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Enjoying your updates, Country Dirt. Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! And thanks for the updates. Wonderful positivity.

My youngest son was a "surprise" arriving 13 years after my oldest son and 10 years after my second son. Teacher was the youngest in her family as well being the same age difference from her oldest sister and her brother. She's always teased me about being her "young man" since she is 6 years older than me. I've not made the mistake of referring to her as a "cougar"! Well, during our separate visits to family over Thanksgiving, we discovered that her sister is older than my mother by about a year. We also realized, via text, that we were both huge topics of conversation with our respective families as we both had to answer questions posed by families and sometimes had to text each other for the answers.

She ended up staying late with her niece's family so didn't get home until late on Friday after turkey day. We met for coffee Saturday morning at the grand opening of a new coffee shop and had a nice time with tons of other people. We made plans to cook an evening meal together at her house later, but when it came time, I ended up grabbing some takeout and we ate that instead. She recently has acquired some mice and is in full on mouse trapper mode, so wasn't in the mood to cook.

An evening of watching the national dog show on television was simply thrilling...even if the dog she picked didn't win. But, I forgot to pick up ice cream, so we had to make our own "dessert" and let's just say that it was awesome, again, like always.

Another great update, CD. And happy belated birthday!

I lost interest in Christmas back during the faux reconciliation and just couldn't find much Christmas spirit over the past few years. But, something just feels different this year. So I bought a tree and some decorations and got around to buying some thoughtful gifts for my adult kids and a few friends. Heck, I even bought some wrapping paper instead of gift bags. It's been fun. I'm not sure why the fondness for the holidays came back, but I think it has to do with being happy again.

As I was wrapping the gifts, I sent a text to Teacher whining about how hard it was to wrap presents. She offered to come over and help. Of course I accepted the offer. When she got here, we talked about where each of us had been shopping and she picked up that I had gone to holiday show that she hadn't, so back in the car we leapt and drove downtown to it. We had some friends with a nice booth there and we ended up spending quite a bit of dough on gifts and enjoyed seeing all the sparkly things. Just as we were leaving, her sister called. She happened to be in town and wondered if we wanted to get together that evening.

Teacher dropped me off and then headed home to spruce up her place for her sister and brother-in-law to come over. I picked up some snacks and drove on over and helped her finish sprucing things up. Her sis and BIL came over and we had a great time visiting. Teacher and BIL drove to pick up pizza and sister and I stayed at the house and talked. After they left, we tried to act with some restraint, but couldn't keep up the act and enjoyed our just us time. We continue to be amazed at the intimacy.

The little group of musicians I play with were asked to provide some Christmas songs prior to a matinee of a local theater group's Christmas comedy. Teacher made sure and get it clear when the music was and when she walked into the theater she just took my breath away. After the music, we sat together and laughed and laughed at the outrageous antics of the Christmas play.

My son drives a very used and tired SUV. I bought it when it was pretty much worn out and drove it for a couple of years and then gave it to him when he got his driver's license. It's finally given up the ghost. He has a newer used vehicle lined up, but has to wait for the owner to get a new vehicle purchased. So, I've been serving as a taxi driver this week. I was able to finally get a tour of his workplace and he showed me some of the things he does. Midway through the tour he was called away to fix a tech issue and the warehouse manager finished the tour for me. I must say that I was very impressed with the high tech manufacturing company and blown away with the robotic processing and knowing that my 19 year old is instrumental in making sure those multi-million dollar machines work they way they are supposed to as well as talking to his co-workers and finding out that he customized and installed the payroll software and email systems for this big company.

Friday night he wanted to go visit some friends, so I let him take my pickup. Teacher texted me and told me that she had a headlight out, so we were both grounded. Not the way we wanted to spend Friday night, but it is what it is.

