Paradise...

I hope we find you safely at home soon.

I am thinking fondly of you.

Blessings,

Eibrab

Journal,

We are just back from a three day road trip. Blue likes visiting friends. It usually means good dinners!

The scenery was spectacular.

We spent last night in a little wood cottage on a lake sans a working furnace, water and power, watching King Kong on a small battery operated DVD player by candlelight. I kept falling asleep and my girlfriend's kids would wake me up, "Quick look there are slugs with teeth!"

During the night, I stoked the fire, hopping back under the covers as quickly as possible. It was cold. From my nest of sleeping bags, I could see the lake shrouded in mist under a moonlit star studded sky. Stunningly beautiful.

We had snow one morning. It thinly coated very green trees and disappeared in hours, the last breath of winter.

Washing in icy water, I thought of the many May 24 weekends Midnight and I would make bets on who would jump in first. I always won easily. He would seldom pay up!

Somehow I didn't miss him as much this trip. I am getting use to being on my own.

Hi Eibrab,

I have been thinking of you and QC. Wondering if you two have connected, come to understand each other and learned that difficult lesson of mutual respect.

Being ornery somehow is linked to how QC sees the world.

Temple Grandin is autistic - she thinks in pictures much like she believes animals do. When they think fear, they may see whatever it is they are frightened of in their head - a waking nightmare.

We would learn so much if for a moment we could see the world through the eyes of animals. I wonder what Blue really thinks of me?

For the unlucky now throughly digested mouse of last week, it must have been utterly terrifying. First the furiously digging paws that laid waste to its home, then the jaws of death.

I imagine him/her sharply tapping me on the shoulder, saying " you think you have had it rough lately. No one is going to chomp your head off !"

Wishing you well and happy...

PB

Hi Paradise,

I'm glad to hear you had a nice trip. You sound good. As for what Blue thinks of you I will not go there. I'm sure he thought better of you before he became your version of a Barbie Doll. I'm sure he believes he is in charge of your household and that he is king of the roost now that he ran off the other male that was a fly in the ointment. From the sound of it he may not be that far off base in his beliefs!

Flowers are beginning to piss me off! One plant grows and prospers and his roommate next door bought at the same time looks like a two day old salad in a dumpster. Same exposure same bedding same everything. I had no idea this would consume and entertain me so much. I actually missed a golf game to plant a new section. I am a certifiable whack job now!

Being alone does grow on you doesn't it? I still ruminate occasionally about what she is doing and her well being but I really think I have shut the door on her forever finally. It makes me feel guilty and disloyal sometimes but thinking about re-entering her life and her family's sounds excruciatingly painful now. I am enjoying my new lifestyle and even if it's alone it's still peaceful and relaxed. I hope you too will soon feel this in your life. Contentment, confidence and happiness are all headed your way. Be patient and let it happen.

Have a drink for me tonight and sleep well!

Hey Dukhuntr,

Gardening slowly but surely becomes enthralling. Somehow like magic you can make wonderful things appear. It is thrilling in an everyday way.

You sound more and more content. It makes me happy. So nice to leave behind all those stressful anguished heart ripped out feelings. Peaceful is good.

We walked back from the beach tonight. We hopped a bus there on the spur of the moment, to find I had only big bills. The driver gave us a free ride! Dinner was a small fries, washed down by a gratis root beer! Free stuff! Always makes me smile !

For me the beach makes every day better and works a similar healing transformation as perhaps your garden does for you. Today was stressful, a decision made last August has come back to haunt us. Someone told me that making complex decisions when you are in the midst of turmoil is not a good idea. He was right. It will take me a while to work it all out. Somehow sitting at the beach looking at the water I always know – everything will work out.

I am having cocoa. It is my drink of choice at night these days. I make it with boiling water, pure Dutch cocoa powder and a squirt of Nestlé’s chocolate syrup. It has become a ritual. Just like walking around and putting everything away before I go to bed.

I have been thinking of mandalas today. They are intricate, grain by grain works of sand art that Buddhists spend sometimes weeks creating, and then destroy in moments to remind themselves of the impermanent nature of our existence and all the things we attach ourselves to. It is to discipline their perspective on what is important in life in their eyes which is to be compassionate. I have been working on my compassion. It is helping me with the anger. It dissolves it and I feel better.

