Last January, I started seeing a man who was recently divorced. His wife expressed a desire to separate in September; they were granted a divorce in December. He pushed it through in a fit of pique and she went along, thinking that being 40, single, and jobless with no marketable skills was going to be a party.

When she saw that Mike was falling for someone while her life was going nowhere, she started to freak out. With me in the picture, the window for undoing her mistake was closing. So she asked him back, promising everything but a three-way. Never really wanting the divorce to begin with, he went.

I kicked myself for being so stupid and vowed never again to date someone so freshly divorced.

Fortunately, my next boyfriend, Bob, had been divorced for years, following a mighty effort to work things out. Their central problems seemed to me insurmountable. That marriage was dead and buried.

Much of my communication with Bob was electronic. In our first month dating, I exceeded my text message limit by 200 messages. I had already changed my cellular plan twice for relationships that failed right after, including the one with Mike. So when I added a $20/month unlimited text plan for Bob, I told him: “Kindly do not go back to your ex-wife” or otherwise screw up. No problem. The notion of reconciliation was too ludicrous to consider.

We seemed good when I upgraded to a Blackberry to make texting easier, locking me into that plan for two years. Bob ended up dumping me a week after I got the damned thing, for reasons that were a bit obscure considering how perfectly happy he seemed with me. I got over it quickly, but something kept nagging at me.

Three days before breaking up with me, Bob spent the afternoon at the house he still owned with his ex, overseeing a repair. I didn’t mind if he spent time there; I knew he still liked his ex, but like a sister. Given the timing of our breakup and the fact that my brain never stops churning, though, I couldn’t help but wonder. A week later, I saw that his low-tech ex had become his friend on Facebook. Hmmm.

I check his profile now and again (it’s public, though perhaps not after today), and nothing very interesting was happening until last week when he posted photos from Christmas and the recent ice storm. I knew from earlier posts that he had lost power, which was curious because he lives south of where the major damage occurred. I started to look at his pictures, and nothing in them was familiar. “That’s not his house,” I said to myself while looking at a shot of the living room. Then there was a picture of a dog. “And he doesn’t have a dog.”

His ex has a dog. He’d spent the ice storm at his former marital home, and given the captions (the dog was referred to using the plural possessive), there doesn’t appear to be any way to interpret these photos—and the Christmas pictures that featured not his sister, as I’d first thought, but his ex-wife—other than that the rotted corpse of their marriage had been miraculously resurrected. As one astute friend said, “Who would post photos of their ex-wife on Facebook if they weren’t trying to declare a reunion?”

Of course. Which means I sent not one, but two men back to their ex-wives. In one year.

Anyone with an ounce of entrepreneurial spirit can see there’s a business opportunity here. I haven’t yet quantified, duplicated, and patented the formula that caused these women to want their discarded husbands back, but perhaps with enough experience, I could zero in on it. I assume that something I do to the men makes them more desirable in their wives’ eyes. Mike and Bob were getting healthier, happier, and more interesting when they were seeing me—going to movies and plays, hiking, eating at nice restaurants, and reading books I recommended. With the affection they got from me, they must have projected more confidence, too. And there’s nothing like the specter of another woman with your man to make him more attractive. Kind of like a scarf. Or the right tie.

Once I figure it out, I’m going to franchise it. How’s Ex-Ex for a company name? People would pay in the thousands for this service. But I’ll need to go out with a few more divorced men to refine the process. The payment for success during this research period? Please—just cover my cell phone bill.

This year, for some reason, starting with my second glass, the wine didn’t taste right to me, so, amazingly, I didn’t overimbibe. This really should have brought on the apocalypse, as plentiful amounts of red wine and a party at home nearly always result in a pretty serious buzz and a decidedly serious hangover the next day. But yesterday I woke up feeling peachy, which I suppose is a good thing. Once my kids left for their dad’s, I picked up a book and spent several hours on my Jeanie chair reading (see Freakin’ Furniture for a photo of the chair in question). I suppose that is a more productive way to start the new year than lolling in bed all day. But still, I do wish New Year’s eve had been a bit more self-destructive than it was.

