Everything old is new

"My heart hit a problem, in the early hours,
So I stopped it dead for a beat or two.
But I cut some cord, and I shouldn't have done it,
And it won't forgive me after all these years,

So I sent it to a place in the middle of nowhere
With a big black horse and a cherry tree.
Now it won't come back, 'cause it's oh so happy
And now I've got a hole for the world to see."

-- Black Horse & the Cherry Tree, KT Tunstall



I love the Mac vs. PC commercials. I got my MacBook in November, and I have been so very tickled to have it that it's become an appendage. Last week I hooked up a wireless router, which I had to splurge on because there were no open networks in my new neighborhood to infringe upon, and now I'm spoiled as all hell again.

I don't think I've turned on my old iMac since I got the laptop, except maybe to make sure it still worked or to get an occasional file. Tonight I turned it on with the intention of looking up some old bookmarks that I couldn't remember the URLs for, and in the process I opened up the past. I stumbled across a lot of sites that my friends no longer keep up, a lot of broken links to stuff I used to be vigilant about checking, some content that I question why I bothered to bookmark at all. (Some of the notable sites I rediscovered I've added to "Sites to see" in the rail at left.)

It propelled me to do a little digging into the files saved on the hard drive. It started with a file called "Things to blog about," and suddenly I was interface to interface with how quickly things seem to change in my life.

For instance, two years ago at this time, I was sitting in a newsroom in Fort Lauderdale, probably designing the Palm Beach County edition of my old newspaper. And loving it and the people I worked with! A year ago at this time, I was still in my first trimester with Jacob, already showing, and embarking on my first visit back to Florida.

During that trip was the FIRST time Joe told me he wanted me out of his house.

As I was telling him about a spat I was having with Zoe's dad, I remember what Joe said, as if he had said it yesterday: "If your daughter is so important in your life, you don't belong in mine."

For some reason -- at the time I'm sure I had my reasons -- I saved a snippet of an email from him from mid-June of last year:

If you like, I'll move the rest of your things to the
garage. It'll save you making multiple trips up and
down the stairs. Let me know when you plan to pick up
the stuff -- I don't want videos and clothes to get
ruined in a hot garage.

How nice of him.

More recently, I have been trying to let all this go and encourage a more healthy communication with Joe, but reading some of the stuff I wrote while I was living with him -- some blogs I never posted because they were just too painful -- make me wonder just WHAT THE HELL I WAS THINKING.


FOR A YEAR.