Just imagine.  Diva is sitting in a quiet, corner booth at Catscratch Jane’s.  It’s 9:30pm on a Wednesday night.  Diva is occupying this booth solo.   This is surreal, and I started thinking, which is usually not a good thing when beer is involved.

My 1st thought is this:  I am sitting here, alone.  Am I bummed that my friends aren’t here?  Am I feeling as if my friends have deserted me for bigger and better things?  Do I feel like I am being neglected?  Am I getting bitter?  No. No. No. No. And no.

I am actually quite content with my life and the way it’s turning out. I’m glad to see all of my friends are happy, content and satisfied in where the last year has taken them.  I am totally capable of amuzing myself and having fun in the situation I find myself in.

My second thought:  Yes, I miss my friends.  But, we have a lifetime of memories made in the short span of approximately one year.  It’s not often that a group of mis-matched people come together like we did.  Every single one of us had some sort of need that this rowdy, loud bunch was filling.  Why, it was only a year ago that we all magically morphed to Catscratch Jane’s.  And dear Lord, the place wouldn’t be the same for several months.

Then something happened.  We all started to settle down.  Some of us fell in love.  Some of us found satisfaction in our careers… Regardless of what it was, we all started to find what we were looking for in life.

All of this brings me to a minor crash in self-analyzation.  I’m 100% secure to know that, although I’m sitting quietly in a corner watching the goings on around me, we all meant and still mean alot to each other.  In some cases, we’re far apart in our physical being. In some cases, we’re just right down the road.  Regardless, we are still together in soul.  Pirates deep down?  Maybe just a little… that Pirate dwells in each one of us forever.

We are really fortunate to have had the opportunity to build bonds that keep us close enough to have a quick lunch, early dinner, a cold beer, or even just a comment on MySpace.  God bless technology.

I really do love where my life is now.  But I still thank God every day that I’ve been blessed with a bounty of friends ~ near and far~ ~old and new~

Sappy, yes.  But, sometimes even Pirates can be sentimental.

The way he wakes up, always with a smile on his face.

The way he calls out my name, and reaches for me to come hold him tight.

The way he follows me, like I’m the leader,  leading him somewhere important.

The way he holds my hand, together facing this big, scary world.

The way he tries to explain to me, the things that are important in his little universe.

The way he bats his eyes at me, because he knows it melts my heart.

The way he snuggles up against me, like I am the one who can keep him safe.

The way he leads me here and there, discovering together what lies in the back yard.

The way he sits on the front porch with me, drinking tea, and watching the trucks go by.

The way he looks at his plate and then at mine when we sit down to eat. How he decides that his plate is just not good enough, and he just has to share mine instead.

The way he laughs out loud, when I nuzzle him under his chin.

The way he looks up at me with his big eyes,  knowing he’ll find reassurance that it will all be just fine.

The way he rubs his eyes and crawls up in my lap when he’s sleepy, makes me feel as safe as he feels with me.

The way he acts like a big man when he’s only a tiny boy, but he must act like his Papa no matter what.

The way he has filled my life with a special joy and happiness like I’ve never known, tears my heart down to the basics and helps me realize what true love really is.

You can tell I’m a Nana.  My grandson Tyler is two years old today.  That little boy has taught me more about life and love than any other lesson I’ve ever had.

     Isn’t that the way it always goes?

     I sat and talked with a girl for about three hours last night… She gave me a helluva ego boost when I needed it, and she’s cute as hell, too.

     Also made me realize … I gotta start taking better care of myself.

     In the immortal words of Tony Soprano:

     “Everything’s good.  What the f#&*?”

That was the question.

I was blown completely in a direction that I had never even fathomed in fall of last year.
Like many kids my age, I have found myself all grown up, family raised, divorced and running completely wild. Kind of like turning 21 again, kinda.
I was pretty content with how life was going. My kids are grown up and I can come and go as I please.

Running around with the girls… you bet.
Acting extremely silly and pirate like… wouldn’t have had it any other way.

But, then it happened. My bestest friends introduced me to the man that would forever change my being. As fate would have it, things moved along rather rapido. And BAM - the question came…

Wanna get married? Of course, it was much sweeter than that. It was a very touching a precious moment. YEP! Let’s get married. GAME ON!
This happened last October.

The holidays went by smoothly and we were still getting to know each other pretty well.
I met his family. They seemed to like me. I passed the test.

Then it was set!! June 2nd. Invitations ordered. Cake ordered. Dress ordered. Church on hold. Preacher with a Bible. You name it, it was ordered. You get the picture.

But as days went by, I started to get scared. In typical Diva fashion, I flipped out, and decided that maybe we needed time to get our ducks in a row and everything ironed out both in our personal lives (kids and whatnot) and with our life together (roof over head, combining of households… ya know).

