We met for dinner on Tuesday night. I got to the restaurant about five minutes early and he was already there. When I approached the table, he didn’t stand to greet me. And the first couple of minutes were awkward. I felt like he was oddly defensive. Sure, we were meeting because I asked him why did he cheat on me, but to have been the cheater in the situation, I felt like his defensiveness was out of place.

We caught up on the easy things first: his dog, his mom, and his beehives. Then, we got into it. He thought that I had sent text messages to the other women outing him. I assured him I had not. I don’t think he believed me, but the truth is I didn’t do it. I really don’t know what he was talking about.

I still don’t believe 95% of what he says. When I asked him, why was I not enough for him, he used it to tell me why he thought we weren’t a good match. He listed our political differences first and then the fact that I had money and he doesn’t as another reason. Besides the fact that was not what I had asked, I thought it was interesting that he brought up those two points as the reasons why we were no longer together.

The longer we sat there, the more I realized how sad of a person he is —he really has no one. He’s alienated everyone in his life except for one high school friend, and one beekeeper friend. He doesn’t speak to his son and hasn’t even met his grandchildren. Since he doesn’t work, he has nothing to do during the days.

We were cordial and he apologized several times for cheating on me. He claims he was trying to disentangle himself from the other women to just be with me. I’m surprised he couldn’t hear the laughter inside my head at that. He paid for dinner and I didn’t offer. We walked out of the restaurant together and hugged. He said something vague like “let me know if you ever wanna get together.” It struck me odd that he would say something like that, but it was an awkward situation and I wondered if it was a filler comment.

The next day, it crossed my mind to text him thank you for the dinner, but I thought better of it and did not.

This morning I got a text from him at 7:20 asking what did I like to get at my favorite breakfast place here in town. (Remember, he lives 45 minutes away.) I didn’t see the text when it came in because I was getting ready to go to the gynecologist’s office for an 8am appointment. By the time I saw the text, I was at the doctor’s office and he had texted me a picture of the front of the restaurant and said that what he had gotten was good and that had I gotten up earlier, maybe I could’ve joined him.

I think he’s bored and I think he thinks that my contacting him again was an effort to start something up again. Sitting in front of him on Tuesday night, I realized I didn’t have any feelings for him anymore. Add to that, I don’t trust him and it would take a hell of a lot of verification that I don’t think he’s willing to do for me to even consider hanging out with him again.

John and I had both been cheaters in previous relationships. The way we started to trust each other was that we each had access to the other person’s emails and phone at any given time. I think Hank is squirrelly enough that he wouldn’t ever want that amount of access to his personal stuff.

All in all, I didn’t get exactly what I wanted from meeting him again, but I wasn’t completely disappointed either. The reason I cheated on Lee, my first husband, was that I was bored, and I knew that there was something more out there. I took that mindset and thought that Hank would have a reason why he cheated on me, but I think it’s just that he wanted the attention and love and affection and didn’t know any other way to get it. He’s just a sad little man.

I’m getting ready for a busy 2 weeks with me being on the road 14 out of 16 days and then we’re into April with the weekends full of pre-wedding activities (my nephew) and Easter.

Got a hitch mounted on my car last week so I can carry my bike to some local trails. The bike is in the shop now and I pick it up tomorrow.

I’ve lost somewhere around 20-25 pounds. Since I didn’t own a scale, it’s hard to know where I started. A friend was doing the 200 calories every hour thing and I tried it. It mostly seems to be working. And I still work with a personal trainer 2 times a week, but I did take the contract down to 30 minutes with her and 30 minutes on my own doing cardio. As my knees get stronger, I’ll do more.

I have a consult for my other knee for possible meniscus tear on 3/31. An MRI will tell us definitively and I’ll know more about whether I’ll go the surgery route or not.

A new (since I moved here) close friend was diagnosed with cancer a couple of weeks ago. I vacillate between having PTSD and trying to be there for him. Right after the diagnosis, I visited everyday. He went to UNC today and he was cryptic in his text tonight on how severe it is. Interesting enough, it’s a HPV+ cancer… HPV was never mentioned growing up and I guess I’m lucky to have never gotten it or cleared it already. (The std tests last fall showed I am clear of everything.) I see profiles on the dating site sometimes when a guy will say he is HPV+… interesting that he would admit to it in a dating profile. My friend is a gay man and he’s done his fair share of seething about which partner may have infected him.

