alive. Mickey Rooney, Elizabeth Taylor, Debbie Reynolds, I can think of no others. I'm sure there must be some.

You know you're getting old when Warren Beatty and Clint Eastwood get Lifetime Achievement Awards.

And tonight they are giving the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award to Jerry Lewis. I read this morning that those humorless, clueless French still think Jerry Lewis is a comedic genius. That's troubling.

Speaking of Humanitarian Awards, this morning I got an interesting, empathetic email from someone in Tacoma who, apparently, has been reading my blog ever since I was up in Tacoma and who has been, and is, appalled by the childish rantings of a fellow Tacomaite and amused by my ongoing attempts to make sense of what I've come to understand was/is very difficult to understand behavior. I had no idea, til this person told me, that the party in question, previously, had me up on a pedestal and referred to me as her second husband. Just typing that sent a chilling shudder down my spine.

I've not read any of the ranting in awhile, the last instance was pretty funny and so embarrassingly self-revealing, making clear, for any and all to see, what I meant by toxic madness.

The funniest part of that particular ranting was a line, something like, the party in question "had been warned that it would end badly if she allowed me back into her life." Now, I long ago understood that this particular person creates her own alternative reality, that bears little relationship to truth. I love the idea that she lets people into or out of "her life," as if it is some sort of Theme Park one gains admission to.

The reality is, it has always been her behavior that causes things to "end badly." The time previous to the final instance was way back in the 1990s, at Sunriver, when I'd had enough of her lack of impulse control causing multiple temper tantrums. By the time I moved to Texas we were on friendly terms again. I remember returning in 2000 and being confused as to why there had been a move to Tacoma, but I didn't ask and didn't learn why til a couple years later.

By 2003, or so, this person had pretty much faded from my consciousness. Then I got a call from my brother. A friend of his, who knew I knew the party in question, had been unable to reach her. I called the number, I had, to find it'd been disconnected. I contacted a mutual friend, in Bellingham, who told me there had been some trouble, that I'd have to find out the details elsewhere. But, she gave me a phone number.

So, I called and told the person, who was warned "not to let me back in her life because it would end badly," that Miss X was trying to get in contact with her. The person who runs her life like a Theme Park and I exchanged pleasantries. And then I got off the phone. I did not realize, at the time, that my calling had given her my cell phone number.

So, with that cell number, the calls began. Soon the calls came daily. I have no idea at what point in time I was granted admission to this person's Fabulous Life. I do know I flew up there in February of 2004 and this was the first time in years I'd physically been in this person's Fabulous Life. I was back again, for a month, in August of 2004. That time I really was deep into that Fabulous Life, staying the month in her apartment building. That was actually fun.

I returned again in November of 2004, 3 flights up to Seattle in one year. I did not like that. I was up there again in, I think, October of 2005 and then again in April of 2006. On that visit I house sat for the person who now villifies me, while she and her first husband went to Mexico.

My next return was July 20 this past summer, for an entire hellish month that ended August 20. The person who now says she has divorced me (again, shudder) had convinced herself that I was moving back to Washington, at least part time, to do flea markets with her. The concept had been discussed, but not seriously, by me. The person who now villifies me, in stereotypical Only Child Syndrome fashion, did not take it well when I said I was returning to Texas and that no, I did not think I was interested in a flea market career. Though it had been sort of fun helping out with several of those, 3 times at the Fremont Sunday Market, once at Art in the Park and one really boring one in Lacey, called the Saturday Market.

Of course, me good-naturedly doing these flea markets, drivng all over, making magnets and even washing dishes and cleaning a filthy kitchen floor is totally forgotten when some minor thing upsets the Only Child, causing a fit to be pitched with a temper tantrum. Which, with the perspective of time and space, makes it all seem pretty funny, with such a high level of groundless acrimony on display. It was I who had valid reason to be righteously offended and upset.

The biggest irony is it was actually I who let this person back into my life. And I actually did have someone remind me of how difficult she was. But, I've always found her very amusing and I figured she was older, maybe the hormonal rages no longer happened. I knew she'd been in therapy and was taking mood altering medications, all of which made me think the temper tantrums were a thing of the past.

I was wrong.

Everything had gotten worse. I don't think I was ever able to get my balance back from the shock of my second day in Tacoma last summer, when seeing the party in question, for the first time in over 2 years, to see that she'd at least doubled in size. I don't know if I was able to keep an unshocked looking expression on my face. I do remember that upon seeing me she told me I looked sickly and gaunt! I probably did. I felt like throwing up.