The ongoing dialogue

If you look for it, there is an abundance of advice out there in the world for someone who’s recently lost a loved one. I don’t remember intentionally looking for it or reading it, but I could probably recite it if someone asked. Things like, "don’t make any big life decisions for at least the first year after the loss".

In my case, I waited one exactly one year and started making plans to move. I heard that little snippet of advice in the back of my head every time I got closer to my goal of leaving Northern Virginia. I knew ‘a year’ was intended to be an average. I knew I was probably rushing things. I didn’t care. I couldn’t live there anymore. It was too much, being there without him. Driving past the Van Dorn Street exit on 95 made me cry, every time, so did 5 Guys, and 3 buck Chuck from Trader Joe’s. I knew I’d never be able to, or even want to sit in the bleachers at Hayfield High School and watch a football game again. So I ignored the voice and kept on keeping on.

Later, I saw a grief counselor who told me I should write Mark a letter; tell him all the things I was thinking and feeling – just “anything I wanted to say”.
I never did this.

I knew if I started, there’d be no end. There was nothing unfinished between Mark and me. I loved him and he knew it. He loved me and I knew it. There weren’t any harsh words, or ruffled feathers. This should be good news. In the case of the letter writing though, it’s not. How do you write a letter to someone who you told everything to? Even when you don’t want it to, your life keeps happening. You keep meeting people, and if you’re lucky, you make some new friends.
Things keep happening in the world, things you want to talk about. Books and movies keep coming out.

It’s the worst insult. Never having a conversation with him again. Never sitting across from him in the living room, with the fire burning behind me and the dogs sleeping on either of side of him, talking about crazy, brilliant, funny, troubled high school students, or broken animals made well again, or family strife, or exchanging Monica Lewinsky limericks.

A letter? Never mind not knowing where to start, there simply would be no end.

I ran from the ghosts to North Carolina, thinking it would be better, and it was. It is. It still is. I have new people here, a home that he should have seen, a new puppy, and these are things he would have loved.

That wasn’t the worst of it though. The worst of it was when I realized I was in love. In love with a man who makes me think I’ve never been loved before. A man I can’t believe I finally met and a man I would have been proud to take home to Mark.

His opinion was always the only one that mattered. Even when I knew it wouldn’t be a favorable opinion. I took them anyway. Often, their reaction to him was the beginning of the end of it with them. They didn’t know it, but I always did.

It feels petulant to say ‘it’s not fair’. It feels juvenile to scream it.
I want to do both and I probably will.

The dogs won’t tell.

I miss you Mark.

OFF

So, I'm off to Atlanta tomorrow.

I'm going to an obedience seminar that is being taught by a woman I've been watching compete for oh....10 years now. Watching like, on the edge of my seat, can't believe how amazing she is, watching. This is as close to star struck as I get. I got into this seminar at the last minute - and almost completely by chance. Too good to turn down.

My wild thing puppy, for all my bitching, is exactly the right kind of pain in the arse for the sport I'm aiming for., and that being said, I have very little clue what the heck I need to do to get him from point A to point B. So, I forked over the cash and called in the professionals.

I'm honestly hoping I don't say something astronomically stupid, trip over my own feet, or spit on her in the likely very excited talking I'll be doing. I would really prefer my pup do all the embarrassing for me. He's young and I can totally use that as an excuse. My excuse would only make me sound like a demented stalker and I'd prefer to avoid that, as that is no way to get invited back.

So, if you have a minute over the next 3 days or so, send a wish for smart, coordinated, articulate, non-spittle-spewing Cravey to show up in Atlanta.

Also, like a child who it "takes a village to raise" it takes a village to get me out of town. So I'm going to say thanks here, to Tiff for lending me a super-duper cooler and T. for taking care of my old-man-dog. You gotta love friends that love hanging out with you as much as they love helping you go off on your own and do your own thing.

Worth more than words, that.

Things to come

It’s Sunday evening, and I’m watching an episode of Star Trek. The original one, when William Shatner was young, lean, and kinda hot even in day-glow yellow polyester and jack boots.

Yesterday I had a wicked headache for most of the afternoon, so the only thing I managed to do was clean out my truck. Late last night, I finished reading a book that I wanted to like more than I did. I kept hoping it would get better, right up to the last few pages. Earlier today I cleaned my house, did laundry, went grocery shopping, ran, did some dog training, and cleaned out my refrigerator drawers. I have nothing else on my ‘need to do list’ (shut up - I like lists.)

