I am in SUCH a good mood this morning!!!!!!!!!! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

I'll have all you hypercritical nitpickers here who've spent so much energy in demolishing my [color:"blue"] layers [/color] (blue suede) one increment at a time, know that I got complimented on my facade today!!!! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

OK, technically she wasn't really complimenting my facade, per se, and she didn't actually say, "Hey, Susan, nice facade you're wearing there." What she said was, "You're such a happy person." Which can only mean that my facade is still I-N-T-A-C-T. Yes-s-s-s-s! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" /> Of course, she's newly from China and maybe American facades don't translate well into Chinese. How do I know? Why should I care? I can still fool people with my boundless good humor, and that's what counts! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />

Besides, pretending to be in a good mood makes me in a good mood...eventually. Doesn't it work that way for everybody? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

I'd elaborate but I've exhausted myself with exhilaration and must rest. Sweet dreams to me. Everybody else work hard! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

t&l

just a quick drop in here, but thanks for the pictures Flard took, the rattlesnake was quite impressive, and the tarantula quite cute!!!

I have nothing to comment on, except hurry and finish your story, or I'm gonna, I'm gonna... I'm gonna be waiting here forever. Mummified. With spider webs growing all over me, and lotsa dirt. While I wait, I should prepare my Living Will, and dole out my scrap books, school books, reading books, pencils, papers, and all my other truly important things that I own, off to the important people, so you can inherit the things you need to inherit and also, be aware, you can find my carcass in Dry Fork, Arkansas, just ask for my folks, everyone knows who we are. I'd like to be cremated. That is, if you don't finish your story! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

We now resume our regularly-scheduled programming of grotesque self-deprecating humor... <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" /> Other-deprecating humor so often seems to go over a lot like a pregnant pole vaulter. Doesn't soar. Lands kinda heavily. May splat upon contact. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" />

t&l

Gell!!!! Back in the land of internet connections again, I perceive. Cool. I need an address so I can send you some pictures I found this weekend.


I thought I WAS hurrying. Am I the only one who can tell? My turtle is going just as fast as it can. Really. Hold the mummification AND the cremation. The Saga of OtherSusan the Stupid nearly killed ME, but there's certainly no reason for anybody else to die over it! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" />

t&l

There is an alleged pt. allegedly en route to the hospital with alleged pain. However, since she's taking her good sweet time getting here, let's see if I can finish another snippet before she rolls throught the door.

I believe the sun actually peeked over my horizon after MS had left for home, sometime during the few days we spent at the farm on that trip. I went with my parents to visit a former high school admirer of hers, and his wife. At this time my mother was 80; my dad was 79. The other couple were in that same age range. I didn't have much to contribute to the conversation, being just the designated driver, so I just sat quietly listening to them reminisce about events from long ago, and people dead and gone for years. (I'm typing this at work, obviously, and just remembering this conversation makes me cry--so if anybody here asks me why I'm sitting at the hospital computer with tears in my eyes and running down my cheeks, I'm going to be royally peeved that I didn't save this to do at home! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />) Of the four people involved in the visit that day, only my dad is still alive; maybe that's what makes it all seem so very, very sad to me. As I listened to them over the course of an hour or so, reliving events that had long since disappeared into the mists of the past as if they had just happened yesterday a realization began to dawn on me.

I think it was the story of the ice skating trip at the local pond that crystalized the concept. Here were these old, somewhat feeble folk' yet in their minds and memories they and their friends were still as young and fresh and beautiful as they'd ever been. It's hard for me to express it exactly, especially as every few words I'm having to stop to blow my nose, wipe my eyes, and cast a furtive glance over my shoulder to be sure nobody's paying any attention to Snivelling Susan over at the computer. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> Nothing had changed for them, except that their bodies had betrayed them, and grown old. But in their minds, their hearts, their thoughts, they were all still young--and they still loved now, and cherished dearly, the people they had loved then, with an immediacy and a fervor that astounded me. And that was the moment when the sun came up at last, and I realized that I was NEVER really going to get over losing MS and the life I had once so eagerly dreamed of having. All those years I'd been running and hiding from it, or pretending that it didn't matter any more, had been exercises in foolish futility, because it wasn't going to go away.

