On the Precipice of Change

I'm so close to moving out of California. Two weeks to be exact. I've been out of my friend's house for a week today due to the landlord freaking out about my dog being a pitt mix. So unfair. Much like the first time I left my ex, time has only proven to make my emotions more raw and painful but this time it feels different. This time, when I cry, it's not from yearning for us to get back together. This time when I cry it stems from the feelings of rejection and failure. I honestly didn't think he would've ever asked me for a divorce....didn't really "ask" me but yelled it into my face that night and then wrote a letter asking for one as well. As bad as some of the times were in the relationship, I didn't ever think that we'd be getting a divorce. My mom told me the other day that she thinks he already has a girlfriend from a picture she saw on Instagram that someone took of him. That hurt. That fucked me up and has for the past two days. Our divorce isn't even official until at least July 20th and he already has a girlfriend. I can say that I'm feeling depressed. I've been crying a lot and the crazy thing is, that I'm messaging and texting friends one thing while I'm sobbing at the same time and nobody knows it. I feel like no one really knows how I feel and of course that's my fault because I haven't voiced those feelings. I feel an immense sense of loss. I feel an overwhelming feeling of failure and hopelessness. I'm making plans for the future while thinking of how pointless and irrelevant life is. My problems are a drop in the ocean compared to all of these people on the planet. Life feels like a big joke where the punchline isn't even funny. Yeah, I feel like shit right now and I'm worried because I'm living by myself for the first time in many years. Can I trust myself to find the motivation to keep going? I'm currently in a dark place, no doubt, and the true test will be pulling myself out of this. I'm trying not to be too self-centered because I know a lot of people have dealt with painful divorces and this is probably nothing compared to some of the other stories out there. I feel like even though people know some of the things that I've experienced, they act like I should act like everything is 100% ok. When everything happened, I had hundreds of friends reach out to me. Now, everyone I interact with acts like I should just be perfectly fine and so excited about my move. They forget why I'm moving. I moved to California with a husband and a job and I lost both of those things in December. I'm leaving empty-handed with the very things I moved here with gone forever and no one thinks of that. They act like I'm on some adventerous journey treking to Florida when in reality I'm going back to Florida with my tail between my legs and a broken heart. It's funny when eveyone thinks of you as the happy cheerful person because once you're put into that box, they can't accept you being anyother way. It's like I was type-casted for a role in life that disables me from sharing my dark times with people. I'm left to absorb the dark times by myself and hopefully not do or say anything too regretable. A lot of times I'm disgusted with my current situation and my life in general. I'm embarrassed that I have to start all over again at 40. I'm embarrassed to be facing my second divorce. I'm trapped in my emotions and the only one that can save me at this point is myself. I have to get out of my own head. I have to think about all of the bad things that I endured in the relationship and use that as a source of strength to pull myself out of this depression. Very much like I always said about hiking, it was "me against me" to climb those mountains and this is very much the same situation. It's me against myself right now and it's a tough battle. Both opponents equally matched and knowing the weakness of the other...in this case, myself, just destroying myself everyday. This should be a high point. Finally having time by myself to really face my shit and deal with it. I'm facing it head-on because when I'm done dealing with this, I want to truly be finished with it; no lingering emotions and pain. I will be free of this one day. Today just isn't that day.

