It's 1 A.M., Where Are Your Kids At??

Hopefully in bed, like mine, which is exactly where I should be. I ask myself why I am still up, why am I not tired? I should be. I had the most amazing and tiring weekend ever.

This weekend was my first long Holiday weekend without my daughter, my side kick. She spent it with her father. I'm still very saddened by all of this; he has her one weekend, I have her another business. For 5 years, she has barely ever been away from me. So, for me to now not see her for more than one day, is very hard.

It helped to have almost every second of my day filled with vigorous activity. I spent it with *Him. He won't have a name on here, much like myself. He's a very private person, or at least that's how he has described it. I would go deeper, and say that, very much like myself, he likes to control the information, amd who he is to others.

I do this myself. This is the whole reason this blog started. So I could have one place where I am myself. For a short period of time, I allowed people who know me in real life, access to my blog. I found myself filtering it after that. The whole point in my blog was to have one place where I could be 100% ME !! When I became aware that I was filtering, I abandoned writing on it at all. I recently deleted any links I had to this blog, and reclaimed it as my anonymous own again. I like it that way...for now.

I digress. Where was I? Ah, yes. I spent a wonderful, active weekend together. It was definitely one of the most romantic weekends I've ever had. The romantic in me, loves that!

There was lots of good food, good wine, and good conversation. There was also two 4 hour bike rides this weekend, a 4 miles run, and 27 flights of stairs climbed. I couldn't tell if he was just trying to help me with my goals, or trying to kill him. At least he's not a sabotager, I've had that in the past. A sabotager makes meeting goals very hard.

Before I left today to go home, he told me that his favorite part of the weekend was when we were at the end of our first long bike ride. It was night, and we were riding through a tree lined path in the Chicago parks. I said "Hey", out of the blue, then when he looked at me, I said "I love you". It was something I felt was simple and heartfelt, and really didn't think much more about it. It's nice to see that he felt it, and it made an impact. Often times, I feel like he only touches the surface with feelings and then backs off. As romantic as he is, he seems very uncomfortable with the feelings aspect of it, or of anything for that matter. He seems to avoid anything that would cause him to feel deeply, whether it be very happy, or very sad. It is this same protection or coping skills that makes me worry if he has actually allowed himself to open his heart enough to feel really deep love for me. This scares me.

I have found myself using similar protective tactics. When I worry that he may be putting up a wall, or pulling back, I then find myself doing the same thing.

I don't want to put up a wall, I want to allow myself to feel. I'm going to make a decision to allow myself to be vulnerable. I'd rather get my heart broken again, and be able to internalize and experience the happiness I have now.

I agree with the famous quote: "It is better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all."

You got the best of me.

I'm going to start off with making it perfectly clear that I never want you back. I don't know where the man I married went, but You are not him.

I never thought I would be in this position, having an ex-husband. I always took marriage for the vows I made...till death do we part.

Which is why giving you the best parts of me was never thought of twice. I was happy to give you everything I had, and never complain when you took the mile.

I happily gave my good body to bring the sweetest little girl into this world. I thought we would forever parent her together.

You got to see me at my best, when I was young and carefree. When I was fun because I didn't have any responsibilities. When I was patient.

I gave you your earning power, by sacrificing my own career, in order to make the career moves you needed to climb the payscale.

I gave you my time. The time I had to nurture a relationship without the logistics of responsibilities and an ex-husband.

I gave you my experience of being a new bride. I will never be able to have that with the man I grow old with.

For all of these things, I am bitter. I can't help but be. You see, sadness can't creep in because I have a precious 4 year old that counts on me, so I can't wallow in sadness at all the things I gave to you, that I wanted to give to the man I grow old with.

Would it be sad...

If I commented on my own posts? Just so I know someone is reading them. And I do. For some reason I find myself reading each post over and over again, just to make sure I said what I wanted to say, in the way I wanted to say it. Neurotic, I know. The worst part though, it's not like I really hVe the patience/energy/motivation to actually go back in and edit them, if, err scratch that, when I find mistakes.

