Technology can be a beautiful , yet scary thing. Here I sit, at the Indianapolis Airport (WiFi is freakin’ awesome) and the hubby calls from MD and tells me that I am sitting at gate C-8. Uh...yeah…but how did you know. He also told me what gate I was arriving at. Sometimes technology is too scary.

I take off in about 15 minutes so I’d better close down the laptop. Just wanted to give ya’ll a shout out while I still could before I hit the remote area of Maryland where WiFi is almost non-existent.

Cool thing though, I discovered that when you were makeup at the airport men not only carry your luggage for you but they also buy you bottles of water. Chivalry is not dead, at least not in Indianapolis.

My BFF and I went to see Baby Mama today at the movie theater. I didn’t think I was going to like it very much, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was really quite a hoot. It was also very predictable. But the laughs overcame the predictability…somewhat. It’s not going to win any Oscars by any means, but it was worth watching, which is more than you can say about most movies out there.

I am happy to report that we haven’t had any more earthquakes in several days now. Hurray! From Friday April 18th until now we have had eleven earthquakes that registered over 2.5. We had quite a few that were under 2.5 but I don’t count those, although they are an annoyance if you are trying to sleep. Our strongest and longest earthquake was 5.6 on the Richter scale. But we’ve also had 4.6 and a 4.0. I don’t think I like earthquakes.

Yesterday afternoon we counter-offered on the offer that was made on our house. Today they counter offered our counter offer and we accepted it. On may 29th I will be on my merry way to MD. I did have a weird mix of emotions when we got the offer and it seemed eminent that our house would sell. I was sad in a way and scared in another and excited and happy too. All at the same time. A weird feeling to be sure. I will miss our happy little haven.



Maryland was never really a happy place for me thanks to my ex-husband. It will be interesting to see if I can make it a happy experience now that he is out of the picture. My grandfather always said that the area of Maryland we lived in was Heaven on earth and he would want to live nowhere else. I never understood his feelings at the time, but I do now. The area of Maryland I am from (and moving back to) is a mix of marshes and mudflats, of wide open fields with countless rows of corn lined up straight as soldiers. It is flatland rivers and hidden tidal pools where the great blue heron’s feed. It is endless miles of ocean as far as the eye can see. It is white marlin, blue crab, oysters, the Bay and the watermen who harvest them. It is home.



Another sure sign that you have arrived on Maryland’s Eastern Shore is the odor. Yes, the odor. The flat farmland is rich with chicken manure, which is gathered from the many chicken houses that dot the landscape. According to local theory it is the chicken manure that gives the vegetables their unique flavor. And one has to admit the vegetables grown on the Eastern Shore are like none other. The tomatoes have a richer flavor, the corn tastes sweeter, and the cucumbers are mild and delicate. Yes, chicken manure can be a wondrous thing. And on the Eastern Shore it is abundant. I guess in a way you could say the Eastern Shore is a real shitty place to be. Okay, bad pun and now I’ll have scads of Eastern Shoreman trying to hunt me down and give me a whoopin’.

We finally got an offer on our house. It's not the best but I suppose it's not the worst either. We would walk away with very little, but at least we wouldn't have two motgages hanging over our head and I could move with my husband. If we accept it we would close at the end of May. I wish I had a crystal ball so I would know what was coming and if I should accept the offer or not. So many decisions.

