The summer ended, school started, and all of our crazy antics now seem as though they happened a million years ago, and to other people.  After our little tumble in the front yard, Derek and I made the most of our time before the kids came back from Catherine's by taking a few days to go off on a vacation of our own.  We hadn't had a night alone together in a hotel since long before a doctor shouted, "You can see the head!", and I think it is safe to say that it was long overdue.   Sure, we only drove over to Chicago to stay at a fancy hotel, but it was still a fantastic change of pace.  We slept late, went to expensive restaurants to eat food we couldn't pronounce, and well, I won't beat around the bush.  We humped like drunken bunnies in heat.  It was good.  Sweaty, and very good.

            On the trip, we decided that even though we had made it out the other side in one piece that a few sessions of marriage counseling probably couldn't hurt.  Letting our renewed sense of lovey dovey-ness cloud out our reasoning skills seemed like a very easy thing to do, all things considered, and while we both knew that what had happened with Patrick and Veigh was gone, completely evaporated, we wanted to make damn sure we took care of the issues that took us to those people in the first place.  It would seem like a wonderful plan to blame them for all the things that we did wrong.  They seduced us, or held us at gunpoint to make out, but the reality is that we had let things slip for an awful long time before either of those two even entered the picture.  Even more fascinating was the fact that it was Derek, once again who made the suggestion.  His determination to make up for the things we lost was inspiring, to say the least, and it made it an exciting venture as opposed to one where one spouse is dragged kicking and screaming onto Freud's couch.

            We have been seeing Dr. Fleischner for about two and a half months now, and she is quite spectacular.  Large in part for her constantly telling us how normal we are, and yet ahead of the curve in our little process.  I guess it is pretty common for these types of things to go beyond car kissing and neck smooching.  We waited patiently for her to show us all the things we had done wrong, and how we could fix them, but instead she prescribed us maintenance homework.  Like sitting and staring into each other's eyes, without saying a word, which we couldn't make it through because we were laughing too hard, or this weird exercise where we had to feed each other various foods while blindfolded.  The trick was that in front of us was a barrage of hideous things as well as yummy ones, and we had to trust the other person to know what we would like and to not say, cram pickled pig testicles down the other's throat.

            No piggy testes, but there was some fun with the blindfolds and whipped cream.

            The more successful things we tried were making sure to complement each other on something new every day, and a nice exercise where we had to kiss without actually touching.  Sounds weird, but it was hot, believe me...

            Honestly, we figured out (with Dr. Fleischner's help, of course,) that despite our attempts at dramatic affairs, all we were really missing was communication, and a bit of understanding.  He had gotten to a point where he just assumed that I could do everything for everyone, and expected me to be this certain way, and I had grown terribly resentful of the pressure, of being treated the same day in and day out, which for a while had me day dreaming, but grew into something so much worse.  Now, it is a lot easier to put ourselves into each other's shoes, and try to respect the life that they lead, and be there to assist when needed.

            Don't get me wrong, we still have our little tiffs.  Such as when I came home to find a giant brown stain on the floor and was informed that daddy had dropped a bowl of chocolate pudding, and left it there while they all drove to the video store.  Hard to see myself in those shoes, I have to say.  Or perhaps the time when I washed his jeans for casual Friday and put in the non color safe bleach, and the next morning he came shrieking into the bed room looking like a WHAM! groupie.  He certainly didn't find the situation as amusing as I did.

            At least now we are not the sit in the kitchen and zone out and sit on the couch with a laptop couple we were at the beginning of the summer, and that is what counts.

            The kids came home to a new mom and dad after their trip to Connecticut and they have never been happier.  We have done more things as a family over that last couple of months than we had in the last two years combined.  Trips to the zoo, movies, amusement parks, ice skating, you name it, we have done it, the four of us, with giant cheesy, "Leave it to Beaver" smiles on our face.  Well, "Leave it to Beaver" without that crazy void look in the eyes of the cast that tells you that as soon as someone yelled cut, everyone bolted backstage to take hits off of Eddie Haskell's bong.  I have never seen Derek enjoy his children the way he has been, and likewise for the kids with him.  It's kind of nice to just kick back and watch the cute that is a father genuinely appreciating time with his children.

            In other news, Catherine now calls me once a week to have a chat after the kids have gone to school, and trust me, I was surprised as anyone, but I don't screen the calls, and I actually tend to look forward to them somewhat.  Her determination to turn over a new leaf with me is inspiring in the way that we might just become a normal family after all.  We talk about how Abby and Ollie are doing in school, how Derek is getting along at work, and how I am getting along at home.  We never bring up what she walked in on that day.  It was never spoken again beyond that backyard, and I am grateful to her for it.  She knows that Derek is fully aware of what happened, but she still chooses to let those sleeping dogs lie. 