Blue is the undisputed king of the roost these days. He had a haute cuisine dinner, steak sliced thickly, arranged in a teepee over kibble dribbled with soup. When he really likes his dinner he jumps in the bed and prances around under the duvet, and digs! Apparently tonight’s menu was up to scratch!

Wishing that all your flowers bloom!

PB

Journal,

Midnight and I went to the beach today, we walked and talked about the company mostly for quite awhile, joking about two funny and not so funny muck ups.

Then stopped in for lunch, at a nearby pub, the first meal we have shared in 11 months. I was amazed at how comfortable it was. Blue was ecstatic. He grinned ear to ear - the entire time: looking at Mommy; looking at Daddy; looking at Mommy; looking at Daddy.

Midnight has not been well. He has a rash on his abdomen, plus something wrong with his stomach. It is sore and tender. He is going to the doctor tomorrow. He must be worried about it. He hates doctors.

He had Steven Johnson Syndrome some years back and was dangerously ill. I nursed him at home through it when he should have been in a sterile burn unit. It took us 5 hospital visits, five different specialists and 11 days to get the correct diagnoses. Rashes can escalate to the point of being life threatening with this allergic condition.

He has consistent trouble sleeping well. He wakes up many times during the night. Me too! I wonder if we wake up at the same time. We use to do that a lot, impossible to know.

He is looking a lot older and very concerned about it. He has been working hard.

When I asked him if he was happier. He said he thought so. He didn't ask me if I was happier.

His focus is still on having the perfect bachelor pad. He has found a perfect couch for one of his rooms! It is on sale and a pittance apparently; he didn’t buy it because he was worried I wouldn’t view it positively! He is right.

He has had advice from an attorney on the proper protocol for the separation of assets. There is a game plan. The end goal is not to be married to me and keep as much stuff as possible I suspect.

Although, today he looked like a wind up toy, that is winding down. For the first time in a long time his speed of talking was normal, not racing.

He seemed lost, lonely and tired. Not the giddy, loopy, foggy, “it’s my party and I’ll screw around if I want to, screw around if I want to ….” alien, I have been dealing with!

paradise,
these are very worrying signs. Watch out for the depression.

Good Luck!

Journal

Dinner was tuna on crackers washed down by 2 rum and cokes slowly enjoyed while curled up watching films.

I tried renting a movie where I normally go, only to be told by the sales clerk, that my husband was in just a moment ago with a “colleague”. She doesn’t know we split. He rented the one remaining copy of what I wanted to see – Kingdom of Heaven.

Blue and I went elsewhere opting instead for Rumor Has It and Transamerica. I didn’t’ want to watch the same movie he was watching with someone else, home alone.

Proximity sucks.

I have been invited to a barbeque Saturday night. By oversight, OW1 was also invited. Her name was on the email list close to mine. I begged off saying I had a prior engagement, as did she. She shouldn’t really be eating barbequed foods these days! (How catty! I find I journal differently after two rum and cokes!)

The hostess emailed me confidentially to tell me she wasn’t coming. Would I please come? I still said no – opting for zero chance of being in the same room with her.

Midnight has shingles. I was smiling when I typed that sentence. Very un-buddhist!

Evening Paradise,

You finally took me up on the suggestion to have a drink huh? I may regret ever saying that. Smiling at Midnight's misfortune is very un-paradise like yes, but it is human and totally acceptable in my opinion. I'm hoping he gets a horrific case of jock itch to go with it!

I know I'm preaching again but do think about going completely dark on Midnight. It works wonders, I know from experience.

I made a bad mistake tonight myself. I took my daughter and her SO out to celebrate tonight. He just got a teaching job after finishing his student teaching last week. A friend of mine runs a charter school here and told me she was hiring some new teachers. I mentioned him and was told they only hire experienced teachers. After some begging and pleading on my part he got an interview and lo and behold he was hired. I made some big points with my daughter for a change. My "mistake" was going by the EX's apartment after dinner on the way home. Normally not a problem because it's tucked in off the street. Tonight though the OM's truck was out front hitched up to a ski boat. EX never liked boats and seeing this only made my mid start flipping over nothing. I hope they both get rained on or even better snowed on. Good chance of both here tomorrow.

