The separation continues. We finally have a date for mediation scheduled. I'm scrambling to collect the last 12 years worth of statements.  My lawyer has warned me that owing to the messy state of things, it's probably in my best interest to offer RO a little more cash. A trial will be expensive.

 

Moving continues as well. We move at the end of May. Honestly, I'd love to move now. I hate this waiting.

 

 

 

Move to the country and plant an organic garden.

 

I think about living that way sometimes. Life would be so much more simple if I wanted that. Tommy, I suspect that you too feel the same way. You can live well and simply if you choose to.  But the call of opportunity, or duty, or leadership, or friendship sets you on a different path.

We have bought a house. It's a town house. The construction is not yet complete. We've been visiting it most weekends-- watching the progress. I really like the new neighborhood. It's right on a large state park and a five minute drive to some great shopping and restaurants. The new place should take five minutes off my commute.

 

The house hunt.

 

The lease ends at the start of May, so the house hunt is on.

 

Real-estate is crazy in Seattle. Last weekend Steven put an offer in on a $500,000.00 house.

 

Let me tell you, a $500,000 house in Seattle doesn't get you much. This house was nice, but small. Built in the 1940's. Three bedrooms. Well taken care of.

 

The house was on the market for one week. Steven put an offer in for $560,000.00.

 

The owners received nine offers. The winning offer was over $600,000.00

 

This is not uncommon. It's the way things are now.

 

Our hunt goes on.

 

Was up at Orcas island for the weekend. It is lovely. A little world of it's own.

 

The island has developed it's own hipster foodie culture. Every restaurant made it's own bread and had the bulk of it's food grown on the island. It got a little tiring after a while. Sometimes you want a regular pizza. The pizza created with love by a James Beard award wining chef is very nice, but a pizza peperoni and mozzarella would do.

 

The first night we ate at the Doe Bay Café. It was close to the rental house. It was recommended.

 

When we got there, the menu was vegetarian and sea food. And expensive. I wanted to leave. Steven suggested we try a few of the starter dishes just to quell our hunger.

 

Those starter dishes were amazing. We stayed for the whole meal. Ever dish was beautiful. Everything tasted wonderful.

 

Saturday afternoon we listened to the Rosario organ… 100 years ago a ship building magnate built his retirement home on Orcas island. A very large room in the house has a huge pipe organ with thousands of pipes. Now that this house is a resort, the Organ is on display to the public and played regularly.

 

We… we… We… I keep saying we.  Steven and I are dating. I like it. I'm looking forward to more. We are both working professionals. We have been friends for years. It's very nice.

We had a special evening of music on the top of the Smith Tower.

The Smith Tower is the oldest high rise in Seattle. It was built a little over one hundred years ago. Mostly it is full of businesses.

But, see the pyramid at the top? A woman named Petra lives there. She lives there with her two children.

Every now and then Petra hosts a musical session in penthouse on the top of the Smith Tower and we got tickets. The music was wonderful.

The other cool part of the evening was that you got to climb up to the very top of the Smith Tower, right into the bulb that sits on top.

I'm struggling a little with the blog. With my separation and the associated legal complications, it's not smart thing for me to publicly comment on my life's details.  Still, I'm going to continue the blog. In some ways, this has become my photo album. I don't want to stop it. At the beginning of every month I skim that month from the previous years.

 

Thanksgiving was good. Stephen and I spent it at the top of a condo on capital hill. The day was sunny and bright. The condo room had a great view. About forty people attended it, pot luck style. Lots of turkey. Too many desserts. They way a good Thanksgiving dinner should be.

 

I've booked the last three weeks of the year off on vacation. My boss noticed that I hadn't used my vacation balance. He told me that this was poor planning on my part. Leadership must plan to use the available resources.

 

So, I'm in Hawaii now. Waikiki to be precise. The weather is glorious here.

 

The trip was a freebie. Steven is a regional manager with people who work in Hawaii. A couple times a year he fly's here to spend a week with them.

 

I've been in Waikiki once before. I think it was in 1995. Twenty years ago. Mostly I don't remember that trip. Every now and then I get little flash backs. I remembered the hotel I stayed at when we walked by it.

 

I hiked up Diamond head Crater. I did this 20 years ago. I forgot most of the details. I did remember the long stair case at the end. It has 40 non-stop steps.

 

The sun is hard on people here. The homeless in particular. Though, I guess there are worse things than being homeless in Hawaii. You could be homeless in Seattle for example.

 

I haven't talked to Bruce in years. We used to work for the same company. He left for some reason. He and his partner, C3, moved to the east coast.