This morning I woke up at 4:51 am. It wasn’t anything I had planned, I just woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. After channel flicking for awhile I settled on a classic “I Love Lucy” episode and snuggled under the covers to watch. At 5:39am something felt a little odd. I wasn’t sure what it was at first but it felt like the bed was being gently shook. I have to admit my first thought was that a ghost was shaking the bed. I’ve been reading too many horror stories. But a couple of seconds later it became quite apparent that something more serious was going on. As I sat up in bed and turned the light on the whole house began to shake. I could visibly see the walls swaying as the house violently shook. It even made sounds. I was seriously freaked out at this point so I grabbed the cell phone off the nightstand and called the hubster. Just about the time he answered the walls stopped moving, but the bed was still shaking. I have to admit my voice was shaking too. I told him what was occurring and whined “what’s going on, what’s happening, I’m scared.” He told me to calm down and turn on the news, that it was probably just an earthquake. JUST an earthquake? It was obvious he has never been in an earthquake or he wouldn’t have been saying it was JUST an earthquake. The bed is still shaking at the point when I turned the news channel on. I see horrified looks on the newscasters faces and they report a minute later that the lights had been shaking, etc and that they believe we all just experienced an earthquake. By the time I got out of the shower and dressed it was confirmed. We had an earthquake which was 5.4 on the Richter scale. That’s no tiny earthquake.



And as if that weren’t enough excitement for the day, I go to the 10:10am showing of Leatherheads at the movie theater and I am the only one in the entire theater. It didn’t bother me until 11:15 when we had ANOTHER earthquake! This one was 4.6 on the Richter scale. It didn’t last as long as the first earthquake but it was still frightening. And they say we may be having aftershocks for the next several days. I am so ready to get the heck out of Indiana. Between tornados and now earthquakes I am pretty much done with this state.

My cell phone rang last night at 10:30. The hubster and I have a general rule in our house; never call us after 9:30pm because if you are calling that late it is obviously something we don’t want to hear and it can wait until the morning. So in my usual avoidance maneuvers I let the call go to voice mail. It would seem that Scott was at my eldest son’s house and it suddenly occurred to him that it was April 15th. This is a bad thing for Scott because he was supposed to give me his W2’s and 1099’s that he had neglected to do so on Sunday. And the fact that I called him several times on Monday still did not jar his memory. Scott’s late night question? “Should I file some sort of extension this week or next?” My reply? “No need, you are screwed at this point, so why waste the ink.” Okay, I didn’t respond to him yet, but that’s what I’m thinking. Come on, who waits until 10:30 pm on April 15th to do their taxes? Seriously!

I’ve been doing pretty well for the last month at dodging the self proclaimed faith healer neighbor. I was getting proud of my self. What is it they say; pride goeth before a fall. And fall I did. When I got home today I am sitting in the Pathfinder, turning the radio down, putting my bottle of water in my purse, etc. The usual stuff you do before you get out of the vehicle. Suddenly I head a tapping at the window. Damn it. It was the self proclaimed faith healer neighbor. She wanted me to go to lunch with her tomorrow. Fortunately I am busy tomorrow so it was easy to come up with an excuse rather quickly. Whew! Dodged a speeding bullet on that one. Then she proceeds to tell me that she wanted me to go out to lunch with her last week but wasn’t able to ask because they had no money. She doesn’t write how much she spends in her checkbook. Doesn’t balance it or anything. So she is always bouncing checks as a result. Last week she had over $400 in bounced check fees alone. And on top of that she had to pay a $180 speeding ticket. So what does she do this morning now that she has finally brought her checking account up current? She heads off to Goodwill to buy more junk. I swear I don’t know where she puts it all. Her house looks worse than the house on Sanford and Son. Yes, I’m dating myself by making reference to that show but so what, I’m old, get over it.


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I woke up this morning with an incredible sinus headache so I know Spring is here finally. I get horrible seasonal allergies. I should be on Allergra D but I got fed up with having to pay $50 a month just to be able to breathe so I stopped taking it last year. So get this; snow flurries last Saturday and Sunday and down to 30 degrees last night. What is today? Seventy degrees. Yes, seventy bloody degrees. This has been one of the worst years for weird weather patterns I can ever remember. And apparently Maryland isn’t faring much better. According to the hubster they are getting hit with the same kind of weird weather, only not as severe as the Midwest. Don’t you hate bloggers that talk about the weather?


