I really was looking forward to 2008. 2007 Had just been so full of crap and badness that I was thrilled that the year was ending and a new beginning was just ahead.

Speed ahead to March 2008 - What the Fuck?!

Three months into the year and badness abounds! A dear friend (and neighbor) of ours passed away at the very beginning of February - it wasn't necessarily unexpected - but a huge shock nontheless and our whole family has still been recovering from the whole ordeal. Then there is the issue that I don't deal well with death under ANY circumstances so as usual, it dredges up huge issues for me (that of course I continue to stuff down and not deal with!).

Last Wednesday - in the midst of what was already shaking out to be the worst week in my entire life - our friend Russ called to tell us that he had come home and found his wife (Ann) dead earlier that day. Russ and Ann were our neighbors when we lived in our little row house on Sherman Street and I have known Ann almost as long as I have known anyone here in Colorado - and she and I longer than we had known even our husbands!! Our children are roughly the same ages and we were long time smoking companions and general partners in crime. Annie lit up any room that she walked into - instantly!! She was a force to be reckoned with and I can frequently recall conversations with her where I was getting an earful of stern advice and/or loving redirection from her. Ann had been in chronic pain for the past seveal years due to a back injury and had been on very serious medications for a long time. She had started with a pain management clinic a couple of months ago and the day or so before her death they had just swapped out all her medications for non-narcotic ones. This may or may not have been the cause of her death - we are waiting for the autopsy/tox results.

I think one of the hardest parts for me to accept and comprehend is that I was already struggling with a mid-life crisis and turning 40. Ann was 46 years old!! She had enough life in her for 3 people and I still can't believe that she is gone.

On top of ALL of this - JJ and I are not in a great place right now. Things have been really tough for the past couple of weeks and that is in culmination to a rough past 6 months actually. I have pretty much done nothing but make ridiculously, mind-altering, stupid decisions for the past little while. I would love to chalk it up all to the mid-life crisis but I don't think I can really make that excuse anymore. So now it's back to therapy - not just for JJ and I to salvage our relationship - but for me individually so that I can attempt to learn why I continue to make destructive decisions for myself.

Current Location: laptop
Current Music: children

You are The Wheel of Fortune

Good fortune and happiness but sometimes a species of
intoxication with success

The Wheel of Fortune is all about big things, luck, change, fortune. Almost always good fortune. You are lucky in all things that you do and happy with the things that come to you. Be careful that success does not go to your head however. Sometimes luck can change.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Has it really been that long since I posted to LJ? Guess so! It's not that I have nothing to say and no time to say it...it's just that this seems to be the year of vouyerism for me - I like to watch what is going on around me. I'm trying to do that more and more in my life - it's not that I didn't do it before, it's just that I always felt the need to participate, comment, cry, laugh, sneer...

I have undergone a kind of metamorphasis in the last 6 months of my life and 2008 has already become quite the year - all 24 (sorry 25) days of it! I feel that I am finally becoming more "me" than I have ever been before. It is exciting and scary all at the same time. It's too bad it took me until the year that I turn 40, yes that's right folks, the big 4-oh, to figure "me" out. My plan for my birthday is to be partially naked on a beach somewhere with a lot of booze and a really hot cabana boy! I hope I can pull that off. I have met a lot of very interesting people in the last few months (either in person or online) who have broadened by horizons significantly. My most significant accomplishment in the new year was receiving my clinical therapist's license (finally) - a feat that allows me to move forward with my professional life. What is most interesting about moving forward is that I have always been somewhat of a dichotomy - and now the 2 halves of myself seem to get farther and farther apart rather than integrating like I always thought that they would. I don't think that it is necessarily a good or a bad thing - it's just odd.

