Dress Use #?: Vent FilterSo, technically vent filter would be dress use #75 but I have thrown in the towel on keeping count. My buddy Dan gave me the suggestion in the early days of brainstorming ideas – thanks man. The final draft for the book I have been working on was turned in a couple of weeks ago and it has been officially accepted. The book will be titled “101 Uses For My Ex-Wife’s Wedding Dress.” There are going to be a lot of ex-wife wedding dress applications in the book that aren’t on this blog – a lot. So it seems strange to keep counting here when the 101 applications in the book aren’t exactly the same as the ones I have posted on this blog. I consider the book to be the 101 best dress uses – my favorites. The truth is that between the blog and the book the wedding dress has already been used in approximately 120 different ways. This dress is unreal. I think it might be indestructible . . . that is as long as I don’t take Trevor’s advice and use it as a camp-fire starter. How well does silk burn anyways? I’m just a few months away from 2 years since my ex left and I feel good. Someone recently asked me if my life was back to normal or a new normal. I’m working on it. My life is so different than it was not that long ago but I’m very happy with where I’m at. I find it tough to establish really solid routines when my kids come and go each week. And I’m often shuffling work commitments around to be hands on with them 3-4 days every week and it will only get more difficult when they start their summer break. There is never a dull moment around here. So I plan to continue sharing dress applications on the blog between now and when my book comes out. Whenever I feel like we have thought of everything someone will send me an e-mail or in passing suggest something that nobody else has thought of. I really appreciate all the ideas. Some of the 101 uses that will be featured in the book came from ideas suggested here by visitors to my site which is so cool. It’s starting to heat up in Tucson which means my A/C will be working hard soon. My buddy Dan thought the wedding dress would make a nice vent filter and he was right. I have reusable filters that I need to clean regularly but they take some time to dry. If you need an interim filter while you clean yours may I suggest a wedding dress? But if your dress is as dirty as mine I don’t know that it will actually improve air quality.
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RaptureI can’t say that I am well prepared for the end of the world, but if the world really ends how prepared does one really need to be? I tried hard the last couple of days to convince my customers to order extra material just in case some event over the weekend screws up our supply chain – nobody took my advice. I only have one thing in mind in case the end of the world goes down tomorrow and it involves zombies. I am going to try to assimilate in my zombie bride garb. I apologize in advance if I do end up on the side of the zombies and play a hand in coming for any of you.
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Site UpdateI have mentioned before that this entire process is new to me. I have never blogged before. I can manage with a computer OK but am definitely no expert. I’m trying to set the site up in a way that is easier to navigate. I have posted a lot of uses and there are a lot more to come which makes a lot of information to sort through if you actually want to see it all. I have added links to the “LIST OF USES” tab so that you can see the current list I am planning to work with. That way it will be easier to find a specific page if you want to see a particular use. Please keep sending in suggestions because this list can change and I still don’t have 101 I am set on. Also, if you would like your creativity to be shared on my blog please send me your break up story and your unique method of getting over your ex to myexwifesweddingdress@gmail.com. Pictures are great if you have them (not of your ex but what you did to their stuff). Also feel free to make suggestions about site improvements or what you would like to see. I really appreciate it. -Kevin
Dress Use #29: Dog BedI think it is interesting that I am selective about the conditions of the spaces that I live in. Some people I know consider me to be a bit of a neat freak and others think I overuse the word tidy. Tidy is such a good word. Is it possible to have a favorite word? If so, mine is tidy. Tidy tidy tidy tidy tidy. The reality is when life is extremely busy it’s impossible for everything to be tidy and honestly I’m quite OK with spaces that aren’t. My desk is often a disaster at work. My garage is total mess. And I have an ironing board in my bedroom that has at least 50 odd socks on it. I don’t have a picture of it but I’m tempted to go take one right now just to show what a catastrophe it really is. I keep these socks because you never know when or where the match might turn up. The day I organized the linen closet, a little while after my ex moved out, I found about 5 socks attached to towels and sheets. That was definitely my biggest day ever in terms of taking socks off of my ironing board. It felt really good. I don’t remember how I celebrated but I’m sure I did something special. It’s not dress related but I’ll definitely include a picture of sock purgatory on my ironing board. I think the determining factor for how I need a space to be kept depends on the activities that take place there. If it is space where I relax then I need it to be clean. That is why I like the bulk of the living spaces in my house and my entire yard to be well kept at all times. One space that has been a huge challenge for me since my divorce is my car. My ex drove the family car, a big SUV. I drive a Honda Element. We rarely moved around as a family in my car. I never understood why my ex’s car was most often messy but now I get it. I am not anal about the condition of my car and never have been. I don’t really relax in it but I do have a breaking point. It is so hard to keep up with the items and the debris that constantly float around the back seats of my car. I would need a scientist to identify some of the stuff I pull out of there. Did my siblings and I constantly eat and drink in our family van as kids? We probably did but I don’t remember that. So with everything else that I have going on I admit my car is low on the priority list. I am an outside sales rep and put around 30K miles on my Element each year. These days I try as hard as possible, when traveling alone, to not look backwards. I’m glad the interior of my car is almost all plastic so that when I do get around to cleaning it it’s not too difficult. I have had multiple e-mails from people asking me how I like my Honda Element. It’s a great car. The one I’m driving is actually my second one. The only big issue that I have with it now is that it only has 2 seatbelts in the back which makes it impossible for me to transport more kids than my 2. Dress Use #29 is dog bed. After I kicked Lenny’s butt in tug of war the least I could do was give him a comfortable place to recover.
