Diario de un loco

Today is Sunday May 31st, the last day of the month. In exactly 27 days my kids fly to Phoenix to visit their mom for the summer. During that time I have the last day of 1st Grade for Jadon, the last day of Kindergarten for Tristan, Baseball pictures for both boys, 10 baseball games (5 for each of the boys), a trip to bellingham, the boys go camping for 9 days, I'll go drinking with Russ and some other friends for the last time before he moves, I'd like to take the boys to the new pixar movie 'UP' and hopefully Transformers which starts right before they leave. On top of all that, I will be hearing if I will be awarded my work benefit to pay for school. I registered for my first class that I will be taking in the fall.

And thats just the stuff I've thought about so far. I'd like to do something fun for Father's Day and I am certain a couple other things will come up as well. Then I also need time for dating, which is slowly but surely becoming more trouble than its worth.

I want to share my life with someone, Im so tired of being alone, but I also feel like Ive mostly been careful, I dont want to jump into anything too quickly. I guess when I say I've been careful, most would say too careful.

My main issue is that I feel time starting to slip away from me. I'll use the 'backup' plan that my friend Sarah and I have for fun as an example. Its not real, but it makes me think, When Sarah is 30, I'll have just turned 33, which is still really young, close in age and all, no problem. But at that point in my life I will have a 12 year old and a 10 year old. When I think about it like that it just blows my mind.

My kids are already so old, there will be a huge gap in the age of the kids I have now and the kids I still want to have. Im getting to the point where I could have kids that end up being closer in age to my grandchildren than they are to my oldest.

This in itself isn't entirely unusual, its just not the way I wanted it to be. I think Im still holding on to a lot of the concepts I put into my mind when I first got married. This does not dissuade me in the slightest from wanting more children, its just a new perspective on a life I never expected to have.

Waiting 4-5 years to have kids is completely fine with me because its vitally important that I develop a good relationship with the girl that is potentially going to be their mom, I dont want to just find a Mom for my future kids, I want to find a partner in life, someone to share my future children with, not just someone to provide children for me.

In all honestly, I'd really like to date someone for a year or two, then get married and then after we get settled into that, have a couple of kids. At this point with my kids getting older, and closer to getting out of the house, Im not sure I even care how many more I have, I'd put a minimum of 2 on that comment at least, but the rest would just be open for discussion, its not my sole decision afterall.

So I guess it comes down to the fact that Im not even in a relationship right now, which puts me BEFORE the very beginning of the above process. Or perhaps AT the very beginning of it if it ends up being one of the girls I am interested in at the moment.

Like I said, I dont want to jump into anything, Im not going to be in an exclusive relationship for awhile, even though I want to be very clear, That Is My Goal. Right now I am very much in the 'dating' phase, and Im not too big on it, Ive had some fun dates, but overall I know that I will enjoy an exclusive relationship that much more, especially knowing we are building something powerful with a lot of potential.

Right now I am mostly seeing my friend Theresa, we work for the same company but we really just met 3-4 weeks ago. We've gone on one full length date, which was a lot of fun, and we've gone out to lunch 4-5 times as well. We have some similar interests, we chat a lot. Things are progressing really well, but I find myself feeling guilty because I just dont feel excited about her, I think we could be good friends, but I dont feel us clicking like I think we should.

Another girl I have seen lately is Heather, she is another girl from work. Heather is awesome, I really like her, she is very cute and fun to be around. We've actually been on five dates, a mix of dinner and long long lunch dates. The only real issue is that she and I are not on the same schedule and its a shame.

We went on 5 dates in like 5 months or something like that. Our first date was way back in December, then I think 2 in January, then one in March and another in April or so. We've rescheduled a couple of those dates as well. There are a lot of scheduling factors involved with Heather. She works night shift and I work day shift, and the way that works out is, almost anytime I am awake and not working, she is either asleep or at work, and vice verse.

