Fun and Frolic With Long-Term Love

BugGirl and her guy went to get tested for Covid this morning. She has a fever and just isn’t doing well. I’m probably going to have DarkKnight drop off some sick supplies for her - Kleenex, meds, cough drops. My poor girl!

Today is my day off and I am just beat. I got almost no sleep last night, as my left arm was throbbing. The elbow ditch just felt like the muscle had been pulled out and it was impossible to find the correct angle to sleep with it. So I am trying to stay awake while binge watching Ink Master (I’m on season 6) and cleaning my house. I have all of the upstairs litter boxes finished, and I’ve did some budgeting. I have a long list to get through and zero energy or real motivation. I also feel gross because I’m still in my pajamas and I haven’t showered. Ugh, while typing this the timer on the dryer went off.

That said, I woke up to a $100 donation toward my nonprofit startup costs, and a bouquet of a dozen roses was delivered! (These were separate events.) There was a Facebook contest being held by a new local florist the last few days, and they wanted to send flowers to a notable woman in the community. Apparently that ended up being me. I saw it happening, because the people who voted for me, tagged me. It was only like a handful of people, because the page didn’t have many likes or followers, but it was enough for me to win. So that happened. It was nice, that’s for sure.
 
BugGirl is negative for Covid. I’m going to take my son shopping this weekend, and since they live together, at least there will be food in the house. She doesn’t get paid for sick days so this flu is going to ravage their finances.

I am a little out of sorts this morning. I feel anxious about all of the steps I still need to do to become a nonprofit. It feels a little overwhelming today. I won’t have time to focus on it this afternoon so hopefully I can worry about it later in the weekend!

I just paid some kids $20 to shovel the walk and driveway, and I gave them a huge ham as well. 😆 So the Box is clear for visitors. I need to shower though - I think I am going to fill the Box early and then shower, so my wet hair isn’t freezing to my scalp. I have 2 people left to come today to pick up their 7-Day Meat Giveaway. What else? I need to make a thank you post to a local dentist - DarkKnight went there yesterday to pick up their regular donation of toothbrushes. I just call when I need more, and they always help out. This time they sent two large boxes. I hope it’s calm here today.
 
So I tripped going out of my front door on Friday, and came down with my entire weight on my right knee. Thankfully it felt worse than it was, at first, and I seem to have escaped without permanent injury. I’ve had my leg elevated and wrapped up since then, with regular icing and attention. I looked up the event on my Ring doorbell footage and it’s quite crazy to see it happening!
 
I got another Stitch Fix this weekend, and it was all pants. I had asked for that, and it was nice to have my stylist deliver! I kept 2 pairs of jeans, bringing my total owned to 3 pairs. Lol Here I am this morning. I’m wearing my new purple sweater - the other one I got in my last Fix came out of the wash completely covered in pills, so customer service sent me another, no questions asked.

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I’ve been really missing DarkKnight, because I’ve been upstairs since my knee injury happened. I’m hoping we can sleep together tonight! We had a “date” this morning - we drove to Starbucks together and hit the drivethru.

As far as MisterMoonbeam, we finally got to have sex this month so I am in a good mood today. Between his dick “injury” and my period and both of us struggling with depression, it just wasn’t happening.

Last night was actually questionable at first because I finally got all of our taxes done, and though DarkKnight and I are getting $2000 back, MisterMoonbeam owes $6700. That was a huge shock to all of us, but it’s his first year filing single and I guess he didn’t adjust his paycheck accordingly. We have to paper file for him because it kept getting rejected due to setting up a payment plan. This has me very worried for our finances coming up in the future.

I also was wonky because the initial payment plan was for 6 years out, and it got me to thinking that I couldn’t even be sure we’d be together in 6 years. That’s how long PunkRock and I lasted. This made me teary. This month has been rough, not gonna lie.

MisterMoonbeam had promised not to break up with me before Valentine’s, and then later extended it to after our anniversary at the end of March. Now he says he is committing to that 6 years, or whenever the bill is paid in full, whichever comes first! This is all said jokingly of course, though I was pretty serious about the “after March” thing. I don’t think I could take the trauma of having another breakup in February.
 
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Ugh. I just got a debt collection notice in the mail for a credit card, for like $1100. Which is a joke, because I haven't had a credit card in my name since I was with my first husband, almost 20 years ago, in New York. I think it's safe to say, even if this was mine, it is 100% outside the statute of limitations and is non-collectible. That said, it's also not freaking mine, and I don't need this sort of headache right now. I just printed out a dispute letter, so that will be going into the mailbox soon. I soooo don't need nonsense like this. Hopefully this firm's inability to validate - which is a sure thing, as they won't be able to prove anything because it's not freaking mine - will make this disappear.

