Riding Shot Gun Duties

While driving out to Kansas City approximately a 12 hour drive one way, it's always better to have the cops in front of you rather than behind you.With a radar detector, and having my daughter riding shotgun with binoculars in hand on the prowl for cops what a system.Construction, accidents, and holiday traffic made for a long drive, but being with my daughter made it pleasurable. A wonderful navigator and DJ. Gas was 20 cents cheaper on the road than what it costs in Colorado, really, that was a nice surprise.
We drove out for a Bar Mitzvah, what a wonderful time seeing all of the family. There were however several accidents and sad events that occured. One cousin ended up in the hospital on antibiotics and missed the Bar Mitzvah entirely, another hurt his knee, in the same immediate family I might add, and another's father had a heart attack. My mother in law was still grieving having just lost her husband a few weeks ago. Seeing her the morning that she was to fly back was very hard. She told me of her fears of going home to an empty house. My sister in law lives very close and I thank God for her and her husband. It still will be hard getting through these next few months.
While out there, I got some good pictures, so I will be busy organizing them and sharing them with everyone getting them sent out in the mail.

To Not Feel Anything

At times I would like to think that I could be forgiving....
But some things are just unforgivable. Lies, deceit, affairs etc etc. Folks tell me that I need to forgive to get through these feelings of anger. But I've come to the realization that I'm starting to not feel anything at all towards him. He seems to have told others untrue stories of how things happened, big surprise there, and if that's his way of dealing with it, it only makes me sad that some folks actually believe his shit. In the past he has acted so horrible towards me, and now while others watch he is sooo nice, saying things like, have a nice trip, making it look like he still cares, what bullshit. And even if he truly feels that he does care, fuck him, it doesn't make up for all the crap that he shoveled my way for our whole marriage.
Karma has already got his bitch girlfriend in that she broke her foot. And again he's trying to get something out of it looking into suing the restaurant. Sigh. He'll be getting his payback for his crap all too soon. Knowing this has been more than comforting.
Seeing this lying sack of shit while back in New York he seems to have been more focused in getting "stuff", rather than concerning himself with how his mother will be in the absence of her husband. Knowing that his dad drove a lexus with all the bells and whistles, making sure that his mom knows that he doesn't have a car several times twice that I heard him say. I felt like telling her how he fell asleep at the wheel and crashed several cars and only just got back his drivers license from the diversion program. It is so phony to watch him act like he cares, it drove me nuts to watch his bullshit, but I digress. He's showing himself to be a gold digger instead of a caring son, just very sad. Hopefully he will figure it out in his lifetime, but I have some serious doubts as he can be an arrogant asshole.

Life Goes On....

I just got back from New York having attended my father in law's funeral. He was a wonderful man, and we had such a good visit while he was out here for the graduation. It's hard to believe that he's really gone. He will really be missed.
He had a massive heart attack aggitated by pneumonia from a virus that he may have caught while on the plane, we'll never know.
I'm very glad that we had his 80th birthday party last January with all the family together, and then this recent family gathering with my daughter's graduation.
His wife now alone, I hope she gets stronger and learns to manage on her own. My son told me that he felt grandma would be strong just how I was. While back in New York, seeing how supportive members from her congregation were, it's as though she has a second family that will be looking in on her taking care that she has everything that she may need.
While I'm divorcing my husband, I'm not divorcing the family, I love these folks and want to continue a relationship with them. We've been family for more than 25 years. I'm looking forward to a Bar Mitzvah next weekend in Kansas City that will be a very fun time. My daughter and I will be driving out and will have a good time being together on the road trip. My son will be flying out for the weekend, so we truly will all be together.

Can You Hear Me Now?