If you don't see this stuff or hear about it it sure doesn't hurt like running headlong into it. Going dark has it's definite advantages.


SLeep well and think of sandy beaches and tropical drinks!

Hi Dukhuntr,

I am really glad your son snagged a job he is happy with. It is important to like what you do. We spend so much time at it.

You are right. The Harleys are right. Pepperband is right. A perfect Plan B is critical. It keeps you safe from disillusionment. Persistent alien contact – wears out love. No more drive bys for you!

It is gorgeous summer evening here. I should be out. I am made up and dressed to go out.

I could be at a large party or out at a jazz performance with several friends or visiting another friend, eating take out, gardening – even doing a sleep over in her lovely house. Hubby is away. I would get an update on her news.

Hearing about the little day to day happenings in everyone’s life is absorbing. People tell me the most extraordinary things. One day, I counted the number of strangers I talked to in my travels during a day. To count as a conversation there had to be several sentences not just a hello. I lost track after 43.

Yet I feel glued to my chair ready to opt for another quiet night - curling up with a copy of Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin or crawling into bed early.

My whole week was about dealing with factors beyond my control. I still feel like a dish rag from it.

After 9/11, I remember sitting in a reception waiting area, waiting for a tense client meeting, knowing my whole month’s agenda had dramatically changed on a dime because of a cave dwelling fanatic I will never meet.

We are so connected.

Someone can sneeze in Hong Kong besides someone else who gets on a plane to Canada who dies in days, ends many other lives, creates a medical crisis (SARS) and costs the province billions.

Several weeks ago, a government clerk, probably in New Delhi, wrote a poorly worded tax information circular that set off a wave of panic selling dropping their stock exchange by a cumulative 25% over several days. Amazing! They have posted guards on the canals and bridges. He impacted my week. I wonder what he is thinking right now. I am sure not happy thoughts.

Wishing you both well and a happy holiday!

Cheers,

PB

Oh, but we are, aren't we?

No truer words have ever been typed.

I like to think of the positive connections...especially at trying times. I hope that I am the one who smiles and greets a stranger with respect, when they thought today wasn't worth living and no one cared.

I like to be the one who plucks that baby mallard duck from his tiny leg being stuck in a drain (true) as his mother yelled at me.. I hope she was yelling nice things.

I like to be the one to quietly place another few dollars on the cash register for the child who didn't quite have enough.

Nice connections that make me feel better about my hard days...

Yesterday it was a year to the date of a very hard day for my family. We are so new in this healing. I haven't handled myself well.

I was judging a horseshow on 9/11, Paradise. The whole lot of us had no idea what was going on for a few hours. We were all so self-absorbed in our competitions. It took me almost ten hours to make it to a television to see the footage. I sometimes wonder if I was the slowest one in the world to see all the pain with my eyes.

I am proud that even a tragedy can bring a connection.. one that goes from bad to good in realizing unity amongst strangers.

I think the connection that this discussion thread brings has impact around the world.

Paradise, I hope this holiday finds you standing a bit taller knowing so.

Blessings,

Eibrab

Paradise and Dukhunter..

For your entertainment.. I would like to note that a certain very tall black gelding is now rather rideable and enjoying his submission... and to the delight of the seven already here.. a new adult female tortoise who needed a home has joined the herd.

She goes by the name of Mildred and came with half of a cantelope. Her initial offering made her quite popular with the hometown crowd.

Big Smiles and fond rememberences this holiday..

Eibrab

PS Dukhunter..."drivebys" are so very human.. I have thought of doing so many a time...and at some point tossing protections bought at a drugstore out the side window for strategic placement on the front lawn. Human, we are all so human...

Hi Eibrab,

Sadly the moments we all stop, think the same thing, feel our oneness, our humanity are invariably due to someone’s inhumanity rendering shock and horror.

You are so right. The only answer is kindness. I think deep down we all know it

Helping baby ducks! Sparing change! Smiling! Easing the tension in a big horse or in a husband who has made a mistake! Making sure your kids have their Dad even though it is a painful road!

Each and every time we think a good thought it changes the world to some degree. If only to the extent it changes us.

Wishing you peace and many good thoughts..…

PB

Journal,

Gorgeous steamy hot weather, everyone was out. Blue and I were at the beach early to watch the mist burn off the water. I drank Starbucks coffee, while Taj Mahal crooned in my ear “Is the Goddess in the House Tonight!”

