At the end of every year, I like to go back to the year prior and look at my goals and try to measure how I did. Some of the things that seemed so pressing and important back then seem trite and trivial now, in light of the changes 2014 brought to our lives. I’m definitely not the same person who wrote the goals last year….for better or for worse, I’ve changed. I suppose in the grand scheme of things, all of life is about changing. Morphing, growing, evolving. Let’s take a look back before we look forward to planning the next year.
1. Organization - I need it at home, at work, in my car, my closets, my pantry, my attic........I need to start with something as simple as getting my Tupperware organized in my kitchen cabinets! The empty containers with missing lids are taking over my kitchen! My pantry, my craft-room, my back porch, my closet, my storage room, my attic.......my entire life sort of looks like Granny Clampet and Fred Sanford got together and threw a yard-sale. I need to devote some quality time to figuring out how to get things and KEEP things organized! After moving into our new home here in Florida, I have actually become SLIGHTLY more organized. I have purged, thrown away, donated, and recycled MUCH. I still need some work in the organizational department, but 2015 will find me better off than the dawning of 2014 in this area.
2. Fairy Garden - THIS is the year that I actually DO it! I've been planning it for years! I have purchased odds and ends here and there and I know that I want a wine barrel to plant it all in! I just have to find/purchase that container and I'm ready to go come spring! I DID IT!!! I FINALLY DID IT!! I have a beautiful large lemon tree as the centerpiece of my Fairy Garden and it is in a whiskey barrel, just like I have always wanted! It holds a place of honor on my lanai!
3. Menus and planning with healthier fare - I usually make menus and grocery lists, but not in any sort of logical sequence or plan.....I want to have a more balanced approach to my meals - especially when Steve is traveling and I'm home alone. I tend to default to a can of soup or whatever is in the pantry on those lonely nights.....and I need to plan better for these times. I started off stronger than I finished up. I still do the majority of cooking at home (we eat in restaurants usually only on the weekends), but with the stress of the move, followed by the stress of Steve’s health problems/hospitalizations/procedures this year, plus the stress of my job…..well, I haven’t been as diligent in planning healthy meals....I've relied on pre-packaged junk like hotdogs and convivenence foods instead of cooking mostly from scratch with whole foods that equals healthier ingredients. I plan to focus more strongly on this in the year to come!
4. Craftiness - I have the dedicated craft room, I have tons of bottles, wads, stacks, stashes of crafting supplies, and I occasionally will go in there and browse through the stuff....taking stock of what I have and trying to envision finished hand-crafted goods. I need to come up with actual projects and put some of these stockpiles of papers, yarn, paint, etc....to good use! I did a few projects this year….not many, but a few. Hopefully our lives will settle down into a more predictable pattern and I can do more than come home from work, cook dinner, and crash on the couch to browse Facebook and Pinterest. I haven’t felt creative at all in a good while……I need to find that spark again.
5. Generosity - I need to be more generous. I need to stop worrying, "What's in it for me?" and think more along the lines of, "How can I help someone else?" I need to be more generous with my $$, my time, my love, my worldly goods, tipping, encouraging.........I just feel the need to give more. I have been fairly generous…..but could definitely be more encouraging and giving of my self and my time. I tend to want to keep my time and hoard it up to spend at home, alone with my husband and puppy dog.
6. Mercy - I tend to judge harshly. Even if I never share the thoughts I have with others, they still color the way I react to things, the way I interact with others and the way I think and act. I have been forgiven SO MUCH....I pray for a way to find it within myself to forgive others. Mercy and Grace when dealing with my own weaknesses would be nice as well. I judge myself most harshly of all....and sometimes, it's not always fair. Hooo-boy. I’ve really missed the mark here. This will have to be on the “carry-over” list for next year. I have been in a deep depression for several months and that tends to bleed over into every aspect of my life and make everything misery-tinged and critical instead of mercy-tinged and grateful.
7. Water - I don't drink near enough water. I usually down about 2 cups in the morning time when I exercise, and then it's an afterthought the rest of the day. I need to drink less coffee, tea, and juice and reach for more water. I will strive for at least 6 cups per day. That should be attainable.......and the days when I have more = BONUS! Another missed opportunity. Does the water in my coffee count? Well, not so much. Another item for the “carry-over” list.
8. Amusement Park - I didn't have a chance to go last year, but I really want to face down and conquer some of my fears concerning roller-coasters and other rides. I'm tired of living my life in a state of being scared of things that probably won't hurt me. It's time to move out of my comfort zone and into the LIVING LIFE to the FULLEST zone! DID IT!! Went to Busch Gardens and I even rode a roller-coaster!! Whoop-Whoop!!
9. One thing a month that scares me - along the lines as #8, I want to experience all that life has to offer. I want to try at least one thing a month that scares me! Whether that is a physical feat (such as river tubing in the rain forest!) or a mental feat (such as overcoming my fear of being seen in public in a swimsuit).....I want to do at least one thing that is outside my usual scope of practice! I want to push the envelope! I want to surpass my own expectations! I want to do things I never thought or dreamed I could do!! I want to have a life of NO REGRETS this year!
10. Blessings - I have had so many, many blessings in my life!! I so often tend to focus on the things I feel I have missed out on, the things I don't have or never had, the things I want but never got....the negative. My glass is not only often half empty, it's also cracked and leaking. I want to be more positive! I want to focus on the blessings and practice an attitude of gratitude and thankfulness. I take so much for granted. I need to be more mindful!!! This is an ongoing struggle…..I am very thankful for my blessings….but still tend to dwell more on my disappointments than on the overwhelming goodness in my life. Another carry-over!
11. Travel - I still want to see the whole world!! I want to see it and experience it, taste it, smell it, and LIVE it! This year, we are planning a trip to New York City in April! It's been a life-long dream to see the Big Apple! In August, we are planning to fly out to Seattle for a week to meet up with Alyssa and we are taking Jaron. I am looking forward to my family being whole again and enjoying our time together and I am looking forward to exploring another corner of the world that I haven't seen before! We plan on visiting Washington and Oregon and possibly even Vancouver, Canada!! I'd like to also fit in a few spontaneous weekend trips here and there along the way. I did get to visit New York City and (unknown to me when I wrote my goals last year….) we moved to a new area of Florida and have had the pleasure of exploring and discovering new places here! I visited Seattle, Washington with Steve and the kids met up with us…which was an AMAZING week in a state I’d never visited before!! Steve surprised me with a weekend-get-away trip to Myrtle Beach to experience Medieval Knights and we had the ultimate get-away when we up and moved to a new state. We did spend a night in West Palm Beach this past month…..and we spent a work-filled week moving from Nashville to Florida….so, does that count? Haha! We met our travel goals for 2014!
12. Writing - I haven't written nearly as much as I had hoped this past year. I had such great intentions and such poor follow-through! I spent way more time on Facebook and Pinterest than I did trying to capture my own thoughts and ideas and transform them into written word. I want to make sure I take more time for writing this year. It's such a balm to my soul and it's very healing to pour my heart out and explore my psyche in this manner. And it's so much cheaper than therapy and so less risky than swallowing antidepressant pills! I have alluded to the fact that I have had a dry spell of creativity and have been dealing with a yawning pit of depression for several months now. I have been having trouble getting myself out of bed and going to work every day…..and by the time I get home and cook dinner….I’ve had nothing else left to give. No writing, no crafting, no motivation, no drive. Pretty much, just existing...barely surviving…and sometimes, only barely at that. My sleep has been affected, my attitude has been affected; I cry a lot. I don't respond to emails, there were days when I didn't even wish precious friends Happy Birthday on Facebook like a normal person. I just sat and stared into the abyss...frozen by indifference, heartbreak, and darkness. I’m starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel and I have actually written a couple of things in the last week or so……so my writing goal will
definitely be a carry-over.
13. Classes/learning - I started a wine appreciate class, a writing class, and a photography class online, but I didn't finish any of them. My goal for this year is to complete the classes I have started and possibly take a few more.....just for the sake of general knowledge and for growing my interest in other areas and making me a more well-rounded and fulfilled person. I didn’t finish the 3 classes….and I didn’t begin any other classes. I wanted to do some more painting classes……I started a women's Bible Study in the fall, but dropped out after only 4 weeks.......I haven’t been doing much of anything lately. I really need that spark again...that motivation to do more than survive one day at a time.
14. Horseback riding - I want to go horseback riding. It was on my list last year, but I never actually made it....so it is a carry-over item. Steve isn't interested in going.....so I either need to just get over my fear of doing things alone and just buy a Groupon adventure and go, or I can find someone else who wants to join me for the adventure and just go. Either way, I just need to do it. I haven’t gone horseback riding yet. We moved really near the equestrian center of Pinellas Park, so I could go down there and just inquire and DO it. I have gained some of my weight back….so it really wouldn’t be fair to the horse right now…..maybe later in the spring or early summer.
15. House Cleaning - most of the time, my house isn't nasty or filthy......it's just cluttered. I don't enjoy cleaning my bathrooms or scrubbing toilets or the bathtub or sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, or any other myriad of chores that need to be done on a regular basis. I need to come up with a systematic approach that doesn't leave me miserable and exhausted in a mad-dash to hide the mess and clean up every time we have friends over. It’s better in our new house. It’s not always spic-and-span…..but it’s not bad either. This one is mostly met.
16. Friends/Entertaining - And I do want to have friends over. LOTS of friends! I want my home to be welcoming and open to friends and family. I'd love to meet/make new friends as well as keep in touch with the old ones. The song my daughter used to sing in Brownies comes to mind, "Make new friends, but keep the old.....one is silver and the other gold!" :) One can never have too many friends! Moving to another state made this one harder, and yet also made it more necessary. We joined a Sunday School class and keep trying to go to the social events to find a fit. We had Steve's co-workers over a couple of months ago and We are having folks over from my work tomorrow night…..so I’m working on it!
17. Adventures - I don't want to EVER pass up the chance for an adventure! I want to try new things, experience everything there is to experience! Life life to the fullest, drink life to the lees! Live a little! So very much of my life was spent inside a box of my own fear and self-doubt.....I want OUTTA that
box and I want to make the most of the rest of my life! Adventures, trips, outings, new foods, new people, new situations......Bring 'em on!!! New state, new job, new friends, new church, new house, new adventures! I think I met this one this year.
18. Positivism - this one is a BIGGIE. I may should have listed it first. I complain and whine WAAAYYY too much. I get on my OWN nerves with my endless pity-parties and wallowing. I have a predisposition for depression. I have struggled valiantly (and sometimes not so valiantly) with the deep dark pit of despair and gloom since I was a small child. I have to actively focus on the positive. I have to dwell on the blessings. I have to physically and literally put my hand over my mouth some days to keep from boring everybody around me with my misery. This year, I am going to make that conscious effort to shut down the whine-machine before my friends and loved ones get that glazed-over, "not listening to this again" look on their faces. I want my glass to be half full for a change. I want to be PollyAnna and emit glittering rays of sunshine from my face. Or at least not complain. It will probably be baby-steps. I just wanted to dream big. :) Still need some work. Who am I kidding? I still need a major over-haul. Pick myself up, dust myself off and try for another year of emitting glitter and sunshine. I'm afraid it was more like toxic waste and acid rain than glitter and sunshine for me this year. That's a big part of my emotional problems....and I need to just get over it.
