I have two things to share with you:

#1 My emotional cripple of an ex-boyfriend has not come back. Considering he has not resurfaced for 1 month longer than it took for him to crawl back crying last time, I figure I am officially abandoned. And SINGLE. And 35. Holy Crud. It was a lot easier in my twenties getting on after a breakup. Back then, Mrs. BeenThere, Carol and I would mix up some new cocktail, watch taped reruns of 'Melrose Place', and possibly end the night shaking our fists and barking the chorus to 'Who Let the Dogs out.' We always had a lot of fun, even at our most abysmal moments, except that one time we experimented with a new cocktail called a 'Dirty Bird.'
A word of caution: Do not, ever, ever fuel a night of misery drinking with 'Dirty Birds' or any other milk-based concoction.
So anyway, breakups aren't as much fun anymore. Not now that Mrs. BeenThere is in Chicago with her two small children and Carol is in Connecticut with the same.

#2 I loved ex dearly but with the death of the relationship also comes the death of a life construct, a fantasy I thought I was close to acheiving with my ex of 5 1/2 years: The Barbeque Fantasy. I was conviced that at 35 I'd be spending many Saturdays with my best friends and family (like, kids+husband+ canine), in the same way my parents spent their Saturdays. You know, getting together, deciding between macaroni and German Potato salad, arguing over who took who's cheesburger (or gardenburger in this age), and capping off the night with the couples battling it out over a game of Taboo or maybe even Jeopardy. OK, OK maybe my BBQ fantasy sounds a little hokey to sophisticated readers, but really, that's what some people are doing. And it sounds a lot better than my current reality of sitting home alone on a Saturday on a bare mattress that needed to be stripped after the foster dog I brought home peed on it when I refused to adapt to sleeping alone. How is it that the closest I can come to my BBQ fantasy is taking the train down to Nathan's Hot Dog's with my foster dog? I mean, he's not even mine.