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But while I am on the subject of the weather, since it was such a beautiful day guess what I did today? I cut the back yard! I am so proud of myself! I didn’t even get out of breath. I knew giving up my 4 pack a day habit would pay off. (just kidding, it was only two packs a day and it was ten years ago). I had a bit of difficulty getting started. (the lawn mower, not the smoking). Finally I was able to get it started and made a couple of passes on the yard only to discover that the deck was set too high and it wasn’t cutting anything. In the long run it all worked out well though and our back yard is rocking! I might do the front yard tomorrow. Or maybe I’ll give it another week, because it isn’t as tall as the back yard was. Odd how that works.


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Now I am wiped out from all the activity of the day, but feeling very accomplished. I feel so great in fact, that I indulged in my addiction for the rest of the afternoon. Yes, I am an addict. A game addict that is. I am addicted to a PC game called Bud Redhead. I have mastered all twenty levels long ago and now work at achieving the perfect score (which I accomplished several times recently). Now I have a new addiction. Diner Dash. I am a waitress in a dive and now have worked my way up to a Tiki joint where I appease my customers with Tiki drinks when I am too slow with their food. Damn those addictions. Damn those inpatient customers. Now if you’ll excuse me I have a restaurant to run.

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How do you freak your hubby out when you are separated by 700 miles? Don’t answer the phone when he expects you to be home. It started on Saturday night. Scott and Leslie were coming over the next day so I could do their taxes. “Come over for breakfast” I offered. After all, I DO make the world’s best Belgium waffles. So off I go late Saturday night to the Meijer to buy breakfast fixings. Scotts a good eater so I knew he would want bacon and eggs along with the waffles. The hubby happens to call me on the cell Saturday night as I am on the way home from the grocery. “What you are doing out at 9pm on a Saturday night?” he asked. “I thought you would be home watching a chick flick at this hour of night.” (I had rented both Bridget Jones movies for the weekend.) I explain that I am making breakfast for Scott and Leslie Sunday morning and he FREAKS! “Who the f**k are Scott and Leslie?” he asked. I had mentioned them before in my conversations with him, so this proved my point that he doesn’t listen to what I say. I tell him who they are though and how I met them and why they are coming over. He calms down. He proceeds to tell me how he is going to spend Sunday with his mother, as he does every Sunday now that he is living 20 minutes from her. He doesn’t bother to call me again until 7:30 Sunday night. I am in the car listening to some very loud rock music and quite frankly didn’t feel like turning it down to talk on the phone. He proceeds to call my 2nd cell phone (I have two) I didn’t bother answering that one either. Come on people, it was the Red Hot Chili Peppers! Would you have turned them off to talk on the phone? I didn’t think so. When I got home I did honestly forget that he had called. Apparently he sent an email as well. I don’t check my email very often so I didn’t realize he had sent one. Finally at 11pm the cell phone rings and I pick it up this time. He is freaking out. “WHERE ARE YOU?” “Home watching Bridget Jones,” I reply. He was afraid I was lying about Scott having a wife and had gone out somewhere with him I think. Normally he is in bed by 10pm, so for him to call me at 11pm on a Sunday night, well that’s huge. Glad I could worry him a bit. Keeps him on his toes. LOL and I must have really worried him because he said “if the house hasn’t sold by the end of the month why don’t you fly out here for 3 or 4 weeks.” Hmmm…. Interesting that he couldn’t be bothered to take any of my “I can fly out” hints until he thought I was out with another man. Silly boy.


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Can you believe we had several snow flurries over the weekend? Odd because on Friday we had 70 degree weather. I even went as far as putting mulch in all the flower beds. Several types of bulbs have already come up in my flower beds only to die on Saturday and Sunday. So sad.

I asked my BFF to go to the movies with me today. When she found out I wanted to see Nim’s Island she begged off. Seems she had seen it twice last week during her kids Spring break. After we had lunch together I did go and see Nim’s Island by myself though. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I don’t know if it was because I was just in the mood for such a movie or if it was really good, but I loved it. Go see it and let me know what you think. Now I want to see Leatherheads. Has anyone seen that movie yet?

