Broken Hearted Runner

After leaving a client event on Saturday night, I found myself driving my Camry through a muddy parking lot with an older male coworker and 2 clients, trying to escape the madness. (I was the sober driver who offered them a ride back to their hotel.) For the sake of humor, we shall call this time, "The Drunken Redneck Mass Exodus,"  and if you've ever left a Nascar race, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I won't describe the entire episode, but let's just say that I, very respectfully and politely, asked someone to roll down her window and communicate with me about allowing me to pull in front of her (the zipper effect, if I may). It didn't end as well as you'd think and I was honestly thanking God for child safety locks, because after being flipped off and berated for being a "stupid, [bleeping, female dog]," my older, male "papa bear" coworker was not very happy. He simply couldn't believe that someone would

I've always thought that Happy Hour was a negative thing. I used to describe it as "the time you spend after work erasing all of the negativity you feel about your job so that you can manage through another day tomorrow." A band-aid; not a cure. I still think there is a little truth in that. But the reality is that work does suck sometimes. Life sucks sometimes. And Happy Hour is exactly that - Happy. I like feeling happy and if taking an hour at the end of the day to enjoy the company of others who are suffering through the same BS helps, then that's not so bad, is it? Happy. For an hour. If that's what it takes. Then I think it's worth it. Sure, it's a bit of a trick. We go to the bar and we sit and have a drink with our friends and laugh. We discuss all of the things that make us upset and we joke about how things would be better if WE were running things. Sometimes we don't talk about work at all - just really enjoy the time and laugh. An

I wish I could fast forward. 1 year. I wonder what will be different... and what will be the same. I'm trying to move on. I'm trying to create a new life, with new habits and new people. I'm trying to build new relationships and to move forward instead of looking back and wishing. I'm trying to make good, healthy, Christian decisions. Sometimes I fail. But I wonder, when I look back on this time, will I have regrets? Or will I appreciate it, like I have with all of the other negative or troublesome times in my life? Will I ever be able to accept the things I've said and done? They all brought me here. They all taught me something. They all helped me to grow. Self reflection is painful. Even more so when I know I've made mistakes that have hurt others. But self reflection is still important and necessary. I am not perfect and I have a lot of things on which to reflect. I mean, I could be one of those people who just says, "F it. I made a

After I had been on a few dates with husband #2, and it was evident that we might actually both be considering "something more," he provided me with a recent psychiatric evaluation. As you can imagine, getting a doctor approved mental health evaluation of your potential new life partner was like, solid gold! (For his sake, I feel I must tell you that the reason he even had access to said evaluation was because he had recently gone through a divorce and custody hearing - he's not a psycho who has regular evals done.) So, anyway, I was lucky. I was about to embark on a relationship journey and I had access to some wonderful information that would help me to decide whether or not it was even worth the "next date." Because I admit, during that time in my life I was using all sorts of other stalking techniques to weed out the goodies from the baddies. I was living in Maryland at the time and so I used  Maryland Judiciary Case Search  to weed out the weirdos w