Shawshank Redemption

Yesterday was the first time that I felt depressed about my situation. We've had storms here for the past 30 hours and those storms brought in some sad and hopeless feelings in myself. It was one of those days where I had the strong desire to go to bed at noon and be done with the day but of course, that's not realistic, especially when living with other people. I went through the motions, looked for jobs online, updated my LinkedIn info, made dinner for us three, played video games and then laid awake until about 1am. I had a lot of nightmares last night. It was one of those mornings that when I checked the clock at 7am, I was happy to get up and be done with sleeping. My dreams were of him, and of us getting back together. I kept thinking that it wasn't right, that my family was going to be so pissed at me for getting back together with him. But it wasn't all rosey, it was stressful and argumentative and filled with fear and dread; much like the end of the relationship was. When I first spoke to the paralegal, the night after everything happened, she mentioned that I sounded oddly ok and that I was probably still in shock. I keep hearing her words repeating in my head. Was I in shock? Am I about to have the mental bottom fall right out of me? Today is one month since the night that everything happened. One month exactly. Maybe there are different stages that I'll be going through and the depression/sadness is one of those stages. Not that I haven't been sad, but I've been mad more than anything else. I guess I can only hold onto the energy that it takes to be angry for so long. Maybe a month is my max and now I'm drained and saddness is seeping in, filling those spaces where I held so much anger. "You didn't go through all of that for nothing" just read that quote and damn did I need it. It's important to keep in mind that this is all just a little sliver of my hopefully long life and everything I just experienced, I need to learn the lessons, even if it means just finding strength or fighting those feelings of sadness, and not losing perspective. There are a lot of great things waiting for me and even here, where I am now, there are great things happening. I need to enjoy what I have here now because this will also be something I look back on, maybe even as soon as next month. I learned a new card game, reminded myself of how it feels to do everything on my own again, have began to play a video game from the beginning for the first time in many years, where I don't have to pass the controller off to another player. I would depend on him to fight all of the tough battles because I suck at fighting the difficult bad guys and now, when I come across them, it's all on me to fight them and honestly, I can't wait to do it. It's not going to come as easily to me as it did with him, but that's ok. Even if it takes me a month to beat one guy, I'm going to do it and beat the entire game all by myself. So I just found out that divorce in California takes at least 6 months and 1 day after filing for it to be finalized and due to covid, it's probably going to take even longer! OMG, I'm going to be legally married to that asshole for most of 2021. Wow that sucks so bad. At least I know why the lawyer seems to be dragging his feet. It's because of how slow this process is. I thought the March 1st court date was the last one but now it seems as if it's the first one and I have no idea what it's even for, ugh. I'm reading about divorce in California and educating myself because I've been feeling like all I've been doing is waiting for the lawyer to contact me, which he has once with the paralegal to say hello and basically that was it. I'm going to have to Kim Kardashian this and learn about the law myself so that I am not surprised like I was tonight. I guess in a way I feel better knowing that it's just going to take several months so I have the freedom to get my ass to Florida and start looking for a good job. I've been eagerly staring at March 1st on my calendar like it was the day that I was going to be released from prison but really it was just a legal bullshit day and I'm not being released until later this year. Back to my cell I go to pass the time and rearrange my expectations.

