Weekend Fun

This was a jam packed weekend. My friend Terry got married and we went to A11egria from Circue du s0liel.

The wedding was beautiful. Terry had beautiful weather, good company, and a beautiful reception.

Mike and I had a wonderful time

even though my bra strap is showing in this picture. We wisely chose to stay overnight at the hotel, so that we could have a good time and not worry about the long drive home.

Sunday, we went to Circue du S0liel and had a wonderful time. Unfortunately, we are exhausted today because we ran and ran all weekend. We have just finished clearing off my porch so that the landlord can start construction. Mike is dozing on my couch,the cat is asleep on my feet. Life is good.

Belated Wordless Wednesday (A day late...)

Eeyore has the right idea. It is hot and humid and miserable in PA, today.

I hated High School....

My sisters agree with me on this. High School was hell. I am not one of those people who expound euphorically about how high school was the best years of their life. Now there were some good times but overall, you can wipe those four years off the face of the map.

There are still some people that if I saw on the street, I would have to resist the urge to sucker punch them. Missy is one of the individuals. We went to a very small, all girl, catholic high school. I graduated with 39 girls. 39 catty girls... In junior year, Adam came from one of the all boy high schools to be in the play. He was funny, good looking, and we got along well. I asked him to the prom. He said yes. I will never forget it, my family was in the kitchen bolstering me to call him and ask. I went out in the hall and called him and he said yes. I didn't say anything to anyone else in my class that I was going to ask him. I was an awkward, insecure female and was scared of ridicule and rejection. Apparently Missy and Adam had been talking but she had not asked him to the prom. When he told her I had asked him, you would have thought the end of the world had happened. She was angry. She and several of her friends tried to talk him out of going with me. I think by this point they were dating. To do Adam justice, he did go to the prom with me and danced with me and all but ignored her. However, the weeks leading up to the prom were pretty awful for me. She was brutal at school; called me every name in the book, had people in the class taking sides.

When I signed up for face book, Missy was one of the people who requested to be my friend. I initially was just going to ignore it but then I thought better of it. I could look into her life by pictures and see whether all my bad wishes had come true. Did she have awful acne, was she fat, maimed in some way? Seriously, I thought it was high school and we were a bunch of immature girls. Let bygones be bygones. Right? No. Today, someone got me with the post this paragraph as your status and everyone posts a memory about you. This could be fun, I thought. I have friends that go all the way back to grade school on face book. Don't you know that Missy posted her memory that I asked Adam to the prom and how upset she was then but it was laughable now.

Now, people, I could lie and say I am laughing about this now. Truth be told, I am not. I still have very strong feelings about this. CLEARLY. I have discovered this: 1. no one is meaner than a teenage girl and 2.the scars of high school run deep and are likely not to fade away completely.

Wordless Wednesday, my favorite pic from the last couple of months

Isis 1995-June 29, 2009. You will be missed....

Monday was not a good day...

My grandmother always said the minute you get a pet, you open yourself up to heartache. But we keep doing it because it is so worth it....

This was not a good weekend at the house. Isis, Mike's 14 year old doberman, has been steadily declining for the last couple of months. We have tried a number of different things: dog aspirin, antibiotics, multivitamins with glucosamine, poached chicken and all natural dog food, and finally rimadyl. She would improve for a couple of days and then take several steps back. All the while she continued to play with her toys and eat well. Friday night, we noticed she was having problems with the front legs. Her back legs have been bad for years but she compensated well. This weekend, she couldn't walk more than a couple of feet without having to sit and her front legs kept sticking. She stopped eating her treats and spent the day sleeping. It just kept getting worse and Sunday night, Mike came to the conclusion that it was time to put her to sleep. I kept hoping she would fall asleep and go that way, but no.

We cried, ALOT. I said I would come back out Monday night and go to the vet with him. I got to the house first on Monday. She clearly had not moved all day and was just wiped out. Mike came home and got her outside and as her final push, she went jaunting across the front yard. I wish my camera had been charged because she ran out of steam and sat down, Mike walked over to her and she got a final burst of steam and jaunted over to him and sat there looking up at him, smiling. The camera was dead, I am unsure I would have been able to take the picture anyway, I was a little bleary eyed.

The vet was wonderful and examined her and found multiple weaknesses in the legs and her heart was not beating regularly. He gave Mike several options but pointed out that they all were essentially plugging the hole of a sinking ship. Mike and I were crying from the time we got her in the car and he choked out that he felt she was in pain and not having fun anymore... They gave her a tranquilizer shot and let it kick in, leaving us alone with her. After about five minutes, her legs gave out and she slipped down to the floor and laid her head on Mike's knee and fell asleep. They gave her the final injection and left us with her. To say that we were a mess is putting it mildly- I had snot pouring down my face, neither of us could breathe or see. But she is no longer in pain and she had her favorite person to rest her head on.