When the kids were little, we had a tree in the front yard that was evil. I forget the nickname they gave it, but I didn't like it because it had very wide-spread roots which sent up tree suckers all over the lawn so that every time I mowed there were more little trees springing up in the grass. If I hadn't mowed the lawn, it would've been solid trees after awhile. In my life, losing MS was the tree, and walling it off and pretending it wasn't there any more was not taking care of the lawn. So it sent out little shoots everywhere it could find a spot, and I wasn't smart enough to mow. As I look over my life, almost all of the flamboyant mistakes I have made were, in one way or another, related to this loss and my reaction to it. My attention-seeking from men (early in the marriage) would be a prime (and unpleasant) example. Impulsively marrying would be another.

For the first time, I not only saw clearly, but I accepted (assuming I still have a marble left in my head by that point), that on the day I die, I will still have in my memory a vivid, perfect image of my beautiful soldier, and I will still love him and cherish him then as dearly as I did when we first fell in love. I can't tell you how painful that realization was, nor how shocking.

Great! The pt. is finally here--now that I look like Rudolph with pinkeye! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> So let's do a quick wind-up. I left WI before everybody else so I could get back to work. My folks and Neaksis were going to drive; I flew. So I ended up, just a few days later, flying out of the very same airport (O'Hare), on my way back to the very same state, still broken-hearted over the same man. Exactly the way I'd been 27 years before...except for this. I wasn't 21 yrs. old any more. I was no longer boundlessly optomistic, with my youth and life ahead of me in all their limitless possibilities. I didn't have any more great dreams or expectations of my future. Even at 21, when I'd had all those things, I still thought my my heart would break. Imagine what it was like at 48, with all that gone...and when the plane left the ground and roared into the sky, I broke into a frenzy of weeping that was unprecedented for me. (Silent, of course. I'm very inhibited about crying in public, but having a window seat, I was able to feign an pathological fascination in the passing scenery so nobody noticed! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />) And so, willy-nilly, I headed back to my real world, to try and figure out what I was going to do with the rest of my life.

t&l

P.S. Neak--weeping willow! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

One thing you may have noticed about the sun coming up every morning is how very different things look once there's light shining on the landscape. You can see more clearly--details instead of blurred, indeterminate shapes. Sometimes this is good. Sometimes not so much, at least at first.

The year this happened was HP's and my 25th anniversary year. Things had really settled down into a stable, if dysfunctional, pattern. Fighting and arguing was minimal, although not non-existent. I didn't spend a lot of time brooding about the previous quarter century, but if I'd been asked to give The Readers' Digest Condensed Virgin, I would've had no trouble in attributing the start of our marital troubles to the one who started them. That would've been HP. He initiated. I retaliated. Things got out of hand!

THAT was how the marriage looked to me before the sun came up, and if I'd described it that way to you then, I would've been telling you my very best, most honest description of our relationship, and where it went wrong. And then there was light. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> Sigh. Really large, deep sigh. How the appearance of my landscape changed when it was daytime. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" />

For the first time, I really looked at what I had done; and for the first time, I was able to place proper responsibility on each of the parties in this relationship. Tracing backwards through the misdeeds, sins, and egregious offenses we had each committed over the years, I eventually came (in my quest to understand how things had gone so very wrong) to the instigator...and shockingly, not to HP, but to myself. Nothing that he ever did to me--not one thing--would've been possible without the first wrong which had been committed by ME, poor-victimized-Susan, when I made the deliberate, conscious choice to marry one man when I KNEW I was in love with another. By that choice, I set in motion a train of events I could never have forseen. I deprived my husband of the opportunity to find and marry someone who loved him for himself. I set myself up for failures I never dreamed I could make. Together, because of my choice, we brought children into a bitter, contentious home, and then gave them a childhood they never asked for, nor deserved.

If my life were a jigsaw puzzle, all the pieces had now been suddenly rearranged. And I was not pleased with the new picture I saw. It was ugly. But regardless of its unattractiveness, the pieces finally fit. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" /> And so I made another choice, but better this time. I chose to deal with reality, and in accepting my own responsibility for my life, to let go of the blame I had always attached to my husband for our train-wreck marriage, and the resentment I felt towards him for what he had done to me over the years.

I'm not trying to say this was easy. I guess I can talk about that later after I think it through a bit more. I'm going to edit Neak's book for a chance of pace. I'm a pain in the angst to myself today, and enough's enough.

t&l

P.S. If I'm editing (and I AM), somebody'd better be working on the cover!

