awkward silence

i failed to mention that last week i got a couple of things in the mail. one was a letter that verified the payoff of the mortgage on 9023 (a release of lien). the second was a couple of letters indicating that the qdro i mailed off was accepted and the money had been split and moved into a separate account. i also got a letter from honda financial as proof that my account with them was paid. which means that almost all the loose ends have been tied up related to tamara. the only things really left that i know of are her name on my state farm insurance and her name on the element title. the second one should already be in motion by the bank. i also probably need to strike her name from a few other things, but not much. then i need to go through her crap and either get it to her, get it to her parents, or throw it away / burn it.
i’ve been pretty stable about my lot in life the last few months. although i’d love to be in a relationship of some kind, i’ve been mostly content with just being on my own.
while i was at home for xmas, on the last day i ran into jennifer and her oldest daughter at the bank my mom works at. (how’s that for a whiplash segue with an obvious direction?) i hadn’t seen her daughter in over a year. she’d grown and looked older. i think i handled the interaction and such okay, but it made me remember how much i liked doing stuff with her kids, and made me wish i saw them more often.
and unfortunatley, it also brought some of my feelings for jennifer back up. it’d been some time since i just sort of fell into the ache of longing for what i’ve lost (meaning marriage, family, friendship, etc). i wish i could just get rid of that stuff — it isn’t doing me any good and doesn’t really have any value. no wonder i don’t let myself get interested in many women…i’d be an emotional wreck (which might make it more difficult to maintain my stoic exterior). i’m not sure if that makes me a hopeless romantic, a masochist, or an idiot when it comes to emotions. (maybe those are all the same thing.) anyway, it caused me to get contemplative for the last few hours i was at home, then i headed back to houston.
as has been my custom lately, i stopped in art at the cemetary where a number of my ancestors are buried. while there, i went ahead and packed my pipe and thought for awhile. after that i headed down to the house and walked around. my mom and dad showed up, but they were going to the deer feeders so they didn’t stop very long. after i finished with the pipe, i got in the element and headed back to houston.