In the mean time, I am faced with a house full of leftovers, and that’s not going very well. At least the red velvet cake is now out of the way (and yes, I’m afraid I “got rid of” it in a manner most unhealthy), and I sent the cheesecake with my boys. Today I am wondering how well I will face the various types of chocolate that are still lying around. After yesterday, I would predict “not well.”

As I have mentioned several times, I am connecting with a lot of people on Facebook, and folks are putting up lots of pictures from the old days. This made me think of the tape I have in my possession that features transfers of my father’s Super8 film footage from about 1967 until 1981. I watched it last night and am anxious to digitize parts of it onto my computer so I can share it with my hometown friends. I know how to do this, but apparently I have hurt a few things on computer, and the software I need to perform this transfer fails with an indecipherable error. I tried downloading an updated version of the software, and when I rebooted, my desktop was gone. Seeing your desktop background with nothing on it, not even the Windows toolbar, is not a happy sight.

Despite my father’s insistence that I didn’t have such a capability, I discovered that the Rescue & Recovery program that came with my laptop does do a system backup, so I was able to recover my system. I am blaming this fiasco in part for today’s late post, because it’s possible I might have written something last night while watching Jerry McGuire for the hundredth time had I had a working laptop.

This afternoon I am seeing Revolutionary Road. I’ll let you know how that goes. I have read the book, which is excellent though a bit dreary, but if anyone can bring it to life properly, it’s Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, and I do mean in that order. I don’t know if I can bear to spend two hours looking at two such heavenly creatures(pun intended, but you might need to be a Kate Winslet or Peter Jackson fan to get it). I might even head back into the theater to see Milk after dinner if I haven’t had enough.

Are you seeing anything this weekend? Write a comment with your review of one of the new movies. I saw Benjamin Button the other night against my will, but I quite liked it.

Have a good weekend hopefully in weather less frigid than we experienced here yesterday…

I already made resolutions back when the Jewish new year happened, so I don’t see what the point is in making more resolutions I won’t keep. I would truly like to keep my house clean, or at least neat and organized, but I am like Pig Pen in Charlie Brown—wherever I go, mess follows. I think the safer resolution would be to learn to love the mess.

I got a small but interesting response to Monday’s post. If you’re a loyal reader and were paying attention, you would know that I didn’t actually get that post up until about 10 a.m. on Monday, which means I slipped my deadline for the first time—by a good 10 hours. That’s because I really didn’t have a post I liked going into Sunday; I had a couple of half-finished pieces I didn’t think were coming together. At about 9 on Sunday night, I tried starting something new. I have never written a Monday post in less than, oh, five hours, so how I thought I was going to make that happen and be pleased with it, I don’t know.

So, uncharacteristically, I said screw it, I’m going to deal with this in the morning, everyone’s on vacation anyhow. And as soon as I woke up on Monday, I leaned over from my bed, picked up my laptop off the floor, and worked the draft I had of Who Pays into something I thought hung together reasonably well, even if it wasn’t my best work.

The interesting response was that it got quite a good review by a couple of loyal readers. And in rereading the piece, I see it’s not actually too bad. Since this came about on the last day of Hanukah, I guess we’ll have to call it a Hanukah miracle.

I’ve also been fretting lately that I was running out of what to say for my Sex in the Suburbs columns. My friend Dale told me to relax, that it would come if I didn’t stress. Well, I got handed such a gift today in the form of some news about someone with whom I had a relationship that is going to give me the best column for next Monday. If you’re not a loyal reader or not a fan of the Monday columns, oh do come back next week. The only thing I can say is that what’s happened is stranger than fiction, and if I don’t get a classically great column out of it, then I ought to just stop writing.

I can’t wait to get going on it, so I resolve not to drink too much tonight (oh, that’s rich!) so that I might be able to write on Thursday.

If you’re used to my usual format, I apologize for throwing your life into disarray by not putting my little Wheel of Fortune Wednesdays symbol on this post, but those who actually read real blogs might recognize this post for what it is: mindless drivel. But I hope it’s brightened your day and given you something to look forward to in the new year.

Have a wonderful, safe time tonight, hopefully with at least one person you truly care about or, barring that, someone fun to drink champagne with.

Love to all—