All the Kings Horses...

This morning I woke up with a broad smile spreading across both cheeks. (Don't look so surprised. I was simply referring to my brand new Life is Good boxer shorts;  had I actually been smiling with my face I would have said I was grinning from ear to ear. Duh.)

The truth is I have lots to smile about. At least I can still afford new underwear. I have spent the better part of the past week helping my attorneys line their pockets as they slave over the umpteenth updated financial disclosures for our impending meeting with the judge. The pot is shrinking fast, and, as it turns out, I might have to spend less on clothing down the road, which will, I imagine, affect my Hanky Panky thong budget. Oh well, there are worse things than having to go commando. As with all laws, I believe in adhering to them in spirit if not the letter. I may not be wearing clean underwear if I get into an accident, Mom, but I sure won't be wearing dirty underwear either. Isn't that really the point?

I am going to try to pay closer attention to the message emblazoned across my behind by my Life is Good boxers and smile more. It'll help with the wrinkles on the other cheeks, the ones that could actually use the plumping effect of well conditioned facial muscles (and if I can't afford underwear, Botox is definitely out of the question). Hey, if you can't pull a good life lesson out of your ass every now and then, what does that say about you?

So there I was, this morning, at the crack of dawn, trying to stretch my lips into some reasonable facsimile of the shit eating grin on my boxers, when the shit hit the fan. Well, it didn't really hit the fan, but a hideous odor did appear to be making its way through the ventilation system, an odor so strong even my little flannel shorts seemed to grimace. You can try to look at the bright side all you want, but when your dog decides to have diarrhea all over the family room in the wee hours of the morning it's kind of hard to stop the corners of your mouth from drooping.

As I mopped up the piles from various corners of the room, I tried my darnedest to come up with reasons to smile. I glanced over my shoulder at the smiley faces on my butt, only to be hit with the realization that, from that particular vantage point, even the insipid Life is Good logo appeared to be frowning. How quickly things can change.


Well, at least the great efforts my soon to be ex and I have put in to get along -- even be friends of a sort -- have paid off and our children appreciate that we are still, no matter what, a loving and wonderful family. Oh, wait, apparently I got that wrong. As it turns out, our kids have no burning desire to see us -- much less spend time with us -- as a parental "unit," and are happy to love each of us (thank goodness for small favors), as long as we are not in the same room. Once again, our kids are very good at demonstrating how much wiser they are than we are. So much for our efforts to put Humpty Dumpty together again.

My friends keep telling me I deserve to have a life. My underwear keeps reminding me that the life I deserve to have is supposed to be good. Maybe I just need to stop pining for the old life, the one where there was at least a credible illusion of "one big happy family," the one in which blind and frustrated dogs didn't turn my house into a toilet just because I wanted to sleep past four.

Maybe, as my friend suggested during my tearful phone call this afternoon, I need to stop trying so hard to put all the pieces back together. If all the King's men couldn't do it, I don't know why the heck I think I can.