We played hide and seek. I hide. Blue seeks. He always finds me. Although some times I give him a clue, like “Over here, Blue!” Before he changes course, sharply banking like a 747, to zoom in full speed. A joyous barky reunion ensues – “I found you Mom! You know I always find you!”

A shocking crime has ignited our little beach community. There are signs posted. Heads are shaking. Chins are waging.

The concrete foundation for a commemorative bench to mark the passing of a lovely woman was vandalized. The culprit has been harshly criticized, in large print. His response flippantly cites Joni Mitchell lyrics in larger print. Both are pegged to a fence surrounding the concrete slab – which now woefully bears the words “Dogs Rule” etched deep into the concrete.

I tore myself away from the gossip and wide eyed milling throng – to get on with chores. While standing at the cash to pay for my Mom’s groceries, a subtitle on the cover of O Magazine caught my eye. “A Lonely Woman’s Guide to Getting Back in the Game!” I sighed and put it the cart.

We do more girly things together – now Dad is gone - trips to the salon, poodling around kind of shopping. Today she bought a swanky embroidered jean jacket. I bought a candle embedded with seashells that reminded me of the beach.

On the way home, I stopped in at my girl friend’s, with a pizza in hand. To sit by her pool, drink wine and watch her children cavort with their friends. Her nine year old son told of a cupcake war that was waged at a backyard birthday party he was at today.

I smiled feeling sympathy for the poor mother who foolishly invited 22 young boys to vandalize her home and heedless destroy dozens of painstakingly decorated Martha Stewart little masterpieces, by smearing them in each other’s faces and shoving them down each other’s shirts. There was icing behind his ear and fun in his voice.

Blue supervised everything and everyone the entire day. He swam at the beach. He swam at the pool. He ate a grilled burger cooked just for him. No sauce. No bun. He is now collapsed at my feet – a tired but happy dog.

Dogs Rule!

Journal,

I treated 3 friends to a play tonight. We had great seats. Sitting directly next to me was a six foot plus, well built man dressed up pretty much like Cher. Taken aback for a millisecond, I smiled and immediately started to chat.

I have never actually talked to a transvestite before. He was a professional ballet dancer until he was 28, a close friend of one of the male dancers in the show. He had a great tiger print leather bag, fabulous turquoise jewelry and I suspect at least two sets of false eyelashes on. His face was heavily made up to almost stage makeup.

His ensemble was fetching. Although his choice of perfume, sorely lacked subtlety. He used his program like a fan, short quick feminine swishes of the wrist.

I sensed a lot of pain underneath that heavily powdered, painted exterior. In a way I found him very brave. It must be challenging when your true self makes others stare at you.

At the end of the day we are all who we are. Travelers each trying to find their way.

Getting up to go, I thanked him for chatting with me, patted his arm, and whispered in his ear “You’re not dull."

Journal,

It is late and I can't sleep. I am sitting at my desk looking out at a pitch black vista. I like the quietness of late at night. Everyone is tucked in bed, dreaming their dreams.

I was out tonight with a friend. We saw Over the Hedge. I not sure I will ever out grow my fondness for cartoons. She likes them too.

We ate dinner later at a steakhouse, talking, joking with the waiter. He is from a little town in Nova Scotia and told us what it was like growing up there. His wife is expecting their first baby next week. We debated the merit of little girl names as they have yet to decide on one, Emma, Lauren, Tara, Samantha. I suggested Paradise. He liked it!

Journaling is comforting. This weekend I plan to read this thread from the beginning. It will help me remember and show me how much I have healed.

Getting ready tonight, putting on my jewelry, I looked at our wedding bands.

Midnight's simple gold band is wearable but severely bent out of shape! It caught a lip on a ladder and he dangled from it some 25 feet in the air. He was not sure whether it caused him to slip or saved him from falling. I like to think it saved him from falling.

My band is a hand made interlinking puzzle of a white gold band and a yellow gold band. If you know how to twist them, they fit together and you cannot take them apart. They both sat lightly in my hand – almost a metaphor of our marriage.

I lost my original wedding band. It matched Midnight's. It was big and slipped off my finger.

