Unfounded Resentment ...

So, I have had an issue for a while now with my mom ... I live with her ... long story if you haven't been following ... and just today my boyfriend had a similar issue with another relative ...

People around us have started building resentments for things that they take on themselves ... in my case ... one example is how my mom always cooks breakfast every morning ... nobody ever asked her to do it ... in fact when I first moved in many times I was on my way to do it and she already was ... then one of two things happens every now and then ... the first is that out of nowhere she blows up at me about how I "never" do breakfast and how I am not pulling my weight ... the second is that one morning she just doesn't do it, but doesn't tell me she isn't going to and then it causes issues ...

In my case, what needs to be understood is that I have been living without a parent for eleven years ... and a mom for almost as long ... I know how to do things like make breakfast ... but

Giving the Best of Ourselves to Everyone Else ... and the Worst to Those we Love the Most ....

This is either a subject people know about and understand or they don't ... at least to start with ... but maybe those that don't will understand ... at least a little ... after reading this ....

My father was an amazing citizen ... he volunteered as an EMT ... he was on the Search and Rescue Team ... he was even a State Coordinator for the Search and Rescue Team ... he was social, outgoing and even charming to most of the world ... but at home he was reclusive and closed off ... he gave the best of himself to everyone outside of his family ...

I have had friends have experience with this lately ... and I have experienced it myself ... someone is sweet and charming and funny with the rest of the world ... they maintain their temper ... but then when they are around the people that are "closest" to them ... the people that care about them the most ... they turn into almost an entirely different person ...

I've seen touchy-feely people that out in public are touching and hugging everyone around ... go home and not touch their spouse/partner for hours even days after ... I've known people

Marriage ... Divorce ... and Friends ...

Lately I've been contemplating my friendships ... past, present, future ... and it got me thinking about some things ....

When my ex-husband and I started dating I had a huge social network ... I had friends from the two high schools I had attended, from college, from several jobs I had worked at ... I had a group of guys I played roller hockey with ... I had friends I worked at the local amusement park with that I hung out with late at night at Denny's and IHOP or just their houses ... I had enough girl friends from various aspects in my life that when we got engaged I could think of more than twelve potential bridesmaids ... I was a social, popular person ... I just was ...

I ran across a picture a few days ago of my ex and I and a group of my friends, from various parts of my life at a Christmas party I hosted two months before he asked me to marry him ... and then I started remembering things ... well, I knew the concept had existed in my life ... but I started remembering the details ... of how I pushed a lot of my friends away ... for various reasons ... but mostly because he was uncomfortable around them ... all my friends from the high school I graduated from were giving me updates on my ex-boyfriend ... the one I was still dating when I graduated from high school and well into my freshman year of college ... my ex-husband hated that ... he really didn't like being reminded I had a past at all ... and now that I have more experience dating people that have pasts ... I understand more where he was

In the middle ...

This is actually something very hard for me to blog about ... I feel like I am standing naked in front of all of you that read this ... but I had to do it ... I had to share the truth about the past ... and my feelings about the present ... and right now ... I only have like eight people that read my blog on a regular basis anyway .... so maybe that helps?!?! ....


Throughout my marriage I had to deal with a lot of drama with my in-laws ... from the day they found out we were engaged, my sister-out-law was horrible, and my mother-out-law had her issues too ... they made my life, and to some extent my marriage a living hell ... always with their disapproval, always with the pessimism, avoidance, passive-aggressive behavior (like refusing to ever even take a beverage in my house ... none the

Julie & Julia

I finally watched this movie a few weeks ago, although I'd wanted to see it since it was in the theaters. I found several things about this movie very intriguing.

It was very, very real ... it follows the true stories of two women ... pursuing their dreams ... their bumpy roads, their faults, their hardships ... and it was just very, very real ... with a happy, movie ending of course ...

What amazed me a lot was that these two women had these amazingly supportive, selfless, yet hard-working men in their lives, that helped them and encouraged them every step of the way. There's the saying, "behind

Parenting Guilt ...

So this is mostly from the viewpoint of a single parent, but I know (from having been married for six years of my motherhood) that all parents occasionally have this feeling. I said in the last archived post that I brought back to life that "I miss my kids like crazy when they're gone, and they drive me crazy when they're here" ... that's not an uncommon sentiment in the single-parent world ... and it creates this little thing I like to call guilt ...

