It just hurts so much I’m numb

I’m sorry. I’ve been terrible this week about blogging. I’ve had a lot going on, and quite frankly have been a little low lately. I’m depressed, there I said it. I have so much to do, and I can’t even get up the motivation to do one thing. I’m fine outside of the house, but once I get home, it just all hits me and I can’t move, I can’t think, I can’t do anything. I’m stressed, I’m overwhelmed, and I miss him so much it hurts. He’s been gone three weeks, only three weeks out of the year that he will be away. What do I do?

When I get home, I can feel it so much more that he isn’t here. It’s his house, our house, and he’s not in it. I don’t want to go to bed at night because it’s our bed, and I don’t feel right if he’s not in it. We have never gone to bed separately (except for his recent traveling) and I hate that I have to now. And it’s not so simple as to be just loneliness. I miss him. I don’t just feel lonely for companionship, or a warm body, or anything like that, I feel lonely for him and only him.

I’m afraid. I’m afraid this feeling won’t go away and it will eat me up inside. I’m afraid I will take it out on my kids when they get home. I’m most afraid this year apart will end up bad for us.

We don’t have much of a history. We’ve known each other for two years, dated for one year, and that one year had more than a couple bumps, bruises, growing pains, and heartbreaking moments. We made it out, together, and happy. In love. And then he left. What if this year changes him? What if the environment and the time away from everything, time away from me makes him feel different? What if he’s a different person when he gets back than the one I fell so deeply in love with? What if he changes his mind? Hell, what if I’m different? What if he changes his mind and all this is for naught? I have fought so hard to be with him, I don’t know what I would do without him. It’s bad enough not having him here, physically in my life, but to be out of my life all together…I can’t even fathom it.

“Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.”  –Comte DeBussy-Rabutin

I truly believe we have a “great” love.  I believe he is “the one.”  He is my perfect match, and I love him so much deeper than I ever knew possible.  All I can do is hope he believes and feels the same things…

So I’m depressed. I’m useless. I’m tired and I’m hungry. And I want it all to go away. I want to make him proud of me. He thinks this house is too much for me to handle and I so want to prove him wrong. I want to make it spotless, and find a place for everything, and fix it up a little. But when I can’t get off my ass to do anything, how can I do all that?

And now I’m rambling…

The would-be friend next door

There is this girl, ok, woman I work with…well I don’t actually work with her, but she works in my building, a contractor for my company, and we occasionally cross paths, but few if any words are exchanged, and they are all business-type words.  She is about my age, but no kids, and no man at the moment, but seems sweet as can be.  She has a blog, which I read occasionally, and it sounds like we have a bit in common…photography (that is actually the general nature of her job), horses (I’ve always always loved horses and have been convinced that someday I will own some and ride everyday), animals in general, silliness, good books, and she seems to be (by keen blog-observation) a little lonely these days.  With my general shortage of local friends and Mr. W’s year away, I’m a little lonely myself.  On top of all that, she lives in my neighborhood.  She actually lives right down the street.  I can see her house from mine (Mr. W’s…ours).  So, why don’t I approach her, we all ask ourselves.

Well, trouble is, she is a little lonely partly because one of her very dear friends recently moved away.  A friend who lived very close by.  A friend…who is Mr. W’s ex-wife and lived in this very house.  Yes, she is her friend.  Although the ex has moved away, they keep in contact, and I do know for a fact she was one of those shoulder-having friends when the ex was going through whatever self-induced pity crying fest she could come up with when Mr. W and her split up so there are probably more than a few loyalty issues in the mere thought of associating with his “new one.”  *Hrumph*

It just sucks, because although Mr. W insists this woman can be a little nutty at times, most (ok, seriously, all) of my friends are a little nutty at times.  I’m a little nutty at times.  Hell, who isn’t a little nutty at times?!  But here I sit, alone, drinking some yummy wine, alone, blogging, alone, organizing this catastrophe of a half moved in house, alone.  And I just watched her get home and go into her house, alone, possibly to feed her cat, alone, and eat dinner, alone, maybe even drink some wine, alone.  *Hrumph*  Do you see where I’m going with this?

