Brendan arrived in his Penske moving van on July 2nd. I drove to Platteville and met him at the cemetery so I could finally introduce him to my Father. We had planned this ahead of time. When he called letting me know he hit Brighton I was so full of energy. I bought this house a month after we got divorced with the mild hope that one day we could share it together. It’s been a big house for just the one of me (and the kdis of course) so the excitement of coming full circle, this year of dream after dream coming true, I was shining. When I was about 1/2 mile from the cemetery he called me letting me know he arrived. I stayed on the phone with him until I could walk up and give him the biggest hug, holding him, holding onto home (oxygen tank in tow). I won’t get into the introduction between Brendan and my Father because it’s one of those memories that is so meaningful one tends to cherish it selfishly.

We headed toward Greeley in a follow-the-leader fashion, me in the lead. I told Brendan about the road system in Greeley so he would start getting an idea. It’s really easy. Streets run east/west, ave’s run north/south. All the streets are numbered and run in chronological order so it’s pretty easy to find your way around once you know the area you live in. Once Brendan was home, and slightly unpacked we went to Fort Collins for dinner at the Armadillo to celebrate his homecoming.

When we got home it was like we picked up where we left off. One difference. There has been LOTS of laughing. I remember going to sleep that night and waking up some 36 hours later. Ever since I’ve been extremely exhausted (I’m also trying to get off my oxygen). I thought it was part of my fibro flaring up until Mom reminded me how fearful I’ve been living alone. Listening for every sound. Don’t get me wrong, I live in a GREAT neighborhood, and I’ve been living like this for the last 2 years. I didn’t realize how much stress and energy I have been hauling around on my shoulders and the safety of having Brendan here let me release all that pend up anxiety and I’m getting it out by sleeping. I’m awake more and more each day and we’re enjoying each day with each other working together instead of apart. I guess we’re taking every single mistake we’ve made with each other and learning from it. Did I mention we’re doing a lot of laughing?

In a week and a day I’ll be leaving on an airplane to Wisconsin where I’m meeting my sister, brother, brother-in-law and my beautiful little niece who will be turning 1 year old on the 30th. From the airport we’ll be driving to Momma Dawna and Papa’s house. I can’t wait. I’m going to really try to get off this oxygen before I leave. I’ve been taking 1 liter when I sleep and try to go without it while I’m awake. I sort of have my days and nights mixed up again. Sleeping durning the day when it’s hottest, and being awake at night when it’s nice and cooled down. We’re getting A/C soon, it’s going to be so nice. And we’ll get used to days instead of nights, especially with Brendan looking for work.

So that’s the latest news in my personal life. More to come with the creative side of life.

The one person I have control over is me. I’ve learned some pretty hard lessons this last year I’m surprised I made it out with my sanity. I’m going to let go of the last horrible rotten year and leave it in the past. I will carry with me those lessons learned. They are the only stow aways that are permitted to come with me into 2011.

I will do everything in my power to kick myself. I’m going to kick my ass out of the pity parties that have been coming around more and more it seems. I’m going to get myself out from underneath this cloud of negativity. I’m not going to be afraid to fail – because i will from time to time and I can grow from it – at least I would have tried.

My first leap into making this the year of Yolospat has to do with my better half. My best friend and soulmate. My ex-husband. I know I know, you’re all thinking, “You’re best friends with your ex-husband?!” Well, we are a rare breed I suppose. In fact, we have better communication skills now with each other than when we were married. I would have not made it through this last year without him. It’s been a year and almost 4 months since I saw him last so this month I’m going to fly out to Georgia to see him. We are both excited, and it gives us something to look forward to. We never got to say goodbye when we made – in my opinion – too rash of a decision. Growth and good changes between us have happened, and also individually that couldn’t have happened had we still been together. Brendan is what smiles are made of, and I can’t wait to see him. We have agreed that I would bring his xmas box with me instead of shipping it so that we can open his presents together.

I have a few projects lined up for this next year. I will be focusing on my writing this year. This includes my blogs, articles, journaling, poetry, freelancing, short stories and a novel I’m working on at the moment. I’m also going to be focusing on my artwork and bring my portfolio into existence. I’m going to try and volunteer at the humane society. I also have house projects lined up, like painting a few rooms, my fence and my deck. I need to put the art studio back together too. I think I might bring the studio inside and put it int he basement for the winter so I won’t have to worry about heating the garage (which is detached from the home).

I have to remember to pace myself. Living with Fibromyalgia is a very tricky balancing act. If I have a good day and I use up more energy than I should have I’ll be in bed for the next 2 days exhausted. I have to remember that I can only do so much and the better I pace myself the greater my “good days” will be. I also want to talk about Fibromyalgia this year in detail to spread the word and to debunk the myths. I’ve talked about it briefly from time to time but it’s a very hard medical condition to understand. I want to help people understand, so anyone has questions please feel free to ask.

