I know that every time I sign in here I have to write how surprised I am that it has been so long since last time.  :)  And I will do it again!  WOW it has been over two years since I wrote!

I'm in Midwifery school now.  I finished my Biology degree at UW and then had a year off of school because I didn't get into Bastyr on my first attempt.  But I got in the second time around.  I am just starting my second quarter and it is awesome!  I am really looking forward to becoming a midwife.  Terrified of course. But excited. 

Melinda and I bought a house this past year in Seattle.  Well just south of Seattle, I guess but it has a Seattle address.  It is an old 1928 house with great moldings and a big yard.  It is pretty much exactly what we were looking forward.

My relationship with Melinda continues to be good.  We have some down moments because, well, life happens, but overall I think we are pretty happy.  She is wonderfully supportive of my schooling and of me as a person.  I feel that she has helped me grow as a person.  Not in that she has taught me about myself but she has really supported me in a non-judgmental way as I grow and learn and make mistakes.  Having her is so invaluable.

We got legally married last month as well!  I always knew that it would be legal eventually but there it is.  We got married on the first possible day in the state.  It was a great day!

The kids continue to grow Kathrynn will be in highschool next year which floors me every time I think of it.  She has had 3 different guy friends confess feelings for her in the last six months so she is navigating how to turn them down but keep them as friends.  I am no help in this area!

Aiden will be in Middle school next year.  He has been home sick for the last week with a fever.  I think it might partially be schoolitis.  He's having trouble making friends at his new school since we moved to our new house.  I worry about him.  He's taller than all of us now, with a little bit of dark peach fuzz on his upper lip.  It is hard to believe he was once my sweet little baby.  He would still like to be.  He still wants to snuggle up on my lap sometimes. 

Simon is 3 now.  He's a little turd sometimes.  But he's also very smart.  He calls me Mama and Melinda is Nana.  His dad Luke also lives with us.  He is a very well loved child.

My mom passed away in November.  She had struggled with cancer for many years and it finally won.  I feel like she went peacefully.  I have mostly been at peace with her passing.  I cry about it a little almost daily but it doesn't feel like a negative thing to do.  I miss her.  But I know she is OK.

It has been a busy year.  It has been an even busier almost three years since I last wrote.

No resolutions this year.  Except to keep on keeping on.  Oh and I'm experimenting with being a vegetarian.

It amazes me to write 2010. Very sci-fi.

This year has been a whirlwind. And of course since I haven't blogged at all anyone reading this will be shocked by all that has happened. LOL

So for my sake more than anyone elses...

In 2009 I met my soul mate. I met her, married her, and now we have a baby baby Simon born just 11 days ago. Busy year.
I feel I have settled into Seattle and have committed myself to living here for at least the next 10 years. It is better than I ever expected it to be and I feel like a whole new person here.

I have completed more than a full year at the University of Washington which floors me every time I think of it. It's more than I ever thought I could really accomplish. My grades aren't as good as I would like but I'm here and I'm staying.

My life is great. Couldn't ask for anything better. It is all a far far cry from what I ever expected it to be right now but it is just about perfect.

I want to make a new years resolution this year. It seems I make them every two years so I am due. So I think this year it is to work harder. There's a lot of hard work ahead between school and babies and arranging my life in a way that I want it. It's going to take a lot of hard work. A lot of good hard work. I think I'm up for it. At least I hope so because here it comes. Ready or not.

So far this is working out to be my best quarter at UW yet. I finally made it into Biology after having to take Chemistry an obscene number of times. I love Biology! I love the class, I adore the teacher, the only downside is my lab partner. I think this is the first time ever that I have REALLY not liked my lab partner. I daydream about her dropping the class.. :)

I'm also taking a plant identification class. It's cool. Not as much fun as Biology but certainly doable. And then there is Latin. Well, Latin and Greek in Modern Usage. It's not that it's bad. It's actually interesting. But I feel very unmotivated to do the work or really to even go. It doesn't help that this is the only one of my classes I have skipped this quarter. And that makes me never want to go back. I skipped it for a good reason though. Melinda. :)

I am now in love with Melinda. LOL I fell, I jumped or whatever it took and now here I am up to my armpits in it. :) Possibly deeper. Melinda is amazing. It's so nice to be dating a girl who is sane. We're almost six months into this and it just seems to be getting better all of the time. The truth is she is my safe place. A place I can go where I don't feel judged at all, where I can be totally honest about anything and know that it's OK. I'm even starting to trust that she is honest with me. It feels wonderful!