Home for the Crazy Divorcees

I wanted to treat this like a journal. I was never in the habit of keeping a journal, just had a diary when I was a kid and I'm certain that I wrote a lot of embarrassing things. I don't think I'll be too embarrassed here. Everything I write is what I'm feeling and experiencing and if it embarrasses me, then it just means I need to become more comfortable with my truths. For the first time in a long time I'm unemployed and also sort of homeless. I am staying with friends on the generosity of their kindness. They have a marriage that reminds me of my parents. They have a lot of issues and when I'm alone with one of them, I slip into the counselor role as they tell me everything that annoys them about the relationship and major problems. It's a role I easily fall into since it's something that was a big part of my life since the age of 12. My parent's marriage was pretty messed up. My dad would yell when he got angry and my mom would go cry in the bedroom. He then got the habit of yelling at my older sister the same way and she wouldn't yell back either. I would get so pissed. Mad enough to get in his face and yell at him. I took on the role of standing up for my mom and sister, like I was their protector. My mom would write my father long letters at night after she got out a good cry and she'd leave it in the kitchen for him to read in the morning before he left for work and sometimes I would read those letters. Actually, most of the time I would read the letters. He would sometimes write her back and it was fascinating to read those letters and get a glimpse into their relationship on a psychological level. I grew up before I should've grown up. At 12, I was a pro at listening to adult problems and giving logicial advice. I remember a neighbor we had, he had all of the Bob Villa books and he would do woodworking projects in the garage. I remember hanging out in his garage and him venting to me about his wife and their problems. I'd listen and give him the most sage advice a kid ever provided. Looking back, it sounds crazy to me and yet it seemed so normal then. I'm definitely getting flashbacks now that I'm falling back into the marriage counselor role. Hanging out with each of them independently is fun when they're not talking about one another. I can't say I really mind, to me, the fact that they each think about eachother so much while they're apart shows me that they do care. Their relationship has major flaws but neither has completely given up on the other. We have seven marriages in this house between the three of us. It's like living in a halfway house for the insane that somehow believe in marriage but can't figure it out. You'd think between the three of us we'd have some pro tips but there's just a lot of story swapping about the shit that our exes did that was annoying or deal breakers. I've had a lot of good conversations with them since they're 20 years older than me, I've gotten a lot of insight on how they feel about relationships, love, life goals. It's actually been exactly what I need in my life at this moment. Immediately after that night, I was ready to drive cross country to Florida, just watch California disappear into my rearview mirror and I'm so glad I didn't. Well, I actually couldn't because I have so many unsettled things still here. The divorce isn't even finalized and won't be for at least another month. When I do leave, my goal is to have everything settled and nicely buttoned-up so that I can truly start fresh in Florida. I feel ok about everything. I feel sad sometimes when I have thoughts enter my mind about all the happy times and then I feel mad because he threw it all away. Then I just feel numb, because if I think of everything at once, it's too much to handle. I've learned to entertain my thoughts for only a few minutes and then push them away; like if I'm in them for too long, I'll get sucked in and the black hole will find me tumbling down it, landly squarely on Memory Ln and it's not so easy to move out of Memory Ln once you've signed a lease. For now, I've gotta keep moving, barely focusing on one thing for too long for fear of the panic attacks squeezing my chest. I read an article the other night about "How to Deal With Divorce". I actually had good dreams that night that my ex and I were having a civil conversation in our old kitchen. I've read too many articles about being in mentally abusive relationships. It makes me feel embarrassed that I was in one for so long and it terrifies me to think of future relationships. I'm going to really have to trust someone that I date in the future. It's going to take a lot of time....unless I already know him and then all bets might be off. Just kidding, not really.

