Okay, I've been bad. Sometimes I just can't help it. Let me lay the foundation. Doc is away on vacation for the week. I took his cats to my house to watch them. I still have to stop in at his house to get his mail, check things, take care of the pool, etc. Well I went over tonight to do just that. Alright so I couldn't help myself to check his old email. I don't have his password (even though I know enough to still get on his account). I bring up AOL and oh my gosh he saved his password - All I would have to do is click the sign on button. But angelic me didn't do that. I couldn't believe it but I fought the temptation and didn't. Yeah, you're thinking - hmmm...wow she is getting better......nope not so, read on....

He has a box that he keeps his porn in so I'm looking through there. I see all store-bought DVDs and VHS. I was looking for something that would indicate that he put his personal sex videos on a DVD.

History: Before I met him 9 years ago, the man videotaped himself with different women having foreplay and sex. How did I know this? Well, way back then, he said about us doing it. At the time I laughed at him. But then one time when I stopped over it was in his machine and he very very briefly let me see. I personally wasn't turned off but I wasn't turned on either. It was before my time. But being the jealous person that I was I didn't like the fact that he still watched it and no doubt got off watching it. That bothered me. Well, during one of my times alone in his house I remember taking that tape and cutting it, but it back where I found it and I know that when he went to use it, it wouldn't work. Well, he never really said anything to me about it. I would occasionally bring up the subject about him watching his sex tapes and one time he told me the broke in his machine. (I was laughing inside cause I knew how that happened). I also remember taking that tape and he never missed it. What I didn't know was how many more he had. Well in 2000 when THAT woman moved in with him, he told me that she found them and wanted him to throw them away. I asked him how many and he said three. I'm thinking to myself - wow I didn't know it was that many. And he told me that he put them up in the attic hidden but told her that he threw them away. Hmmm........ When she left and he was putting his stuff back (it was stored in the attic), I asked him if he found those tapes he hid - he told me no. I left it at that.

Fast forward to now. I always felt he did find them and just didn't tell me cause he knew it would upset me. I have even gone through his collection of VHS that were unmarked to see if I could find them. Well tonight by a fluke, I came across a blank VHS, put it in and tada it was him in one of his sex tapes. I had all kind of thoughts running through my mind - some made me sick, some made me laugh but the evil Mary took the tape. I now have it and can't decide what I want to do with it. I'm fighting evil here.

The evil me says keep it, destroy it - he won't mention it to me cause that would be admitting something he was denying. He might even forget what he did with it and never miss it. And if he suspected that I took it - what would he do and could I live with that?

The Good Mary said leave it be - put it out of your mind - it's his memories, blah blah blah.

But the Evil Mary takes over and feels that as long as he is intimate with ME I don't feel comfortable him looking at past lovers having sex. Call me neurotic but whatev.

I would like to hear opinions. Not judging me - that I don't care to hear but put yourself in my place and now you have this sex tape of your lover(husband/wife) what would you do with it? Be honest with yourself - we all know what is right and wrong but I wanna hear FEELINGS on this subject.

I saw my therapist today. We didn't talk about my mother, instead I talked to her about my oldest daughter. I ended up getting teary eyed and said some things that made her dig out the following checklist. As I read it, I couldn't believe how many I do. No wonder I have anxiety over the littlest things in life. I felt it was worth sharing. Take whatever you want out of it and hopefully it will open up something like it did for me.

Checklist of Cognitive Distortions

1. All-or-nothing thinking: You look at things in absolute, black-and-white categories.

2. Overgeneralization: You view a negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.

3.  Mental filter: You dwell on the negatives and ignore the positives.

4. Discounting the positives: You insist that your accomplishments or positive qualities "don't count."

5. Jumping to conclusions:  (A) Mind reading - you assume that people are reacting negatively to you when there's no definite evidence for this; (B) Fortune-telling - you arbitrarily predict that things will turn out badly.

6. Magnification or minimization: You blow things way up out of proportion or you shrink their  importance inappropriately.

7. Emotional reasoning: You reason from how you feel: "I fell like an idiot, so I really must be one." Or "I don't feel like doing this, so I'll put it off."

8. "Should statements": You criticize yourself or other people with "shoulds" or "shouldn'ts." "Musts," "oughts," and "have tos" are similar offenders.

9. Labeling: You identify with your shortcomings. Instead of saying "I made a mistake," you tell yourself, "I'm a jerk," or "a fool," or "a loser."

10. Personalization and blame: You blame yourself for something you weren't entirely responsible for, or you blame other people and overlook ways that your own attitudes and behavior might contribute to a problem.

These were taken from Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David D. Burns, M.D.