19. My Spirituality - This one is between me and God....it is so deeply personal, I can't really put it into words. I have some work to do here.....and I don't really feel comfortable sharing most of the details, but essentially.....I'm not where I was.....I'm not where I should be.....and I'm not yet where I'm going. In other words.....it's a journey and most of it is uphill and I need prayers for the faith I need to keep putting one foot in front of the other in this area. I'm wrestling with some BIG spiritual issues and I know that the only peace I will find in these areas will come from trusting that God has everything in His hands. Still wrestling. Still on the journey. Still traveling up-hill in cement boots while dragging a Buick behind me. Lord, I believe......HELP my UNBELIEF!!!
20. My Children/my Adult Parenting Role - another touchy area.....another topic where about the only thing I can do is just pray for understanding and some sort of peaceful acceptance. It's been a tough year for this Mommy of two headstrong adult children......a lot of turbulent flood waters (mingled with tears) under the bridge of 2013. It's hard to watch the ones you love the most make decisions that break your heart. I have to keep reminding myself that my job is to love them the best I can and to constantly lift them up in prayer. In some ways, it’s gotten better…..in some ways, it got worse – and I mean so bad it was off the track and derailed. Honestly, I don’t even know how to measure progress in this area. 3 steps forward, 2 steps back, I suppose. Some progress, but still a lot of heartbreak.
Now, in addition to the set goals I had, there are a few unplanned accomplishments/personal victories that I experienced in 2014 that I need to celebrate:
1. I rode a giant rollercoaster (and only cried a little bit).
2. I ate raw oysters. I ate crab claws. I ate crab cakes. I ate shrimp. I ate lobster. I ate fish.....all kinds - even sushi! And I liked it!
3. I cooked lobsters at home! (and they were delicious!)
4. I got dressed up in fancy clothes, high-heeled shoes, lots of make-up, (and for heaven's sakes - I even wore body-glitter!!) and went to a cocktail party and dinner and even went dancing!
5. I danced in a conga line.....a conga line led by the fabulous Ms. Gloria Estefan, no less!! I couldn't even make that up if I tried!!!
6. If you know me well, you know how I DEPLORE being alone and doing things alone....however, I explored my new cities on my own. driving myself around in a strange place and exploring....eating in cafes, walking along docks, sipping iced coffee on a park bench, ducking into quaint little shops and taking tons of pictures! I even visited botanical gardens and had a solo-sushi-picnic by the water! I even visited a winery alone and had a chocolate-wine paring.....dateless! It was scary, but I was BOLD!
7. I found an amazing Italian Market to frequent and I had gelato and cannoli! TWICE!
8. I had Starbucks at the original Starbucks at Pikes Market.
9. I took the following modes of transportation this year: car, truck, bus, ferry, train, shuttle, tram, plane, subway, bicycle, motorcycle, golf cart, rollercoaster, carousel, moving sidewalk, rental car, boat. taxi-cab, I guess you could say it's been a moving year!
10. I visited a Chinatown in two major cities.
11. I finally saw a play on Broadway and marveled at the lights in Times Square.
12. I ate a hotdog from a street-vendor.
13. I stopped in a busy Manhattan bar for drinks one evening.
14. I have watched the sun set over the Gulf of Mexico and over Puget Sound and I have watched the sun rise over the Atlantic Ocean.
15. I have had a total reset of what my priorities are this year.....a reminder that the most important things aren't really even things....and not to take those most important things for granted or lightly. Our lives are but a vapor and I have learned to cherish the precious blessings I've been given.
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Friday, December 26, 2014
2014 in Review
My year in review:
January 2014 found us in Nashville.....going through our usual routine. Steve was working for QHR, traveling and away from home about 4 days a week, home mostly only on the weekends. I was working 50-70 hour weeks at Guardian Home Care as the Executive Director, feeling mostly like the little kid sitting at the adult table......learning a lot, but feeling the stress and burden of all the responsibility. I was miserable when Steve was gone.....pretty much crying myself to sleep every night and talking to my puppy a lot. There were some highlights though....On 1-4-14, I went down to mom's and picked up Cayland and Bethany and we had a "girls-day-out!" We had a right proper tea at The English Rose and played around at The Chattanooga Choo-Choo. We got pedicures and ate a ton of BBQ at Rib and Loin. It was a wonderful day full of lots of giggles and love and fun. Those girls own a huge chunk of my heart! <3 On 1-14-14, a package of Christmas goodies arrived from Alyssa in Japan! Lots of weird candy, including Wasabi Kit-Kat bars!
February rolled around, along with our Valentine's Day Anniversary. Steve told me to pack for an overnight trip and that I would find out where we were going once we got to the airport. He wouldn't give me ANY other clues! He told me to pack warmly, but to pack a dress and "stuff you can walk around in"......so the morning of 2-14-14 found us at BNA Airport, and my boarding pass said that I was traveling to Charleston, SC. We flew into Charleston and rented a car and explored around town, walking and taking in the Saturday morning market and we had lunch on the waterfront outside on a deck, overlooking the boats coming in/out. It was the old Navy Pier that had been renovated into a nice restaurant! In line with my goal of being more adventurous, I ate raw oysters and drank a watermelon martini at noon and we feasted on Seafood before getting in the car and heading north. Our destination was a hotel in Murrell's Inlet, a place where I had kidnapped Steve to for his birthday many years before! We stopped and checked into our hotel to rest and freshen up before my BIG surprise! Steve had purchased tickets to Medieval Nights Dinner Show for me! It has been on my bucket/dream list for YEARS!!!! I squealed with delight when I found out! Literally squealed. And cried a few tears of joy. It was AMAZING!!! Horses!! Beautiful horses! And Princesses, and knights! And serving wenches! And food you eat with your hands! It was all delicious! And magical! AND I got to wear a paper crown and cheer for our knight! After our Medieval adventure was done and our bellies were full, we went to Barefoot Landing, where we used to visit when we lived in North Carolina. We walked around the shops and checked out the pretty lights reflecting in the water. The next morning, we took the beach-route back to Charleston, stopping in beach-side towns to walk along the board-walks and see the sights before stopping for a quick lunch and heading back to Nashville. It was such a wonderful adventure!! It was around this time that Steve started interviewing with Baycare Hospital systems in Tampa, Florida. He was sick of life on the road and I was not doing well with him being gone so often. I had been fighting the demons of depression and being alone seems to shine a giant spot-light on the darkness. I was completely miserable when he was out of town. The job in Tampa seemed like a dream come true! He officially accepted the offer on 2-25-14 and we announced it to the world on 2-26-14, after I had told my kids, my Mom and given notice to my boss at work. My whole world started to tip on it's axis just a few degrees.
The hustle and bustle of moving several hundred miles away is daunting. The beginning of March found me meeting with realtors, listing our house, meeting with realtors some more, staging the house (all on my own - since Steve was working out his 30 day notice as well and still had to travel right up to the day before we left Nashville). The weather in Nashville was particularly cold and brutal in Late Feb-early march this year, with several mornings of snow and frost and temperatures dipping in the single digits....which made planning the move to a warmer climate a little more appealing. One of the harder things to do was to leave my job at Guardian. Things were not always a bed of roses, but we had come a looooong way in a short time and pulled together as a team.....the people I worked with were like a second family to me and I felt like I was the momma-hen most of the time. I really come to love and cherish my co-workers and saying good-bye was difficult. Leaving a job that I loved and co-workers that I loved for the unknown was a scary thing for me. Leaving my son in Nashville was also difficult. After so many tumultuous years, he was finally pulling himself together and doing well and our relationship with him had grown and matured and we enjoyed getting to see him on a semi-regular basis every couple of weeks. Moving so far away would be very difficult for me as a Mommy. As luck would have it, my last 2 weeks on the job were also 2 weeks of Jury duty for me! I think you could hear me howling "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!: when I pulled the yellow postcard out of the mailbox. Of all the dumb things!! But luckily, I made it the entire 2 weeks without actually having to go to the courthouse and serve on a jury! Thank goodness!! My last day at Guardian was 3-21-14 and we left for Florida on 3-22-14 and moved in to our temporary condo on 3-24-14. On 3-25-14, I received my Florida Nursing License in the mail and began my job-hunt in earnest.
After many weird twists and turns, we finally accepted a full-price offer on our house in Nashville on 4-3-14! I went on several job interviews and spent quite a few hours pouring over job listings on the internet. We met with our realtor here and went house-hunting almost every single weekend and spent evenings cuddled up on the couch looking at house listings....searching for the perfect place to call home. I was restless not working....even for a short period of time. I did get to drive down to Fort Meyers and spend a day with my Uncle Hubert and Aunt Mildred and had a lovely time. Steve and I felt like we were on a weird extended vacation, staying in the condo. He worked all day and came home to a home-cooked meal at night and then we'd go for a walk in the evenings before dark. I accepted a position with Greystone Home Care and began working again on 4-10-14. I was out of work less than a month, but I was very glad to be gainfully employed again. I took the position as PCC (Clinical Supervisor) but by the end of the month, I was promoted to Director of Clinical Services. The job was difficult and the office in a state of near-constant turmoil. It was sooo not what I was accustomed to dealing with. I spent my first few months wondering what on earth I'd gotten myself into and, well.....I suppose that feeling still somewhat continues today. It has been one of the most stressful positions I've ever held, that's for sure. We had planned a trip to New York City with some friends for the end of April and even though we moved to Florida, we were able to get our tickets changed and fly from Tampa instead of Nashville. We met our friend at La Guardia and took the Big Apple by storm!! The trip was amazing and exhausting and everything I ever dreamed it would be! I got to see all the famous sights: The Statue of Liberty, Manhattan, Time Square, Broadway, Radio City Music Hall, The Bull on Wall Street, Chinatown, Central Park, The Met Art Museum, Fifth Avenue, Rockefeller Center, The Empire State Building, the 9-11 Memorial.....it was all just like a movie!! We ate at fancy restaurants and drank wine in fancy bars, we dressed up like rich folks and saw a play on Broadway! And we walked our feet off! We took taxies and we rode subways! Ahhhhhhh!!! So many, many bucket-list moments!!!
As April gave way to May and the weather started heating up, living in the condo lost a lot of it's charm. The view was beautiful, overlooking a pretty lake with exotic waterbirds and fish that liked to flip and flop on the surface of the water....but the thin walls and loud neighbors and lack of parking wore thin quickly. And having to go up and down 3 flights of stairs to take Sophie to potty wasn't much fun either. We longed for our own furniture, my own kitchen utensils, our own BED, our own furniture, a Television (we didn't have one the whole 3 months in the condo) and the rest of our clothing and belongings. We missed being HOME. The closing on our house in Nashville and the closing on our house here in Florida were scheduled for the last week in May. We packed up the truck, the dog and our workclothes and we headed back to Tennessee. We spent a week packing and cleaning and culling through years of belongings. The packers came and took most of the stuff, but we had several things we brought back in a Uhaul truck ourselves to save some $$. Jaron came back with his and got to stay for a few days with us. That was the best part! The work was exhausting and it was so hot and miserable and there was a looming deadline to be done and out of the house and we were all stressed and pushed to the max. When we finally got to the new house and unloaded the truck and were able to relax, it was the BEST feeling!