He bought me the new one for Christmas one year when we were saving for a house and supposedly not buying each other presents - just stockings. I had admired it in a store window and found it wrapped up prettily at the bottom of my stocking. I remember squealing when I opened the little box.

It helps to remember the happy squeals, the laughing moments… it keeps the balance.

Hi,

This was an entry posted by Brumby over on Fortysixty. I found it interesting. He describes what it is like from the MLCer's point of view.

PB


By Brumby

I posted something like this on another site previously.

I think my situation is a "little" different. I am 47, married 22 yrs and lived together 24.
Kids are almost 21 and 18. My MLC has been a a gradual thing over many years. I have
always had a deep sense of my mortality that has only gotten worse over time. Most
people would regard my marriage as successful. I get on well with my wife. We talk a lot and
laugh a lot. Our kids are fantastic. I love them deeply and tell them so. We are
financially secure but after the kids leave (1 daughter left) we know we are in for
a period of readjustment. My wife had a very brief affair more than 8 years ago which
did hurt me but i understood then and now that it was because i had pushed her away. She
is a v. affectionate person who has built her world around me and when that world went
cold i could not blame her.

Since then we have been great. I totally admire this woman.
She is absolutely the best person i have ever known yet still i yearn for something even
more. What i have been searching for is i suppose the kind of thing that many people-
especially *women* want implicitly- total abandonment to another person almost to the
edge of reason. A love that is absolutely beyond control. Where there is no choice. For me
this is the whole reason for existence. And to this point in my life, i sense that i have lived
a kind of happy compromise that has worked in the conventional sense, but which
i fear comes nowhere near the intensity and rapture that is possible.

Yes i would be shattered if anything ever happened
to my wife or kids, but without this experience at least once in my life i feel that
i have only been going through the motions. As if my life is unauthentic and lived
by habit and conformity.And no, despite how well i get on with my wife i do not think
i will ever have this feeling for her- although i think in many ways that this is still the
feeling that she has for me. And i could no more hurt this woman than i could shoot my
own mother.

I am on the threshold of an OW scenario too. This girl is 25 and impressionable. I feel
so pathetic. If there is no fool like an old fool, then that's me. I don't understand how
i can even have these thoughts. It's so ridiculous, yet they exist. And almost to the
edge of my control. I am so classic MLC now that everyone notices and says so. I wake up
at 3.00am thinking about this girl. The world dissolves when she walks into my office.
I toss in bed for hrs and then go for a run at 5.00am. 3 miles in the
dark- anything to get it out of my head. I hit the gymn, go swimming. All of this
intensity is new to me and people notice. My wife asks me if i have a girlfriend and i
say no, but my heart says different.

Physically i am good. I'm fit and strong.
competitive again, wearing jeans and t-shirts i haven't worn in 15 years. Sex with
my wife is OK. It's relaxed and comfortable and she enjoys it a great deal even though
in erectile terms i have problems now.

I have a long family history with anxiety and probably mild depression. But i'm not
interested in medication. A couple of years ago i had a kind of OW situation too where
i was besotted with a married woman. I confessed my feelings to her but she handled
it well since she was in a stable marriage and not interested in me anyway. Luckily
no damage was done and i accepted it well. Of course these current feelings could just
be more of the same.

My anxieties came to a head about a year ago when i was having
physical symptoms like burning feet. A quack Dr. started investigations for peripheral
neuropathy- which is something that only a sadist could wish on anyone and that
precipated a week long "crash". I have always been able to work despite these things
so i suppose on an absolute scale they are relatively minor. Somehow each day i've
done what's needed to be done no matter how empty i am. I treated myself for this
anxiety with relax tapes and breathing exercises that quickly fixed the hyperventilation
that was causing the physical symptoms.

My wife and kids clearly know something is wrong. This all coincides now with the
impending departure in 6 months of my daughter. This will hit me very hard. when my
son left it i remember sitting on the couch and wondering "what now?". On the surface
they understand that i need change after the kids have gone. I have lived in this
town for 12 years and i desperately want to go overseas to work or do something different.
My wife is less keen but has agreed that i should go overseas for 6 months next year
to kind of scout for job possibilities. So i'm gonna be a kind of 48 year old backpacker
through asia. I suppose i'm just treating the symptoms with this plan.

