Like a bad horror movie...

I never liked slasher flicks. Michael loved them. I did enjoy Scream, but that was about it. In one of the final scenes of Scream, the character Randy says something like, "this is where the killer jumps up for one last scream". And, of course, he does.

I thought everything was over between me and Michael. In October, I signed up with one of those "credit protection" agencies. As soon as our divorce was final, my $60/month "credit protection" would kick in, saving me about $100/month. I figured that even if the divorce got delayed a full billing cycle, I'd still be $40 to the good. Silly me.

It's March 8th, and I'm still married.

I canceled the credit protection in January, after sinking $240 into an insurance I would never cash in on.

Last November, Michael told me that he'd signed and mailed the papers. The divorce would be final "soon". To his credit, he did sign some papers. He signed the divorce decrees, which states that he wouldn't contest the divorce itself. Unfortunately, before he could sign the divorce decrees, he had to sign the separation agreement. That makes sense, from a "common sense" perspective -- obviously, we'd have to be "separated" before we got "divorced". But from a legal perspective, I couldn't see that it mattered. In the divorce papers that got filed in July, it stated that we'd been separated since April.

Regardless, I was learning more about the legal system than I ever wanted to know. So, he had to sign a separation agreement. No problem.

Ok, small problem. Turns out that even though we had informally hashed one out via instant messenger, a separation agreement has to be "official". It has to have the right language in it and be notarized. So I set an appointment with my lawyer to draw up "official" papers on my next day off. This appointment was for the Thursday before Thanksgiving. I got called in to work, so I postponed our meeting until Tuesday, immediately following work. That Tuesday, I got a phone call just hours before my shift was up: My lawyer had just been in a very bad accident, and was being rushed to a larger hospital in another county. Perhaps it was a little selfish of me, not being immediately concerned for her welfare, but I was already past the 90 day waiting period two times over.

"Will you reschedule my appointment for me?" I asked her secretary.

"Well," she replied hesitantly, "I don't know when she'll be out of the hospital. It might be a while."

"I see," I said. I was mentally kicking myself, at this point, for having gone to work on Thursday instead of meeting with my lawyer. Now it might be weeks or months more before my divorce became final. I want to be divorced in 2008. Is that too much to ask? "Thank you for calling," I told her secretary. "Please let me know as soon as you are able to reschedule me."