Speaking of dating, 2025 is not my year. I’ve been stood up, had dates and not been called back, and plain told by a couple of guys after the first date that they were not interested. And despite having subscriptions to three dating sites, I gave them up for Lent, mostly to see if my mental health improves by stepping away. I feel like I’ve cried over men more in 2025 than I have in my entire life. Are there any nunneries hiring?

Call me Elvis. I’m up at night and sleep during the day.

Ozempic has been largely a fail. I titrated up to .5 mg over 3 or 4 weeks and was SICK AS A DOG for 2.5 weeks. Weak as dishwater, nauseated to the point of not wanting to crawl out of bed, and diarrhea like I’ve never seen. I tried .25 mg again last week and the nausea has been lower but I just don’t feel good. I see that doc again next week.

On the other hand, I did see a doctor about upping my depression meds. I’ve been on Effexor since 2018 or so for a female hormonal imbalance and the more recent feelings of sadness and hopelessness have not gotten better.

I finally got in for the very expensive breast MRI and although the lump or whatever is benign, they found gall stones. The ever helpful surgeon’s office who originally said she could operate or I could go for the breast MRI called 2 weeks after the MRI and told me the results (that I had already downloaded from the imaging center) and (non) helpfully offered to schedule me for a gall stone removal surgery for the fall. Ummmmm…. No thanks. I think I’ll wait until I’m employed.

And Mama Menopause is fucking with me again. A brief period in September 2022, then nothing until February 2023. Then, 2 Saturdays ago, hello blood flow from no where! It’s been a trickle for the 2 weeks and then yesterday and today, it has been a firehose. Night sweats continue with no rhyme or reason when they happen… not tied to diet, temperature of room, outside temps, nothing. And I have this weird sour smelling odor on my upper body that I’ve finally been able to stop by showering in Hibiclens once a week.

Ok, so what’s good?

My plants are doing ok.

I’ve got a decent tan.

I’m taking advantage of streaming services and enjoying shit on tv.

I like my new vacuum cleaner.

Mercifully, my air condition works.

That’s all for now. Just restless and ill and out of sorts.

I never wanted kids. Being the baby in a small family, I wasn't exposed to children and I grew up in a world surrounded by adults. As a teenager in a small town, the only real way to make any money was to babysit and I did so begrudgingly. I hated entertaining little people until bedtime or naptime and I felt like the hours before the golden hour of when they would sleep were endless torture. When I started dating my first husband, Lee, I made it clear I did not want kids. Somehow, the fact I wanted an abortion when I found myself pregnant was morally repugnant to him. Nevermind it was pre-marital sex that got us in that pickle!

Somewhere along the way, I came up with the fantastical notion that I wanted to adopt a child when they were 18, given them my name, send them to college, and call them my own. No diapers, runny noses, skinned knees, puberty behavior, or temper tantrums. Sure, it was expensive to send a practical stranger to college, but when did I not spend money?

When I met John, he was the first man I dated who had a child I'd have to meet and interact with. It scared me and it was a source of worry for a while. Ironically, she was 18 at the time and in her first month of her freshman year at college. Her name was Sarah and the fears I had of her being fiercely protective of her father and distrustful of me disappeared the Saturday I met her. She was wonderfully open and welcoming of me. At some point during that first meeting (which was about to weeks after we first started dating), she asked him if I was someone special and he told her I was!

In those early years, Sarah was a lot like I had been and I made the mistake of thinking she'd be like me as she grew. Parents may make this same mistake-- I don't know-- but it has been the source of my greatest frustration until I realized she will be who she is to be. She was shy and awkward. She tended toward the arts. She liked painting and drawing. She liked to travel. She was a big girl and had brown hair the color mine used to be. We would go for pedicures together and the techs would ask if we were mother and daughter. I would be secretly proud of the comment until she would tell them no.

