I slept for an hour and a half, and woke up and am too fidgety, even with the Ambien. So, I’m doing what I do. Writing it out.

Soon, I’ll be with my friends, and Dan will be included in that circle. I’m happy about that. I’m happy to show him my places. Tonight I got an email from the Block Island Express, which used to be one of my favorite summer trips. Maybe we’ll do that! Or Newport RI. Or both.

But first before the fun starts, I have to call the atty when I get in and find out the status of the whole situation. Find ouf it he’s being committed somewhere, and did her appointment go through, and can she give me a copy of the appointment for the landlord so that I can have access to his stuff. And can I pick it up Friday morning and go over there?

If all answers are yes, which I expect, then Friday I’ll get the paperwork from her, just a short drive, and then will meet the landlord. And will find myself in my old neighborhood for the day. There is no fence between the cottage and my old house. It sits there, looking doomed, disregarded, sad, given up. It could have been such a nice house. The tallest tree on the lake is in front of it, a tulip tree. The yard is terraced down to the lake. There is lots of mountain laurel around the house, and other shrubs now overgrown and hiding the windows, I’m sure. The guy who bought it hasn’t done anything with it yet. There are no lost dreams there anymore, because my dream the last years I was there was to get out of there. I’ve not missed my house on the lake for a moment since I left. It could have been, but it wasn’t. I accepted that a long time ago.

I wish I’d thought to bring a smudge stick for the cottage, and cleanse some of his energy out of there.

But I’ll see my old next door neighbors, and we’ll talk, and I’m betting they will want to help. The friends I’m staying with will probably come over too, so that will be nice. And if not, it’s nice enough that they are having us.

Dan has been so tender, so sweet. He’s been my rock, just loving me. Being who and what I need every minute. It is not a coincidence we found each other when we did.

Time to go back to bed, and try to sleep. Maybe do a little meditation first to quiet my mind.

Love and light all.

I’m ready. Packed. Printed out our boarding passes. The house is cleaned and the fridge is cleaned out. The handyman came and put up my new gutter today. I’m leaving nothing undone.

Tomorrow this time, we’ll be with my peeps. We’ll be laughing, and talking, and catching up on the last 10 months. Dan and I both way overpacked, because we packed lots of clothes for the weather like it is here, which it won’t be there. Because, really, that’s the kind of clothes we have mostly. Then, we realized it will be much cooler there, especially at night, so threw in some jeans and longsleeved T’s, and a jacket or two.

Uber is picking us up at Dan’s at 6:30 tomorrow. We are happy that we both got TSA pre-check on our boarding passes, even though Dan’s Known Traveler Number has not come through yet. We should have time to get a bite to eat at the airport after we get to our gate.

I’ve heard the old wisdom, that you can never go home again. I’m sure things will be different, but not that much, up there. I look at being with my friends as going home. I look at dealing with my ex’s stuff, next door to the house where I lived 30 years, as not even close to going home. I am dissociated from it. I don’t think I have any pain, or anger, or any emotion at all for it. A bit for my ex, at the way his life has turned out. But his life is of his own choosing. What has happened to him is no one’s fault but his own. He isolated himself. No one could stop him.

I’ll take the joy that I find from this visit, and do the work that has to be done. It will all be good. I’m excited.

Love and light to all.

I don’t have much time to write this morning because I have a lot to do to be able to leave my house for a couple weeks. But I have a few things I want to write out, so here I am.

I am doing the new Oprah/Deepak 21 day free meditation called Desire and Destiny. I had a couple days to catch up on so listened to all of them and then meditated. It was kind of cool, because it reminded me that we need to set intentions for everything we do. Whenever you say something, or do something, we have to think about what the intention is that is behind the action. And we have to be honest. In order to be true, we have to listen to our intuition and accept ourselves. I have done a lot of questioning my intentions and listening to my intuition with this trip north.