My second most significant accomplishment of the year really occurred at the end of last year: I finally joined the gym! I prepaid my membership, got myself a trainer, and am now to the point where I go to the gym EVERYDAY! I am officially a gym rat! It was really about time...In 1988 I weighed 118 pounds and had a 24" waist - about a year and a half ago I was at my heaviest at 250 pounds and we won't even talk about my waist...I don't think I had one! I have carried all my weight in my belly and my ass - so although some guys like the ass and I get hit on by the Brotha's a lot - I was really getting sick of being asked "when are you due." People seem to be offended by the term "fat" when I would speak the truth and say that I was - so I began using a term coined by Gabriel Iglesias and called myself "fluffy." Seems to be less offensive to people. I would like to be able to accept myself "as is" however, being turned down by at least three health insurance companies because I don't meet their "height weight ratio criteria" (i.e. I was too FAT) made me realize I needed to do something. I am so close now to hitting below the 200 pound mark (a place I haven't been in 7 or more years) and look and feel better than I ever have! The girl who always said "I wouldn't fun if a murderer were chasing me" just the other day ran a full mile without stopping in 13 minutes!! The best part is the way that my husband can't keep his hands off me!

I am looking forward to 2008 more than I think I have looked forward to a year in a VERY long time. I'm curious to see what the year has in store for me and for the whole planet (which seems to be a ticking time bomb at the moment).

Huh - writing here at 2am when I can't sleep is cathartic - I should do this more often...

Sorry I missed it!! I was too sick to get out of bed and type!

Hope it was an awesome birthday full of cold beer and hot guys!!

Love you!

Lets101 Quizzes - Quizzes For Fun

I dreamt the end of the world last night...

I wrote the dream down - a vague sketch of what I could remember - after I awoke crying at 5 in the morning.

When it seems less real, maybe I'll be able to post it and someone else will be able to make sense of it...

This is the second time I have had a dream about the end of the world.

Tags: dreams

I just returned from a road trip with my hubby and children. We went to the Sand Dunes - yes! there are sand dunes in Colorado (ultimately, I still felt water was missing)! And they are beautiful! We continued on through the south-western part of the state to Cortez and then on into Arizona and on into the Grand Canyon, a place I have never been before and Jarrad was at once as a teenager.

More on the Grand Canyon in a second...We left the Grand Canyon after two days and continued on to Page, Arizona (location of Lake Powell) and then to Moab (Arches National Park) and then home with a two day stopover in Glenwood Springs (to play in the hot springs pool and hike the Fairy Caves).

First let me say that this was an adventerous little tour for me: I don't hike (usually) or camp (generally) and my idea of roughing it is not having room service...let's face it - I'm a princess! However, Jarrad is a big proponent of camping, fishing, general crustiness and manly stuff and I do not want my daughters (as princess-y as they are) to grow up any more princess-y! We will not be having any boys (unless we adopt at some point) so I try to allow Jarrad opportunities to "lower" the estrogen level in our home on certain occasions.

So it was off to the Grand Canyon. Upon arrival, my father called to see how we were doing (he was in Florida visiting a friend) and when I told him we were at the Grand Canyon, he informed me that a 4 year old had died there just the day before - fell off the "rim" as they call it! Ok - so everyone who knows me (and this is most of you reading this) knows that I am a paranoid, over-protective, pain in the ass social worker so you can imagine how excited I was to take my daughters and my adventerous husband to the Grand Canyon at this point!

We arrived at the rim just after noon - and yep - I was terrified! I just don't do heights well (ask the friends I once went to the Royal Gorge bridge with!) and the thought of falling off the edge of those cliffs - that literally went anywhere from 400-1,000 feet straight down onto jagged rocks, was terrifying to me. Then the thought that my husband or one of my kids could fall off into the abyss was even worse. Then I got up the courage to look out and across the canyon - next to the site of my daughter's faces just after their births, it was the most breathtaking and heart stopping site I have ever seen in my life. I was completely overwhelmned by the power of nature itself and how our planet can create something so wonderful, beautiful and powerful all at the same time.

