Guess which one I'm having?
Chocolate, of course. Sex is highly overrated. And chocolate lasts longer.
* * * * *
Let's see......
roomie is off to the Great Northwest for a week, my BFF is getting hitched tomorrow, I spent the weekend with kiddo and she and I had a great time at Queen's house (who is recovering from major surgery that I hope does her a world of good) watching "Firefly" and "Swingtown" and "Hot Fuzz." By the way, "Swingtown" is a great show! The clothes and the hair and the music, down to the telephones and the shag carpet and the avacado kitchen appliances, are spot on. I'm enjoying it immensely. I remember 1976.
I don't remember the swinging lifestyle, of course. I was way too young for that. I'm also not naive enough to think that all swingers act like Trina and Tom (the couple on the show.) I suppose I am naive enough -- or idealistic enough -- to hope that somewhere out there, there will be a man able to indulge all the different things I need in order to have a full intimate relationship. Tom comes about as close to "that man" as I've seen. Maybe he's out there. But if he is, will I believe that he's really being real?
It appears that a national TV news program is interested in doing a story on the case that I was a juror on. I have no idea what that means. Will I be on TV? Will I just get a phone call one day? Will nothing happen at all? I won't know for a while, I'm sure.
Exh is getting married in two more months. They've set a date but I won't divulge it here. He and I had a bit of a talk about a lot of things after I dropped kiddo off this evening. We went all over the map -- how I felt about his upcoming nuptials, how Yo feels about me and some of her insecurities and strengths, about some of mine, and my thoughts on what needs he was satisfying to go so far so fast with this. I told him I knew he just wants to be married and that I knew it was because he has always needed something outside himself to focus on in order to make life worthwhile. He agreed. And when I revealed that I felt "easily replaced," he said, "You're not easily replaced. Believe me," and we exchanged one of those looks that would have inevitably led to a heated kiss in the movies or on TV. But in real life? -- well, I have no idea what he thought or felt -- but no heat, not really, not on my end. I just felt the sharp tang of regret. Maybe he was feeling that same sort of amalgram.
I've not been writing much lately, mainly because I'm struggling with another phase of that grieving process. I've not really been very talkative to friends or family either, and I know at least some of my friends (notably HD) have noticed. I just don't feel like sounding too much like a broken record until I figure it out.
When I was married I pushed and pushed against the gilded cage I'd built for myself. I wanted freedom and I was profoundly frustrated that I couldn't taste of it from where I was ensconced. I resented the people around me that "prevented" me from being my full authentic self, which I felt would only be released when I was untethered by duty, obligation or guilt.
What I never realized until I got divorced -- and even for a long time after that because I was just so giddy with taking full and free breaths! -- was that "those people" had given my life boundaries. I had a place to feel secure and people that depended upon me. I had a sense of belonging. I knew where I was going and I knew why even if I didn't like it all the time. And most vital -- my life had meaning.
Now I come home every afternoon and look around at my empty apartment and wonder what it all means now that I don't have the people whom I didn't realize until I lost them, meant everything in the world to me. Who am I, now? Where is the meaning, now?
I'll figure it out.
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
I'm baaaaaaack......
Sorry about the long absence from the blogosphere, which is mostly explained by a long vacation to the Midwest. I returned on Sunday and took yesterday as a much-needed recovery period from the long drives I've done in the past week and a half. All total I drove through eight states and logged more than 2400 miles.
It was tiring but very enjoyable. I travelled with the parents and the kiddo. We travelled first to the midwest state where my brother currently hangs his hat. His home is only a few counties over from the one where the ancestors that carried my maiden name had lived in the 1810s-1850s. I wrote a book about these particular ancestors back in 2004 and have been researching them ever since so needless to say, my interest and excitement were high. My ancestors had all moved away by 1852 except one girl who decided to stay behind with her husband. I wanted to find her family's descendents and their family cemetery so I got the chance to drive through the county they lived in and travel all the little roads that they used.
I managed to locate their old homestead, as well as the cemetery -- but the last, only by sheer serendipity. I stopped at a house about an hour after driving around trying to locate the cemetery, meaning to ask the residents if they knew where it was. Not only did they know, but the house just happened to be the home of the great-great-grandson of the woman I was searching for! Talk about fate. I not only found the cemetery (grown over, way back in the woods, I never would have found it myself) but I also found long-lost kin. Life sure is cool some times.