What is my intention in helping to inventory my ex’s belongings? It is purely self-serving. He owes me money, a lot of it. I want to make sure that I know what is there, and that we can do everything possible to protect it from going to the state to pay for his care. It’s about the money. It sounds cold, but finances are usually hard, cold, and emotionless. I don’t want to be involved in his life. I know that this will be hard, I’ve thought a lot about spending time at the scene of the crime, trying to deal with any triggers that might be there. It is mostly sadness now, that I feel. I just don’t know how his thinking was so skewed when we were together. So screwed up that it now has him delusional in his denial of it.

I thank God every minute for Dan in my life, for his willingness to go with me, for his strong steadfast love that will be there for me to lean on if I need it.

So…the intentions are set. I am pretty good at listening to my intuition. Another part of my intention on going up there is to see the friends who were my surrogate family for the last 20 to 25 years. I’ve contacted everyone I want to make sure I see, and I know I will see others. And another part is to be able to include Dan in my life up there. It was a life I loved, and to share it with him is a blessing.

The trip will be hard, it will also be wonderful. I’m staying with one of my closest friends, the one who drove to Florida with me. And she’s having my other closest friend and her husband over for dinner the night we get there. Dan will fit right into that circle.

My blogging will be sporadic over the next couple weeks, I am sure. But since this is how I deal with things in my life, I’m sure I’ll be around. Love and light to all.

I came home from Dan’s before noon today. I did some picking up of the house for my writers group meeting this afternoon. Then I began to sort through the clothes I want to take to CT.

I’m looking so forward to seeing everyone. It’s like going home to family, really. People who have been my friends for more than 20 years. Close friends. The kind you share your joy and pain with. When I think of all the things they’ve seen me through, and all the fun times with all of them. I’m excited for them to meet Dan. They’ll be so relieved at what a good man he is. I’ve been getting in touch with them so hopefully we’ll be able to get together while I’m there.

My writers group here is a wonderful bunch of women too. We have shared some really hard and really good times with each other. Tonight, one of the group wanted to write an article for the local paper about our group. My first inclination was to say no, but maybe there’s a way. I told her I just don’t want to change the character of the group. We are limited to 5 or so, and I don’t want to have people asking to join us and have to say no. We finally agreed it was fine to mention it in a very vague sense, not naming names, or the work read.

We generally have taken to reading something each of us wrote and then talking about it, relating it to our lives, telling our stories. In between we get off on all sorts of topics. Past lives, politics, quantum physics, love and loss. We know we are safe with each other. It is a lot like my spiritual bookclub up in CT. Awesome to have girlfriends.

It’s been another full day. It’s another night where I close down my day full of gratitude for the life I have created. This post is really just reflecting, trying to keep it real. Time to go to bed. Love and light to everyone.

Whew. Busy day. I’m exhausted, but I got a lot done. It would have helped to sleep more than 3 hours sleep last night.

I got enough meds to get through 2 weeks in CT. Got gifts for the two grandbabies in my friend’s circles. Got gifts for the people we’re staying with.

Since a self-storage called my sister-in-law in the other day and told them that my ex’s storage bin is going up for auction, I called them, and got the balance on the fees he owes. Then sent an email about it to the atty who will be appointed conservator to tell her about it, so she can decide what to do. There might be some stuff in there with some value like a generator for our house, a fiberglass bottom inflatible dinghy, and 30 hp motor, personal watercraft, two kayaks, bedroom furniture, etc. Then emailed my atty in CT so she could begin to figure out how to put liens on all his personal effects.

Now, when I go up there, I will have to deal with his cars, his stuff in the cottage and his stuff in the storage bin. As my atty just said to me, he’s the gift that keeps on giving.

I also got my TSA pre-check approval so called Southwest to add it to my ticket. Not that it will do much good for this leg of the trip because Dan’s hasn’t come through yet. But we should be all squared away for the trip home.

I took a short nap and drove over to Dan’s. We were going to make dinner, but he surprised me and took me out to dinner because I’d been so busy today. He’s such a good guy. Takes good care of me, something I’ll never take for granted. And something I try hard to reciprocate.

