Look at what I woke up to this morning. Lurvely.  

Yes, this is an actual pout. Not even a fake one. 

I'm watching my usual bawlfest: Extreme Makeover Home Edition. This week it's the "Arena Family" where the team "grants a new lease on life to the grieving parents of a gallant little boy whose life and death touched the hearts of everyone in their community."

I watch the opening scenes where they start talking about this little boy who died from a brain tumor and I can hardly contain myself. My husband is standing right beside me, rocking our daughter and I don't want him to see me cry. But my eyes are bursting and my throat is completely choked up and I can hardly see.

How can a little six year old boy die in front of his parent's eyes. How can this happen? I allow myself for just a moment to put myself in that mother's shoes and my heart breaks to think of my little five year old boy in that situation. How could I survive? How could I possible continue to breathe after my child died?

The human existance is so frail and so breakable.

DUDE! We forgot that we had some photos on Major Man's camera from our road trip in Summer 2005. We drove from Chicago, IL to Calgary, AB. We drove through Rolleau, SK... the home of Corner Gas!

I love me some Corner Gas! Of course, you have to a) be Canadian and b) actually have lived in Saskatchewan to really, really get this show down to the very marrow of it's being.

These things are pure sin. Pure, total, sin. But Oh. My. Gosh. Why don't they just write Big Freaking Orgasmically Good Chocolate that will go directly to my hips and belly and I won't care because Oh. My. Gosh.

Don't buy them. I swear. You will become addicted.

I had a virus on my computer. A virus. Me!

Thankfully an online buddy somehow logged on to my computer from his remote location (at a horse show, in his living quarters trailer... I kid you not!) and fixed it all!

He specializes in remote IT ... um... stuff. So if you happen to be in Canada and have a business that needs IT help... and no budget for an actual IT department.. he's your guy.

My buddy Muttering in Manitoba asked a few weeks ago, "why did you marry your first husband?"

I admit, I didn't want to answer it, I didn't want to devote any time thinking about it. I didn't want to type it out. But whenever I'd think about blogging it was like I'd left something undone. Something unanswered. And since I had actually discussed this with Major Man before we got married, I figured I could spill it out here in The Internets.

I met my first husband in high school and I did not particularly like him at that time. He was a skater punk. I was a horse girl.

When I re-met him four years later, he was a bull rider. I was still a horse girl. There were no skater punk tendancies that I could see.

I knew he smoked pot once in a while, but hey, so did my dad... no big deal. I certainly didn't and wouldn't. He liked to be taken care of, I liked to take care of him.

Somewhere along the way I figured I loved him because I felt as though I needed him. remember that song "I Need You"? That's what I thought love was. When you can't possibly live without someone, when you feel drawn to them becuase they need you and you need whatever it is you are getting from them.

We said we loved each other all the time.

I'll skip all the parts about the stress that a baby can cause and what happens when people are unable to deal with that stress in a healthy manner.

I married my first husband because I was 23 and I had no idea that to really love someone you have to love yourself without them first. You have to know who you are and what you can and cannot do. You need to know what your 'dealbreakers' are, to borrow a Dr. Phil term. You need to know that there is a huge difference between needing someone and loving them.

None of that applied to me.

Now it does. Unfortunately for my first marriage, it was not strong enough to survive the learning of these lessons. The love was simply not there.

I believe I learned the lessons. I believe that there were two factors - my divorce and the birth of my son - that caused me to finally know who I was, what I stood for and what I believed in.

Both involved immense pain.

I'm thankful for both.