Also, she was in bowling league, and she kept pretty busy on Sundays, which only left Saturdays for us to go on dates. She uses some of her Saturdays to spend time with other family and friends and of course the clincher is that I am a single parent and need to spend some Saturdays with my kids.

We recently talked about going on another date, bowling league is over so Sundays opened up, my kids are going to be gone for the summer which frees me up a little as well, and I stay up late nearly every night so we might be able to have late night plans after work if we can figure out anything cool to do. The main problem is that, we don't even have a chance to talk much really, but she is cool enough that the trouble is worth it and I think I should see if there is real potential with her.

The other girl on my mind is my friend Sarah. And in my opinion, we've really messed things up in the last week. I'll delve into things a little bit more in the next few paragraphs, but the reason I say we may have messed things up in the last week is because for once in the history of our friendship we really let ourselves get very close, so close that it felt like we were together in the short couple days she was visiting. We had a very meaningful talk and even addressed how we would react to this after the weekend was over.

We acknowledged how we act after these kinds of moments, which for Sarah is withdrawing, becoming unavailable, and taking some time to think. For me I guess you could say I lash out, while she was here I would say I let my heart and mind speak together, she had my emotions tempered by our reality, but once she was gone and I felt that huge hole in my heart, I could look around, see, feel, hear and smell her presence in every facet of my home... when I write in this state of mind I write directly from my heart, I don't control what I say and it gets me into trouble, especially with Sarah, because that is the opposite of what she needs in that moment.

The issue I feel that really messed things up in the last week is that, by acknowledging we would mutually react this way, I think deep in both our minds we may have developed a hope that we would both react differently this time, or at least that the other person would. I know I really hoped this silence wouldnt happen, and I am certain she hoped I wouldnt lay my entire heart on the curb for her in text. We make things very difficult for each other.

I've talked about Sarah, either directly or indirectly, in this blog alot. She and I met not long after I started this blog. It was the end of fall/beginning of winter time, probably November 2006. I loved the book The Da Vinci Code and the movie had come out on DVD and I wanted to see it. I went to blockbuster to rent it and the girl behind the counter was somehow both astoundingly beautiful and easy for me to talk to. We talked about the Da Vinci Code since I was renting that at the time.

I thought about this girl and i didnt even know her name yet, Im not the best at looking at peoples name tags, and even if I had, Im not the best at remembering names unless Im around someone a lot. I was very very intrigued though, so I started dropping by to see if she was there after work.

I got off work literally right before she started work. It became clear to me that she was very easy to talk to and I developed a crush on her very quickly. I think she was weirded out by me visiting her a lot at first, but I think she got kind of invested in the story I was going through at the time and that ended up leading to us becoming friends.

We started playing Tennis together a lot, when I would go across the state to visit our cousins, she became my road trip buddy and would go visit her friends and family that same weekend. We had dinner a couple of times and watched a couple of movies in theater. The main clincher was that for quite a while I saw her almost everyday, I went in to make sure she didnt get any work done the first hour she was there lol.

She was dating someone at the time, and I was going through a rough time with my divorce. Despite that we ended up getting very close and I developed feelings for her, and I think she had some feelings for me at that time as well.

Things kind of flew into overdrive a little bit as her boyfriend was about to graduate which signaled that she was about to move away, possibly far far away, but fortunately it wasnt too far. We went on one final road trip together up to Coeur d'Alene. I invited her to come up and celebrate a bunch of stuff with a friend of mine and I. I had gotten a new job, I had finally filed for my divorce, and my friend Russ had just recently had a baby.

So we all went out drinking and I had told my friend russ that it was open season, I was going to let him get me as drunk as he wanted and I left my inhibitions at the door, or as much as I can anyway lol.

Well, Sarah and I had both been drinking, I had had an inordinate amount of Tequila, when I woke up I had my very first hangover LOL. I could also barely remember most of the night after a certain point. I did have a vague recollection that Sarah and I had kissed. Probably not long before I threw up and she cleaned me off, which I unfortunately remember very well.

