The next day I had to return home to Alabama but Susan and I kept in touch constantly via phone, e-mail and instant message.  I planed another trip to Knoxville the next weekend, and invited Susan to come to my parents house and we would go out from there.  Now my parents we’re all that cool with me dating so soon after FA had left.  Plus, FA and I were still living in the same house, although in separate rooms.  This early in the separation process we still weren’t sure how bad the divorce was going to turn out and I wasn’t at that point aware that she had been having an affair as well.  So my folks, especially my dad, was concerned that I was jumping too soon.  I assured them that this was only a date, not revealing that I already felt like Susan and I were meant for each other.

Susan showed up and met the family.  They really liked her and she felt right at home.  Being the product of a split family, she had grown up with just her sister, mom and her for years.  She wasn’t used to the whole extended family deal.  I think she really impressed my Dad with her professionalism, her working two jobs, and her straightforwardness.  She is TOTALLY different than the ex in soooo many ways.

We left and went down town to the strip.  The strip is the main drag that runs through campus and has many restaurants and bars.  We sat outside at O’Charley’s and ordered beers and appetizer.  I left at one point to run next door to buy a pack of smokes and as I walked back to the restaurant I loved seeing her sitting there at the outdoor table waiting for me.  Man, I knew I was in love.  I was in love, but it scared me a little too.  Having never really felt that type of feelings before was scary.  Not to mention that a month before I had been fully married, now just legally separated.  It frightened me a little that I could be jumping back in something so quick, but of course at the time we had no idea that we would “bite the bullet” so soon and get married.

After dinner we walked around some and she showed me a few of the sites on campus of the University of Tennessee.  At some point we ended up at a Comfort Inn and decided to get us a room.  I went in charged the $80 and got the key.  We went upstairs, walked in the room and immediately began kissing.  Before I knew it we were in the bed and I was on top looking down into her eyes.  The light from the muted tv gave just enough illumination that I could see that beautiful face.  Unfortunately it was over a little too soon…..hey it had been a while for me, okay?  We laid there for a little while holding each other and watching Fox News.  After a little while she said she wanted to do it again and fortunately I was able to oblige!  Soon after we left and went back to my parents house to her car.

The next month was much like before.  We kept in touch constantly.  By the end of March my divorce took a interesting turn when FA got it into her head to crush up a few prescription sleeping pills and serve them to me in a glass of kool aid.  An ambulance trip to the E.R. (more about all this later) and the threat of her being arrested led her to quickly fire her lawyer and sign the papers my attorney had put together.  So, on April 2, 2003 I was legally a single man!  She had filed the papers on Feb. 20 and in Alabama there has to be 30 business days from the time of filing to the judge signing off on the divorce decree.  See what I mean about a quick divorce??  The next week she moved out into an apt. and the kids and I stayed here in the house.  During this time Susan would occasionally come down and spend the weekend with me.  She got to know my kids and, although she had never had a child of her own, she seemed to get along well with them.

In May I invited Susan to take a trip down to Destin, Fl with me.  It was during this time that we decided to become an official “couple”.  We had a great time on the beach, at the pool, out to eat, shopping, etc.  She introduced me to oysters and calamari.  We even made our own little “movie” one night in bed.  Unfortunately she made me erase it later on!

We continued to see each other most weekends and talk constantly.  There were not always perfect times, things happened along the way to cause some friction (more on that later, probably) but we still held it together, breaking up only once and for only about 12 hours! lol

By mid June she began to apply for jobs here in Birmingham.  We had talked about marriage, but figured we would wait till the first of the year.  That would give us time to really get to know each other and take some time to pay down on debts, save and stuff like that.  Then she was offered a job, a very good job.  It was hard to pass up and we agonized long and hard about what to do.  I had written in the divorce decree that neither FA or I could co-habitate with the opposite sex.  I was afraid of the kind of men she might have around my kids when they spent the night with her.  So Susan and I living together was out of the question.  Her getting her own apt. was not an option either.  It would be stupid for her to put so much of her income into an apt. and utilities when we could pool our money here.  After all, I have this 4 bedroom house with plenty of room for all her stuff.  So we thought long and hard.  Mostly she did, I knew I wanted to marry her.  SHe wanted to marry me too, but there was a lot for her to consider.  You see she had been single all her 32 years.  Since she graduated college she had been working the same two jobs, one full time the other part time.  Also during this time she had been living with her mother.  So, for 9 years she had been single with little financial responsibility other than her car, credit cards, etc.  Leaving the familiar and moving to a new city, taking a new job, having a new home, taking on two children, and dealing with my crazy ex all was a lot for her to consider.  I gave her time and encouraged her to think long and hard about it, after all there might always be other great job opportunities down the road.  I was surprised one day when I got an email from her asking if I thought getting married that up coming Saturday would work for me!  Of course I was like, yeah.  I quickly got in touch with the courthouse in her town, arranged for a preacher, reserved a U-haul and on July 19th we took the plunge!  We got dressed up in our best blue jeans and went to the house of a 90 something retired Baptist preacher and with my sister as witness we got hitched!  There were a lot of funny points to all this, and I will write about them at some point later.  Getting tired of typing now!  Doubt if anyone will read anyway, but like I have said before I think creating this will be therapeutic for me.