The movers came with our stuff on the big truck a week later and the first week of June, we officially moved into our new house!!
January 2014 found us in Nashville.....going through our usual routine. Steve was working for QHR, traveling and away from home about 4 days a week, home mostly only on the weekends. I was working 50-70 hour weeks at Guardian Home Care as the Executive Director, feeling mostly like the little kid sitting at the adult table......learning a lot, but feeling the stress and burden of all the responsibility. I was miserable when Steve was gone.....pretty much crying myself to sleep every night and talking to my puppy a lot. There were some highlights though....On 1-4-14, I went down to mom's and picked up Cayland and Bethany and we had a "girls-day-out!" We had a right proper tea at The English Rose and played around at The Chattanooga Choo-Choo. We got pedicures and ate a ton of BBQ at Rib and Loin. It was a wonderful day full of lots of giggles and love and fun. Those girls own a huge chunk of my heart! <3 On 1-14-14, a package of Christmas goodies arrived from Alyssa in Japan! Lots of weird candy, including Wasabi Kit-Kat bars!
February rolled around, along with our Valentine's Day Anniversary. Steve told me to pack for an overnight trip and that I would find out where we were going once we got to the airport. He wouldn't give me ANY other clues! He told me to pack warmly, but to pack a dress and "stuff you can walk around in"......so the morning of 2-14-14 found us at BNA Airport, and my boarding pass said that I was traveling to Charleston, SC. We flew into Charleston and rented a car and explored around town, walking and taking in the Saturday morning market and we had lunch on the waterfront outside on a deck, overlooking the boats coming in/out. It was the old Navy Pier that had been renovated into a nice restaurant! In line with my goal of being more adventurous, I ate raw oysters and drank a watermelon martini at noon and we feasted on Seafood before getting in the car and heading north. Our destination was a hotel in Murrell's Inlet, a place where I had kidnapped Steve to for his birthday many years before! We stopped and checked into our hotel to rest and freshen up before my BIG surprise! Steve had purchased tickets to Medieval Nights Dinner Show for me! It has been on my bucket/dream list for YEARS!!!! I squealed with delight when I found out! Literally squealed. And cried a few tears of joy. It was AMAZING!!! Horses!! Beautiful horses! And Princesses, and knights! And serving wenches! And food you eat with your hands! It was all delicious! And magical! AND I got to wear a paper crown and cheer for our knight! After our Medieval adventure was done and our bellies were full, we went to Barefoot Landing, where we used to visit when we lived in North Carolina. We walked around the shops and checked out the pretty lights reflecting in the water. The next morning, we took the beach-route back to Charleston, stopping in beach-side towns to walk along the board-walks and see the sights before stopping for a quick lunch and heading back to Nashville. It was such a wonderful adventure!! It was around this time that Steve started interviewing with Baycare Hospital systems in Tampa, Florida. He was sick of life on the road and I was not doing well with him being gone so often. I had been fighting the demons of depression and being alone seems to shine a giant spot-light on the darkness. I was completely miserable when he was out of town. The job in Tampa seemed like a dream come true! He officially accepted the offer on 2-25-14 and we announced it to the world on 2-26-14, after I had told my kids, my Mom and given notice to my boss at work. My whole world started to tip on it's axis just a few degrees.
The hustle and bustle of moving several hundred miles away is daunting. The beginning of March found me meeting with realtors, listing our house, meeting with realtors some more, staging the house (all on my own - since Steve was working out his 30 day notice as well and still had to travel right up to the day before we left Nashville). The weather in Nashville was particularly cold and brutal in Late Feb-early march this year, with several mornings of snow and frost and temperatures dipping in the single digits....which made planning the move to a warmer climate a little more appealing. One of the harder things to do was to leave my job at Guardian. Things were not always a bed of roses, but we had come a looooong way in a short time and pulled together as a team.....the people I worked with were like a second family to me and I felt like I was the momma-hen most of the time. I really come to love and cherish my co-workers and saying good-bye was difficult. Leaving a job that I loved and co-workers that I loved for the unknown was a scary thing for me. Leaving my son in Nashville was also difficult. After so many tumultuous years, he was finally pulling himself together and doing well and our relationship with him had grown and matured and we enjoyed getting to see him on a semi-regular basis every couple of weeks. Moving so far away would be very difficult for me as a Mommy. As luck would have it, my last 2 weeks on the job were also 2 weeks of Jury duty for me! I think you could hear me howling "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!: when I pulled the yellow postcard out of the mailbox. Of all the dumb things!! But luckily, I made it the entire 2 weeks without actually having to go to the courthouse and serve on a jury! Thank goodness!! My last day at Guardian was 3-21-14 and we left for Florida on 3-22-14 and moved in to our temporary condo on 3-24-14. On 3-25-14, I received my Florida Nursing License in the mail and began my job-hunt in earnest.
After many weird twists and turns, we finally accepted a full-price offer on our house in Nashville on 4-3-14! I went on several job interviews and spent quite a few hours pouring over job listings on the internet. We met with our realtor here and went house-hunting almost every single weekend and spent evenings cuddled up on the couch looking at house listings....searching for the perfect place to call home. I was restless not working....even for a short period of time. I did get to drive down to Fort Meyers and spend a day with my Uncle Hubert and Aunt Mildred and had a lovely time. Steve and I felt like we were on a weird extended vacation, staying in the condo. He worked all day and came home to a home-cooked meal at night and then we'd go for a walk in the evenings before dark. I accepted a position with Greystone Home Care and began working again on 4-10-14. I was out of work less than a month, but I was very glad to be gainfully employed again. I took the position as PCC (Clinical Supervisor) but by the end of the month, I was promoted to Director of Clinical Services. The job was difficult and the office in a state of near-constant turmoil. It was sooo not what I was accustomed to dealing with. I spent my first few months wondering what on earth I'd gotten myself into and, well.....I suppose that feeling still somewhat continues today. It has been one of the most stressful positions I've ever held, that's for sure. We had planned a trip to New York City with some friends for the end of April and even though we moved to Florida, we were able to get our tickets changed and fly from Tampa instead of Nashville. We met our friend at La Guardia and took the Big Apple by storm!! The trip was amazing and exhausting and everything I ever dreamed it would be! I got to see all the famous sights: The Statue of Liberty, Manhattan, Time Square, Broadway, Radio City Music Hall, The Bull on Wall Street, Chinatown, Central Park, The Met Art Museum, Fifth Avenue, Rockefeller Center, The Empire State Building, the 9-11 Memorial.....it was all just like a movie!! We ate at fancy restaurants and drank wine in fancy bars, we dressed up like rich folks and saw a play on Broadway! And we walked our feet off! We took taxies and we rode subways! Ahhhhhhh!!! So many, many bucket-list moments!!!
As April gave way to May and the weather started heating up, living in the condo lost a lot of it's charm. The view was beautiful, overlooking a pretty lake with exotic waterbirds and fish that liked to flip and flop on the surface of the water....but the thin walls and loud neighbors and lack of parking wore thin quickly. And having to go up and down 3 flights of stairs to take Sophie to potty wasn't much fun either. We longed for our own furniture, my own kitchen utensils, our own BED, our own furniture, a Television (we didn't have one the whole 3 months in the condo) and the rest of our clothing and belongings. We missed being HOME. The closing on our house in Nashville and the closing on our house here in Florida were scheduled for the last week in May. We packed up the truck, the dog and our workclothes and we headed back to Tennessee. We spent a week packing and cleaning and culling through years of belongings. The packers came and took most of the stuff, but we had several things we brought back in a Uhaul truck ourselves to save some $$. Jaron came back with his and got to stay for a few days with us. That was the best part! The work was exhausting and it was so hot and miserable and there was a looming deadline to be done and out of the house and we were all stressed and pushed to the max. When we finally got to the new house and unloaded the truck and were able to relax, it was the BEST feeling!
The movers came with our stuff on the big truck a week later and the first week of June, we officially moved into our new house!!
Wednesday, December 24, 2014
Nursing
If you ask any wide-eyed, green, wet-behind-the-ears nursing student why they want to be a nurse, she will likely get a dreamy look on her face and immediately say something like she "Just wants to help people!" Help ease suffering; heal the broken; bind-up the wounded; Encourage the down-trodden. Educate the ignorant. We all essentially wanted to save the world while wearing comfortable scrubs and sensible shoes.
I remember saying those same words. Having that same vision; that burning mission....that sense of higher purpose. I remember getting misty thinking about all the good I could do in the world. All the hands I could hold.....all the love I could share. Florence Nightingale in shining, crisp white.
And then the reality of nursing hit me full force. The understaffing. The never having enough help and never feeling quite sure you are doing the right thing, but not having time to second guess either. The IV sticks you didn't get on the first try. The moment when you first realized that the world of nursing was more about hanging IV's, passing meds, and charting for hours than it is about offering comfort or healing anything. It was about being able to assess a situation quickly and take action, almost on automatic pilot, listening to your developing sense of "nurse intuition" .....and it was about getting it right. Because you don't get a second chance when a life hangs in the balance.
It was not glamorous to change bed linens for the third time on your 12 hour shift because your patient has diarrhea. Again. It's not glamorous to clean vomit off your shoes. It is not glamorous to fish a pair of dentures out of a full emesis basin. It is not glamorous to administer enemas, insert Foley catheters, shave private parts, shove an NG tube down someone's nose while they fight and curse at you so you can administer charcoal to absorb the poison they swallowed in a failed attempt to kill themselves. It is not glamorous to come in to work when it is dark and leave 12-14 hours later when it is still dark......only to come back to work in 10 hours and do it all over again. It is not glamorous to suction secretions from someone's tracheotomy or to change adult diapers full of adult poop. It's not glamorous to take out the trash, to empty the Foley bags, to see maggots in a wound when you change the dressing on an amputated stump, or wade through ankle-deep trash in the hoarder-house of your home-care patient.
None of these images are what you think of when you think of nursing. It's certainly not what I had in mind when I applied for nursing school. There have been hours of the drudgery of paperwork, hours of cleaning up all sorts of bodily fluids, hours of gritting your teeth and taking the verbal abuse of patients and family members who just don't appreciate your time and effort. And there have been moments of sheer and total terror. Moments when your patient is talking to you and then slumps over at the bedside and becomes nonresponsive. Times when you pull the cord to call the code and the adrenaline kicks in and your training takes over because you are too shaken to think straight. There are moments when you teach and teach and teach your heart out.....and they still don't get it. There are veins that roll or blow and just disappear and are impossible to stick.
