First Week of New Semester...

WOW! This week was crazy! It's Sunday and I've allowed myself the entire day (except from 1:00-4:00 to watch the Steelers game!) to study for a big quiz tomorrow. I spent four hours yesterday - yes, on a Saturday, in an open lab, practicing my knife cuts. I'm still slicing on an angle and can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. I'll probably be attending open labs A LOT! I'm exhausted and can't imagine how anyone could go to school and work AND take care of a family! I feel pretty confident overall. I'm pretty organized (as you can see by the photo) and you can see where my favorite place in the apartment is for just organizing and getting ready for the week ahead - in front of the TV! Besides school, I'm keeping up on lessons in my Divorce Care workbook, exercises in conjunction with my physical therapy,working with a trainer at the gym, working with a great investment consultant, and keeping up on the paperwork for the divorce. I finally looked over the Consent Judgement of Divorce paperwork last night. There it was - in black and white - the procedure to end 30 years of marriage. "...from which it satisfactorily appears to the Court that there has been a breakdown of the marriage relationship to the extent that the objects of matrimony have been destroyed and there remains no reasonable likelihood that the marriage can be preserved..."; and "...DOTH ORDER, that the marriage between said Plaintiff, Dan E. Alt, and the said Defendant, Edith A. Alt, be dissolved, and the same hereby is dissolved accordingly, and a divorce from the bonds of matrimony between said parties is hereby ORDERED." I know it's for the best - at this point in time - after many months of Hell. You know what I've finally figured out? One of us in this marriage has been thinking about this for quite a while...the other one was taken quite by surprise...and shame on her. You don't go from loving someone to wanting a divorce in a matter of a day. Shame on her for not even considering the possibility of  needing to have her own credit card and credit in her own name. Shame on her for not being more knowledgeable about where and how life savings were being invested. Shame on her for not giving herself a chance to realize what her worth was. Shame on her for going through most of her life thinking she wasn't smart enough to go to college. And, shame on her for thinking she was going to be taken care of for the rest of her life by the man she shared almost her entire life with. I guess that may sound cold and harsh, but over the last six months I've realized - just as my lawyer explained it to me - divorce comes down to money. There are feelings of sadness, hopelessness, disbelief, fear, hate, love, abandonment, embarrassment, humiliation, etc., etc., etc., but in the end it comes down to money. I was talking to a very nice women the other day who lived very close to where we lived in Harper Creek. She had most of her home destroyed a couple of months ago by a terrible storm that ripped through the area. After months, their new home will finally be started this week - a new foundation will be built. The pain of that terrible day is still in her memory, but it's finally time to rebuild. Their home will be better than it was before. They're going to make some improvements and upgrades to the way it was. It will be a better home in the long run. They are so grateful to God that they weren't killed. Time to start over and appreciate just what really is important in life. I feel like that. That, in a sense, is what I'm going through in my life right now.