A definition that I find extremely fitting for a certain person.
As I learn more and more about what’s been going on in Arizona since I left in May, a term came up that I find extremely fitting for one of the parties involved. From the New Oxford American Dictionary:
gold digger
noun informal
a person who dates others purely to extract money from them, in particular a woman who strives to marry a wealthy man.
What amazes me is how easily a weak man can be led around by his penis.
The reality is much worse than I imagined.
Back when I was writing fiction, one of my plots involved two characters who developed a deep romantic relationship.
2 unintentionally reveal; be evidence of: she drew a deep breath that betrayed her indignation.
DERIVATIVES
be•tray•al | -əl | noun,
be•tray•er noun
ORIGIN Middle English: from be-‘thoroughly’ + obsolete tray ‘betray,’ from Old French trait, based on Latin tradere ‘hand over.’ Compare with traitor.
Jack, the woman in the story, was damaged goods — she’d lost her husband, who she loved dearly, when he killed a man in a jealous rage and was locked up in a foreign prison. For years, she tried bribing guards to get him out — stealing to get the money she needed — only to learn that he’d been dead almost as long as he’d been gone. She’d become an outlaw, basically destroying her own life, to get back a man who would never return. Along the way, she lost their child to a family member who threatened to expose her if she tried to find them. With everything she loved taken away from her, she took refuge alone in an outpost city, a borderline alcoholic watched over by a very close friend named Alex. That’s her backstory.
The man, Ray, entered at the beginning of the story as another outlaw who had chosen to take refuge in the same outpost city. He quickly became friends with Alex, and through him, with Jack. They had many similarities in their knowledge and skills and it was natural that they should hook up. They worked together as a team. His companionship and their lovemaking helped her forget the tragedy of her past. She fell in love with him and it seemed pretty clear that he felt the same way about her.
The only problem is that Ray wasn’t what he seemed. In reality, he’d come to take Alex out of the city. He was using his friendship with Jack and Alex as a means to achieve his real goal. As the plot unfolded, he stood by while one of his men gunned Jack down. Jack survived it, but was left with the pain of the feeling of betrayal.
As a writer, I had to instill my character with that emotion. It had to come through her in the way she spoke, looked, and acted. It wasn’t enough to say she felt betrayed; I had to get inside her head and make her feel betrayed. And then communicate that to readers.
That’s fiction. Whether I pulled it off will never really be known; the work is at a standstill and will never be published or shared.
But one thing is for certain: the feeling of betrayal is far worse than I ever could have imagined.
I’m going through it now. After 29 years of a life with a man I loved, a man who claimed he loved me and acted as if he did — right up to the moment I last saw him! — I’m discovering a huge web of lies and actions behind my back. As I learn more and more about his betrayal of my trust, everything that comes before our last communication is in question — including his true motivations for marrying me in the first place. As I realize that I can’t believe a single thing he told me, the pain grows and grows.
What makes it even worse in this situation is his complete failure to explain his actions. It’s as if he just doesn’t care — something I’m finding so hard to believe and accept after a 29-year relationship. But it confirms my worst suspicions about his actions and motivations.
A complete and utter betrayal of my trust, possibly going back for years and years.
The pain of betrayal is the worst pain possible. It’s a pain without end, rooted in once fond memories now analyzed and questioned. It’s pain made worse by realizing that someone you thought really cared about you apparently doesn’t care at all. Or, worse yet, is now bent on hurting you as much as he possibly can.
That’s where I am today.
An odd solution to a puppy problem.
I am an early riser. I have been for at least the past 15 years. I’m usually up and out of bed by 6 AM. My body wakes up and, since I either didn’t want to wake my soon-to-be ex-husband or I had things to do, I’d get up and start my day.
My day starts with a routine that I’ve shared with Alex the Bird for almost 10 years — since Alex the Bird came into my life. I throw on some clothes, come into the kitchen, and brew some coffee, often reciting the mantra “Coffee is the most important thing” — a phrase that Alex the Bird still hasn’t picked up. While the coffee brews, I prepare Alex’s scrambled egg in the microwave. I cut up half of the egg and give it to Alex in a little dish atop her cage. Then I settle down at the table with my coffee and my laptop or iPad and enjoy the very first cup of coffee for the day while catching up on Twitter or writing a blog post — like this one.
(When I was home in Wickenburg or Phoenix with my dog Jack and then Charlie, the routine also included letting him out for his morning pee, putting a scoop of food into his dog dish, and topping off his water. He’d get half of Alex’s egg, then wait around Alex’s cage for the pieces of egg that dropped and gobble them all up. But those days are apparently gone for good, so it’s best not to dwell on them.)
The routine is pretty much the same when I live in the Mobile Mansion in Washington. After all, coffee is the most important thing.
