That recent poem

was short lived. My wonderful weekend with my sweetheart of eight years, was beautiful. She had a great concert and we visited with her chorus friends at an after party. We had food and wine there, then we went back to our "love nest" for the night. After a nice soak in the hot jacuzzi, we had our own long heated session of love making and rested the night away.
It wasn't until I got home and unpacked, made dinner for my son and I and talked to Lynn on the phone for a bit about our nightly dinner menu for the families. With an awesome dessert of rice krispies made for by my son, I retired to my room to check my emails from the day. As my laptop whirred and pinged on the start up menu an unfamiliar, yet familiar page was brought up. It was an SBC email page but it was not mine, it was Lynn's. Somehow, my laptop did not sign her out when she initially checked her email at the hotel this morning.
Months ago in August, while I was in Belize for a vacation, upon my return, my intuition was telling me that something about Lynn and I was not right. Something had urged me on to look at the Craigslist women for women's section. For several days, I didn't know what I was looking for until I saw a very familiar body of a woman's picture in the Craigslist ad. It was Lynn! Taken at her home in her bedroom, a silhouette of her long brown hair and her beautiful curves. I didn't know what to think until I read the ad. It was obvious that she was looking for someone. I was pissed the hell off and printed it out because now, I was going to confront her with it. We had talked and made plans for lunch the next day and it was hard to contain my anger and disgust. I hadn't slept well that night in anticipation of my lunch date the next day. We met in the parking lot at the IHOP in Redwood City. Lynn could see that I was upset about something and asked what it was. I asked her if she wanted to see other people. She looked surprised at my question. I asked her the question again and produced her ad printed out for her to see. After talking it out in my truck and some crying, she explained herself and that she was feeling a "low self esteem" day. I wanted to break up with her right then and there. She said that she would take down the ad and we never talked about it after that. We kissed and made up. But something was still sitting in the back of my mind, something still wasn't right.
As Lynn's email page sat staring at me, I thought to myself, "it's wrong to read her email". I have to trust her. As I wrestled with that thought, my eyes wandered over to some of her folders. I said, "F**k it" and opened the folder and read. I couldn't believe what I was reading, dozens of personal ads that she had sent to herself from the W4M and the W4W sections. She had also sent out replies to ads. She's been corresponding since 2005!! It might have been even longer but I don't think SBC goes back that far. The thought repulsed and made me sick. I was upset. I read through just about everything. I decided to not talk to her tonight and email her a "dear Jane" letter. I don't want to talk to her! I don't want to see her! How could she do this to me? I'm going to send my "D" (divorce) mail to her tonight. Merry F**ken Christmas to me.

Lunch with Casino Brothers

My favorite co-workers and friends, Mel and Jaz, treated me out Hokkaido's for lunch today. Talk about the mother of all buffets, this is the one! It is a Japanese buffet located in Foster City at the Bridgepoint Mall where the Ice skating rink is and is very inexpensive. Their food is served and presented exquisitely and the buffet stations are strategically placed so that they utilize both sides of the food bars. You've got your sushi of all kinds and is to die for, crab, stuffed oysters, tempura, soups, more than 10 different entrees, fruit, salad and dessert stations all at an affordable price. The gastronomic rule of eating at this type of buffet is to pace yourself. Make sure the foods that you eat mix well with a diet that you're used to otherwise, you'll be in the restroom all day with a sour stomach. Our conversation ran the gamut of work, holiday party and Casino's. Mel and Jaz are Diamond members at the Rio All Suite Hotel in Las Vegas and can literally request a hotel room at their convenience. I am a mere Platinum member and I'm less than six hundred points away from a Diamond. They are planning on a trip to Harrah's in Lake Tahoe sometime this month. I'm going along for the ride and haven't seen snow since my girls were 4 and 6, almost 18 years ago. With goodbye's being said, it was time to go.
I had a dentist appointment at 3:45 and had to go home to brush and floss my teeth after that big lunch. Dr. Naeimi at Gentle Dental in Daly City is a wonderful dentist. She really takes the time and care to explain what she is going to do as far as shots of novocaine to numb you to the health of your teeth and gums. Her assistant recreated a bridge for me last year to fill in a missing molar that I had. He shaped it so well that it feels like a part of my teeth structure. I told her about my RA and the medicines that I'm taking and seemed concerned about my health. Dr. Naeimi explained that since I hadn't been back in more than a year, my mouth developed bits of calcium deposits on random areas of my teeth. She didn't sound too happy with the x rays that she viewed and said that I'll need to come in every four months to have my teeth cleaned. I'm hoping that this won't be too expensive. For today, she did a deep cleaning on my right side and will do my left side next week. She also found a small pocket in the upper part of the gum where it had receded a few milliliters letting in the deposits and slowly eroding and causing bone loss. With the quarterly cleaning regimen, she'll make sure to put antibiotics there to prevent any infections. After my co-pay of three hundred some odd dollars, I saved a little over nine hundred dollars! I don't know what hurt more, the novocaine or the co-pay. I said my goodbyes and got an especially long winded goodbye from a "futch" (femme/butch) woman I haven't seen there before. She must have been hired to help take care of all the back log of patients that they receive. I definitely got a vibe that she was "family". After I said goodbye to the ladies behind the desk and they replied a short goodbye, she was turning off the Christmas lights and turned to tell me, looking beyond her Harry Potter glasses, "Goodbye now, drive carefully and see you soon". I mustered a Novocaine smile and said, "G'nite" and thought to myself, yep she's family.