We talked about the kiss briefly, and Im not going to delve into our conversation, but we did kiss again before leaving couer d'alene. I have honestly never been able to get that kiss out of my mind. Kissing Sarah was so much different than kissing anyone before or since and I think that is because I had developed more than a crush on her.

Things got weird between her and I, she let me back in a little bit after I sent her flowers, we got together to play Tennis and we discussed things a little bit. I went too far and I told her that I Loved Her, which at the time was not yet true.

She ultimately decided to stay with her boyfriend and they moved away together. I remember being devastated for a long time. With my divorce happening, I wasn't ready to be with her as much as I wasn't ready to be without her.

After that she came back to Pullman to visit a couple of times, one of the times she came for Jadon's birthday which was really cool. We pretty much kept things on a Friend basis, we talked a little bit about stuff, but for the most part I think we kept the kiss and the feelings out of the equation. Id like to note I still cared about her in this way, but I honestly felt she was just no longer interested in that, she had made a very clear choice to stay with her boyfriend.

She and I started talking more and more, online sometimes on the phone, or just through blogs and messages. She and her boyfriend also broke up during this time. Ultimately we went through a short time period at the end of 2007 where we talked about dating, and I dont think either of us ended up being ready for that idea and it fell through. We went through another one of our downtimes where she doesnt talk to me and I have one sided mass conversations with myself in her message inbox lol. Its a cycle.

Well, ultimately she was going through a hard time and we started chatting again and we left the whole interest part out of it and I felt like we really built a stronger friendship in that time period. She was trying to figure out what was next in her life, things had really gone down hill she felt and she wanted to get back on track. We were chatting on MSN almost daily at that point.

She decided to move home and she found a cool job, I think it was her Carson Cars job that she found right away. It was right around that time, maybe before she started working that job, that I got a girlfriend and Sarah and I went through another downtime because she had started developing more interest in me, and it was mostly because we had gotten close as friends again and she had been going through a really hard time and was starting to come out of it, but it was hard knowing she still had interest.

All through this I fight with myself on whether to pursue her or whether we should just be good friends and I really feel like whenever Im convinced it just the friends thing, she wants more and whenever I want more then she wants distance.

Ultimately things with Kim didnt work out, what I thought was there was not and Sarah and I had gotten through our 'rough patch' lol, our cycle, and started talking again.

I wasnt really sure what to expect, especially knowing she had just had interest again. So I just kept it at the friend level, we flirt outrageously with each other, but I didnt make any advances. I had gotten tickets to go to the Cougar Football game in Seattle, they were a fathers day present from my mom and kids. The original idea was for me to take Sarah, then while I dated Kim, Sarah and I weren't talking at first, but those plans stayed alive.

It had been over a year since I had seen her, we made big plans for our weekend, a cougar game, lots of standup comedy at bumbershoot and then seeing stone temple pilots while we were there. We also wanted to try and go to the zoo if there was time. Ultimately Im thinking, Sarah and I are both single, I am very interested, at this point my feelings for her have only grown, and I know that she had expressed interest in me just a few months previous.

I wasnt thinking we would start anything like a relationship, with the long distance between us, I wasnt sure what to expect, but I was thinking we might end up being pretty close over the weekend and that some of our normal barriers would be down.

Ultimately she had essentially just started dating this guy over in new york within the week or two prior to my coming to visit. We had alot of fun while I was there, we spent a lot of time together but overall it was the opposite of what I had expected and hoped for. There were more barriers between us than ever.

I was dissapointed and a little hurt, but I realized it was best just to maintain the friend thing, before that weekend it had been over a year since we had seen each other, as I said a couple paragraphs above, and I think I underestimated just how long of a time period that is.

She lost a bet to me, she ended up knowing way more Stone Temple Pilots songs than she thought, and that meant she had to buy us tickets to go to the Apple Cup in Pullman together.

