Happy Birthday

Happy 78th Birthday to my Dad!!!!

We just took him out for breakfast and had a lovely morning. I gave him a new book to read for his birthday.

Will I Just Get Past This?.... Ever? (I'm even starting to drive myself nuts.)

So begins another day with Daughter #2 still in bed and Daughter #1 away and not able to text me from Vernon. She is at a ranch taking part in round robin activities with two other patrols besides her own, and informed me that she would be out of cell range for three days. That's ok because at least I know she is ok. She has informed me that she is thinking about the armed forces for a career option after she finishes school. I worry about that... what mother would want her child to go through basic training to be sent overseas to be exposed to the worst of humanity, where life is disregarded as little or nothing, where it is considered cheap. But she is her father's daughter and I think Sir Arsewipe really and truly has never been happy in his life because he always wanted to join the armed forces and never did so. He blames his mother and father for taking away the opportunity when he was right out of high school because they would not sign his forms... but he could have done it after he came of age. He didn't because ultimately he is not a risk taker.... the biggest risk he has ever taken was dumping me and the kids and then he only did it once he had the safety net of a new woman to encourage him. Meanwhile I would not hold Daughter #1 back from the armed forces if that is truly what she wants to do.... but that does not mean that I would not worry about her... nor does it mean that I will not encourage her to think of other options.

I woke early once again this morning... for the last few days I have begun to feel in limbo with no real concrete future ahead.  I know what I want but everything seems to be conspiring against me. Waking early seems to be the time for me to lie abed tossing and turning trying to figure out what I am going to do and how I am going to do it. It was 3:39 a.m. when I woke and I watched the sun come up and then finally fell back to sleep at around 5:30. I should have gotten up since I woke from a startling dream of being told that I was unloved in front of his whole family and that I was a terrible wife and that I no longer made him happy. I woke from that disoriented and full of anguish. It was not a good feeling to live it all again. It is not the first time I have lived that dream since the 6th of June and I expect it will not be the last time. I hate feeling sorry for myself but I am beginning to think that maybe some counselling might be a good idea.

With this limbo of no sale on the house and not even any serious interest at the moment I am beginning to lose hope in my dreams coming to fruition. I am trying to stay positive... and I am trying to stay mad at him... it gives me something solid to hold onto in this vortex in which I find myself swirling. It is stupid to not be mad at him... and I am mad but somehow I feel overwhelmingly sad that Michael... well it does no good to call him names or to dwell on the fact that he is not the man I thought he was.  He has lost every ounce of respect that I ever had for him.I can't believe some of the things that he has written down and I can't believe he was able to hide his feeling so profoundly. What I think I can't believe the most is what a stupid fool I was to believe him. But that is part of the limbo that I am in... I do not know if I can trust my own judgement of people.  How will I ever be able to look at a person and tell if they are a shit and a shyster. I even have begun to fear being scammed with a scam artist. What this whole thing has done has been to completely undermine me. I think that because I am generally a nice and genuine person I have been put upon by the worst of society and what's to stop that from happening again.

I know others live through this and I am sure I will too but I'll be honest I don't think I will come out of this the same person. Certainly not kind and trusting in the goodness of human nature.  I have seen too much of the other side. It scares me.

Every day I sit down and I try to think of something to write about other than the big "D" but it always seems to come back to that.

Yesterday I got the add out for Mom's and Dad's place. There are adds all over town and a PSA announcing that their house is for sale. Each night I beg God to please see me through this mess and get me to where I need to be. I need to be away. Soon his chit will be back from Ghana where she has spent the last three weeks and then going out of this house will be a whole lot more strategic because if I run into her I am sure I will have a heart attack.... or worse. Soon, he will be back too...  and I would like never to see his face again...this side of hell would be too soon.  And so each day I continue to unpack... pack.... sort.... organize. And that is what I will be doing once again today.  Yesterday was a bit of a holiday since I went to town to order myself a new pair of glasses. Then we went out to a friend's house for dinner and stayed till 10:30 at which time we came home in time to feed and water the animals... Dad will be coming today at some point for his monthly haircut... so the day is getting on and so must I....

