This is why I love girlfriends. We always know when we are bumming, thrown off course, worried or sad despite a smile. Yesterday was an upsetting day for me, and this is what my girlfriend from work emailed me while in a meeting with our boss who assumes she is taking notes. She kills me. I get this in my car at lunch...she is the bestest..


------Original Message------
From: Connie
To: XXXXX@yahoo.com

Subject:

12 Random Reasons Why You Are Awesome

Sent: Nov 25, 2008 2:31 PM

1. You have fluffy hair
2. You love little Rio
3. You're an awesome Mom, even though your kids don't sometimes realize it
4. We pee and bleed simultaneously (deep bonding)
5. I can tell you about my dating life and you don't judge me
6. You learn more every day
7. You make me laugh
8. You know stuff about lingerie
9. Your clothes are amazing
10. Your eyes are all sparklie, even when you are sad
11. You could drive to DC with your eyes closed, I'm convinced of it
12. The producer of Saturday Night Live wanted you to join the mile high club with him once, and you turned him down.

Thought you should know...

Hugs,
Me

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone with SprintSpeed

Good Thinking

Read this today.

1.Think about what your needs are in a relationship. Making a list of all the qualities you want in a partner and then identifying the top 10 non-negotiable items can help you clarify what you really desire.

2. Assess the compatibility of your lifestyles. Take time to think about whether you and a potential partner share similar interests, goals and values. NOTE: Compatibility in all areas is not realistic. But share what is important to you and make sure you and a possible mate can find ways to make peace with differences and not always do what you want to do.

3. Establish bottom lines. There is not room for compromise on some issues. Think about those qualities and behaviors and make sure you look for a potential mate.

4. Think about how you communicate. You should be assessing how you and a possible partner resolve differences. Disagreements tear at a relationship so you and your mate need to establish ways to work them out immediately. The approaches should leave both people satisfied they have reached an acceptable compromise.

5.Talk, talk, talk. Make sure you and your partner talk about the issues that are important to both of you. This includes top deal-breakers - money, intimacy, work, his-kids-your-kids issues, couple alone time when kids are around, priorities, and even the amount of time you spend together or apart.

Brokeback Marriage

Leaving someone gives new meaning to the term afterlife.

Someone for whom you gave your life and past for two decades; gave up bare as a licked bone, only to find out that he lied about, not everything, but the big things, the things that mattered.

Regardless of his reasons – they were selfish ones. Self protective maybe – than he shouldn't have gotten married. A real marriage, whether the church-cake- legal kind, or marriage by the heart on a flower covered hill somewhere, just the two of you, doesn’t allow room for secrets.

My answers are complicated –but the truth is simple.

It all flows from currents of my past. It took living with a man who neglected us, to realize that growing up in my dysfunctional family had left me with such a high tolerance for cruelty that I couldn't recognize perversion when it hit me in the face.

Now my life is divided into three parts; before, during and after. Also -Leaving him has nothing to do with getting away from him.

He has fooled them all. Gained pity as the victim- he was "replaced" he says. He fails to tell people he didn't touch me for 2 years at a time, refused counseling and drove to Boone NC while I was on business in NYC twice to try to locate the woman he had the affair with three months before our marriage.

His clever twists and turns on the stories, even if partially true are seriously out- of- context; and always just telling/showing of my reactions to his actions. His family, my family – they don’t know the truth, the whole story. Just one side of a very complicated story, hell even his lawyer had to be told the truth by my lawyer at mediation.(do you text her 87-100 a day? Did you call her switchboard at work 17 times screaming to put Lisa on the fucking phone? Did you sleep with Mary, Carla, Laura - all before you were divorced? Did you and your private investigator Starbuck pal GPS her car? Did you break into her house - twice when she was out-of-town? Do you refer to her when with your children as "The Traitor" or "The Adultress?" Did YOU sleep with Penny lea Muller for five years while she was married? ) Scott sat sheepishly nodding but adds...Penny was committing adultery, not me. (WTF????).

What went on in the bedroom, my heart and his damaged mind. It was emotional abuse, the things I found, caught...I had to walk away. Funny thing, he had a new girlfriend just 4 weeks after he left. Said he loved her, left our family on Christmas to be with her. I found the emails. Printed them, he admitted it to me and the boys, said he wasnt thinking.

