Here comes the bride!.... again

So, in my meanderings online I stumbled upon some info that led me to believe that my ex is about to get remarried.  Then I dropped one of my children off at his girlfriend's house, and saw that her house had a sold sign on it.  So, I asked my son the other day, "So... when's the wedding?"  He replied, "April 6th".

I'd be lying if I said that I felt nothing about that.

But it didn't take long at all to remind myself how good I have it now.  I have a great man who loves me fiercely, treats me like a queen, values my opinion, and lets me love him back.  My kids love him, his kids love me...it's a fulfillment of everything I could hope for in a relationship.


But, in my own way, I still need to process things before I can completely let them go.  So here are the niggling residual issues:

- It seems that he actually WANTS to marry her.  I don't recall feeling that from him.
- He built a deck at her house, but never wanted to do that kind of thing for me.
- Where we used to live, it was a half hour drive for him to get to work.  He complained about it constantly, and tried to convince me to move to the city.  Now, he will be living an HOUR away from work, but apparently that's all cool.
- She's a nice, Menno-Christian, and he's all over that fact.  He checks in with the kids to see if I'm going to church, if I'm praying at mealtime, etc.  Excuse me?  I went to a Menno church for 8 years before I left him, and he didn't want ANY part of that.  Now, it seems he thinks he's better than me, because now he is doing this Menno Christain thing.  Please.  Again, he wouldn't do it for me, but he'll do that for her?
- And they are going on a honeymoon.  That really burns me, to be honest.  *sigh*  I was never good enough in his eyes for that.


I was talking a bit to my beloved about this sort of thing.  And he had some very wise words to say about it.  He said sometimes when a person is accustomed to relating in a certain way to a particular person, it's difficult to break that pattern.  And when they try, their partner doesn't trust that it's a permanent change.  I think he nailed it.  My ex has acknowledged that he didn't know why he treated everyone else really well, but then was so awful to me.  He would have moments where he would try to be nicer.  But after experiencing that cycle, I could never relax and trust that he was going to actually be nice to me in a lasting way, and he would always prove me right.  I'm sure that his attempts to be nice probably felt like they were all for naught, since I wasn't hugely receptive to it after several repeats of the cycle.  (Can you blame me?)  My beloved said that rather than try anymore, it's often easier to start something new with someone else, where you don't have that history.  Yeah... that's true.

I remember I went out to Kareoke with my friend Brenda, and she brought along another friend also.  THAT friend works with my ex.  We had a great night, lots of fun, and on the way home she says to me, "Kyle* is SUCH a nice guy.  I really don't understand why you left him."  I smiled at her and said, "I know he is.  In fact, he once told me that he didn't understand why he was SO nice to everyone else except me.  And that is all I'm going to say about that, because you like him and you have to work with him."

The fact is that this gal that my ex is marrying is a great person.  I have nothing bad at all to say about her.  My kids really like her, and she is good to them.  My ex is apparently nicer since being with her, and ALOT nicer when she is present, than when she is not. I don't know what that means exactly, but it makes life more pleasant all around now that he's with her.  I do not wish her any ill will at all.  In fact, my kids tell me that she and I have a lot in common, and that under different circumstances, she would be the kind of person I would be friends with.  Well, I do hope and pray that my ex has learned a few things from OUR experiences and will do better, and be better with her, and to her.  I wouldn't wish for anyone to experience him the way I have (and still do sometimes).

And when I step back and look at the bigger picture, I'm extremely happy and eternally grateful for everything that I have in my life now.  Most of all?  Peace.  Oh sure, life has its stressors, and it gets a bit chaotic sometimes, but I have deep peace inside.  I have a great relationship with a wonderful man, and a great relationship with all of our kids.  We recently moved to a place in the country, which is what we've both always dreamed of.  What more can a girl ask for?

I wish them well, and I'm glad that the divorce process is over and we can both move on.  It's high time.  Good luck, dear ex husband, and God bless.

*Name changed to protect identity

Countertop Taters!

I saw this photo on "Grow Food, Not Lawns" on Facebook and decided to try it!

Now, I'm trying to get into the habit of not only being frugal, but to reuse and recycle everything that I can.  You can purchase Gro-Sacks here and they aren't expensive.  However, I was pretty sure that I could recreate a growing bag of my own.



A simple Superstore shopping bag should do the trick!  I realize that the materials are likely different than an authentic Gro-Sack, and I expect this bag to rot away eventually.  But it was only 99 cents, and I already had it on hand.  It will be enough to contain everything for the meantime.  If I run into a problem with it, I will troubleshoot that when I get there!  :)



I found a plastic container to put the bag in.  This will help me to keep the water contained, and if the bag rots and breaks, at least everything is contained in here.  This makes it easy to move if I need to.



I had a few spongy, wrinkly potatoes that no one really wanted to cook and eat, so I cut them into pieces, ensuring that there was at least one eye on each piece.  Then I planted them into the soil.



I put the hillbilly gro-sack in front of the window next to our aquaponic tank.

And now we wait.... lol

Starter Aquaponics

So my beloved had this 20 gallon tank kicking around.  So he rigged it up so that the water from the pump would flow into the floating tray, and then down the tube on the right hand side.



He glued two seedling trays together, and then McGyver'd a toilet flush mechanism so that the water would flow out of the tray nicely.

At first he used heavy wire to hold the tray up, but the wire wasn't heavy enough, so we glued three layers of styrofoam onto the bottom of the tray.  That seems to work ok.  He also added an extra piece on the spout of the pump so that the water would flow into the tray.




Then I got busy and used some peat pots with regular potting soil to plant some seeds.  In the spirit of reusing what we already have, I was able to plant some red peppers, grapefruits, zucchini, and pears from seeds of things we had already eaten. My honey had some tomato and radish seeds kicking around, so I planted some of those as well.  I'm also regrowing green onions and celery on the side there.  It's coming along nicely.  It's really suprising how often you can cut down the onions.  They grow back so fast!

Next up - we gotta get a few fish.  We'll likely just get some feeder goldfish to go in the water below.  :)