In the year since we married there have been MANY ups and downs.  After all, we have had to get to know each other since we only dated for 5 months before the quick wedding.  We have both struggled in many ways….Personally, financially, emotionally.  We have even talked of divorce.  There has been inappropriate actions on both our parts with the opposite sex.  This “Marriage Made On-Line” hasn’t been a complete bed o’ roses.  But I know without a doubt that I love the crap out of her.  And I believe she feels the same about me.  There have been times where we both didn’t expect to make it to the one year mark…but we did….and it will only get better from here!

Later ya’ll….

http://mydiarya.blogspot.com/2004_07_01_mydiarya_archive.html

This is a great read….I have been transfixed for the past two hours reading Rita’s blog.  What a life and what a writer.  All I can say is….WOW!!!!!! 

Thanks Rita,

Chuck

Ya’ll have a good night….

The headache stopped after about an hour today.  Guess it wasn’t as bad as yesterday, thank God!  Overall this has been a good day for me.  My ex, F.A., has had the kids since yesterday morning and Susan and I have pretty much chilled out all weekend.  We watched The Butterfly Effect today.  Pretty interesting movie.  We ate, slept, talked, read the paper, slept, ate and listened to the thunder storm.  Didn’t have to go out and water the flowers thanks to the rain.

Had something weird happen to me this morning, besides the orgasmic headache….When I woke up at 10 something a.m. Susan was also awake and she asked me why my boxers were laying in the kitchen floor.  I threw the covers back and realized that I was naked.  I have no memory of taking off my boxer shorts.  When I went into the kitchen and picked them up they were slightly damp.  Especially around the waistband.  I also remember waking up sometime around 7am and going to take a leak.  When I got back in bed I put my arm under my pillow, in the position that I always sleep, and noticed that the area at the top of the bed, under my pillow was damp.  Some weird shit!  I did have a few drinks last night, but not too much that I would forget what had been going on….I never drink that much and I have never had black outs.  Don’t know if it has something to do with my meds.  Just seems really strange.  Why would I take off my boxers and leave them in the kitchen?  Then go and sleep buck ass naked?  I hardly ever sleep that way.  Oh well…..guess this is one of those unexplained mysteries.

Have tried to get Jim on the phone several times today/tonight.  He hasn’t answered.  Jim, if your reading this call me on my cell phone.  Was hoping he and I could get together tonight and have a couple drinks and talk.  Can’t wait to read his blog whenever he starts it.

Thanks for the nice comments recently.  It’s good to know that there are people out there reading about me and my life.  I have checked out each of your blogs and intend to continue to read all you have to say.  If I can ever figure out how to link on here I will be adding you to my page.

Well, I know that I have promised to finish my “marriage made on-line” intro, and I will do so very soon.  Possibly tomorrow.  Right now I just felt like talking about some other stuff. 

Hope everyone had a nice weekend.

Later y’all…..

Man, what is up with these headaches??  I spent all of yesterday with a major tension headache that ran  from the base of my shoulders all the way over my head to above my eyes.  It’s weird….seems lately I have been getting these headaches everytime I have an orgasm.

Friday night, as I had posted, we had sex.  She came, I didn’t and I didn’t get a headache.  Yesterday morning around 9am we had us some good old Saturday morning lovin.  As soon as I blew my load, the headache started and continued till late in the evening.  At times it was so bad all I could do was get in the shower, turn the nozzle to massage and let the hot water beat on the back of my neck/head.

And now today…..we just had a quickie and it’s started again.  Only this time it wasn’t intercourse, just oral.  I wonder if it could be the dosage of the Lexapro I am taking.  Jim and I discussed this yesterday.  He is on it too and had similar probs early on when he began taking it.  He got the headaches, just wasn’t getting the sex! LOL (sorry Jimmy)

Don’t know if being less anxious and depressed is worth being allergic to cummin’!!  Anyway, once this headache subsides I will get back with my “marriage on-line” story….I promise.