Enter Penny the Tiny Dog. Or Tiny Puppy right now. Her routine is a bit different. After her morning pee, she comes in and cleans up after Alex the Bird’s scrambled egg droppings. And then she comes to me where I’m invariably sitting at my desk and starts jumping up on me. She wants to play.
Of course, I’m just getting started on my coffee. Not even half of it is gone. I’m not ready to play. Heck, I’m not even fully conscious sometimes.
A side note here…yesterday, one of my Facebook friends shared one of those images with a message — you know, the kind always floating around Facebook. This one said:
My favorite coffee in the morning is the one where no one talks to me while I drink it.
My reply was:
Mine is the one where a tiny dog doesn’t jump all over me for attention while I’m drinking it.
The solution is to distract her with something more interesting and rewarding than me rolling around on the floor with her. And that solution involves a beef soup bone and some peanut butter.
I bought the bone at the supermarket about a month ago. It didn’t take her long to eat the marrow out the ends. The bone is nice and dry and kind of clean. The holes on either end go in pretty deep. Sometimes she still plays with it.
I bought the peanut butter to bait the mousetraps. I don’t really like Skippy because it has sugar in it and I don’t think peanut butter should have added sugar. And although I like peanut butter, sometime over the past 10 years or so I’ve developed a sort of allergy to it; after eating it, I just don’t feel quite “right.” I switched to cashew butter, which is harder to find but very tasty. Of course, it’s not on my diet, so I don’t have any around for me or the mice. So I went to the supermarket and bought the smallest, cheapest jar of peanut butter they had. It turned out to be Skippy. I don’t care about feeding sugar to the mice.
One day, on a whim, I put a bit of peanut butter in each end of the bone and gave it to her. I was rewarded with about 15 minutes of peace and quiet to finish my coffee. Afterwards, she found something else to keep her busy.
Now it’s part of our morning routine. When she’d done cleaning up after Alex and she starts jumping up on me to play, I prepare the peanut butter bone and give it to her. I can then enjoy my coffee in peace.
The only problem is, she’s getting really good at licking that peanut butter out of the holes.
And I got proof of that today.
I like to hike. I like taking long walks on trails — especially cool, wooded trails winding alongside canyons or rivers. I love to be out in nature, to breathe the fresh air, to smell the plants around me. I really like hiking in solitary places, where I’m not likely to run into another group of hikers with their annoying children or loud chatter, so I can let my dog hike off-leash with me, running ahead, sniffing around, and then darting after me to catch up when she falls behind.
Unfortunately, I was never able to handle uphill climbs. I always got short of breath on any hike that required me to do any climbing at all. I took frequent rest breaks, often holding back some of my companions. It was as if my lungs just weren’t up to the task. This goes way back — I recall doing a hike at Lake George not long after meeting my soon-to-be ex-husband back when I was only 22 and being the second to last person to reach the mountaintop fire tower that was our destination.
Downhill was not an issue. I can hike downhill all day long. Doesn’t matter how steep or how far. Gravity apparently helps out enough that my lungs can deal with it.
Of course, the situation didn’t get any better as I aged or gained weight. Last year I went for a hike in Wenatchee to Saddle Rock with my neighbor and wound up sending him on ahead because I felt bad about him waiting for me. It was a fact of my life, something I dealt with. But not something I wanted friends to have to deal with, too.
So imagine my surprise when I took a short hike this afternoon up a mountain road with an elevation gain of 350 feet in less than half a mile — and didn’t need to stop once for a rest.
I’d tried the same hike back in the end of July — just over a month ago! — and got less than 1/4 mile with four rest breaks. But today, I “motored” up the hill like it was a walk in the park, passed the gate that was my original destination, and walked another 1/2 mile beyond it. I was rewarded with a stroll through tall pine trees and an incredible view of the valley beyond.
I did work up a tiny bit of a sweat on the walk, but I think that’s because it was still pretty warm out — maybe even in the low 80s. Never really got my pulse going, though. And on the way back (when I used GPSTrack to measure the elevation change and distance of the hike), I averaged 3.3 MPH.
I can only assume my newfound energy — or excess lung capacity — is due to the 32 pounds of extra weight I’ve dropped in the past 11 weeks. What else could explain my sudden ability to climb hills?
I do know for certain that the weight loss made it possible for me to slip between the bars of this gate instead of trying to open or climb it. I don’t know the bar spacing, but I know damn well I would not have been able to pass through three months ago.
Regular readers of this blog might be wondering why I keep blogging about my weight. Simply put: I’m amazed by the change. If I knew that I’d look this good and feel this good with 30 pounds off my body, I would have done this years ago. Or never have gotten so overweight.