The other thing I got in the mail that made me have a headache is a letter from the IRS. Very timely, since I was doing taxes this weekend. It was a notice to MisterMoonbeam, saying he owes still on a previous payment plan and needs to shell out some cash. Which makes me feel A LOT better, because the current return kept getting rejected online and I couldn't really figure out why, and an existing payment plan was one of the reasons the site gave as a potential issue. I don't think MisterMoonbeam knows about this, so we are going to have to figure it out. I was helping him this weekend to sort and organize his office and there was a lot of old paperwork for medical bills and debts, and I have no idea if they've been handled. I don't even know if he knows. He was in a dark hole while his wife was passing, and he was just ignoring stuff for a while. So I know he has been taking care of a lot of stuff financially lately, which is good. But I am sure some of this stuff has slipped through the cracks. I personally have very little energy to devote to this stuff, but I am going to have to set aside some time and help him with it, I think. Right now our finances are completely separate, but that may change in the future. If that's the case, I wanna make sure he's got everything handled.

Today was snowy here and my knee was still achy, so I kept the Box closed for another day. I've been finishing up season 8 of Ink Master, and I am pretty sure my brain is fried from that. I ordered some plastic DVD sleeves and some storage bins to hold them, to reduce the space our movie collection is taking up in our living room. We honestly don't watch most of the movies we own, so taking them out of the regular cases and putting them into thin sleeves will give us some more space in our home. So that's what I am doing today!
 
Ugh. I was up all night until 4 am this morning. I woke up with my 9 am alarm but man was I dragging. I actually just excused myself to the guys and came to bed because I was falling asleep on the couch. I’ve been crazy horny all day, but I am just exhausted so I don’t see sex happening tonight.

I had all three of my musketeers here volunteering this afternoon, so my overflow room is looking shiny and stocked. I’m happy, especially since I have tomorrow off. Less stuff to worry about! One of them asked me about visiting Ocean City in the winter, and she said she will never forget seeing all of the photos from my Valentine’s trip there last year, and then a week later seeing posts about how PunkRock had split. She said at the time she was really thinking it must be a prank of some kind, but she didn’t think I would joke about something like that.

Definitely not.

Moving forward. Not going to dwell on it, even though I think with it being the anniversary of our breakup right around now, it is definitely bringing up emotions. I am staying focused on the fun coming up soon though - my 15 year wedding anniversary with DarkKnight, and going to Virginia Beach with him for that, and my one year anniversary with MisterMoonbeam, and our trip to Mount Joy. We plan to stay isolated during each, just enjoying the location and each other.

I am also looking forward to getting my taxes back - I am finally going to change my middle name legally to Hope, and a chunk of change is going to pay for the 501c3 paperwork. The rest I think may either go toward the one credit card DarkKnight needs to pay down or maybe a group trip someplace. The credit card would be the smartest, of course.
 
Ugh. Even though I went to bed early last night, I didn’t actually fall asleep until 2 am. MisterMoonbeam came in and gave me an orgasm, but even that wasn’t enough to knock me out. Of course I woke up at 7 am, so I am tired again today.

It’s my day off and I am on the couch at the moment. I did some budgeting and realized that my son owes me $60 - DarkKnight took him shopping this past weekend and the totals got switched around. So that means a trip to the bank today, at some point.

DarkKnight is coming home at lunch to pick me up so I can take the car. I have to take my last Stitch Fix rejects to the post office, and I have some other running around to do. It’s weird - I am not used to going outside of the house like a normal person any more. I find myself trying to rationalize postponing errands and canceling plans. Covid has definitely changed things!

My Chewy order should be here today, and I’m expecting a bunch of Amazon packages. OMG my delivery driver for Amazon yesterday was a HUNK. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to interact with him at all, as I had two donors in the doorway when he stopped. I actually did some clicking around online yesterday to see if there was any place where the name of the driver appeared, but nope. I hope I get the same dude today because holy crap was he hot! I love big bearded dudes and omg I wish I could have said hello.
 
Facebook decided to share with me that it’s now officially been one year since PunkRock left me. Lovely. I’m curled up in a recliner, drinking chai, feeling a bunch of emotions at the moment.