Black Fingernails

I am looking at my fingernails and thinking how disgusting... The logwood dyeing that I did the other day has turned my fingernails black.  After all day yesterday and all night using water to wash dishes etc... you would think that they would be a little cleaner than they were.  But they are not. They are black and I guess they will be like that until the logwood dye eventually goes away. I have finished my 25 shades of logwood and it looks awesome but I am still not posting pics yet until the skeins of yarn all dry. Then there will be pictures that show their true colour. I am going to get going on my project for level 3 at that point. The great thing is there's not a lot left to finish the level 3 homework. I am hoping to really focus on that and get it done in the next few weeks. Then I am going to get on to the in depth study.  You have no idea how lovely it will be to get started on that.

Selling the house doesn't seem to be much of an option right now. We have turned down one offer which was 29,000 less than we were asking... we had dickered back and forth for a while and had been really nice about dropping a price. But they still wouldn't go above 29,000 less than what we were asking, which is just not going to happen. Most people are only willing to come down by 10,000 or 15,000 but 29,000 I think they must have been totally out to lunch. So no sale at least not right now.  We also need to get really serious about selling Mom's and Dad's house. I have to have enough money to buy a house in Nfld without having a mortgage. That is the only way I can move back there. All the stars need to align to make this work really. Still I am hopeful that it will work eventually.

If you are wondering why I am not talking about the shimozzle that I am in with regards to divorce etc... well that's because I have decided that enough is enough. I do have to get on with my life at some point. There will be comments from time to time but I am really going to try to start moving on. Sir Arsewipe is gone and as far as he's concerned he's moving on to better things and I don't constitute better things in his life. We have discussed trying to be friends but that's just not going to happen. I have discovered too many negative things about him and his secret actions behind my back and how he has felt for such a very long time. When someone lies to you so profoundly for so many years then there is no basis for any kind of relationship. No trust, no respect, = no anything. Yes he is the Daughters father and I will have to deal with him in that capacity but really I want nothing to do with him at all. I wish I could wave a magic wand and be back home. I wish I could wave it again and have our divorce final. It turns my stomach to have to talk to him because he won't even talk to me about anything... he turns away from me and ignores me and walks away and acts like I'm the shit on his shoe to be scraped off. And then after the calling down that I gave him for using our personal email address to send love letters and poetry to his chit I don't think friendship is an option at this point. Once nasty things get said over and over and once nasty things are done over and over there's not a whole lot to work with. Suffice it to be said that the sooner I am financially able to stand on my own two feet and the sooner I can get away in every possible manner the better.

I do still miss the family fun times we had together. I miss Daughter #1 who texts me regularly. I miss companionship but the man who constituted so much of my life is gone.... completely and unutterably gone. I am amazed how one person can change so very radically in such a short time. One year ago I was planning our camping trip to Cameron Lake but already at that time he was gone in his heart and just going through the motions of being a husband.... he is quite an actor really.

So I sit here and look at my black fingernails and realize that my life with him is kind of like that. Some crazy shit turned our love black (if we ever had love because according to him he never loved me the way he should have... obligation is not love... still can't wrap my head around that one) and now slowly I am washing it away... it won't take long now till my nails are clean and so is my life.

Hack Hack Cough Cough (Snort)

Anyone who thinks that anything on the internet is private is a complete blithering idiot.  I recently had a kid tell me and show me just how easy it is to get into private domains and see what kind of stuff is going on there. Social media like Facebook are notoriously bad. It was amazingly simple really. Kind of scary too... People have no clue who else is reading their private stuff. It really is best not to put anything into writing that you don't want seen by anyone else.... even when you think it's private, it's not. I have a person from Mountainview, California who goes in on my blog here regularly (like every four or five days) and adjusts and makes things available to Google search... I watch him/her and he/she watches me. Then a while back I wrote a blog about the end of the Space Shuttle program... I was sad to see it go... I used some key words apparently because the next day there was someone monitoring me from a particular agency in the states that begins with C---r--l I-------- ? (I don't want them to come back again).

It is amazing to think that there are people out there who do this kind of stuff all the time. They just spend all of their time monitoring peoples' movements on the internet. I like checking out my stat counter because it allows me access to seeing you guys and tells me who's been in on my blog recently and who is following what I am saying. If you leave a comment on my blog ever after I can figure out who you are.  I can see what your previous website was and I can see what you leave me for. It's cool really.

