I am back... logging on from work using Safari's private browsing. I have moved! And I have moved my three cats single-handedly, without a car and without asking cat rescue agency volunteers for help. Just caught each one and carried across a big apartment complex in a pet carrier, one by one. Tommy, who weighs 16 lbs, was a handful! The other two were easy.

I have boxes boxes boxes everywhere. The living room is filled with my boxes. Lots of work ahead! The small bedroom is partially filled with stuff that ex and the girls did not have time to go through, and, since they have a much much smaller apartment now (they have moved to one of the most expensive areas of the country solely for the sake of a very good public school district), he will be coming to my place to go through the boxes, moving what needs to be moved and discarding/donating the rest. Since he has a bad back, I do not see him doing this job by himself, so being realistic I do not foresee being able to use the small bedroom for a while, which is OK. It is like having storage in your own apartment, plus paying less rent to it than using Public Storage would have cost. The master bedroom is in top shape - the only place without boxes. The kitchen is in need of major cleaning and I cannot cook until I do that job. Probably this weekend. The cats are loving it though: Tommy likes to climb atop the tallest box and Maddy likes to hide amidst the boxes. A cat paradise. Well, at least someone is happy.

I did not get the job. But it is not because of some past that haunts me (Notz was right on my other thread: it was my projection that they found out about my mental health medical leaves). The real reason cannot be determined - maybe they ultimately gave an offer to a friend of some higher up. The reason they gave me was as follows: they offered the position to someone with better technical skills, even though purely as a project manager (my profession) I had the strongest interview feedback and "more than passed" their threshold. They regretted not having a second opening to offer me at this time and would keep me in mind. The hiring manager himself called to deliver what he called "the bad news". It was a nice gesture; usually, the task of delivering the bad news is delegated to the recruiter. Speaking of the recruiter: she sent me a LinkedIn invite a couple of days after they rejected me, which was a nice gesture too. The agreement is that we will have open communication in case a second position opens up. The way I was treated leads me to believe that IFF a second position opens up, I am their best candidate for it and they would be happy to hire me. But there is no guarantee, so I will soon start looking for a permanent job with benefits. I will need to make 66% more money than I am making now in order to resume paying child and spousal support, so it is going to be a pretty serious job search. But I trust that there will be an opportunity for me. And if this employer that recently rejected me comes up with a second position in the meantime, that would be my first choice since they are within a short biking distance from my apartment - their location really cannot be beat.

I try to stay positive and view this experience not as a 100% rejection but as proof that I can perform pretty darn well as an interviewee. So I try to stay confident rather than become upset.

With the guy... A partial success, I would say, and a partial failure. But that is OK, I will live through that too. So he told me once that he loves me - just loves me outright. Another time, told me that he has a lot of tender feelings towards me and on some level, love. Checkmark. Told me that although he falls in love rather easily, he was never sexually attracted to another woman as much as to me, by a wide margin. Another checkmark. But to my proposal that I visit him during my Christmas break he did not react with enthusiasm. He said that he cannot plan that far ahead and that we will be on email about it. Just before he left for the States there was some improvement in his relationship with his wife, who lives separately, and he does not know what lies ahead now; if they get back together then he will not "work on two fronts". This was not what I wanted to hear; I wanted to hear that I will always have a special place in his heart regardless of his marital status. But I understand that he wants to have something active with a living breathing woman next to him rather than brief meetings twice a year with someone who lives on another continent, even if that someone on another continent has been the love of his life for the past 25 years. And I cannot go back: I need to get my act together here, finding a job that will enable me to pay support on top of my living expenses, and eventually put my girls through college. A tall order that is, but I will manage.

So in terms of sexual attractiveness, just how horrible is it to be fat? It is not the end of the world, but it is a very bad idea. I will provide details on the respective thread.

Ex has been super helpful, picking D. up from the airport and giving us rides locally when we needed them. All of us went to an Afgani restaurant together. Prior to the Afgani restaurant D. and I went to SF where he bought a present for his wife - a red puffy vest from Abercrombie. The vest was my choice: I love puffy vests and I had bought quite a few of them for my kids when they were younger. I wanted my older daughter to approve of the gift, as she is the family's expert on stylish clothing. She approved but then she quietly asked me why the guy is buying a $150 present for a woman he is about to divorce. Ex (who thinks of D purely as a friend of mine) was equally curious: he thought that it was for a daughter. I explained that the guy does not have children. Ex (who has 4 children: 2 adults in Europe and 2 daughters with me) wondered why. I said nothing; I did not say that one of the main reasons D. does not have children is me: when it was time for him to have children, he had unrequited love for me and wanted to have children with me, but I was always interested in other things, be it going to live in America or other men. So I just said that I would find out why he is buying presents for his soon-to-be-ex-wife and let them know. And I did find out: he does not know what is going to happen, he is not ready for a divorce and neither is his wife, and as long as she is officially his wife, he cannot come home from a trip empty-handed. I have not yet had an opportunity to relate all that to my older daughter; I am just thinking about how confused she would have been had she found out that on top of this weird r/s with his wife he has an ongoing r/s with me. Utterly confused. In the meantime, D. found her very beautiful from head to toe (she is a lucky girl in that respect - she has everything going for her, knock on wood) and said that soon she will be torturing her victims with her beauty. The thing is, she is only two years younger than I was when D. met me - that is why he said so. I hesitated to respond. I thought of saying: "Her father's mission is to raise her in such a way that she would not find satisfaction in torturing her victims with her beauty" but somehow... just said nothing.

The biggest thing... yesterday night I fell asleep next to him without amitriptyline. We did not have sex: we were too tired after a long day and only had a couple of hours available for sleep before his flight to San Diego. By myself, I cannot fall asleep without a drug. I tried; I know I cannot. It was amazing. Apparently, it is not orgasms that induce sleep, not even sex per se. It is... don't even know how to call it. Intimacy, perhaps. And, in the same vein, French kissing suspends my migraine attacks completely. Have to keep at it though: if I stop, the migraine comes back. So we would have patented this method of aborting migraines but since it does not involve a pharmaceutical discovery, I am distributing it freely to all those in need.

Speaking of pharmaceuticals, he brought me two "mild" APs, one Finnish and one Danish, to keep in my stash for just in case. The Danish one: in case my triggerless anxiety attacks come back. The Finnish one: if Amitriptyline stops working for sleep. Both to be used in very small doses. In large doses they act as APs, but in small doses they are used for anxiety and sleep, respectively. I do not remember their names (I am writing from work).

He told me that he never treats suicidal depression with Prozac or Zoloft the way I was treated in the spring, because Prozac is not a strong AD and it can activate a patient before providing AD relief, which puts the patient at risk of using this newly activated energy for suicide. What can I say: I am glad he is not my doctor, because I was totally happy with the way Prozac worked for me and I am very grateful to my former p-doc for prescribing it. A small dose made a world of difference.

That's my report. Hope everyone is well, I have missed you even though I have been very busy with stuff. I will log on as soon as I have internet at home.