I’m over the person. I am 100% on that. I am over the drinking, and the not getting up for work. As much as I loved him, his contributions to my stress level are not missed. Apparently he was lying to me for quite a while as well, and when I would ask him to go to AA, and therapy, he would go once or twice and then decide he was all better. When I asked for therapy for us, it was denied.

What I do miss, is the sense of security I had, but looking back, that too was not a thing. He was never my safe, my rock, because of the previous paragraph. When I cry now, it’s mostly out of hurt and anger, that I allowed someone in so close, and that I was not able to be what he needed.

My depression in 2019 cannot be minimized. Everyday was a horror for me, as I would lay in bed and wonder if my oldest daughter was ODing, if she was able to shower, if she had food. It became my day to day existence, worrying about her. I was in therapy but it didn’t help - I was terrified my girl was going to die.

So I had nothing to give PunkRock, and as he refused to face his addictions on his own, I couldn’t help. I didn’t have any spoons. And then DarkKnight lost his job and was unemployed for 5 months, and our finances were in the toilet. It was rough.

Still, I believed we were a team. When he told me he had been looking for a way to leave for a year, I was devastated. His failure to communicate is on him. His words to me in January 2020 that he thought our relationship was solid and he loved me more than ever were absolute lies. He started dating as an exit strategy, and his girlfriend gave him one when she told him she wanted to be monogamous. She told me she wasn’t worried about his drinking problem because she grew up in a household with an alcoholic. He said she didn’t stress him out.

I say I 100% that I hope one day he can get into a program and stick to it. He’s been an alcoholic and in and out of rehab since he was a teenager. She isn’t going to magically cure that, and neither is he. I know I couldn’t, but it took him leaving for me to believe it.

I still get teary some nights, but it’s not because I miss him, or that I miss what we had when things were good. It’s because I want to feel love again, like I thought we had. I get tears of hurt and anger, but they move on through and I move forward.

I have attachment issues. The way he left didn’t help those. However, I think I can say that the therapy I had up until that point did have a positive effect on how I dealt with the loss. Am still dealing with the loss.

I’ve heard it said that tears are just love with no place to go. Sometimes I believe that. Other times, I think they’re just there to wash away the past and make the future more clear.
 
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Wow! So my state taxes were already deposited. DarkKnight and I had to go shopping for Fresh Food Friday last night and when I pulled up my bank balance, I can see all of my accounts at once, and I saw our joint account was looking $700+ heavier! Nice. I gave him $50, I spent $50 on the Stitch Fix style pass, and we paid off a credit card. Feels pretty good!

I am having some major pulling pains on my injured knee today. I’m not happy with it!
 
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I went to bed this morning at 4 am! I read a book a friend recommended, then bought a trilogy another friend had said to try, and I got sucked into the story! Gah! When I finally went to bed, I slept until 11 am. Crazy.

Today everyone is sleepy here - MisterMoonbeam is snoring next to me at the moment. I came to lay down and read some more a while ago, while DarkKnight went on a walk. He’s making me some chai right now, so I am going to get up and go snuggle with him in a short bit.

I had plans to work some more on the unfinished side of the basement today. The back half of it is already emptied out and looking good, but the half with all of the tools and misc house construction items is a disaster. I hope to have it all done this weekend, but that isn’t happening if I keep being lazy on my day off.
 
I’m feeling very overwhelmed with my nonprofit paperwork lately. I start feeling anxiety, so I stop reading and moving forward until I calm down. Like every step has been easy and okay once I get into it, but passing the first hurdle is difficult. I’m glad I gave myself the May 1 deadline for filing!
 
I cannot brain today. I wanna go back to bed and not wake up at all until it’s time to go to bed.

My alarm went off at 9 am, and I had two missed calls from BugGirl, plus a dozen messages. She’s been sick again and work won’t let her back without a doctor note. But of course they don’t provide health insurance, so she doesn’t have a doctor. She’s trying to sign up on the app for state insurance and she wanted my help with choosing a plan. Math in the morning - or at anytime really - is not my strong suit.

All night long I kept smelling cat pee and I found the offending pillow, only to have my senses assaulted again this morning. I was too tired to find where the stench was coming from, but it smelled too bad to be able to fall back asleep. I think Olivia sprayed the other day when ColePorter came downstairs. Since she can’t hear the other cats, she gets started and is terrified when they suddenly appear.

Ugh. I really don’t wanna do anything today but cry a little and sleep some more. Instead, I am now upstairs drinking chai and getting ready to shower. The Box is supposed to be opening at 11, so I have another 15 minutes to regroup and then get my butt into the bathroom and get today started on a better note.
 