Unless you are jumping from computer to computer (and I mean using different computers each time you log in) it is not hard to find out what you are doing... at least while you are on my blog. Once you leave my blog I can't follow you... unless I was a wiz kid like the one I spoke of earlier. So if you are ever on the run... don't keep going back to the same computer and for heaven's sake don't say anything in the form of a comment. Actually, in order to hide you will probably want to stay off the internet altogether.

Last year my cousin who follows my blog went to the states and I was able to tell that he was on my blog because he was using the same computer... it was his laptop that I was able to follow. As a result I was able to know his activities while he was there.

And passwords.... keep them to yourself and try to use as many different ones as you can. If someone knows any of your passwords then that makes checking out your personal stuff even easier.  Really the best thing you can do is hide. Even using code words like "turtle" won't hide you.

Be cryptic.... unless you want people to find out stuff about you.... then you're just plain weird! (Which is maybe the case with me!)

Just watch...  because I used the words cough and snort in this title, for the next few days every website that I go to will be selling me tissues and cough medicine. Really!

Oh and if you do use text messaging or anything that you don't want to be found out... erase and delete everything.... including the history of it and all recent items that you have visited. Really... I'm serious...

Oh and by the way.... Hi to the person from Mountainview, California.... maybe you could contact me a let me know who you are?! I might actually believe you. : )

That's The Way Uh Huh Uh Huh, I Like It Uh Huh Uh Huh

Yep great day today. Finally have that 25 shades of Logwood dyeing done. Well, almost. I didn't quite finish the modifiers. Will finish up in the morning when it is cooler. Right not I am wasted. I have been up since 4:30 a.m. Last night we watched the scariest movie ever with Daniel Radcliffe called The Lady In Black. Freakin' scared us silly. I went to bed and slept ok because I can kind of put stuff like that out of my head but Daughter #2 is not used to such movies. When I woke up at 4:30 a.m. Daughter #2 was sitting up in her bed with her lights on and she was white as the sheet she was lying on. I think she was scared poop free.  Poor kid never got to sllep until the sun had come up.

I started skeining yarn at that unGodly hour and didn't quite have it finished when my dyeing partner showed up at shortly after 9 a.m. We worked like daemons all day and it was one of those hot summer days that are almost unbearably hot. +41 degrees C in the sun on my deck at one point today... My dyeing partner left at 5:30 this afternoon at which time Daughter #2 and I jumped into our swimsuits and went for a dip in our local outdoor pool. Nice! Home for a couple of movies and to be honest I'm not staying on long since I am so pooped out that I can hardly think straight. A good night sleep is desperately needed for both of us and believe me that won't be long in coming.  My hands have black all over the tips of my fingers because of dipping my hands in the logwood dye bath. Too bad I couldn't have had the wax needed for a henna job 'cause this might have worked just as well.  I'll try to post a few pics of my dyeing tomorrow as I will get it finished early in the morning if it is cool enough.

This is the kind of day I like.... and I hardly thought about Sir Arsewipe at all... damn... I just thought of him... curse it.

The Brain Power Is Completely phsssstttt!

These days I find that if it's not related to the divorce crap going on that I have the concentration of an ADHD dog. Oh shit!... does that mean I'm acting like Bailey (Sir Arsewipe's dog). That really is disconcerting. But what I mean to say is that I have very little concentration power for anything other than all things divorce. I hate that. But when I sit down to spin right off the bat I want to jump up again and go racing off and doing something else. Unpacking and sorting boxes seems to be about the best thing I can do. Sorting and organizing the junk of our lives sucks but I am able to do it so I do.

Something that I have noticed through this process is the support or lack there of from friends. I have some very good personal friends who have bent over backwards to help me and be supportive. I have some acquaintances who have come by to put their arms around me and given me a hug. But I am amazed by the people in whom I thought I had a friendship who haven't even so much as called to see how I'm doing.  And I know they know about us splitting up. Perhaps they feel their loyalties are divided. Perhaps they feel that something embarrassing might be said. Perhaps they feel that they will somehow get embroiled in our affairs. All I know is I have discovered who my friends are. It's a sad state of affairs when the people you have nurtured as friends let you down. Thanks to you all who read here and have emailed, texted, or phoned to give a few words of moral support. I really appreciate it because it reminds me that I am not alone in this world and there are people who care what happens.