Saturday we got together for our community's Winter Solstice lantern parade. It was so cold! We danced around a fire to stay warm and ventured out with about 85 other souls carrying homemade lanterns to celebrate the longest night of the year - even if it is not for a couple of days yet. But she shared a story that just warmed my heart. During the day she spent time preparing and packing a box of gifts for her son. While she waited in line at the post office she discovered that she was next to a lady who teaches at the school I taught at. During the conversation, the former co-worker mentioned that she missed seeing me at the school since I retired. My Teacher took the opportunity to let the other teacher know that I was her "honey".

We have loose plans to go skiing, visit her family and my family for Christmas.

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays to you and your family. I love your updates.

My 19 year old bought, registered and titled his first car! He mostly paid for it with just a little loan from the First Bank of Dad. I'm so proud of him! His first pickup is so much better than the one I bought at age 19!

But that's not why I am here.

Teacher and I survived the holidays. We weren't together as much as we wanted, but family connections on both sides had us splitting time.

This week is a momentous birthday for her - 65 - and since she is still teaching, I asked her if we could do something this weekend to celebrate because her birthday is during the workweek. She agreed. We went to a nearby town for prime rib and then for a blues music show. We had a wonderful time and saw some newish friends and made more connections.

After the show, we returned to her home and had some just us time which was amazing as always. But, when I prepared to head to my house, we had a conversation that we've been dancing around for a while. When she retires completely - in a year and half - she intends to leave the city we both live in. I'm not quite at that same point. So needless to say, the end of the night was not that great.

We met for coffee this morning. We had a bit of small talk then dove right in and got to the issue. She asked if I saw a future for us, just as I had a mouthful of food. It literally took me 30 seconds to chew that stuff down. I grasped her hands and told her that I was certain that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. I realized that I inadvertently proposed! I said that much could happen in the future, but I knew who I wanted to be with. Oh, and just a bit of an aside, I noticed that she was wearing a pair of earrings I gave her for Christmas (this will come up later)

She smiled a bit and we went on to other things going on. Prior to my son purchasing the new pickup, he had borrowed a car from my parents (who live about 2 hours away). My son and I planned to take that car back to them today. I gave her an idea of the time we would head north to drive the borrowed car to Grammy and she pretty much volunteered to come along.

All of that came about. Teacher rode with me while my son drove behind and had a really nice two hour conversation then we had a nice late lunch with my parents. Then she climbed in the back seat and my son drove us home, all while keeping us entertained with his witty observations of life. A short bathroom stop for my son at her house and we parted with the admonition that she thought she would just stay home and do some prep work for school for the upcoming week.

Just a few minutes after I got home, she sent me a message that she was going to meet some mutual friends for dinner. I responded that I could meet her and she texted back that she would see me in a bit.

I jumped in my car and headed down to the local establishment. Despite the fact that we were with a few friends, we mainly talked to each other. I tried to 'clarify' some of my aging father's stories. I also mentioned that noticed the earrings, which were supposed to "take her worries away" (at least that was what the literature on the package said) and asked her if they worked. She took my face in her hands and said, "They didn't, but you did!"

Can you feel me smiling?

[This message edited by countrydirt at 9:40 PM, Sunday, January 15th]

Today was Teacher's late son's birthday. He would have been 27. Last year we went skiing on the day. Today, we met for coffee and then she went with a school classmate and friend to scatter flowers on the river. She specifically asked me not to come because she wanted to shield me a bit from her ongoing grief. I respected her wishes.

Later, she said she thought she might like cake, so I suggested that I could likely take care of that even though I wasn't sure what part of the store carried cake! I mean, I've done the shopping in my home for most of my adult life, so I sort of know the layout of the store, but I rarely buy sweets. Heck, my youngest son works for a candy company and we don't even eat or buy much candy. Anyhoo, to make a short story even longer, I told her that I would call her when I got to the store and she could advise me.