When I used to keep this up more regularly, I thought there might actually be people reading it. And, every once in awhile, someone would leave a comment, someone who came here by accident, or randomly. I also used to post links to each blog on my Facebook page. However, that was a double edge sword, because I found myself wanting to sensor what I wrote. Which defeats the whole purpose of this blog. So, for now, I will just post, and hope for some the accidental reader, and hope that something I write is interesting enough for them to maybe stop by again!

Fears & Regurgitation

I've just discovered that I can blog on my phone! While that will help in my pursuit to write more often, I'm pretty sure it will reduce the quality of what I write. For instance, I'm laying in bed, seconds from falling asleep while typing, all motivation for spell check and editing gone, and in a rambling, incoherent state of mind.

Yes, I'm THAT tired that I'm incoherent. I have to be anymore, in order to fall asleep. I HATE sleeping alone! So, in order to not have to think about it, I wait until I'm absolutely exhausted to even lay down. And that's where I sit right now, eyes sneaking shut on me. Night my blogspot friends!

Long time, no blog

My Dearest Blog,

I am so sorry I have neglected you over the months. A lot has happened. I sold my house, moved to a large city, and am finally moving on with life.

I'm sorry to treat you like a disposable friend. I tend to retreat to my own head when dealing with hard circumstances; shutting out the world. I promise to work harder on letting you in.

One thing about having a Gypsy Soul, you tend to find coping mechanisms when being free. Mine is hunkering down. I tend to only want to share the good things in life, and not burden those I care about. This has been a life pattern. When things are good, I want to shout them from the rooftops. When things aren't, I want to suffer alone. I guess this pattern hasn't changed. Things are good again, and so here I am.

I've recently started dating again. It's a little weird, after being married for 7 1/2 years. He seems to be a wonderful man, though I find myself scared and cautious. He loves to share his music with me, and on one of the first CDs he made me, there was a song by a British group called The Streets. The song is a slow rap, in almost a talking tone, and he is describing meeting this girl. Thefirst thing he says about her is "her last relationship f&cked her up". This hit home.

I wasn't sure if He put the song on there to start a dialogue, or because it is something he worries about (it very much could be - he analyses everything like me!). Even if he did, I don't think He has a clue as to how true that statement is. I've tried to hide it as much as I possibly can. I don't want to burden Him, think I'm damaged goods, or scare him off. But the truth is, that because my marriage ended with my ex cheating on me, I find myself untrusting of ALL men, even Him.

I don't want to be like that. I want the innocence and trust back. I want to believe in good intentions. I want to be nieve again...because being wide eyed is torturous. He has never given me any reason not to trust Him. It is not fair for me to have doubts, yet I can't stop myself from having them.

I miss the days of innocence. I miss the days where I thought someone was so in love and enamored with me, for exactly who I am. I want to feel special. And no matter how much he tells me I am, I can't seem to grasp it and internalize it. I stead, I find myself putting up a wall, to protect myself.

I want to break the wall down. I just can't figure out how to do that.

My first group exercise class...at a Gym.

Wow. I never realized that I am uncoordinated…until today. I took my first gym group exercise class. I’ve done group exercise before, in the Army, but this was different. Group exercise in the Army usually consists of group runs, push ups, sit ups, various forms of torture completed with an M16 in hand or the use of your own body weight for resistance. I’ve always endured these, and even, in a sadistic way, enjoyed them. They were usually creative. Once I had to do 100 squat thrusts, yelling “You’re my dog, Drill Sergeant!” after each one squat thrust, when the said Drill Sergeant overheard me refer to him by his first name to someone else. So, it never dawned on me that I may have a problem with group exercise class.

The class was called Body Blast, and its description stated “Get the heart pumping using a variety of equipment, then wrap it up with weights and core strengthening activities.” What they fail to tell you is that the first 5 minutes is step aerobics. It was then that I realized that moving my feet and hands in a specified pattern, at the same time, while stepping up and down on a step, was really not my cup of tea and was going to be a challenge. It was ugly…REALLY ugly.