            She tells me of her world, of how things are playing out with Richard.  During one conversation, she spoke again of how it saddens her that they sleep apart, at which point I asked her if she had ever told him that it bothered her.  The incredible length of silence that followed was telling.              "Well, I had never even thought to!" she had said, "It's just not the sort of thing you discuss!"

            My turn for a long silence.

            When assured by me that hey, it was worth a shot, that he can never know what you are thinking unless you fill him in, she promised to feel the situation out.  A week later I answered the phone at our usual call time and was treated to a very chipper voice that sounded remarkably like my Mother in Law's.  While he didn't exactly fall all over himself at the topic she brought up, give the guy a break, he is as old school about things as she is, he eventually came to her saying that he missed her too.  Things didn't slam into normalcy like with Derek's and my Yard Smackdown, but she had been sleeping in his room for the last few days, which had her kinds of giddy I didn't think she was capable of being.  When she started sharing the "lovemaking" portion of the story, I felt my ears bleeding and told her that while, yes, we were friends now, we ain't now, and are never gonna be, that type of friend.

            She of course has her moments where she dips back into the old Catherine pool, and slips me a zinger or two.  Most of the time she catches herself and apologizes, and the rest of the time I let it go and smile.  They are like little reminders to be thankful for what we have together now, as opposed to how we used to play.

            Gwenny, my sweet peach, has had an interesting few months herself.  Her promotion at work went through, she moved to a bigger apartment, and even more enjoyable, she met a fella.  And not just her usual breed of Meet 'Em, Greet 'Em, Between the Sheet 'Em, no friends, this gentleman seems to have been able to get past the bucket of horny that is Gwen.  Eric Whitman, excuse me, Doctor Eric Whitman, is head of pulmonary medicine at a large hospital in New York City, and was not met at a bar, gasp, but at a fundraiser that Gwen's firm was contributing to.  He was tall, he was dark, he was charming in a not-trying-to-get-into-your-panties type of way.  He wined her, he dined her, he took things slower than I think she even knew how.  They met a good month before Gwen came here for Abby's party, but being the selfish, evil friend that I was, all wrapped up in Patrick nonsense, she never had a chance to mention this delicious dish of hers.  All these months later, and they are still together, which makes this, let's see...  Carry the one....  Oh, yes, her longest relationship, ever.

            In the interest of making myself a well rounded and complete individual, which will benefit our marriage as a whole (Dr. Fleishman's words, not mine, clearly) I have planned a trip of my very own up to visit Gwen in her native habitat.  Will be my first venture out on my own in a ridiculously long time, and I get to ride on an actual airplane.  By myself.  Without an antsy, bored child strapped in beside me screaming about the movie sucking, their ears popping, or how that guy sitting in front of us has no hair, and smells like trout.  I will traipse around the big city, led by my dear compadre, and see the sites that well, should be seen I suppose.  In reality, I am sure she will just take me out and get me good and liquored up a few times and gush about her new dreamy, doctor, boyfriend.  And I am pretty damn excited.

            As for Patrick, well...  Let's see.  After I treated his business to a sharp jab from my knee and abandoned his apartment for the final time, he seemed to take it personally.  That or he took it as a blow to his fragile man ego, and decided that he was going to get even with me, or at the very least make me jealous, and sought out a new chick to move in on.  Well actually, not new, he picked someone he thought would have a big fat impact on me.  Natalie Brimawich.  You heard right, but let me reiterate again, Natalie Brimawich.  They ran into each other at a gas station a few days after our little encounter, and Patrick wasted no time moving in.  Not that he had that far too go, she had been flirting with him all summer too. 

            It happened short and sweet, she made her way to his apartment, and it only took her one visit to succumb to that god forsaken cologne.  It would seem that her home life was not quite what she had made it out to be, although no one in particular was shocked to find out that her husband wasn't exactly a love smitten, dedicated husband to the ice queen herself.  I think the sad part is that she probably felt him slipping even further away, and thought that making him jealous would help.  Because that is what an affair always does, you know.  It is especially ineffective when your husband can barely tolerate you in the first place.

            The scenario unfolded quickly in front of the whole town.  While Patrick assumed that things would probably stay on the down low of their indiscretion, except of course for the voicemail he left me sharing the dirty deets in a hope to make me swoon, I assume, but much to his eventual chagrin, Natalie went right home and spilled her adulterous beans to her husband, proudly informing him of the who, the when, and the why.  I would have loved to have seen her face when he stood up and told her that he had been having an affair of his own, with a junior associate at his firm, and then handed her divorce papers that he had drawn up a week before.  I would have loved to have seen her face even more so when she realized that she had signed an iron clad pre-nup granted her literally nothing were she to ever cheat.  He on the other hand, hand no legal documents barring him from screwing around, so he walked away scot free.  It is amazing what a woman marrying for money will sign to seal the deal, isn't it?

