did you think I'd lay down and die?

Song of the Moment

My first girlfriend was Tanya. I was 18, she was 16. We were inseperable. We spent hours talking to each other, on the steps of the school or on the phone. Tanya's Dad didn't like me much, which meant careful dating tactics. Basically, she would sneak me into her place when he was gone. If he came home early, in the closet I went. Many a night I spent ducking into her closet at the slightest sound of the door opening. I remember telling her I loved her as G'N'R's "Coma" played in her living room. I remember telling her goodbye when I had to move....I forgive myself for being young and not realizing I hurt her by leaving.

My ex-wife, Janet, wasn't always my ex-wife. I met her at the exhibition, beside the Pirate Ship. My first impression was "tall, lanky and laughs like a horse". 7 years later, I remembered how she had kissed me in the hall of her sisters apartment and asked me to never let her go.....I remembered this as I fell to my knees in anguish in our backyard, beside the swing I built for our little girl, after her telling me "she didn't love me anymore"....I forgive myself for thinking "our" life was "my" life.

*After moving out, I found Tanya and re-kindled what we had, briefly. Time had changed both of us, but there was always that flicker in her eyes when she looked at me, that sense of being home*

My first "crush" was Andrea. She was everything my ex-wife wasn't. Open and free, ambitious and crazy. We did things I still laugh about, like riding kids bikes at 3 AM around her neighbourhood, flipping shopping carts over onto fire hydrants as we wanderd back from the bar and laughing at the mundane things in Life. Andrea was my crush, I was only her "friend". I tore our friendship apart because of it. I remember the last time I saw her, walking defiantly across her yard, daring me to talk to her. I forgive myself for wanting to be with her enough to wreck a friendship.

*Tanya kept in touch with me during this friendship, even though she was with another man, inviting me over and making me welcome. This was the only affair I have ever been part of....and the simple sin of it, even during the innocence of the Christmas season, made it all the more forgiveable to me*

Charlotte was my summer romance. She wandered into my life, like a windstorm, taking me with her. Everything was perfect. That "L" word was everywhere. I gave up everything I had had up to this point to be with her.... moving out of town and away from the Life I knew, making her life mine. I remember her putting her arms around me and saying "How could you ever think you're ugly?" But jealousy tore what we had apart. I forgive myself for learning the hard way what is most important in my life....me

*Tanya is getting married by year end. She emails me every now and then, telling me how her baby boy is and saying she will come to visit when she can.*





Ciao

the wreckage of my past keeps haunting me

Song Of The Moment

Well, I managed to get a place, nice and close to work AND close to the little one. Its almost as close as my old place was to her. Funny how, when I lived in the old place on the highway, I thought how cool it would be to get a job at Online, doing tech support and being close to my little girl. Now?...well, after a few adventures, I have that *insert smile here*

Been thinking lately though about how Life works for your advantage in the end. Past year, I have gone up and down, workwise, moneywise and socialwise. There's no real hint of actual "premeditative" thinking in place as to how I got to where I am in Life right now, other then a want. Imagine if I actually applied myself as to what I want? In the end though, you ultimately get to thinking that you are not where you want to be and get down. To hell with that....I have things in Life and I don't plan on taking them for granted. Anything that happens from here on out is a good thing waiting to happen, as far as *I'm* concerned.

Ok, enough of the spiritual rambling. 10 days before I move into my BIGGER new place. "heh heh"....11 days before the little one comes over to check it out....and not too long before I get my new car. Yup, thats my next goal. Its always good to have a 6 month plan. And if I *am* on a road in Life, I'm not going to be walking it for long. Gonne drive the CRAP out of it





Ciao

the paper holds their folded faces to the floor

Song Of The Moment

I've been watching "Dark Side of the Rainbow" a little bit lately. For all that are not familiar with this, let me give you a little inside information on it. Basically, "Dark Side" is Pink Floyds' "Dark Side of the Moon" synced up to "The Wizard of Oz". Ya, its kinda weird, but a good watch all the same. The coincidences really catch you (like when the cranky old woman appears on her bike or when the house gets lifted up by the twister), ... but thats all it is really. Coincidences.

