a busy night

A very busy night here on the blog, with the roving Blog Bots and Russia apparently running amok on a Friday the 13th.

I'm not a terribly superstitious person. I will always say "bread n butter" when separated from someone that I am close to while we're out walking, but it's such a knee-jerk thing, I'm only consciously aware of it in the moment just after. My mum was fairly superstitious, black cats/ladders/salt/mirrors/and Friday the 13th.

I've never had an ounce of trouble on the 13th, up until the last one. That was the day that the corn bin ran over my foot at the farm, and then they put me into room 13 at the hospital. But even then, my foot wasn't broken and it easily could have been. That sucker of a bin was at least 1/2 ton, and my boss and I both heard the crunching that I was feeling. Anyway, no worries here about the date.

I had a quote running through my head the past few days, from A Tale Of Two Cities by Dickens...the opening, that goes something along the lines of "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...". It seems to sum things up for me at the moment. Well, most moments.

It was an emotional night, last night, with the bakery stuff all fresh and right in my face. A nice phone call, not that it was filled with the happiest of things. And a music sharing chat later with a friend. A conversation with former spouse re: the upcoming holiday and another friend who is facing major surgery on Monday...all of that together and the upshot, for me?

BOYS ARE DUMB.

Sorry guys, but you are. 

Dumb as stumps. 

Seriously. 

Music sharing friend from Austin...bless you, you're a dolly... but for Pete's sake, fella. That bestie, as you call her, that you can't leave behind to move home? Dude. There's a reason for that, figure it out. It doesn't even take a matchlight flicker to see what's going on there, son. Sigh. Take the girl, take the plunge, make her yours. Just freaking do it. And yes, I am going to tell you this the next time we talk. I don't mind being your shoulder to cry on, because I care about you and you're lonely, sad, but the thing is, you don't need to be. K. Solved your shit, right there. You'll be making those most excellent chicken/dumplings for 2, and there'll be arguments over who gets to use the Keurig first...you'll win because you won't take no for an answer, but knowing you, you'll make her coffee first. Yep. That's the boy. Dumb as a rock, but you'll be fine.

Surgery friend...okay. You've been playing hard to get with all these women who are after you, but once this operation is done, it's time to get off your butt and get out there again. I know you are quite an enlightened guy in many, many respects, but not here. Let's get this done, get you healed and get you where you need to be. Monday, surgery. I expect things from you by spring. And yes, I will tell you this. When you are in recovery and can't talk back to me. See? Smart girl, this one. Your daughter, she needs this as well. And you know that. You're afraid to try and I understand that, good lord do i, but it's time.

Former spouse. You continue to confuse me. You have a new wife. YOU HAVE A NEW WIFE. Well, not new. ANOTHER wife. I understand the care and concern for our girls, and I appreciate it so very much, even though they aren't certain how they feel about it. Wait. Let me say that older daughter, she's coming around. Please hear me when I say, don't stop trying yet. You are very close to mending those fences that you burnt to ashes, and that isn't just due to your efforts. It's due, in large part, to mine. It's not ego to say that. It's acknowledging a fact. I've worked hard on both of you, to soften, to clean, to prepare the wounds for this healing time and I'm gonna throat punch whoever gets in the way. Hear me??? No. I'm not saying that to either one of you. To the two of you, I will continue to soften and clean and care for those wounds as unobtrustively as possible. Younger daughter, you're being a shit. Yes, you have a right, a perfect right, to feel hurt, but you continue to hurt yourself when you refuse to allow healing and apologies to happen. You, well, you I just might be that blunt with. You won't take it well, you just don't. I'll figure it out. You know that I won't ever do or say anything to hurt you intentionally.

But, former spouse...

WHY DO YOU CARE WHAT HAPPENS TO ME????
I don't understand. You left. You said things, all the things, that shattered me. You knew they would, you went for my jugular, knowing exactly where it would hurt the most, and with the sharpest knife you could find, severed it, over and over. You almost bled me out. I don't understand. You show me greater care and compassion now than you did in our 25 yrs together...and it hurts. It hurts almost as badly as it did to feel none of that from you when I was yours and had the right to expect it. The contrast is brutal. A Christmas gift of the kind that is all that I ever wanted before, a memory to make with the girls...perfect for me. Not once in all our years together did I ask for a thing to be given, ever. So, very confusing. 
And yet, I'm grateful to know that if I had no one else to turn to, even as uncomfortable as it would be, I could go to you. Without family and without someone of my own to claim or care for me, which while i don't want to have to NEED someone, I want to WANT them in my life (which, yes, is it's own form of need but not the unhealthy dependent type...or codependent...another discussion), just knowing that gives me comfort and pretty much removes any feeling of need for it. 
Does your wife know? 
No.
NVM.