I face my demons head-on, always have, trying to take responsibility for my fuck-ups, and yes there are many, but few I actually regret as a whole. You rarely choose the circumstances that become your life’s meaning, and given a list of options, divorce and being stalked and terrorized are not ones I would have chosen.

Simplistically I thought, I could just walk away, go inside myself for a bit, journal, read self-help books and pop into therapy from time-to-time, think at the beach, and learn from my mistakes. I would be older and wiser – and could just slip into the future with my "new and improved" self, meet Mr. wonderful while being clear-headed and whole for him.

But getting away isn’t as easy as it sounds.

One can do all the physical separation one wants, only to be reminded daily that “he” can mess up your life, your credit (again) and destroy your reputation in a simple conversation with your hairdresser, or through all the fake email he sent to himself just to show family. Now it's in litigation.It will go nowhere.

A clever little tape recorder, and a stalking texts saying that he is watching me, or that he saw me at a named restaurant bar last Sunday night. Snapping photos of me, my car and mailbox as he angrily circled my parking lot until the police came, later with back-up. Sneaking into my house stealing our wedding license, my diamond ring, a $100 bill , notes and photos from my night stand drawer. Hacking my email, manufacturing more "fake" ones, (I was on an airplane the exact moment they were written and sent by him, as me - love that I save receipts) and stealing passwords from my Rolodex, reading my private blog, cutting pasting, adding....sending, showing, telling.

Busted. Then it dawned on me...

The harassment and stalking has lasted longer then our dating did, and he hates me more than he loves his own children.

How could I have been with a man who is so capable of self serving hatred and destruction of his own life and children's heart and soul? Why did I choose a man who is the garden-variety selfish soul who doesn’t want to relinquish first place in his own life – but just wanted a good first- in -command while he hides his secret?

Refusals to dance with me. Even in private. His masturbating every night, alone in the bathroom. I lay in bed listening to it with tears running down my face. Faking sleep as he returns to our bed. Refreshed. His urges relieved without having to give.

I will always struggle to break my patterns from my past, the emotional and verbal abuse by my father, the mother who never stuck up for me, my often stupid conclusions, my insecure image of my quite normal body. All on crack-like hyper mode, all skewed, all wrong from a life of toxic people.

I am in love now. But early on I felt my own damage when I was with my new love. I recognized, sometimes, my slight hesitation of giving it all over to him during love-making, the holding back, the fear of asking for what I want, what I like, fear of rejection, despite his sweet assurances. That has all changed now - I feel like a weight has been lifted off of me. I want him in my life, I want him to be part of my developing a richer interior. Being with him makes me a better person. A healthy relationship and a healthy family. A couple years later I have learned to trust this man freely- with my body and my heart.

A freedom I never knew.

See You At The Dump

I love this story and have infused my details of late, making it my own.

A woman was hiking along a cliff pondering her pending divorce and the wrath of a family member.

She falls—but after tumbling and scraping down the hill, she manages to grab on to a branch. Fearing that she doesn't have much longer, she begins to pray. The response is simple:

"Let go."

Feeling low on family support and high on frustration, she ignores the command and cries and aches until the first rays of dawn. And then, astonishing though it may seem, she looks down and sees the ground…about 12 inches below her feet.

And truth be told, I have been the same idiot as of late, holding on to pain and wearing myself out trying to decide if I should write a response letter to a family member who blasted me this weekend in an email. I sat rebuffing each of his bloody slices, accusations attacking my heart, empathy, thoughts, salvation, soul, feelings, or lack thereof, honesty, character, integrity, and my magical ability to "destroy everyone else's happiness," along with my apparent waining desire to parent my own 17,19 and 23 year old children.

Considering one child has lived away for over a year now, and the others are NEVER home...I suppose the cookie baking must continue. Being gone 8 days a month for work, yes so I can feed them when home - is a sin as well. With all this - I suspect the Dept of Social Services will start yanking children from all flight attendants and traveling dad's anyday now.

All I could think of was ......WTF and WWJD?

And for the record - the email didn't make me want to go to church.