So I did. I normally talk on the phone through my bluetooth enabled hearing aids (yeah, I know, I'm not old enough for hearing aids, but, well, 30+ years of shop teaching and industry work sort of fixed my hearing) but the hearing aids were picking up all of the store noise, so I took out the left hearing aid and we just talked 'old school' and I selected some cake and chocolate covered strawberries.

I arrived at her house and little Molly was out in the yard and greeted me at the gate with joyous barking. Of course I let her out of the yard and she waited patiently at the front door with me while Teacher came to answer the door. She was on the phone - on speaker- with her sister, telling her all about my ineptitude of locating desserts in the store and sister said, "Well, he seems like a keeper to me if he's willing to buy dessert with remote help!" I said, "Thanks Sister!" We all had a laugh.

The cake was good (shortcake with white chocolate icing and strawberry filling) but the chocolate covered strawberries were really great. Yes, we fed them to each other - which, by the way, is pretty darn sexy. Well, as sexy as shattering chocolate and fruit juice on the chin can be!

We didn't turn on the TV and fed each other and talked for an hour or so and snuggled on the sofa. Of course the evening progressed! Who feeds each other chocolate covered strawberries and doesn't consider that foreplay?

Life is good. I think I'm ready to move on with life. I've enjoyed providing a bit of light in the darkness of infidelity.

Keep your chins up. It can be really good on the other side!

This is the first time I am reading this thread and it won’t be the last. Thank you for these updates….. Life goes on. Enjoy!

Keep your chins up. It can be really good on the other side!

YES it can!!! Thank you so much for allowing us to see your journey through your eyes. It is simply BEAUTIFUL!!

Thanks for the update - it has been a while since your last post and I was missing your journey.

A couple of more fun things. The day after my last post, Teacher sent me a text asking if I wanted to do anything that day. Instead of texting back I called her and we talked about a couple of ideas like skiing, snowshoeing or hiking. I told her I would just load all of my gear and head to her house and we could go from there.

We ended up talking ourselves out of driving a couple of hours to go skiing and decided to look for a hiking trail and/or another activity. We drove about 45 minutes north and she selected a trail she "thought" she had gone on before and it would be a nice strenuous 5 mile hike.

I need to clarify something. Teacher has more hiking experience than I do, but she always goes with other hikers with even more experience and often rides along with them so doesn't really pay attention to how to get to the trailhead. I, on the other hand, am challenged at reading maps, but can navigate to trailheads with help from my phone. But some of our hikes have not gone the way we planned. This one was no different. I told her I ought to write a trail guide called "Teacher and Countrydirt's Misadventures - or The Trail Not Taken".

So, we got to the trailhead for multiple trails and looked at the tiny screens on our phones and decided we had it covered...oops. About a mile in to the hike we came to multiple forks. I looked at the map and told her I thought we ought to take one branch, but wasn't completely sure. She said she thought another branch looked like what she remembered, so I deferred.

We had a nice leisurely downhill mile and half until we started hitting lots of ice on the trail and then I thought I would take out my phone and look at the map again. Turns out the navigation thought we should have gone on the trail I thought was the right one and we would need to hike 8 or 9 miles on that trail loop to return to the trailhead. We agreed that we should just turn the hike into an out and back. So we started back UP the trail, which turned out not to be so gently sloping as it seemed going down. Needless to say, we had to stop a few times to let our hearts stop pounding.

We finally made it back to the top and enjoyed the last mile of downhill. Turns out we hiked about 6 miles. But it was all good.

As we were driving back down the road, my son called me and said he had cut his hand pretty badly and wasn't sure what to do. Right at that moment, my cell phone lost signal. Fortunately Teacher uses a different provider and her phone worked, so she dialed up my son and we talked through the incident. I suggested that maybe he could call his mother since she lives about 15 minutes away and we were up in the mountains, but Teacher went into mom mode and just said that we would head that way and take care of him. Turns out his mother didn't feel well and didn't come over.