We've been careful not to make any plans together. Nothing farther in advance of a few weeks. We've both been hurt in the past and we know that relationships often don't turn out as planned. But recently we have been making plans and sharing dreams and going together on little flights of fantasy. I love those. :)

As a result of this relationship I decided to come out to my dad. I came out to my mom when I was dating Sara and I came out to my sister when I was dating Diana. I've put off coming out to my dad in part because I really had no idea how he would react and in part because both my mom and my sister told me I shouldn't come out to my dad when I came out to them. I knoew he would be disappointed in me which is something I don't really like to cause but I had no idea how that disappointemnt would play out. Last weekend I finally got up the nerve. I told him I was dating someone (which he was delighted about) and then I told him it was a woman (which he was far less delighted about). He seemed to come up with a bunch of reasons against it. I think he was processing. He told me:

-My generation just doesn't approve of such things. I know now everyone is doing it or whatever but I just don't approve. (I can accept that)
-I was in the Navy! In the Navy things like that are not allowed. (Good thng I'm not in the Navy!)
-I hear once you've eaten camel you will never go back. (This was mortifying to hear from my DAD!)
-All the women I've heard of who decided they were lesbians after getting divorced then later decided to go back to men and no man wanted them. (Really? This has not been my experience. I didn't elaborate on bisexuality or how so many men think that is hot)
-I guess it would be worse if you were a man. (Yes, certainly, glad I'm not a man.)
-I can handle the friendship part it's the sex that bothers me. (I promise never to ever have sex in front of my dad with ANYONE!)
-So I guess your kids will never have a father. (Actually they have a father, they may never have a stepfather thought this is true).
-I saw so-in-so's girlfriend and I just about died. She was scarey! (Melinda is SO NOT scarey.)

There were other rebuttles. I can't remember them all. These were my favorites. He didn't yell though which made me happy and he didn't disown me or have a heart attack. I asked if he still loved me and he said yes. :) The next morning when I was leaving to come back to Seattle he asked that the next time I have big news like this I not tell him right before bed beause he couldn't sleep. If that is the worst that comes of it I think we will be OK.

My dad was my last hurdle. When I've hidden the fact of my queerness it was out of concern for my dad or him finding out from someone else. Now that he knows I feel like I can tell anyone and not worry about it at all. It's a fantastic feeling.

Life is good.

It's June, it's JUNE!! :) My birthmonth, and really I think my favorite month of all. It's freaking hot though. I really thought it didn't get hot like this in Seattle. Kinda like the cold I didn't think we would be getting in winter... Hmmm, boy was I wrong!

So June, month of my birth. Also the month for replacing car tabs and this year getting an emissions check (for the first time!), and beginning summer break and, eating ice cream, and traveling to Richland and becoming briefly childless and Father's day and falling in love... maybe.

Well if I were capable of falling in love that is. I'm not really though. I think I'm too cautious. I can't fall. I can jump. I can hop and skip or tiptoe. But I can't fall. I can't do it without intention and a conscious decision. Maybe that takes the fun out of it. I think as a mom though I must be cautious of falling in all of it's varied forms. Even if the end result of falling in love is warm and soft and cozy not broken bones and concussions. Falling is still scary.

but what do you call it when you're perched on the edge and you really have no choice left but to go over it? Can that be anything other than falling? Can it still be jumping? Guess we'll see. :)

It's amazing to me how quickly a new city can become home. I have lived in apartments for over a year and not felt like it was home. but I feel like Seattle is home. The place I always needed to come and be but just never made it, until now. It's good to be home. :)

I'm dating. Which makes me laugh because I'm not supposed to be dating while I'm in school. That was my plan. It got boring though. :) So I am dating. I'm dating a lovely woman named Melinda who I met for the first time on Valentine's day. She is wonderful really. No drama, no trauma. Just a sweety. Well, so far. LOL

I'm doing ok in school. By ok I mean I'm passing all my humanities classes and not doing so hot in my science courses. This wouldn't be the end of the world really if I weren't hoping to be a Biology Major! next quarter I will work harder. I honestly don't have much choice on that one.