My Writer’s Market book came in the mail yesterday. It’s what every writer needs in reference to publishing, agents, writing idea’s, tips and tricks. You name it, it’s got it. It also has the updated 2011 list of all agents and houses, including what they specialize in and what they are looking for. I also got the Short Story Writer’s Market book too.

I hope everyone makes this year a better year. I know I am.

I’ve been gearing up for NaNoWriMo!! NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month where one has to write 50,000 words of their novel from November 1st through November 30’s. This will be my first year doing it. I’m excited. You can follow my progress at My NaNoWriMo page. I’m writing a lot of short stories this month, and practicing on some writing prompts I have been collecting over the last year since I missed it last year.

Speaking of missing NaNoWriMo last year, sigh. This is the month of October and in 4 more days will be the anniversary of the day I got married. It’s almost going to be a year since I’ve seen my husband ex-husband. It doesn’t feel possible, it feels like a decade. And the worst part about it is through all the hustle and bustle of getting packed and moved, we never got to say goodbye to each other. The other worst part is that I don’t know when I will see him again. I miss him more than any word I can think of in the English language. Its emotional agony, only worse. I lost my soul-mate and my best friend all at the same time. Adjusting to being a single female living by myself is an adjustment I keep fighting subconsciously. I feel scared much of the time, especially at nights knowing he’s not here makes everything seem empty, but through my art, writing, reading, crocheting, and now knitting, I’m trying to keep myself as busy as possible. I’m so grateful for our telephone calls nearly every night, and I’m thankful we keep in constant communication and we’ve both grown from this experience, and he will always be my soul-mate no matter what happens in the future. The distance is so hard though, just so hard. When incidents happen like they did with “Lance” a week ago it makes me wish I were still in Georgia.

Jonah is a lot better. His face is healing at a remarkable speed. The scabs are starting to fall off and new skin is fresh and pink underneath. My friend David got a new puppy. A miniature Chihuahua named taco. I was scared at first that taco and Molly would butt heads for dominance but it was amazing how fast she took to him. This is the first time she’s meeting a dog smaller than her, it was so cute. David made a funny joke. He said if Molly and Taco had puppies, they would have tamales. Hehe. Pictures coming soon of Taco. I’m also building a computer for David that he can use now that he’s gone back to school and kicking ass with his grades.

I’ve been using my iPad a lot for writing out my short stories and my writing exercises. For some reason I’ve gotten a talent for tying on it. It actually makes me write even more than I do already. I found a program on the iPad called Manuscript that connects to DropBox so I work on it no matter where I am.

His vet called today to check up on him to see how he was doing. I told her about the cone collar thing and the wound is getting this grayish scab so the vet said to leave the collar off and make sure to watch him really good.

I didn’t get much sleep last night so I took a nap this afternoon to catch up on sleep. I was woken up by my neighbor of whom I just met a few days ago. There is this beautiful outdoor cat that’s been hanging around my place the past few weeks. He’s a beautiful orange long haired tabby, so I named him Butter. At first I thought he lived next door but when I was up before the sun was last week I found him sleeping under my car so I knew then he was either dumped or his family had moved away without him because he was very well groomed and wasn’t anywhere close to being skinny. As the weeks went on I found him getting thinner and thinner and he had tree leafs stuck in his coat so I brushed him and I’ve been giving him food and water. That’s when I met my neighbor for the first time, the OTHER person giving Butter food and water. She’s a senior with gray curly hair and about as vertically challenged as my Mother. She has this magical sense about her that tells her whenever I go outside because the minute I step out on my front porch I see her walking across the street toward my house. She never stays very long, but we have these mini conversations while she’s here.

One of the first things she talked to me about was the previous owner of this house, Wendy. She said that once Wendy bought the house from her folks she completely stopped taking care of it and it visually stated to look run down to the point that it could have passed for an abandoned house. My neighbor was excited when I moved in because she saw the house and property return to it’s former glory and because of that her own house was recently appraised for more than it’s ever been. Wow, that’s neat to hear.

It’s not the first time one of my neighbors has talked to me about Wendy herself let alone the condition she let the property get to. There is a lot of landscaping that needs to be kept up and both yards are fairly large in size. From my own experience of dealing with Wendy the stories I’m hearing seem to go along with what I know about her. To have so many neighbors come up to me and thank me for the work that’s been done to the place and to tell me how thankful they are to have a “neighborly” neighbor says a lot about what it used to be like around here.

It’s also nice to have neighbors myself that I’ve gotten to know. Brendan and I never really got to know our neighbors, and as much as I dislike people coming over uninvited, I’m glad my neighbors do. It makes me feel like we’re all looking out for each other, and it softens the adjustment I’ve had to make living alone for the first time in 6 years. Having said that it doesn’t make me miss my husband any less wishing he were here.

