Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance - and other P Words.

So yesterday's blog post was fun. :)

The feedback I received from it was along similar lines - that it was a private affair I should keep between me and my ex (which implies I communicate with him).

I don't think it's out of line at all for me to bash my ex a bit on my blog. I've shared a lot of personal details about myself and people in my life in my posts and I don't think they need to be limited to when I'm feeling warm and squishy about someone.  If I had named him and posted a link to his facebook page that might have been over the top, but I took it way easy on him. Way easy.

But that's the end of the blog real estate that he'll be getting. On to better and more interesting topics.

Since it's the beginning of 2013, we're going to talk resolutions. This year I noticed a lot of resolution hate on the Internet and I was surprised. What's with all the negativity toward setting new goals for yourself in the beginning of the year? Sure, the chances of keeping a New Years resolution is pretty slim. When I look back at the resolutions I've made over the past decade or so, they're all just the same resolutions over and over. Which means I haven't kept one of them yet. But this year will be different. (I've said that before, too.)

I love New Years. It's in the running with Halloween for my favorite holiday. It's a holiday that celebrates friendship and forgiveness and hope and optimism. And champagne. It's a day off from work with no obligation. It's a free day. Is there a better way to start the year?

Every year I make resolutions. This year was no different... except that I narrowed my list down to one. One single resolution.

My mother will be so proud. I'm going to stop procrastinating. Procrastination is like a dirty word to my mother. She is the antithesis of procrastination. When I was growing up, our Thanksgiving table was set the week before Thanksgiving. Things were planned, calendars were filled, we never ran out of toilet paper or milk. If there was a task to be done, my mom had it done before anyone else even knew that a task had been thought of.

Oh, the apple fell so far from the tree with me that you might as well call it a lemon.

I've been a procrastinator my whole life. Why do today what I can put off til tomorrow? Perhaps the problem will just go away on its own?  Why study for that exam a week ahead of time when I can party all week and fit in a cram session the night before the test?

And we wonder why I didn't do so well in college.

So this year, I'm really going to work on procrastination. It's going to be a journey. It's a 35 year old habit that I'm trying to break here so I imagine it's going to take some practice.

And on that note - I'm off to put the laundry in the dryer.

Here's a big giant middle finger for my ex-husband - and oh hey, I'm gonna blog more.

I stopped blogging for a while, did you notice?

For a while I thought I was going to scrap this blog. Completely. Never to return again.

But you know what? I like it. I like having my very own soapbox and I like having a place to write. I just hate feeling like I have to censor myself. Censoring myself makes writing, something I love to do, so unenjoyable. It makes it a task on the to-do list instead of a hobby I'm passionate about.

So why would I censor myself?

The most recent reason boils down to my ex-husband. Through the grapevine I learned that not only is he reading the blog - but he's taking the pictures I post of Bug and Munchkin and posting them on his own facebook wall like he's father of the year.

So let's get something straight. Bug and Munchkin don't know him. At all. Not even a little bit. And they don't ask about him, either.

The last time we saw him Munchkin was about two weeks old.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to paint a picture of myself sitting at home crying because my husband walked out. That's not the case. I'm the one who left. I left because he was a cheater and a liar and a manipulator and there was no way in hell I was going to raise my children to follow in his footsteps. I left because I was tired of sitting at home taking care of a child, trying to pay the bills, and making a home for us while he went out with friends and spent our money on fun.

But I'm not going to turn this blog into a lynching. Suffice it to say, he wasn't there for us in the way we needed him to be so I left him.  And he put on a show like he cared for a little while. But in the end it was pretty obvious that he was just fine with being single again and that whole "being a dad" thing was kind of putting a damper on his social life.

By the time Munchkin was just a few months old, he had completely stopped even trying to contact us. Neither of the kids have ever once received so much as a call on their birthday from him. Nothing.

And to be quite honest, that's fine with me and as far as I can tell it's fine with them, too.

But for him to post pictures of my babies on his facebook page like he's their dad and he has something to be proud of? It infuriates me.

He has nothing to be proud of. He has no reason to brag about how awesome they are, how beautiful they are, how talented and smart and funny they are. He had no part of that. None. They are amazing in spite of him.

The best thing he ever did for them was walk far, far away. And I hope he keeps on walking.