Has anybody watched After Life with Ricky Gervais? Sweet show about a widower. Also some funny stuff.
Heading in to the office today on my day “off”, to play catch-up with phone calls and paperwork. Got some grocery shopping done this morning, plan to tackle my bedroom closet this weekend. Also need to catch up some miles for the thousand mile challenge.
Also - don't know if I've mentioned it before, but I've been growing out my white hair since August 1st. Just got tired of every 2-3 weeks at the hairdresser's especially when I was trying to protect CMM at home and my hairdresser wasn't being careful. It's a long slow process (my hair is well below my shoulders). I'm liking it so far though, and think my I'm getting a bit of new hair growth, which is surprising, since I never thought the dye was hurting my scalp. There's also some unclear research about hair dye and cancer risk, especially people like me with dark hair color and lots of episodes of dyeing. So I'll proceed with it and hope I like it when it's all grown out. My hair has never been any color other than my natural brown - my hairdresser matched it exactly with the dye.
Right now I'm not interested in dating again, and don't know if I ever will. But anyone who dates me will have to be okay with snow white hair with a little gray streak in the middle. They say platinum blondes have more fun, right?
Working in my closet today, and noticed an inscription in the back of a framed photo CMM had there. It’s the Chicago skyline, and the inscription says “To CMM, Chicago….the place where all our dreams began. I love you, (wife)”
So sad that marriages that start out happy like that can end up in such ruin, with the children as the fallout.
That's sweet that he kept that. Goes to show he had a big heart.
It's one of those things that in many ways I hate about divorce. If my xW had passed on, I would undoubtedly still have lots of pictures of her / us around and be proud of it. I purged all of them except for digital copies and put them in one of the boxes that she eventually took.
I don't regret it because the pain of the end of the marriage poisoned many of the memories for me, but I regret "having" to do it.
I don't expect his daughters will want that. You had talked about reaching out to them - were you still thinking of doing that? There was a lot of anger there, I think on both sides.
On BD H52, W50 T27, M26 S21, D23 BD-9-Mar-16 D-15-Jan-18 Final-19-Apr-18 I am a storyteller. The story may do you no good. But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells
This stuck me as interesting and made me think of my own example. Have been officially D’d now 15 years but still have have the last family portrait photo hanging. I did move it to a less conspicuous spot but not hidden. I removed most of the rest. TBO if the kids were not in it I’d probably not leave it out. But it’s part of my life. It was one of the last times we were all together a few months pre bomb. I’ve got some other photos of old GFs around too + mostly doing activities or visiting interesting places. Again, it’s all part of my life. Now I guess if I had a LTR it might be different but I’m totally fine with it. Might seem odd to others, not to me. Yeah things often start out happy and end otherwise.
DonH Midwest Me 56 WAW-EXW 55 Met 11/95 / Married 5/00 Bomb 6/20/05 / She Filed on 6/2/06 / Divorced on 10/9/06 4 who'd qualify as GF since D & dated about 25 women since D
kml, I think snow white hair is awesome! My grandmother and my aunt both had it, and they looked better for it. They were both had excellent dress sense, and the white hair just made them look...I suppose....majestic.
It is sad that CMM's hopes and dreams didn't quite make it, but the fractured relationship with his children is what I find the most upsetting. Dying without my children near me is one of my nightmares.
As for photos, at BD I packed away all of the wedding photos, but left the professionally taken family ones out. Over time I put most of them away though, but there is one still there. I look at the couple we were from time to time and wonder what happened. I don't feel as sad as I used to, but as Don says, it's all a part of my life. I can't change it, and I don't want my children to think I want to.
Ricky Gervais is an excellent show writer! I love "After Life" - typical British humour mixed in with (untypically British) emotional stuff. He is so very unpretentious, raw and real, yet intelligent and sometimes quite sophisticated.
I hope you're taking care of yourself. I'm sure there will be more joy for you in the future, but right now you are just putting one foot in front of the other. This too will pass.
Wow. Still cleaning that closet and leafed through the photo albums I have there. Mind blowing.
Let me preface this by saying, when I was young, I thought my looks were nice, but boring. I was unpretentious and seriously did not realize how beautiful I was, although I wasn’t unhappy with my appearance. My ex, being someone who could never be satisfied in life, would occasionally nitpick at something or other about my appearance, but honestly, I didn’t pay him much mind. I knew I was okay.
But looking through those albums - OMG, I was f-ing gorgeous!!!! I don’t say this to brag - I can’t take any credit for it - but what an idiot my ex was. I was kind, smart, beautiful, sexy, and although not an athlete, there I am rock climbing and backpacking and skiing - not exactly a couch potato either. Nothing was ever good enough for him and he was an idiot who couldn’t enjoy it even when he had it all.
I keep these photo books for my kids. They encompass many years of my adult life. I haven’t edited out my ex. I don’t display any photos of him in my home, but I haven’t cut him out either.
It actually helps to see them again - it just reminds me how warped he was.
Done with my Sunday morning walk with my friend and getting ready now to tackle the closet again, which has turned out to be a much bigger job that anticipated. Should be done by tonight however. Right now it’s like tgat part of remodeling where you’ve done the demolition, it looks awful, and you ask yourself why you ever started, it was fine before! But I know today is the good part as you start to put things away. Some things will also get redistributed to the garage (like, does the blowup visitor bed have to live in my closet, especially during a pandemic without visitors? The answer is no, it does not!)
Also - does anyone have any recommendations for digitizing my very extensive collection of CDs, including some very indie things I could never find again (that fun French trio we saw playing in a tiny club in London, the European ska band CCTV Allstars we saw in Bath, the self produced CD from street drummers we saw somewhere in our travels. )
I used to have a laptop with a CD drive and an easy program to rip cds but I think that ones long dead.
I use the standard Windows Media player that comes with most computers assuming you are in that world and not on a MAC. It does a decent job of indexing the files and is easy to use. Where it lacks is when it gets the tagging wrong or you have content that it can't figure out. You can actually right-click on the file on your computer and edit the meta data tags directly though.
You can get an external DVD/CD player that plugs in to your USB port for just a few bucks and they work well.
On BD H52, W50 T27, M26 S21, D23 BD-9-Mar-16 D-15-Jan-18 Final-19-Apr-18 I am a storyteller. The story may do you no good. But a story is never for the listener. It is always for the one who tells
They say platinum blondes have more fun, right?