It was about the lack of mens commitment when their wife gets a serious illness. You can find it here.

When I got diagnosed with Fibro a lot of things changed in my marriage, and not for the good. It was around that time Brendan started to distance himself from me. I noticed he would spend more time in the basement, and less quality time with me. On my bad days he would take out his frustrations of my illness on me because he said he didn’t have anyone else to talk to. I noticed that I was walking on egg shells around him more, and his drinking gradually became more frequent.

It got to the point where we were not spending any time together, those egg shells I was walking on became glass, and the drinking had become a nightly occurance.

Toward the end of our marriage, I asked him if we could spend one night a month together. He said it was a lot to ask for and he didn’t know if he could commit to it because of work (he works part-time at Publix)

I guess a person just knows when it’s over and it was that moment I knew I had to get out of that toxic environment, and that my marriage was over.

This has taken more than a toll on me. There were things said tonight that touched the very core of my heart. Not in a good way. It questions my very soul to the post important people in my life. The most important person in my life. I’m not sure what to do, or how to fix it. I thought things were completely opposite than the way they were presented. This goes back decades, even longer. I question who I really am as a person who has too big of a heart and so much love to share and I thought everything was understood and ok, but they aren’t. My very soul is questioned. Love is questioned.

I’ve been doing the right thing ever since 2003 and being the responsible adult doing the right thing, making the right decisions, and loving my friends and family for everything, but .. do they feel it like they deserve? It makes me feel that I’m damaged, that I have been, that it’s permanent. These things I will never forget tho they have been forgiven.

When games over ride a friend in need, where does one go. I don’t know anymore. When there is noting left to say, it’s simple. There is nothing left to say.

I never wanted this divorce. I did everything I could so it wouldn’t come to that, but it has. It’s not only hurting me, it’s hurting my Mom too and I feel that’s somehow my fault. I hate it. I hate all this.

Solution of being a hermit is starting to sound pretty good. I can’t hurt anyone that way. After tonight, I’m at my own breaking point, if it hasn’t happened already. Words are daggers, and they went straight into my soul, and hearts can be repaired. But the soul is a different thing altogether. Souls can just die. If my soul would be a person, it should be in ICU, but there is no such thing. It screams, burden. That’s stamped on my forehead for all to see. It’s what my soul screams and I’m so ashamed. There is no way of coming back from that.

Anyway, I found myself a little gem that will make a huge impact on my life. It was a quote. Not only was it exactly what I needed to hear, it was something I needed to believe. Sure, this divorce thing sucks. I’m selling the home I feel in love with without a future home (yet) in the future. I’m actually really trying to act normal as much as possible thinking it will help with the sadness and loss when really I want to curl up in bed and cry my eyes out for the next year with a good supply of kleenex. Can you imagine the monster of a headache you’d have after that? Whoa.

This came from Martin Allsop’s twitter page .. “We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us” – Joseph Campbell

Like I told my Mother, I want to get through this whole divorce, moving, etc. thing without any regrets which means I need to be unemotional for a moment to make rational thoughts. Good luck, right?

I was talking to Tiffany last night that I haven’t even heard from my in-laws in over a month. My Mother-in-law and I used to talk/email daily with lots of “I love you’s” and she would always start her letters with her nick name for me .. “Jenny Dear” .. it really hurts and makes me question the whole concept of “family” again. How can you love one of your family members one day, then never speak to them again? It just doesn’t make sense to me .. it just makes me sad, hurt, and in a way abandoned.

Moving forward .. the realtor will be out tomorrow to take pictures of our house and we’ll officially have it on the market with a virtual tour even, hurray!

Like I said, I’ve done everything I could do for this man, and it’s not like I’m asking for repayment, I mean hell, he’s getting way more than he brought into the marriage, but maybe a little respect or some sort of sensitivity at the situation. When we were talking the night of his panic attack I told him how I gave him my heart and how he used that against me and his reply was “That was your first mistake, never give anyone your heart” .. I thought the safest place to put your heart would be in your husbands hands. He’s right however, pretty stupid of me.

I’m weepy today (which is an understatement). When I said my vows, they were intended to be forever. I never wanted to be divorced. We were on the same path in what we wanted of life, but instead of settling down now he wants “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” … in other words, drop me off at the curb and don’t look back.

This really hurts.

sometimes i need you close so bad…”

“Replies are coming (yes you yolospat) and I barely know what I’m saying but you…mean something to me…and I know it’s the fucking net and I trust no one but…fuck…I’M SAYING WAY TOO MUCH AND I WISH MY MAC HAD A BREATHALYZER AND SHUT UP BRENDAN.”

now you’re makin’ ME smile. ha!”

and fuck, maybe my mom is right, and i should be a writer.”