There are lots of other things going on, yet not much going on. Do you know what I mean? It’s hard to imagine that this time last week I was wrapped in the hubsters arms. I really do miss him. This whole selling the house, moving thing sucks. No, let me rephrase that. This whole me staying here to sell the house while he moves to MD to start his new job thing sucks. I want to move to! I am sick of being stuck here in the Midwest. I want to move on with my life too. I’ve already made new friends in MD and I would like to hang out with them. My friends here are sick of saying goodbye to me, they want me to leave already. Even my family doctor says “what, you’re still here?” when I see him. Time marches on and I want to as well. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it! Besides, blue crab season has officially started.

Now that I am back in Indy, doubt is starting to set in my tangled mind. What sort of doubt you ask? Well, since my hubby is staying with his brother until I move out there, he had to ask his permission for me to stay last weekend. Of course his brother said yes. But tonight when I made a brief mention that I wouldn’t mind flying out for a week or two, I followed it by saying “I don’t think your brother would like me spending a couple of weeks at his house though.” To which the hubster should have replied “he doesn’t mind, we both enjoy your company and hope you will fly out.” But that’s not what the hubster said. What he actually said was that his brother was freaking out over last weekend because I didn’t give enough notice…he thinks. And that’s all the hubster said. He didn’t say “oh I would love you to fly out” and he didn’t say “my brother doesn’t mind how long you stay”. No, he didn’t say any of those things. And in regards to the email I sent the hubster earlier in the day, mentioning that I had found a roundtrip airline ticket online for only $149, he read it but ignored it. So what am I to think? So here I will sit, in my big empty house, waiting for a buyer.

Speaking of which, it’s no wonder no one wants to buy our house. We have the drug addict across the street who is into boom-boom sounds on his very loud car stereo and the faith healer neighbor with garbage bags full of leaves lining the sides of their driveway. And speaking of the faith healer neighbor, who do you suppose dragged their kitchen table onto their driveway to eat dinner tonight? Yup, the faith healer neighbor.

And while I am ranting, to be quite honest, if I don’t get the hell away from my two sons I am going to die of high blood pressure. They are driving me NUTS! Now the eldest one has taken the liberty of putting his dogs in my backyard when I am not home and leaving them there ALL F**KING DAY! That’s a major problem when you are trying to sell your house and those dogs have dug holes in your back yard and turned it into a mud pit. Totally destroyed not only my landscaping but also my flowers that WERE starting to poke up. Not to mention that people viewing the house can’t step out into the back yard because of these barking dogs. It’s really pissing me off. I am so dammed sick of being used. Give an inch and take a mile. And if my eldest comes in here drunk one more time I am changing the locks. God save me from the alcoholics of the world. Yes, my nerves are shot. It’s probably a good thing my husband doesn’t want me to fly out because my damned son would have the house destroyed by the time I got back, an he doesn’t even live here. It’s times like this I think I could easily become a Xanax taker. (or whatever it is you call someone that takes Xanax.) Now I think I’ll go and watch the two Bridgett Jones movies that I rented this afternoon and pig out on Ben and Jerry’s.

Friday, as Jas and I were eating lunch at her favorite Chinese barfette, I decided that I couldn’t take another weekend alone. So I called my eldest and asked him if he wanted to drive down to the Shore with me and share the driving responsibilities. A normal car trip to the Eastern Shore of Maryland is anywhere between twelve and fourteen hours. I had two showings on Saturday morning, starting at 10am. Therefore we decided that we would hit the road at 9am on Saturday. (I have no idea how the showings went, but since I haven’t received a call from my real estate agent telling me we have an offer, I can only assume we had our usual bad luck.)


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At 8:45am Saturday, I picked up Jasmine from her moms. By 9:30am we had picked up her father and his girlfriend and were on our way. We made really good time and at 9:16 that evening I was wrapped in my hubby’s arms. I must say it felt damned good. I mean damned good. And did I mention it felt damned good?


