it's good to be me

It's been a really good week to be me, yesiree. I don't often get those weeks that go right,every day. So I'm really letting this one sink into my heart.

Thursday, I got to help my friend (and now boss) with her interview radio show "The Writer's Block." She taught me to run the sound board, record, cue, etc BECAUSE....I will be guest hosting for her on February 1. An hour to talk writing with guests of my choice...um, yes, please! I'm very excited. Green Eyes also met us down at the station that day to give me a copy of his newly completed (and most excellent) CD. My friend was so kind that she took it from him and played three of the songs during the music slots in the show. Hooray for being able to help out!

I got the call on Friday that I'd placed in the 101 word fiction contest I entered. It's sponsored through a widely read, local, weekly newspaper, and it's kind of a big deal around here to win it since all the really good but not yet professional writers enter. I will find out on January 4 when the winner's issue comes out just how I did, and then will get to participate in a special reading the next night. If I happened to get first place, there's a $400 prize. Not too shabby. And enough to cover the cost of the tires I had to replace on my van.

Friday night was my annual Festivus party, surrounded by old friends and new, sharing lots and lots of laughs.

Then Saturday, I was offered the Literary Director position at Fusion Magazine, where I've freelanced and run social media since April. It doesn't come with a lot of pay, but some, which is good for working it into my nights and weekends. And I get a huge say in shaping the tone of the magazine. Would love to steer it towards the direction of Harpers or Esquire. We certainly have the pool of writers around here to do it.

Anyway, I was really happy. It was so nice to have a week where nothing/no one pushed me down . Of course, I'm resolved to always see my blessings and be happy, no matter what--but wow (!) What a nice feeling when it's an EASY thing to do :)

Then, tonight, I did one of the hardest things I've had to do. Ever. And I didn't even know I would have to do it. It was Z and E's Christmas piano recital, and I sat in the same room with my ex-husband and his new wife and their baby. I've never had to do that in the two and a half years they've been together. Brad has just come to family stuff alone. But tonight, he brought them.

 I hadn't seen his baby before. She was cute. Not as cute as our kids, of course--but cute like babies are. I watched family members fawn all over said baby (which is fine--I strongly encourage baby fawning!).  I listened to Brad two rows behind me introducing "his wife" to people who hadn't met her, and heard a voice not mine saying, "Hello ______." And I sat there, alone, in the front row, being brave.

I held it together. My boys played brilliantly. I came home. I put them to bed. I stood over the sink and had a brief, intense, shoulder shaking, silent cry; my mind trying to wrap itself, again, around the fact that this is my life now.   For now and for how long I don't know, it will be just me and the boy squad. Then, I took one giant inhale/exhale and...let it all go.

And I was fine again...

Perfectly comforted in the fact that one day Brad WILL feel what I have felt, just as I have felt it. More than being thrust down to hell or made to roll a rock eternally up a hill or whatever, that's the only "justice" I ask for him from God. To feel without filter. And understand what he's done. Not just to say he does, but to really, really understand.

A rough situation that may have taken me days or weeks or even months to get over a few years ago, I now got over in the space of a half hour.  I think that's some great progress.

Yeah. A series of happy victories and one awesome display of strength and grace. Good to be me :) Hoping you all had a good week of being yourselves, too.