So we did. Turned out to be a pretty minor cut, but since my son has never done manual labor and smashed his finger with a hammer or cut himself by working with his hands, he just sort of freaked out. I, being the good dad, looked his finger over and pronounced it a long ways from his heart and handed him some more bandaids. Then I told him tales of me getting fingers cut and mangled and having hide scraped off my knuckles and burning myself while teaching shop classes and carpentering and ranching and what not and even pointed out scars and mishapen fingernails. I regaled him with how long it took a quarter sized burn on my kneecap to heal after I knelt down on hot metal to inspect a weld a student had made. I'm not sure he was impressed with his dad's toughness.

I took Teacher home and we decided to cut the evening short as we were both pretty tired from the uphill hiking.

Today we got together with Nurse and a bunch of her people for one of those paint and bubbly classes. It also came about in a funny sort of way. Teacher and I talked earlier that we missed seeing and doing stuff with Nurse. Turns out that Nurse texted Teacher, instead of me (her best friend!) and asked if we wanted to do the painting thing. So, while hiking and all, we were trying to reserve our spot for the painting and I ended up being able to get a message through and had us lined up.

To make a long story even longer, we all gathered up at the paint place and had a fantastic time. As far as I know, in my 59 years on this planet, I have zero artist skills, but darned if I didn't paint a couple of koi fish swimming above a bed of rocks with some diseased looking lily pads floating above. I went ahead and gave the fish the ich, just so it would look realistic! (An aside, if I take my glasses off and look the painting from far away, it only looks half bad in an orange sort of way)

After I got home, I was showing the painting to my son and Teacher called. So I put her on speaker. We had a rollicking conversation for 20 or 30 minutes. After we all said goodnight and hung up (although is it hanging up now since you poke at the screen with your finger until the screen goes dark?) okay, after I poked her goodnight, my son looked me dead in the eyes and said, "You know dad, it wouldn't be weird if you told her you love her in front of me."

[This message edited by countrydirt at 3:16 AM, Sunday, February 5th]

I'm the bald one on the left. Teacher is the pretty one on the lower right and Nurse is next to her. The rest are Nurse's relatives.

[This message edited by countrydirt at 3:31 AM, Sunday, February 5th]

So much can go on in 10-12 days in a relationship! Both good and not so good, but never fear, my update is good. Teacher and I have such a difficult time getting together sometimes, despite living less than 10 minutes apart. I think it has something to do with being a bit older and being pretty comfortable being single, while still loving having a real relationship. Life gets in the way as well as the timing of our own routines.

I spent a lot of time on my mountain bike over the past week or so. The weather has been pretty ideal for hitting the trails and engaging my body. Teacher, on the other hand, felt the effects of trying to get back in shape over 2 or 3 days and was pretty wiped out physically. She ended up with an infection of some sort and was on a medication that precluded drinking wine or being intimate. I suggested that perhaps she ought to take up some new hobbies. We both thought that was hilarious.

So, we weren't together as much as we wanted since my last update. But...Valentine's Day approached and arrived. I just happened to have a nice salmon fillet and some squash. She just happens to like a man cooking for her. And her medication solved her "problems". Needless to say, we had a wonderful time with each other.

You might notice that Valentine's Day was during the week and Teacher is still teaching. The weather gods helped and gave her a snow day so I was able to stay at her house a bit longer than a normal workweek night since she didn't need to wake up at 5 a.m. to start her day. We are still are not able to feel comfortable sleeping all night in her bed, so I headed home and was snug in my own flannel sheeted warm bed, in a colder house, within 10 minutes. That just seems to be what we do. I want to add that we can and have slept all night in the same bed, but it's more comfortable for me to head home.

The next day I offered to come be her chauffeur on the icy and snowy roads while she ran errands. She gratefully accepted and we enjoyed some 'bonus' time together. Afterwards she fed me. That was really nice. A bit of snuggling time and I said that I ought to go home since I didn't want to waste her afternoon as she still had schoolwork to do. She said, "I don't think it would be wasted!" and reluctantly agreed.

