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.