On a deeper level, things like this happen all the time. We relate older things to newer things and vice versa and make something new out of it. We apply for a job and remembering our experiences with our old jobs, relate it to the new position, making it something new and old at the same time. Faced with a decision, we remember choices we have made in the past and determine what to do based somewhat on those experiences. In the end though, is it creation we are doing or just making something out of nothing? Forcing irony on our lives to make something happen?

All right, enough of the philisophical (full-of-fuck-all) sense. I am currently looking at securing a new place of residence (ie getting a new apartment). Looked around and found a few that were not too badly priced so far. Now, its just a matter of figuring out whether it would be easier to spend more to live closer to work or spend less, live farther away and spend on getting trasportation to work an such? Ahh, the simple pleasures of budgetting.....maybe I'll "sync" this decision up to my past places and get one closer to work and just come to terms with being isolated "way out there", away from town.....






Ciao

just like a wound

Song Of The Moment

Mark was my best friend when I was younger. I remember walking around the block, joking with him about girls, parents....everything. I smoked my first cigarette with him, watched my first horror movie with him (and got scared pissless when he followed me home and jumped out at me from behind a tree). When I met my wife, I moved out of town and lost touch with him. When me and my wife split up, Mark moved in with me. He was a different person then the kid I once knew. Hopped up on pills and baggage from old relationships haunting his once laughing mind, it was the hardest thing to do to tell him to leave. It was like telling my past to go away.

I never knew my Dad. Didn't even know what a Father was til I was 18. I had just gotten my drivers license and needed a car to learn on. Mom told me to "ask Dad...he just lives down the road". For the following year, I drove Dads car everywhere, escorting my then girlfriend around in that old Ford Granada. I never believed the stories of how violent Dad was, throwing fits bad enough to scare Mom that us kids would get hurt. To me?...he was just "an old man who was letting me use his car"....and "My Dad".

When I met my wife, I never thought I would marry her. She was loud and brash...everything I disliked. While in the operating room during the birth of my daughter, I remembered the "brash & loud" woman whom I had met so long ago and looked over at this woman, tears in her eyes, holding our little girl. It wasn't the same woman....and even though we are now parted, every once in a while I remember that woman, the one that cried when our daughter sang to us minutes after being born.







Ciao

I'm lazy today...here's a Repost from May

Song of the Moment

I can still smell the interior of the Oldsmobile Toronado as the wife and I drove down the slightly sloping dirt road to the cemetary, followed by my sisters van and my brothers economy car. It smelt of pine and misery.
I was and still am a big Alice Cooper fan and that Summer I discovered that he had done albums AFTER the band had broken up and BEFORE Trash and Hey Stoopid came out. I ordered "Goes To Hell" first (straight from Germany) and listened to it religiously on the Olds' tape deck as I drove back and forth from Ch'town to Morell everyday.
That Spring, Mom got sick and had to be admitted to Outpatients. The cancer she had been fighting for almost 5 years was getting worse. They ended up taking both of her breasts and she was miserable because of it. I offered her to stay with the wife and I out in Morell, because she was from out that way and so she wouldn't have to stay alone at her apartment in town.
She lived with us for a month that can only be described as "dream-like". She was happy and smiling and doing things. The family came to visit often and brought tea for her or just came to visit. I thought everything was great.
Then, one night, I heard her crying as I came home late from work. I seen her in the spare room, smiling so big with tears running down her face. She was gasping and holding her side painfully. "I can't stay with you anymore, Hughie", she said and started to cry harder. I gave her a hug and sat there for the longest time.
We drove her back to the hospital the next day. The cancer had, once again, progressed and it was only a matter of time before she was gone. I can remember taking Stephen Kings "The Stand" into the hospital many an afternoon, and reading it as she slept in the cage-like bed.
She would sometimes wake up, in a drug-induced stupor, and think I was Dad and ask if I took off my boots...I learned to answer "Yes I did" and let her get the rest she needed.
It was an early tuesday morning that my sister Charlotte called me at home and said "Come now, she isn't going to last much longer"...I rushed out the door with the wife and sped like hell to the hospital. The tape deck came on automatically and played "Goes To Hell" for us.
When we got there, my sister looked up at me with tears in her eyes and said "oh my god hughie...its too late...its too late.." She kept saying that, as my brothers and sisters looked confusingly about the room, not knowing what they were seeing. David kept saying "what do we do now" for a minute or two and left, ultimately to break down in the hallway on his knees.
Mom's face was so content and tranquil, like she was just sleeping. I remembered then what she would look like as I would wake her up on Saturday mornings so we could watch cartoons and go to the store for a "comic book surprise". I remembered then what her face looked like when she sat in the front row of my high school gymnasium and watched me accept my diploma.

