DIJA'S SECOND ACT

 Dear Lorenzo, I cannot fucking believe that I'm awake right now. It's Saturday, 9:14 a.m. and I SWORE to myself that I would sleep in today and do absolutely NO work around the house but... Here we are. I have BAGS of clean clothes to fold and put away, a kitchen full of dirty dishes to wash, and a bathroom sink that is still stained yellow from whatever painting project your daughter undertook several nights ago when she was supposed to be asleep. Most Saturdays I wake up fully energized, ready to work out and start cleaning as soon as the sun comes up but... Not today. I stayed up well past my usual 9:00 p.m. bedtime, watching a movie on Netflix. And unlike my usual late night fare, The Lost Husband was NOT a comedy. It was the touching story of a woman who moves her family to her aunt's farm to heal after the death of her husband. It was the type of slow-paced, quiet movie that you would've hated and been pissed at me for forcing you to watch. But the movie triggere...

Dear Lorenzo, I hate daytime television.  I hate the fake, manufactured bullshit that is Maury and the Jerry Springer Show.  I HATE all things celebrity like the Daily Mail show (which I've seen once at my hairdresser's; NEVER AGAIN) and TMZ. And as well you know I hate all of the judge shows, like Judge Judy and Paternity Court. But I recently discovered a daytime talk show that I actually enjoyed. It's called The Mel Robbins show and it's hosted by a life coach whose expressed goal is to help her viewers make their lives better. On Friday she said something that really spoke to me. According to Mel, we are all "one decision away from changing our lives". One decision. Just one decision away from here and wherever the hell I'd rather be. And so with that in mind, with those words reverberating through my brain all weekend long, I think I've figured out exactly what my one decision should be. It's time to give up drugs and alcohol for a while. When...

Dear Lorenzo, It's Sunday, August 9, 2020 and I'm up cooking Butters an all natural, anti-itch meal that I found on Youtube, while simultaneously doing laundry and talking to you.  Today started with my regular, Sunday morning dose of pre-teen melodrama mixed with a pinch of guilt and a heaping dose of long-suffering silence from Amira. She's been sulking since we got home from the park last night. Why? Because she has swim class today and she doesn't want to go. We do this dance every damn week. On Saturday nights she starts with the "my stomach hurts" or "my allergies are bothering me" or whatever dumb ass excuse she can come up with. By Sunday morning, resigned to her fate, she walks around the house casting sidelong glances in my direction, doing her damnedest to guilt trip me into rescheduling her class for another day. And it usually works. Eventually, I get tired. Tired of listening to her whine. Tired of trying to figure out all of this paren...

Dear Lorenzo, It's 9:42 a.m. and with both Amira and Butters still sleeping, I figured this was the perfect time to write. If you could see me now, I fear you wouldn't recognize me. For one thing, I've gotten fat. Really, really fat. Like, I wouldn't even DREAM about attempting to squeeze my fat ass into the jeans I wore when you were still with us, that kind of fat.  You see, when you died, no, before you died, when you were lying in intensive care at St. Francis Hospital, my binge eating began in earnest. It probably sounds stupid to you but...eating my way through the pain helped. When I was stuffing my face with sour cream and onion chips, Ritz crackers and Cabot's Vermont sharp, white cheddar cheese, the pain of your accident, of our daughter having to see her father being carted off by an ambulance, became much more manageable for me. Nothing hurt as much because I was using all that junk food to anesthetize myself. But in the aftermath of your death, the jun...