There are times when you have to leave one patient who is dying of cancer to go see another patient who is struggling for each breath due to emphysema and then leave that patient to see a patient who is facing amputation of a second leg and then you leave that patient to see another patient struggling with another catastrophic disease. And you catch glimpses.......glimpses of yourself in their suffering. Glimpses of your possible future. Glimpses of your family members. Glimpses of life choices that led to ruin. Glimpses of suffering. Glimpses of pain. And sometimes, glimpses of hope.
I've been present for countless baby deliveries. And I cried at every. single. one of them. (Yes, nurses cry....we usually try to hide it, but we do). The miracle of a new life....the hope! The possibilities! The newness! The first face-to-face meeting of the baby and mother and the overwhelming sense of love at first sight!
I've also been present at deaths. I've worked Hospice when my job was to go to the home and try to offer comfort measures to ease the transition and make the death pronouncement. Sometimes, I was there when the patient passed and sometimes I got there after the fact. My job was to bathe and prepare the bodies.....and to comfort the family and loved ones.
I have held the frail, thin-skinned, vein-lined hands of so many precious elderly patients.....offering a smile, a prayer if indicated, a few words of encouragement and care. I make it a point to look into their eyes....eyes often dimmed by time and disease.....but eyes that have seen a life-time and really lived.....and I have seen so much there.
I started off by saying that nurses want to "take care of people".....but somewhere along the way, we really gain so much more than we give. We learn, feel, see, and hear such diverse slices of the human experience from day to day......and I've come to realize that this is a gift that few other professions allow.
I work mostly as an administrative nurse now....not as much hands-on care these days. I supervise the nurses who do.....I try to mentor and teach them what it means to really care. And I try to make a difference for them. I still interact with the patients, but mostly on the phone....intervening when there is a problem or a need or when I need to assist them in arranging their care. I still go out and see patients from time to time. I never want to lose that part of my profession. It still thrills my heart to hold a hand and look into someone's eyes and know I've done something to help them.
I got a message this morning from one of my former co-workers that one of my long-term home care patients - a man that I cared for regularly over a 3-4 year period......had passed away. My initial reaction was shock and then sadness......but it was quickly followed by the knowledge that it was a relief for him. The 3-4 years I'd known him were riddled with hospitalizations for exacerbations of his disease processes that caused him great pain and caused him great suffering. He always had a smile for me though....he called me his "Manda-Baby" and would ask for me by that name when he called our office. When he knew I was scheduled to come see him, he would turn off his oxygen, light up some incense and spray air-freshener so that he could pretend that he hadn't just smoked before I got there. He wasn't fooling anybody. Nothing smells as guilty as cigarette-smoke and patchouli-scented incense....but it was a game we played. He knew that I knew that he knew that I knew......but he didn't want another lecture about how smoking was bad for him. He made his choices and he chose to continue smoking, even though it was very slowly killing him. He was gruff and rough around the edges and had lived a hard life. He didn't have much, but once, when he went to the farmer's market and bought himself some fresh corn, that sweet man saved an ear of corn just for me. That ear of corn meant the world to me....it meant that I had made a difference in his life....enough that he would think of me and want to share something with me...even an ear of corn.
I had moved away from the town where he lives. I moved to another state and took another job and hadn't seen him in more than 7-8 months......but this morning, the news of his death still broke my heart. And I cried. That's what it's like to be a nurse. At least it is for me.....It's giving and giving and giving......but getting so much more in return. It might be a lot messier than I bargained for....and a lot less glamorous and a lot more tedious at times......but it's always worth it. I'm still proud to be a nurse.
I remember saying those same words. Having that same vision; that burning mission....that sense of higher purpose. I remember getting misty thinking about all the good I could do in the world. All the hands I could hold.....all the love I could share. Florence Nightingale in shining, crisp white.
And then the reality of nursing hit me full force. The understaffing. The never having enough help and never feeling quite sure you are doing the right thing, but not having time to second guess either. The IV sticks you didn't get on the first try. The moment when you first realized that the world of nursing was more about hanging IV's, passing meds, and charting for hours than it is about offering comfort or healing anything. It was about being able to assess a situation quickly and take action, almost on automatic pilot, listening to your developing sense of "nurse intuition" .....and it was about getting it right. Because you don't get a second chance when a life hangs in the balance.
It was not glamorous to change bed linens for the third time on your 12 hour shift because your patient has diarrhea. Again. It's not glamorous to clean vomit off your shoes. It is not glamorous to fish a pair of dentures out of a full emesis basin. It is not glamorous to administer enemas, insert Foley catheters, shave private parts, shove an NG tube down someone's nose while they fight and curse at you so you can administer charcoal to absorb the poison they swallowed in a failed attempt to kill themselves. It is not glamorous to come in to work when it is dark and leave 12-14 hours later when it is still dark......only to come back to work in 10 hours and do it all over again. It is not glamorous to suction secretions from someone's tracheotomy or to change adult diapers full of adult poop. It's not glamorous to take out the trash, to empty the Foley bags, to see maggots in a wound when you change the dressing on an amputated stump, or wade through ankle-deep trash in the hoarder-house of your home-care patient.
None of these images are what you think of when you think of nursing. It's certainly not what I had in mind when I applied for nursing school. There have been hours of the drudgery of paperwork, hours of cleaning up all sorts of bodily fluids, hours of gritting your teeth and taking the verbal abuse of patients and family members who just don't appreciate your time and effort. And there have been moments of sheer and total terror. Moments when your patient is talking to you and then slumps over at the bedside and becomes nonresponsive. Times when you pull the cord to call the code and the adrenaline kicks in and your training takes over because you are too shaken to think straight. There are moments when you teach and teach and teach your heart out.....and they still don't get it. There are veins that roll or blow and just disappear and are impossible to stick.
There are times when you have to leave one patient who is dying of cancer to go see another patient who is struggling for each breath due to emphysema and then leave that patient to see a patient who is facing amputation of a second leg and then you leave that patient to see another patient struggling with another catastrophic disease. And you catch glimpses.......glimpses of yourself in their suffering. Glimpses of your possible future. Glimpses of your family members. Glimpses of life choices that led to ruin. Glimpses of suffering. Glimpses of pain. And sometimes, glimpses of hope.
I've been present for countless baby deliveries. And I cried at every. single. one of them. (Yes, nurses cry....we usually try to hide it, but we do). The miracle of a new life....the hope! The possibilities! The newness! The first face-to-face meeting of the baby and mother and the overwhelming sense of love at first sight!
I've also been present at deaths. I've worked Hospice when my job was to go to the home and try to offer comfort measures to ease the transition and make the death pronouncement. Sometimes, I was there when the patient passed and sometimes I got there after the fact. My job was to bathe and prepare the bodies.....and to comfort the family and loved ones.
I have held the frail, thin-skinned, vein-lined hands of so many precious elderly patients.....offering a smile, a prayer if indicated, a few words of encouragement and care. I make it a point to look into their eyes....eyes often dimmed by time and disease.....but eyes that have seen a life-time and really lived.....and I have seen so much there.
I started off by saying that nurses want to "take care of people".....but somewhere along the way, we really gain so much more than we give. We learn, feel, see, and hear such diverse slices of the human experience from day to day......and I've come to realize that this is a gift that few other professions allow.
I work mostly as an administrative nurse now....not as much hands-on care these days. I supervise the nurses who do.....I try to mentor and teach them what it means to really care. And I try to make a difference for them. I still interact with the patients, but mostly on the phone....intervening when there is a problem or a need or when I need to assist them in arranging their care. I still go out and see patients from time to time. I never want to lose that part of my profession. It still thrills my heart to hold a hand and look into someone's eyes and know I've done something to help them.
I got a message this morning from one of my former co-workers that one of my long-term home care patients - a man that I cared for regularly over a 3-4 year period......had passed away. My initial reaction was shock and then sadness......but it was quickly followed by the knowledge that it was a relief for him. The 3-4 years I'd known him were riddled with hospitalizations for exacerbations of his disease processes that caused him great pain and caused him great suffering. He always had a smile for me though....he called me his "Manda-Baby" and would ask for me by that name when he called our office. When he knew I was scheduled to come see him, he would turn off his oxygen, light up some incense and spray air-freshener so that he could pretend that he hadn't just smoked before I got there. He wasn't fooling anybody. Nothing smells as guilty as cigarette-smoke and patchouli-scented incense....but it was a game we played. He knew that I knew that he knew that I knew......but he didn't want another lecture about how smoking was bad for him. He made his choices and he chose to continue smoking, even though it was very slowly killing him. He was gruff and rough around the edges and had lived a hard life. He didn't have much, but once, when he went to the farmer's market and bought himself some fresh corn, that sweet man saved an ear of corn just for me. That ear of corn meant the world to me....it meant that I had made a difference in his life....enough that he would think of me and want to share something with me...even an ear of corn.
I had moved away from the town where he lives. I moved to another state and took another job and hadn't seen him in more than 7-8 months......but this morning, the news of his death still broke my heart. And I cried. That's what it's like to be a nurse. At least it is for me.....It's giving and giving and giving......but getting so much more in return. It might be a lot messier than I bargained for....and a lot less glamorous and a lot more tedious at times......but it's always worth it. I'm still proud to be a nurse.
Friday, October 31, 2014
21 random words guarenteed to make me giggle
1. Cummerbund. Such a ridiculous word for such a ridiculous piece of clothing!! It serves no real purpose. It's just there. Being silly. And if you say it 3 times really fast.....you will laugh.
2. Nibblets. Just strolling down the aisle in the grocery store...minding my own business when WHAM!!! Right there in the canned food aisle: Nibblet corn. Nibblet. Nibblet. Nibblet. Nibblet. Bet you just smiled a little. You literally can't say the word without smiling.
3. Hootenanny - The word just SOUNDS like a fun party!! I want to throw down at any Hootenanny that might be going on!! If you plan a Hootenanny, PLEASE invite me!!!
4. Kumquat - OH, come on. The entire word is just BEGGING you to giggle inappropriately. You can't help it!!
5. Obsequious. I don't know if it's the ob part, or the sequious part that gets me....but put them both together and you have some outrageous fun times.
6. Sasquatch - Sassy and Squatchie. Sasquatch!!!! Say it again!!! Sasquatch!!!!
7. Wonky. The word is just so much fun!! Wonky! It starts up the circus music in my brain just to hear the word WONKY! It's a fun way to say odd....or weird. But it's ever so much more fun!!!
8. Quinoa. Because it SHOULD be quin-oh-ah. But it Ain't!!! It's Keeen-Waaaah. Because it can. Simply because it can.
9. Gubernaculum Simply because it's a gubernaculum and therefore deserves derisive laughter.
10. Lollygag - it just sounds like it would be SO. MUCH. FUN to do!!!!! Whattcha wanna to today? Let's lollygag!! Heck yeah!!!!
11. Skedaddle - Right up there with lollygagging. skedaddling is a pastime worthy of a good chuckle. I think there would be world peace if more people lollygagged and skedaddled more. Just sayin.
