From bed

I am just trying to think of reasons to stay awake rather than go back to sleep for a few hours before I go to a new German language group I just joined. I installed the blogger app on my phone, so now that I have a phone that actually does the voice recognition stuff properly, it's actually kind of nice but I can just talk to my phone and my words show up.

Some of the lies I've told myself over the past year.... 1. my ex-fiance truly loved me. 2. my friendship with my former best friend was completely platonic. 3. I am okay and don't need a lot of help. 4. I have no deficits after the stroke. 5. the Canadian fell as hard as I did. 6. I enjoy my career. 7. I'm independent. 8. I'm in control. 9. I am okay alone. 10. my friendship with my current best friend is completely platonic. 11. I read a lot. 12. I sleep enough. 13. I eat healthy.

Anger, Revisited

My anger today sprang up after some less-than-civil dealings with my ex-fiance about some (still) shared finances. I honestly want to see that man happy, even though it will never be a happiness found with me. He was the greatest love of my adult life thus far, and I hate that it ended so poorly. Even if he became available again, I wouldn't want him. He abandoned me at a point in my life when I needed him the most. Now he's someone other woman's problem. I just hate that the only way to stop crying over my pain is to become angry. I think I am done with anger for the day. I am just going to cry - let it out - and then MOVE the fuck on!

Anger

My anger is costing me a new relationship. I feel C pulling away. He's spoken to me about his concerns in regard to my anger. I resent him for feeling the way he does. Another man (K)- a good friend who has indicated he would like to date me - has been comforting me and my bruised heart. Instead of just saying, "Well, you need to work on your anger," he provided me with books about processing anger and a friendly ear to help me sort through the messes of my life. I know he realizes he's helping me be more of what the guy in my new relationship wants - someone free of bitterness and anger. When K knew me before as a college student, I was actually a calm, sweet-natured form of myself - the person I still feel like on the inside, just hidden/swallowed by the hardened shell of an angry person. Anger made me stronger for a while last year after my stroke. It made me strong again after a broken heart. Now it's time to be stronger than my anger.

Tuesday's Music

I'm horribly disorganized. I have one day to completely change that. I have a piano arriving on Tuesday - an old college friend with whom I reconnected made this possible. His parents are giving me their own piano (an antique piano that has been in their family for about 65 years). While the move and the tuning will cost about $350, the piano is a rare find and worth a hefty sum. I couldn't believe when they insisted on GIVING me the piano, free of charge. They offered it to me when I saw it and asked to play it; I haven't had a piano in my home since 2004, and I just wanted to "tickle the ivories" - in this case...REAL ivory keys. So, Tuesday will bring me something new to focus on, which is good. I've been sort of stuck in a rut lately, and music always soothes my soul.

Some quotes

From William Shakespeare:

"The time of life is short; To spend that shotrness basely were too long."

(Henry IV)

"He that is giddy thinks the world turns round."

(The Taming of the Shrew)

"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."

(Twelfth Night)

"Men of few words are the best men."

(Henry VI)

"My salad says, When I was green in judgment."

(Antony and Cleopatra) From Mark Twain:

"One of the striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives."

("Pudd'nhead Wildson's Calendar) From Alexander Pope: "'Tis with our judgments as our watches - none Go just alike, yet each believes his own" (Essay on Criticism, Part I) "True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, As those move easiest who have learned to dance." (Essay on Criticism, Part II) "To err is human, to forgive divine." (Essay on Criticism, Part II) "In words as fashions, the same rules will hold, Alike fantastic if too new or old; Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside." (Essay on Criticism, Part II) "Words are like leaves; and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found." (Essay on Criticism, Part II) "A little learning is a dangerous thinkg; Drink deep, or tast not eh Pierian spring: There shall drafts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely sobers us again." (Essay on Criticism, Part II) "'Tis education forms the common mind: Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined." (Moral Essays, "Epistle I) "Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man." (The Essay on Man, "Epistle II") "Worth makes he man, and want of it the fellow; The rest is all but leather and prunello." (The Essay on Man, "Epistle IV") "A wit's a feather, and a chief a rod; An honest man's the noblest work of God." (The Essay on Man, "Epistle IV") "Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is but always to be blest." (The Essay on Man, "Epistle") From William Wordsworth: "My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky." ("My Heart Leaps Up") "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!" ("The Prelude, XI") From John Keats: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." ("Epitaph") From Rudyard Kipling: "Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never twain shall met, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat." ("The Ballad of East and West") "Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forgt - lest we forget!" ("Recessional") From Robert Louis Stevenson: "Here he lies, where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill." ("Requiem") From Sara Teasdale: "Life has loveliness to sell -" ("Barter") From Ulysss S. Grant: "I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effecgtive as their stringent execution." (Inaugural Address, 1869) From Joyce Kilmer: "Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree." ("Trees") From Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: "Let the dead Past bury its dead." ("A Psalm of Life") From Abraham Lincoln: "With malce toward none; with charity for all." (Second Inaugural Adress, March 4, 1865)