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We didn’t do much while we were on Maryland’s eastern shore because the weather was nasty. It rained the entire time, usually just a steady drizzle or annoying mist, and it was chilly with temps in the 40’s. But I didn’t care. I was with the hubster and I could have cared less what the weather was doing. Unfortunately the weather spoiled Jasmine’s plans for going on the boardwalk in Ocean City.


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We did go on Monday afternoon, weather be damned. But it was cold, and rainy and just plain nasty so none of us stayed on the Boardwalk for long. We stayed long enough to get Thrashers fries though and Dolly’s caramel corn. After all, that’s the whole point of going to the boardwalk anyway. Well, unless you are my friend Jules, then you end up in the Purple Moose saloon drinking fuzzy navels. What a blast you have doing it though.


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Jas professed to having had a good time even though the weather was crappy and messed up her Boardwalk plans. Being the budding zoologist that she is, she enjoyed staying with Greg and I at his brothers farm because not only does he have a cool dog (Bud) but he also has a beautiful (but loud) peacock named Bailey. When we arrived we went out to say hello to Bailey, then when we turned to walk away the peacock let out this blood curdling scream that sounded like a woman being murdered. Poor Jas jumped a mile. I have to admit, I jumped too. In case you haven’t heard a peacock in person, they sound like a woman with a high pitched voice screaming “HELP!” Try sleeping through that!

On the way back we ended up sitting in bumper to bumper traffic at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. That’s very unusual for a weekday morning in the Spring. If it were a Sunday afternoon in the middle of summer I could understand it. Nonetheless, we did make it home safely and in record time even though we sat in the Bay Bridge backup for 1 hour and 30 minutes. We were home by 9pm last night.

I had an incredibly hard time sleeping last night. After you spend three nights sleeping with your husbands arms wrapped around you, it’s very hard to go back to sleeping alone. Although I am glad we went I have to admit I miss him more than ever now. Please, someone buy our house ... quick!

I would love to tell you how great things are right now, but why lie. Ever since Friday I haven’t gone for longer than 30 minutes without crying except when I am sleeping, and even then I probably cry in my sleep. I keep doing things out of habit like getting up to let the dog in and then I realize he is in doggie heaven and I start crying all over again. It’s so hard. I don’t think I cried this much when my grandma died, and she was the person I loved most in this world.

I tried to make his last day a happy one. I made him a couple of scrambled eggs and gave him many, many treats. I spent the entire afternoon in the family room with him. Just before our appointment I took him to a doggie park so he could sniff doggie butts. He wasn’t able to run around with the other dogs, but he did mark his territory by peeing all over every inanimate object he could find. That always makes him happy. He was smiling and happy that last afternoon. He even took a massive poop in front of the building that the procedure was being done at. Then my friend Rosemary arrived and we went inside for our appointment. Thank God she was there for me. I don’t know how I would have gotten through it otherwise. She took care of the last minute paperwork for me. I hugged Moose and talked to him and told him what a good doggie he was and how much Greg and I love him. I told him I was sorry he was in pain and hadn’t been feeling well lately. I told him I was so sorry for all the times I had been grumpy with him and it wasn’t his fault, it was mine. I even asked him not to haunt me. Then it was time. I wrapped my arms around his neck and buried my face in his hair and kissed him all over his face and head, telling him repeatedly I love him. And it was over. He was 11 years and 28 days old.

Afterwards Rosemary and I went to dinner. That’s not a true statement. We actually went to a restaurant and ordered dinner. There wasn’t much eating going on though. I took two bites and couldn’t bring myself to force any more food down. So we just sat and talked for an hour. She told me funny stories about annoying things her kids her husband had done and I sat there allowing her to take my mind off of things. When I got home my oldest son came and took things away for me, as I had asked him to do. Things like Moose’s bed and food and toys and such. I couldn’t bear to look at them. Especially not his favorite toys. I was in bed by 10pm that night. I had such a massive headache from all the crying. When my husband left for Maryland on March 1st, he told me to be nice to Moose, that he would be a good companion for me in his absence. He was right. I miss that stupid dog so much.