12. Cockamamie. Also funny just because of the way it sounds. That's a cockamamie idea!!! You just can't say it with a straight face!!!
13. Grommet I know it's a useful tool......but it's also a funny word. Grommet. Grommet. Grommett. See????
14. Dinghy - Sure. It's a small boat. Or a small penis. Either way.....it's a hilarious word.
15. Pajamas - as fun to say as they are fun to wear!! Am I right???
16. Juju. As in bad juju. Or the candy. I'm not picky.
17. Sphygmomanometer. SOOOOO much funnier than B/P cuff!! Ever so much funnier!!!
18. Cahoots! I just want to be in cahoots with somebody when I hear this fun word!!!
19. Angina . Because it sounds too fun to be chest pain.
20. Zygote because it has NOTHING to do with goats at all.
21. Juxtaposition because it's just fun to say. Especially on opposite day!
2. Nibblets. Just strolling down the aisle in the grocery store...minding my own business when WHAM!!! Right there in the canned food aisle: Nibblet corn. Nibblet. Nibblet. Nibblet. Nibblet. Bet you just smiled a little. You literally can't say the word without smiling.
3. Hootenanny - The word just SOUNDS like a fun party!! I want to throw down at any Hootenanny that might be going on!! If you plan a Hootenanny, PLEASE invite me!!!
4. Kumquat - OH, come on. The entire word is just BEGGING you to giggle inappropriately. You can't help it!!
5. Obsequious. I don't know if it's the ob part, or the sequious part that gets me....but put them both together and you have some outrageous fun times.
6. Sasquatch - Sassy and Squatchie. Sasquatch!!!! Say it again!!! Sasquatch!!!!
7. Wonky. The word is just so much fun!! Wonky! It starts up the circus music in my brain just to hear the word WONKY! It's a fun way to say odd....or weird. But it's ever so much more fun!!!
8. Quinoa. Because it SHOULD be quin-oh-ah. But it Ain't!!! It's Keeen-Waaaah. Because it can. Simply because it can.
9. Gubernaculum Simply because it's a gubernaculum and therefore deserves derisive laughter.
10. Lollygag - it just sounds like it would be SO. MUCH. FUN to do!!!!! Whattcha wanna to today? Let's lollygag!! Heck yeah!!!!
11. Skedaddle - Right up there with lollygagging. skedaddling is a pastime worthy of a good chuckle. I think there would be world peace if more people lollygagged and skedaddled more. Just sayin.
12. Cockamamie. Also funny just because of the way it sounds. That's a cockamamie idea!!! You just can't say it with a straight face!!!
13. Grommet I know it's a useful tool......but it's also a funny word. Grommet. Grommet. Grommett. See????
14. Dinghy - Sure. It's a small boat. Or a small penis. Either way.....it's a hilarious word.
15. Pajamas - as fun to say as they are fun to wear!! Am I right???
16. Juju. As in bad juju. Or the candy. I'm not picky.
17. Sphygmomanometer. SOOOOO much funnier than B/P cuff!! Ever so much funnier!!!
18. Cahoots! I just want to be in cahoots with somebody when I hear this fun word!!!
19. Angina . Because it sounds too fun to be chest pain.
20. Zygote because it has NOTHING to do with goats at all.
21. Juxtaposition because it's just fun to say. Especially on opposite day!
Sunday, October 26, 2014
Falling back into Being Me
My husband asked me a few days ago why I haven't written in my blog in a while. He chuckled and said that he liked to read the things I write to gain insight into what I was thinking/feeling.....because I really don't like talking about how I feel out loud. I have been mulling over his question ever since he asked me.
I have tried to write a few things over the last few months.....I have actually sat and poured my heart out in a few paragraphs.....but the emotions ended up being so visceral and so private that I had to delete them instead of sharing. Instead of removing the mask to be honest, it felt like I was ripping my skin off and it was just too painful to expose those raw nerve endings. These past few months have been a very difficult time for me. I don't even feel like I've been myself for a while. And I miss me. The real me......not this crazy, sad version of me.
I have already admitted that I have fought a life-long struggle with depression. I am no stranger to the dark, claw-like and crushing grasp of despair. I can beat it back (at least to the edges of day to day life) with sheer will most of the time......I can quote Bible verses, spit out affirmations, fake-it-till-I-make-it, take everything in stride, keep smiling, be kind to others, remain positive, and keep plowing through. I am tough and strong and resilient and brave. I am a trooper. Or so I like to pretend.
The truth is.....the way I feel on the inside is more like a little scared toddler.....my heart hurts and I want to be petted, comforted, told that everything will be fine. I want to hide in my bed, pull the covers up over my head and cry and cry and cry. Some mornings, it's all I can do to drag a nearly lifeless body up out of the bed, shower, dress, and force myself to drive to an office where I will work at an unfulfilling, thankless job where I struggle to go through the motions for 9-10 hours and then come home.
There are times that I feel completely empty and apathetic. I feel dead inside; void, barren, wasted. There are brittle, dried-up spiritual tumbleweeds blowing through the dust of what's left of me. And I wonder what's wrong with me.....why I don't care about things that I should. Why things that really matter don't seem to....not so much any more. I feel like my heart is shrouded in Kevlar, barbed wire, and steel-wool, blocking any actual emotions. I wonder if maybe I'm just a broken person who won't ever get it right.
At the other end of the spectrum, there are days where I feel every emotion and hurt so exquisitely that I agonize over every word, every action until I drive myself crazy. I imagine slights and insults were none are intended. I let my feelings be hurt by things that don't even concern me. It's almost a strange emotional-thought-life paranoia... that every snide comment is about something I've done. That every vague, snarky Facebook post is about me. I get a sense that people are judging me, laughing at me, weighing me in the balance and finding me wanting; lacking. It's insanity. I know it's not "all about me." My thinking is skewed. It's ego-centric, prideful, and narcissistic......and I can't seem to stop these crazy thoughts. The harshest critic of them all? The one staring back at me in the mirror every day. And, my friends....that woman in the mirror can be SO mean!!!
She tells me how ugly I am. She tells me how unworthy I am. She whispers how I've gained some weight and how lazy and sinful I am. She laughs and points and says, "I told you so." She jeers and sneers and leers and shouts those accusations inside my head all day long. She tells me how awkward I am. How I don't fit in. How shallow I am for fretting about these silly things. The worst thing she does is show me exactly how blessed I am in spite of all the crazy thoughts I have.......and then howls with sinister laughter when I feel guilty about feeling the way I feel.
It's a very fast downward spiral into despair from there.
I am horrified to admit that I found the spotlight on depression in the aftermath of Robin William's horrible suicide captivating. I read every article that came across my news feed. I googled everything about depression and the cause and treatment; I was fascinated to read first-hand accounts....not articles written by professionals - but written by other depressed folks. I wanted most of all, I guess.... to know that I wasn't the only one. That I wasn't crazy for feeling this way. Don 't get me wrong..... I am not suicidal. I have no intention of harming myself or others....I could never even imagine hurting anyone else on purpose...and I'm way too much of a chicken to hurt myself. (However, I did muster up enough courage to manage to give myself a flu shot the other day.....and it kindda hurt, but that's not really the same thing, huh?. Haha!).
I am a nurse and I am always looking for objective, measurable data. There is an actual measurable stress scale and I read through and graded myself. Moving to another state, not having a job, looking for a job, starting a new job, selling a house, buying a house, leaving loved ones behind, a loved one's major illness and several ER trips and surgeries/procedures, fear of losing said loved one, not being happy or fulfilled in your job, being estranged from loved ones, wayward children, worry about a child who lost a job, worry about the horrible choices your adult children make that you can't control, a mother in poor health who also lost her job, it goes on and on and on...........and don't even LET me watch the evening news!!!! Suffice it to say that my stress score rates very high for this year.
The move to Florida brought me a mixed bag of emotions. It's a new, exciting adventure. A new chapter in our book...new places to explore, unknown things to discover, new friends to love.......a tropical, balmy climate, sunshine and palm trees; the amazing chance to live everyday where the rest of the country only gets to visit for vacation! A strange, new, and wondrous place. But to come to our new home, we had to leave another place called home. We had to leave dear friends, leave a job I loved, leave our son, leave my family, and leave the known. And that takes an extraordinary step of faith.
The thing I cling to every time we move is that my HOME is wherever my husband is. Because he owns my heart and where he is, well....that is where my heart is. He is my rock, my shelter, my better half, my best friend, my lover, my soul-mate......he is....well, he is simply my world. When he first started feeling bad this past spring, we thought it was just the stress and fatigue of moving....packing, unpacking, starting a new job, and the stress of buying/selling 2 houses were just getting to him. We aren't as young as we used to be.....and it was just so dang HOT and HUMID here in June and July...we chalked it up to stress and fatigue. Until around the end of July when we couldn't deny that something was terribly wrong. He was having trouble breathing, had to sit upright in bed to breathe, heart racing, blood pressure sky-high. The truth of how very sick he was knocked the breath out of me. When the cardiologist told us that he had Congestive Heart Failure and that his EF was only 20%, you could have pushed me off my chair with the brush of a feather. (To put this alarming news in perspective for my non-medical friends, an EF of 30% is the threshold for qualifying for Hospice services....he was at only 20%......well below that). The fact that he was able to get up every day and go to work is a testament to how stubborn and determined he is and to what a solid work ethic he has.
My usually vibrant, work-a-holic husband would stumble in from work every evening and crash on the couch....weary and completely exhausted. His color was more gray than pink. He had dark circles under his eyes. I tried my best to compensate for his overwhelming exhaustion (his heart was pumping so fast and erratically, it wasn't pumping enough blood for his brain and organs to function properly). I took over the yard-work; I took out the trash. I cooked for him and carried his plates to him on the couch. I would run upstairs to fetch things for him so he wouldn't have to go up and down the stairs. And I still felt helpless as I had to watch him suffer every day and there was very little I could do to relieve it. And that was scary. It shook me to the very core.
In the middle of undergoing multiple unsuccessful cardioversions, heart catheterizations, CT angiograms, TEE testing, echocardiograms, EKG's, blood tests, starting strong cardiac medications and blood thinners......he then developed acute appendicitis with a leaking appendix!!! He had to undergo an emergency appendectomy.....on my birthday, no less! He had his last (and most dangerous) procedure on 10-2-14.....a major cardiac ablation where the doctor burned away 4 large sections of heart tissue. The Electrophysiologist who did his procedure is one of the most successful in the entire South East US in his field. He told us going in that there was only a 75-80% chance it would work, but it was really his only choice for treatment. He told me that without treatment, his heart would hold out probably less than a year. So there was little choice. The procedure was planned and performed; it was an 8 1/2 hour long procedure. A few of the scariest hours of my entire life. Seeing him in so much severe pain after the procedure about did me in. The procedure seems to have worked, though we won't know for sure until about 2-3 months post-procedure. He is already feeling MUCH better and his heart-rate is now in the 50's......instead of the 180's. I am slowly seeing him come back to life...a little bit every day. His color improved; he started cracking jokes again. I knew he was doing better the day I came home to find him washing his car. (His car went almost 2 months without it's weekly wash....and if you know him at all you know he had to be SICK not to wash his car for 2 months).
