And after work, I drive home. D’uh.

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My Daughter, My Self–As I say to everyone, “There is a reason we call her The Clone.”

I took this picture just a few minutes before we left for the airport. She’s probably boarding right about now.

Hope, I didn’t forget Self Portrait Sunday OR Project 365. I have pictures for the past 2 days and I will post them when I have time to tell the stories that go with them. Here’s today’s self portrait, taken just minutes ago with the handy dandy webcam on my Acer Aspire.

And part of the reason that you don’t get the other pictures yet, I must confess, is that someone has run off with my camera and it still has the card in it. Oh the joys of parenthood! I really should lock my bedroom door, LOL!

Let’s continue our journey, shall we? Unlike my weight loss diet, which has gone on for nearly two years, we are nearly at the end of my memory walk. Yeah, I know–2 posts and nearly finished. Crazy, huh? There are two little ones today. Then there are a couple from Europe and then a couple about my two dads that I don’t know if I will ever be able to tell, but we shall see. Later.

And before I forget again, here’s today’s self portrait, taken with the webcam, because it is easy and I lazy.

Both of these that I am going to talk about today happened when I was 6 or younger, and I know that because of where we lived at the time. We moved from there before I started school, and I was heartily upset when we moved because it meant I couldn’t ride the bus with my best friend who lived next door, which thing we had planned on with great excitement. Yes, I remember her name, it is/was Gina (last name left out for a modicum of privacy).

So, there in the cul-de-sac where we lived, there was a sewer grate. Only not really a sewer grate like you would think of, because we didn’t actually have sewers here then. I guess you would more properly call it a run-off grate. It was square, with rectangular openings for the water to go through to drain the street. You could sit on the curb and still put your feet on it, even if you were a little snip of a girl who was only about 3 feet tall and weighed maybe 40 pounds soaking wet. With 4 layers of clothes on. Which I wasn’t wearing, because it never actually got cold enough for four layers of clothes here back then, and anyway, we were riding bikes that day, Gina and I, so it musta been warm enough for that. And it was certainly warm enough to want to sit down and rest for a bit and giggle, which we must have done, because we did. And somehow, I got my foot into one of the slots in that darn grate, and I could. not. get. it. out. For a very long time, or at least for a very long time to a very small child who was very scared and near to panic. I can just remember sitting there crying, and my ankle hurting from me trying to pull my foot back out of there. And obviously I got it out, because I still have two feet, and I don’t know how I did it, but I did it myself because my parents were…..I don’t know, in the house I guess. And I think I remember telling Gina not to go get them because I was afraid I’d get in big trouble for putting my foot in there in the first place.

Second thing, still in that same house, we had a dog named Laddie. Now, I don’t remember playing with the dog, that would be nice. But I know that the dog died, and my dad buried her in the backyard (I know that, but don’t remember–you see the difference?? There are plenty of things I KNOW without actually remembering) and I cried, not because the dog was dead, but because I had pulled her ears and made her whimper not too long before she died.

I still remember how that house looked when I lived there. And I had a big plastic gun that shot balls, and that gun was not in my room, but across the hall in the room beside the kitchen. And in the room next to mine, on the left as you walk down the hall, there was a dresser and on that dresser sat Daddy’s marbles. I don’t remember anything else about that room, I guess I never really went in there, but you could see the marbles from the door. They were in a glass vase back then. I have those marbles now, at least some of them. I left part of them at Aunt Lady’s for all the great-grands to play with.

You will perhaps note that those marbles are no longer in a glass vase. Yes, it’s a rum bottle. And it sits on the hutch in my room, as part of my wall of happy. Which has become a room of happy now, just so you know. I thought very briefly about putting them in a more appropriate container, but I decided against it. My dad was who he was, and I choose to remember the truth, ugly, pretty, somewhere in between. I don’t have enough of them to start altering them to suit political correctness or any other such silly thing. And btw, the half I left there for the kids are similarly packaged.

Webcam shot, laughing at That One, cause he’s just so darn fun-nay.

Yes, with a real camera! Today was spent at cheer competition. And I must insert here that I was told I looked pretty darn good today. And no Medifast coupons were used to obtain the figure that was so complimented. Which you can’t even see in this picture. Muhahahahhahaha. Both of the teams that could advance did and so it appears that I will be traveling to Charlotte over Thanksgiving once again, this time with THREE cheerleaders, instead of two.

Yesterday, I mentioned some things I mean to discuss and they included

my new closet

such a long freaking hiatus

old photo albums

massive downsizing of my personal possessions

gaining free time

dancing on a fine thin line

pinkness

I suppose we might as well start at the beginning with the blogging hiatus. I found out a few months ago that in addition to in-person stalking, my EH (that would be estranged husband) was also cyber-stalking me, to wit, following me on twitter, trying to friend me on facebook and also reading this blog. A blog where I have poured my heart out again and again and again over the years of it’s existence and which he never bothered to read before we separated. Now, he’s no more interested in my thoughts and feelings now than he was then, and I know that. He mostly hopes I’ll drop a juicy tidbit about wild monkey sex on the living room floor in front of the children, I’m sure. But I am not going to do that, because I can’t. I speak truth here, and since there isn’t any of that, I can’t just say there is, yk?

The thing is, it’s me. This blog is about me, and I am disinclined to put myself out there in front of him anymore. He wasn’t interested when I tried and now it is too damn late. And so I quit blogging, because I don’t want him to think he knows me when he really doesn’t. Even when he reads it in black and white, I doubt he gets it. But that leads to it’s own set of issues— I am a writer: the stories must come out. We’ve discussed this very thing right here before, you (dear readers) and I. In truth, during this period of silence, I have had a lot of fun. I’ve done a lot of growing and a lot of learning, but it’s also been a time of great personal upheaval as I try to erase erroneous behavior patterns that I adopted while I was so depressed toward the end of my marriage. And by end, I don’t just mean the final weeks. So there has been much work, and also much sorrow and a great deal of joy going on with me.

You know, it is not a cakewalk, coming back into one’s rightful self. It is a tumultuous thing, to realize where you currently are, and where you once were, and to begin the slow and hopefully steady climb back to your former self. At one point during this great adventure, I was thoroughly chastised by a very young friend for not “doing more”. Of course, what my young friend did not see was my amazing duck move. That’s when I look still and calm on the outside, but I am paddling like mad on the inside. She was seeing a house that needed cleaned and boxes of stuff that needed sorted and I was seeing a heart and soul that needed some serious loving mending, and that is what I was busy doing. It took the form of “laziness” to her, of disregard. What she saw was a lot of coffee consumed, a lot of cigarettes smoked, and much conversation with friends who love me, even when I find it hard to love myself. That was HARD WORK. But when I had accomplished that mental and emotional work, I cleared that mess she was looking at in a day and a half.

And it was a mess, too. Law, law. That One and Micheal and Jane had moved everything we owned that wasn’t nailed down into the living room of my house. Jeepers, Creepers, it was a lot of stuff. Fourteen bags to charity and probably the same again to the trash and still over half of it had to be put away. And I believe we could pull that same stunt again with similar results. But that will have to wait. I emptied out my old closet yesterday, and the corner of the living room is now filled with that mess. But that, dear friends is a story for another day.