I never cried until the wake. I wasn't alive for those 2 days previous. I would do things and not know why I did them, always asking "what am I doing?" When my Dad walked up to the coffin and bowed his head, I only seen the tear in his eyes, the same eyes that hadn't set sight on Mom for almost 20 years. I saw that he still cared for her. I saw that he regretted not being there. I fell to the floor and stopped breathing. My sister Anne says there were tears in my eyes and David said he *knew* it was coming but couldn't and wouldn't stop it, it had to happen. I had my first *nervous breakdown*....

I drove the Olds to the country cemetary close to where the house I was born in is. Nothing was said in the car, only Mr Cooper was talking, asking me to wake him gently if I could.






Ciao

i'm a different man

Song Of The Moment

A weekend in the middle of the week? What the heck?!? Apparently I get to relax for the next 2 days while everyone else grumbles about their monday to friday workstyle....oh well. I have things to do as well. Wednesday I have to scan the area around work for potential apartments. Then, Online has a pool thing-a-mah-bob at Dooly's in the evening (free pool + drink specials = I'm in). Thursday is, hopefully, going to be the day I get the rest of my things from my old roomies (truck needed : apply within!)

Last few days, been seeing this real nice girl. Didn't want things to escalate. but, they did. Now?..we're talking about really serious subjects and I don't know what to make of it. I've been messed around alot in the past and, even though I am as flexible as the last guy, I really don't want to be used or frigged around with. The way we have things now is ok, warm conversation, little necking now and then (*smiles*)...but, after the relationship from out-of-town?...I just don't know where I stand mentally relationship-wise. Guess for now I'll just let it sit and see. I have work to consider, a place to live to obtain. And then, there's my little one. How does she enter into this all?
TO BE CONTINUED.........

Anyways, time to get ready for the "last work day of the week".
*get his best phone voice on and pretends to give a crap about a strangers computer problems*




Ciao

wallet-sized photos of the queen

Song Of The Moment

Payday has come and gone and let me tell ya, being held back pay is a crappy way to start any job but, with enough time and irritating patience, I should make this work. With enough money to pay my dearly seperated ex-wife, my little girls rapidly growing RESP and some left over to spend on moving costs to move things from my ex girlfriends house, it was a welcome break to get out for pool and convo last night with my Ontario-PEI lady.

Even though most of my good friends insist that I am going to "move right in" with this one, I am trying to see if I CAN, for once, take it slow. I have been through alot (not saying most people in Life haven't been) and I have come to realize that staying true to yourself and seeing what your expectations OF yourself is much more important then the simple desire to "be with someone". I've done things, I've seen things...but in the end, I want no regrets.
*besides, this one is somewhat my type intellectually*

Rain is pouring down at present and my thoughts are returning to days of old and how they have changed to now. I am reminded of a Robert Frost poem that almost entirely defines my feelings on this rainy October afternoon...
"Natures first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay."





Ciao

me and my ragged company

Song Of The Moment


Two posts today...hey, what can I say? IN a good mood...Original artwork by me over there by the way. Drew that one in 1992. Wow, over a decade old...should make me feel old, but it doesn't. 32 isn't that bad. Once you reach the "upper" 30's...36, 37...then I think it would be kind of depressing....