When relief is less than a foot away, sometimes greater tenacity and steadiness of nerve is required to release in silence than to retain in pain. And never is this more true than when the thing you're clinging to is a relationship that's dead as a door nail due to ignorance of facts, inability to deal, confusion, hurt, and that damn mixing up of peoples holidays. They don't know how to adjust - so feeling angry gives just cause for a clean break.

The inability to meet face-to-face with resolution because a person doesn't want to be reasoned away from a clean stance - is mind blowing to me. Who blows off another family member in an email? Like really - who?

He promised he would meet - but went coward on me...not a man of his word. He took the easy way out..not very Dr. Phil-Esq eh??

When a relationship ends in death, divorce, or division of any kind, we may recognize the loss intellectually, but it takes longer to get the message to our hearts. We need both hands free to embrace life and accept love, and that's impossible if one hand has a death grip on the past


We cannot expect things to heal if we are always picking at them, so I deleted the email and went to bed. We cannot look for "perfection" in others -- these are not the qualities of "loving heart" and "seeking growth through disappointing changes." Ask yourself if you really find it so joyously preferable to feel so very very right when in conflict with people -- because if you do, you will repeatedly simultaneously wind up finding yourself feeling very, very alone and sad.


Anger = hurt and this person is hurt. Simple as that. He has decided to let me go - not I him.

Only by learning how to let go do we learn how to hold on to what matters. It's as though the shadows created by loss illuminate what remains; the contrast helps us see with great clarity and appreciation the things we were meant to do, the people we are meant to be with, and most importantly -those who are still with me, and those I love deeply- who also love me back unconditionally.

For that- is my future.

We Are All A Little Bit Psycho When We Love You

So I'm chatting to Hot Stuff the other day and he says"....Did I ever tell you that my ex used to call my voice mail at work JUST to hear my voice?"

The hesitation in my response surely gave it away -

"Ah......yeah, girls do that stuff..." I stammered. "I mean, ya know, I have..I mean your voice mails..and stuff..I save them all..."

He stopped eating his cookie and just blinked. I think I heard his hair grow.

That's when it hit me. It has NEVER even occurred to him to save my voice mails. EVA!

So I say with a snarky pout..."Sooooo..... you delete MY voice mails?"

Hot Stuff squirms in his fav red chair. (He loves it so much it needs it's own zip code...) and the look on his adorable man face was a combination of -oops meets dumbfounded enlightenment.

This is always so much fun to watch - when a guy doesn't know how to defend himself because he is so discombobulated that he was ever suppose to know this was important in the first place. So that gap where the correct answer or a clever little lie pops out, simply cannot gel fast enough.

Hence the look. If his brain was a cartoon right now - The Webkin just blew up.

"So, you delete them?" I demand in a high pitched screech, arms flailing.

"Well..NO!"....he wails.

I watch a little corner of his cookie fall to the floor.

".....I just never save them I guess...." he says, head hanging.

In his defense, I have to say that Hot Stuff has never been mean or insensitive. It is just that men don't have the first clue as to what women do or think in a relationship and don't think about details, like saving a message. I cannot expect him to understand. They live life in bulk. They are like Sam's Club, they get the bulk of stuff -big food, beer and sex. But they cant tell you what they ate in detail, what her name was, how many times, dates, colors, decor, what music was playing.

Women on the other hand live among AND for the details.

I, for example, can tell you exactly how Hot Stuff smelled, what he was wearing, the exact location of the sun in the sky, the temperature, the licence number of the cab next to us and exactly how his head tilted when he finally said "I love you" outside of Union Station. (I can also tell you how many seconds it took to start blubbering for joy when he drove away, and how fast I text'd Brenda with the news.)

So for simplicity's sake, I have compiled a list for all creatures sporting an appendage between their legs. Read it slow, know it's true and deal with it. Ninety percent of all straight females will agree this is the Gods honest truth.(The other ten percent are lying bitches.)

Here is a list from Mens Health Magazine this month. Swear to God. I was screaming out loud reading these. I feel normal and validated. Read on guys....


1) She has googled ALL your exes and already knew what they looked like and where they worked.

2) She is always observing and analyzing your every move, reading into your emails, texts and phone conversations.

3) She saves all your voice mails and has played them for her girlfriends who say you sound cute.

