Ladies and Gentlemen!

The man coming to the stage now plays to audiences all over the Bay Area and beyond, a very funny guy, put your hands together for...


Usually I write stuff and joke about tempting fate and it laughs at me and concurs. I'll write about how much I spill on myself, for example, and the next day I'll end up with my shirt covered in Mystery Spots. You know how it is.

So I thought maybe I was being a little brazen with my post yesterday, daring to joke about my boyfriend's supposedly impending divorce and all.

Oh, you know? Here's something I love, something that never gets old -- Ish and I will be somewhere like a restaurant or club, and someone will ask if we're married. And then I get to smile and say, "Well, HE is." Ahahahahaha.

Whew. Good one, huh?

But seriously, folks.

Last year, the Friday of Memorial Day weekend was a VERY NOT GOOD DAY. Ish was maybe sort of laid off, without warning, from a job he really didn't like. (Talk about salt on a wound.) And given his then-tenuous hold on his "life's plan" (welcome to the club, kiddo), it threw him into a pretty sucky tailspin. That very day he began speaking of packing it all up, packing it all in, and moving to LA and scraping by and trying to make it as a comedy writer. It was bad. And that evening, while we were busy trying to think of the positives, there was a freak cat accident in the kitchen and my Sherlock kind of went crazy and then lost his footing at the same time Ish was approaching him and, as these things go, Sherlock managed to regain his footing all over Ish's face.

This is to say that last year, Ish spent Memorial Day weekend feeling both broken down and, well, bloodied and scarred. From his girlfriend's cat.

At one point over that weekend, he actually did the "pitiful milkshake" dance. He'd been explaining his situation to our friend Lisa, and somehow that devolved into his standing, slumping his shoulders, and then rocking them back and forth with his head bowed, sighing the words, "My pitiful milkshake. Brings all the boys to the yard. Damn right." SIGH.

It was hilarious, despite itself. (Maybe you had to be there.)

Anyway! Can you believe it's a year later?

Yeah, well. So Ish has made a lot of changes, grabbed a tighter hold on his at-least-for-the-forseeable-future life's plan.

And I've written a little bit more about him, since he's such a big part of my life. But I've been holding back, too, inasmuch as he's still technically uh, someone else's husband. Right. I mean, that's why I've never even mentioned his name.

This morning, the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, he got up and turned off the alarm. He went to the livingroom to grab his Blackberry, which had recently bleeped to indicate he had a new message. He then walked back into the bedroom, and read the key sentence aloud.

Turns out, he's divorced. She'd written as soon as she'd heard from her lawyer this morning. They're divorced.

Ish is a free agent.

So if you don't mind, I'd like to re-introduce him to you all now:

Invisible Internet Friends, meet Ish -- formerly of the pitiful milkshake, now "newly single" -- otherwise known as Peter Bartlett.

But you can call him Pete. :)