If you have called or txt'd me in the past two days I have not gotten them and I didn't know there was a problem. I have phone service for both now so feel free to re-send or call.

In related news, thanks to a kind and knowledgeable friend who's willing to answer dumb questions and walk me through unfamiliar situations, I am working on getting my own phone and account which I should have by next week. I think for the help involved (and the amount of money he's going to save me) it's a small price to start calling Dave "Daddy". Well, and of course I'm positively stoked to have lenaen as an otouto!

As a side note, I'm so nervous about being in the charity fashion show I could throw up. I want to support this, but maybe I should have volunteered to, like, set up lights and fuss with people's clothes backstage. I am VERY good at saying, "You look perfect *nodnod*... now GET OUT THERE RIGHT NOW YOU'RE LATE *push*."

Maybe you didn't notice, but I stopped blogging about it.


I like to move. Move on, move up, move along. I make mistakes like the next girl but I try to analyze them, turn them every-which-way about and learn from my choices... but never, ever do I want to sink into regret. Regret is an anathema to me because it implies an involuntary inability to move on - you walk forward but some vital part of you is back there, in the past, and you cannot go back and retrieve it. The best you can do, with regret, is cut off the piece of your soul that's stuck back there in the past and hope that you heal clean and don't leave tattered bits hanging out that'll catch on the present. But like an old man, your regret is an injury that's gonna pain you when the weather hits just right, an ache that you can't do anything about and can only hope goes away fast. And often, regret brings a dirty diseased bit of the past into the clean present, contaminating Now with drug-resistant strains of guilt or hate or anger.

*shudder*

( This post is about the end of my divorce, tomorrow. I would not call this a happy post. )

I stopped blogging about my divorce, and I'm sitting here in this dark room just being with my thoughts, because my marriage and divorce is something that eventually I'm going to leave in the past. And my memories of all this won't be littered with bits of my heart and soul but instead clean, full of adventure and grace and beauty and love. I have faith that I'll have learned from it; my marriage made me who I am and I'm grateful, and so did my divorce and I suppose I will find the humility to be grateful for that, too. In the end, I hope that this whole story, and everyone in it, gets a happy ending. It'll be a surprise ending now, for me at least, but in the end I hope we all live Happily Ever After.

He knows it's wrong.

Everyone knows that: opening other people's mail is just wrong. There is no justification except "I'm an ass and a control freak and I wanted to know about your business and so you can fuck off."

Which isn't a justification, really - it's more about being a contemptibly odious human being, isn't it?

( Yes, quite repugnant. )

*sigh* I'm too busy having a life to be bothered with this crap. Where's Anyanka when you need her, eh? I'll bet some good friends would like to have quite a talk with her.


EDITED: Everyone is quite right - I could have avoided this drama by getting my mail at a PO box. Mia culpa - I'll do this when I can. But we ARE sharing a life, sort of, and I still think we have to have some level of trust. How else can we live peacefully?!?

( . )

I know it's been over a year, but I have moments like this more frequently than I like to admit:

I find myself wondering What is it that I am supposed to remember today? Something... and checking that I locked the car and that I have my cell and that I have all the children with me that I'm supposed to, only to conclude Oh yeah - remember? We're not together anymore." The physical jolt of shock is getting less, but it always makes my stomach tighten up a little.

So when I got this text I both LOL'd and felt sad, but over it all I was kindda glad that I wasn't the only one.

Text To: Skye CELL
Text From: ch4rm CELL
11:02 am 2/17/08

Well I just panicked
because my ring was
missing from my finger.

I wanted to run home from work and hug him.

We all know horrible, horrible divorce stories.
( My story? Ain't one. )

I am not happy, I'm not sad, and I'm both - you understand. Mostly I am proud of both of us; contrary to everything we've heard and been told, ch4rm and I HAVE divorced amiably.

I am looking forward brightly to the future with my little alt!family and a growing new self, but for now?

I deserve a nap before I have to go make dinner.