I would understand a woman's motivation, but a man's...no. I understand "human" and "girl"...even "cat" and "horse". But man? I've never claimed to. In fact, I've sung the praises of men and their differences over and over, but it gets so very old to simply accept and have no answers so very often. And so, this gets chalked up to, "Who the hell knows. Boys are dumb."

And such a bad night from dreams. Well, almost.

Very bad BDD dream. Horrifying. Best friend and I are going out dancing tomorrow, our last club crawl for a year that has brought so many changes for us, but for her especially. Almost a year ago I took her to her first rave, and we've done many since. So, in reality, we are going, but in my dream, I was trying on a little black skirt that I like and it kept riding up, which I couldn't understand. I kept pulling it back down and looking to see if it was hitching up on something. Looked in the mirror and a wave washed over it, then cleared again, and when I looked in it, I saw someone who weighed a couple hundred lbs more than I do, with a distorted face and such...I stood there, went ice cold, then flaming hot, unable to move and from somewhere the faint sound of something terrifying, growing louder and more shrill...looking back into the mirror, I saw that what should have been my mouth was wide open and that the noise was a scream coming from somewhere deep and horrible. Younger daughter, in dream, heard the sound and came running in, telling me to be quiet, what was wrong with me? I told her to look at me! What the hell had happened? She replied that I looked great, what was I talking about? I realized, still dream, that she couldn't see what I saw, so I pulled her over and made her look into the mirror to see it. She still couldn't. She said I was freaking her out, to stop, but I was freaking out on my own. Ran for the bathroom and jumped on the scales, which tipped at 289. I jumped off, did it again, same. I fell to the ground, sobbing, asking her to kill me, I couldn't live like that. And then I woke myself up, hard. Laid there for a bit, afraid to get up, to look in the mirror, just feeling my body all over and shaking. Finally, it left me. God, I hadn't had a dream like that for decades. I know that it was the emotion of the night and the conversations, the future, trying to stay very focused on right now. It was hard to eat today, but I followed the list I made myself write down in the morning. So. All good.

I read a little, trying to finish up a book, fell back asleep and dreamt that I was in a kitchen...food again. But this time, I was fixing a fancy salad and sandwich tray for someone else, in their kitchen, not my own. I took it into the other room, put it down, smiled, went back into the kitchen area and sat down at a table? There was a stool that I was sitting on, and I reached over and pulled a couple of tomato slices and a piece of bread for a tomato sandwich (thank you, Harriet) and a someone came into the kitchen. Smiled, said thank you, reached over to get something, looked at my almost sandwich asked what the hell that was, I smiled and said "something delicious...some?", scoff and mock disgust, to which I laughed. I actually laughed, in my sleep. Then a slight change in the energy, more conversation, and I woke up again. Totally different feeling though. 
Golly. 
What a night.

Boy. 

Can't you see? 
I can't say these things to you. If this is to be, then you will need to see them as they are on your own.
I don't have any answers, I have no crystal ball. I only know what I know.
I'm doing my part to not hide myself the way that I always do...daughter, she tells me that I play the cards too close. My closest friends, they say the same. But I've never held the hand as loosely as this is. 
Still, I do hold myself in check...there are layers of me that you are on the very edge of knowing. In another post I called myself a slow burn to know. It's true. 

In your past is not the only place that such things as you lament were given. See them with adult, healthy and matured eyes, in the way that it exists as a reality and not a blinded child's dream destined for disillusionment. 

So, Boy. You are dumb.
But that's okay. 

Because for all I know, I'm the dumb one here, in the reverse direction.
I'll take that, though. 

Next post, it's Christmas talk. 
I think. 
Time for bed, almost 1:30 and I need to be at work in 6 hours.