I know in 20 years or so i will be dead, disabled, sick or half the man i am now. I
know that i want to know this kind of love at least once before i die and i cannot tell
my wife that i have never loved her in this way- even though i suspect this is
precisely how she has loved me. I cannot cause this kind of pain to her. I would
prefer her to believe that i did indeed love her like this but that it has changed.
I could never harm her to the extent that she believed she has wasted her life with me.
I know this feeling and it is beyond me to inflict it on someone else, let alone the
woman whom i have shared 24 years of my life with through thick and thin.

I think some of my anxieties have also been accelerated by some close calls- an aircraft
crash and near drowning in the last 5 years. Whatever else it does, my frenetic
exercise has helped my anxiety and depression. I DO face most days optimistically
and expecially so since i negotiated this period to myself- something we can afford
to do and also something i feel utterly compelled to do.

But until that happens the situation with possible OW is killing me. I am not trying
to demonstrate my virility. I am not interested in mere sex. Absolutely the opposite.
It wouldn't even bother me if there were no sex.
I can't even begin to explain the effect this girl has on me. It's a dream. That
combination of beauty, youth and relative innocence. There are times when i would
trash my life in an instant just to say what i feel. But i'm just an old grey haired
fool.

One part of me says it would simply destroy my life and that of everyone i have
ever cared about. Another part says, without this, your life is destroyed anyway.

If you have lived your life on rails as i have- shouldered every responsibility (and
believe me not many men would do ALL the night feeds for their babies, cook
and shop for 15 years and hold down a job etc etc)- then you begin to wonder what
freefall is like. What would it be like to abandon yourself to something so intense
that you have no control of it? What would it be like to be immersed so closely
that YOU, this person and the world disappears for a microsecond of bliss?

How would it feel if the dozens of parameters, cares, concerns, factors and other
people's needs just left you for a while? What would it be like to tear up the timetable
and schedule of your life, put it in the bottom drawer and walk out on the highway to
hitch a ride and see what happens?

The carpet of tax returns, paperwork, plans and receipts are guaranteed to follow you
to the hospice and ultimately the grave. What are you looking for? Permanence? Everything
you are and ever will be will one day be taken from you. But you think i should have a "to do"
list that takes me right up to the door of the crematorium? For what?

Haven't i done enough? Children and hospitals. Jobs that suck. Bosses that suck bigger.
Dreams parked permanently. Yes we all worked hard. I can blame no-one. Everyone did
their share. But i can't take this deal to the grave. I love the family we created. And
the last thing i want is to cause them pain.

But each day i deal with the pain of watching another day that could have been filled
with hope or a new adventure just disappear in a smear of sameness and daily
administration.

To my wife i say: your friends and phone calls, lunches and chats. The dozens of people
who stop you in the street to reminisce the last 40 years. This is you. It fills you up and
makes you glad. The little social intricacies that make up your day. The gossip mill and mesh
of people you know simply ARE YOU! All of this provides meaning to your life. Even the
trips to hospital to see the dead and dying are part of this context which you accept
without even an eyeblink. Where is the horizon in this world? For God's sake where is the
passion and excitement, the simple oxygen that tells you that despite your fate, right now
you are ALIVE. The sun rises and it IS beautiful. It's not just another camera snapshot.
Why the ^&&* can't you taste the salt of the sea?

But I cannot stay on this treadmill to nowhere. Do you want me as that neutered cat- fat,
happy and harmless on the sofa? Doing nothing all day. A world made up of 4 walls and
some phone calls. TV and a retirement diet of game shows. A BS vacation with others
further up in God's waiting room? Yeah i'm really looking forward to it.

How did i forget that something gave me breath and an entire earth to walk upon? How
did i forget that a to do list can include climbing the pyramids- without an oxygen bottle?
How did i forget that in planning and saving for the future i was mortgaging today?

Truly i regret nothing. I did what i thought was best at the time- knowing what i knew and
i would not change it for anything.

But that was then and this is now. The only now i have left. You want me to line up with the
rest of them at the firing squad. We can converse with others as we all move patiently
up the queue.