And while hunting for another picture last wk., guess what I did? I found a picture of "Mr. Incredible" and her flowing tresses, that's what! I can't see Neak until tomorrow but I'll have her post it for me, as well as a picture of the The Pwitty, Pwitty Faiwy Pwintheth, both before and after she apparently spent the day sipping nectar from the flowers in the beer garden! After all this wallowing about in the pool I've been doing lately (even though it SEEMS that I've been wallowing alone <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />) I'm ready for at least a brief change of pace, and something with some humor in it!! I've also got pictures of the Whirling Dervish after his mother got him ready for guests, and then quit watching him long enough for him to find the mud puddle in the back yard. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> Neak thinks it's funnier now than she did at the time! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

t&l

When's the next chapter?????

<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />

I will write tonight at work if I have time. I've stayed up too late this morning to write this afternoon. I'm going to be sleeping right up until the stick of dynamite goes off under my bed and wakes me up to leave for another one of those busy days at the ORIFICE! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />

Tomorrow is iffy. It's my one day off, and there are errands to run. However, I WILL be at Neak's house to cut my dad's hair, and she DOES have that computer with DSL. But the humor break comes first. I have to find something to laugh at every single day. It keeps the discouragement gremlins from building little condominiums in my brain. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

It was interesting, though. In looking for the pictures I wanted Neak to post, I came across a picture of MS and Neak's little girl from the last time I saw him. I think it was about 2 yrs. ago. I've lost track. And I was perfectly able to look at it without mooning (I certainly hope it goes without saying which meaning of "mooning" I'm talking about!!!), or mooing either, about lost opportunities and missed chances. How I got from the fire hose of tears sitting on that plane 9 years ago, to the person who could see the pictures this morning, and with a cheerful spirit move right on through the stack, is pretty much why I've opened myself to the embarrassment of telling The Sorry Saga of OtherSusan the Stupid. Maybe when I get done I'll be allowed to change it to OtherSusan the FormerlyStupid. I guess we'll see! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

t&l

t&l,

The words....the words.... where are the words to ask this.

What I want to ask is exactly when did the sun come up and shine a different light on the past 25 years of marriage?

When did enlightment occur? And how are you different as a result?

End of questions....however regarding the jigsaw puzzle - it's a puzzle that has the ability to change landscapes. How will the puzzle look now in the light your new "enlightment"?

Your children seem happy and well adjusted too.

cc46--Don't tell anybody. It can just be our little private secret. OK? But I was beginning to think I was alo-o-o-o-o-o-o-one around here. Everybody got so very quiet. And I'm afraid of silence. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

OK, not really "afraid," as in trembling with terror, but I certainly don't like it. I have on background music while I work, fans while I sleep, the radio while I drive, the tv at work if I get a chance to take a little nap--something, anything going on around me so I don't feel all by myself. Weird, huh? Especially from somebody who doesn't really like to be bothered while I'm busy, either. At any rate, I just wanted to let you know I'm glad you're here. You have calmed my skittish nerves. Thank you.

t&l

Well, who WOULDN'T be nervous if they were swimming in a pool full of sharks! Hmmph. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />

Look back 10-15 posts to where I sat and listened to my parents and their friends reminisce about the past. That was daybreak. You don't see everything at dawn that you can at noon time, so I'm not claiming that it all became clear to me at that moment. But it was the start. For that matter I'm not claiming I understand it all now. If I did, I'd know I was lying, even if nobody else outside the family knew.

I'm not going to delve into how it changed me just yet. It's 1100 and I have to get up in 6 hrs. or less, so I'll just sunbathe and sleep by the pool today, if you don't mind. It is my intention, at the end, to ask Neak and Neaksis to give their opinions about what has or has not changed about me before I tell my own opinion. That way, nobody will have influenced them to repeat the party line. Besides, I'm curious to know what they think (and hope their brick bats are small!) and to see if the changes they perceive in me are the same ones I THINK I made. Should be interesting. But a little scary, all the same.

t&l

t&l,

I am following your story very, very attentively. Let me tell you a secret: I have 3 threads which are sent to my e mail : one is mine and one is yours!<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />
I just don't want to miss any part of the story and I can't read MB at work <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> so when I can, I check my mail.

I already mentioned that I love to hear true life stories as long as they are interesting <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

That's why I'm always willing to play cards or even holiday with my aunts who are 78-83 years old and their friends. I can always get them to tell me someone's story! And they have a lot of them!