I just got a phone call for Mother's Day from my son. What makes this all the more special, is that it was made from a submarine! I love you too honey, thanks for thinking of me. :)

Shine Shine Shine

What a fabulous week. My daughter just had her 4 graduation ceremonies this past week, and family and friends came from out of town and locally to help her celebrate this wonderful achievement.
BOOYA!
She had her more personal graduation commencement exercises from Music, Fine Arts and Japanese, plus the graduation for all of the graduating seniors at Folsom Field.
PLUS....
Her honors thesis 'Spectral Beasties', is now showing at the Fiske Planetarium and will be on permanent display for all of this summer.
She has been shining all of her life, so it has been the greatest seeing her get the acknowledgement she so well deserves.
Way to go honey :) I love you

May Day

I am very upset with how our country's leaders aren't listening to us. Allowing these very large protest marches in our country, of illegal aliens waving their Mexican flag and demanding rights here in this country has made me very angry, and it is an outrage. The cost alone in enforcing security for these marches is costing a pretty penny as well.
We need to start enforcing our laws that are already on the books, and build a fence. We should not allow illegal aliens; rights, housing, jobs etc without legal status.
The majority of illegals don't seem interested in assimilating to our way of life, or in learning english, and there's the difference: The Immigrants want Freedom, the Illegal Aliens want to Freeload.

"FINE UPSTANDING LYING SACK OF SHIT"

It's interesting how he feels that he's the one wronged here.

What a Fine upstanding lying sack of shit
"LSOS"

I've recently learned how he's not only been lying to me but to others as well. He probably lies to himself.

He's been such a fan of talking about getting back to his good spiritualism/energy/karma; with all of his bad behavior, actions and deceit it'll come back to bite him in the butt, and I predict very soon. This just coming from me, and I'm no psychic reader.

Funny, but what I remember most of his talking about his past "spiritualism" looking back in the 70's, was mostly describing devil worship/witchcraft/metaphysical type stuff. His current girlfriend is helping him get back to this spiritualism/darkness. Why oh why didn't I see him and his actions more clearly all those years ago.

Love is blind as they say, but truth is like getting laser surgery and seeing very clearly for the very first time in my life.

While I lost alot of years with this despicable lying sack of shit, at least I have rid myself of him. Living without him these past few months have been wonderful, aside from the divorce issues. Looking back at my having to put up with his anger and rages, using the crystal changed him into a man that was very troubled.

He wouldn't brush his teeth for weeks, didn't bathe very often, his hygeine in general was awful. He didn't comb or brush his hair, when it was long it was horrible, he would just pull it back into an uncombed pony tail, so when he cut it that was a bit of an improvement. His poor hygeine mixed with his short temper that the crystal methamphetamine was doing made him a real mess.

I do hope he gets his life together, not for me I'm done, but he needs to get it together for the kids. I want my kids to have a father. I do have a feeling that his relationship with the kids will always be tainted, which is very sad.

At least I still have alot of good years ahead of me to get enjoyment out of life. I hope my kids stay ever strong to get through this. I know how hard this has been on them and I'm so sorry that there isn't alot I can do to help them, other than to be there for them.

I am so very glad that he honored the one rule I insisted on, that rule being to keep the drugs away from the kids. I didn't want him using around the kids, this was a rule that he hated, but again I am so glad that this was enforced by me. My kids I don't think would be where they are in life today if they would have been subjected to drugs in their lives. This was a constant battle, once the kids started junior high and high school. He would leave crap out on the counter at night almost wanting the kids to see the stuff so he could come out of the closet. I found myself doing "rounds" every night clearing up the junk and putting it all away. He on several occasions would tell me how he wanted to do drugs with our daughter, as he wanted to "connect with her on this level". This LSOS actually was gleeful when she went off to college, saying that she would probably be introduced to drugs while at college. He seemed very disappointed when she told of how she had gone to a party and hated how stupid everyone acted and disliked that druggie atmosphere.

That's when I started telling him that the kids needed a father, not a friend.

I'm putting this ugly divorce behind me as soon as I get the papers from the court. I am moving on and I will survive this. I have great kids, my family and friends are the best. I love my inlaws and want to keep connected to them, I didn't divorce them. My inlaws are not aware of any of these horrid details, as my sister in laws told me how they didn't feel their parents could handle the stress of learning about all of his fuck ups; many affairs, falling asleep at the wheel, getting suspended until 2007, his class 3 felony charges, and his crystal methamphetamine addiction, being in their 80's. I don't want to hurt them any more than they already have been. He told them that "we separated", I wouldn't let him get away with that crap, and told them that he had an affair and left me.

