The Queen....of my ...Apartment

I guess when I left off, I was trying to catch up on the past 2 years. Most of it is pretty run of the mill, change of life divorce stuff that I guess every woman who has ever been in this position goes through. I learned to budget, find money for emergencies, get help when my tire was flat and my grandson was in the back-seat, haggle with credit card companies and be the true queen and only resident of my new castle.
After living with my daughter, son-in-law and perfect grandson for a couple months, I moved into a friend's home. This was a bit more like what I figured the soon to be divorced woman's life should be...except, I really did not have a place to call "my own". I lived above her kitchen and had a bathroom and a closet downstairs. I could use the kitchen, living room and any other room I wanted to...but it was not mine. When school was out, I traveled a month then moved in to the first apartment I have ever lived in ...in my life! My sons packed the U-Haul, muttering the whole time that everything would NEVER fit...but it did. My oldest daughter asked me where I got the new-found "decorating gene" that was missing for her entire life in our old house. I had apparently aquired it as a by product of the divorce.....and I settled in to life in a calm, charming...uncluttered place. Free of bankers boxes, overflowing attics, noise and human contact.
For a while, I had a sweet little yap yap that I named Cleopatra...as she was the obvious queen of the place. My guilt feelings, however, lead me to give her and her hundreds of dollars of doggie parafanalia away to a sweet college girl who needed a companion. I was alone...but was never home and I hated making the dog suffer for my life-style.
By the time my 50th birthday rolled around, I was settled, digging my new digs...and trying to figure out when these huge life changes were going to stop happening....
The kids went to the beach with their dad and to the mountains with me and we figured ...how hard can this be? Birthdays were celebrated in my little apartment as one by one each child got a year older and more settled with this family shake-up.
The days of that year have waxed and waned...I am truly now the queen of....my apartment. The closets are beginning to look like I live here...not some strange woman from planet "neat" and as hard as it still is to believe..Home is now....here.

The Not-So-Perfect Storm

Today is July 19, 2010. I found my blog and as I sit reading, I can hardly stop the tears. Amazing how prophetic the last entry was. Two months after it was written, my husband of almost 26 years asked for a divorce. It was not a surprise...in fact, we both knew it was coming...but no matter how prepared you are, it is still a huge ....adjustment. A storm....with loud thunder and scary lightning. At 49....alone...starting over....with a big empty house of bankers boxes and photographs asking me "what now?" I had 5 kids (including my precious son-in-law) and a grandson that now had to learn to divide and conquer on every holiday and special occasion that came around.
The junk room still looming, was now laughing hysterically. Not only did I have to conquer it...I had to get ready to move it and everything else in the house....to a place of...my own. First things being first, I found a new job, moved 2 hours away and filed the papers...wondering the entire time....how was it that just yesterday, my biggest fear was how to clean out the junk room? How ironic was it that the woman who had such a hard time throwing away anything that contained a memory....just threw out 26 years...and could not salvage it from the junk pile?