I had a friend and co-worker tell me once, right after my ex and I split, "I love my husband, but maybe we should get divorced just so every other weekend at least I'd get a break from my kids." ... I think she was

An hour or two at the SSA

It was a good time to people watch ... nothing else really to do ... it's interesting because people go there for beginning of life, end of life, marriage, divorce and to get their benefits whether it's disability, death or retirement.

However, it was interesting to be sitting there ... divorce decree in hand ... ready to change my name in all legal capacities back to my maiden name ... to watch all these young, terribly in love couples come in ... some of them with obviously sun-kissed skin that I can only imagine came from a honeymoon in some amazingly romantic and tropical place ... I thought back to the last time I sat in an SSA office ... I was one of them ... although he didn't come with me, I was there alone, but I was terribly in love, fresh from my honeymoon, anxious to take on his name and start our new life together ...

Ironic ...


Now I'm sitting there anxious to get my old name back, to take back that piece of me ... and don't get me wrong, my ex is not an asshole, we have an amicable relationship, I've met his girlfriend ... we talk in a friendly manner about the kids ... we filed as co-petitioners for our divorce and didn't fight over anything ... but still .. I was anxious to get this piece of myself back ... to leave that piece of him behind ... and as I'm looking at all these couples .. I'm wondering how many of them in several years will be sitting back in that office ... divorce decree in hand ... feeling the way I do now ...


I've said it before in blogs, I'll say it again ... nobody gets married expecting to get divorced ... nobody wants that .. in fact my ex and I swore we wouldn't do that to ourselves or our children ... but the bad things, in both of us, got the best of us. We got married young, and had you told me back then we were too young to know, that we weren't through figuring out who we were as individuals, I would have told you that you didn't know what you were talking about .. that we were at an advantage because we would learn who we were together .. that we would change and grown together that being young would make us stronger ... although I don't think that argument is completely without merit ... it was not the reality we faced in the end ...


I don't have a horror story to tell you .. there were fights that definitely went to far, but even though things were thrown and walls were punched nobody was ever hurt .. he didn't go off and have elicit affairs .. he didn't have unhealthy addictions .. sometimes he spent way too much time away from home .. I guess for me looking back there was something manic in the way I felt; I either felt neglected or smothered ... but after the first couple years I never felt like we just existed together ... he was either completely gone and unavailable or he was completely there and all over me (in both the emotional and physical meaning) ... I never felt unloved or unwanted ... even when I felt neglected ... he always told me that he thought I was pretty/beautiful/gorgeous/sexy/hot .. whatever word he felt like using at the time .. and he always kissed me goodnight and good morning ... I always knew that he loved me ... but he was possessive, not in a psycho movie kind of way, but my mom would call and I would talk to her, he'd get mad, my best friend called to tell me she was pregnant and he was pissed off because it was during the Broncos game and I was supposed to be giving my undivided attention to him and the game, even though his attention was clearly just on the game; I even left the room to have the conversation. The possessiveness was bad, but not what went wrong in the end ... in the end ... we could not stop fighting ... we fought over everything ... weeds in the lawn, dirty dishes, dirty clothes, his hobbies, my friend, his friends, my family, his family, how we would handle our children, what to have for dinner, money, jobs ... we fought over everything .. he would walk in the door from work and immediately have a complaint ... I would walk in the door from working myself ... he would immediately have a complaint ... I started dreading going home ... I started dreading him coming home ... because I knew the second we were in the same room together the fighting would start. I would drive around for hours sometimes after work listening to music, talking to my friends on my cell phone .. not wanting to go home. I tried to walk away from the fights, when I did that he would get downright mean ... but I admit that if I wasn't done making my point and he tried to walk away I would do the same ... the day I knew it was probably over was the day my 2 year-old son came and covered both our mouths and told us to stop. My daughters had come upstairs from their downstairs bedroom on occasion in the middle of the night to tell us that we had woken them up, but for some reason those little tiny hands covering our mouths was one of the biggest eye-openers in my life. He went to counseling for anger management ... he used what he learned there to turn around and attack me ... to tell me how I was the reason he was angry ... then we went to counseling together .. he would take over the sessions, rarely even letting the counselor talk, nonetheless me ...