OK, so here is a delightful poem, cdeacon, and this one actually comforts me a bit.
I feel sort of bad, though: no one will ever be able to be comforted by this poem with regards to ME. ;)

( To be used on the occasion of feeling anxious about the New Girlfriend )

Dear friends list,

The sun is in the process of setting over the residential neighborhood, throwing long autumn shadows across the playground where I sit with a few other young mothers watching the babies play with a passel of neighborhood kids. Two jr. football teams are practicing in the fields, waiting parents sitting in clumps under the big oak trees that grow around the perimeter of the field, and a couple teenagers from the apartments nearby are behind me in the ravine videotaping themselves skateboarding. I just finished talking to a couple who moved into the condos down the street 6 months ago because they love this area and the low crime rate: they hope to settle here in Arvada forever. Their black cat, Athena, has settled down beside me (cats know I'm allergic, I swear) as I type.

This is the school park near the condo that I might rent, and I think we may be happy here.

It is strange to be looking for a place of my own - mixed fear and joy. I am responsible for so MUCH once I move, as opposed to being responsible for SO MANY now. Of course I think of the padawans in all my decisions - that's why we're out here at the nearby park, to make sure we will ALL be happy here, even though their primary residence will be in the house with Ch4rming. But it feels like dress up, like make-believe, to be looking for a little place of my own. I moved from my childhood home to 6 roommates to living with Ch4rming and running a house so I have never lived on my own. But it has that feeling just like when I was first married and Ch4rming and I were setting up house together and we got to live together (and sleep together!) 24/7; like it's not real.

I suspect it'll get VERY real once I start attempting to pay bills.

But all that is detail for later. Right now I am encouraged by finally finding a place that meets my criteria: located near the babies, light (important in the coming arctic winter) and attractive, safe, good price, and 2 bedroom. Wanna see?




We all know I long to live in a city for a time someday - but not right now. And I'm not saying this is my dream apartment, either. But for now what I'm saying is I think I could live here and be happy.

Put that way, I'm in a better situation than a lot of people I know, aren't I?

So tell me what you think, friends, and what I've forgotten (or never knew) to be wary of. I'm rather a stumbling newborn kitten out here in the world but I'd like to think that I'm learning fast.

Counting my blessings,

-Skye

We were in the ocean, Paris and Cai and I, in the water up to Paris' chest. Paris was holding Cai like a baby, horizontal on the surface of the water, teaching him to float. Cai was being strangely compliant, for Cai: floating calls for relaxing, though, so I was proud both of Cai for letting go and Paris for trying to help him.

The water level dipped a little and I saw that there was a wave-swell coming - a smallish one, a California swell about two feet high, but big enough that at this level of water it was not a go-over but a dive-under. I realized with rising alarm that it was too late to hand Cai over to me so I could hold him above the wave while I planted myself and let the wave smash into me. (Cai likes that part, the way I sway backwards and then forwards, as I right myself, emerging from the water, spraying breath out like a whale.) I looked at Paris, concerned, but he was already leaning over Cai's prone form and whispering softly,

"You have to hold your breath, brother. Take a deep breath and we'll go under and then come out and I'll wipe your face and we'll breath again. Ssssh, just lay there, just like this, I've got you and you just hold your breath, ok?"

I looked at Cai, laying on the water with Paris' hands around his waist, and I didn't see any change in Cai's face or chest: no indrawn breath, no filled cheeks. He doesn't understand, he's too relaxed, he's not prepared! I thought, and started to force my way through the water over to them.

Too late, My mind gasped as the wave loomed in front of me and I instinctively dived into it, angling in and then up so as to emerge out the backside as soon as possible without being too close to the top swell (so as not to be sucked over the crest when it broke). I had one last flash of Paris maneuvering Cai like a surfboard into the heart of the wave before everything was not-breathing and this-way-up and air-breathing instinct took over.

( I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.  ~Rene Descartes, 'Meditations on First Philosophy' )