Last night a lady who lives just down the road from me came by and I really appreciated that because the thing is that I really don't know her all that well. Basically she has asked the girls to take care of her cat from time to time and that's it. She seemed very supportive and was sorry to hear that things had gone so far south for Sir Arsewipe and me. She stayed for an hour or so and then there was a thunder storm brewing and we could hear it getting closer. She left to go home with the statement that her door is always open if I ever needed a friend. Nice.

Today the weather is cooler and I am glad of that since I will be back in the shed working on getting more boxes opened and more crap sorted. It seems never ending and to be honest I'm starting to think that half of our lives was in that shed. I also think that half of our lives belongs in the dump... no pun intended. But still the clearing continues... its amazing some of the stuff we have kept over the years. There's more acrylic yarn and shit than you can shake a stick at. But it is not all garbage... I am finding treasures too. Stories I've written for the girls when they were little and stories my maternal grandfather wrote for me when I was little. I have found old year books and bits and pieces from earlier years when all the world was an oyster. I even found a wee quilting project that I had forgotten I even owned. I have only a little work left to finish it and it will make a very nice little lap quilt. Or maybe I'll do some blocks for around it and turn it in to a worthwhile sized quilt. I found my great grandfather's carpentry tools and I found his old musket and gun powder horn carved with a ship. I have found things that should have been on display in this house over the years but I was always too careful about putting up in case Sir Arsewipe might think that there was too much of my stuff in the house.  In the end it didn't matter cause Sir Arsewipe is an arsehole. My pile of boxes continues to grow.... Sir Arsewipe's pile of boxes continues to grow and my spinning wheel languishes for want of attention. There is fibre that should be dealt with and an In Depth Study to think about it... Unfortunately I just can't go there... at least not yet.

Yesterday I watched a movie... "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo".  It was good. A bit gruesome in places but a well developed plot with interesting characters. I love a good mystery with lots of twists and turns. And it helped me to put all things divorce out of my mind.

Daughter #2 is still abed.  Daughter #1 checks in via text messaging on my phone each day.... I'm glad of that since keeping in touch with her gives me a reason to keep going. So we are getting along. Summer seems to be passing me by though and that bothers me. I did go swimming the other day at the pool. We had intended on a trip to Cameron Lake but in the end felt it was too much of a reminder of last year's idyllic holiday. At least we thought it was idyllic... who knew.  Yesterday was the annual Paddle For The Peace. Lots of years, Sir Arsewipe and I have taken the kids and been a part of that event.  It was hard to know that so many participated and I did not. I guess I probably should take the canoe and enjoy it while I can because I doubt very much if I'll be able to for much longer... oh there go the water works again... I best stop thinking about all of this and go through some more boxes....

Have a nice Sunday 'cause I'm sure it's deserved.

And So The Ball Starts To Roll

Yesterday I woke up early and I had my phone charging by the side of my bed. You will remember that some months ago I committed myself to the Shadow Weave project. But I have decided that with everything that has been going on around here that I just can't and so I have agreed to sell the warp to a lady in my guild. All I want is to get the money back that I spent on the damn thing in the first place. So I knew I had discussed the price of the yarn with the lady I ordered it from via email. I decided to look back through all of the "sent" messages to find that particular one and see what the price of the yarn was. As I was scrolling through the messages I discovered that there are several there from Michael to his girlfriend.... love letters... poetry.... God it was enough to make me want to puke. Why oh why do I have to keep getting slapped in the face with this.  Alright already.... I've got it... really... I do... and it's just barf!!!!

Later in the morning I called the Fairway Divorce Solutions people in FSJ. Our divorce will be a mediated divorce rather than taking it through the traditional system of lawyers and courts. It is faster and cheaper and for me it is the right way to go. I want to come out of this on the other end with as little psychological damage as possible and I want that for the girls as well. So far it is an uncontested divorce. He is being very accommodating and I hope that continues. The girls, thank heavens, are old enough to decide for themselves where they want to live.  For Daughter #2 there was no question. She has decided that her father is too untrustworthy to live with and she has lost a great deal of respect for him. For Daughter #1 it was much more difficult. She has a much better base of friends. She is a western girl in that she loves horse back riding and all things horsey. She also loves the Junior Canadian Rangers and will miss that as well. She feels like she belongs here in BC because it is her home... it took her a while to decide to come with me and for her it is a real act of bravery. She will be leaving everything she knows and loves behind her. But eventually she came to grips with it and part of it was the fact that she would have a hard time with her father having a physical relationship with another woman other than me. Part of it is the trust issue as well. Michael has decided that, though difficult, it is probably for the best and that the girls should stay together... at least that is what he is saying. For the girls it will be an opportunity to experience a new way of life. Another culture might not be a bad thing for them. So when there is no contest over the children and when there is no contest over finances then there is no real reason to hold up a divorce. Yesterday I got the ball rolling.