Forgive But Never Forget

It's been almost a month now since the shit hit the fan. I managed to lose my husband, home an job in one night. Not sure many people can make that statement. He was diagnosed with bipolar years before I even met him and didn't want to take medication, which I did support his decision. We hadn't spoken about this since meeting in 2012 when we were in the stages of getting to know one another and he told me so many terrible things about himself but I thought "look how real and loyal I am" so I stayed. I didn't flinch when he told me things about his past. The weeks leading up to that night he had become really manic. Waking at 4:30am, not really eating, becoming more and more hostile. Our marriage had began to deteriorate extremely slowly. He was losing patience with me, cutting me off when I spoke, not answering when I spoke to him but I figured it was maybe a rough patch and things would right themselves. In the eight months of consuming weed he had quickly become obssessed with it. If he wasn't smoking from the bong, he had the vaporizor tube stuck in his mouth, removing it only to eat dinner and then promptly reinserting it until bedtime. It was like he couldn't get high enough. It made me sad to watch. I felt like I could literally see his brain malfunctioning, trying so hard to get higher and higher, but looking for a high that thc couldn't provide. A few times I nagged him and told him to slow down or chill out but that would only make him stop for an hour and then he'd be right back to it. I don't know how long this realistically could've lasted because I think in May when he took his first hit it was the beginning of the end, all over again. I guess what I learned from this is that an addict is an addict, whether it's alcohol or weed or anything that gets you to another level. We were so careful that we didn't even use mouthwash with alcohol in it, only for it all to go to shit with weed. He made a friend that gave him shrooms one of the first times they met which I thought was weird but did remind me of the time when we were dating during part 1 that one of his co-workers told me he had been asking him for coke. I confronted him and of course he said it was for someone else and I dropped it. The thing about me is that I forgive but I never forget. I have the capacity to forgive almost anything. Sometimes it takes me many months and even years to forgive but I do forgive. Forgetting, well that's not part of my self-preservation. So when he showed up with shrooms after just meeting this guy, I knew that he steered the conversation to drugs. I knew it and it hurt like hell to know that he had really slipped beyond my reach at that point. We ate the shrooms on Christmas Eve, Merry Christmas let's get fucked up and open presents. I didn't smoke that night, honestly he had turned me off of smoking at that point. Just like he turned me off of alcohol in part 1, part 2 ruined weed for me. To watch someone consume so much of it with the desparation that he did, it was gross. I went to bed, not feeling anything becuase I think I ate too much dinner and didn't eat many of the shrooms. He smoked, a lot and when I kissed him goodnight his blue eyes were black with his pupils dialated to the full extent. But I went to bed and slept and looked forward to having the next day off. That weekend he was the most manic I had ever seen him. He was on the phone with customer service people for three hours. One minute he'd be tearing her down and then the next minute he'd be making small talk. The atmosphere in the house was so crazy that I just sat outside as long as I could. It was making me feel crazy listening to him. I felt like I physically could not be near him. I felt my anxiety was at it's peak due to his unpredictablity at this point. I was so mad at him that he had me feeling like I couldn't even be in the house. When he got done yelling at the customer service people, he turned the music up as loud as he could and proceeded to clean and do anything except interact with me. It was a terrible day. That was the last Sunday in December. Monday seemed ok, I went to work and when I got home we ate, took showers and had plans to hang out and then something snapped inside of him. He began breaking everything in the house. Shattering the vases that houseplants were in, throwing them on the floor, opening the front door and chucking them outside. Tearing down the blinds in the kitchen, ripping out items from the entertainment system all while yelling at me, eyes bulging with hatred. It was so scary and so surreal and so out of left field, that I didn't even know how to handle it. He had never physically intimidated like he was on this night. I was shaking but staying quiet. I knew by the way he was acting that me saying