The kids are doing pretty good. Kathrynn has a slew of friends and she's playing the flute and in Drama class. Aiden is mosly engrossed in Halo right now. He has made one good friend Gavin who is the sone of a great new friend of mine named Nicole. We hang out with them a lot.

This quarter is almost over and I can't wait for spring break!

It seems so odd that I've lived in Seattle for four months now. Odd in both ways. On the one hand this was a huge move for me. The biggest of my life (well except for moving from California but I was nine months old so it didn't really faze me). Four months seems like a long time to have lived in this new city and to have not bothered to write and reflect. I guess I wanted to have something important to say. But four months on the other hand seems a little unbelievable because honestly, I feel like I've always lived here. I really expected that moving this far to a completely new city would shake me more. I expected a HUGE adjustment. But it hasn't really been like that.

The lifestyle here IS completely different from the Tri-Cities. But the kids and I are adjusting well. I was going to write that we were the same people and extrapolate that somehow that was why things weren't so weird. But I don't even know that that is true. We're kinda not the same people. It's been incredibly liberating to live 4 hours from my family.

And there are a lot of squirrels.

This is one of the first things that totally shocked me about Seattle. Somewhere in the back of my mind I expected things to be either the same as the TC or less. And the squirrels sort of sum that up. If I hadn't seen squirrels it wouldn't have surprised me. I didn't come looking for squirrels. Somewhere in my brain squirrels and big cities don't go together. If I had seen the same number of squirrels I probably wouldn't have noticed either. But the fact that there are TONS of squirrels everywhere stands out. And they are endlessly amusing. I'm always stopping at school to watch their antics.

There are also crows. Lots of crows. I'm not so fond of the crows. What there aren't is 'seagulls'. The ring billed gulls which I grew up calling seagulls in the TC aren't here. I've seen one. There are gulls here. Bigger ones that seem almost twice the size of what I'm used to. But we don't really see much of them and they aren't the scavenging menace of the seagulls back home.

I've noticed other things here besides the wildlife. Like garbage cans. Back home if you want to throw something away you throw it away. In the garbage can. If it's an area with a lot of paper waste there may also be a recycling bag. But here there are easily 6 options. There's mixed paper, aluminum, plastic, glass, composting, and waste. At LEAST! The other day at school I saw one where someone had cleverly rearranged and altered the letter so it read SEX TAPES! But I don't think that's standard. :)

Schools here are very different. Because Seattle lets you choose any school in Seattle that has room (and having room is a huge issue) it's one of the first things people want to know about the kids if they hear you have them. And the schools are underfunded and overcrowded and in some ways just plain weird. It would have never occurred to me to ask if a school had an art class or music class or a librarian. I thought these were pretty damn standard. But they're not. PE is. It's required. But for instance Aiden's school had PE every day. And it's their only special. They can't afford a music or art teacher. Meanwhile Kathrynn's school (yes they go to different ones because of space issues) has all of these things and she's playing the flute in band and in afterschool drama. It's a little baffling. And there are umpteen private schools which I don't have to worry about at all because I'm too poor to even consider them. Aiden's school is on the chopping block and there's a good chance it will close next year.

It snowed yesterday. Even though people had assured me it doesn't really snow in December.

I stand in the sunshine when I can find it. But I don't really miss it when I can't.

My apartment is insanely cold even though the thermastat insists it's 70.

And electricity is REALLY cheap! Like $45 a month when I was running the AC constantly.

I take the bus a lot.

I've made more friends than I expected to.

School is hard and I don't have any friends there.

So, all in all I'm amazed it's working out as well as it is. And at the same time if feels perfectly normal like I've always lived here.

Life is good.

On Mary Ellen's recommendation (at least I hope it was a recommendation, reading it again I could see how maybe it wasn't, but I think it was) I read Eat, Pray, Love. It was fabulous I thought. Not exactly life changing, but relevant for sure, and mind opening at least.

If only I had the money to travel the world for a year. Oh, yes and the ability to pause my children. LOL

It is interesting that she recommended it though because I find that books come into my life as they are needed. I'm really not a big reader. I'm not the type who always needs to be reading something or who keeps a list of things I want to read. It's rare that I actually long to read. And I tend not to research books before reading them either. They just sort of show up either recommended to me as this one was or by complete chance like The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life (the last book I was engrossed in, which I randomly picked up for 99 cents at Hastings).

