something's missing...

i took the boys to the park today. that's nothing new. we do that stuff quite a bit. however, we normally go to the park during the week, after school, in the midst of a work day. working from home gives me that advantage and i like to use it when i can. the problem with today is that it was a gorgeous weekend day, and the park was full.

doesn't sound like an issue, i'm sure. but it wasn't a park filled merely with children. instead, it was filled with families. yep, families. small kids, moms, dads...and if not moms and dads, couples that could pass as them.

it made me feel alone. i sat in a lovely park, enjoying a gorgeous day, a great book, and the idea that my kiddos were having fun. but the whole time i was saddened by the missing pieces.

i miss my family. ok, maybe i don't miss a piece of my family. but i do miss the idea of a family. i miss someone who cares about me and the boys. i miss being pushed on the swing, having someone race me to the boys, and i miss having a hand to hold as i watch them play.

while i am feeling a lot better about the piece that left the family, i wouldn't mind a keen replacement. until then, i'll fill the void for the boys and try not to let them know i'm missing the wholeness.

it's official...i suck...but life doesn't...

this i absolutely unexcusable. it is has been almost enough time for a child to be conceived and born since i last updated this blog. you can tell i'm super into the mommy mode here as i just measured 3/4s of a year in pregnancy. eek...

hmmm, things have changed. for the better, even. it has been a long time since that comment was made, but it appears to me now that i should have made it on june 28, 2006.

things are, dare i say it, good. my life is stable. my boys are doing well. my family is here and supportive. i'm working and liking it. yep, strange things to put together in consecutive sentences for me, but yippee skippee!

so, without anything more pressing to say, i move along. i'm sure there will be plenty for this hoyden to mention soon enough. just know she's back and more herself than ever!

i get knocked down....

and hope to get up again? if only the chumbawumba had given more directions in their song. maybe then i'd know how to recover from the tko punch landed to the jaw. alas, no directions. merely statements of fact.

it seems not to fail that rain becomes hurricane when life goes a bit off course. i have a new insurance bill to pay now. yep, he took me off the insurance two weeks before he told me and now i have yet another debt to pay. oh, and that is only about a quarter of what the deductible will cost for the roof i need.

however, that's merely money. i'm more thrown off by the excessive lies (although i would hope that more than a total lack of lies is excessive) being thrown at me. i've felt insane for almost two years now, and suddenly realize, "hey, guess what? i'm not an idiot. i was right." however, being right doesn't make it hurt less. yep, lies on lies on lies. and now we've moved to personal attacks. those are fun. the real issue is that they aren't even creative. so, lack of points for that especially.

i've been hit....

well, tagged actually. leave it to s-a to hit me with this when i'm not near a book. instead, i had the little man of the house grab one from the shelf. it is the book i use to teach academic writing 1 and let me tell you, it's a real scream...

here are the rules:
1. pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. open the book to page 123.
3. find the fifth sentence.
4. post the next three sentences.
5. tag five people.

while i won't be tagging anyone, i did play along :)

conspicuous consumption has replaced quiet repose. but many of the great styles of garden history have been practical, if not precisely in this way, for example, the ferme ornée or eighteenth-century ornamented working farm with fields, kitchen gardens, orchards, pastures placed beside the more decorative and formal elements of the garden. these were gardens that had their practical commercial aspects. but although the mall is a far more commercial place than the practical garden, the shift has not so much destroyed the garden -- for most of history a space set aside for the rich -- as adapted to its new social and economic realities, and it thus can be seen as the appropriate for a consumer-oriented culture. in the formal gardens of the past, where nature was rearranged to fit aesthetic taste of the period, one walked through the landscape contemplating vistas and approaching the beautiful.

as i said, this is from an academic text: the academic writing reader. the essay is entitled "the shopping mall and the formal garden." kind of interesting....

old socks....

i feel like a pair of socks. yep, socks. not red socks mind you, of whom my favor is a weakness according to two of my favorite and best people, but old socks. the dingy white ones that need some bleach and maybe a darning or two.

the men in my life (not among my favorite and my best) are treating me like old socks. i am comfy. there is no doubt about that. but comfy doesn't do it when compared to the lovely, cottony sheen of new socks. i am kept in the drawer of the bureau for those cold nights when a guy just needs some warmth and comfort...the kind only old socks can bring. i am the emotional comfort as these men pursue new relationships. i'm the history. i am the understanding, and we all know how great it is to be understood. however, i do not get the fun the new socks get. i get shoved to the back of the drawer, crammed in with everything else, never to be taken out on the town. the new socks get that. they get the show and i'm stuck in the laundry basket, waiting for my own attention.

that's it really. i am the go-to gal when it comes to emotional support. i'll tell you what you want, when you want, and i'll do it freely and willingly, devoting every bit of myself to what you need. i am the old socks. dependable, valued, but not worth introducing to friends, wearing with a suit, or anything better than sloughing around the house when feeling miserable.

i want to be new socks. for someone, someday, i'm sure i will be. but i don't want to be fresh-from-the package new. i want to be gap brand socks...the kind that are comfy and broken in when you buy them brand new. no need to go through the starched stiffness of brand new after all. and i want a sock wearer that will keep me new after many loving wears. i want to be lucky socks... the kind he puts on before his big meeting.

so, to the rest of them, those who wear the old socks once in a while, i say "hmmpf! we're lost in the dryer now, boy! good luck. and i'm sure those new socks won't be as comfy as me!"

black friday...

i made it through my first holiday alone. granted, i wasn't alone. i was with two rather fun children, although one was pretty grumpy. the problem is that i'm angry. in my world, in my head, there is absolutely no good reason i should have been separating christmas ornaments yesterday. no reason i should have been cooking for two kids instead of my whole family. and absolutely no reason anyone should have felt bad for him and invited him over. but i was, and they did.

i drank an entire bottle of wine and still couldn't sleep through the night. i woke up with one of those dreams that leaves you shaking and crying and upset and alone. the kind that makes you relive the last year of your life...the year you wish would slip away, but keeps coming up every night in your head, and on the unlucky nights you remember the dreams.

i really thought i'd be "better" by now. i don't know why i figured this, but i did. in fact, i counted on it. i just knew that after those papers were signed, it would all be better. but it isn't. i'm not sure it will get better. utter despair does not sit well with me, and while i try to misery to a minimum, it isn't working either.

feeling lonely and alone...

it seems i truly got nothing but loneliness from this divorce. i found out my insurance, which was once almost courtesy of the u. s. government via the air force, is now costing not quite as much as it could, but more than i really have to give. copays, prescription costs, you name it. this is now my life.

he told me tonight that he might get a second job. "good," i think, finally feeling as though his life isn't going quite the way he hoped when he split. i mean really...i've had a second, third, fourth job for years now. then he tells me this second job will be bouncing at a bar...and irish bar. damn him. his second job will get him out of the house, into the adult world...the one where folks are scantily clad and drinking...while i sit home, on the computer yet again. how is this fair? no, i don't want to work a night a week in a bar. no, i don't want his life. but i do want something! i want something to go my way and it just seems it isn't going to any time real soon.

anyone wanna come to my pity party?