Santa bell ringers

are out in full force. I visited Pak-n-Save this morning to do some grocery shopping and just before leaving the store, I heard the familiar ringing bell. {Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring } There she was, giving everyone that passed her whether they gave money or not, an upbeat cheer or spirited salutation with a warm, genuine smile. As I put a few dollars in the trade mark tin, I noticed she was a little older, had the Santa hat on and sported the red apron, looking like Santa's elf. What really attracted me to her was her joyousness at being out there and collecting contributions on a cold and dreary, rainy day. As I put my groceries into the back of my truck, I overheard her talking to herself saying, "Thank you for Christmas, thank you for this day". She was in a state of constant joy and very comfortable with herself. At that moment, I envied her for volunteering her time, her spirit and pure joy in helping and being thankful. If I think that I'm at my lowest point, I think about others that are less fortunate that I am. I am very thankful for this day.

Sleep

I love it, I crave it, I want it but can't always get it. My life has been so busy since being off from work and I don't always get to sleep in. This morning, Lynn and I are going to Watercourse Way and we have room number two. The drive to Palo Alto is always nice but with the gas prices inching higher and higher, it makes me want to stay home. Lynn and I rarely get a chance to go out because of your children's school schedules but we manage to find the time like this morning. Our appointment was for 10:50am and we were right on time. The woman who escorted us to our room was new and had to give us a briefing before she left us to our own devices. We couldn't wait to shut the door, lock it and now have a nice hour and a half of tub time. This room is particularly warm and inviting. There are dimmer light switches for a more romantic mood as well as sound for the one channel in this room. At the time of this writing, we were being serenaded by melancholy music from Ireland. It was very Celtic. Aside from small talk, we got undressed and skimmed down to our "birthday suits" ( you could do that when your lovers) and plunged slowly into the hot tub which was very hot but not scalding. This hot tub could probably hold 6 people comfortably. There is a dry sauna which is wonderful for that congestion in your body. Once you get the jets going in the tub, this is probably the most fiercest tub out of all of them. The jets are very strong in this room and is aimed at your middle to lower back and shoulder areas. Can we say heaven!
Well, small talk leads to small kisses, then deep kisses and soft caresses. After an hour of foreplay, lovemaking and cool down, an hour and a half is not that long. We had time to shower and enjoy each other's company at a slower pace than our usual hour long tub time which is too short and right when your in the middle of a climax, here comes the incessant knock at the door. "10 minutes!" Which we both reply in out of breath voices, "OK". Now the question is, do you stop, leave your loved one hanging and get dressed? Or would you go for it and love her for all she's worth? I agree, we chose the latter.
After hot tubbing, we always have incredible appetites and usually a good lunch at Whole Foods is the kicker. We love their salad and food bar which is wonderfully healthy, a bit expensive but always filling. I turned our conversation to a morbid subject of refinancing my house which is due in February 2008. I am one of those millions of people that got into the 'interest only" loans but, in my case, with substantial money down. For the first two years, I enjoyed a relatively low monthly mortgage payment and this year because of deferred interest rate expiring, it has now doubled my payments to an instrument that I can no longer afford. A good friend of mine, Sarah, is a loan officer and hopefully, she can give me some numbers and wake me up out of this mess and find a good loan for me. If not, I will have to sell my home and try to recoup any losses and possibly try to move into a mobile home or manufactured home in Daly City, Sunnyvale, Mountain View or rent an apartment. Lynn seemed sad at this prospect because it would mean that I would have to uproot my son from his school in Pacifica. We left it at that and will hope for the best next week. Now, Lynn was ready with my "honey do-list".
We made our way back to her house and today we put up her decorative Christmas lighted colored balls that we hung in front of her house. When the sun goes down, these lights are on a timer and light up when it's dark. They are beautiful! All the colors of the rainbow. We hung little plastic candy canes and ribbons on her neighboring trees. It was very festive and she seemed quite happy to get that done since her family rarely participate in the decorations now that her two daughters are older. As the coolness of the afternoon wore on, we sat down to her homemade pumpkin pie and a cup of coffee while watching the lesbian comedy show with Sabrina Mathews and a few other women comedians. They had me laughing so hard, Lynn would just look at me when I yelped so loud. The light of day was fading slowly away as we watched the remainder of the comedy show from her bed, entangled in each others arms and legs, comfortable, warm and quiet. We fell asleep tired from our day only to be awaken by her dog, muffin, barking away. Startled, we woke up, delivered our long hugs and slow kisses. This is the hard part, it's the time when I leave her to back to my home.