I have been quiet lately in part because I have nothing to say and in part because I have more swirling in my head than I can put into words. Even now I am writing in fits and stops in-between my pages as I drudge through the tedious tasks my job provides. At least it is Friday and I have Saturday to look forward to. This Saturday we will look at our first house in MI. Maybe after the first of the year we will start hitting the open houses. It is time for us to seriously look for a place if we intend on having a house before our lease is up at the apartment complex. I want to be a home owner again (even a part owner).

Other activities have bore no fruit as yet but month by month we try ever more exotic �techniques� to improve our chances. It bums me out sometimes to consider that I might be too late but I�ll get over it.

The sad comes and goes (as usual) and although it can be intensified by the activities at hand it is usually not connected to events.

Christmas is upon us and I am suitably unprepared. I work feverishly (read lazily) to get our my Christmas cards finding more people I must include daily. I also have been considering my friends in the west and their lack of contact. I realize that people are busy with their lives but one friend in particular has me quite worried and sad. She was/is one of my very closest friends and initially when I move all the way to this wasteland, she and I talked with some regularity but it has been a while (too long) since I have heard from her and I am worried. I miss her laugh and our wonderful dinners together where we talked ourselves horse. She listened to me and I tried to do the same for her (I always thought I talked too much but she continually assured me that she didn�t see our friendship as one sided). I am saddest of all that I appear to have lost her. I have lost friends before and it hurts whether it was a fight that lead to the disconnect or you simply float away. I haven�t given up yet. I keep trying and hoping she will forgive me and call.

The M word is being bandied about lately due to our recent attempts at having a family and our more recent consideration of homeownership. My Darling would like the security of M if we have a family and I believe I would feel more comfortable in home ownership if there was a legal connection beyond both our names on the deed (there is the added possibility that my credit history will be an issue). While neither of us believes in any moral reason to formalize the arrangement the protections of the law for the items above are stronger in M than out. I don�t like the difficulties it presents in extracting oneself from the arrangement. While My Darling appears reasonable enough my experience is that if you observe the fringes of their anger (by that I mean how mad does he get when something he cares about is involved) you can measure how bad it is going to be if things don�t work out. Then again if we buy a house together we will still be entangled well enough to involve the courts anyway so I just don�t know. If the family thing happens there is no question we will go through with it I�m just no so sure about the other reason.

Then there is the contemplation of my last trip down the aisle. My mind keeps going back to that time and playing events over and over. Five years of my life that I do not want to remember yet I also do not want to forget. So many people crossed my path as I traveled around. I have so many stories, good stories, and he is tied to all of them. I can�t talk of those times with out thinking of and or speaking of my ex. I appreciate my Dad�s ability to modify a favorite story for telling to My Darling (about a gift given for a holiday which turned out to have been given by my father to my mother for the same holiday.) At the time it seemed to reinforce my attachment to my ex but now it�s another in a series of good memories turned bad by the meanness of the man I once loved.

Now there is another man that I love. He seems kind and loving (so did my ex, so are we all when we are in love) and I will tie myself to him one way or another (a decision I question all the time when things are rough yet they always resolve and we return to a happy relationship which makes me believe it is all part of the normal human interaction in love and cohabitation.

So here I sit in the middle of Christmas and family, love and M, friends and distance, time and ticking, all wrapped up in changes most extreme. You see why my silence. I have said so much and so little.

I almost forgot; two of my Haiku are to be published. The San Dieg0 Poetry A$$ociation will publish a collection of work from local writers (I qualify only due to the earlier portion of the year spent in SoCal). For those of you who missed the early post.

Michigan

Water and land share
equal footing around here;
It's disconcerting.

Darkness steals this day,
warmth abandons garden pools
leaving frozen fish

*Thank you R de R for your suggestion, I like it.

I wish you Peace

~alison~

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