But with your thread I sometimes get lost... so I have actually had to go back to check the "story" so I don't miss any part.

My life history could have been like yours. I nearly married someone I was not in love with, but higher forces intervened and H resurfaced and we married. I always felt that it was meant to be.

Now he's the WH, <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" /> and after 8 months of plan B and a lot of thinking I'm not sure whether he was only supposed to be my H for the "first" half of my life, father to my kids, and maybe there are other better plans for the second half...

In spite of those doubts, I will do the "right thing". I will give him 1 year (plan B) before I file for divorce.

Anyway this thread is not about me <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" />

I love reading about your family. We latins have that kind of family too

T&L,
You are never alone. Even when we can't answer, we are with you in our hearts.

This has been an interresting journey, I enjoy traveling with you.

I heard a women say once (she was speaking in church) that she didn't love her H when she married him, in fact she said she really didn't like him at all, but she felt like God wanted her to marry him. She then told us that as the two of them tried to be kind to each other, and as they unselfishly met each others needs, they fell in love, and had a very good relationship.

I remember that as I read along here, and as I hear stories about Thank You's and Kisses.

Yes, one very smart gal.

Hows the blood preasure?

Here's your quote for today.

Inside every older lady is a younger lady -- wondering what the ****** happened.
-Cora Harvey Armstrong-

SS

ohh, my heart aches so. I have so much sorrow and empathy to drown the whole world and suffocate them, and your story just makes me cry and cry and cry, but they are healing tears, to hear it from my mother-in-law's mouth. Since my vist to you went around the A* family gossip line, R asked how I handled seeing you. All I can say is, it was, is, and will be, very healing to me in my relationship to Flard, and in my personal life. I greatly admire and admit am shocked that you have invited me to this website to see all your warts displayed, I, your daughter-in-law, and that because I know you, you still choose to tell me and everyone else your story. Thank you, oh thank you so much for trusting me and everyone with your most intimate parts. I think you are a wonderfully brave woman, and I admire you ever so much.

T&L,

I wish my wife would have, by chance, sat beside you on a long journey - and learned something from you. I don't know if that have made her more or less eager to D me.

-AD

To my way of thinking this thread is about anything people want it to be. When it started, quite frankly, I didn't know it was going to be about me either! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> It just keeps changing. Maybe it should be "thndrnltng's mutant thread"?

t&l

Thank you.


I'll talk about this later today. Maybe it's time to take a brief exploration of The Great Clam. After all, I've spent 34 yrs. in the grip of said clam; can't say I've turned into a pearl exactly, but I was definitely an irritant to it, and I've certainly developed some hard protective layers in the process. Hm-m-m. That sounds vaguely familiar. Have I ever heard that before? Where could it've been? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />



Generally fine, thanks. The 2nd med they tried seems to be working, although I'm going to be trying very hard to get off of it. Not quite sure how, but there's gotta be something I can do! Perhaps I could give it to someone else? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> It IS more blessed to give than to receive, you know. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

t&l

You mean that blabbermouth Flard didn't already tell you everything? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" /> And as much as I appreciate your kind words, I'm going to admit something to you...when I brought you to this site I had NO idea that we were going to be LOOKING at my warts, nor exactly how many warts were going to end up being displayed!!!! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />


Or where some of the warts to be displayed were located! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> Thank you, again, and know that I also admire you for your growing and your attitude and your effort to be what you ought to be even if Flard isn't thinking clearly these days, having currently mistaken his butt for his head, so that he has gas where his brain ought to be! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />

Love you--

t&l

I don't know either, since people always ultimately reserve to themselves the right to be stupid. But anybody who knows me at all could tell you that if I'd ever had a chance to help you out that way, I'd have been right in there pitching!!!

Too bad I don't have a hundred Neaksis clones, so I could just pass 'em out as needed. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> The blushes are for Neaksis when she sees this post--she turns the loveliest shade of beet when embarrassed! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> On occasions of sufficient humiliation, I've had to hose her down just to keep her from spontaneously combusting. Really. Would I make something like that UP? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />

All joking aside, I'm sorry this is turning out this way for you. All I can say, based on my own life experience, is that you can survive, and even thrive in the long run, if God is and remains your one Constant. Everything else can come and go...if He remains. I will pray for you. I know others are also, but you can count on another, whether you withdraw from MB involvement or not.

t&l