And yet they always seem to be completely relevant. The answer to a prayer that I never prayed. LOL

Interestingly also I've reached a point where I have been doing a lot of 'spiritual seeking'. That would be one thing these last two books have had in common. They are geared toward those of use who are seeking to make sense of it all. Which Mary Ellen didn't know when she recommended the book. Which makes it kinda extra neat.

What did I take from this book in relation to why it was recommended? That there is nothing at all wrong with accepting at least two solid years of singleness. At least as long as I'm also willing to accept that it might not happen. Which I always have been.

As much as I'm learning over and over NOT to trust people, lovers specifically, I'm learning more and more that it is OK to trust the universe. To put what I WANT out there and to hope, and even expect that it will work out the way I want it or better. The or better is important.
I don't think I'm a naive person. I actually see myself as pretty damn jaded but with that comes a realization that whatever happens, if I make the best of it, it's the best thing that can happen.

When I applied at UW I knew from the moment I applied it was pretty much out of my hands. I had worked hard, I had written the best essay I could. I'd mailed it in on time and all I was able to do at that point was visualize what I wanted and trust that it would all work out. The funny thing was I got accepted. That wasn't how it was supposed to work out when I applied. When I applied, moving to Seattle and going to UW was my backup plan. When I sent off that application my heart was sure that the best thing for me was that I NOT get accepted which would have freed me up to move to Oregon and be with Sara, guilt free. But it didn't happen that way.

Once I was accepted I had to let everything else fall in place. I have always maintained that going to UW might still not be the right thing to do. But if that was the case then something would happen to prevent it. People close to me have stared at me as though I were crazy when, in reference to paying for school, and juggling child care and having a place to live, I have said with a great letting-it-wash-over-me gesture "It will all just work out".

I had no legitimate reason to trust that it would all work out. This is a big school in a big city where none of my family lives to function as the safety net I'm SO used to. But part of me is growing to trust the universe that let me get accepted into the college I needed to go to even though my heart wasn't in it when I applied. But at the same time I know that had I NOT been accepted something better would have come along.

I just seems to be falling into place. The money is there. The perfect school for my children doesn't even have a waiting list this year. And just the other day I was offered a 3 bedroom apartment in the family housing which was my last big concern that I was blowing off.

At the same time I feel I have more friends in Seattle already than I do here. And my family here most days is just barely tolerable.

All this feels like all signs point to YES.

I've always wanted to move to Seattle. Always. Since I was 11 and my class went there on a field trip. And for the first time in my life I feel like I actually can. I can and it makes perfect sense.

It's taken 20 years!

I went back tonight and read a lot of old posts in this blog. In a way I was trying to pin down exactly when my marriage went to hell. I can't. Obviously it was stewing for a long time. It's easiest to say that the affair was the catalyst that eventually ruined it all. But that predates this blog so it's hard to tell. I have another more private blog that I was keeping from before the affair and the posts there are actually remarkably simular to most of what you find here. In fact some of my most depressed and depressing posts in it are right before the affair.

I think my reoccurring problem in relationships (and not just romantic ones) is that I have the real relationship and then in my head I have one or more imaginary relationships with this same person which are varying degrees of better or worse than reality.

I know that early on in my marriage it was these phantom relationships that both made me see bad thing in our marriage that weren't really there and allowed me to overlook real problems that could have possibly been dealt with earlier. I guess ultimately I think my marriage could have been saved. I'm not saying it SHOULD have been. Or that I regret how things have turned out. Only that I think if I, personally, had had a firmer grip on reality we might have been saved a lot of trouble.

And then I did the same thing so many years later with Sara. I let the phantom relationships get in the way of reality.

I know this is a habit I have. I recognize it now. And I don't want to keep reenacting this same scenario over and over. Which is why I have decided to remain single. Basically just to give myself permission to not NEED to be in a relationship so badly that I invent one. I really need to get to a point where I can accept the reality of what IS as opposed to what might be or what I want or what some childhood demon thinks of the situation.

I'm not saying I want to be alone forever. I don't. But I know that I have a problem with dependency in a relationship so I want to learn to be independent. I know a big issue in my marriage was money so I want to be able to support myself and manage my own finances. I see this as a time to build skills that will hopefully make any relationship I get into later stronger. I think that is a perfectly honorable use of my time and energy.