No. Not me. Not ever. I know you love me and in my own way i have definitely loved
you. Sometimes in words but always in actions. And maybe our ways were different.
I am sorry if there has been an imbalance in the ways and depth of how we have loved.
I hope i never have to tell you that. I hope you believe forever that for all that time
my love for you was endless. I don't believe it was. Perhaps i compromised too much
and i truly pray that you never come to see your life with me as a compromise
even if it is perhaps the truth. And always telling the truth is BS no matter what they
say. In the last few minutes of your life I'm going to tell you your son has died?
Yeah right. Some things are beyond bearing and knowing you, i know which ones would
be. You deserve to believe that for a time i loved you beyond the limits of human reason.

I deserve to believe that such a thing is possible, even if i have never experienced it.

Where we go from here is beyond knowing.

That was an interesting look into the mind of a MLCer. It makes me wonder how much of MLC is culturally determined by our affluent, leisurely, youth-oriented society -- in other words, does a 48-year-old peasant somewhere in a developing country get hit with the feeling that life is passing him by, or is he too busy with the struggle for survival to dream about "passion" and dumping his wife while he goes for a three-mile run?

If the writer lived in a culture where age and wisdom and experience was celebrated and venerated by his community, would he still be so frightened of aging? Would he see "youth and innocence" as something desirable, or would he find it horrifying to go back to a state of callow youthfulness? If meaning were found in the passing on of his wisdom and the fulfillment of his responsibilities, not in the running away from them? If he sees his future as a doddering shuffleboard player ignored by everyone, no wonder he anxiously dreads it.

Hi Hoopsie,

Your comments are appreciated. I wonder too, how much is related to just being spoiled by having more than we need. When I read Brumby’s post, I suspect it would capture how Midnight feels pretty well.

It leaves me sad and frustrated.

He tells people "She is just a terrific person, but we grew apart..." He is right. We did grow apart. He just noticed before I did.

I spent the morning in court over the traffic accident I was in last fall. The taxi driver was visiting his sick mother in Calgary, his wife sat in his stead in the courtroom, garbed in traditional dress. They asked for an adjournment for family reasons.

I felt sorry for her.

It must have caused hardship for their family. Not withstanding that, ignoring a police officer, totaling another person's car, injuring them and their dog, merited at least an " Are you O.K?, not the stream of verbal abuse he hurled at the officer."

I have never been to criminal court before. It was interesting. I was frisked. Standing there in my little Ann Taylor suit being searched for firearms! A funny picture!

Got go back to work...

Wishing you well and happy...

PB

Paradise...

I read the copied post with great interest. He seems so human. It makes me very sad.

Yesterday I saw the MOW with the child at a school function. The child is now a year old, no younger siblings were supposed to be present.

I don't think that my son was aware.

The complete lack of any respect that this woman has shown for me and my children baffles and hurts me to the core. I would never, ever be so cruel.

I'm dealing.

Two days ago I found a small, mostly featherless bird at the door of my truck. Not a soul around either human or avian. I suspect it was a gift from a grinning bulldog.

I've called it Help, as I feel that is what he was screetching at me. He lives in a bucket and eats soaked horse pellets, bread and milk and the occasional bite of a breakfast muffin.

He's a loud, noisey, demanding guest. He's quite funny. However, in the middle of the night last night..I truly wish the dogs had carried him up into the bank barn with their other treasures.

Bulldogs are not very smart... or maybe they are.

God Bless you,

Eibrab

Hi Eibrab,

Your OW has been hurt deeply too. People in pain are confused. They do horrible things trying to spread around their grief and anguish in a vain attempt to lighten their own load - that only in the end increases it. We are connected. You cannot hurt someone else without hurting yourself.

She must feel used and abandoned. You won the prize. It cannot be easy for her to look at your husband’s child every day and know that he is with you.

You know in your heart, the best way to deal with it is to work on feeling compassion for her. It will diffuse your anger, heal your hurt and render you protected from any harm she is trying to cause by allowing you to see her as she truly is – a confused human in pain. We could nick name her Chip – referring to both her state of being and what is riding on her shoulder.

Your clever bulldog saw you were upset and decuded to cheer you up with a present that would distract and amuse you. He sounds like a card!

Everything on this planet that lives and breathes seems to have a personality. I will be waiting to hear all about Help's.

Wishing you strength, patience and humor. All of which you already have in abundance!

I will wish her wisdom and the ability to adapt to her situation without trying to cause more pain.

PB