            With his wife squashed like the annoying mosquito that I had known for years that she was, Anderson Brimawich turned his sights toward the other half of his wife's affair.  Not one to ever be made out the fool, especially in the public eye, he needed to make sure his reputation as a force to be reckoned with, and therefore feared, was fully intact by setting out to tear Patrick limb, from figurative, limb.  And when you are one of the most powerful men this side of the equator, well, it's not particularly hard to do.

            While he could have done a hundred things, had his knees broken, cement shoes, or a hundred other mobster theme-d ideas, instead, he took his quest to the most unlikely of places.  The school board.  And when one of the largest benefactors on the district comes to saying that he thinks a certain teacher should be run out of town in a big hurry, well, the district listens. 

            Patrick was forced to resign three days before school started.  There aren't a lot of options open for a man who sleeps with the wife of a guy like Anderson in the same zip code.  Or state.  And so our dear Mr. Patrick Dixon was left without employment opportunities and was left with no other choice than to head back to the West Coast to, wait for it...  Live with his parents. 

            I have heard that he got a job coaching soccer at a public high school, and may start teaching there after school gets back from Christmas break in January.  It is a darn shame because rumor is that he was actually a very good science teacher.  Too bad he couldn't focus on that part of himself as opposed to the part of him that seemed to be drawn to conquering married women.  That part is located about six inches south of his belly button, I believe.

            While the human in me wants to feel bad for the two of them, it is pretty hard to do.  He was such an arrogant asshole that it was bound to happen that he would bite off more than he could chew in women someday, and he is quite lucky he didn't find an angrier, more violent husband on the other side of that nibble.  And as for Natalie, well, she is just a horror of a person and always has been, so there is not much to work with there, sympathy wise. 

            Initially, I felt terrible for her little boy, Nicholas, but when I saw him at pre-school, being dropped off by an especially kind nanny, hired by his father, I had never seen the boy look more, child like.  He ran to greet people, he smiled, and he acted like a four year old boy should act.  While I am sure that they divorce of his parents was hard on him, it also seemed to give him an escape from a house filled with an incredible tension.  Sometimes, it works in ways you wouldn't expect, doesn't it?

            I ran into Natalie a week or so ago at a Target while trolling around for more school supplies, and it took me a very long succession of blinks to realize it was her.  There were no designer labels draped over her, no four inch heels to be teetered upon, and her hair was back in a pony tail which I had never before seen, and still wonder if it was a mirage of some sort.

            I wanted to rub things in.  I wanted to gloat.  I wanted to point at her and ask the other shoppers to join me in a rousing chorus of "Neener, neener, neener!" but I didn't.  She looked at me, expecting it, she knew she deserved it, but it's just not my style, I suppose.  Instead, we shared some cordial hello's, and went on our separate ways.  The look of shame in her eyes was enough for me, she didn't need to be taken down anymore.  She is a great example of how things could have been, had I fallen to Patrick the way she had, and seeing as how it was an epic battle, and I came close to losing on more than one occasion, who the hell am I to judge?

            With it all over now, it is easy to look back and take an inventory of sorts.  I gained a better marriage, a relationship with my Mother in Law, happier children, and a renewed closeness with Gwen.  I lost my sense of boredom and need to be in my head all the time, I lost my arch nemesis, and neither of those things are missed.

            I also can't seem to catch even the slightest waft of the cologne Patrick wore without simultaneously feeling enraged and nauseous.

            I stand in my kitchen, watching my husband making breakfast for our children.  It is a bright and crisp Sunday morning, the first feelings of Fall making their way into the house.  We let the kids stay up late last night and we watched movies together as a family, and after they were carried off to sleep, Derek and I sat on the couch together and read books, silent, and comfortable.  Now here we are, going about the most normal of routines, the passing of milk, the pouring of cereal, and yet it is the most riveting thing I could start my day with.  No finer start.  I think of how it feels like we came so close to messing it all up, coming so close to taking away the possibility of ever having mornings like this ever again, and how I can't imagine ever letting anything threaten the perfection of watching my daughter butter toast for her brother, of watching my husband pat their heads absent-mindedly as he walks back to the refrigerator for juice. 

            No, this is something that is so much better than anything I ever day dreamed about. 

            I also gained the ability to see that.

            I give my hair a good, final shake, tossing off my reminiscent thoughts of the summer gone by, as Oliver walks up to me, his eyes with their familiar sparkle, his smile, minus his first fallen baby tooth, his demeanor one with intent, and bend down slightly to give my son my full, undivided attention.

            "Mommy?" he asks.

            "Yes, sweetie?"  I beam at him.

            "Where is my gween cup?"

            Well.  Shit.