Ah, yes, she still had a mother... John's first wife, Kate. And before I got too carried away with any ideas that Sarah would ever be mine, John would subtly remind me when he'd talk about "his" daughter. As time went on, Sarah and I did things together and I helped to pay her way through undergrad and grad school. I put the bulk of a down payment down on he first new car. She'd call me for advice, whispered secrets to me, and told me things she did not want her dad to know. But always, he'd say "my" daughter.

Sure, I missed the first 18 years of her life, but I've been a steady part of her next 14 years... and more, God willing.

Moving to Morehead after John died has me meeting more people. It's been lonely realizing that all of my direct blood relatives have passed away and I'm the last of the Mohicans. And a question that often pops up is "do you have any children?" At first, I'd say no, but then I realized a fact: I have a daughter. She is my beneficiary in my will. She is the one I think of all the time. She is my connection to John. She loves me and calls me her bonus mom now. And dammit, I have a daughter!

OK, I have to rant and there's no where else I can do this.

I met this nice fellow week before last when I hired a shipper to get a sofa and ottoman from Richmond to NC. He flirted, it was flattering, so I texted with him. This went on over a week until Monday when he was home and bored and wanted to sext.

Ummm, no. If I could talk dirty, I would not be in the field I'm in now. I'd be a rich romance novelist churning out books. And this is NOT where I thought this was going. In fact, I had not even thought about where this was going because there was no "this."

This comes on the heels of someone else on Sunday... he had texted me a week or so ago. He had been a friend of John's when John and I first met, but they had lost touch. He originally texted to say he was sorry to hear about John. I thanked him and didn't chat much because I don't know him. He'd send random funnies and jokes. Then on Sunday, he texted and said he had always had a crush on me and was horny. He said he was touching himself and wanted to know what I thought about it. Jesus Fucking Christ, man. Really? I gave it to him with both barrels.

I think I have a new rule: no texting with men. You want to talk to me? Fine. Pick up the phone, say what you want to say, and that's it.

A co-worker wears this really cool skirt that's really a black tennis skort. She looks very summery while still being business casual. A couple of years back, I asked her where she got them and she said they were Nike tennis skorts. Knowing Nike apparel runs small, I thanked her and never pursued it. Last week, she visited me in my office and told me that since she had gained weight, she could no longer wear the Nike skort and that she had found one at Lane Bryant. "COOLIO!" I said and promptly ordered one for me. I chose the free shipping option where they ship the item to the local store. Over the weekend, they notified me that it was in.

Yesterday was my birthday and I took the day off from work.  It was a ME day. And so somewhere around late morning, I toodled over to Kingstowne to pick up my skort. I pulled into the parking lot and spied a car coming out of a space. I lined up my car in the row and waited for her to maneuver her land barge out of the space. As soon as she cleared the space, this little black Infinity came around the opposite corner and pulled into the space. Ooooooo this burned my butt. I pulled around to the other side and parked a few spaces further down. I had to walk past her car to get to the store and when I did, I noticed she was still sitting in the car with the engine on and texting. As I passed by her window, I said, "Well that was a bitch thing to do!" and kept walking.

So I go inside and wait at the counter. I give my name and it takes a while for the sales girl to get my package. Once I sign for it, I asked if I could try it on in the dressing room. She said sure and helped me find a dressing room. Now I'm doing all this at a leisurely pace. I get the skort on, it looks decent and I wonder if they have any cute tops to go with it so I head back out to the sales floor with the skort on.

I slowly make my way to the front corner of the store when this large woman blocks my path and says, "Did you call me a bitch?" I'm taken aback, having mostly forgotten about it since it had been at least 10 minutes prior and being a little shocked at having someone acost me. I figured out pretty quickly who she was and I said, "Why yes, I did." You stole my parking place that I had been waiting for." She said she had seen the woman pull out of the spot and pulled around to get it. I replied that I had been waiting for her to pull out. She quickly came back to the bitch comment. "You don't call me a bitch," her voice was getting louder. She also inched forward to intimidate me. She was striking distance. So I called her on it. I asked if she was going to hit me.

