MUSINGS

Hi.  My name is Liz, I'm a 35 year old divorcee from the deep South.  I come from a tiny little dirty spot in the middle of the woods where old traditions are still the heartbeat of the community.  I was raised by a couple who have been through fire over the course of 43 years, they have slept at separate houses but never left one another.  I have 2 brothers who have been married multiple times and a sister who is creeping up on 20 years with her husband.  I had an aunt who never married and an uncle who married a woman with 5 children and an ex-husband.  I come from a household where my mother worked for 22 years from the time I was 4, while my father stayed home and drew a disability check.  All of these factors have given me the groundwork to figure out what I wanted out of relationships, marriage and my significant other.  I discovered one thing about me, I'm more of a traditionalist than most folks would peg me for. I started ...

I don't know when I became a planner, maybe I always was one....I do remember driving my ex nuts with moves and trips because I'd want to have an idea of what we were doing before we did it.  On that same hand I have a tendency to just jump into things with both feet, as usual the "Liz Conundrum".  I've been hit in the last year with this incessant need to strip my life down to bare basics and start over.  Like from scratch.  Currently, that is not an option; at least not a comfortable option that I'm willing to jump into.  My mom made a statement once that is dead on:  we spend the first half of our life trying to run as far away from home as we can get, we spend the other half trying to get back. In a physical, geographical sense, I'm not sure I could live back home and be ok with it.  I've lived in cities around the world, I have a very diverse view of it.  I don't know how well received my attitude would be if I were to try and blend back in...

A while back on a run for the shop, I met a young fellow who was a bit taken with me.  It was an end of the day emergency "get it n go" type situation.  I walked into their lobby in stained wrecked jeans, a dirty work shirt and messy hair.  I'd been in the yard all that day moving parts and getting filthy, but for whatever reason he thought my smile was the be all end all.  I was flattered and moved on about my business.  This week I found myself having to interact with said young man again, we had an issue in the shop that I needed the company's advice on.  Once he realized who I was we got a bit chatty.  I found out he's roughly 9 years younger than me, should I have been single at any given moment of our interactions, that alone would have been a deal breaker.  I have a strict bracket of ages when it comes to the opposite sex and who I'm will to give a try.  But he made sure to express that he was more than interested in old...

It's been a hell of a New Years Day...I've cleaned, scrubbed, wiped down, picked up, thinned out and shredded all the things in the house that needed attention.  I've not been this tired in a while, but it's a good kind of tired.  I have a lot to reflect on from this past year.  There were a lot of firsts this year, I made new friends, rekindled some old relationships, and had a mostly positive experience.  I made some milestones with my honey and our family.  I am anxious to start this year on a different foot with a new outlook. I don't want to do resolutions as such this year, I'd rather set goals that will work toward making me a better person.  I've already started one of them.  I've begun doing some research that I haven't done since I lived overseas.  I had a lot of time on my hand then, a lot of time to think and study.  There is no reason I can't do that now.  I just have to learn how to budget my time. For the last year I h...