While I don't believe that divorce is a good solution,  sometimes when there is no other choice then it is the only option. Now that I have discovered Mike's alternate life I have come to the conclusion that our marriage was a farce from the beginning. I made my vows faithfully. The person I married was the person he showed me and what he showed me is not who he is. (We won't touch on the remarriage thing since that touched a hot spot yesterday and no I am not thinking about remarriage in any way other than the most unconcrete way... as a possible "what if" at some point down the road... it is all theoretical at this point)! Still a divorce will spell out Mike's obligations to me and to the girls for the next years without him. Divorce to me is a civil contract and nothing more. It is a way for a woman to know that she is not going to starve in the hedgerows. That wouldn't happen to me anyway. But still it is a way to know that life is not going to dump you on your ass and with nothing, nadda... nary a ting. Remember I said yesterday that civil law cannot overthrow God's laws. All civil law does, is put in place a way forward, and defines your relationship in another way. I cannot totally shed him... he is the father of my children and we will always share that connection.

Still, yesterday was a day of angst. I knew that the mediator would require me to rehash everything... and I did. And it was tough. But it is done and for the better. There is nothing that can be done now until he comes back from Vernon. At which time he will meet with the mediator and then we have to get our financial records in order. After that it will be a back and forth between me and him via the mediator until we have an agreement in place that we are both happy with. In between we will have to attend separately a couple of seminars on financial counselling and co-parenting. Once we have the agreement hammered out we take it to our respective lawyers to get some advice on it and then it gets filed at the court with our signatures and the lawyers signatures... and then we are free to do whatever we want in the eyes of the civil court. Remarry whatever.... for me that will be a hard day. I will be letting go of my childhood dreams of love and marriage, of old age with someone you love. The mediator expects that our divorce, being uncontested, will probably be done by the time Christmas rolls around. All I could thing was our anniversary is the 28th of December... with my luck that will be the day that we file. For him I'm sure that would be a great anniversary gift... for me.... well I'll leave that alone.

Today I am going to try to get some more of the boxes in the shed opened and organized. His stuff for him and my stuff for me. Slowly I am seeing the piles in the shed get lower... the ones in the house get higher, mine and his. It is going quicker now because mostly it is books, but there is a box coming with the girls school work and drawings as little girls.  I will pack that away in boxes for them but I will keep one or two things for him and one or two things for me. There is also the box of Valentine's and love letters he gave me... I may just burn them unopened.... too hard to reread. After the boxes of personal effects are done then it is a matter of taking out the rest and deciding what's worth a trip to the dump and what's worth trying to sell. Our furniture is very little... the beds are coming with me... the computer is coming with me, (he has a personal laptop). The TV is coming with me though I may buy a Blue ray player and give him the surround sound stereo since he likes CBC and it picks up CBC very well. Bureaus and things like that can be sold, my antiques go with me since they have been in my family for a very long time. Dishes I don't care about. Camping stuff he can have including the old canoe he carried across a lake in a wind storm on the ice and almost blew away with. Gardening stuff is his since I will buy new when I get settled. Scooter is Daughter #2's and the Kayak is Daughter #1's. The rest is small appliances which I will replace when I get where I'm going. My chair will go with me and his chair will go with him. I will take all my spinning and weaving stuff including fleeces if there is room. It is not a lot to show for twenty years of living together... but then my needs are quite adequately cared for in the simple. A small house, little or no furniture other than what we need absolutely. A nice deck for summer time living and occasionally a canoe trip or camping trip.... I thought I was fairly easy to please... apparently that's not enough or maybe it is too much... I don't know but for whatever reason we are finished. Almost....