Kiddo hadn't ever seen the area of the country that I was born, since the last time she was there was when she was only a few years old. I really enjoyed taking her into the woods I used to wander and introducing her to the man that bought them from my grandfather; the one who used to tell me to watch out because "there are bears in them there woods!" We ate wild blackberries and wandered barefoot and didn't have to watch for bugs or snakes or scorpions, which freaked her out because everything is poisonous or stickery in Texas. I introduced her to sweet Midwest corn (instead of this field corn crap here in Texas) and dark red tomatoes as big as softballs. She ate fresh cucumbers she helped my brother pick from the garden and baked bread with flour that my sister-in-law got from the Amish people near their house. We saw beatiful green grassy meadows, acres of corn and soybean fields bursting with bounty, the hills of the Appalachians, dark rich soil with the smell of the earth rising from it, the heavy weight of the humid air, the hoots of mourning doves, the trills of the wrens, and the constant buzzing of cicadas. Home.
I own land there....or will, once my parents deed it to me as they plan to do in order to make sure it remains in our family. It's been in my family for 130 years. I would really like to go back someday. It's mid-america and the people work with their hands in factories and in the fields. They're good hearted and down to earth. Not much market or need for professional jobs there. But when I go back, I feel at home. Who knows what I might do. I do know my daughter loved it and it pleased me. I am glad that -- although she was born and raised here -- that she can feel a bit of love for her mother's roots.
In other news, it appears that exh will get married again this month. A friend of mine heard it from his sister. He hasn't mentioned it to me and I doubt he will until he actually does it. Or I'll hear it secondhand from kiddo. We'll see.
So, I'm back here, and it's back to my old routine. I sure did have a good time.
It was tiring but very enjoyable. I travelled with the parents and the kiddo. We travelled first to the midwest state where my brother currently hangs his hat. His home is only a few counties over from the one where the ancestors that carried my maiden name had lived in the 1810s-1850s. I wrote a book about these particular ancestors back in 2004 and have been researching them ever since so needless to say, my interest and excitement were high. My ancestors had all moved away by 1852 except one girl who decided to stay behind with her husband. I wanted to find her family's descendents and their family cemetery so I got the chance to drive through the county they lived in and travel all the little roads that they used.
I managed to locate their old homestead, as well as the cemetery -- but the last, only by sheer serendipity. I stopped at a house about an hour after driving around trying to locate the cemetery, meaning to ask the residents if they knew where it was. Not only did they know, but the house just happened to be the home of the great-great-grandson of the woman I was searching for! Talk about fate. I not only found the cemetery (grown over, way back in the woods, I never would have found it myself) but I also found long-lost kin. Life sure is cool some times.
Kiddo hadn't ever seen the area of the country that I was born, since the last time she was there was when she was only a few years old. I really enjoyed taking her into the woods I used to wander and introducing her to the man that bought them from my grandfather; the one who used to tell me to watch out because "there are bears in them there woods!" We ate wild blackberries and wandered barefoot and didn't have to watch for bugs or snakes or scorpions, which freaked her out because everything is poisonous or stickery in Texas. I introduced her to sweet Midwest corn (instead of this field corn crap here in Texas) and dark red tomatoes as big as softballs. She ate fresh cucumbers she helped my brother pick from the garden and baked bread with flour that my sister-in-law got from the Amish people near their house. We saw beatiful green grassy meadows, acres of corn and soybean fields bursting with bounty, the hills of the Appalachians, dark rich soil with the smell of the earth rising from it, the heavy weight of the humid air, the hoots of mourning doves, the trills of the wrens, and the constant buzzing of cicadas. Home.
I own land there....or will, once my parents deed it to me as they plan to do in order to make sure it remains in our family. It's been in my family for 130 years. I would really like to go back someday. It's mid-america and the people work with their hands in factories and in the fields. They're good hearted and down to earth. Not much market or need for professional jobs there. But when I go back, I feel at home. Who knows what I might do. I do know my daughter loved it and it pleased me. I am glad that -- although she was born and raised here -- that she can feel a bit of love for her mother's roots.
In other news, it appears that exh will get married again this month. A friend of mine heard it from his sister. He hasn't mentioned it to me and I doubt he will until he actually does it. Or I'll hear it secondhand from kiddo. We'll see.
So, I'm back here, and it's back to my old routine. I sure did have a good time.
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