 

Out of the blue, today, I get a message from C3…

 

"I got a call the other day from the Police that Bruce had killed himself. Am just getting my brain back and figured you would want to know.   He was really happy with all you guys and i begged him to go back to Seattle to be among his friends. But he couldn't do it. Dunno why really.  But he really loved you as a friend. C3."

 

I let C2 know. Bruce introduced C2 and I. He, as I, is saddened by this.

 

 

 

 

Fall is setting in. It's cool. It rains every day. The Seattle gloom is here.
 
My life is quiet. I'm working a lot. Probably not taking enough vacation.
 
Steven's life is stressful. His father isn't doing so well though. His father has decided wants to die, sooner rather than later. He has COPD. He is CHF. To further this, he has stopped taking all meds except his comfort meds.
 
Comfort meds. That's a new phrase I had not heard before.
 
The thing is, now that he's off almost everything but morphine, is that he feels much better.  It's occurred to him that he may live for months instead of dying in the next few days.  Or is that the morphine talking?
 
 
 
 

It's October 12 today. That means this blog is 15 years old. Happy birthday blog. It's fun and strange looking over the first entries. I lived fairly different life back then.

My separation from RO is proceeding. We both agree that seeing a mediator won't be a good use of our time, so I'm going with petitioning the court for dissolution. It was a little under a year ago that I left RO. It's time to finish off the legal parts of our relationship. I'm surprised how long this has taken. So are my friends.

LIfe in Canada…

My mother was complaining how the length of this year's Canadian Federal Election process. It's twelve weeks long! Usually they are only six. Every night the news is the same thing-- who said what on the election trail. The real news is being pushed to the back burner. Get it over with already.

Perhaps she was subtly ribbing me about the American election cycle. Twelve weeks would be refreshing.

C2 is in town. He wants to move back to Seattle and may do so. He is a government contractor and the finance debated that happening now may cause him to loose his job. He wants that to happen.

We went to the state fair last night. Saw the animals. Rode the rides. It was fun,

Last week, RO tried to kill himself again. We were talking on the phone. He threatened to take pills. He wanted to end it all to solve all the problems and make everything simple again. I told Steven what RO was up to. Steven called 911 while I stayed on the phone with RO.

RO is already out of the hospital. I don't understand why he isn't under constant observation. This is the 3rd or 4th time he's tried to kill himself.

Weddings. So many of them.

This past weekend Steven and I went to Yakima for a friends wedding. The wedding was at Gilbert Cellars. Very nice place.

Weekend before we flew to Denver for a wedding & a few days R&R.

The 20^th, we caught a concert at the Red Rock Amphitheater. The Piano Guys. They are a great band. I was initially surprised that I had never heard about them before. After all, they filled a ten thousand seat venue and they were clearly knew there stuff. Over the course of the evening though, I figured it out. They are Mormon, and they are very famous amongst Mormons. I'm just not in touch with the Mormon world.

Check them out on YouTube.

Friday we went to the Celestial Seasonings Tea factory for a tour. Yes, you heard that correct.

It was one of the most intense experiences I have been through. One of us got injured and had to leave. The peppermint room was an assault on the senses…. I exaggerate but only a little.

The tour was largely populated by middle aged women and their families. Oddly enough we were there at the urging of a female middle aged friend who wanted to see it.

One person on the tour did have to drop out. She was asthmatic and the tea dust made it hard for her to breath.

The peppermint room was intense. Celestial Seasonings has a separate warehouse room to store peppermint. When you walk into that room your eyes and nose start to run.

And then we sampled tea.

Saturday we went to an amusement park but left early because the threat of lightening shut down the big rides.

Saturday night was the frosting emergency. The mother of the bride had elected to make the wedding cake. But Saturday evening, for the Sunday Wedding, the cake was still not ready. In fact the first batch of frosting didn't turn out and the mother of the bride didn't have a car or kitchen available to her to make another batch. So, we drove across Denver Saturday evening to a friends with an available kitchen.

The frosting and the cake turned out very well.

On Sunday was the wedding. It was held at a barn at a botanical garden. It was very beautiful.

The parents...

My parents are getting old. The roomies parents are getting old. It makes me ask hard questions about how I want to live out the rest of my life.

Fifteen years ago my mother flew with me for a month to Zimbabwe. Today she won't leave the country.

Steven's mother is pressuring him to buy a house big enough that she can move in.

A coworker just bought a new house with a bedroom on the ground floor, because his parents were having problems using the stairs at his old house.

C2's father just sits there and does nothing with his time.