Well, I got a date for the weekend! My Ontario-PEI lady and I are going out to shoot some pool. Its funny....only reason I *had* for calling her was to see if she was up for doing anything for the weekend....wound up chatting for a few hours. Its nice to be able to talk to someone cultured yet down to earth like her. I mean, she's into landscaping (re-doing a large garden outside her house) and painting (apparently she and I have to get together for a "draw-off")....but, also, she isn't prude and uptight about how she does things. She isn't the type of person, I think, who would have "15 steps to cleaning up after you have a shower", lets say. Or *INSIST* you remove your shoes when you walk in...and then spend the day sweeping up dirt from the floor anyways. And her sense of humour is unreal! Reminds me of something off of Comics. She says I have an accent.....an "island" accent. I don't know *aboot* that, eh.....heh.

Anyways, short post for now. I have a long week ahead of me til the weekend. Counting the days.....





Ciao

gonna write you off the page

Song of the Moment

Well, its been an eventful few days. Had the fortunate luck to see what happens when you give your friend your honest opinion on how they do things. Can't really go into great details but, lets just say it wouldn't sit well with most what was going on in the household. Kind of wish they didn't take it like they did.... telling me to leave. It really was something that I disliked about them from the very begginning...something that, really, is inhumane and shouldn't be happening anywhere! But, well, you know how friends are? You can't tell them their short-comings for thier being your friend.
When their faults interfere with your life though? Its time to put your foot down for what you believe in. I don't regret it....I'm better for not putting up with it anymore.

And, as well, I got to learn about the nature of people and their want to help. With no where to go, a new friend of mine invited me to stay with her til I could get my own place. Its cool too because she knows that we are "just friends"... besides, even though she is very giving, she just isn't my type. Thats ok though, she's good enough to be my friend.

Speaking of my type, went out on a blind date just last night (kind of odd, seeing as how the night before I was virtually homeless) and met a very funny, attractive woman.... Well, I thought, as I usually do on first dates, that it would be awkward and uncomfortable. 6 hours later?..we were still chatting about everything from Life to friends to romance. She's awesome, she just moved back from Ontario to her home in Mount Stewart and you can definately see the Ontario-ian in her (drives like the cops are chasing ... just kidding heh). What started off at 7 PM, ended off with my friend watching me and her say our "goodbyes" (big smile here) in the parking lot at 2 AM. Now I sit here, next day, friend left for work and I kind of want to give my Ontario-PEI lady a call. Maybe I will......








Ciao

charlie hotel alpha november golf echo

Song Of The Moment

Finally Friday! Whoooo! Time to take off the "Apple Hat" and get some R & R. Got a call from one of the head guys at Advantage today. A good friend of mine referred me for a job there, after seeing my website and some of my works, ... and after helping her with her site.
Sounds promising, mainly website hosting. Something I would definately be interested in but, since I have taken on Online, they are my first priority (unless Advantage can beat Onlines' offer that is ....
(*hinthintwinkwink* to either companys' heads reading this)

Took some time after work this evening to try out a new cafe. 56 St. Peters Road, Gingers Cafe. I have to tell you, LOOKS CAN BE DECEIVING!! I seen the place a long time ago and thought "just another small-time coffee shop that will likely go under"...but no way man! What coffee shop on the island has 1) Live entertainment on a friday night 2) pool tables 3) smoking room 4) antique harely davidson in the corner? This place blew my mind!! I *highly* recommend it to anyone looking for a different way to go out on a date, as it cuts the traditionality and gives you a little of BOTH coffe shop and pool hall. (and yes, I said I would plug the spot in my blog tonight so there!)

Got to thinking back when I got home. Have been going through a bunch of old pictures. The past 3 years have really been eventful and change-filled for me. This time 3 years ago?...I knew very little about the computer, was kind of withdrawn when it came to meeting people and didn't have any intrest in any kind of "path in Life" Now, I look at myself and see how much I have accomplished over the short period of time that has passed. I've gathered a "cult-like" following online (try google searching DividableFiend), I've managed to pursue one career to its peak and start another, hopefully more fulfilling career, have had several romantic interludes AND have done alot as a Father...and an individual. I guess it just goes to show that *sometimes* you have to look in the rearview in order to see where you've been so you know how far you've come.

Anyhoos, its late and, since its the weekend, I have ALOT of sleeping in to do tomorrow morning :D







Ciao

2003 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~2005