There’s really nothing wrong with all this, but something happened tonight that made me think of the person I was in my twenties. *That* girl wouldn’t have spent a weekend like this unless she was dying of some Mongolian body rot. That’s not to say I was the ‘belle of the ball’ by any means, but I was busy. My last semester in college I took 28 credits, worked 25 – 30 hours a week and I did my volunteer rotation hours where the director of my program told me to - for another 15 hours. I was quite literally, on the run, constantly. One of my roommates at that time was living the same life and getting divorced. We also had a crazy alcoholic roommate who was either drunk, getting drunk, passed out and pissing on our couch, or passed out and setting the kitchen on fire. (Yes, really.)

After graduation in May, the drunk roommate went to rehab, the other roommate moved to Arizona with her biker boyfriend and I moved into a little guest house on a horse farm. My full time job never went over 40 hours and I had NO idea what to do with all that free time. By fall I was back in college, taking Tae-Kwon-Do, and exercising the horses in the morning before work. Two and a half years later I had to leave the horse farm. I bought a condo, changed jobs, gave up Tae-Kwon-Do, got ‘serious’ with a boyfriend, started racing motorcycles, and got my start in dog training.

When I look at all that, it gets me wondering what happened to all that energy? motivation? Where did it go exactly and when? And how did I miss it leaving? Shouldn’t something that big require an announcement? a parade?, at least a trumpet? Maybe “Taps” would have been appropriate.

Is this how balding men feel? They just look in the mirror one day and suddenly the comb-over is not only an option, but the only option? And they’re all “it was just here yesterday.”

It’s no comb-over, people, but I do not like the look of this.

Reason Number 8,987

why I love my friends.





Because randomly on a Tuesday afternoon they will send me emails with pictures like this attached.

Making the snotty woman in Texas who tried in her very proper way to ruin my afternoon *poof* D I S A P P E A R.

Oh yeah.

I'm it.. or the SEO Meme.

Dagnabbit. Renn Tagged Me.

This is the latest meme that’s been all about the ‘net lately. I just spent the majority of this weekend working (boo! hiss! boo!) so this is the first opportunity I’ve had to scan the blogs and here I am.. tagged.

So, I’m supposed to link to 3 of my very own most favorite posts, and then tag 5 more people to do the same.

I’m taking KF’s advice and picking my own favorites.

First things first, those that came before me:
Revellian dot com - SEO Keywords For Beginners, Content: The Kings Illegitimate Stepchild, Tales of Blogger-X IllusionMariuca - Wishing On A Falling Star - Love In Disarray, In Love With A Dream


The Good ClientMariuca’s Perfume Gallery - Perfume Shopping Spree, Defining Beauty, In Full Splendour

Speedcat Hollydale Page - Rocket Boy in Hawaii - DC9, Speedcat’s Death Ride into Terror!,
he Boy Inside All Men

Terri Terri Quite Contrary - Just How Immature Are We?, Finding a Voice, So Much More to See than the Game

Mahala- Uncle Huberts Custom Cows, Pray for the Child at Big Lots, The Legend of Saushie's Crotch

Tiff - How am I like Ron Weasley, A Social Experiment, Absolutely Boring Entry 101

Renn - Mum, Horror Story, Die, Frau, Die

and mine..
Cravey - One Foot in Front of the Other, Madline, A Wee Confession

and My Tags.

Her Rooness, My friend the Princess (when you're hot you're hot baby!) No Celery Please, Roy, and my newest runner/blog crush friend over at JustRunJustLiveJustBe



Have at it.

Oh, and Happy Monday.

A bad day and a cute (& helpful) puppy

This morning, my brand spanking new coffee pot, did something horrible, the water stayed trapped up in the filter/coffee area, and it didn't acutally FILTER into the pot - being as this is it's only job on the freaking planet, you would think this is not so hard. It disagreed, making me surly at best... I should have just gone back to bed, right then.

But no, some part of me, said "it will get better".. Silly silly me.

This day went down hill out of control - like an epileptic on rollers skates at the top of a ski jump.

In short. It just plain sucked.

I was amazed I didn't get hit by a cement truck driving home.

One of my friends used to encourage me to find one good thing that happened in the course of a bad day. I did have a moment. You see at about 6 am this morning my puppy stepped on my little toe. While this doesn't at first blush sound like a good thing, and it hurt like crazy for about 12.8 seconds, it seems to have fixed the problem. How, you ask? I think all along, my toe has very possibly been dislocated, not broken. No joke - it's all better. I even RAN on it during my workout today.

So yeah. I'm running again. Oh.Yes.I.Am.

I have no idea how I'm going to work out the rest of the crap that happened to me today - but at least I'm going to run through my frustration. Oh.Yes.I.Am.

How's YOU?