my kids are gone and this is what i'm thinking...out loud. duh

i was reading the dooce today. Oh my good lord god. that is a rockin blog. i am so jealous. i love that blog. she is just too cool. i have a girl-crush on her writing.

My kids left today. summertime julie is in the house. the very best part of divorce is visitation. in fact, i think a lot of marriages could probably make it, if they worked out a visitation arrangement... so anyhoo all morning i've been catching up on my blogs; leaving comments...and also dealing with the fact that my kids gone. for two weeks. it's bliss. and hell. but mostly bliss. it is both bliss and hell.

A Word About Singapore

this is an aside... ignore it. blog to follow below: i'm starting to get this blogging thing. i've just been spilling out a little trival thought now and then. but there is a method to this madness...this mommy-blogging. also, am i a mommy blogger just because i blog and i have kids? do we have levels of mommy bloggers, because the blogging,--i can excel at. but the mommy thing--we might have to talk. so remedialish mom, super blogger. ?? sound good? and i will try to pepper this thing with some vulgarity and rough language. i know how much you blog-stalkers love that shit.
okay, onto the blog.

A Word about Singapore...

because i am a general dumb ass when it comes to my man relationships, i've once again let myself get sucked in by "Singapore", the 57-yr-old-expat-love-of-my-life-dying-with-cancer-dude-that-strung-me-along-forever-then-ignored-me-for-three-months-and-got-engaged-to-his-hindu-girlfriend-in-singapore-leaving-me-heartbroken-and-emotionally-wounded.

...i fall for expats like a watermelon off of david letterman's roof. but that's a whole nother blog alltogether

it all started with an email last week. i didn't even know where he was or if he was even alive. i hadn't heard from him since february, when all was bliss with ms. hindu 52 yr old..don't get me started on this woman. .. last i heard the cancer was doing it's business through his bones and lord knows i've wished him ... harm... more than once. so for all i knew he could be on the other side by now. and i'd be free of him and his damn man-hold on me.

but there it was ... in my inbox. an email from him. he's in alaska. woopie doo. and now that he's up there all by his lonesome (where's hindu girlfriend now??? hmmm.. you think i'm gonna ask, oh hell no) he wants to touch base again. how are those beautiful girls of yours? gee, i've really missed our talks...blah blah blah, let me get you all hot and bothered over nothing then drop you like a steaming pile of shit from a circus elephant's ass (how do ya'll like that vulgarity, my new little blog-stalkers) ... he also lets it slip that he's been in texas since june 1. but never called. or came to see me. "it was just too hard to see you." he said. ugh. funny how it's not so difficult to call me from AL-AS-KA.

still, i'm sucked in. thinking about him. dropping hints for him to come to town. we text. email. only one phone conversation, but it was enough to get me going again.

the problem with Singapore, is that i love him. (see: dumb ass). at some point in our allbeit strange and probably unhealthy alliance, i made a conscious decision to dig out the key to my heart among all the rubble and give it to him. oh yes, that worked out well. i'm again reminded why i hid that thing behind my liver.

and that's where it's gonna stay............... for a while.

...above all else, guard your heart.... prov. 4:23

Final sprint to the Back Forty...make that a slow jog

When Harry Met Sally is of my quintessential life movies. Like The Big Chill, Talladega Nights, Mommy Dearest, Urban Cowboy...and about a dozen others, lines from that movie pop into my head as i work through this life.

Remember when Sally's ex-fiancee married his transitional person (all this time i was thinking he didn't want to get married when really he just didn't want to marry me) and she cried all night on Harrys' shoulder?
Sally in snotty tears: and i'm gonna be forty!!
Harry: yeah, in like eight years.
Sally bursting into tears: it's just sitting there! waiting!

i feel that. my eight years are up. well, in eight months they are. age is just a number--hey, i know that. have you seen the guys i date? still, 40. it's the biggie. it just sits there. like a fence-gate in the middle of the road.

ENTER OLDNESS HERE

nothing after the forty mile marker will be the same as it was up to that point. maybe it will be better. maybe not. but i'd like to hit that starting line in as peak condition mentally, emotionally and um, physically as possible.

and so our blog begins...

if i get any more out of shape, i'm afraid i'll be declared clinically dead. i never exercise. i mean never ever. walking from my car to the office is the most energy i exert in any typical 24 hour period.

the shrieks of horror from my inner being whenever i pass a mirror (or store window...or any reflective surface) tell me that the time has come. i can't get by with sitting on my ass anymore. my ass is about to crush something. it's time to move this mortal coil around a bit.

yes, this is yet another blog entry
of my attempt to work out
in order to get
better looking . sue me.

i went swimming this weekend. not walking around the pool, swooshing through the water with my head up like what i usually call swimming.
i mean actually performing the strokes. thought i was going to have a stroke.
i can't even call it swimming laps. it was swimming lap.

i've never been athletic. or graceful. or happy about moving. i'm a writer. a reader. a listener. a talker. none of these activities, to which i excel, require me getting out of a chair. and i've come to expect it that way. my only other hobby: drinking, fits well in the "sitting down" category of pasttimes that i've employed these past 5 years.

i will not take up space and time boring you with a list of all the crap i've bought as i've talked about working out. because it's just that: talking about it. intending to get into shape. constructing a plan, but never executing it.
just like so many other things i've intended to do and haven't:
Get my masters.
Start a cooking business.
Take up hoola hooping.
Write a memoir novel.
De-clutter the house.
Accept myself.

the list goes on and on. now time is ticking. i am a writer. i work on deadline. and not a minute sooner. the consumate "best under pressure" kind of person: i work about a week past deadline. so with eight months ahead until i have to blow forty...candles... i figure i'm about a year late in deciding to get started.
for me, seems right on time.

i'm not going to be a hard body. i doubt i'll even be a firm-tofu body. but before i start the second half of my life, i just want to do something i set out to do . being able to swim more than a lap; knowing i'm physically strong; liking the curve of my waist, feeling the quiet approval of my inner voices. seems like a good place to start.

it's God's same mantra to me---dump lazy and do something.
life is what you do. not what you intend to do.

so here i go. no cutesy wrap up.
oh, okay. why not.

the truth is: i can see the ME i have the potential to be--and that's who i want to spend the rest of my life with.
and... when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with a person, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible ...