*sigh*...Just by the date of the entry you have an idea of how long it has been since I have been into my weblog. Things are going pretty well, though I just found out that an O2 sensor for my car will not be covered by the expensive extended warranty that I purchased. Therefore I will have to relinquish $327.00 if I ever want the Dodge, (which Renee has named Jody), to ever travel any faster than 50 miles per hour. So little time, so much work, so little money. That is my new saying for about everything in my life right now. I am very pleased however, to be attending a marriage retreat with Renee tomorrow. I suppose we will find out how compatible, or how compatible that other people perceive us to be on this retreat. We took a Meyers-Briggs'ish' type test called a FOCCUS test, and it basically asked the same basic question in a multitude of ways. I was fearful that perhaps we would have little in common by the way some of the anwers were annotated, but just like Renee always says, "I wouldn't want to marry someone that was like me.", Perhaps she is right. I wouldn't want to marry anyone like, me, as a matter of fact you would be hard pressed to find someone like me out there. I consider myself to be an Original, in a multitude of ways with both good and bad results. I wrote a poem the other day called, "I, Step-Dad" this was a poem that kind of evolved as a was listlessly doodling during hours and hours of endless testimony at a Committee Meeting. This poem made me aware of my true feelings for Devon and Robbie. After I wrote it, I reflected on how my relationship with Renee began, and how it evolved and blossomed, I was not aware that the same thing was happening with the boys as well. I really do love them with as much intensity and devotion as I love Renee. To me that pokes big holes in the idea or sayings that men have in relation to children that do not belong to them. Usually we hear someone say something like, "I have learned to love him", or "In time I may love him like my own son." That is completely alien to me. You don't "learn" to love your soulmate...it simply evolves, occurs, happens, originates, or any other word that you choose to use for that which happens without your efforts.

Be that as it may, I am still amazed at how things have progressed within the confines of a 15 month period. I am amazed, but yet not the least bit apprehensive. This seems like the most normal, natural if you prefer, process that I have ever embarked upon. This wasn't a case of it "being the right time", it was more like, "I finally found the one, and luckily I was ready." I think that it was divine intervention that prevented me from ever meeting Renee until the time that we did, because certain events, people, problems, and situations may have precluded us from ever coming together had we met any earlier. People say, "Things happen for a reason", and I wholeheartedly subscribe to this theory. The greatest thing that happened to me was my engagement to Renee, and the reason was that it was meant to be.