anything he didn't like was going to end even more badly than the night was already going to. I agreed with everything he said, hand washed all the dishes he threw into the dishwasher and then said I was going to bed. Well, the night was not over for him or for me either. I'm skipping a lot of terrible details because frankly, I'm shaking just writing this much about what happened. He screamed a lot of things at me and was making less and less sense as the night went on. When I was in bed hearing him continue to break more things upstairs, I decided that when I left for work the next morning I was going to drive straight to the airport and buy a one way ticket to Florida. I was going to leave with my purse and the clothes on my back and get the hell away from him. It made me cry to think about petting my dog one last time but I didn't see any way out. That seemed like the best plan until he started yelling about me quitting my job and making me say, "yes, I quit my job. I will not go in tomorrow". That was at around 3:30 in the morning. At 4 he began to come downstairs and yell at me and break things in the room. One of the times he went upstairs I locked the door and called 911. I had enough time to tell them my address and why I was calling before he was threatening to break down the locked door. I hid the phone under the covers and kept 911 on the call. He began to flip the breaker switch, leaving the room in total darkness and also began trying to remove my glasses. One of the times he went around the corner to flip the breaker again I made a run for it. I ran out through the sliding glass door and my dog followed. I ran up the driveway across the lot up to the street and down the street. I crawled up and into an embankment on the side of the road. By this time is was 5am. I laid there with my face pressed against the dirt, shivering from the cold and terror with the realization that if he were to find me that I think he was going to kill me. My dog laid there with me, shivering as well with his face pressed against my arm an he dared not even make a wimper. He was terrified and dammit we were in this together. I think it took almost 20 minutes for the cops to arrive. I saw the lights flashing and heard yelling and then silence. I was half expecting to hear gunshots because he was so out of control. Once it was quiet for a few minutes, I walked down the road and back to the house. He laid there with the taser prongs still attached to his body and wouldn't you know it, he was still yelling at me. What a mindfuck. They took him away and I got to packing. This time I packed more than I did the first time around. I packed some jewelery and sunglasses and shoes and of course my dog. I went back to the house once to get more of my belongings but the owners had let him come back so a lot of my things were gone. A watch my mom gave me when I was a teenager was gone and I'm still kicking myself for not packing it when I left that day. He had packed all of my clothes into tubs. Well, not all of my clothes. He picked and chose what to throw away and what to pack. Even then, he was still exerting some sort of control. Just pissed me off and made me shake my head about it all. I took all the clothes that he packed and gave away a few garbage bags worth to Goodwill. A lot of my shoes that were still there only had one foot. Did he really take the time to throw one foot away from each pair of shoes? Yes, yes he did. I wouldv'e been okay never going back to that house and I didn't think I coul do it but then a few nights before I was thinking, "fuck him for making me so afraid that I can't even go back to a house". I've been staying with friends for the four weeks and am planning on moving back to Florida. He was served with divorce papers and a restraning order last week, so when that is finalized then I'm out of here. I'll make sure to flip this state the bird when I leave. Valentines day is coming up in a couple of weeks and honestly I feel so damn bitter. I don't think I'll every marry again. I just think the idea of marriage is outdated. I'm about to turn 40 and have two divorces now under my belt. I think I'm tapping out of the marriage game. I'm all set with that. I've been wanting to keep a journal and I thought why not unbury this gem and make this my journal. I'm sure many fucked up things are still on the horizon for me. I'm not all gloom and doom. I'm excited to go back home. Ten years is a long time to be aways and most of my friends I haven't seen in all the years I've been gone living all over the U.S. I'm ready for the next chapter and I'm optomistic about life in terms of work and just hanging out with friends and family. Love, I don't want to hear that dirty four lettered word muttered around me, at least not for a while.