Off to bed, I don’t think I’ll have any trouble sleeping tonight.

Love and light.

The dawn won’t be around for a few hours. My head is awake, my body is tired. I had a really nice day.

I woke to a serious set of thunderstorms. The thunder shook the house. It went on for a few hours this morning. We had planned to leave early for my sisters house on the island, but ended up waiting until about noon, since it was raining so hard. We had coffee, and talked. Made some tentative plans to get to the airport on Thursday. I’m planning to leave my car here at my house so it doesn’t look like I’m gone for 2 weeks.

When it finally stopped raining, we left. It is amazing how the streets flood here in Florida. The day was gray, and cloudy, but still warm. Once we got to my sisters and checked the place out, we drove my sisters car the two blocks to the beach and took a nice long walk it. We walked up to the driftwood beach. This beach is bordered by a mangrove thicket, but the layer by the beach is all white, and bare. They don’t allow taking of the wood, because it’s keeping the beach there. Then we turned around and walked back the other way. The gulf water was so warm, it’s probably as warm as the air.

It is such a pleasure to walk the beach with Dan, to be able to share this place that I love with him. I think our trip to CT will be nice too, to be able to share with him the places that I love up there. We’ve talked about going to Newport. Who knows what else? My whole adult life is in that place. Now he’ll be a part of that.

We left my sisters house and the island around 3, and stopped for pizza at the all-you-can-eat pizza place. For $7.99 for lunch and $8.99 for dinner, you get all the pizza you want, plus salad, soup, cheezy bread and and ice cream sundae for dessert. They had about a dozen pizza’s on the counter, cut into about a dozen pieces each. It was great!

So we watched TV til late, at some point had a snack, and now here I am up in the middle of the night. It’s been a long while since I’ve done this. I’m just not all that tired. I slept for awhile. I’ve not been needing Ambien any more to sleep. It’s been a couple weeks. I am used to sharing my bed with Dan, which is something I wasn’t sure would happen when we first started dating. I’ve been sleeping alone for so long. Now I miss him on the rare night we sleep apart.

I guess I’ll try to go back to bed soon. It helps to empty my mind out here. Love and light to all.

It’s been t-storming since late last night. It stops for a couple hours, the sun comes out, and then it starts again. It’s just crazy, it storms so much. Every day. Basically, one stays inside here most of the day, lol. Going out is done early in the morning, or in the evening. I gotta say the humidity backed off yesterday during the day, and the sun was out. It was actually a pleasant day. It will be nice to get to New England for a couple weeks, where the temps, at least at night, dip below 80.

We got rid of the fruit rats before they got started this time. The one we saw (that jumped out of the cabinet at me and scared the living daylights out of me) had not gotten into anythinig yet, and there was only one rat poop in the cabinet, so I’m pretty sure he’d just found the cabinet. Dan put that expanding foam around all the pipes and that seemed to do the trick. They have no way to get into the cabinet now. I sure hope I’ve seen the last of them.

We decided to go to my sisters just for the day tomorrow to check on the house. We both have too much to do to get ready to go on a long trip, so wanted to be here Monday. It will probably be storming tomorrow too, but I’m hopeful we are able to spend a little time at the beach, even just an hour. It seems so luxurious, to be able to drive 2 blocks from her house and go to a fairly deserted beach with white sand and turquoise water that is about the same temperature as the air.

My ex’s landlord who is my old next door neighbor is driving me crazy. I had a phone conversation with him, advising him that an atty is now being appointed conservator, and that I will get the documentation he requested from her, and bring it to him. He just now texted me as if we’d never talked. He asked if my sister was successful in being appointed. I reminded him of the whole conversation with him, and his request that I bring the court order appointing her, and permission from her to go through his things. Geezus. No wonder he got along with my ex, he’s almost as crazy. I see him as probably being the biggest pain in the ass with this whole thing.

Just some random thoughts for the day. Love and light.