So, a few months after my son so brilliantly opened my eyes ... and after talking and trying ... and going to friends for their counsel ... we went to my middle child's pre-school graduation ... we came home .. we laid in bed next to each other and decided we were done ... that we couldn't do this anymore that regardless of how stupid it sounded to us years ago, and how we knew people would perceive us .. that we had to get divorced, for the sake of our children ...trying to force something that wasn't going to work, that was clearly something we couldn't do in a mature and civil manner, in order to keep a family together ...was in the end going to do more damage than cutting our losses, doing it as amicably and civilly as possible and just moving on ...

Some drama ensued for a few months after ... he called many of my family and friends and told them that it wasn't a mutual decision and told them everything from I was going to try to get full custody of the kids and take them away from him to I cheated on him to I was an alcoholic and neglected my children ... he in all honesty, kind of went crazy for a few months ... in his defense; I was really his first girlfriend ... he had never really even dealt with a breakup before, nonetheless a divorce ... after spending 10+ years with someone and 8+ years of marriage ... when things calmed down is when a new woman entered his life ... he became civil again, we were able to discuss, negotiate ... etc., ....

So, again, here I sat in the SSA office ... "decree of dissolution of marriage" in hand ... ready to take back my maiden name ... and I wonder how many of those happy young girls sitting there anxious to take on their new husband's names ... will have a similar story to tell ... sometime down the road ...

I want you to want to do the dishes ....

So, this is a blog post that I have been writing in my head for years (that's my way of saying don't take this as a slam on the current man in my life ♥) ... but it seems to be an ongoing theme in my relationships with men and in those of my friends with their significant others. I have heard it reversed and I will get to that as well!

So, let's start with that line; "I want you to want to do the dishes" ... for those of you that don't know where that line is from, it is from the movie, The Break-up Jennifer Aniston's character says it to Vince Vaughn's character after a party has occurred at their house and he sits down to play video games while she is in the kitchen doing the dishes. She of course is angry, she wants his help, he responds and says basically fine, I'll come help, she says something like I don't want you to do it because I'm asking you to, and then says "I want you to want to do the dishes" ... he of course finds this ridiculous, stating, "who would want to do the dishes?"

Unfortunately, the metaphor in all that is one that most women know very well, and some men do too. Nobody wants to do the dishes, well maybe a few do, but not many. She wanted him to want to help her to want to spend time with her, to be part of the household of people instead of just a fixture in it.

No girl or woman wants to force a guy to take her on a date, or snuggle and watch a movie, or hold her hand in public or make love to her ... we don't want that ... we want them to do it because they want to. Maybe not even that it's something they want to do, but because they want to make her happy. Robert Heinlan once defined love as; "Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own" ... this is basically the concept at play in this whole metaphor of "I want you to want to do the dishes" ...

When I was married to my ex he had a hobby he did every Saturday morning at first and then it turned into every Saturday & Sunday morning, so along with his work, this meant he was gone from the house no later than 7am, 7 days a week. Sometimes I wanted him to stay home, sometimes for as selfish a reason as then maybe I could sleep in one day, but because I wanted to spend time with him, wanted to actually eat breakfast with him for once ... but it was never the same if I asked him to stay home. I wanted him to know that was something I wanted and make the choice to do it on his own, to choose me over his hobby, over his friends ... to choose to stay home just because it was something I wanted. I didn't want him to stop going altogether or to not go all weekend, just one day, every now and then, to just either realize the night before or the morning of that he wanted to and think something like, "you know what, today I'm going to spend some time with my wife, eat breakfast with my kids" ... it rarely happened, in fact I think it only happened when I asked him to, and even then there were times that he still went, just sometimes for a shorter amount of time.

I think there are a lot of situation where this falls into play and on the "gamer widow" side ... yes, my current boyfriend plays a lot of WoW & COD ... part of what I think I have a hard time with when it comes to this is that it's not predictable. I am a spontaneous person, but at the same time I like to know certain things in advance. It's the part where it catches me off guard ... like we just got done raiding on WoW together, and we get off the computer in my mind to go to bed and watch TV or whatever, and then he tells me he's going to play COD, I never react well. It's not that I have a problem with him playing, it's that in my own mind it wasn't the plan, so the lack of knowledge and the unpredictability don't help. However, it's the same thing in a lot of respects, if one of his friends IMs him or texts him and tells him that they want him to play, every once in a while it would be nice if he said, "na I'm going to spend some time with the girly tonight" or something ... it's actually a very hard thing to explain, but I think most girls get it.

