So my weeks tend to start around 5pm on Sundays… I know, an unusual time, but that’s how it is. Either I recieve my children back into my home at this time or STBX picks them up to go to his house at this time… and so this is the demarcation between the time I am a parent and the time I am lonely. I have the cats, I have friends, but for the most part I miss my kids the weeks they are gone and crave the weeks they are here.
And so begins a new week for me.
The kids are home, I don’t necessarily need to deal with the ex for a while (other than the 2 weekly calls they are to make to him, the Festival of Trees perfomance that GirlChild will be in on Saturday, and the exchange next Sunday) other than the occassional email where he pokes at me for some reason or other. Its good not to have to deal with him all the time, almost like when we were married and he was gone to the mines for a week at a time. Gods, you know that your relationship has failed when you can’t wait for your spouse to go away and leave you alone for a week!!
So, anyway… the week has so far started off with a bit of a bang (laugh).
On monday, despite having checked my cell (which I use as an alarm) I slept in and we didn’t get up until 7:20am. Which, isn’t all that bad, except, but we usually leave the house for the babysitters at 7:30!
So I ran around getting the kids up, the laundry in (GirlChild had an accident in her bed when I turned on the light and she suddenly woke up…oops), made sure they had breakfast to go, their lunches, and started supper for us (crock pot pot roast) while Boychild got his things together and fed the kitties. Of course, with my luck, the windows on the car were frosted, so I spent another 5 minutes dealing with that!! Oh the joys of almost winter.
But the rest of the day was relatively uneventful, as days go. I processed the pay and time cards and had that sent off to the payroll department by 10am. I found another contact in the hotel industry, and she managed to find us 10 rooms (all at the same hotel) for the December 4th night that we needed, so it looks like the Christmas party is on again … if only I can hunt down DEFINATE numbers and names of who is and is not going to attend. Which means I will have to deal with my tires this weekend if possible because I’d rather drive down there and then I could check out the wool store and the Chapters while I’m there before driving back… oh the joys! If I get a day off for this I am spending it doing my OWN thing and not worrying about getting a flight back!
And so I wrote a few diary entries for my Open Diary (because there are just things that don’t need to be out here for everyone, and I don’t feel like being accused of throwing things in the face of the purple elephant again).. and I got caught up on a lot of things, and I got home and picked up the kids and inspected the pot roast (next time I think I will use more water or the “med” setting, but it was overall good). I started the potatoes and made the gravy and defrosted the buns.
While we were waiting for supper to cook I knit a bit, chatted a bit, and read a chapter of “Inkheart” to the kids.
Supper over, I plopped GirlChild into the tub and read another chapter of “Inkheart” to her while she bathed. Got her out, got her dressed and hair brushed out. Then I ran the water for BoyChild (since he needs privacy now that he’s 
and went to wash the dishes in the kitchen. Apparently in the 5 minutes between starting the water and coming in to check on the water, BoyChild decided to do something with the tap, which resulted in the shower knob on the tap being pulled right off.
Sigh.
So now I have to figure out how to fix that…
By the time they were both washed and dressed it was bedtime. So I got them set up for tooth brushing. Then we did the books, the songs, and lights out…
Thank GODS!!
I have had so much to process from this weekend, never mind the past week and the past few years that have come back to haunt and hurt, that I have felt the need to write a LOT more lately than I have in the past 4 or so years. And though I know there is no point in dwelling on things — there is no openning for dialog anymore, there is no chance of talking to the friend ever again and I need to let it go — I still think on it and wonder if I could have done things differently. The conclusion is the same, I did what I needed to do at that time and had hoped that I hadn’t cut the ties completely. But I did… and now it has to be over for good.
Lately I have been reviewing my online strategies. My former friend is one that I will never likely come across again, and part of that reason is that I do a lot of dialoging online (what with having the kids around every second week) through various IM type things (ICQ, AIM/iChat,GTalk, Y!, Skype… yes… I do a lot of that). I am fairly easy to find online, if someone knows my aliases and knows approximately where to look for me. I am a networker, and yet, I ‘hide’ in plain sight. I am everywhere, but getting a hold of me is harder than it sounds becasue I don’t always answer and I am so used to being pinged and checked and talked to that I am also used to deleting users and denying access to me. I don’t have a landline phone, so I am harder to pin down and my address is not accessible in the phone book.
I have other friends who avoid being identified online. Who use only what they need to online and stay off otherwise, prefering to only interact with live people. I have a few friends who are online more than I am, preferring online interaction as their primary contact point. And I am in the middle. I use online interaction a lot – I actually LOVE getting email and having email discussions with people, I IM, I talk to people on Skype, I blog, I post on OD, I do twitter, and I am randomly doing a podcast. But my goal is always to reach out, to connect, to weave new friends into my life, and reconnect with people I haven’t seen or talked to for a long time… and ultimately meet up and interact in person. I crave meeting up with new and old friends. I love talking in person… and I like getting out of my house and moving beyond myself.
But I have always been a person who is both very private and very open at the same time. There are things, deep hidden things, that I hold sacred to myself, things I will never discuss because they are MINE. Like precious pebbles, I have never spoken or written about these things — secret shames, secret joys, sheer unadulterated moments of happiness or sorrow — because they are mine and I do not need to do so. There are a great deal of things that I have never spoken or written about (online or in a paper journal) and I never will. Some are in regards to promises made, some are just the unwillingness to commit the memories to words that will always be incomplete. It is how I am. I have 10 years of memories on open diary, and yet there are significant moments and periods of time I have never written about. Same with paper journals… I have 20 years of paper journals saved in my home… and yet I have things do not wish or need to open up to eleviate the joy or sorrow, and so I have left them unsaid…
Somethings will always be only mine…
But there is a perception that, because I write so much, I write everything, I spill everything out for everyone to see all the time, and that has never been the case. I write a lot. But there are still things that I will not write about, not even if I thought they were private and only I could read them… because I know better than that. If it is something I don’t want anyone to know about, if it is somethign I want to keep only for myself, I do not write it out anywhere — not a text file on my computer, not a note to self, not in the daytimer or secret diary or journal or using secret codes. I need these things for myself and to share them would, in some way, diminish who I am.
I have a geis on me, a sacred promise to keep the secrets to myself. Its been the primary cornerstone of my life. It drove STBX nuts that there were things I never talked about… things I thought were too insignificant to discuss, the tiny loves of my past, the stories of me that have so far contributed to who I am today. I keep my silence… I practice my craft, and I try to create myself around the pearls of my experiences. Some of the most beautiful things have been created by the layers of joy and pain that come from being able to hold silence in your words…
That has been something I have been thinking about, a lot. Is it a matter of trust that I have hidden from so many people? I know I am different to different friends. I have shared memories with some that I lack with others, secrets deeply entrenched between us since childhood, teen angsty fights or fears, and the hurts of adulthood… and yet with others things have been on the surface. So what makes the best type of friend? I don’t know…
But it does hurt more when you have to lose one that knows your deepest fears, when you have to turn away someone who can’t know you because you need to hold things sacred and private.
I’ve always known that…
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