And you know what comes out of her mouth next??? The pulled the god damned race card. She yelled "You only said that because I'm BLACK!"

Again, I was shocked. And I don't do well on my feet. My lame ass response was  "No, I said that because you are too close to me."

OMG, a thousand other responses came to my head afterward....

Like "No, I said it because you're FAT!" was my favorite because after all, with the ridiculous nature of her question, I later thought she should have received an equally ridiculous response because we're both fat and both standing in the fat woman's mecca.

But back to the altercation. She continued on the earlier route of "You don't call me a btich!"

Meanwhile, I'm still walking around the store, trying to get away from her AND trying to look as if I'm still browsing the clothes and that she's not intimidating the hell out of me. I turn around each time she says this and tell her that first of all, I didn't call her a bitch... what I said was she did a bitch thing and 2nd of all, I really can call her whatever the hell I want because she did a rude thing that was inexcusable.

She FINALLY walked off, still yelling that I can't call her a bitch and as she left the store, she said something to the sales girl who was straightening clothes near the front door. She left the store and I went to the front window to see if she was headed to my car to do some damage to it in some way. She had walked the other way though.

The sales girl asked if we were old rivals or something. I replied that no, she had swiped my parking space, I had called her a bitch for it and she had stalked me into the store to verbally assault me.

By the time I got back into my clothes and left the store, she was gone from her spot and my car was scratch-free and my tires appeared to not have been touched.

It was a weird situation, but what pissed me off most of all was the race card. I was mad at her for what she did to me not because of the color of her skin. I would have called it a bitch move had she been any color of the rainbow. I told John later and he said that as white people, we are conditioned to not say anything about race. That she thought it was all about race may be her conditioning to believe that it is all about the color of her skin. Because of this and what happened to me at my company under my previous manager, I truly believe that the Civil War is not just being held on to by white supremacists like my brother though they're the ones who mainly get blamed for carrying on bigotry. Some black people cannot let it go either, forever thinking it's the white man (or in this case, woman) always trying to keep them down. And GOD, I hate that just as much as I despise my brother's bigotry.

Today after work, I take back the unused portions of Clyde's food and un-opened meds to the vet. Norman has been grieving more than I thought a little dog could grieve. Last night, John and I Skyped for a while and every time John called out to Norman, Norman would ignore the computer and run to the door. It was sad. He's still not eating very well and his tail hardly wags, even when I try to engage him in play.
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I'm not sure why people bitch about fact the storm was not as bad as they predicted. I know a lot of money and science has gone into weather prediction, but Mother Nature is still Mother Nature. (I still remember the Chiffon margarine commercials where the spokesperson would say, "You cannot fool Mother Nature.") So I had a day at home. So VRE didn't run and the train tracks that run parallel beside my neighborhood were silent. So the area slowed down a little bit and had a chance to breathe. I'm sick of people saying that meteorologists are Chicken Littles. Fuck you for claiming to be perfect in what you do for a living.
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Speaking of Mother Nature and the effects, is your arm broken or maimed to the point you cannot clean off the roof of your car?? I saw countless potential wrecks this morning from flying sheets of ice and snow on the beltway. Thoughtless people piss me off.
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I slept on my left wrist in some weird, mangled way last night and today, it feels tight and cranky. Hey-- just like me!




This post has been brought to you by the lack of caffeine.

W are lissfully happy watching tv on the couch, but during commercials, we've found this stuff we'd like to sell. It's currently up on Craigslist, but ping me if you're interested in something. You know Grandma's Xmas money is burning a hole in your pocket!

Semi dry wetsuit XXL 120

Focal 10" Car Sub Woofer 50

Oakworks Massage Table- Boss CS2 125

Softball Stuff- Asst Bats Balls, Gloves 40

Empi Pro Max Tens unit 150

Empi Epix VT Tens Unit 75

Folbot Non-folding Kayak 200

Nathan Water Bottles Quest Hydration Pack/Camelba - $30

I think next week, I'll hate it even more.

The US Open will be at Congressional CC and there are travel advisories for my route during the exact times I travel it.

Fuck you, golfers.