Maybe we wouldn’t get along.  Maybe it would be all wrong and we couldn’t stand eachother.  Maybe it wouldn’t be one of those friendships that click, that you want to cultivate and grow into.  Maybe it’s better that she is off-limits…

…but just maybe, it’s not.

Fall food for thought…mmmm…

It is Fall, rapidly approaching Winter, and I hate the cold.  Some issue with my joints, specifically my knees and fingers which I (and a small handful of doctors I’ve seen) am convinced is the very early beginnings of arthritis, make me hate the cold even more. 

That said, I love this time of year for the food!! 

I do love food.  If there was a word stronger than love, it would be that.  I have a passion for food, a lust if you will.  Luckily for me, I have a decent metabolism and preference for healthier fare.   Don’t get me wrong, McDonald’s fries and Cinnabon have seen me through some hard times.  As a matter of fact, Double-stuff Oreos and milk made life tolerable during those rough post-partum, mid-bad-marriage depression days before I discovered the wonders of anti-depressants.  I could finish a pack in less than two days.  (Maybe that had something to do with my post-baby weight being so stubborn)  And they must be Double-stuff.  Once you go Double, you don’t go back!

So here is the Fall, and some of my faves are arriving in food service establishments all around me.  Starbucks breaks out their Pumpkin Spice Lattes and Pumpkin Loaf.  Dunkin Donuts (yes, I occasionally have to stray on my trips up to Massachusetts and Rhode Island) has their Pumpkin muffins and doughnuts.  And then there is the hot turkey sub at WaWa.  What’s a WaWa I hear you saying?  It’s a wondrous place.  A gas station with (usually) the cheapest gas around.  A convenience store with several pretty decent brews of coffee, to include a yummy Kona and Ethiopian blend which almost very respectfully approaches the wonderfulness that is Starbucks…almost.  WaWa also has slushies (gotta love a slushy), fountain sodas, every drink, chip, and candy imaginable, and the best part…a full service deli with a built in sub-shop.  Yes, WaWa is quite possibly the greatest food related store known to man, at least the sub-set of man that lives on the East coast somewhere between Pennsylvania and Virginia.  (In case you are wondering about it’s origins, a wawa is apparently a type of goose or something that is native to the Jersey/Pennsylvania/Virginia area…at least that is what I have heard.)  Now, this hot turkey sub, like so many other wonderful Fall treats, only comes around when the leaves start to turn, and Thanksgiving is just barely visible on the horizon.  It makes its appearance mid-October, and lasts through the holidays into mid-February.  This year the fantastic folks at WaWa have added to it’s wonderfulness, not that it needed it.  I had one Tuesday, and to my delight, it is now…are you ready?…toasted, hot carved turkey (not lunch meat people, real carved turkey chunks), stuffing, and cranberry sauce…with real cranberries!!  Oh, and don’t forget the gravy.  Mmmmm…Thanksgiving dinner wrapped in a wonderful toasted sub-roll package!  To quote Rachel Ray, “Delish!!”

Anatomy lesson: 2

A couple weeks back I had an uncomfortable conversation with the girl about boobs.  Today, a few hours after dropping her off to her dad’s, he calls me, inquiring, “What is up with our daughter?”  Huh?  I asked him to explain, and explain he did.

Apparently, he was watching football with his new girlfriend (the 23 year old, big busted one) and my little princess was sitting on her lap, when she began rubbing the gf’s boobs, inquiring “what are these?”  I had filled the STBX in on the conversation earlier in the week, so initially he thought nothing of it, but still asked if she had ever done that to me.  I told him she has poked at them, and maybe rested her hand there.  “No,” he said firmly.  “Like I rub a boob?”  “Oh, no,” I responded.  “That’s weird.”  Apparently he told the girl that those are the gf’s private areas, and she shouldn’t touch them, and no one should touch hers.  Then, my little curious princess points to the gf’s crotch asking “what’s that.”  STBX said he told her it was her leg, to which she responded, “No, that?? ” and pointed up the gf’s skirt.  At this point I was laughing my ass off.  I pointed out jokingly to the STBX that maybe he shouldn’t fondle his girlfriend in front of our daughter.  Regardless, neither of us are sure where she is getting this from.  (Of course, he did explain to her, again, that that area is another private area and no one else should touch the gf or our daughter there either.)

