What’s Next?
I’ve been pretty tight-lipped about it, but today was the second and final trip to America’s Finest Merely Adequate City to visit the family court. Family? I hear you ask. It wasn’t too long ago that I was actually married. About seven and a half hours ago, actually.
It was a bright and cheerful day in San Diego. The sun was shining, only the highest clouds managed an appearance, and the autumn morning air was crisp enough to mask the city’s in-built smell of waste—mostly human. I stuffed ten bucks in the box at the parking lot across from the courthouse and awaited the appearance of The Appellant, aka My Beautiful and Talented Bride™. Hell, somebody had to be The Respondent, and it might as well be me. Right? I respond pretty well if I must say so.
I work with a broad swath of humanity down at the Far Eastern Outpost, but not as broad as the courthouse. The most engaging figures were without a doubt the women who chose to get tarted up for an appearance in family court. “My husband is a heel!” just doesn’t seem to carry as much gravity when your boots keep on going up your thighs or your hairdo boldly scrapes the sky, but that’s just me. Or not. Hiz Honner found against Boot World Girl (en espanol) and we didn’t wait around to hear from Mrs. Indefatigable Hair since that was very likely to take a very long time. The machine-wrought boobs and her future ex’s man tan guaranteed fun arguments, but not in a Law & Order way. More of a VH1: Behind The Cosmetic Surgery way.
We did wait though. We waited and waited. We waited to hear that our absent paralegal sobered up, came back across the border and filed duplicate papers. We waited to hear what we should do (sign this one five times, sign this one three times). We waited on the Group B bench. We waited in the court gallery. We waited for the court staff to take a break. We waited for Johnny Surferdude Esq. to argue for a continuance. We waited to hear Sketchy McDad make his case for 36% custody of the kids instead of the current 28%.
Stipulated: Family Court is no fun.
At 11:20 this morning, though, they sat us down and after swearing us in (!) the judge immediately went into his ruling… The settlement is so ordered, and “as of this second, you’re both single people. I hereby dissolve this marriage.” This second? Was the court reporter reporting seconds on his reporting gizmo? I suspect bravado!
So yeah, it was a happy day in that all of the procedure and nonsense was done. It was also a very sad day because it drove the final nail into the last, what, fifteen years? That’s a lot of time to have dissolved just like that. I’m not sure that I’m okay with that.
– bob
P.S. So what’d I do when I got home? First was to call a bunch of people to tell them about it. Second was to take myself out to an expensive dinner at the local cafe (and I wrote most of this there, actually, because I really care!). Try the gnocchi!
P.P.S. Disclosure: I’ve made some edits to this post to fix some of the writing-by-candlelight problems and to correct some factual bits.