4 - Hoppy Easter

4/12/09

Easter Sunday deserves a quick time to reflect, to be thankful for all I have and wish blessings to all my family and friends! If you are enjoying this day, hugs to you. If times have been tough, may good things begin today - you are NOT alone. The purple flower is from the front of my house. I took it this morning, a sure sign of new beginnings, happy things, fresh starts!



MyStupidSecondDivorce took a backseat to family and friends today. I enjoyed both immensely, including some community and a wholelottafood! EGADS! I need to learn to make LESS and not worry about running out. I am an awful cook, but ham and fixin's are fairly basic and no one went home doubled over, so I think Im good to go! Now, if my hind end would quit growing....lets just say its wide AND flat these days!

I think on this religious holiday people often look for signs, signs of the coming warm months, signs of change, of hope - like my purple landscaping flower. I think early in my first divorce I did the same. Near the end of the crying and fighting and dividing of the whogetswhat nonsense, DH1 suggested to me that I might need to find a place to live, a new home for my HS-age daughter and I. Hhhhhmmmm. Interesting, since I had spent the last 20 years being a SAHM, working mostly parttime to keep within our tax bracket while raising the kids and running our home. Now I had to consider shelter? Sheesh! Who the heck was going to give me a loan, let alone how would I come up with a down payment on a home on my own as I was giving DH1 everything in the divorce. Remember when you were a kid and pulled a funny face or crossed your eyes and dear old mom warned you if you kept it up that your face would stay that way? Well, that warning came back to haunt me right then as during this time I thought "the big ugly cry" would adorn my next drivers license headshot. You know, the mouth open wide, eyes squeezed shut, snot-running, gutteral moan cry that physically hurts? Yup, that one was happening pretty often.

So, on a Sunday while raking leaves in my ugliest orange hoodie with my daughter asleep in the house not feeling well, I threw "the big ugly cry" on my mug, this time attached to the whoaisme self-pity party, and hopped in my car and drove, drove to a few nearby small towns (no way did I want to live HERE anymore) and blindly scoured the new affordable residential subdivisions looking for my "dream" (cheap) home. I looked and looked most of the day until I found just one I thought may fall in my price range. (It was small and plain and poorly located - a perfect fit for a broke, newly divorced, part-time employed, deer-in-the-headlights worrier.) So, I took the number and website off the sign with just a glimmer of hope, a small sign that maybe, just maybe I would not soon live in a tent and headed home to look up info on this ugly shack. I did just that, only to find that the realtor of the house was the sister of my unbeknownst-to-me-soon-to-be DH2. WHAT? I had dated DH2 for a while in HS and so knew his sister well. Was it a sign? Was it fate? Oh my gosh - HOPE!!!! So, I shot a quick, innocent email to her that night, giving no information on me, just that my situation was changing with the kids almost out of the house, asking if I could see this house when it was convenient for her...blahblahblah. By 10:30 AM the next morning, my house phone rang. With the help of caller ID, even before I answered I knew I was saying hello to a chain of events that lead to hope, just a glimmer, but infinitely more hope than I had had the day before. My long-distance tie to my freshman-year-in-HS crush was initiated. A sign, fate (as most who heard this story called it - romantic twits!), whatever it was had appeared: My lifeline.....

TODAY:
This morning was busy with a much anticipated church service, then cooking, baking, entertaining, touching base with family and friends, enjoying the day, enjoying the Masters, enjoying life. Sigh.

Mood: Calm, good.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
People, BE KIND! If you are reading this, I mean you. Just, please, be kind...