Random Thoughts, in Fast Succession

My mind keeps playing with the thoughts of merging households and merging lives. I've said since the day EEFFH broke up with me that I wanted to be in a committed relationship of the cohabitation type (with or without the recognition of the State). But the more settled I get in my life and the more of these stinking three-month relationships I go through, the more I question that desire.

I woke at 4:45 this morning, fixed a cup of tea, took my Excedrin, put the ice pack on my neck, and pulled the laptop into bed with me. And thought about the fact that the only person I risk disturbing in taking those actions is Rudi. Actually, a couple of minutes later Rudi bit me so hard I now have blood and a bruise on my left forearm, so I guess he really was disturbed. Or is disturbed!

I'm thinking I need to get another cat to get Rudi OUT OF MY FACE!

I think women are more adaptable than men. (Somebody contradict me if you think I'm wrong.) I think women are more able to amend or emend their lives to fit in with someone else's life. (As I write that, I picture two hands coming together to hold each other.) I've been living alone now for three years. Wow, is it only three? It seems like so much longer. I guess you could say I've been living alone, emotionally, for eight years.

My second husband had been alone for twelve years when we married. He wasn't so adaptable. I moved into his home and had to ask before I hung a picture on a wall or placed a rug in a bathroom. When John and I got together the second time around, I told him if we wanted that relationship to work, we would have to start over. So we bought a house that was ours. Not his. Not mine. No ghosts in closets. I highly recommend that action.

I've been thinking about having a home in the same neighborhood as my as-yet-unidentified man. That way I could have my things, my messy spaces, and he could have his. But if we were to break up, I'd have to move.

The Gardener keeps all his old girlfriends as friends. How does he do that? I can't imagine.

Once I'm done with a relationship, I don't really want to know what's going on in the life of my ex-whatever. Maybe it's because of all my acceptance/rejection issues. If I'm not good enough for you, then get the hell out of my life. Don't keep throwing in my face the fact that I wasn't good enough.

But does that hold with a relationship that develops only as friends? One man currently on my list is absolutely the dearest man. I hold him in the highest esteem and consider him a man of the utmost quality. But I really don't see it developing into a romance. I adore him as a friend. Is there a man alive for whom that is a good thing, or — coming back to Mr. Match's statements of competition — must it be all or nothing: friendship and love and romance and sex or nothing at all?

Is there a farmer in the house to say, "That'll do, Pig. That'll do."