I am somewhat of a history buff and am fascinated at the energy in places and what has gone on there before me...thus I was lead to the book store where I found a book: Over the Edge - Death in Grand Canyon. In the midst of this book I have discovered that I will have to do some further reading on the Grand Canyon. The history of this place fascinates me and although I am horrified at 1)the general stupidity of people and 2) the absolutely unforgiving nature of ...well...nature - I find that I understand the inability of people to just walk away from that place and not become obsessed with every frighteningly beautiful and sacred inch of the vast cliffs, deep canyons and rushing river. Over the Edge has also taught me all of the very vast and different ways that there are to die in the Grand Canyon, but also some of the absolutely fascincating history - and it IS fascinating! So now I will have to wrestle with myself between wanting to hike the canyons and explore things from ancient ruins to the probability of finding dead bodies and abandoned pieces of history, versus not wanting to die! A trip back will likely be in the workings - when the girls are older and when I am fitter and feeling up to accomplishing such a task!

Then it was off across Arizona and into Moab. Holy shit - that's really all I can say...mostly because I had no idea that this stuff was OUT there! Vistas changed from one mile to the next: jagged grey mountains, sheer red cliffs jutting up out of a desert, round and etched rock that looks like it has no business being where it sits! Questions ran through my brain - how old was that rock slide? Did people live on that ledge up there like in Mesa Verde? Did people ever live in this canyon - it's so beautiful now - did it look like this 800 years ago? Who walked here? How did they live? How did they die? What aspect of nature caused that to look that particular way?! What the hell did people think when they rode a horse/wagon up to this?!?

Mostly I was just completely awestruck at how beautiful our planet is and what it has to offer - and then sad at how badly we treat it...

I learned a few valuable things on this trip:

1. Most of the people who die in Grand Canyon are young adult males

2. A body that falls into the Colorado river from a bridge 450 feet will appear to "flatten out and burst open" according to eye witnesses

3. Crystal Rapids is the deadliest rapid on the Colorado river in the Canyon

4. Once you see the Grand Canyon and start learning some of its history, the bottom will call to you...

5. Moab and the Arches National Park is not a place that should only be alloted a day

6. Denny's in Moab sucks and should never be considered as a dining option, even in desperation.

7. We live on a wonderful, beautiful and tragically unforgiving planet - we should try not to fuck it up...

oh

and 8. The bloody mary's at the diner in downtown Glenwood Springs are awesome - but don't have more than 3 if you plan on doing anything the rest of the day!

Tags: travel
Current Location: Dining room table - laptop
Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Hailey's Piano lesson

Waking up sandwhiched between two very warm, very male, very hot bodies!

Current Location: My dining room table
Current Music: Something on 93.3

I know that there has been so much hype...but this is funny and I couldn't resist.

"I'm thinkin...I don't wanna give you all shit..."

You're on my friends list. I'd like to know 27 things about you. If you don't have enough room to answer a question just put your answer in the comments area. You'll be surprised how much you didn't know about your friends after this!



Poll #1057754 You down know me
Open to: All, results viewable to: All
Do you have a tattoo?


How old are you?


Are you single or taken?


Fish?


Do you dream in color?


Ever seen a corpse?


Hipsters or Hillbillies?


How did we meet?


What's your philosophy on life and death?


If you could do anything with me, and have no one know, what would it be?


Do you trust the police?


Do you like musicals?


What is your fondest memory of me?


If you could change anything about yourself what would it be?


Would you cheat?


What are you wearing?


Have you ever peed in a pool?


Would you hide evidence for me if I asked you to?


If I only had one day to live, what would we do together?


Which do you prefer - short or long hair?


What's your favorite day of the week?


What's your favorite color?


If you could bring back anyone that has passed, who would it be?


Tell me one interesting/odd fact about you?


What was your first impression of me?


Have you ever done drugs?


Will you post this so I can fill it out for you?

Current Location: My dining room table
Current Music: Hubby cleaning the kitchen...sweet sound