I don't enjoy watching the inevitable changes of time affect my parents. I exercise regularly and watch what I eat. Perhaps this will extend my healthy and active life. But in the end...

Yesterday was my first court ordered anger management session. It was actually good. I enjoyed it. Maybe even got something out of it. I have to hand it to the instructor. He is trying to be helpful to a room full of people who would rather not be there. I think the program is very 12 steps based. He tried very hard to emphasis that we are responsible for our actions and that we have to be honest with ourselves because anger is often the result of someone revealing our personal fears and shames. If we are not afraid of ourselves... if we are not ashamed of our selves...

Steven hates the stories.

Last September, Steven checked him self into rehab for crystal meth addiction. He lost his job shortly after leaving treatment.

Since then he's come along way. He has a great new job, even better than the old. He has distanced himself from drug and alcohol using friends. He attends AA regularly and has a sponsor.

He still has a lot on his mind. Everyone he met in the rehab treatment center has since relapsed. Regularly, someone he knows through AA falls off the wagon and hits tough times.

He read "Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction." The son in this book also had crystal meth addiction. The son relapses often.

All these stories of relapse worry Steven. There are not many role models of people who stayed sober.

I don't know what to say here. His life is going well now so he has the strength to say sober. Sooner or later he will hit a rut. We all do. I hope then that all his friends will help

No update in over a month. I've been lazy.
 
My charges are in the process of being dropped. I have to take an anger management course. After that the prosecution has agreed to drop them.
 
Not much progress finalizing RO and my separation.  We are in the progress of getting a mediator, neither of us are pushing that one along, so the process has stopped.
 
Steven and I spent a few days at Cannon beach in Oregon. Was beautiful. As we joked-- imagine a beach, miles long with soft white sand. The beach's land scape is dotted with gorgeous hay stack rocks. All beautiful. Now, imagine that beach has a constant, non stop cool 20mph wind. That beach is Cannon beach.
 
Indeed. We've had a heat wave here. Seattle has hit 90F every day. Cannon beach barely scratches 70F.
 
Steven and I also spend a weekend at a friends cabin in Shelton WA. Very quaint.
 
Steven, as well as his friend are both in AA. I've getting to know the AA vernacular a bit better than perhaps I wanted to. Fortunately it's all very practical. About establishing proper relations. Being responsible for yourself and acting to allow others to be responsible for themselves.
 
I drink much less hanging out with Steven. I generally like that. Now, I do enjoy a glass of wine, or a beer every now and then, but I don't drink daily any more.
 
On a different topic, I don't think my parents will travel out here this summer. I'll probably go and visit them. They are getting older and more hesitant to travel. Too bad
 

Over the weekend we had a big BBQ with about 30 guests. It was great to see old friends and meet new.

RO & I… The time is coming when RO and I have to have a good hard chat. He lives in the house I own. He works at the business I own. These facts are dragging things out.

I know I am not responsible for his happiness. I am not responsible for him earning a living. Yet, my actions can't help but hurt him. I have to close the business. I have to sell the house. With his struggles over the past few months, I can only imagine how he will react.

It is my birthday today. Have been reflecting on the past six months.

I'm settling down to a new normal, however I still have a ways to go. RO agreed to switch to mediator, which I want as well. My lawyer and RO's lawyer were both accusing the other of never returning phone calls. This log jam ate of time and soaked up money.

I like living in my new place and my new roomates. Steven is great to half around. He's a Big E Extrovert, and is always planning something. Brown, on the other hand, is quiet, like me. This is very comfortable. Brown and I can be in the same room for hours and not talk to each other. We both like that. The silence bugs Steven. He doesn't understand our introverted ways.

Since I left RO, I've used two tubes of tooth paste. I think I'm on my third bar of soap. It's weird that I know that. My post RO life is so clear in my mind that these details are sticking with me.

My life is very minimalist right now. Intentionally so. Mind you, I'm not living without stuff Steven owns a lot. So my bedroom and bathroom are clean and spare. The rest of the house is well decked out. It's a good balance.

It looks like my assault charges will be dropped. The prosecutor and my lawyer have agreed that if I take an anger management course, and stay out of trouble for six months, then the charges will be dropped. All that has to happen now is for the judge to sign off on everything.

I spent the week in Chicago for work, for a conference. It was a nice trip. Very busy, but fun. I thought that I'd have a chance to relax a little, but that never happened. Between work, and dinner with coworkers, I wouldn't get back to my hotel till after ten.

The flight back was a pain. Two mechanical failures and a thunderstorm meant that I spent about four hours just taxiing on the runway. Bleah.