4) She spends an insane wad of money every month on waxing, tweezing, exfoliating, moisturizing, tooth bleaching, underwear buying, mani-pedi's, hair, dermatology, personal trainer, self tanner.

5) She needs constant indications that you want her around. Any slight hint of a future plan will make her weep and email her friends the second you leave to go to the bathroom.

6) She finds nothing sexier than watching you rush around shaving, showering and getting ready for work in the morning.

7) She wants you to take without asking.

8) She checks out your butt every time you leave the room. EVERY TIME!!!!

9) She wants you to talk a little bit dirty during sex.

10) When she falls in love she looses her appetite. Don't notice that she never finishes her food.

11) Just looking at your hands when you drive will turn her on.

12) She smells your shirts when you are at work.

13) She fantasizes about when she can see you again. Everything is stretched into slow motion.

14) She has peed into a HUGE wad of toilet paper so you don't hear her. She has panicked that it may not flush. (Ok - so I added this one)

Something Fishy

No matter whom I have dated, kissed, or married, no matter what city, accent, denomination, color, or continent, circumcised or uncircumcised, messy or neat, artist or business man , or somewhere in-between, I have come to conclude that all men are the same.

Simple creatures.

I was recently reminded of this when helping my out-of-town boyfriend move to a new apartment. Our conversations before my arrival went something like this.

Me: “So….handsome man…are you starting to pack yet?”

BF: “Oh yeah…even took a few loads to the new place.”

Me: Swooning -falling deeper, with visions of his 6’3 scruffy self- sporting three day beard growth, his dark locks tousled as he neatly packs boxes with his impressive lawayer-ish books- wearing no shirt while R.E.M. plays in the background.

BF: "Yeah, I have some bins around here someplace - and I’ll get some boxes this week, take a few more car loads…I don’t really have that much stuff ya know?…I can toss most of this post-divorce shit and start new…ya know what I mean sweetheart?

Me: (Wondering what constitutes as post-divorce shit.)……. “Soooooo, what stuff did you move already?

BF: “Mostly art, books, the stuff I really wanted to be careful about…breakables.”

Me: “What about that fish plaque thingy?”

BF: “Oh yeah. He’s there.”

I shudder.

Now, I understand this fish means the world to him. I inquired about it the first time I stayed at his apartment, fully expected him to say it's from his mother who took ceramics.

No - it was something like ...a village man in Guam wanted him to have this sacred fish as his final dying wish because MY boyfriend single-handily saved the entire area's river basin through eco-bio-efforts and the 4.7 million dollars he and his small team raised by selling their bone marrow to help save cancer ridden premature Siamese twins born without spines.

I suddenly felt dumber than a box of hair.

I did however, note its position above the main window about 3 centimeters from the ceiling above the blinds. I let the location part go as a guy thing.

(Another guy I dated, had some sort of wooden pig mask with horns screwed to a pole in his loft that eerily resembled my ex mother-in-law.)

Moving day arrives, and we pull up to his place. This is where he opens the door. I stand in awe at an apartment that looks exactly like it did when I was there last month – save for a bit of a mess hovering around the sofa.

Me: “Ok…..um…what are we going to use to move all this?”

This is when hot stuff hands me a box of lawn and leaf bags and gives me that darling brown-eyes thing..... (and this is where his mouth gets really cute.)

I melt inside.

How can I be mad at a guy who bought me my own Christmas stocking for his place, buys me custom made soaps and suffers through Starbucks even though he would rather exhume his own liver with a plastic fork - before drinking even one sip.

A guy who calls me from Australia in the middle of his “night” in a jet-lag infused stupor to simply ask how my day was?

A guy who perfected the art of styling pomade – all because I said I liked it in an email even before we met .

A guy who calculates how many days it takes to grow a five-o-clock shadow before I return to visit (and gets asked if he is growing a beard every third week at work while itching like crazy...) all because he knows it drives me crazy.

A guy who puts decorative girlie pillows on his bed every morning - because I bought them.

A guy and runs a mile through his building complex to surprise me with a Diet Coke because I was bummed that he was out.

A guy who still kisses me on elevators.....unexpectedly.

A guy who drives five hours to have dinner with me, so I only have to drive one…

Garbage bags and fish plaques aren’t so bad after all…