It still blows my mind that I've met someone who feels the same way I do. We are pretty much smitten.

[This message edited by countrydirt at 6:16 AM, Friday, February 17th]

CD, you're my hero. Thanks for the update. It's so nice to see a normal relationship develop and watch what happens.

Another kind of big dang deal today.

A few days ago Teacher received a text invite to some new friends' home for a 75th birthday party. We weren't sure we were going to go until today. It was suggested that it might be a music party with playing and whatnot. Teacher wanted to make sure she was ready for her school week before she committed.

This morning she gave me a call and asked if I was still interested in going. Of course I replied that I was. We decided that she would come over and pick me up since it is actually on my side of town. When she arrived I made sure and make my 19 year old come away from his computer to have a hug with Teacher. Then I grabbed my guitar and white knuckled the ride for about 2 miles from my house to the birthday boy's place. (Teacher is not the best driver, but mainly pretty safe! )

Anyhoo, we got to the party and commenced to meeting and greeting people. Teacher, as a born native to this town, found plenty of folks she sort of knew. I saw a few I knew and met several more then my former sister in law and her husband showed up and we all visited for quite a while.

I got my guitar out and played along a bit and made a few new friends. Most of the music were songs that were just not in my era of playing, but simple enough (I know mainly folk music from way back and bluegrass and country from not so far back but the era of when I was a teenager, I just listen to but don't know and this was the stuff this group was playing)

This crowd was older than who we normally hang out with, so conversations were a bit different - more talk about grandkids, medical issues and aches and pains instead of epic hikes and gnarly mountain bike rides. Neither Teacher or I have grandchildren.

But, the big dang deal is this--of course Teacher and I arrived together and left together. But we both spent most of the afternoon separate and visiting with other folks. Normally at social events where we are meeting new folks, we pretty much stay joined at the hip and end up talking to each other, but today we spent more time with new folks. Guess we've been together long enough to not actually need each other as a lifeline to get out of awkward social moments. It was kind of neat.

As we drove away we both said we had a nice time. The few minutes of conversation as she drove me home were sort of "randy" and we both had huge grins on our faces. It's really fun to flirt with the one you are with!

Have a great week!!

Love hearing you have so much fun!

Silly update. After the last update, that very same evening, I sent an ILY text to Teacher and she responded with "I'd rather hear than read that!" So I called and of course reminded her that I love her.

I occasionally learn/discover/rediscover features on my iphone. The next morning, as I was warming my car up to head out, I recalled that you can send voice recordings via text, so I sent her an ILY voice text, you know, so she could "hear it"instead of read it. The voice texts disappear from my phone after just a few minutes, but the recipient can save it and my phone lets me know if they save it. Teacher saved it.

So, I've started sending one every morning, mostly nice, but with just a little bit of naughty thrown in. Teacher called me last night and raved about how good those voice texts make her feel. I guess I have a new thing I will do now.

We ended up talking a long time last night. Quite a bit of the conversation was about her mother's and her life as the youngest child of a single parent (Teacher's father passed away when she was 6 and her mom was 42) and about how her mom remarried at age 62 and had a wonderful 27 years with her 2nd husband. Teacher also went on and on about how much she loves my family and my son, in particular.

DS is trying to upgrade his professional wardrobe and earlier asked for advice from me. I reminded him that I probably wouldn't be much help since I buy my pants at the feedstore and my shirts from thrift stores (I mean, what's wrong with wearing some dead guy's shirt? And I have gotten some pretty nice barely used dress shirts for little money at times) I told him he would be better off asking his mom or Teacher to go with him to a real store, not Walmart or Target. He said he'd rather take Teacher since his mom always points toward sparkly stuff. I mentioned it to Teacher when we talked last night. Teacher is all over that idea!

AWESOME update!!! I think I will try voice texts too!! Then again...my H now works from home...so he will probably hear me talking and wonder what in the heck I am doing...LOL!!