It seems my days are spent getting through the day until 4:00 comes and I go up to the firehouse for my Diet Coke and some comradary.

Since Thanksgiving, I have shed alot of baggage and made some decisions that will affect me the rest of my life. I agreed to a divorce, put my house on the market before we got foreclosed upon, and lost my job which I loved. Behind the scenes of all this "stuff" is the fact that my daughter has been missing somewhere in Atlantic City for almost four days. Doing drugs, no doubt. It makes me very very sad.

I have had to take 25 years of memories, treasures, and again "stuff" and condense it into one huge moving sale. He is gone 20 miles away, and I am here with the boys moving to an apartment about 1/5 the size of my home. At least I can say that when the going got tough, I stayed put, dug my heels into the ground, and yelled "I AM GETTING OFF!"

That does sound a little off color, but what I mean is I am getting off the "I can't do anything about this situation/I am not in love with my husband/I am tired of being broke/We can't afford this house/I feel like I'm living with a stranger/How come I handle everything train."

So, now I am on the way to a brighter better future. My therapist said I am on the verge of a great decade since the last one was spent as a caregiver, devoted wife, and worried and anxious mother. Now is the time to be me.

Getting back to the firehouse. I have no family in NJ. The firehouse guys...they are like family without the drama. They make me report to them on what's happening. I told them my daughter was missing, not my friends. They are going to help me move so I don't have to get a mover, and one guy found me my apartment. I truly understand what it means to have a community within a community help each other. You get helped without feeling like you are being helped.

What have I done in return? Well, before and after my yard sale, I donated a ton of office supplies, a huge shed, fax machine, and other things to the firehouse and to those who have heard MY drama all this time. Seems like a small small token of what they have given me.

How come this isn't about firefighting? Hasn't been any, and that's a good thing. But I am the secretary and this week I actually learned how to put one of those get well cards through my printer. One step at a time.