OK, I haven't been over here in forever. This photograph isn't even current; it's definitely from this year but the ink was installed in Roanoke in July, 2015. I was looking through the archives for something to post and it kind of jumped out at me. I'm out here because I was googling the primary Alecto's Ophelia site to see what still pops up since I only keep 19 or 20 current posts live at any given time and only two or three per month from the archives and here's Alecto Alone, a free blog site which really should have gone dormant from lack of use. I suppose if get enough hits by accident which result in the link to the primary typepad site being clicked then it stays. For me, the history is kind of disconcerting because it's got very small chunks of my life going back to one marriage and touching on a signifiant relationship that followed after a four year hiatus from men in general and now there's been nearly two years since that one ended and I've just now asked myself, 'Alecto, if you really WANTED to be in a relationship don't you think you would be by now?' The answer was, of course I would. So maybe you can see why this very basic time line might be disconcerting.

Oddly enough I don't think there's a photograph of the first tattoo I had installed in April of 2009. That one's really cool. Maybe I'll add it later.

So the first two kids are all grown up. They're thirty and approaching twenty-six. One of them is making very loud noises about getting married and the third is finishing her junior year in high school. I've been an active parent for thirty and one half years not counting the first pregnancy and once I deposit that last baby into her dorm in something like sixteen months it's all over.

There was a time when I looked at the last baby with the nine year gap between she and her sister and said to myself and sometimes anyone who would listen... she is NEVER going to leave and this is NEVER going to be over.

I can imagine an awful lot of things but this wasn't one of them.