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Dress Use #46: WindsockI am exhausted. The last few days have been very busy for me. My kids came home on Thursday after a 2 week vacation and so my spirits are back up. I was completely out of sorts without them. I had a funeral to go to on Thursday, a burial on Friday, and a wedding last night. I need to go back to work tomorrow to recover from it all. Funerals always cause me to reflect a lot on my own life and about the people that I care about. Along with a lot of my family I was very sad that we lost my Aunt Ethie last week. She was such a wonderful person that always had a smile on her face. She was very loving and it is her relationship with my Uncle Webb that gives me so much hope. They were married for 62 years. A lot of people assume that because of my history I would not be fond of marriage but that isn’t the case at all. I have received quite a few comments on my blog and emails to myexwifesweddingdress@gmail.com. A lot of people have shared tidbits about their situations with me. I have heard from a wide variety of people: married, divorced, and single – happy and unhappy. I have received quite a few stories about successful second marriages which are very encouraging. I have also received quite a few notes from people encouraging me to never marry again. I had to take a class here in Arizona because I got a divorce and I have kids . . . one of the many perks about the whole process. The divorce statistics are scary. I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise but for some reason I thought there might be a chance that second marriages were more successful that first marriages. That isn’t the case but the numbers we were given in that class had them being extremely close. Second marriages are only 1-2 percentage points behind first marriages in terms of success rates, or so we were told. I thought for some reason that people would be more careful the second time around but maybe that isn’t the case. Well it turns out that I am really a big believer in marriage. I have witnessed many of them work and want to be like my Aunt Ethie and Uncle Webb. At this point I think the number they posted, 62, is too large for me to catch but I believe I still have time to string together enough years to post a big number of my own. Here are some pictures of another dress use that came from the blog – windsock. It might look as if the dress doesn’t work for this application but don’t be fooled. With the help of the dress we were able to learn that the day these pictures were taken there was very little wind.
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Dress Use #51: Juice StrainerI’d like to share a very nice comment that I received on my blog a couple days ago. In the early going when my site started to generate some traffic there were comments made by people explaining that they didn’t know what to do with their wedding dresses. Some were from people who were divorced and others who were happily married but the message was clear – a lot of dresses are boxed up or hanging somewhere doing nothing. My brother Colin who takes the bulk of the pictures for the blog and helped come up with a lot of the ideas went to work trying to find some charities that are looking for used wedding dresses. He contacted a number of them and from those we selected a few to post links for on the blog. Those can be found under the DONATE A DRESS tab at the top of the main page. I have received messages from a few people now saying that they have donated a dress to one of these charities which I think is pretty cool. I received this message earlier this week from Jenn and would like to share it: “Kevin, I just wanted you to know that your blog has been a source of positive inspiration for me. After limping along for a while, my 14 year marriage finally ended in divorce just this May. Like your ex, I left my wedding dress behind when I moved out- not because I wanted to make a statement or because of any painful symbolism it may have but because it was in a little-used closet that I missed entirely in my sweep. I simply forgot it. Ever since I started reading your blog, I have been thinking about that dress. I thought I might like to do something constructive with it like donate it to one of the charities you have linked to your blog but I wasn’t sure quite how to approach the forgotten dress issue with my ex. I didn’t want to give him the impression that I was dwelling on the dress or the marriage or that I was planning nefarious acts with the thing. I was dreading the awkwardness of the whole situation because conversations are always tense even when we’re talking about simple co-parenting logistics. You however inspired me to “man up” and I did in fact get the dress this weekend. It is all packed up and will be shipping tomorrow to the Mary Madeline Project. Not that your personal growth process as documented here needs legitimizing of any sort but now none may say that your blog is not a force for good in the world. Because of you, at least one woman has done something positive for others and taken another step in her own journey.” I have received suggestions from a number of women suggesting things my ex-wife’s wedding dress can be used for in the kitchen. I guess when I used it clean dishes and take hot stuff from the oven I was only scratching the surface – who knew? I was inspired by a family friend, Leah Davis, to attempt to strain some juice with it – not your everyday juice but juice from the prickly pear cactus that grows wild all over our desert. I was able to find a clean section of the dress, strain some juice, and put together a relatively tasty margarita. Thanks Leah. #gallery-1 {margin: auto;}#gallery-1 .gallery-item {float: left;margin-top: 10px;text-align: center;width: 16%;}#gallery-1 img {border: 2px solid #cfcfcf;}#gallery-1 .gallery-caption {margin-left: 0;}
