Blessing or Curse, you decide!

Well, for two days now I have been mute! I have laryngitis. Now, to someone like me, you may as well as inject with the plague. Okay, that's extreme. However, I am a talker and a talker without a voice is just, well, a mime!

That's my take on it. Ask the others in the house, maybe it's not so bad. The kids haven't been yelled at in two days and I'm guessing that's alright with them. The downside of that is that in order to get their attention I'm resorting to throwing things! Probably not a good thing.

This can't go on much longer. I can't even work. Try talking to people through 3 inch bullet proof glass when you can't raise your voice above a whimper. So I'm using vacation time, which sucks. I figured I'd make it worthwile at least and clean my house while I have this time. Nope! Not happening. Took about three seconds of breathing the fumes from the cleaning supplies before my throat started to feel like it was being caressed with sand paper! Then the gagging started and don't get me going on that!

I'm in Love with Dane Cook...

...Okay, I'm not. I don't even know so I musn't be ridiculous in my emotional outbursts!! Oh, I lie!!! Web of lies spew from my lips. I do love him!! LOL.

The thing is, my love of Dane Cook is a mystery. Even to me. One of my biggest pet peeves is the use of the c**t word. I hate it. Really, really hate it. And that is saying a lot coming from a well-versed potty mouth such as myself. Oddly enough, Dane Cook uses that word quite often. So, why do adore his humor and laugh hysterically?? I don't know.

He's a big goof ball. I love that! His humor is, at times, bordering on absurd. He's silly, nerdy and pokes fun at the same things I do. Yes, he has a foul mouth, but so do I. Yes, he's a total spaz, but so am I.

I can't take it! Listening to him almost brings me to tears, or at least I almost pee my pants. He really gets the ridiculous and absurd side of life. Oh, he offends! But it only makes me love him more.

Bees

Kids are great. Not only do they love you unconditionally and feel good in your arms, but they offer endless amounts of entertainment on so many levels. Sometimes they are purposely trying to make you laugh or pay attention to them, sometimes it's an accident.

My piglet always brings a smile to my face. This time we were researching honey bees for a report she has for school. Research for reports not really my favorite thing but, as parents, our jobs go beyond food and shelter. So, bee research it is.

Well, there wasn't anything she did directly that was so amusing. But it was due to her bee paper that I had a good laugh, and now have a new respect for bees.

You see, bees are a female driven society of creatures. The first thing to note is that the male of the species serves one single, important function...for mating. That's their purpose in life. I'm quite sure human males will be saying 'yee haw' right about now, but let me continue. The second important, and amusing, feature of the male bees is that once they have served their purposes as successful mates, they die! Kinda makes that one, first time extra special, don't it?

Well, if that isn't enough, poor guys, come Autumn in the female dominated hive those boys lucky enough to still be living, virgins though they are, will be kicked out of the hive for the winter months, not being allowed to return until the summer.

Call me an optimist, but isn't that poetic justice?

Nature is a thing of beauty.

What is wrong with me???

Well, at first thought...a lot!!

It's strange. I know we all remember being little kids and losing a tooth. Remember how you couldn't stop yourself from sticking your tongue in the hole for nothing, no matter how many times your mother yelled at you to knock it off or it will never heal. If anything, that was a sign to do it some more. Well, that's how I kind of feel about my life right now. It's a big, raw wound that I keep sticking my tongue in and, sure enough, it's getting infected and not healing.

I know that probably makes sense to no one but myself. I think the point isn't so much that I may as well be a toothless six year old, but that even as a grown up we are prone to doing exactly what we know isn't good for us. I'm no exception.

However, I'm also realizing that I'm approaching middle age. I am still in the dark as to how that happened. I have myself convinced that I'm having a flash forward and I will someday have Alzheimer's and I've lost years of my life already because there is no way I can be getting closer to forty this fast. But that point is moot. Like it or not, I am close to forty. I have a couple great kids that I've done everything I can to make a good life for. I work hard at a job I may love but is still relatively thankless. I have little to show for my hard work and devotion.

I'm not getting younger, wealthier or happier. The opposite is happening. What I need to do now is carpe diem!! Sieze it, I say!!! While I still can. While I'm still young enough to enjoy it, to be able to get ahead and start some things freshly, with a hell of a lot more sense and confidence.

So, I guess, really nothing is wrong with me, other than fear. Yeah, you know who I'm talking about. It's the sonofabitch that lives under your bed no matter how old you get. He was there all along, I don't care what my parents said. And he's still there, and he still controls a big chunk of what I say and do.