Choices

The seven months that we spent apart was a whirlwind. I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders and my mind. I moved closer to the restaurant I was cooking at and rented a room from a guy I found on Craigslist. I cooked at a restaurant that I really enjoyed with co-workers that I still keep in touch with. I went running on the beach, right past the apartment I used to live in and I admit to stopping the first few times and just staring at the patio where I used to sit and I'd just cry. I would think about all those happy feelings I had living there and all of the terrible ones I felt as well. I dated the guy I rented the room from which was a huge mistake...shocking, I know but I guess it just felt good to be with someone nice again. That only lasted a few months and I began looking for my own place. I found a cute little basement apartment, still nearby where I was cooking. The landlady was the sweetest old woman and I was happy once again. I had my own place in the Bronx and I loved that little apartment. I had butterfly stickers on the wall that my sister sent me and my clothes hangers were pink and black velvet. My ex moved in sometime in 2013, by calling me one night and telling me he had nowhere to go. Should've been a red flag that his parents wouldn't even take him in at this point and he had obviously burned all of his bridges. My girly apartment quickly turned into our space as he shoved his concert tees into the closet and began to redecorate while I was at work. So, this basement apartment was an opportunity for me to have my own space again. I decorated it, bought some furniture, kept it nice and tidy. Life was beginning to feel normal again. I felt like I was on the right path again, living the life I had wanted to live when I moved to New York. I began dating a regular from the restaurant. He was quite a bit older then me, I think about 16 years older, which was not my usual dating preference but he was youthful and loved good food and wine. I think we lasted about three or four months. In that timespan we went to Paris, took multiple trips to Florida where he owned a home, flew to Chicago to dance the night away to the blues, ate at top restaurants in the city and saw some of the best jazz concerts I've ever seen at the Lincoln Center. The heart wants what it wants and it doesn't what it doesn't. I found myself feeling really rushed in the relationship. He had the pressure on me to move in with him, getting into the habit of mentioning it almost every night as we said goodbye at my car or in front of my apartment. A friend of mine said "what's the worse that could happen?" so I took that sage advice and ran with it. I moved all of my items out of the basement apartment and into a rental home with him. It didn't take me very long to feel like I had majorly fucked up. And here I was, eyeball deep in this relationship, living with the guy, and how was I going to get out of this one? My sister came to visit in January 2015 and while she was visiting, I received an email from my ex. He was at a halfway house in the city and wanted to meet up to speak with me. I had always felt that the relationship ended with no satisfactory finality, so I agreed to meet him at a diner to get some closure. I took my sister to JFK and met up with him at the diner. Of course before I got to the diner, I stopped at CVS to buy him things he had requested, like a little travel bag, razor, toothpaste. You know, things a convict doesn't have when he's just been released. Stupid me, I was already wrapped around his finger and I hadn't even seen or spoken to him in seven months. We met at the diner and he did all of the talking. I should've given him hell. I should've made him accountable for all of the shitty things that he said to me and shitty way he made me feel but I didn't. I just sat there and listened to all of his bullshit stories. I drove him back to the halfway house and he kissed me before he got out of the car, and I kissed him back although it felt weird and wrong. Driving back home I knew I had to end the relationship I was currently in. He was waiting for me an pissed. He had read the email my ex wrote me and suspected that I had met up with him. He was right and had every right to be angry. Well he wasn't angry, he was pissed and his temper slowly began creeping up more and more. He kept coming into the bedroom and then leaving to pace the house, only to come barge in again and repeat this process for a while. He told me I had to leave, which I was fine with and I actually left that same night. I was already mentally done with the relationship and my ex was an easy way out. Well not an easy way out, more of an unhealthy, familiar road that I had traveled. So off I went and got back into the process of finding an apartment, moving my ex and myself into it and figuring out this part 2 of the relationship. This time alcohol was not allowed since that's what destroyed the relationship in part 1. Onward we continued that way, managing hotels together, moving to different cities, bickering here and there with only a mean outburst from him a few times a month. We married in November of 2016 and he got on one knee while gazing up into my eyes so lovingly. I was moved and felt more in love with him in that moment than I had ever felt. The years went on and we stuck with the sobriety until May of 2020. At this point we were living on the West Coast and I remember we were listing to Stick Figure and I said "this makes me want to smoke weed and it is legal here...." that's all it took. He was onboard and within the next few minutes we were googling where and how to purchase weed. We placed an order and he made a pipe with a screen for us to smoke out of. Eight months later, the bottom would fall out of our relationship in one terrifying night. Everything we worked for, all the dreams we had, all of it gone in one night.