My Daughter Has Reminded Me Of This Song....

ARTIST: Timbuk3
TITLE: The Future's So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades
Lyrics and Chords
Intro: / A - - GD / /
I study nuclear science, I love my classes
I got a crazy teacher, he wears dark glasses
/ A7 - - - / /
{Refrain}
Things are going great, and they're only getting better
I'm doing all right, getting good grades
The future's so bright
I gotta wear shades, I gotta wear shades
/ D - - - A - - GD / D - A - / G - - - / A - - GD / /
I've got a job waiting for my graduation
Fifty thou' a year'll buy a lot of beer
{Refrain}
Well I'm heavenly blessed and worldly wise
I'm a peeping-tom techie with X-ray eyes
{Refrain}
I study nuclear science, I love my classes
I got a crazy teacher, he wears dark glasses
{Refrain}
I gotta wear shades, I gotta wear shades

Astrophysics In Combination With Art....

My daughter is very creative and sometimes shows her true feelings in her art.
While she is graduating with 3 majors, Fine Arts, Music and Japanese; I got the feeling from this picture that she was feeling bad that she didn't choose Astro Physics or Astronomy as one of her majors. She has been really showing alot of interest in this direction and has been working in the astrophysics building with folks that work with NASA and such. Constantly talking about all of the cool stuff that she does while there working. So I was feeling bad that she didn't learn that she was interested in this until after 7 years of college.

Then she started her Honors program and thesis this past year. It's simply incredible how she managed to put all of this scientific work into a beautiful art form, blending together her art with science. Her gallery opening was April 7th, and was a big success. It was very well attended, and I am just so very proud of her. Below is a photo of her 'Spectral Beasties' art show.

Solar Spectrum and Absorption Beasties
Acrylic on foam

What do you get when you look at a rainbow in detail? You begin to see it interrupted by dark bands. These bands are caused when the light is absorbed by molecules and elements present between the hot part of the sun and our eyes, some found in the earth’s atmosphere, some found in sun’s atmosphere. The most prominent bands were first classified by German physicist Joseph von Fraunhofer in the 19th century with the letters H through K, some of which are illustrated here by being orally absorbed by beasties. Each element and molecule absorbs only a very specific frequency of light, which tells us what the sun is composed of.

This painting spans the visible segment of the electromagnetic spectrum (roughly 400-700 nm), which also includes radio waves, microwaves, infrared radiation, ultraviolet radiation, x-rays, and gamma rays. The sun’s light is strongest in the visible part of the spectrum, which may be why our eyes have adapted to see it best.

Emission Beasties of Selected Elements
Acrylic on canvas

These beasties lie near the floor in their ground state. When an atom loses energy it emits a photon. The photons emitted show up in bright bands against a dark background in exactly the same positions that they appear in when absorbing light. Scientists can compare the spectrums of known gases with those of unknown elements in spectrums of celestial objects, such as the sun, in order to understand their compositions. Can you match the absorbed twin D lines in the solar spectrum above, to the emitted twin yellow lines in one of these paintings?

The five paintings exhibit emission spectra of five elements (from left to right):

Na – Sodium, found in trace amounts in the sun

He – Helium, composing 8% of the sun

H – Hydrogen, composing 92% of the sun

O2 – Oxygen, largely in the earth’s atmosphere, also found in trace amounts in the sun

Hg – Mercury, found in trace amounts in the sun

K 393nm Ca
H 397nm Ca
E 527nm Fe
D1 and D2 doublet 589nm and 590nm Na
B 688nm O2 (earth’s atmosphere)

Doppler Fishes

Oil on canvas

When a train approaches, the pitch of its whistle seems high and then when it passes the pitch drops. This is because the whistle’s sound waves are getting squished together as the train comes towards you, and stretched out as it moves away.