I put my entire wedding party in a holding pattern like a jumbo jet circling La Guardia during rush hour on Monday morning in Manhattan. I have never felt such pressure or such fear and I’ve had some pretty self-induced dramatic experiences in my life.

Everybody had some sort of input. A slight few of my closest friends were very understanding and supportive and just went happily into the holding pattern.
Others decided that it didn’t need to happen and actively gave opinions over and over.

You see, planning of the wedding ceremony was all set up and in place. But the cold feet I ended up being the proud owner of got the best of me. The wedding ceremony was the easy part. After it was all planned out and ready to go, I had time to stop and think. Which in this case, turned out to be a good thing.

I started to think about how different we are. How our views on alot of things are completely in the opposite. The way we treat and raise our kids is totally ass backward from one another.

One of the biggest fears I’ve got: becoming a wicked step-mother.
His son had always been nice to me, until the plans started to come together and it was apparent to him that this was really going to happen. Silently but surely, I knew he was sabotaging it. At least in my non-rational mind I’m sure he was.

But, I found out, when I started to keep my fella at arms length due to fear and wasn’t seeing half as much of him, just how important he is to me.

In the last week of my self-promoted hiding phase, I started to really ponder on all of the little things he does just to make me smile.
**The 100 mile-round-trips he makes in the middle of the week just to say hi and give me a kiss**
**Being serenaded in front of everyone by him and his bluegrass buddies as they sing “You are My Flower” because he wants me to know how much he loves me**
**Jumping in his big ol’ truck to ride around and do nothing but look and talk**

That man loves me. He’s not trying to tame me or make me into something I’m not. He takes my bitchy and ever-so-slightly sarcastic tone with a teaspoon of sugar and loves me anyway.

I finally got enough courage to talk to him.. To tell him I’m a freak and that I was scared of what was happening. You know, face-to-face verbal communication is way under-rated.
We both had answers to all the questions that were looming. We came to agreement on alot of subject matter.

So, I guess the answer to the above question is….

TO WED. Yes.

We have decided that a fall wedding is in order and that we are going to have a
most wonderful, beautiful ever after together.

Details to follow soon. I need to pull my wedding party in from the holding pattern and in for a landing before I go and shout from the roof-tops.

     Do you ever meet people who will, at all costs, attempt to corner you and verbally attack you for no reason whatsoever?

     Most everyone tells me how easy I am to get along with, and feel that they talk to me about anything and everything because I actually listen.  They also tell me that I wear my heart on my sleeve a lot, and tend not to come asking a lot of questions when I appear to be stressed or shaken.
     I have two people in my life who go out of their way to ignore all of that.  Instead, they prefer to sit back and make verbal assaults, threaten me with violence and make sure to tell me that it’s all my fault that they are so angry.  It’s nonsense, and I have no time for it.

     Mind you, if I’m having lunch with one of them and that sort of thing starts, I’ll get up and walk out.  If they call me on the phone, I’ll hang up.  If I see them in public and wave to them and they glare at me and walk in the other direction, I’m certainly not going to chase them down.
     These actions, however, are mortal sins in their eyes.

     Two weeks ago, I was taken to lunch by one of them, and before I finished eating, the tirade started.  It was vicious, and completely one-sided.  I simply got up and walked out of the restaurant.
     This, of course, started a series of calls to my office phone and cellphone, complete with hateful, spiteful voicemails.  Apparently, getting up and walking away is “immature” and “weak,” and illustrative of what a “disgrace” I am.

     Later that night, after the walking-away-at-the-restaurant incident, she decided to physically corner me.  As I attempted to leave, she ran around me like a pack of rabid chihuahuas, spewing incessant, inflammatory ankle-biting.  The blood-lust in her eyes glowed in the dark, and the acidic venom coming from her mouth was enough to pierce my thick skin.
     Fight or flight kicked in.  I was cornered with nowhere to go, and I finally blew up and gave her the verbal bashing she needed.  Of course, that’s never the end of it, is it?  Instead, she attempted to hit me, throw things at me and scream bloody murder.
     Fortunately, while she was preoccupied trashing the place and finding something else to kick and throw, I took the opportunity to get the Hell out of there.
     I don’t need that.  Nobody needs that.

     Of course, that didn’t stop her from running and telling everyone what I said.  Nevermind the events leading up to it, or what happened after — the important thing is what I said, and nothing else matters.
     And thus, we come to party number two.  Three times in the last two weeks, he’s called and started screaming at me, prompting me to simply hang up.  I don’t have time for that, especially when I’m working.
     Yes, working, mind you.  Apparently, I’m expected to drop everything, listen to tirade after tirade of circular nonsense, one point of contention dependent on another, but when the first is debunked, the rest stand like a house of cards with the bottom level missing — something clearly impossible without zero gravity and some Elmer’s Glue.
     Hanging up, of course, meets with with an hour-long series of phone calls, complete with voice mails threatening violence, telling me how “childish” and “weak” I am… and that I’m a “disgrace.”

