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And just as quickly and Liz Phair's cd entered my life, it's been replaced by the soundtrack from Scrubs. There's a song about a monkey. How bad can it be? It's been a relaxing weekend. Just what I needed to cleanse Fuckhead out my brain. Friday night I stayed up very late watching movies that made me cry and TV that made me laugh 'til I almost pee. Played some more DDR until I was too tired to pass the levels and then fell asleep to an Unwrapped episode on beer. Ah, yes, a good evening.

Saturday, I took care of some paperwork. My bank account is still in my married name, mostly out of laziness on my part. But since my house loan will be in my current name, I decided to make sure everything was in sync. It was interesting to explain to the nice man at Bank of America that yes I am changing my name on my accounts and yes here are the divorce papers to prove it, but yes I'm still staying on the accounts with my ex-husband. He just looked at me and said "well, if that's what works for you all." Just another thing to take care of when Jeremy gets home from California.

One thing I learned as a divorced woman is that it's very hard to clean your previous married name out of your life. You will always get mail from random places addressed to your married name. You will still find random accounts (your TGIFriday's frequent diner's club card or what-have-you) that are still in your married name. My mother confessed that her social security card is still in her previous married name and she hasn't had that name for nearly 40 years. I don't let it bother me. It didn't seem practical to go on a "scorched Earth" campaign and rid my life of anything labelled Mrs. BlackBear. I know who I am.

The one thing that got to me, though, was going over to the old house. I went over to check on the cat and fish while Brian is still out of town. It's difficult to walk around a house that you used to live in ... that you remember very good times and some very bad times in ... and not feel a little sad. It was even harder to see things that I owned ... Jer and I owned together ... that aren't a part of my world anymore. I couldn't find a pen anywhere in the house to leave a note for Brian. Hell, I couldn't find paper. Nothing was where I would have put it. Things change, I suppose. It's still just sad. I left my list of reminders for Brian and played with the cat for a bit and then headed home. A short drive in the sun in my fantastic car did wonders for my mood.

Last night was a fine evening. As says, it's nice to just have "empty hours" with him. We picked up the Maxim magazine in which he is now featured (page 42) and perused the "back to school" reading section of Barnes & Noble. We make the scoffing noises at each other over the classic books that each of us had read and the other hadn't. In the end my find of the evening was the Create Your Own Erotic Fantasy book. It's a little hokey, but what do you expect when you mix "one handed reading" erotica with a "choose your own adventure" format? It literally has choices like:

If you want to ditch the sex party and make plans for Saturday night with Peter, please turn to page 73.

If you're looking foward to getting naked with strangers, please turn to page 79.

Again, not Anais Nin, but entertaining all the same.

Today has been a day of naps and snacks. I have felt like a kitten in the sun. This is just the recharge that I needed to prepare myself for next week and beyond.