The very real threat of losing the man I love was more than I could even fathom. Mentally, I knew that the mature, adult thing to do was to face that fear, talk about it, realistically make contingency plans in case it didn't work, and pray for the best. But I couldn't even allow myself to think in that direction. I spent many, many hours agonizing over the uncertainty and the fear. I would spend my lunch breaks at work, crying in my car where no one could see. I would take a long shower so I could cry at night.... without upsetting Steve with my tears. The things is, I couldn't even try to imagine any kind of life for me that didn't include him. One truth that came out of this entire episode.....I don't EVER want to take him for granted. I want to cherish every single memory. every moment, and squeeze every drop of joy out of our time together. Every night when I snuggle up to him to go to sleep, I breathe a prayer of thanksgiving for the precious gift of my husband.
I'm hoping that as we ease into fall, my moods will stabilize and life can get back to some sense of normalcy. Fall is my favorite time of year.....the cool respite after the burning hot summer. The slowing pace, the calm before the storm of the holidays. There aren't many changing leaves here in Sunny Florida. We've had some cooler, less humid mornings, but it's still in the upper 80's and sunny most afternoons. There aren't any boots or scarves or bonfires here. I can still go swimming and wear shorts and flip-flops. But I've pumpkin-spiced the heck out of my coffee, pancakes, cookies, cakes, pies, and I even managed to make pumpkin spice fudge.....trying to capture that elusive crisp feeling of "fallness".
I know there will be days when I am homesick. Days when I just want to hug my babies, and laugh with them like we did when they were little. There are days I would trade my right arm to have a hug from my Mamaw and a few more hours to just talk with her and tell her how very much I love her. There are times when I just need my Momma. There will always be stormy days when the clouds are threatening and the winds blow strong.
But there will also be days that are good. Days when my sun is shining and the birds are singing and the clouds in my skies are all fluffy and white. There will be days of laughter, days of joy....days of singing and days of blessing. And I will store them up in my mind. I will take pictures of the places, the faces, the things that bring me happiness and I will save them to count my blessings on the darker days. And they will remind me of how God is good and I am blessed. They will whisper that the hard times will pass and promise that the suffering of this world is only temporary.
And hopefully, I will find that I am falling back into being ME again. The good, the bad, the ugly, the sad.....the happy, the crazy, the paranoid, the creative, the whole jiggly mess that I am.
I have tried to write a few things over the last few months.....I have actually sat and poured my heart out in a few paragraphs.....but the emotions ended up being so visceral and so private that I had to delete them instead of sharing. Instead of removing the mask to be honest, it felt like I was ripping my skin off and it was just too painful to expose those raw nerve endings. These past few months have been a very difficult time for me. I don't even feel like I've been myself for a while. And I miss me. The real me......not this crazy, sad version of me.
I have already admitted that I have fought a life-long struggle with depression. I am no stranger to the dark, claw-like and crushing grasp of despair. I can beat it back (at least to the edges of day to day life) with sheer will most of the time......I can quote Bible verses, spit out affirmations, fake-it-till-I-make-it, take everything in stride, keep smiling, be kind to others, remain positive, and keep plowing through. I am tough and strong and resilient and brave. I am a trooper. Or so I like to pretend.
The truth is.....the way I feel on the inside is more like a little scared toddler.....my heart hurts and I want to be petted, comforted, told that everything will be fine. I want to hide in my bed, pull the covers up over my head and cry and cry and cry. Some mornings, it's all I can do to drag a nearly lifeless body up out of the bed, shower, dress, and force myself to drive to an office where I will work at an unfulfilling, thankless job where I struggle to go through the motions for 9-10 hours and then come home.
There are times that I feel completely empty and apathetic. I feel dead inside; void, barren, wasted. There are brittle, dried-up spiritual tumbleweeds blowing through the dust of what's left of me. And I wonder what's wrong with me.....why I don't care about things that I should. Why things that really matter don't seem to....not so much any more. I feel like my heart is shrouded in Kevlar, barbed wire, and steel-wool, blocking any actual emotions. I wonder if maybe I'm just a broken person who won't ever get it right.
At the other end of the spectrum, there are days where I feel every emotion and hurt so exquisitely that I agonize over every word, every action until I drive myself crazy. I imagine slights and insults were none are intended. I let my feelings be hurt by things that don't even concern me. It's almost a strange emotional-thought-life paranoia... that every snide comment is about something I've done. That every vague, snarky Facebook post is about me. I get a sense that people are judging me, laughing at me, weighing me in the balance and finding me wanting; lacking. It's insanity. I know it's not "all about me." My thinking is skewed. It's ego-centric, prideful, and narcissistic......and I can't seem to stop these crazy thoughts. The harshest critic of them all? The one staring back at me in the mirror every day. And, my friends....that woman in the mirror can be SO mean!!!
She tells me how ugly I am. She tells me how unworthy I am. She whispers how I've gained some weight and how lazy and sinful I am. She laughs and points and says, "I told you so." She jeers and sneers and leers and shouts those accusations inside my head all day long. She tells me how awkward I am. How I don't fit in. How shallow I am for fretting about these silly things. The worst thing she does is show me exactly how blessed I am in spite of all the crazy thoughts I have.......and then howls with sinister laughter when I feel guilty about feeling the way I feel.
It's a very fast downward spiral into despair from there.
I am horrified to admit that I found the spotlight on depression in the aftermath of Robin William's horrible suicide captivating. I read every article that came across my news feed. I googled everything about depression and the cause and treatment; I was fascinated to read first-hand accounts....not articles written by professionals - but written by other depressed folks. I wanted most of all, I guess.... to know that I wasn't the only one. That I wasn't crazy for feeling this way. Don 't get me wrong..... I am not suicidal. I have no intention of harming myself or others....I could never even imagine hurting anyone else on purpose...and I'm way too much of a chicken to hurt myself. (However, I did muster up enough courage to manage to give myself a flu shot the other day.....and it kindda hurt, but that's not really the same thing, huh?. Haha!).
I am a nurse and I am always looking for objective, measurable data. There is an actual measurable stress scale and I read through and graded myself. Moving to another state, not having a job, looking for a job, starting a new job, selling a house, buying a house, leaving loved ones behind, a loved one's major illness and several ER trips and surgeries/procedures, fear of losing said loved one, not being happy or fulfilled in your job, being estranged from loved ones, wayward children, worry about a child who lost a job, worry about the horrible choices your adult children make that you can't control, a mother in poor health who also lost her job, it goes on and on and on...........and don't even LET me watch the evening news!!!! Suffice it to say that my stress score rates very high for this year.
The move to Florida brought me a mixed bag of emotions. It's a new, exciting adventure. A new chapter in our book...new places to explore, unknown things to discover, new friends to love.......a tropical, balmy climate, sunshine and palm trees; the amazing chance to live everyday where the rest of the country only gets to visit for vacation! A strange, new, and wondrous place. But to come to our new home, we had to leave another place called home. We had to leave dear friends, leave a job I loved, leave our son, leave my family, and leave the known. And that takes an extraordinary step of faith.
The thing I cling to every time we move is that my HOME is wherever my husband is. Because he owns my heart and where he is, well....that is where my heart is. He is my rock, my shelter, my better half, my best friend, my lover, my soul-mate......he is....well, he is simply my world. When he first started feeling bad this past spring, we thought it was just the stress and fatigue of moving....packing, unpacking, starting a new job, and the stress of buying/selling 2 houses were just getting to him. We aren't as young as we used to be.....and it was just so dang HOT and HUMID here in June and July...we chalked it up to stress and fatigue. Until around the end of July when we couldn't deny that something was terribly wrong. He was having trouble breathing, had to sit upright in bed to breathe, heart racing, blood pressure sky-high. The truth of how very sick he was knocked the breath out of me. When the cardiologist told us that he had Congestive Heart Failure and that his EF was only 20%, you could have pushed me off my chair with the brush of a feather. (To put this alarming news in perspective for my non-medical friends, an EF of 30% is the threshold for qualifying for Hospice services....he was at only 20%......well below that). The fact that he was able to get up every day and go to work is a testament to how stubborn and determined he is and to what a solid work ethic he has.
My usually vibrant, work-a-holic husband would stumble in from work every evening and crash on the couch....weary and completely exhausted. His color was more gray than pink. He had dark circles under his eyes. I tried my best to compensate for his overwhelming exhaustion (his heart was pumping so fast and erratically, it wasn't pumping enough blood for his brain and organs to function properly). I took over the yard-work; I took out the trash. I cooked for him and carried his plates to him on the couch. I would run upstairs to fetch things for him so he wouldn't have to go up and down the stairs. And I still felt helpless as I had to watch him suffer every day and there was very little I could do to relieve it. And that was scary. It shook me to the very core.
In the middle of undergoing multiple unsuccessful cardioversions, heart catheterizations, CT angiograms, TEE testing, echocardiograms, EKG's, blood tests, starting strong cardiac medications and blood thinners......he then developed acute appendicitis with a leaking appendix!!! He had to undergo an emergency appendectomy.....on my birthday, no less! He had his last (and most dangerous) procedure on 10-2-14.....a major cardiac ablation where the doctor burned away 4 large sections of heart tissue. The Electrophysiologist who did his procedure is one of the most successful in the entire South East US in his field. He told us going in that there was only a 75-80% chance it would work, but it was really his only choice for treatment. He told me that without treatment, his heart would hold out probably less than a year. So there was little choice. The procedure was planned and performed; it was an 8 1/2 hour long procedure. A few of the scariest hours of my entire life. Seeing him in so much severe pain after the procedure about did me in. The procedure seems to have worked, though we won't know for sure until about 2-3 months post-procedure. He is already feeling MUCH better and his heart-rate is now in the 50's......instead of the 180's. I am slowly seeing him come back to life...a little bit every day. His color improved; he started cracking jokes again. I knew he was doing better the day I came home to find him washing his car. (His car went almost 2 months without it's weekly wash....and if you know him at all you know he had to be SICK not to wash his car for 2 months).
The very real threat of losing the man I love was more than I could even fathom. Mentally, I knew that the mature, adult thing to do was to face that fear, talk about it, realistically make contingency plans in case it didn't work, and pray for the best. But I couldn't even allow myself to think in that direction. I spent many, many hours agonizing over the uncertainty and the fear. I would spend my lunch breaks at work, crying in my car where no one could see. I would take a long shower so I could cry at night.... without upsetting Steve with my tears. The things is, I couldn't even try to imagine any kind of life for me that didn't include him. One truth that came out of this entire episode.....I don't EVER want to take him for granted. I want to cherish every single memory. every moment, and squeeze every drop of joy out of our time together. Every night when I snuggle up to him to go to sleep, I breathe a prayer of thanksgiving for the precious gift of my husband.