I don't remember how long I have been plugged into the internet but I do remember the first time I connected with someone. Way back then I connected through AOL (who didn't back then) and I discovered chat rooms. I don't even remember his name anymore but the picture he sent me was of this gorgeous man. I was excited over this connection. We shared some history and some intimate facts and became good "friends" He even gave me his phone number so that when I was vacationing in Orlando I could call him. I never did - was too chicken. Well, it didn't take long to get the hang of "meeting" people on the internet. It was easy with all the chat avenues then. I can't even remember the names of the chats anymore. I do remember there was one that you picked an icon and you actually went from room to room or area to area and the screen changed to the theme of that room. It was fun at the time. Then there was the chat that you needed a mic for. It was before ICQ and again I don't remember the name but it was a new thing - you could type and talk to a person. So exciting. I met some really nice people on there.

Quickly I learned that men wanted a hot babe and sex, either by meeting the hot babe, talking on the phone and having phone sex with the hot babe or simply having what they called "cyber sex". Being relatively new to it all, I did try the "cyber sex" and it was fun but it did absolutely NOTHING for me. I could type circles around those guys and I could have done the foreplay, the act and the cigarette afterward and they could still be unzipping their pants. Too boring for me.

I then got brave and talked on the phone with them. Well, let me tell you ladies who have men who work in offices - You might be surprised what they do there. I discovered phone sex and that wasn't too bad because I was pretty sexual and confident about my sexuality - in other words I had no problem masturbating and if someone on the other end of the phone liked hearing it - all the better. I was at home alone during the day so it was quite easy for me to entertain myself. Men did not have a problem giving their phone numbers out for phone sex. I never gave mine out. I wasn't that trusting.

I got braver though. I started to meet them in person. Of course, they wanted sex. It seemed I intrigued them with my confidence in my sexuality and then after meeting me they felt they needed some of it. I will admit that I went through a phase that I am not proud of to this day but it is a part of me and who I am now and I can't change what happened. I also met Doc through a chat room on AOL and I don't regret that. I'm not sure I would have met him any other way. Looking back on it now, I have to say that most men were pigs/players but I was no better than them back then. Thank god I felt as if I have grown from the experiences.

I never truly trusted the people I met through the internet. I always felt they weren't being 100% honest or even 75% honest. When meeting them, I could tell immediately that most lied about something about their physical appearance. Some even lied about their marital status (surprise surprise). Others lied about their sexual abilities. Again, I was constantly learning.

I met one of my best friends through online. Actually, I played her. I pretended to be someone I wasn't, got information out of her and then felt so guilty I confessed and we became good friends. To this day, she tells me that I am the only friend she can truly trust. Ironic isn't it. But I do treasure a friend's loyality and will not hurt anyone I consider a friend.

Meeting Doc online proved to educate me beyond anything I have ever dreamed. I became almost to the point of being obsessed. I knew how to get his password and I would see who he emailed, who emailed him. I even created his screen name on another area of the web and posed as him and women would IM me. I found out a lot of information that he would never tell me and would even lie to me about. I should have stopped seeing him then. I should have done a lot of things then but I didn't. There was something in me that was driving me to be this sneaky, conniving person who was totally different from anyone I was.

Doc was seeing other women from online. I would pose as a man and talk to these women online. Women always seemed to talk better to a man than a woman. I would steal a man's picture and share it with them. Anything to prove that I was a man. I would try to convince them to dump Doc or prove that he was a low life. Most times it worked. I was good at it. I knew how a woman thinks and I knew enough about the situation to say the right things. There was one point when I was tricking this woman and felt so guilty about it that I eventually confessed to her. We became good friends but I was too trusting. We shared things about Doc. Something happen eventually and Doc questioned her about me and she confesses to him about some of things. I was crushed that I trusted this woman and she let me believe I could trust her. Heck she even had thanked me for saving her from a relationship with him. But for some reason beyond my thinking, she felt some kind of loyality to him. Well, the shit eventually hit the fan with Doc and I and I stood my ground. Admitted to very little. I was very stubborn. I learned a lot from that experience of backstabbing. Doc and I weathered it. I earned his trust back and things are pretty good between us. Of course I still know the ins and outs of the internet and can easily find things out but I trust no one (except two) with any of that information. In other words I share nothing I find.

It was easy playing other people online. It was easy deceiving people. Men were stupid. Women were stupid. I only did it to gain information I needed. I wasn't mean. I wasn't nasty. I was just a different person than who I was - sometimes even a different gender. No one knew. No one questioned me. I must have been that good. Soon I had Doc to myself and the games that were played online were taking a toll on me and enough was enough. That was years ago and a lot has flowed under the bridge so to speak since that time. The only time I had to "play" online was to help a friend or two.

