Living alone is a guilty pleasure of mine. No company is better than bad company.
I think you're doing the right thing for the dogs and yourself. There are other pets available that are less labor intensive.
Once you've simplified your life somewhat, maybe you'll begin again to live it.
Have dinner at Madeo's with a girfriend or a sister. I know you drive a lot during the week, but I'm always up for a road trip. Maybe just down to Huntington Beach for the day to check out the surfers and renew your spirit with the ocean breeze. Or heaven forbid you take off one weekend for Montery - just to go to the aquarium. There's an almost equally nice aquarium in Long Beach. You are in road trip heaven - you're in a postion to spend a weekend in Palm Springs, recuperating from your broken heart. Find the dogs a home and get out into the world.
When you come home, there will be the serenity everyone is chasing. Your own little sanctuary away from the traffic and the world. Filled with your favorite things. Decadent little pleasures you give yourself. Candles, chocolates, wines, big fuzzy kangaroo slippers? Whatever you like!
Yep, living alone is my favorite guilty pleasure. No company is better than bad company.
CB
Become the Red Hat Lady that your heart wants you to be:
WHEN I AM AN OLD WOMAN I SHALL WEAR PURPLE
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
Taken from the book
When I Am An Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple
Editd by Sandra Martz
Papier Mache Press--Watsonville, California 1987