     I would submit that the more mature, and difficult, thing to do is to simply not give a damn what they think.
     Unfortunately, that sort of logic is lost on these two.

     The only “disgrace” is that they’re both family.
     Situations like that, you can’t win.  All you can do is walk away and hope for the best.  And somehow, I’m resigned to the fact that that’ll never happen.

     The title says it all.  But no, Beavis, I’m not talking about sex.

     Last week has made me a little gun-shy as far as tweaking around on customers’ computers.  Sure, that’s only a small ten percent of my job, anyway, but some days, I just feel like IT is a lost cause.
     The reasons I feel that way are numerous.  It isn’t just that people ask me for recommendations, pay good money for the consulting, get something entirely diferent and then ask me to support something I know nothing about — I’m great at that, and I enjoy learning at lightspeed.  Or that when I spend a great deal of time waiting on people, while they expect me to have everything done in five minutes — I usually do, or at least get things started in the right direction quickly.  Or that I have a couple of employees who quit and come back two days later with all the consistency of a well-strung yoyo — I still only pay them for the days they actually do something for me, anyway.
     No, instead I’m looking at it from a more practical perspective.

     On the average day, the only time I get to go outside is during the car ride to a client’s place and back.  Some days, I don’t get to go outside at all.
     Tuesday, for instance, after that totally fun Monday, I got to sit in the office and spend a grand total of ten hours on the phone.  Ten hours of my day talking to people, sorting out billing problems, giving advice, helping fix problems, etc. etc. etc.
     Wednesday, I went to fix an IP cam in the morning, and then returned to the place I was at Monday and screwed around a little with Merit-style machine built by a company in South Carolina.  That machine was fun — it gets hot and dies, but it’s got a funky ATX power supply which actually has a speed-sensor on the fan.  Never seen that on a power supply fan.  At 5:30, one of the guys and I left to take a look at bunch of equipment someone wanted to sell them.  The trip was a bust, but at least I got to drive through the mountains.

     Today, I messed around in the office until 3PM, and then headed back to the mountains to help a friend move a bunch of woodworking tools from a carving seminar held the weekend before last.  On the way back, I picked up a Washer and Dryer and loaded that up, too, before taking it all and dropping it where it needed to go.
     Sweaty, hot, sticky work.  And I was outside.  And I got sunburned.  Like a normal person.

     It’s been an experimental couple of weeks for me.  Doing “different” things has been wonderful.  I feel like myself again.
     But I’ve never been one of those people to say, “____ is what I do, and ____ is how I define myself.”  I’ve had a life full of doing different and exciting things, running around the world at a moment’s notice, doing sound for a band here, unlocking keys from parked cars there, re-wiring a house somewhere else, working on racecars over there, running fibre optics for a telecom somewhere else, and engineering and implementing an 800 user corporate network over there, and then working on some bar’s electronic dart machine over here.

     After getting married six years ago, all of that changed.  I started down a stagnant path, while I was in that armpit of a foreign country, mostly because they won’t let you do but one thing — they like to pigeonhole your career, your race, your sex, your nationality, and if you don’t fit into the boxes, you will sink.
     After returning to the US almost four years, I continued pigeonholing myself like that.  It is simply not good for me, and there was no cause for me to do it.

     It’s one of the cool things about growing up in the South: you learn a lot of different things from a lot of different people.  Some are hobbies, some are work, but you’re exposed to it all:  it’s being a Jack-of-All-Trades, and if you’re doing it right, you’ll still do a better job than half the “professionals” out there.
     I mean, that’s what I do.  That’s who I am.  And it’s something that’s been missing from my life for the past seven years.

     They used to say about Dream Jobs, “Find what you love to do, and do it.”
     For me, there is no Dream Job.  The variety of chasing all those hobbies is where it’s at. 

     I’ve had another thought recently, about my company, that even though I am more meticulous than the guys are, it doesn’t mean I do a better job — they’re all perfectly capable.  And I know damn well that if I let them have the flexibility to do what they want to do, the company’s gonna grow exponentially.  It’s a win-win.
     And I should knock my involvement down to one day a week doing IT.

     That gives me four other days a week to screw around chasing some potentially money-making hobbies, and two days on the weekend to go to the lake, fish and drink beer.  I’m pretty sure nobody except my immediate family knows that I actually love doing that.

     Variety … it’s where it’s at.