The same thing happens with light. As a light source in space such as the Andromeda Galaxy moves towards us, its light waves get compressed and the patterns in its spectral lines all get shifted towards the blue end of the spectrum. The opposite thing happens to nearly all other celestial objects: they are red-shifted because they are moving away. Due to red-shift we can tell the universe is expanding.

So as you can see, she has learned how to incorporate science into an art form. There is simply nothing that she can't do, I'm convinced of this.

April Fool's

Dag nab it, my son got me again this year. I even talked with both kids this morning telling them that I was on my toes about it and how I wasn't going to let them get me today. Well that was early this morning and only a few hours ago my son called me and I wasn't thinking about April Fool's Day any longer. Damn!
Well I won't let them get me next year!
I actually sent them an email prank regarding Chef from South Park but that was kind of lame. Sigh.
Honey you really out did yourself. Although the one you pulled while in California was the most intense one.

I truly am enjoying all this beauty, growing and changing every day.
My son must be shining just like this beautiful flower (as mentioned on my previous post).
Or.... both my kids must be shining
:)

Birthday Beauty

Today is my son's birthday, he is 22 years old.

This gorgeous flower bloomed just overnight with these two beautiful blooms.

I don't understand numerology much, but it's kind of fun to think that these two blooms are in a way celebrating his '22'-ness. This will last for a very long time, for me to look at and be thinking of him.

I wish I could be with him today and do some fun celebrating together. But will settle for enjoying a Guinness in his honor.
I love you honey! I raise my glass, HOO-YAH!
love mom
Also thanks to Nev for the beauty, I do enjoy it every day.

WOO HOO!

Today I took the signed and notarized settlement papers down to the lawyer's office. She will be filing them with the court this afternoon.
WOO HOO!
It doesn't seem fair that I have to give him half the worth of my retirement, when he's the one that ran off and had all of the affairs throughout our marriage, being so full of lies and deceit, cheapening anything good that we may have had during this marriage. He once said that he felt sorry for my being so fixated on all of his affairs to the elimination of all else, and that is why he settled in the manner in which he did. So in a way he's blaming me for his mean antics in his behavior in how he has dealt with my lawyer, racking up the hours of phone calls, emails and the like. $$$. I'm not fixated, I just have folks every week or two telling me of another affair with someone that he had. When will these stories end, I don't need to hear them anymore, I've heard enough to learn what a joke our marriage had been over the 25 plus years. He has just blamed everything to do with our marriage on me, that everything was my fault, that I didn't do this, or that I wouldn't do that, etc.. Well with his many affairs, it's hard to see that he was ever 100% committed to our marriage. Just like a leopard he won't change his spots, he'll start having affairs behind his new girlfriend's back, he might have started already. She having an affair with him knowing that he was a married man. To be able to lie in my face, the one person that should be the closest person to him, his wife. He talks now of how he tried to tell me blah blah blah, but a few weeks before his last affair, I had asked him what a certain phone call meant, and he lied to me while directly looking in my face. "Oh, she talks to everyone that way, she's weird, etc." Funny how he's demeaning his new girlfriend already, or maybe not so funny, just more of the same. He had definitely perfected his art of lying to me.
By doing crystal methamphetamine for several years, which I hated, he fell asleep at the wheel just last April, while driving on the highway having the air bags deploy and saving his life, he also got suspended from work, having gotten busted while on the job using. Oh but he only uses medicinally, I forgot, heh. If we had gone to court, I was told that I would probably have to pay him maintenence, they kept talking about me with my good earning potential. It's truly amazing how the courts afford every indulgence to drug abusers. The fact that he lost his job because of getting busted, my lawyer told me was just bad timing for me. Just to name a few issues here. His equity in the house equaled my half of the stocks and my half of his IRA's, or at least pretty close, ( we still had alot of debt in the house) but my retirement put me over so it necesitated my giving him half.
Half of his IRA's = around $30,000,
half of my pension = $70,000.00
So I'm paying him $75,000.00 total, $65,000.00 now
and $10,000.00 over 4 years.
I will be able to keep this home, for that I'm very grateful.
It will be so wonderful to get all of this ugliness behind me and I can start fresh, and get on with my life, without him in it. I am so done with him.
A girlfriend spoke of my being "SOL".
Survivor Of L**.

link

Now to qualify for a mortgage, including the previous mortgage, line of credit and now the money I'll have to pay him off with, sigh....

