Unclogging the drain

I had been thinking for a while that I should start blogging again.  It might not become and everyday activity, but I feel like some of the things that have been swirling around in my brain might be worth putting out there... there's a lot of crazy in the world, and it might do me some good to write to make sense of some of it.  Or at least to put some of my thoughts down again in some format;  I have always been a journal keeper and diary writer, and for the last three or four years at least, I have not been journaling.  I literally have in my possession journals of mine from the fourth grade all the way through high school, which is both painfully awkward and also riveting reading material.  I have read back through several of them, which make me laugh and cry in equal measure, sometimes simultaneously.

This morning, I am sitting at the dining room table at 327 JK Lane, in Goldtown/Kenna, drinking yesterday morning's cold leftover coffee and contemplating how long I have actually left the Liquid Plumbr in the drain in the bathroom, while my sweet love snores in the bed.   A lot has changed since the last time I kept a blog of any regularity, or wrote with any regularity, really.  The last time I blogged much, it was 2009... which now seems ten thousand years ago, but as I re-read the posts yesterday (which are now deleted), it seemed like no time had passed.  How is it that time goes so fast, yet it crawls?

The clog in the bathroom drain is my hair, which is almost as long now as it was in 2008 when I chopped it all off post-Eric.  2008 was a wartime era for me, and I was struggling to take back control of my life, my appearance, my body.  I was sickly and very overweight, and I went through a phoenix-like transformation between the summer of 2008 and the summer of 2009.  In the summer of 2008, I split my time between living in my town home in Lynchburg, Virginia, and living with my ex-fiance's mother, who was battling cancer.  I drove her to treatments and took care of my ex's half-brother, who was about ten years old at the time.  By the summer of 2009, my ex had cheated on me and left, I had gotten a new job back home in WV, started losing weight (lost about 70 pounds, actually), quit smoking and drinking, bought my own home, cut my hair off, and got two cats.

It was pretty freaking sweet.

Some might say I really know how to do that kind of situation up right, which actually says a lot more about me than the crazy men that I have dated... I know how to do self-care in a crisis, and I know how to make some damn decisions when it counts.  It's like my mother (who is a stone cold badass woman) just channels right through my body and mouth, and I keep putting one foot in front of the other in a very "I'll show them" kind of display.  Ex cheated?  Well, eff you and get out.  I'm better off.  Losing my job in VA?  I'll get one in my home county in WV and be gone before the end of February.  Screw you and your arts cuts.  Stuck living with parents?  Not for long.  I'm buying a house, bitches.  Lonely?  Nope.  I've got Harold, the greatest cat to ever walk the face of the planet, whom I purchased from the Humane Society for $20.  Screw. You. Universe.  (I'm throwing up two middle fingers for effect, in case you were wondering.)

I'm forever clogging the drains now, because after everything that came in between then and now (and my goodness, there was a lot), I now have really long hair again, and I'm in love again and allowing myself all the cushy comforts that come from a long-term, confident, adult relationship, which I can definitively say I have never really enjoyed before in my life.  This one is so different than the others because it's really a very grown-up thing.... rather than relaxing my standards and ending up like I have in the past over and over, I finally took my mother's advice and refused to settle until I really found somebody that I felt like was worthy of what I have to offer.

And my gracious, it is glorious.

He is smart and self-sufficient. He has a great job and a beautiful family, who have welcomed me with open arms; we make a great team.  He loves me for me, not for who I could be if I lost the extra weight or didn't have toe hairs or wasn't busy clogging the drains with wads of my beautiful long hair.  He loves me right now.

And I love him every minute.  Speaking of this minute, he woke up to have coffee with me, so off I go.  Until next time, friends.