The male analogy that my boyfriend gave me when he said that it made sense to him, was to say that he doesn't want me to sit there and watch the Broncos game with him because he's forcing me to, he wants me to do it because I want to. Whether he means that in the literal watch the Broncos because I want to watch the Broncos or in the "girl" sense of I want you to do it because it's something I enjoy and we can spend some time together, I don't know, but it is kind of a way of looking at it from a male perspective.

It's hard, because us girls are pretty willing to admit that a movie is a "chick flick" .. but we want to see it! We also want to see it with the men in our lives in most circumstances, but we also don't want to hear them bitch and complain the whole time or after or anything else about how "girly" it was or how we "made them watch it" ... we know that our men don't want to watch these movies .. and a comment after about how "girly" it was or something is one thing, but ruining the experience for us is a totally different thing. It comes down to the fine dance of a relationship ... guys don't want us to sit there and watch sporting events (I use sporting events as a stereotypical example, I actually like watching football & basketball) with them and bitch the whole time about how stupid this game is, and say things like "how can anyone watch this, they're all just a bunch of steroid driven male animals out there trying to prove their masculinity to each other" ... and roll our eyes and act like this is just the worst possible thing as a man that you could have made us do. Again it goes back to if you're with someone you truly love their happiness should mean close to everything to you. I don't believe in sacrificing who you are, but you should be able to bend, to open your horizons ... to compromise!

So, you don't like the same kind of music ... make a mix cd or a playlist on your iPod that has alternating music and then music you both like. So, she likes chick flicks and he likes horror ... alternate, a chick flick this week, a horror movie next week .... these are things couples everywhere do in order to compromise in relationships. The point is though it ruins the experience for the one that wants to see that movie or listen to that music if the entire time it's being complained about, eyes are being rolled, snide comments are made, etc., .... we know you guys don't want to watch The Notebook for the 5th time ... but it means the world to us for you to sit down with us and watch it, and do it without whining and complaining and qq'ing ... we want you to want to watch The Notebook .... starting to make sense yet?

As far as the actual dishes, the housework ... us girls do want you to want to help us. If you are part of the household, you are equally responsible for it. Sometimes we are stay-at-home moms or even housewives, and that means that we do take on more than half of the work, but you men out there can still help. In relationships where both or neither work, it seems only fair to split work 50/50. My ex and I made a deal when I started working part-time that he would take care of the kitchen .. dishes, counters, etc., he also did the litter boxes the bulk of our marriage, because I was pregnant for so dang much of it ... I did everything else. He helped before get togethers and sometimes helped put away his laundry, but as a stay-at-home mom I did everything else. That was a compromise that we came to, and it worked, however we did a lot of fighting before we wound up with that solution.

When there are things to be done in "common property" ... I think men and women alike think the other should help, but that should be something that is done naturally, not something that one forces the other to do .. such as the dishes .. us girls want you guys to want to help to want to do the dishes to want to do your part in the household to maintain it and keep it running.

I hate being naggy, it actually is harder for me to say "hey, can you help me with this" than about anything else. I am a hinter .. which is bad .. all men tell me that's bad. I'm like, "gee those dishes really need to be done," or "wow, the dogs shed a lot this week, we really need to vacuum" or "it's trash night we should get the trash out," or "the bathroom is disgusting" .. and it's not that I expect the men that have shared my life and my home to jump at the opportunity to clean something, and I'm all for cleaning myself as well .. but I absolutely detest having to flat out ask an adult type person to help clean something or do something that I see as obvious ... I want them to want to do the dishes, to want to vacuum, to want to help take out the trash, to want to help clean the bathroom ... I want them to want to help me and participate in the household that we share ...

Having talked to some girlfriends about this, I am not alone in this ... there are many of us women that detest the need to be naggy, we don't want to be bitchy, we don't want to make "honey do" lists ... we just want help when it's obvious that we need help ... we want you to want to help!

I know I've said basically the same thing now in about twelve different ways ... so I'm going to stop ... years of writing something in your head, could almost write a novel ;) ... so boys when it comes down to it we do want you to want to do the dishes!

Welcome!

