"and he's no George Clooney"

I'm still writing about my divorce. I keep saying I will stop it. As I was looking for creative inspiration a moment ago I saw the Halloween candy bought for the trick or treaters and thought of how this year I'll be answering the door by myself. BASTARD!! Please hang in there with me reader(s). I will get through this or really try to have a book club tie in. It's been ten months and if only all the Anniversary's would pass and his damn weekly emails. Now those are going to stop. I'm putting a stop to those. What's that all about? And coffee dates? Am I whoring myself out for thirty minutes at Starbucks so he can see that I'm doing sort of okay and he doesn't have to feel guilty? From next week on he will hear from me when I need new tires and my car serviced as it is stated in our agreement for the next three years, (pretty good deal I think!). Book Club tie in, thank goodness for the extra week this month! As I've said and should probably keep to myself, I haven't been able to focus and read the way I used to the last ten months, and I need this week to finish the book which I am liking. I find myself staring off into space rather than reading like I used to. Members are picking great books too. I've really enjoyed the first half of them and it is with shame and remorse that I'm not getting them finished. See, I can say this here as I don't think many of you read this - this can be a test case scenario. I always say I'll go back and finish them and I still want to. I even, like most of you, had a list of my own reading I used to get done in between meetings. Oh how I wish I could get back to that time. BASTARD!! See it keeps coming back. Almost all negative things happening to me or that exist in my life I can relate back to Lying Cheating Bastard. It's just a fact, not me being a bitch. But we move on....I do consider myself so fortunate. I'm not living in some basement apartment. I was able to pay my Vet bills and all other bills for that matter, and still live the way I was used to. Some of that may change soon as our arrangement changes the first of the year. BASTARD!! But I have my home which I do love, and my book club with all it's members that I do love, whether they think I'm a nut case or not. They seem to put up with me and I do try to maintain things with the appearance that I'm not overwhelmed with a divorce (really it's just a legal separation that he wants to keep that way forever - hey! what's with that?!) and keep an illusion alive that I'm getting along just fine. I only need a book club to keep me going, well really it does make all the difference in the world. Now if I would read that book and go to the meeting and hold my head high THAT would make a difference and be a step in living right. BASTARD!!

a Rose by any other name would be called Petal

As they say, if it's not one thing, it's another, and this past Wednesday, I had to put my dear little dog to sleep. When will it ever end. I'm about to hang it up and if it wasn't for the fact that I have a daughter that phones me and expects me to answer periodically and a couple of other kids that think I'm out here on the planet at their beck and call I might have just bagged it right along with Petal. I don't like being totally alone now. Her little clicks of her toenails along the wood floors are greatly missed and her scratching on the door even. Ex husband has already suggested getting another one - I believe to assuage his guilt over leaving me alone - he felt the dog was company enough I guess when he left in January. Well isn't that considerate. No dogs for awhile I think, I'm not ready to replace that sweet faced little thing. My fear at this point is that old adage of things happening in threes and I don't have a third thing to spare - I don't! So I hope it can come from something back a few moves like my computer crashing or losing my dining room set to the lying cheating bastard or something like that...does that qualify? I hope so. The other thing this has created that I didn't expect is a whole other loss of routine... I lost that when Bob left and here again with Petal gone. We got up and went outside and as much as I complained it was nice to greet the day and come in and make coffee. Now there is nothing to make me get up and start that routine. Bob, prior to Petal had a strict OCD routine that was much more involved, but at least it gave my day structure and now I drift. Today I was going to start my new life without dog and I haven't gotten off to a very good beginning. I will try again, with trying to do what I have wanted to do, when I wanted to do it, or go somewhere, but I hated leaving her. I always took her in the car with me and she had a little booster chair. Ahh Freedom! Soon it will feel good I imagine. No more boarding worries when I want to go somewhere. No more finicky eating. Right now I would spoon feed her with my son's silver baby spoon if she were here and it would help. I would drive her around in the car , going nowhere special if she liked it. That little dog was a part of my life that came to me when I really needed her and now maybe I will learn I don't need her and can be alone. Perhaps, I just liked that little dog around for that cute fuzzy face, and there wasn't a cuter face than hers, that loved me no matter what, yea, I think that was it. Goodbye Petal, I miss you so much. May 16, 2007 - October 6, 2010. I didn't get to keep you very long but you'll stay with me forever.

"Just gettin' by on gettin' by"

Sometimes if you wait for creativity and imagination to come before you do something you're waiting an awful long time. So you begin and hope that those things come as you go along. That is what I'm hoping for now. Since my last post there has been much to write about. Book Club musings, and my all time favorite- personal blather. Book Club is still and will always be my baby and something I hope very near to my heart. I hope every month it becomes (or stays) happy and healthy and I think for the most part it has. The biggest problem with it is me. As I have often stated - I have lost the ability to read since January. This activity has been replaced by absently staring off into space. I blame this - you guessed it - on the Lying Cheating Bastard. My mind just wanders and everything reminds me of how I got from there to here and how I will get from here to somewhere else. As one of you told me, "Life is a cinch by the inch but a trial by the mile" and while that may sound corny, it has gotten me through many a moment of grieving. I know I haven't been the same person and I apologize to those I've hurt and lost patience with, and I thank those who have shown me kindness and a handful of hope along the way. But enough philosophizing. It's been nine months now and I'm so grateful that much time has passed, but also can't believe it's been that long as I'm still in shock and amazed at the daily affect it has had on my life. Life goes on whether you want it to or not, there are bills to pay, Dr's appointments, and kids grow and change, and things around the house need repair, pets get sick and decisions have to made that I thought I wouldn't have to do alone. But what I've learned in the last nine months; I'm not alone. The Book Club will survive without me. LBC members are the best people in the world. If I reach out, there are many friends who are there for me if I have the courage to ask for help. I have the ability to know when I'm wrong, in fact, through all of this, it's much easier to admit the small stuff. Life is short. Who knows which way the wind is blowing? I'm still standing every first and third Saturday with an attendance list and reading guide in one hand and my small skinny vanilla latte with one equal in the other and no ones taking those things from me until they can pry them from my cold dead fingers. I hope that's okay..... is that okay? That is okay isn't it?