Ultimately she and I had had a fun but awkward weekend together and we werent talking very much, things kind of got worse before they got better, and then the final week before the Apple Cup comes along, she didnt tell me she had bought the tickets, she wasnt calling me back, she wasnt answering my texts or messages at all, I couldnt find out if she was planning on coming the night before the game, or the morning of the game, I couldnt find out if she was leaving after the game or staying the whole weekend. Basically it was just complete radio silence until I got a text literally one hour before the game started saying her mom was in the hospital.

We started talking more and keeping more in touch with each others lives and I feel like our friend ship grew a lot. Then came spring break earlier this year, im heading across the state so I make plans to visit Sarah.The first weekend I pick her up really early and we take the kids to the airport together, then we spend the rest of the day together before I have to head home. We went to the IKEA store, which was amazing. I really felt like our friendship was better than ever, it felt so good to be around her again.

I couldnt wait for the next weekend to go and pick the kids up, we were going to hang out with Sarah again and I had started getting the impression that she might be interested again, but I wasn't sure if that was the road to go down. I felt a longing to go down that path, but considering our history up to this point, I felt like I was just fooling myself.

That second weekend was even more amazing than the first, and my kids were there for most of it. The main thing we did was go to Seattle Center, we took the kids up the space needle, then we spent some time playing with Ice and sitting by the fountain.

We clicked really well, Ive always felt like our chemistry was amazing together. I feel like I could tell she was leaving me some openings to make a move, but ultimately I held back, she had talked a lot about this guy she had just met and I just felt like we were leading different lives and it wasn't time.

I convinced her to come visit me finally, I had wanted her to see my 'new' apartment for awhile, and she quickly worked out that she was going to be coming over. It happened very fast. She kept dating the new guy, who seems really great, since we're just friends we kept on doing what we had started doing after Bumbershoot and we stayed fairly up to date on the phone with each other and I knew she was really into this new guy, despite being different then her normal list of interests.

Well, I guess I didnt even think about what our weekend was going to be like. I made plans for my friend and his wife to come over to have dinner and play games the first night, I wanted us to play sports the next day, like Tennis, have a watergun fight, we would make some food together, watch Angels and Demons (which would tie directly into the first conversation we ever had), then spend Sunday with my family spreading my grandma's ashes in grangeville.

Ultimately we did do all of those things as planned, plus more. But what happened that I wasnt expecting was, at some point after my friend left on the first night, we started slowly letting barriers down that we had almost always kept up. At this point I would like to note that this is NOT a public blog, not even all of my friends can read this or else I would not be going into so much detail.

It started simple, cuddling with each other while we watched movies and then the night culminated in one of the most passionate kisses of my life, and even right before that I remember hesitating because I was afraid of where this would lead, and how this would end. After that night I thought back to a lot of times we had been together, even back before our first kiss more than 2 years before this, there were so many moments that in my mind we seemed like we could have just been on the verge of letting these same barriers down.

It seemed like we kind of chalked the first night up to mostly a curiosity thing, but the next day I couldnt resist, I felt like I had just unlocked a floodgate and all my barriers were down, we became very open and honest about our feelings for each other and the state of our lives, but ultimately it was clear this was just going to be a single weekend together.

We got closer than ever before, we allowed ourselves to really experience what it was like to be together on a romantic level. And when the weekend ended I think we both longed for things to be different, but we both understood that this is ultimately not our time, we are still following different paths.

Now flash forward to the beginning of my Sarah story, where we fell into our normal cycle like after every time we felt close to each other, and ultimately we both just got hurt again and kept going forward with our separate lives.

I very much consider Sarah the tragic love story of my life. Tragic in that, I have incredibly strong feelings for her, I can picture her in every facet of my future, I feel like I can see exactly what our children would look like, and yet I just have this feeling that if we remain friends, this cycle of getting close and then backing away will continue and we will keep getting hurt.