Later y’all…..

Picture if you will, it’s Valentine’s Day 2002 and my (then) wife and I went to dinner with another couple.  We had, I thought, a nice time with M&W eating and talking at P.F. Chang’s.  Afterward we all went to Barnes & Noble, had a coffee and looked at books.  Little did I know at the time she was planning on leaving me, and actually already had the plans in the works.

Later that evening after we had picked up the kids and she had hastily excused herself to bed I went up to my office and got online.  Scrolling through the chat rooms I came upon a screen name that interested me.  I checked the profile and couldn’t help but notice the words “Go Vols” written at the bottom of her info.  Well you see, I am a big University of Tennessee football fan and the Vols, short for Volunteers, is how the school is known.  I sent her a instant message and we began to chat.  She was a single, 32 yr old professional woman in Tennessee named Susan.  We talked for a while that night.  Our chatting continued the next day and evolved into phone and webcam chats.  A few days later the bottom dropped and my wife left me.  It took a few days for the smoke to clear before I got back in touch with this pretty Tennessee fan from online, but get back in touch with her I sure did!

My parents live about 45 minutes from where Susan lived and after a few weeks I decided to take my kids home to visit my folks and Susan and I planned to meet, in the appropriate “public” place of course.  We met at the mall and as I walked in the main entrance there she sat, outside the Ruby Tuesday restaurant and folks, she was a vision of total loveliness!  We have since both confirmed that we felt like we had each fallen in love way before we had met, just due to the great talks/chats we had had, but seeing her sitting there was like one of those cheesy movies….the sky’s cleared and the angel’s began to sing.  I walked up to her and we hugged.

We walked around the mall and at some point our hands interlocked and it just felt natural.  Talking to her was so normal, everything about her just felt right.  We ended up going back to Ruby Tuesday and having dinner.  We ate and drank and our hands met again over the table.  Man, I was in heaven.  This beautiful, successful, intelligent and sexy woman was interested in me!!

After dinner we went out and got into my car and did a little “parking” right there in the mall parking lot.  Kissing her was awesome.  Being with her felt like I had finally come home.  We spent a good hour or two sitting there, talking, kissing and exploring each other.  It stopped there, there was no actual sex, we didn’t sneak off to a hotel.  We just shared that first time alone experience with one another.  I drove her to her car and after much more kissing we parted ways with the promise to get together again soon.

As I drove back to my parents house my thought’s were completely on her.  All I could think about was how, in the middle of this divorce thing, I had again found happiness.  I again felt like the world wasn’t going to end and things just might be good again.  She called me to tell me how happy she was to have met me.  She also revealed to me for the first time her major obsession.  Seemed she had just driven through the Starbucks drive thru and gotten herself a Frapachino (sp).  She sure does love her Fraps!!  Anyway…enough for tonight.   The rest of the story next time……stay tuned!!

Later y’all…

Well good evening!  It’s 11:00pm here in CST and I was very surprised to see I had 3 comments on my first day of blogging.  Thanks to you all!!  I hope, if you continue to read, I don’t bore y’all too much.

I intended to spend this my 3rd entry for today talking about the wonderful meeting of me and my new wife, but first let me say this……This past Monday, July 19, 2004 was our one year anniversary.  We had planned a wonderful time away that night.  I had to be out of town at a food show and had reservations at a very nice hotel in the capitol city of our state.  It was our intent that she would leave work early on Monday, meet me down in Montgomery, and we would go to dinner and then retire to our suite and have an awesome anniversary celebration between the sheets.  Well guess the fuck what?  The Friday before, F.A. (the ex wife) decided to try to kill herself for the second time in three months.  Her hospitalization in the psyche ward left no one to keep my kids so……Susan (my wife) had to stay home and didn’t get to go away on our anniversary get-a-way.  Does this sound like an episode of Jerry Springer?? You have NO idea…..I am sure in the posts to come you might get a better understanding.  Someone in the comments mentioned that my life could be a book or movie…hell I can’t remember…all I can say is he/she is right.  I am sitting on a “Movie of the Week” goldmine.  Or at least a Life Time Movie hit.  Anyway…..can you tell that I am a little bit upset about the whole situation??  Tonight she did all she could to ruin the plans that Susan and I had .  She was supposed to pick up the kids for the weekend by 4pm.  Well, it didn’t happen.  You hear about dead beat Dad’s….how about dead beat Mom’s?

