On Day 4 of the cleanse, and thought I’d poke my head in here and give an update. 🙂 Also, cuz I know you are all dying to know, an update on how I’m surviving without W here.
And the answer is: I’m doing surprisingly well, on both counts.
Oh, I miss him, and I miss ice cream, and I miss CAFFEINE(!)…maybe caffeine most of all…
No, no, just kidding, of course I miss W more than caffeine. Sort of. Maybe. Heh.
Actually I think giving up the caffeine wasn’t as hard as I thought. I usually only drink a half-to-one-full cup in the morning anyway, and drinking anything hot (I’ve been drinking herbal tea) seems to work well enough. Now the taste of all that sweet flavored creamer…that’s another thing. I dreamed about drinking an eggnog latte the other day.
I also dreamed about W fucking me in my peehole. Hmm, wonder which dream is going to come true first? Since the aborted sounding scene some time ago I’ve been fantasizing an awful lot about it.
And oddly enough, now I am suddenly missing W acutely. No, not because of that bit of kinkiness I just wrote, but in an utterly vanilla way. I just changed my profile pic and cover photo on my vanilla FB, and in doing so I scrolled through the photos that I uploaded from our almost-totally-vanilla NY trip. It was over the Christmas holiday of last year, if you’ll recall. Coincidentally, my workplace just announced our holiday office closing for this year (about the same as last year, when we did our NY trip), and he is in NY right now with his family, which (sigh) includes his EX wife and not me. So…yeah. I am missing him and the trip we took there, and (if I am to be honest) feeling…a bit left out and excluded. That he hadn’t even considered bringing me was…a blow. In reality it was not what it felt like emotionally…it was not a trip that he was particularly looking forward to (kind of a command performance by his ex for his granddaughter’s birthday, planned by her, traveling with her and even staying with her there) and so he didn’t think I’d have any interest in going, but sometimes…I see how chained he still is to her in some ways and I wonder if he will ever pull himself loose. When will I ever be part of his family? When will I naturally fill that space in his mind (I know I fill that space in his heart.) But the reality is that mentally…it is still he and she that is “the family” when it comes to his kids. Not him-and-his-partner. And so I feel relegated to “kinky girlfriend” status, and…it stings. Even if he really doesn’t feel that way about me.
Oh dear, apparently this cleanse is cleaning a bit of toxicity of another sort out of me. 🙁
Bah. Let’s move on to better stuff. Because I have been having a lovely time the last two days with Ad, and with my own family, and not feeling all this resentment.
In particular I have been enjoying doing the yoga sessions with Ad. We have done them three days out of the four so far, and only didn’t the one day because I came down with a migraine. (That was a bad day.) We decided not to only use the Yoga Journal detox recipes (I just couldn’t choke the stuff down anymore) and so we looked up other detox/cleanse recipes, and have had an enjoyable time creating a menu, shopping for it, and cooking together. Right now he is upstairs making Spiced Butternut Squash and Apple Soup for our lunches tomorrow, as a matter of fact, a dish that I am quite looking forward to. In fact all the dishes, such as Roasted Winter Vegetables & Cannellini Beans, sound intriguing to me, and I even enjoyed the cod and herbs that he made the other night. Whole, simple foods taste clean and clear, and if I let myself sit for a while after eating, I feel satisfied, and not like I am missing out on the fats, sugars and processed foods I am accustomed to. I don’t think I want to do this for longer than 7 days, but I do think I am going to try to incorporate more fruits and vegetables and less of the bad stuff into my meals.
Maybe.
Maybe I’ll just go back to doing and eating what I did before, and chalk this up to an “experience.” We’ll see. 😉
There have been failures. The ginger/tumeric tea, while delicious for the first cup, soon made me want to vomit, as did the basmati rice and mung bean main dish that Yoga Journal was so fond of. I discovered that I like basmati and brown rice in general quite a bit though, so that was a positive. And the grapefruit/carrot/ginger smoothie was horrific – I HATE grapefruit and should have known it wouldn’t work, but I hoped that the sweetness of the carrots would cover the bitterness that I dislike.
Not so much.
On the good side, though, I made the aforementioned discovery that it’s a hot liquid that I actually crave in the AM, not so much the coffee. And I love oatmeal with a spoonful of raw honey, cinnamon, pecans and berries! These are all positive, lovely surprises.
So yeah, after yoga yesterday morning I set off to my Mom’s to have a belated birthday lunch with my sister. (I brought Jilly’s cupcakes. SO not on the detox diet, and I am sure it set me back, but it was necessary. And oh-so-freaking-good!) On the way I dropped my son off at work. He and I have been having a some difficulties lately. Mostly normal stuff, I believe, and probably having to do with a young male needing to assert his independence and separation from his mother, but still. Sometimes he can be a challenge. This trip was very pleasant though, and we had a spirited discussion about humankind’s responsibility to our environment and other such topics, and then he surprised me speechless by leaning over and hugging me tightly as he got out of the car. “I love you, Mom,” he said. “You’re an amazing mom. And an amazing person.” It made me feel like there is hope that we’ll survive this current upheaval whole and happy and connected.
After I dropped the BoyChild off at work, I drove over to our house on Castleman. It saddens me that it is standing empty, when I so want to live there again. Driving around my old neighborhood though, missing it and remembering all the things I had loved about living there, the trees in fall, the old houses, the city, being able to walk everywhere, the park, and the house itself, I decided to talk to Ad about creating a space of my own there, and using it as a personal retreat occasionally. At least until he rents it out or sells it (which doesn’t seem likely to happen in the next decade.)
And then it was out to my Mom’s house. The Boychild’s and my current struggles did give me some insight and (possibly) some helpful advice for my sister tho, when she told me all about the struggles she has been having with her own (21 year old) son. In many ways I believe that she has brought much of their conflict on herself, but I could see much of his behavior echoed in my own (16 year old) son’s, and tried to help her to see that perhaps he’s not just an “ungrateful, spoiled little self-centered shit” and that much of what he is going through is pretty normal and not a deliberate attack on her; in fact much of it probably has nothing to do with her at all, but with his own fears, insecurities, etc. It’s hard as a parent to accept when our children start having lives, hopes and desires that have nothing to do with us though, especially if they have been the center of our universes for so long. I don’t know how much it helped…she has a lot of anger and bitterness to dig through and discard.
But lunch was actually quite pleasant, even with all that, and just being able to talk about our lives as women – not just as family – was refreshing. I felt very connected to my mom and sister both as a family and as women, something I haven’t felt in a while.
When I got back from lunch, Ad and I had a date night. It was relaxing and fun, and we talked about lots and lots of things. I also remembered to talk to him about the Castleman house, and he agreed that I could create a studio there, though somewhat reluctantly. He likes things just the way they are, and me being gone more isn’t an idea he is keen on. I also think he is worried that I’ll just slowly move over there, bit by bit.
He could be right.
Today we left the house right after yoga so that I could go see someone about a Secret Project I have in the works. I had hoped to actually have part of it done by the time W got back from NY, but we can’t start until the 22nd. But that’s okay, it is now in planning mode, and he doesn’t have to come home to some strange thing I have done every time he goes away. I fact I may not even do a thing at his house this time (I am sure it will be quite a shock to his system.) Knowing it is in the works is enough for now. 😉
And now, Ad is calling me to dinner. Salmon with lemon and herbs and fresh green beans. Yumm.