Upon further conversation, I found out my little princess is also a thief.  They (STBX and gf) had taken her to Claire’s at the mall to get some throw away jewelry to play with.  Princess was holding a shopping bag, at her own insistence.  When they left, she asked for her bear.  STBX reminded her that they didn’t buy a bear, so she dug in the bag to prove him wrong, and lo and behold…a bear.  He asked the gf if she bought it for her.  Gf said no.  Wha-la…princess is a thief.

On another occasion, princess took it upon herself to give a stuffed toy to a baby in a stroller, again at a store…a stuffed toy from the shelf…not paid for.  When STBX tried to put it back, the baby wailed and the mother gave him the look of death.  (Laughing my ass off again at this point in the story.)

Added bonus, my STBX is a cop and seriously homophobic.  So now I get to give him grief about making our daughter a criminal who likes girls.  HA!

Love Your Body Day?

According to the NOW Foundation (The National Organization for Women…really?  I didn’t know we had our own nation wide organization) yesterday was Love Your Body Day.  Hmmm…that’s funny, I missed it.  It’s kind of ironic, actually, since I have been pondering my relationship with my body just recently, and whether or not I do actually love it.  I’ve gone back and forth with it, but I’m still not sure.

I had a crisis a number of months back when I realized just how skinny I had gotten (from a bigger than 10 to a smaller than 4 in about 6 months).  It was more from stress than anything else.  I had just started working out and got my first glimpses of myself in those 360-floor-to-ceiling gym mirrors.  After a couple months getting up at 430am and going to the gym to lift with Mr. W, I began to get used to the skinny girl in the mirrors, and I noticed a few things about her:  She was growing muscles!  She was getting stronger!  She had energy!  She was feeling better!  It was great!  But, alas, I say was, because I haven’t been to the gym in over 2 months.  With Mr. W leaving, we kind of skipped over our mornings in lieu of spending more awake time together at night, and with his traveling up until he did leave, he wasn’t home much to go to the gym with anyway.  I know, I know, it’s no excuse.  I could still drag my ass out of bed and go, but seriously, I need a partner, a spotter, a cheerleader.

After 2 months, I feel like crap.  I’ve been semi-sick for about 1 1/2 months out of the 2.  My metabolism has slowed back to a crawl.  My clothes are becoming more and more snug.  I’m tired all the time.  I’m back in the vicious circle of insomnia.  And I just generally feel like crap.  Not to mention the little muscle tone I had aquired and was oh-so proud of has disappeared.  So just when I was beginning to love my body again after so many years of hard times and a rocky relationship, we are back to square one.  *ugh* 

The plan is (here I go with a plan, a goal, a disappointment waiting to happen) to pull myself out of this physical funk I am in and do some sort of exercising activity every day for the next two weeks (while the babes are gone).  Be it running or going to the gym or yoga or working out at home or just simply walking, I AM GOING TO DO SOMETHING!  Really, I am.  NO REEAALLY!  I want to love my body.  I really do.  I don’t want to be super skinny.  I don’t want six-pack abs.  I don’t want bigger boobs.  (Ok, I do want bigger boobs, but I was learning to like myself in spite of their laking) I just want a little muscle tone.  I want to have clear skin.  I want to fit in the clothes I have so I don’t have to buy more of the staples and can concentrate on things like shoes and accessories.  I want to feel good.  I want to sleep.  I want to be healthy. 

Dear Body,

If you can give me all the things I’ve listed above, I will love you always.  I promise not to abuse you.  I promise not to neglect you.  I promise not to feed you endless amounts of junk, although the occasional treat would definitely be deserved.  I will put all our problems and hang-ups behind us.  I will love you.

Please??

–me

And a plea to all of you out there reading this:  BUG ME!!  NAG ME!!  Especially those of you who know me outside the blogosphere.  I need a little prodding to get me going, and while I may be whiny at first, I will love you for it!