The house is empty without her. Her toys are on the living room floor and her food bowls are still in the kitchen. Neither of us can bear to move them. When I walk through the dark bedroom in the middle of the night, I still step over where she should be on her bed on the floor... We both walked in the house last night calling her name. Neither of us have slept well the last two nights, we both keep seeing her lying on the floor as we left the vet. They wouldn't take her away until we had left. I wish we had brought her blanket with us to be cremated with her...

I don't like dobermans but Isis was the exception to the rule. She was a love and will be missed, greatly. I shouldn't have typed this at work, I am a mess all over again...

Because You Asked....

Several of you have requested more information about the boy. Here it is....

As you may remember, I posted about a blind date back in the beginning of January. That blind date was Mike. Around Christmas, I became determined to shed old baggage and start a new campaign to meet new people. Not "the one" necessarily but get myself back in the dating game. I had tried Match.c0m and EHarm0ny with little success but I decided to give Match.c0m another try. Part of match is Chemistry.c0m. I filled out the profile, determined to be clear about myself and what I was looking for, no hedging on the weight or vagueness about what I wanted from my life or potential dates. I had several matches and I went through the motions of answering their questions and reading their responses but noone struck me as interesting. I was ok with this, though. I figured if nothing else, I would meet new people and regain the confidence I had lost over the last several years.

Then somewhere in between Christmas and New Years, I was contacted by Mike. We went through the motions of the beginning levels of communication for Chemistry and then began emailing and instant messaging. After about two weeks of talking, we agreed to meet for dinner. Dinner was an enlightening experience. Here was this very pleasant individual, exactly as described, who was easy to talk to. We spent 3 hours talking. I walked away from dinner saying WOW. Mike says he walked away thinking I was the one. (I knew on the second date when he showed up at my apartment with flowers and chocolate.)

Neither one of us have looked back. Everything has been easy and natural. It is amazing to find this person, the one that completes the spaces you didn't realize were empty until you meet them. We have looked at rings, he has asked my opinion, but I want him to pick it out. He has seen what I like but also wants me to be surprised. I don't know when it is coming but he says sometime this summer.

Mike is one of 5 children ( the other 4 are half siblings) but is estranged from all but one. His parents each brought children to the marraige, Mike is the only child from their marraige. Both parents have died. He has been on his own for the past three years. He is divorced, having married someone he admits he knew he should not have. They got caught up in the planning and did not know how to reverse it all. They remain friends, although I have not yet met her. She is 5 years younger than we are and it seems that they were immature when they met and that carried into the marraige. She must be a good person because although they were in the middle of a divorce she moved with him into his parents home to care for her mother when they brought her home on hospice.

I am hoping this answers burning questions...

The Day After

We arrived at the hospital at 10:30. Mike was registered and ushered into a room where he was handed a paper gown, instructed to wear that and only that, and then subjected to a barrage of questions and stuck with needles. He said he was fine until they made him put on the paper gown; then reality sunk in... We only had to wait about 20 minutes once the admitting nurse was done with him before the OR tech came to usher him off to surgery. In the elevator, he began to shake and when we got to the doors of the OR suite, he started to tear up. I could go no further with him and kissed him good bye, told him I loved him, and went to wait in the surgical family waiting room.

Now, my family has had a number of surgeries and we have congregated in these waiting rooms together. It is a stark difference to be waiting alone. Don't get me wrong. We still worry and watch the time pass but when you are with others, there are a number of distractions. The females are knitting (I think the last surgery, 3 out of 4 were knitting pumpkin hats), Damian is reading the paper and we all are texting brothers 2 and 3. 15 minutes passes quickly. We are all worried but we are bolstered by family. Yesterday was torture. Minutes seemed like hours and I couldn't knit or read, it took too much to concentrate. Someone foolishly had given Mike a time of 1-2 hours for surgery so that when I hit the 3 hour mark, I began to worry. Friends from the hospital would stop by to check but still time stood still, it seemed. The physician came out after three and a half hours. Surgery went fine, he was able to do everything he wanted but Mike would be sore and off his feet for awhile. I would be able to see him once he was moved out of the recovery room, another hour at least.

When I did finally get to see him, he was groggy and sore but he smiled when I saw him and the first thing he said was, I love you. He is swollen and sore and exhausted. The next two days will be spent sleeping on the couch, he has to sleep upright so no bed for him. He can eat only cold soft liquids- my favorite type, ice cream. As I type, he is asleep next to me on the couch, the dog is asleep at my feet and we have Yo Yo Ma playing in the background. Life is good.

Thank you so much for all your well wishes and prayers. They mean so much. I am honored to be among such lovely people in blogistan...