Today is the first day...

of the rest of my life, or so I told myself this morning as I trekked up the sidewalk from my apartment to my SUV. Get in, turn the key and while the dang thing started, it refused to keep running. So, I called AAA and asked for roadside assistance. "Is it your battery or do you need a tow truck?" asked the oh-so-polite-had-to-be-a-blonde on the other end of the line. I replied that I did not know, but I was fairly sure it wasn't the battery or the alternator, since the car started and the battery was showing charged on the meter on the dashboard. Well, thirty minutes later a battery man arrived and when I described the symptoms, he called a tow truck. Another thirty minutes and I now know that God does indeed have a sense of humor - a one-armed man driving a tow truck appeared and tentatively diagnosed the problem as a security issue with the alarm system. Mind you, this SUV does not have an alarm, but I did not want to argue. Actually, I was more fascinated with how that guy was going to manage to get that enormous SUV on the tow truck. I needn't have worried because he did just fine and I should be ashamed of myself for thinking that his handicap would stand in the way of his doing his job, but I am possessed of a warped sense of humor and I couldn't help myself. I mean, I couldn't have gotten the SUV even remotely lined up to get it on the truck - who am I kidding? I am sure I've been punished for my negative thoughts with the ever-skyrocketing repair bill. Karma, you know.

Speaking of karma, or whatever you want to call it, there is a reason why today was the first day of the rest of my life. First of all, it's September 1st and the first day of a month is always a good day for new beginning. Secondly, I've barely been coherent or able to function like a productive adult since last Tuesday morning, when my husband decided to rip my heart out and hand it to me. He does not want to be married anymore. Consequently, I am not moving to Pennsylvania or anywhere else. Tim has successfully adopted out (with the help of a family who owns a farm) all but six of our cats: Eddie, Sophie, Lucie Bee, Walter, Louie and Berny. I desperately want to bring my fourteen-year-old cat Eddie back home to Florida, but I don't hold out much hope of that happening. Apparently everyone who meets him wants to adopt him - but I've had Eddie around longer than Tim and I just can't give Eddie up. Something told me back in January that I should keep Eddie here with me, but I didn't do it because he's the head boy and the other cats loved him. He was the leader of the pack.
So anyway, I gave myself until this morning to get it together and well, you can imagine how that went. First the car problem - my friend Richard came and picked me up at the condo - we had planned to sort out junk at the office that I could either put on craigslist for sale or take to Goodwill - and then the day just sort of went downhill from there. We went to the storage unit - that tightly-packed abomination you can see above - to take pictures of my table and some other stuff, but after surveying the mess, we decided that we need to get some of the junk out of there first, so in a week or so I'm going to lead an expedition to the wilds of unit E41 and put stuff bound for the office in my friend Long's van and stuff for Goodwill in the back of my SUV. I think we can clean it out twice as fast that way and then I can take pictures of the big stuff that I plan to divest myself of since I won't be moving away.

That is some bad paragraph - and I fancy myself a writer... But you get the gist of this post - my goal today was to get it together (as best I can) and start moving on. I think I made a pretty good start - at least I have some kind of plan. I know this isn't going to be easy, but then, whose life really is?