I'm hoping that as we ease into fall, my moods will stabilize and life can get back to some sense of normalcy. Fall is my favorite time of year.....the cool respite after the burning hot summer. The slowing pace, the calm before the storm of the holidays. There aren't many changing leaves here in Sunny Florida. We've had some cooler, less humid mornings, but it's still in the upper 80's and sunny most afternoons. There aren't any boots or scarves or bonfires here. I can still go swimming and wear shorts and flip-flops. But I've pumpkin-spiced the heck out of my coffee, pancakes, cookies, cakes, pies, and I even managed to make pumpkin spice fudge.....trying to capture that elusive crisp feeling of "fallness".
I know there will be days when I am homesick. Days when I just want to hug my babies, and laugh with them like we did when they were little. There are days I would trade my right arm to have a hug from my Mamaw and a few more hours to just talk with her and tell her how very much I love her. There are times when I just need my Momma. There will always be stormy days when the clouds are threatening and the winds blow strong.
But there will also be days that are good. Days when my sun is shining and the birds are singing and the clouds in my skies are all fluffy and white. There will be days of laughter, days of joy....days of singing and days of blessing. And I will store them up in my mind. I will take pictures of the places, the faces, the things that bring me happiness and I will save them to count my blessings on the darker days. And they will remind me of how God is good and I am blessed. They will whisper that the hard times will pass and promise that the suffering of this world is only temporary.
And hopefully, I will find that I am falling back into being ME again. The good, the bad, the ugly, the sad.....the happy, the crazy, the paranoid, the creative, the whole jiggly mess that I am.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
My first few months of living in Florida (March to July)
Just realized that it's been almost 5 months since I've logged into my blog. It's not because I haven't had anything to say.....but mostly because we have been caught up in the hub-bub of moving and starting new jobs, finding a new house, closing on our house in Nashville, exploring our new surroundings and what-not. A lot has happened in just 5 months. Am I the same person I was then? Haha!! Of course I'm still ME, but then again, maybe not really. Changing circumstances have a way of shaping opinions, changing outlook, and doing an over-all make-over on a girl.
I have learned that I am a lot more resourceful and stronger than I thought I could ever be. I was able to move us into our condo almost single-handedly in the rain because Steve had to start his new job the day we could pick up our keys. Granted, I was only moving in our clothing and kitchen goods....but it was up to the third floor. And it was exhausting. But I did it!!
I had to start over and find a new job. It was difficult, scary, disconcerting, and a little bit weird to go to interviews after working my way up to my executive director position in my last company. I ended up taking a job that was 2 positions down from where I was with my company in Nashville, but after 2 weeks, I was offered a promotion and now I'm the Director of Clinical Services. I'm not the only one in charge of sinking/swimming before....which is reassuring and a lot less pressure. This company's corporate climate is so different from ANY where I've ever worked....it has been a very difficult adjustment for me. And for a Southern country girl like me ( for the record, Florida is NOT a Southern state, by the way...everyone here is pretty much from up-state _____, (somewhere north of the Mason-Dixon line)... one of the HUGE adjustments has been dealing with so many people (patients and co-workers) who are so straight-forward and seemingly rude. I am used to working with mostly Southern folks......folks who say yes ma'am and no sir and temper even the worst news with, "Bless your heart." Not so here.....it's a straight-shooting, take-no-prisoners way of communication. It pretty much "is what it is" and you just need to put on your big-girl panties and deal with the fall-out or else "forgettabouttit." That took a bit for me to get used to.....but the worst of the culture shock is behind me....I hope. They don't really mean to be rude, they just want to get to the point and not have to shoot the breeze and ask "How's your Momma and 'em" before getting down to business. I understand it better now. I had a lot of hurt feelings at first. (Can you tell I don't get out much?) Haha!
We also had to find a new church. We visited several....we LOVED the church my friend Cheryl attends "Exciting Idlewild Baptist", but it was over an hour away from our house (an hour with no traffic.....more than an hour each way with traffic), so that wasn't very practical....especially for choir and Bible Study groups. So.....we visited several churches in this area, but most are either very traditional (ie....a sea of white hair and a choir with an organ/piano/hymnals....a little of that is okay, but it's definitely NOT our favorite style of worship). We found some churches that were a bit....how should I say........too weird....for us. A few that were waaaaaaaaay too liberal, and a few not nearly liberal enough. We have settled for the last month at a fairly large Baptist church near my husband's office.....and it's only about a 15 minute drive. Very doable. We enjoy the preacher's messages and feel that he really does teach the Bible and he doesn't holler, scream, spit, do holy-aerobics, or offer a bland pop-psychology feel-good message. The music is a mixture of hymns and contemporary worship....which is just how I like it. I love the old hymns that I grew up with....but the Bible DOES admonish us to "Sing unto the Lord a New Song!" and after the 5th verse of singing "Just As I Am" like a funeral dirge.....I'm ready to embrace those new songs as well as dust off the golden oldies from time to time. I am looking forward to fall, when the church starts up their new small groups. They have been on a break for the summer...so we still don't feel "plugged in" or connected yet. We go to church with 5000 other people, listen to the message, worship....and leave. I thrive with relationships and I acutely feel the lack of that right now.
It really has been somewhat lonely after moving. It helps that my husband is not traveling and we are home together every evening. THAT part of things is heavenly. The sad part is not having anyone here yet that I can call up when I want to go and get a pedicure or ask who to see to have my hair done.....or to just vent or swap recipes with. Like I said, work friends here are very different than work friends I've had everywhere else.....they don't socialize outside of work and gawk at the idea of being Facebook friends with anyone from the office. That stumped me at first.....some of my strongest friendships have come out of working side-by-side with other women......I really miss that camaraderie. I miss my friends back in Nashville....I miss my family too. I miss my friends out in Texas....and in Chattanooga. I know that in time I will make friends here too.....I just assumed it would happen before I hit the 5 month mark.
We have met a few of our neighbors...but they mostly keep to themselves too. We live in a very small gated neighborhood....only about 12 houses....so there aren't that many neighbors. They tend to either be a lot older (retired) or a lot younger with small children. We're somewhere in the middle.
We love our new house though.....having a swimming pool has been interesting! It is a lot of work (especially for my sexy, hot pool boy: Steve Griffin)....but it is so wonderful to come in after a long hot day and jump in and cool off for a few minutes before starting supper. We've even started teaching Sophie how to swim. She's a reluctant swimmer. She likes it when she's in there....but is still a little anxious when we aren't right with her. Most of our boxes are emptied now.....but we still have a garage full of boxes and since this house doesn't have an attic, we are having to use our office as a 'storage room' of sorts for the Christmas stuff and other things that we use seasonally. We still don't have our pictures hanging on the wall yet. We keep saying we are going to tackle it, but have yet to make the commitment.
Well, that pretty much catches up with what's happened in the last 5 months. It's been a crazy kind of ride, that's for sure.
I have learned that I am a lot more resourceful and stronger than I thought I could ever be. I was able to move us into our condo almost single-handedly in the rain because Steve had to start his new job the day we could pick up our keys. Granted, I was only moving in our clothing and kitchen goods....but it was up to the third floor. And it was exhausting. But I did it!!
I had to start over and find a new job. It was difficult, scary, disconcerting, and a little bit weird to go to interviews after working my way up to my executive director position in my last company. I ended up taking a job that was 2 positions down from where I was with my company in Nashville, but after 2 weeks, I was offered a promotion and now I'm the Director of Clinical Services. I'm not the only one in charge of sinking/swimming before....which is reassuring and a lot less pressure. This company's corporate climate is so different from ANY where I've ever worked....it has been a very difficult adjustment for me. And for a Southern country girl like me ( for the record, Florida is NOT a Southern state, by the way...everyone here is pretty much from up-state _____, (somewhere north of the Mason-Dixon line)... one of the HUGE adjustments has been dealing with so many people (patients and co-workers) who are so straight-forward and seemingly rude. I am used to working with mostly Southern folks......folks who say yes ma'am and no sir and temper even the worst news with, "Bless your heart." Not so here.....it's a straight-shooting, take-no-prisoners way of communication. It pretty much "is what it is" and you just need to put on your big-girl panties and deal with the fall-out or else "forgettabouttit." That took a bit for me to get used to.....but the worst of the culture shock is behind me....I hope. They don't really mean to be rude, they just want to get to the point and not have to shoot the breeze and ask "How's your Momma and 'em" before getting down to business. I understand it better now. I had a lot of hurt feelings at first. (Can you tell I don't get out much?) Haha!
We also had to find a new church. We visited several....we LOVED the church my friend Cheryl attends "Exciting Idlewild Baptist", but it was over an hour away from our house (an hour with no traffic.....more than an hour each way with traffic), so that wasn't very practical....especially for choir and Bible Study groups. So.....we visited several churches in this area, but most are either very traditional (ie....a sea of white hair and a choir with an organ/piano/hymnals....a little of that is okay, but it's definitely NOT our favorite style of worship). We found some churches that were a bit....how should I say........too weird....for us. A few that were waaaaaaaaay too liberal, and a few not nearly liberal enough. We have settled for the last month at a fairly large Baptist church near my husband's office.....and it's only about a 15 minute drive. Very doable. We enjoy the preacher's messages and feel that he really does teach the Bible and he doesn't holler, scream, spit, do holy-aerobics, or offer a bland pop-psychology feel-good message. The music is a mixture of hymns and contemporary worship....which is just how I like it. I love the old hymns that I grew up with....but the Bible DOES admonish us to "Sing unto the Lord a New Song!" and after the 5th verse of singing "Just As I Am" like a funeral dirge.....I'm ready to embrace those new songs as well as dust off the golden oldies from time to time. I am looking forward to fall, when the church starts up their new small groups. They have been on a break for the summer...so we still don't feel "plugged in" or connected yet. We go to church with 5000 other people, listen to the message, worship....and leave. I thrive with relationships and I acutely feel the lack of that right now.
It really has been somewhat lonely after moving. It helps that my husband is not traveling and we are home together every evening. THAT part of things is heavenly. The sad part is not having anyone here yet that I can call up when I want to go and get a pedicure or ask who to see to have my hair done.....or to just vent or swap recipes with. Like I said, work friends here are very different than work friends I've had everywhere else.....they don't socialize outside of work and gawk at the idea of being Facebook friends with anyone from the office. That stumped me at first.....some of my strongest friendships have come out of working side-by-side with other women......I really miss that camaraderie. I miss my friends back in Nashville....I miss my family too. I miss my friends out in Texas....and in Chattanooga. I know that in time I will make friends here too.....I just assumed it would happen before I hit the 5 month mark.
We have met a few of our neighbors...but they mostly keep to themselves too. We live in a very small gated neighborhood....only about 12 houses....so there aren't that many neighbors. They tend to either be a lot older (retired) or a lot younger with small children. We're somewhere in the middle.