Cunt

Well, here I am...ten years later. When I began this I was getting divorced, moving to NYC and starting my career to cook professionally. Now, ten years later, I'm getting divorced again, moving back to Florida and hoping to revive my cooking career. I seriously can't make this shit up! I've been in a relationship with my current, soon to be ex husband since meeting in 2012. We dated until May 2014 and broke up until Jan 2015. He had an alcohol monitoring bracelet around his ankle when I met him, charming, I know. Honestly, he was so different than my first ex-husband. This guy was a loud New Yorker with a I don't give a fuck attitude. I liked that he had been in trouble because I always felt that if I wouldn't have been married from the age of 23-30, I probably would've gotten myself in trouble too! He was facing some charges and always managed to get out of doing jail time by going to rehab. Needless to say, I spent Thanksgiving of 2013 taking a train from Penn Station all the way to Port Jefferson in Long Island to vist him at one of the rehab locations he would stay during our relationship. Once visiting him, arriving back at Penn Station, I proceeded to go to TGIFridays, sat at the bar, ordered a tall cold beer and a dozen chicken wings. I guess it felt exciting to be with someone that had so many issues and so much baggage. Wow, it seems weird to admit that but I think that's what it was really all about. Oh and the sex, well that was really what hooked me if I'm being completely honest. So onward our relationship went until he began to get blackout drunk everyday and pass out at night. Sometimes he'd pass out in our (my) queen sized bed, laying diagonally and I wouldn't be able to move him, so I'd fall asleep in a chair. Seems so pathetic now that I think about it. Was the sex really that good? At that point, it was non-existent, so no, it was not good anymore and why I put up with him I'm not sure. My last cooking job in 2013 was a well known restaurant in the Lower East Side and the hours were intense. I was living far North in the Bronx and would need to be there by 10am. I actually took the job as a prep cook, although by that point I was more than capable to cook on the line as I had done in so many restaurants around the city. It was just one of those opportunities that I felt like I had to take a step back in order to possibly move forward. The shift would end after dinner shift and even after the kitchen upstairs was cleaned. The cooks were in the habit of having a beer and making sausage after dinner and cleaning, so I'd often still be there at 12 or 12:30 at night. He insisted on picking me up from work, since he was cooking at a restaurant in Long Island and would drive into Manhatten on the LES and he got into the habit of yelling at me if he had to wait a couple of minutes. He berated me almost every night all the way up to the Bronx. And yet, I still stayed. In 2014 we moved to Long Beach, Long Island and we had an apartment right across the street from the beach! I could hear and see the ocean from the front patio. It was glorious. All my life living in suburbia Florida and I finally had an apartment on the beach in NY. The blackouts didn't end and by May he was in his own world. I didn't even feel like we were in a relationship anymore. One night while blackout drunk, he called me a cunt. This was actually the second time he did it. The first time he did it, we were in the Bronx and I cried all night. I wrote him a note telling him that I couldn't be with someone that called me that and disrepected me so badly. He laid on top of me when he found the note and cried, assuring me that he'd never do that again. Well, here we were a few months later and I felt like I had to stay true to my word. So, I left in the middle of the night. He was so wasted, I packed to huge suitcases in the same room he was sleeping and he never even woke up. I wrote a note this time too. I wrote something along the lines of "I'm leaving and now you don't have to worry about hurting my feelings anymore". How naive for me to think that he actually cared in the first place but I'm an eternal optomist and see good in people even when it doesn't exist. That was May 2014.

Pissing on the Parade

Alright! So, we're planning a trip to Mexico for January vacation. Apartment is booked, car rental and flight all booked. My guy was talking about getting machetes and hiking through the jungle; he was only half kidding. So hiking became a topic of discussion and his attitude was "yeah, cool, we'll go hike in a jungle somewhere. We'll figure it out." And my first thought was "lets do some research to see where to hike. Some where that might end with a cool view based on where other people have hiked instead of just stopping on the side of the road and walking through a jungle, only to come back two hours later half eaten from mosquitos and miserable." So, apparently I'm always negative. It's like I have to be extra realistic for the both of us. I'm waiting to look in the mirror and have the resting bitch face that some women have. I used to think it was their fault but now I'm wondering if it's a product of their environment from their relationship. Sometimes you have to piss on their parade. Of course, all of this discussion and these thoughts took place while we're running breakfast for a full hotel. That's another reason I don't recommend working with your significant other. You have these super personal, emotionally charged conversations and then a second later a guest is asking is for a scone recipe and I have to grit my teeth and smile. I'm straddling the line of my personal and professional life every minute of every day. I'll be expecting a trophy once this job is over. At least there weren't any guest complaints today! We got every extra set of keys back from the guests and there were only two late check-out requests. Woo Hoo!! So I was thinking that I should add some sort of food knowledge, since I have a lot of info in my head about food. I've been making popovers for the breakfast and did a couple hours of research on how to successfully make popovers. I've made about 200 at this point and here are some tips: 1) heat pans in the oven while making the batter 2) can use cooking spray on light metal pans but if used in a dark metal pan they won't rise 3) warm the milk before adding to the frothy eggs 4) they collapse because they are still raw inside. So cook at 400, once they've risen and begin to get good color, lower to 350 to finish cooking. 5) Prepare to feel victorious!!!