Serendipity

I was just part of a reuniting of high school sweethearts after more than 20 years and several broken relationships later. The timing of each being involved while the other wasn't, distance, life in general kept them apart over all of the lost years. Well now they have reunited and are so happy to have found each other again. It was meant to be....

To Make Yourself Out To Be A Victim

How angry I became when I found out about the bitch badmouthing my kids, because they are being such 'bad kids' to their father. What's worse is how dear old dad didn't dispute any of it. Oh poor me, the kids don't love me anymore.... What a nice understanding 'holistic healer' who is so understanding about what the kids are having to deal with.
It's a good thing I wasn't there, how dare she bad mouth my kids.
Also changing actual events, from when R changed locks and L and his bitch took the 45 minute tour, to; boo hoo, R wouldn't let me into my own house. Oh poor me....Bullshit. Thankfully R was able to tell the truth about what actually happened.
Also L has been rewriting history regarding the drug bust et all. Terrible that there are just too many witnesses that were there that really know what happened.
Strike three you're out.

With the ugly comments made about the kids, and all of his remarks about his 'new' family, it makes me wonder about how he feels about his 'old' family. In regard to the disposition of the pistols/inheritance that he may not give to the kids as previously agreed upon, I would like to think that he hasn't gone off his rocker too far. I'm certainly seeing him very clearly now and his actions speak volumes.
At mediation I gave him these pistols, I then told him how I hoped that he would give them to the kids, with that he told me how he was still upset with our son not talking to him. So I told him how BOTH kids were having a very hard time dealing with our divorce, and then he said well S is still talking to me. I would like my kids to have a father, but he has to do alot of soul searching and rehab and get healthy. I only hope my kids are still around for him when he's ready to act/be their father again.

Oh how I wish I had bought this shirt....

Frivolity And Mirth

On Monday, dozens of sword-wielding Hindu activists used loudspeakers in the central city of Bhopal to ask couples to stay indoors on Tuesday. “We oppose it (Valentine’s Day) tooth and nail because the concept has come from the West and through it an attempt is being made to spoil Indian culture,” said Devendra Rawat, a spokesman for radical Hindu outfit Bajrang Dal in the city. “Our teams will visit parks frequented by boys and girls and teach them a lesson.” In Mumbai activists of the Shiv Sena, a right-wing pro-Hindu political party, on Sunday vandalised a gift shop. The activists said they would also target hotels and restaurants that offered special romantic deals on Tuesday.

The 'Bah Humbug' of Valentine's Day

Yeah, Happy Valentine's Day.

Being Remembered

I was surprised by beautiful flowers being delivered today. They are gorgeous and smell incredible.
I have to admit that I had been feeling a bit alone with Valentine's Day just around the corner, and the flowers just made my day.
Being remembered in this special way, made me feel like a million, and very loved.
Thanks to my son and daughter who have just been wonderful to me and I really appreciate it. I love you guys too :)

BOOYA!

I am so very proud of my daughter.
She will be graduating with three majors, Music, Japanese and Cum Laude Fine Arts.
I was just able to reserve a room on campus for this wonderful celebration, and am very happy about this. This room has a patio/deck outside facing the Flat Irons in Boulder.
Several family and friends will be flying in for this wonderful occasion to help congratulate my daughter in all of her wonderful achievements.
I've just learned a new word, "booya", (It means basically, "bam!", "in your face", and "hell yeah", all at the same time. A term that self congradulates the user, describes excitement, lets others know the magnificence of the celebration or rouse as well as the superiority of the user, and is used as an exclamation of those ideas.)

BOOYA! BOOYA! BOOYA!

Shopping

I went shopping today with my daughter, and just had the best time. Insane sales on items that are really needed, and having everything look great on her made it easy.