Beginning Again with Ben

Its been a while, I know. When I get behind then it seems like a monumental task to blog again. Its not that I’m not thinking of you all, cuz I send music, but… I just dont find time to sit down while I’m at work. I almost never even touch the internet when I’m at home anymore. In fact I’m going to cancel my home internet simply because I might use it once a day and its nothing that I can’t just check when I get to work, or… as I plan, check on my new phone, but I’ll talk more about that later.

First off, Thanksgiving.

For Thanksgiving I went to go visit my family down south. I’ve visited my family more this year than I’ve ever visited them before. I attribute some of it to truly missing them, especially my sister and her family, and having the freedom and time to do so.

This, as best as I can recall, the first time I have sat down with my family for Thanksgiving dinner in 16 years. I mean, my mom, dad and sister. My mom visited for Thanksgiving three years ago, and we ate together then, but, its been a long time as a whole family.

It was a nice visit, as most of my visits have been lately. I stayed with my mom this time, the last few times I stayed with my sister. I’d not taken into account that my mom is an early to bed person with her job, where I am the exact opposite, a night owl because of my work hours. But, it wasn’t bad, because I was able to relax each night and just do nothing.

It’s not that I can’t do nothing when I’m at home. Its just that even if I had been stressing out about doing something, I simply couldnt. No internet, just a computer with lots of recorded TV I hadn’t gotten to watch yet and a phone with unlimited text messaging! I had lots and lots of “me” time.

I went down on Wednesday, spent Thanksgiving with my mom and then on Friday we had a meal together with my sister, brother-in-law, nephew and dad. On Saturday, with the threat of bad weather on the horizon, I dedided to head out at half time of the MU vs. KU game.

On Sunday I decided to cancel my vacation day and go into work. If I’m home I might as well go to work, right?

Here are a few pics from when I was with family.

First is my mom and sister cooking for Thanksgiving!

Elise and Ben and I

My entire family loved Ben.  Which is not hard to imagine! He was a very good boy while we were there and remembered his manners. Alley and Ben both played nicely with my mom’s Weim “Jesse” and for the most part everyone got along with “Chauncey” too. Alley likes Chauncey because he plays at her speed, which is all out, all the time!

Not much has been going on since I got home. Work and snow I guess.

This was our first true snowfall and that was before Thanksgiving. A few days ago we got an additional 9″ plus there is always more snow in the forecast.

The last few days I’ve been thinking about getting a new phone. I’ve looked at lots of phones and I think I finally settled on the LG enV2, which gets great reviews, but… it means I have to switch cell carriers.

I’ve had US Cellular forever and ever, but Verizon has all the same coverage as US Cellular plus lots and lots more! PLUS…  there just aren’t any phones I want from US Cellular. I might as well stick with my Motorola RAZR and I’ve had that for a few years now, and although I love it, it’s time to catch up with technology.

Well, looking at options and carriers and phones, etc. had me on Craigslist today. On a whim, while I was on Craigslist, I looked at available apartments. My lease is up at the place I’m at now at the end of January, but I had planned on signing for another 5 months, to get me into summer and move then. But, things don’t always work like we think they should.

Well, this apartment caught my eye, and I’m going to go look at it on Saturday. They accept pets and its in a really nice area, worlds better than where I am now, and it’s not any further from work. It also has a pool, fitness center and is in walking distance to a dog park. Perhaps its fate, perhaps not, but, I’m going to go look at it to find out.

In other news, on December 2nd, my husband and I were divorced. He is such a procrastinator… poor guy. He was there, on time, but with paperwork he was still filling out. I suppose a lawyer would have made him fill it out a bit more promptly.

We didn’t use a lawyer for our divorce. We paid not quite $200 to file the paperwork with the county and took care of the whole thing ourselves, with no other costs but fuel to drive to the courthouse on hearing day. I know some people would say, if you get along so well with someone that you can negotiate an entire divorce, including real estate and property division, perhaps you could have, or should have, stayed married. Ya, its not like the thought didn’t cross my mind.

I don’t hate my ex-husband. Not even close. I’m not a fan of his recent attitude of live it up and be a rude shallow prick to everyone, including me, but, well, he’s got to sort that out for himself. I know that deep down he cares, and deep down he’s still trying to figure this all out, what happened and where to go from here. I feel bad for him. I feel guilty for how I’ve treated him and I feel responsible for his behavior. Had I handled myself better, perhaps he wouldn’t be quite so damaged.

When I first left him I wanted him to wise up and realize he can’t treat people the way he treated me. Of course, I needed to learn the same lesson. I wanted him to just leave me alone and go away, but on the other hand he had been my best friend for the last 7 years and I wanted him to still be there for me, when he hadn’t been there for me in our marriage, but, still… his kinda being there was more than I had available to me.

Ya… I don’t know. It’s been eleven months now since I moved out and there are times where I miss the house, and fewer and fewer times where I miss him. But, I’m not as angry with him anymore either. I’ve forgiven him for all that there is to forgive and I think he has forgiven me, at least I hope so. He’s still too proud a bastard to say “I’m sorry!” but, well, miracles don’t happen everyday.

I guess what I do now is look at the future and say, where do I want to be now, where am I going? I look at my job, my hobbies, my relationships and say, “Are these what I want?”, “Are these going to get me where I want to be?” and I guess more often than not I say, “Yes!”. What more can a person ask for.