*bluebirds chirp* This weekend, I have a Scubaboard get-together tomorrow afternoon, and Sunday should bring a long, lazy day in the sun, reading and diving. Hopefully I will also get my ass to the gym and I have long neglected the butt-blaster and I am never going to create a respectable ass out of my white-girl, flat-as-a-pancake butt without it.

I was thinking.. It's funny to think what changes my life has seen in the past year. I only have a benchmark because today is Ed's birthday. But this day last year, I was:

1. Working at that horrible, horrible office in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea
2. Renting from Seth in Coconut Creek
3. Spending an hour on the road to get to my place from work every night
4. Then spending another 30-45 minutes to get from my place to Ed's every night
5. The owner of one cat. ONE. ONE ONE ONE!
6. NOT DIVING YET. I couldn't even swim at this time last year. COULD NOT SWIM.

Now I:

1. Work at a much better place, despite the fact that I'm bored most of the day. There are worse things than being bored, right?
2. Renting from my landlord and LIVE ALONE
3. Have a commute time of approximately three minutes
4. Have more cats. I will leave the math up to you. And they are the most important little things in my life. I can feel my blood pressure sinking every day when I go home and greet them.. Kitten gets a head scratch, til she starts crying.. Fluffers takes extra-gooey love, in any form.. Elliot likes to stomp around on me with his claws out (ow!) as I rub his head.. Mama gets the belly rubs.. and the kittens get belly scratches.. lord.
5. Try to dive weekly. I can't believe I didn't dive for the first three years I lived here!

Lots of changes. On one hand it is sad.. I had a person I cared about to make lop-sided birthday cakes for... I had a person who was leaving for Pennsylvania the next day that I hugged and kissed and told I'd miss.. Tonight, on the other hand, it will be me and my pride (of cats, not that other kind, for alas I've lost all that on Hollywood Boulevard) and a bowl of homemade pasta. Not that this is a bad thing. :)

You know, the other day driving home, I passed nearby that old office. I had a flashback to me standing in the women's bathroom, crying so hard I couldn't breathe. It was after a fight.. I was saying I couldn't live without him, that he was my everything - he was my best friend, I lived there, HOW CAN I LIVE WITHOUT SUKI AND LUCY!?!?! I thought of this while in the passenger seat of Alli's car last Sunday, after a long, lovely day in the sun and eating ice cream bars that were making a mess of both of us.. This probably makes no sense, except in my own head.. It's just strange that I pictured my life as this big void without him, when in fact, I had people and things swirl in from a dozen directions that filled my life with happiness, laughter, cat hair on all my shirts, and sand in my bathtub.

I guess there are many ways to have a happy life. Petty theft, stray cats, pointless photojournalism, conch molestation, getting all the "inside" jokes on Friends, and occasionally pissing off the neighbors.. Well, that seems to be working for me right now, even in the shadow of overdraft fees and funny noises my car is making. :)  ¶ 3:34 PM