It's time to sweep out from under my bed and kick that fear to the curb for good.

Wish me luck.

First Time Home Owner

As some people know I've been questioning the joys of marriage for some time now. I go back and forth between the love and hate, realizing that the old cliche is true and the line really is fine. It's easy to see how people who once shared so much love now find themselves crossing the love line and going into Hate Town, population: HIM!

Well, since I live on a constant teeter of not knowing what to do, what's right, what if I mess it up? I think I've finally put the nail into my own marital coffin. Maybe, who knows?

You see, I'm buying a house. Myself. Not only is his name not involved, he doesn't even know. Yikes! That's a big FU if I ever saw one, I know. However, I fell in love with this house and showed it to him, hoping we might be ready to make the change. We live way out of town, the house is in town, by both our jobs. It would be a money saver for sure. But he refused.

On a whim, or death wish maybe, I said to heck with it and applied for a loan, which I never thought would be approved, and it still may not. But it's looking much more possible than I believed. So now I'm faced with the dilemna about it and why I did and what am I going to do about it.

Why did I even do it? Do I want him to hate my guts? I knew, know, that he's going to have kittens when he finds out. Do I figure we'll make it through, or am I hoping he tells me to get out? Am I trying to buy it because I'm definitely wanting to go live in it, am I lying to myself telling myself that I can rent it out?

Honestly, I think I want him to be so mad he can't forgive me. I think it would be so much easier if he left me. And that is one awful thought. I think I'm weak. And I'm scared. I have no idea what I'm getting myself into.

Decisions

I'm constantly telling my kids that the right decision isn't always the easy one. And that's true. It's also something that is much easier said than done, as I'm sure we've all discovered. What I'm learning as I get older is that it becomes even harder. You're older, more set in your ways, have more fears. The thought of making those tough calls can be daunting.

Though I might say that making those decisions needs to be done, and they do when they're right, I'm not always making them myself. I find myself procrastinating for so many reasons. Mainly, I feel too old to start life over. I done got all used up!! I feel that trying to begin anew at this point puts me somewhere between un-appealing and spinsterhood.

But it is one of those tough choices. I'm not happy with my life, I need to make changes. Even if those changes leave me alone and starting over with nothing and no one, save my wonderful girls, thank God for them.

I'm not exactly old, but I'm not young either. And I don't make a lot of money. And starting over tomorrow would mean, literally, starting over with nothing, as I surely wouldn't be offered a pot to piss in, much less a bed to sleep in.

It's a cliche said so often but I find it true, I love my husband but I am not in love with him any more. I love him for the children we have, for the stability he has shown me and willingness he gave me these years to put up all of my crap. He's a good man, but not the man for me. Not any more.

But, like I said, the right choices are often the hardest. And I'm finding myself unable to make them because of all those fears. Is it better to be alone for the right reasons than to be with someone for the wrong reasons? It's easy to answer until you find yourself there. I want to make the right call but what will happen if I do? I can't lie any more but what options does someone like me have?

I don't make very much money, I have barely mediocre credit and I hate sleeping alone. All these things, and more ( I won't even get into what an ugly divorce this would be), make my decision so difficult.

I'm beginning to wonder if it is just inevitable that I just stay where I am, unhappy and lying. But I hope not.

Ends and Beginnings

It's true that our entire lives are filled with ends and beginnings. Not to mention the great beginning and the bittersweet ending that is experienced by us all. I'm talking about inbetween beginnings and endings. Plum full we are of them.

We begin school and end it, we begin jobs and them, we begin friendships and often end them, we begin projects and end them. Everything has its beginning and ending. At this point in my life I'm coming into my own, an ending.

Though some endings are jubilant and full of hope, some are not. Though relief is present, joy is not. The end of a marriage, of ten years of a life spent as a couple, is, at best relieving and bittersweet. At worst, excruciating and heartbreaking. Sometimes it's all of that, as I am learning.

I have yet to actually speak the words to anyone, including my other half. In fact, the thought of saying it out loud is almost too much. I can't fathom that it's come to this, yet it has. I really don't want anyone to know, which I know is impossible. My fears are vast and consuming.

I have nowhere to go really, though I'm working on it. I have no money. I have little to take with me. Other than my memories and the gratefulness I feel at having at least been given the gift of my beautiful daughter. It's the best thing that came from my marriage, and she makes it all worth it.

I just don't know what to do next. How do I say it? How do I leave? How do I start over? I'm terrified of going, of staying. I'm terrified of an ugly fight over a beautiful child.