So…..like I said, tonight I had planned to share with you the wonderful story about how Susan and I met on-line, fell in love, and got married.  It really is a very cool and soul inspiring story.  Alas, I just don’t feel like telling it.  Maybe it’s because I am pissed at the ex because of her exploits tonight, or maybe it’s because Susan and I got a little tipsy and had wild sex and she came and I didn’t, or maybe it’s because I haven’t had the chance to really talk to my best buddy Jim about it all yet.  Hell, I don’t know.  I am just a little mad.  I am mad at too many people….namely my ex.  I think the overall theme of this blog will be “me trying to make the best of a new marriage”, and tonight it hasn’t been successful.

I promise to get to the good stuff this weekend.  Have a good night.

Later y’all….

Where to start?  I guess it would be best to give a little marital background information.  I was married to a woman for a little over 11 years.  I will call her F.A.  F.A. and I met in college, dated off and on for two years, then married after I graduated in ‘91.  The first couple of years were pretty good.  In late ‘93 our first child was born, a daughter T.  With the birth of T, FA gained a lot of weight and began a self loathing process that would go on for 9 years.  Not that I had anywhere to complain.  I am 6′5″, and within a few years of marriage I had ballooned up from around 220 to 280.  But anyway….in 2000 we had a son, L.  Right around the time he was born I began a massive weight loss program thanks to Dr. Atkins.  I went from a top weight of 332 down to 235 in about a years time.  During this time FA continued to gain weight, grow more and more miserable and spend most of her time in bed, not working.  She was also completely not interested in sex.  After a while of my persisting she finally told me flat out to go “find myself a girlfriend or something and leave her alone.”  She also informed me not to “bring anything home to her”, incase she wanted to have our quarterly sex session.  Well, I must say that I was interested in the prospect of finding a friend and my wife not caring.  With my newly slimmer body I wasn’t having any trouble turning a few heads on the rare occasion me and my buddies would go out for a beer.  BUT, I never did anything major.  Oh yeah I went to the strip clubs and even a massage parlor once, but I never got into any real action other than a lap dance here and there or a “happy ending” at the oriental massage joint.  Then I discovered the wonderful world of on-line chatting….complete with web cams and all the trimmings.  I made some nice friends and even met a couple, but never went too far with them.  You see, I was, in a way, committed to my family/marriage.  Even though she had given me the greenlight and we both easily described our marriage as a room mate situation.  We were friends, we were just not lovers or in love.  We enjoyed a lot of the same things….watched Friends and ER together every week.  Oh, and most importantly we had the kids in common.  But that was about it.

Late in ‘02 I was promoted in my job and moved back to the south from Oklahoma.  I bought a house, the family moved and I thought maybe things we going to get better with us.  She began working out and losing weight.  She made plans to go back and finish her degree….everything seemed on tract.  She even, for my BD in November had sex with me!!  Whoo Hooo!!!  Then, right around Christmas, I asked her if we could try to work on things, maybe go to counseling, do what ever it took to make our marriage better and also more intimate.  I remember her taking her hands from around her waist, turning from the sink and saying, “I will let you know when or if I am ready to do that.  Meanwhile just keep on doing whatever you want.  Go find yourself a gf and just leave me alone.”

Well folks, if you’re actually out there reading this, I did just that.  Not exactly a gf, but a one night stand.  And guess what?  She busted me….all thanks to Yahoo Messenger and my keeping archives and forgetting to log out one night.  She hired a PI, had me followed, and two weeks later filed for divorce.  Little did I know at the time she was banging the PI the whole time.  Anyway….to make a long story short, the divorce ended very quickly.  I won’t go into the details here now, maybe some other time, but you should know from the day she filed to the day it was finalized was about 45 days.  I ended up getting primary custody of the kids, keeping the house, and pretty much came out unscathed.  I did promise to pay her alimony for 5 years, but that is another story….but during all this terrible time something good did happen.  I met the love of my life, in a Yahoo chat room….and a whirlwind courtship began…..

More later, got to get back to work.

Later, y’all….

Well, hello.  My name is Chuck and I am a 35 yr. old married man living in the deep south.  I have recently discovered the wonderful world of blogging and thought, “what the hell, this seems fun….maybe I will give it a try.”  Not that I imagine that anyone would want to read about me, my life or how I feel about things.  But, maybe it will be therapeutic for me.  I am sure my counselor would agree.

I guess the focus of this will deal with me, my wonderful wife Susan, my kids, work, life, love and sex, hobbies, etc.  I intend to be very honest and forthcoming about all aspects of my life, but not giving up total privacy.  I intend to be a faithful blogger and keep everything as up to date as possible. 

Well for now I suppose I will post this and see if it works.  I’ll get back later today and give a more proper introduction touching on the origin of the title of my blog.

Later….