Today has gotten a bit better, as DarkKnight’s federal taxes have been deposited. Almost all of it is going to pay for 1) the 501c3 startup fee ($800) and 2) the new website ($500) though.

I spent most of the day watching Ink Master while resleeving DVDs in the living room. I’m organizing our two big bookcases - one holds movies and the other has bins for Blessing Box special pickups. I have taken 5 shelves full of DVDs and condensed them to be 3 boxes of movies. It’s not done yet - I ran out of sleeves today, but more will be here tomorrow. I am setting up my rock collection in the reclaimed space, so I ordered some stands as well. I think it’s going to be great when I am done. Whenever I look at my rocks, I am full of happiness. It’s one hobby that I have been happy to continue on my own - for a while, I was just buying and gifting to PunkRock. These are all mine! 😃

Here’s two pics of the DVD sleeves. There’s a slip that holds 2 discs, which then goes inside a clear envelope with the artwork. They take up lots less space, and fit perfectly in some boxes I bought. I will post pics when the setup is complete.

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I spent some time last night with MisterMoonbeam planning our anniversary (March 21), and I looked at some options for my anniversary (March 11) with DarkKnight as well. We want to take trips, but we aren’t going far and we most definitely are not going to be spending it with others. For DarkKnight we are thinking of getting a hotel room overlooking the ocean in Virginia Beach, spending our lo weekend snuggling and playing board games. With MisterMoonbeam, we are planning on going to a small boutique hotel in PA that has theme rooms. Again, we will spend time together and be alone. That place actually does ghost tours and paranormal investigations but we would be skipping those right now. I still don’t feel that those sorts of things are safe.
 
I got BugGirl to go to the Free Clinic in town earlier this week, and it turns out she has a MASSIVE kidney infection. I’m really worried - and so are they - because she only has one full kidney and 1/4 of the other, from an operation when she was a newborn. They gave her a shot of antibiotics, and she’s on another oral antibiotic at the moment. This afternoon I have to take her in to get looked at - she hasn’t been back to work by their order.

My youngest is coming over today to do some organizing - she asked if I would give her a job this week to make some extra cash. So I will have her working in the basement. She’s coming over soon so I should probably get out of bed!

I did finish my living room bookshelf organizing - all of my DVDs have been resleeved, and I now have my rock collection front and center. The movies are all in 3 of the black boxes. I have them at that height to stop my cats from messing with my stuff! The framed pictures are of mushrooms and fungi, and were all taken last year on nature walks with MisterMoonbeam and DarkKnight.

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So happy - I was able to see both of my daughters today! Funny enough, they both wanted to talk to me about their birth control, and it sounds like they are both switching to the type the other is using! BugGirl currently has an IUD, and my youngest has the arm implant. Neither will recommend the type they are using though. I told them both separately that I don’t wanna be a grandma yet!

BugGirl is still supposed to be on bed rest the remainder of the week, but she says she can’t afford it. She has only been on the antibiotics for 2 days and she’s still in a lot of pain. She needs to go back in two weeks for a check up.

I am really exhausted this evening. I was running all around today and I need to relax!
 
I am so tired. I was up til 3 am last night but was able to sleep in until 9:30 or so this morning, so that was good. I ordered in Pizza Hut for lunch, and it’s MisterMoonbeam’s day off, so we are both on the couch with my cat Harry, who is being super snuggly.

I need to shower. We have the electrician coming over today because suddenly two outlets aren’t working in my overflow room and the breaker won’t stay on. I hope it doesn’t cost me a fortune. I’m not really worried about it, because he’s a friend, but I still want to pay him something decent!

Last night DarkKnight and I finally booked our weekend getaway for our anniversary. We are leaving Thursday through Sunday next week. We got an AirBnB cottage right on a creek. It really pretty, with a fireplace and a huge deck overlooking the water. There’s a little island too! It’s in Pennsylvania, about 2 hours from where we live. I am looking forward to snuggling up with him and just being together. It’s not near any major cities, though there seems to be a lot of state parks and hiking trails, so I hope the weather is nice enough for us to enjoy that.
 
I have put off updating because I am just so emotionally drained and exhausted. This is going to take a couple of posts.

Saturday was rough. I spent the entire day with my son, and he is really having issues right now. I brought him over to my house and he shared that his depression has been incredibly overwhelming. He actually quit his job like 5 months ago, and had been lying about it because he felt like a failure, and worthless. Quarantine has made his struggle all the more difficult.