Everyone else were veterans of this class, they moved with such grace and synchronization as…well…a dance team. I felt very much like the newbie, but it was so bad, I couldn’t even be embarrassed. I just laughed my butt off…which did not help me with the coordination at all. Thank God it only lasted 5 minutes! We then moved on to squats and lunges. About 10 minutes into that, I was praying for the aerobics back!! Ouch. I am definitely going to be sore tomorrow.

Overall, this class was definitely worth it. It is mostly strength training and sculpting, which will be a nice addition to my cardio. I am hoping…eventually…I too will be able to master the step aerobics portion of this class. Then again…maybe I should practice a little at home before the next class. Maybe.

Can science & religion coexist?

Over the years I have struggled with my own spiritual beliefs. At one point I even asked my ex-husband, if he believed in God. If you know my him and his intolerance for proselytizing, you too would have been as shocked as I was to hear him say Yes. In my astonishment, I prodded him further. He said not only did he believe in God, but he KNEW God existed. I questioned him even further..."how do you KNOW that God exists?" Expecting a one hour "Jimmy Answer" based on a laundry lists of facts and historical examples, and the reiteration of his last point, he again surprised me. He opened his arms out in guesture, referencing all that surrounds us, and said "I don't know what s/he looks like, or what form it is in, but whatever created all this - is God".

This was the most simple explanation, yet made absolute sense to me, but I still have a hard time reconciling my own beliefs. I think that my struggle is rooted in two different reasons.

The first would be my own childhood, as a child I felt like my mom pushed religion down our throats. She felt responsible for our religious teachings, which I now understand, but I think the lessons would have been more constructive if she didn't follow a cult-like sect of the Catholic religion known as the "Bayside Movement". I think her 'selfless' giving of herself and any possessions we ever had to the church (and if you know how poor we were growing up, you would know it was very little), instead of using those resources to feed, clothe, and house her children, also turned me away from organized religion.

The second reason I think I have pushed away is the way I have seen people, especially public figures, lobbyists, politicians, and anyone else that wants to push their agenda in a specific direction without allowing open debate, have used religion as a debate ending exclamation mark.

As someone who is outspoken, but loves the opportunity to have a real exchange of differing ideas, I get so disappointed when religion is brought into the conversation to make a point. I mean, how do you argue with religion and not sound like an A-hole? I just feel like once religion is brought into the discussion, the discussion is ended because there is nowhere to go with it, without it becoming extremely personal.

This brings me to my question, can science and relgion coexist?

I guess I don't understand why people would want to deny Global Warming. What is the reasoning that Sarah Palin or Fox News feel so strongly against the possibility of Global Warming. Why is it so hard to believe that all of the polution we produce is hurting our environment? I don't understand why this is a political debate.

I try to look at it from what we DO know. We know as a fact that the Earth has its own atmosphere. Think of it as a plastic snow globe. Now, place a large rock in the snow globe, fill it half with water, then freeze it. Then we're going to place a heat lamp directly outside of it to reprsent the sun. Now, let's place some wood chips in there and burn them to represent fossil fuel. As they burn, the outside of the globe (the atmosphere) gets thin. The thinner the plastic globe gets, the more heat gets through the globe and the faster it warms up the ice and melts it. The more it the ice melts, the less surface of the rock is visible. It is a pretty easy and simple experiment to complete.

So my question is why global warming is being disputed? I have tried to google why it is being disputed and some of the articles say that Global Warming itself is not being disputed, but instead the rate of the warming is being disputed. Other articles I have read say that Global Warming is being disputed because of the ties with Global Warming being related to the consumption of oil and coal for energy use. The use of oil and coal for energy is a hot political debate, and maybe the side of the political spectrum that you fall on for that issue is the same side you fall on for Global Warming?

The other issue I have seen is a religious division. Bare with me while I try to decipher the articles I have read on this, and please correct me if I am misinterprating them. Those that deny Global Warming based on Religious beliefs, do so because it places Humans in a position of power over the Earth and the destruction of it, whereas many religions believe that only God has that power.

So, my question comes up again. Can religion and science coexist? Why can't God have the ultimate power because God placed us here on this Earth and gave us Free Will. Then allowed us to run with it, whether we caused our own destruction or not, is ultimately up to us and our Will.



I'd love to hear others opinions on this subject!