Ive never felt for anyone what I feel for Sarah, and I know deep in my heart that whomever I end up marrying and having children with someday, I need to feel this way about that person. I do wish that person was Sarah, for me, the feeling is there, but the timing is just not right and Im starting to think it never will be. No matter how much I want that, our paths have never truly crossed.

I dont want to lose a friend, especially one I care about so much and that has been so important to my post-divorce life. But if she and I can't be together, do we really want to keep hurting each other? And on the opposite spectrum of that question, Why, if we care about each other so much, are we not together?

Our recent weekend together will always be very special to me, Sarah is very special to me.

Romance and Dating aside, the future is looking brighter and brighter. My Grandma has passed, but her legacy remains. I can't wait to start school again, Im extremely confident about getting my work benefit and in addition I think I will continue to do well working at SEL.

Right now I am going through my house and completely finishing it. There were lots of spots left incomplete, places where I just stuck stuff and so forth. I already finished my hall closet by my kitchen, its completely organized now. That frees up a lot of space in the kitchen itself, which I am going to make look a lot nicer. Sarah nudged me in the direction of making space to put some of my Grandma's chickens out and the more I thought about it the more I think my Grandma would have wanted that, especially in the kitchen.

My Grandma's death is so fresh in my mind that I flip flop back and forth between not wanting to be reminded she is gone, and wanting to remember her and honor her. I wish she was here now to talk some sense into my foolishness with women lol, Im sure she's upstairs glaring out me now trying to Will me into knowing what she would want me to do!

After I get done with the kitchen I will move on to my bedroom. My bedroom is in good shape, if I keep any room in the house completely simple, it will be that room. I do want to put a couple of pictures up, and organize my gaming closet a little better, but overall it wont change much. After my kids are gone I will completely go through their room finally and get it all sorted and stuff, get some shelves up and posters.

At this point, or sometime during all of this, I will go through and finish my living room. There are a couple of posters I have had my eye on for awhile that I will probably get put up in there and then I will finally get my pictures put up that I want in there as well.

last I will go back through my storage unit, which is vastly over burdened with Nicole's belongings (approximately 1/3 of the storage space is her stuff), hopefully Ill get her to ship it to herself this summer, otherwise I will ship it down at my cost and have her owe me for it the next time I pay my portion of travel costs.

I'd like to touch on my writing progress. There is none! I really got into it, I was working on my writing habit, the number of ideas I was getting at any given time literally doubled just from the activity, but then my grandma passed and I just stopped completely in my tracks with a lot of things, including reading and writing. After chatting a lot about storylines and different things on the car trip with Russ this weekend, I think Im ready to sit down and work on that habit again.

Im going to start walking to Exercise again, I tried it out a couple of nights ago when the boys were staying at my moms house, I went out for a walk at like 9:30 at night lol. Ill hopefully try to do it in the mornings, but I am more of a night person so I might go as the sun is setting instead.

I walk down the Chipmen trail for 30 minutes (an alarm on my Phone tells me when the 30 minutes have gone by), I walk that 30 minutes as fast as I possibly can while maintaining regular breathing and without stopping. And it freaking hurts like hell. Then after my alarm goes off I turn around and walk back home as fast as I can again, trying to beat my original time if possible, this works out to be an average of an hour long walk.

Once the boys are gone for the summer I am going to try and do this as often as possible, Ill probably try and do it while they are gone camping as well.

When I lived in Bellingham and lost a shit ton of weight and dropped a whole bunch of pants sizes, I was walking a minimum of 1 hour each day, and that was just to and from work. With the amount I walked over all to my friends houses and to work, I was walking a minimum of 40 miles per week. I can and will get back to something similar again. I remember feeling so so good doing this once I got a couple of weeks into it. I want to see if my slightly older body can handle it and also see if I can lose weight as easily as before.

Well, I am certain I have more to talk about, but Ive spent nearly three hours writing this blog and I really need to get some other stuff done.

-Jason