I tried to help him as much as I could. I got his taxes filled out and filed. I paid some medical bills and handled a stack of paperwork for him. He hadn’t paid his electric bill in months - thank god for Covid shut off restrictions - and he needed to take care of other invoices that had gone unpaid as well.

After the paperwork parts, I took him to JCPenney and bought him a new belt and some underwear, as well as a pair of khakis and a dress shirt for a new interview outfit. He told me he had a meeting set up on Monday (which is now today as I am writing this) for a dishwasher job, so this was important!

We met my youngest daughter at the phone store, and we spent two hours working with a rep to get them both off of my plan. For the first time in decades, my phone plan is now just me and DarkKnight! My son now has a smart phone - up to this point he has always had a flip phone! He now has an iPhone 11, so he’s experiencing a hard learning curve. He didn’t want to upgrade, but AT&T wasn’t supporting his device anymore due to age.

I bought him lunch to go (it was like 3 pm at that point) and dropped him at his house. Later that night, DarkKnight took him out to dinner, and they had a talk. Since now we know my son is just sitting inside with no contact with the outside world, we’re including him in our bubble. He’s going to come over once a week for a game night, and DarkKnight is going to visit him once a week to hang out as well. Previously, we thought he was working in a customer-heavy job at Walmart, so we’ve not seen him much. It breaks my heart that we could have been seeing him last year if we had known what was going on, but he lied about working and he made his life harder than was needed.

I have a LOT to do with Medicare in the next month for him now and it’s a little overwhelming for me, but I will get it planned out. The good news though is that I had saved his $600 stimulus check, so everything he needed help with got covered, and he will be getting a chunk back in taxes PLUS the new stimulus. Moving forward he should not have difficulties with money, even being unemployed. He gets disability money, so that’s paying his rent and utilities.

Guys, I am SO very scared for my son. His birthfather committed suicide at age 32, and my son will be 32 in a few months. He’s struggled with depression his entire life, and we’ve had him in therapy for years. He has high-functioning autism, tactile dysfunction and issues with hoarding. I’m glad BugGirl can keep an eye on him - they live together - but life is obviously a struggle for him still.
 
Yesterday I spent the entire day at the ER. MisterMoonbeam was sweating and had a high resting heart rate when just sitting in the living room recliner - 170! He had some chest pain, and when we checked his blood pressure, the machine was in the red. DarkKnight came home so I could take the car, and I drove MisterMoonbeam to the hospital.

This has happened in the past - he says his heart will race about once a year. Well, the ER fast tracked him through triage, and they had him laying down in no time at all. They allowed me to sit with him, and everyone was really great while tests were run. They did two blood draws, two EKGs and they tried twice to get an IV in him, but those both failed for whatever reason.

In the end they let us go home because he didn’t have a heart attack. They said that it was an electrical issue and not a plumbing problem, so he needs to see a cardiologist to get a monitor. Also, he has a “massive” heart murmur, which is entirely new, so that needs to be looked at as well.

It was very scary. It just thrummed into my head that I have no future set up with MisterMoonbeam - no final planning, no life insurance, no retirement. The nurses called me his wife a couple of times and we didn’t say anything to dissuade them - I was afraid of being asked to leave. When they did ask him if he wanted me as the point of contact though, he said yes, and I told them to list me as his partner, which was a thing on their drop down menu. He also sent me his parents’ phone number, and the two numbers for his stepsons.

It was scary and I felt very adrift. However, he was REALLY anxious. His wife passed from heart issues, and the last few years he was in and out of hospitals with her, so it brought up all sorts of memories. This stress was not really great when you’re already having heart problems! That extra stress was terrible for him. I really struggled, seeing him so anxious. I love him so very much!

This morning I had to already remind him once to call the cardiologist and make a follow up appointment. He hasn’t done it yet. If he hasn’t done it by this afternoon, I’m going to do it! He may just be too stressed out about it still to handle it. Well, I am too stressed out to not have it handled!

I am really nervous now about leaving on Thursday to go away with DarkKnight for our anniversary. One of our friends in Fredericksburg may come down to hang out and stay for a night while we are gone - his late wife’s other partner. I would feel really good about this, but MisterMoonbeam is noncommittal.

That said, he and I have reserved our own anniversary trip - we are going to stay at a hotel in the Rittenhouse area of Philadelphia. We are planning to just relax and enjoy our amazing room (on a high floor with a view of the city) and maybe go to an escape room together that weekend. We are going to avoid the city at large, for the most part, to minimize risk.

I am really going to need a vacation after all of this high stress stuff!
 
Annnnnd I got my period. Fucking yay.
 
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