Friday, November 25, 2016

Let's Take A Minute To Look At Some Pictures Of Ferrets


Happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers!! And... Happy November to everyone else! I hope that you all had an AMAZING day! We spent the evening with my Platonic Hubby's family. It was really nice to be able to spend my first married holiday with both my new hubby, and the Platonic Hubby (friend) who has been my side kick for so long. I feel very lucky that The Guy understands that although his family is blood related, that the family I've built for myself is still every bit as much my "family," as his blood relatives are to him.


"Oh my gosh Eden, why are you showing your face now!!??"

Wednesday, November 16, 2016

He Could Have Killed Me (But Thankfully He Didn't, So Here's A Funny Story)



“There is absolutely no way that all these cars are here for voting,” I thought to myself as I tried to pull into the parking lot of my local polling station. Cars were lined up and down the streets, and when I say that “I tried to pull into the parking lot,” I mean that I tried, and really couldn’t, because someone had parked their mini van IN the one-way entrance to the building.

Photo Credit Courtesy of Giphy.com

I was so annoyed by this person’s obvious lack of respect for anyone but themselves, that I actually thought about keying their van.

Thankfully I am not crazy, nor a criminal, so I did not.

I did however, stand for TWO HOURS in the early voting line, and spent much of my time watching car after car attempt to pull into the lot, only to be blocked by the majesty’s royal carriage. Finally, a city employee came up and began asking if anyone in line owned the silver dodge caravan that was parked in the entrance.

A woman, who was at the absolute front of the line, began to ask a series of suspicious questions.

Thursday, November 10, 2016

There's Something I Need To Tell You (Part Two)



If you haven't read Part One of this post, I highly, highly suggest clicking here and doing so first, as this is the second half of a story that really needs the first half in order to make sense!

If that just seems like much too much work, the super quick synopsis is that shortly after my ex left, another man came into my life and "married" me in a wedding that was not even legal.

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A week later, after he had “married" me, he moved in; something that he had wanted to do for a really long time, and something that I had been very resistant to since we hadn't been married. Yet upon his arrival as my co-dweller, to my horror, he proclaimed that he wouldn’t be paying any bills, or helping to clean (since it was my house and not his), that I would be doing most of the cooking since I was his wife, and that although he was excited to start working on fathering another "genetic offspring," that he would no longer be helping to raise my kids since they weren't his.

And I, maybe for the first time, truly found my voice, when I put my foot down and said “no.”

The next night, while I was at work, I got a call from my babysitter who was concerned because The Helper was “moving a lot of stuff out of your house.” I raced home to find him loading his car with not only his belongings, but also mine, my children’s, and the wedding gifts that we had received the week before.

I fell to the grass on my knees and begged him not to go.

It’s one of the most shameful moments of my life, and one that haunted my dreams for years to come; the moment I graveled at the feet of the man who had been scamming me.

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

There's Something I Need To Tell You





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“Um… hey. So I know this is a weird question but do you know a good divorce attorney? Did you like whoever you used?” was basically the Facebook message that I was sending a former friend’s, former boyfriend.

I say “former friend,” because life had been drifting us apart until new babies and new jobs had widened the gap far enough, that although on good terms, we hadn’t spoken in several years. And I say former boyfriend because he was her ex.

He was also the only divorced person I knew at the time, and my ex had just left.

Messaging me back only a few minutes later to ask what was going on, I was fairly brief but blunt about my situation, and what came next was what I can only describe as “overwhelmingly helpful.”

Within an hour he had set up consultations with several local attorneys, given me instructions on how to freeze my bank account, and offered to come over and talk me through a plan.

At this point my parents were the only other people who knew that my ex had left a week prior, and they weren’t too keen on doing anything other than waiting around to see if he came back. But I knew that not only was this my chance to finally “escape,"  but that I couldn’t wait any longer after some things that I had found out shortly after my ex left… and everything he had done that had led us to this point.

I needed to be free, but I was completely falling apart, and a week after my ex had left, I still had absolutely no idea what my first steps should be.

But this guy, “the Helper” if you will, well he knew exactly how to take care of the situation, and he wasn’t shy about stepping in to “help.” Repeatedly asking me if he could come over, calling me every hour to see how I was doing, and messaging me more information than I knew how to handle, it left me feeling both smothered and relieved at the same time.

I didn’t trust myself to do anything right after I had spent so many years living life where every decision that I had made turned out to be wrong, and suddenly when I was the most lost that I had ever been, here was someone who seemed to know what he was doing, and was going to make sure that this time, I was going to do everything “right.”

Looking back, I can see exactly what was going on, but back then, I was just too unaware. So when the Helper kept asking me if he could come over so we could talk about this in person, I said no as many times as I could before he eventually wore me down and I said “yes.” And when he offered to take a few days off work to watch my kids so that I could get some appointments lined up with social services and handle things with the bank, I said “yes” again, because I had no other help.


Several months later and before I even knew what was happening, the Helper had become completely ingrained into every single aspect of my life. He would come to my house directly after work, and sometimes stay through the weekend. If I had something come up and needed a babysitter, he would take the day off work. If I was tired and the baby was fussy, he would run errands for me so that I didn’t need to go. If something in the house needed fixing, he made it a priority to work on it in his very next free second.

But even though I was drowning in life, I spent most of that time attempting to resist his insisting assistance, yet I always gave in at the end because I was too tired to fight every battle that life seemed to keep throwing at me, and in all honesty, I did need the help. And at night when the sun went down and the lights went out, he would fill the room with his promises for our future, and the reasons why no one else had ever deserved me like he did.

Yet I never wavered from the fact that I did not want to date him.

No, I had repeatedly told him that I was not ready to date so quickly after my husband's departure, and that I was only looking for a friendship. And while I remained firm on my end, I could tell that to him, we just weren’t there “yet.”