I'll share one story. This tells you how much I go out on a limb for a friend. This friend was dating men from online with no success. Every time she thought this guy was the one but it always turned out that he was a loser. He would put up a great front, date her, act like he was interested, have sex with her a couple of times but always moved on one way or another. Well, there was this one guy who she suspected of still playing online. She had invited him to her apartment for dinner on a Friday and he had accepted. She wanted me to "meet him" online and offer to meet up with him. I went online and "met" him for the first time. I was good. I had him hooked in ten minutes. He was desperately wanting to meet me. So I made arrangements to do that - on Friday night, the night he was suppose to go to her house for a home cooked meal. He called her to tell her that he wasn't going to make it for some lame reason (I don't remember anymore). But this was what we were expecting. Somehow she knew he would do that. So Friday came and we were to meet for Chinese food. My friend and I picked our stakeout spot carefully. We saw him arrive, go in and sit down. We watched as he waited and waited. I never had any intention of meeting him. I even called him on his cell phone to tell him that I was running a little late. He never suspected that I was playing him. My friend had a little satisfaction and left a message on his home phone. We watched for awhile and then went home. What a stupid man!!! To think he could play her when he got played in the end. That wasn't the last time I helped her out.

My point here is that the internet is a perfect place to be who you want to be, man, woman, child, etc. You can be 10 or 100. It's scary and I know I learned the hard way and then I became good at deceiving. I guess it helps to have that mindset in the first place but that doesn't mean I enjoyed it to the point of intentionally out to hurt someone. To this day, I do not trust everything I read online. I know that people embellish things. Rarely do you find someone who is completely completely honest. I have learned to detect that honesty in people. Some however have not learned that and continue to have their guard down and share information with strangers in the belief that the other person will be loyal to them. I can only hope that they will learn without getting too hurt.

I was hesitant to start a blog for the very reason I just stated - sharing information. I am careful. I am sharing more than I probably should and I am being honest about it. The only thing I'm not being honest about is my name. That's right Mary is not my real name but then you didn't really believe that it was right?

If anyone can learn anything from any of my experiences it would be to be careful who you trust. Be honest yourself but there is no rule written that says to be honest you have to share everything. The hurt when you get stabbed in the back from someone you trusted is a hurt that you will never forget.

Finally making some time to make a quick note about the graduation party. It was great!!! Food was great, company was great, weather was great (okay it was a tad windy and we didn't put too many balloons up because of that). People are still commenting on it and saying how nice it was. My mother even behaved herself and wasn't a problem but then I didn't really hang around her too much. Doc came and seemed quite comfortable only to tell me that evening that he was really feeling uncomfortable. He hid it well. He gave my youngest 50 bucks and a hug when he left. I have to admit that I felt a little nervous but with all the excitement of the party, it passed. Hubby got to be grill master which he did an excellent job.

Time to breath now and get ready for another party (not as big) in a month or so.

Well my baby has gone and done it, graduated from high school. We are so proud of her. The ceremony was wonderful and she looked so grown up....where have all these years gone.


Above is the picture of her graduating class. After the ceremony, there were fireworks and the local police were lined up to give them a salute with flashing lights and sirens blaring. It was great!!

I'm off work for the next five days, four of which will be in preparation for the party this Saturday. I can't believe all that we did in the past month to our place. It was as if we needed a reason (the party) to do the stuff we should have been doing years ago. I'm glad it's getting done and I'll just have to have more big parties like this to get more done in the future.

The girls were painting some trim under the porch out front when my youngest encountered a black snake. I was in the house working but heard the scream and the loud chatter that followed so I went out to see what was going on. They were so funny. She could have sworn it rattled something at her (we have no rattlers around here) and that it hissed at her.....Poor snake (yeah right like I'm really that NOT afraid of them) it just went under the porch to get away from them. They finished painting out there and went around back to finish more painting there when they heard a car thump over something on the road in the front. Here didn't that snake go and try to get away from us and cross the road. Unfortunately he got squished on the road. It was a 4 ft black snake and it took several cars to hit it before it was completely squished. yuck!! I don't mind the snakes as long as I don't see them.

I remember about two years ago I was working in my office when I heard a plastic bag noise beside me. When I looked over I saw a black snake (young - about 2.5 ft) slivering from the window (air conditioner side panels were not fitted properly) over the bag into who knows where. Well, I immediately started to hyperventilate but did manage to scream before doing that. This caused the family to come running to see me breathing hard and pointing. My husband put it outside far away from the house. Needless to say, that air conditioner's side panels fit extra snuggly. If I was a calm rational person, I would have gotten my camera and took a picture of this snake trying to be quiet while sneaking in the house and then looking at me as if I was the strange one.

Well, tomorrow is going to be yet another busy day. Wow, where did the time go.... My children are all graduated, are 18 and almost 21 - boy am I feeling a tad old. Hopefully that won't last. Night...