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Dress Use #56: Fishing NetI was planning to write about everything going on in my life these days in this post but got sidetracked by pictures and memories of friends and fish. Dress use #56 was taken on the San Juan in New Mexico on a recent fishing trip. I’ll get back on track at some point sharing what life has been like for me post divorce . . . my story of starting over. Tonight, however, I’m just reflecting on good friends and good times. I got carried away with the video I put together showing the wedding dress net and ended up including pictures of me and my friends from a couple of our trips. There is no therapy in this world that I know of better than hanging out with these characters. I am very grateful for these friends of mine and the time that we are able to spend together. #gallery-1 {margin: auto;}#gallery-1 .gallery-item {float: left;margin-top: 10px;text-align: center;width: 14%;}#gallery-1 img {border: 2px solid #cfcfcf;}#gallery-1 .gallery-caption {margin-left: 0;}
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Dress Use #6: Gym TowelI discovered a good way to lose weight and get in shape – divorce. I guess it might not work for everybody but it certainly did for me. I wasn’t in terrible shape when my ex moved out but at 190lbs. (I’m 5-10”) I definitely wasn’t in the best shape of my life. I have always enjoyed running and mostly run in order to stay in good enough shape to play soccer. I have never been a morning person but I found myself awake early often with little to occupy my mind. There were mornings that I would anxiously await the sun so that I could crank up my music and pound the pavement. Running is very personal for me and I have to admit that more often than not I prefer to run alone. However, I thank my sister for joining me for some of my early morning runs because at that time there was little that I wanted to do alone. I also began going to the gym more often particularly on nights where I would otherwise be home alone. The city gym I go to requires each person bring there own towel to wipe down equipment after each use. What a towel I have . . . .
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Dress Use #12: Dish RagI had this crazy notion when my ex-wife moved out that I was going to have all sorts of free time I didn’t before. We were going to split the time with our kids 50/50 so that meant 3.5 days per week alone that I didn’t have before. I didn’t think I would have a tough time flying solo and I could not have been more wrong. I have more respect now for single parents and for couples with kids when both parents work. I don’t know how single working parents keep everything together. In the early days we had no fixed schedule with our kids. They were constantly moving from one house to another and I really couldn’t look beyond 24 hours at any point. I like routines and I was completely out of sorts and so were my kids. It didn’t take long for me to realize that the kids needed some sort of a schedule so that they knew where they would be each day. Once we settled into a routine where they spent half the week with me and the other half with their mom things got a bit more normal, a new normal, but not easy. One of my gripes about managing my home on my own is laundry and specifically girlie clothes. I would not be disappointed if I never had to shop for or fold a single girlie garment ever again. My clothes and my son’s clothes are so simple. They all fold into nice square packages that can be organized nicely in drawers or easily hung. Girl clothes are totally different. There are tops with pieces inside or outside and straps that are out of control. There are frilly skirts and dresses. What am I supposed to do with those? Shopping for clothes for my daughter is brutal. I wish target served liquor at their food counter so I could pound a beer before heading to the little girls section to attempt to understand exactly what it is my daughter wears. I can pick up an pair of shorts or pants or a shirt for my son and he will wear it. It might be a little big, might not match, or might have a permanent chocolate milk mark on it an he doesn’t care. But when I buy clothes for my daughter I rarely get it right. In the early going my ex would complain that clothes she had purchased would end up at my house. I argued it didn’t matter because every time she got them back they would likely be dressed in something that came from my house and it would all balance out. So now when we exchange our kids they are naked. OK that’s not true but I did smart assingly suggest it because her idea of trying to keep clothes separate made no sense. I don’t mind dishes so much, especially now that I have an amazing dish rag.
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Dress Use #52: Sun ShadeSomehow I have managed to find myself busier now than I have been for a long time. I have a lot going on – there a lot of good changes taking place in this crazy life of mine . . . I’ll elaborate later. It is exciting that the days are starting to get noticeably shorter and that some slightly cooler temperatures aren’t that far away. This is time of year in Tucson when most people are grumpy when talking about the weather. It doesn’t seem like that long ago that the corrugated accordian sunshade was a great new invention. In Arizona you pretty much have to stick a shade in your windshield every time you park you car. My ex-wife’s wedding dress makes and excellent sunshade.
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