So, I guess I have to start this thing out with some kind of a welcome so that then I can dive into the juicy parts of my life, my gaming life and my real life. I haven't decided how many people I know "for real" in either I will invite to read this blog, because then I might have to censor my words to some degree. I'm sure within the next 48 hours or so most of them will know this small piece of property on the information highway exists. I guess I'll start by telling you all a little about myself.

I'm 32 years old, a divorced mother of three little angels; sometimes their halos are held up by horns, but they really are angels. I am a gamer girl (umm duh) ... I've played games since pong and pac man ... my first real "favorite" game was a game called Balloon Fight on the original NES. I played many, many games on various systems over the years, I never thought I would be a computer gamer (beyond Freecell and Minesweeper), and then my boyfriend introduced me to Guild Wars and then the highly addictive World of Warcraft. I never thought I'd be a WoW geek, never thought I'd be this passionate about a game that basically has no end, but I am. I currently have 4 level 80s (for those of you unfamiliar with WoW 80 is the highest level you can be at least until the expansion, Cataclysm, later this year). All my 80s are alliance although I do have horde toons on other servers. My 80s consist of a Holy/Shadow Priest, Arcane/Frost Mage, Demonology Warlock & Restoration/Elemental Shaman. I am part of a casual raiding guild, but we have an inner group of progression raiders that I heal for on my priest. I probably could devote an entire blog to explaining WoW in layman terms, and probably will sometime soon. I also have an XBox 360, Wii, PS2, Gamecube, N64, NES, DS, and probably other ones I'm forgetting. I have sold and given away systems over the years, so that's far from all the platforms I've played on.

That all being said, as it mentions in my profile, I do understand the "gamer widow" side of things. The girly point of view ... the casual raiding guild that I am in, my boyfriend is the GM of, he spends a lot of time outside of WoW playing COD on the XBox (one of very few games I haven't started on yet). With administrative business within the guild and raiding groups and actual raiding time, we spend quite a bit of our free time playing WoW, and then we spend time outside of WoW playing other games. While we are doing these things together, rarely does it fall under the category of "quality time" by my definition. We both have fun playing together and apart, but sometimes the girl in me needs more than game time, so to any girls that just have guys in their lives as gamers reading this, I get that part!

Something that many people don't understand is that online gaming, regardless of the platform, is a social life.I have met so many people that have turned into amazing real life friends through games. Think about it, it's a social activity that you engage in with people from all over the world ... and if you play often you may talk to these people more often than you talk to your classmates, friends or even family. Let's say in WoW you raid 3 hour raids, 3 times a week. Even if that's all you play ... you are talking to 9 other people for 9 hours a week. It's not much different than being in a class together. There is a stigma associated with online gaming (PC, Xbox, PS3 and Wii), which is part of why I decided to write this blog. We are normal people, playing these games is really no different than being part of a book club, soccer team or any other extracurricular activity people choose to be a part of in order to be social and do something fun with people they enjoy spending time with. It is also relatively inexpensive, especially compared to going out to eat or even just have drinks with friends. Someone once said to me it was a cross-section of America ... and now I would say the world, I am a part of a huge cross-section of the world ... I play with people in England & Germany, California & Maryland ... all without leaving my home. I have made amazing friends that have helped me through very hard times in my life. As with all social interactions, there are those that annoy the crap out of me ... there are those I have fought with ... those I have had to put on "ignore" ... but overall the social experience has been very positive ...WoW has been much more positive than any other online gaming I have ever done. Halo had more sexist jerks and quite frankly perverted boys, Guild Wars doesn't promote as much social interaction as WoW, so the "friend making" isn't quite the same. WoW is built around social interaction, making quests and achievements within the game that require 10, 25 or 40 people to work together on in order to complete. WoW in many ways has changed my life, in a very positive way. My children all play on a limited basis, but they do play, I have a friend and fellow gamer that has links to reports about how games that involve as much problem solving and analytical thinking as WoW does improve their learning abilities and makes them more successful later in life. I believe it. There is a lot of problem solving required on social levels, logistical levels and developing strategies that work, because one strategy in the game does not work for everyone.

I guess I'll have to do a WoW 101 at some point, but for now I think I'll end this little post ... I will as time goes on be writing many posts about my real life; kids, boyfriend, school, work, etc., ... this I am thinking will be a true diary .. at least what I want to say in public .. but for now you get the mostly gamer side! :)