And I’m also writing this to encourage other people who are overweight to do something about it. Yes, it’s hard. Yes, there are sacrifices. But the way you’ll feel when that weight is off is worth all the effort and sacrifice you made.
Like me, you’ll feel like a new person. I promise.
As for me, my new goal is only 10 pounds away. I should be there before I go back to Arizona in October. Can’t wait to get into those old jeans stored away in the closet!
Triggering memories with just a song title.
This morning, at 3 AM, a mouse walked into the humane mousetrap I’d set at the bottom of Alex the Bird’s cage. As it struggled to get out, the rattling of the little plastic trap woke me up. At 3 AM.
I’m not sleeping well these days and once I was up and had silenced the trap I couldn’t get back to sleep. I reached for my iPad and checked out Twitter and Facebook. My U.K. friends are always up in the middle of my night and I thought they might have something interesting to say or some interesting link to follow. Something to keep my mind off the personal problems that are making sleep so tough these days.
I found a Facebook update from a pilot friend who’d just returned from an overseas contract. I’m assuming he won’t mind if I reproduce it here:
I have not used Pandora on my phone for about a month.This morning before I select Pandora to plug into the jeep I am singing “Dancin’ in the Moonlight”! It was the last song I had on A month ago! I did not remember that, but my subconscious did!
Image from killingtime2 on Flickr.
And that triggered a memory from forty years ago…sitting on my bed in the attic bedroom I shared with my sister, listening to “Dancing in the Moonlight” by King Harvest on a Panasonic “Ball and Chain” AM radio. My radio was dark blue, my bedspread and the wallpaper were pink. It was 1972, the year the song came out, and I was about 11 years old. I was just beginning my “music enlightenment” — discovering that there was more music than the Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole my parents listened to on their console stereo downstairs. I tuned into WWDJ in those days, a Hackensack, NJ-based pop radio station.
I remember fiddling with the tuning dial on that radio, picking up weak signals from faraway places like Chicago and Philadelphia and Boston.
I clearly remember listening to other Top 40 pop songs on that silly little radio: Precious and Few (Climax), Also Sprach Zarathustra (theme from 2001; Deodado), Crocodile Rock and Bennie and the Jets (Elton John), Your Mama Don’t Dance (Loggins and Messina), My Maria (B.W. Stevenson), Ain’t No Sunshine and Lean on Me (Bill Withers), American Pie (Don McLean), An Old Fashioned Love Song and Shambala (Three Dog Night), Does Anybody Really Know What Time it Is? (Chicago), Oye Como Va (Santana), Angie (Rolling Stones), Pick Up the Pieces (Average White Band), I Shot the Sheriff (Eric Clapton), Killing Me Softly with His Song (Roberta Flack), My Love (Paul McCartney and Wings), Alone Again (Naturally) (Gilbert O’Sulllivan), Brandy (Looking Glass), A Horse with No Name (America), Without You (Nilsson), I can See Clearly Now (Johnny Nash), The Candy Man (Sammy Davis, Jr.), I Am Woman (Helen Reddy), Nights in White Satin (The Moody Blues), Song Sung Blue (Neil Diamond), Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree (Tony Orlando & Dawn), You’re So Vain (Carly Simon), Superstition (Stevie Wonder), Let’s Get It On (Marvin Gaye), Photograph (Ringo Starr), Half-Breed (Cher), Brother Louie (Stories), Love Train (The O’Jays), Will It Go Round in Circles (Billy Preston), Kodachrome (Paul Simon), Give Me Love (George Harrison), and Time in a Bottle (Jim Croce). With a little help from Top 40 songs lists, I can go on and on. What kids today call “oldies” is what I listened to on that silly little radio in the early 1970s.
I was listening to that radio in my bedroom when Jim Croce‘s death in a plane crash was announced in 1973.
In 1973, I began buying record albums and playing them on a portable turntable set up in a corner of our room. I still have those albums, many of which have the year of purchase written in the upper corner of the album jacket.
In 1974, WWDJ suddenly switched to an all-religion broadcast. By then, I’d begun exploring FM radio with WNEW-FM, a real rock station, on the same console that played Sinatra for my parents downstairs.
All those memories, triggered by a Facebook update.
This morning, when I sat down at my computer, I decided to play Dancing In the Moonlight. I was very surprised to find that it wasn’t on my Mac in iTunes. Easily remedied: I went to Amazon.com, did a search, and had the MP3 playing within minutes. 99¢ wasn’t much of a financial burden for a music-based flashback.
For a moment, in my mind, I was back in that old attic bedroom with that silly little radio on my bedside table, listening to its tinny sound. Back then, could I ever imagine that I’d be listening to the song from my computer, plugged into a surround-sound system in an RV in the middle of Washington State? I don’t think so.
And to my Facebook friend: thanks for triggering the memory.