We love our new house though.....having a swimming pool has been interesting! It is a lot of work (especially for my sexy, hot pool boy: Steve Griffin)....but it is so wonderful to come in after a long hot day and jump in and cool off for a few minutes before starting supper. We've even started teaching Sophie how to swim. She's a reluctant swimmer. She likes it when she's in there....but is still a little anxious when we aren't right with her. Most of our boxes are emptied now.....but we still have a garage full of boxes and since this house doesn't have an attic, we are having to use our office as a 'storage room' of sorts for the Christmas stuff and other things that we use seasonally. We still don't have our pictures hanging on the wall yet. We keep saying we are going to tackle it, but have yet to make the commitment.
Well, that pretty much catches up with what's happened in the last 5 months. It's been a crazy kind of ride, that's for sure.
Friday, March 14, 2014
My first thoughts on Moving to Florida
Welp. The Griffins are on the move again. This time, we're headed south, to sunny Florida! The Sunshine state! Palm trees, beaches, sunshine, oranges, and humidity! My husband has accepted a position as a systems director of Clinical Documentation Improvement for a 10 Hospital system in the Tampa-St. Pete area....a great career move for him! And it means that he won't be traveling all over the US and he will be home with me EVERY. SINGLE. NIGHT!!! None of the 10 hospitals are more than an hour away from our central location! I am beyond thrilled to get my husband back!! My home is where HE is....no matter what state that may be.....it is a state of happiness! I'd make do in a cardboard box on a sidewalk if it meant we could be together every night....I love this man more than anything else in my life! Just seeing his face and feeling his arms around me after a long day makes everything else in my world fall into place.
It doesn't hurt that we're moving to Florida.......the place most people go for VACATION. Sunny, warm, temperate, close to the beach, near Disney World, lots of parks, lakes, and bays......what's not to love? It doesn't get as hot in Tampa as it does here in Nashville.....humid, yes.....but there's a breeze blowing in off the ocean most days and it rarely gets over 100 degrees! Palm trees, citrus trees, sandy soil, swimming pools, lanais, sunshine.........it sounds like paradise! Yes, I do know that there are fire ants, humidity, alligators, hurricanes, Palmetto bugs, tropical storms, sink holes, lots of older folk, tourists, and traffic.....but we have most of that stuff here too.
I will miss my friends; I will miss my current job.....things are going really well and I have invested a lot of blood, sweat and tears into my current office. However, I know that I will make new friends and find a new job there. We will find a new church home. I will miss my family, but hopefully they will come visit me. We will find new adventures and new places to explore. A new home, a new routine. A new me? Maybe!
Here's to the adventure and the joy of new discoveries!
It doesn't hurt that we're moving to Florida.......the place most people go for VACATION. Sunny, warm, temperate, close to the beach, near Disney World, lots of parks, lakes, and bays......what's not to love? It doesn't get as hot in Tampa as it does here in Nashville.....humid, yes.....but there's a breeze blowing in off the ocean most days and it rarely gets over 100 degrees! Palm trees, citrus trees, sandy soil, swimming pools, lanais, sunshine.........it sounds like paradise! Yes, I do know that there are fire ants, humidity, alligators, hurricanes, Palmetto bugs, tropical storms, sink holes, lots of older folk, tourists, and traffic.....but we have most of that stuff here too.
I will miss my friends; I will miss my current job.....things are going really well and I have invested a lot of blood, sweat and tears into my current office. However, I know that I will make new friends and find a new job there. We will find a new church home. I will miss my family, but hopefully they will come visit me. We will find new adventures and new places to explore. A new home, a new routine. A new me? Maybe!
Here's to the adventure and the joy of new discoveries!
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
My terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad evening..................
Well, I glimpsed a mere smidgin of my mortality tonight.....and ladies and gentlemen..... it wasn't pretty. It has been a hectic day at work.....akin to juggling cats while balancing a running chainsaw on the end of my nose with both hands tied behind my back while wearing rollerskates. It was a hectic day. And a gloomy day. It has rained, misted, sleeted, slushed, and was otherwise blustery, raw, and miserably cold. And then I came home. To an empty house. My husband is in sunny Florida this week for work and I'm lonely. So lonely. And grumpy. And gloomy. And morose. And suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder, Major Depression, and a trail-mix of many assorted psychiatric disorders such as OCD, paranoia, and bargain-basement low self-esteem sprinkled in....ya know, just for kicks. The internal storm was brewing....I knew I was headed for a major emotional melt-down and I could feel it hanging in the air along with the fluctuating barometric pressure. Sadly, I didn't disappoint myself.
I reheated some left-overs for dinner. The same meal I've had the last 2 nights.......when you've have bariatric surgery, you eat a LOT of left-overs.....one single meal seems to last for weeks. I'm sick of that chicken casserole, by the way. SICK.OF.IT. I never want to eat it again. It was really good the first time I ate it last week.....then it wasn't awful the second time, it was just okay last night, it was gross at lunch today.....and it was downright disgusting tonight. I didn't eat much of it before I flushed it down the garbage disposal in the sink and went foraging in the pantry for other foods. I didn't want anything "heavy".....and heck if I was going to go to the trouble to cook something for just me........so I decided to pop some popcorn in the microwave to eat while I browsed Pinterest and watched reruns of Big Bang Theory on TBS. So I did.
I'd eaten about a handful of the popcorn when I got choked on a kernel. It literally got lodged in my trachea so badly that I couldn't breathe. I tried to cough.....it came out as a desperate wheeze.....After a few attempts, I knew it had to go up or down.....else I was going to suffocate......so I coughed HARD. I coughed so hard....terribly hard......forcefully hard. At last, I dislodged the popcorn. But then I couldn't stop coughing....and then I coughed so hard I started gagging.....and then I coughed so hard I threw up......and when I coughed that hard, as I threw up....I simultaneously lost control of my bladder (Hey. I'm middle-aged woman who gave birth to a behemoth 10 pound baby boy 22 years ago,.....and the icing on the cake: I'd just taken my 3 water pills...so that pump was primed!! So don't judge me for my occasional stress incontinence! It happens.). So I jumped up from the couch......yes, my now vomit covered, urine soaked couch........and tried to run to the bathroom.....but I stepped on the end of my own sock, pulling off my sock and tripping myself.....causing me to fall onto the floor on my knee - giving me a carpet burn and a huge bruise to my knee-cap. I ended up in the floor - hysterically coughing and crying with one sock on, wet pants and a shirt full of popcorn vomit. What a FUN evening!!! I kept thinking....."This. This is how they will find my body!!!" and somehow, I found the will to pull myself up, limp to the bathroom, strip out of my disgusting clothing, shower myself, dry off, and re-dress in flannel pj's and a nice soft t-shirt and fuzzy warm socks. And I just needed to vent.......but I had no one here to complain to (except Sophie the Schnauzer....who listens, but it isn't quite as cathartic to tell her about it....she was there for the performance anyway).
I survived my ordeal......just a little worse for wear. My dog was very worried about me....she stood vigil while I was in the shower. I got the couched all sparkling clean and the carpet as well. The clothes are soaking and will be washed later tonight. All's well that ends well, I suppose. I'm just glad today is almost over. I don't want any more popcorn, that's for sure. I think I will just sit here a while........snuggle with my puppy dog......perhaps chance drinking a warm beverage once my tummy settles down.....and I will just go to bed early and hopefully get some sleep tonight. Steve will be home tomorrow night and my world will get exponentially better and brighter again. I was not made to eat popcorn alone. Too dangerous.
I reheated some left-overs for dinner. The same meal I've had the last 2 nights.......when you've have bariatric surgery, you eat a LOT of left-overs.....one single meal seems to last for weeks. I'm sick of that chicken casserole, by the way. SICK.OF.IT. I never want to eat it again. It was really good the first time I ate it last week.....then it wasn't awful the second time, it was just okay last night, it was gross at lunch today.....and it was downright disgusting tonight. I didn't eat much of it before I flushed it down the garbage disposal in the sink and went foraging in the pantry for other foods. I didn't want anything "heavy".....and heck if I was going to go to the trouble to cook something for just me........so I decided to pop some popcorn in the microwave to eat while I browsed Pinterest and watched reruns of Big Bang Theory on TBS. So I did.
I'd eaten about a handful of the popcorn when I got choked on a kernel. It literally got lodged in my trachea so badly that I couldn't breathe. I tried to cough.....it came out as a desperate wheeze.....After a few attempts, I knew it had to go up or down.....else I was going to suffocate......so I coughed HARD. I coughed so hard....terribly hard......forcefully hard. At last, I dislodged the popcorn. But then I couldn't stop coughing....and then I coughed so hard I started gagging.....and then I coughed so hard I threw up......and when I coughed that hard, as I threw up....I simultaneously lost control of my bladder (Hey. I'm middle-aged woman who gave birth to a behemoth 10 pound baby boy 22 years ago,.....and the icing on the cake: I'd just taken my 3 water pills...so that pump was primed!! So don't judge me for my occasional stress incontinence! It happens.). So I jumped up from the couch......yes, my now vomit covered, urine soaked couch........and tried to run to the bathroom.....but I stepped on the end of my own sock, pulling off my sock and tripping myself.....causing me to fall onto the floor on my knee - giving me a carpet burn and a huge bruise to my knee-cap. I ended up in the floor - hysterically coughing and crying with one sock on, wet pants and a shirt full of popcorn vomit. What a FUN evening!!! I kept thinking....."This. This is how they will find my body!!!" and somehow, I found the will to pull myself up, limp to the bathroom, strip out of my disgusting clothing, shower myself, dry off, and re-dress in flannel pj's and a nice soft t-shirt and fuzzy warm socks. And I just needed to vent.......but I had no one here to complain to (except Sophie the Schnauzer....who listens, but it isn't quite as cathartic to tell her about it....she was there for the performance anyway).
I survived my ordeal......just a little worse for wear. My dog was very worried about me....she stood vigil while I was in the shower. I got the couched all sparkling clean and the carpet as well. The clothes are soaking and will be washed later tonight. All's well that ends well, I suppose. I'm just glad today is almost over. I don't want any more popcorn, that's for sure. I think I will just sit here a while........snuggle with my puppy dog......perhaps chance drinking a warm beverage once my tummy settles down.....and I will just go to bed early and hopefully get some sleep tonight. Steve will be home tomorrow night and my world will get exponentially better and brighter again. I was not made to eat popcorn alone. Too dangerous.
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Words of Wisdom
So.........I spent part of my rainy, gloomy afternoon looking up inspirational quotes to get myself out of a dark place....I don't even know how I slide from Happy-Happy to Depths of Despair faster than a heart-beat.....but it happened again today. That quickly and without warning......it was like slamming into an oncoming train at full-speed. Nothing happened to trigger the descent....nothing awful, nothing scary, worrisome, or tragic. I just feel depressed. Not just sad....... but overwhelmingly defeated, depressed, unworthy of love, ashamed of being me, self-loathing......and it is literally just like flipping a switch. Part of the mind-boggling and shameful aspect of the whole thing is.....I don't feel entitled to feel the way I feel. I have no good reason; there is no justification or provocation for the drastic mood swing. The only thing I can chalk it up to is the simple fact that the devil is a liar and he's not just whispering these lies into my ear, he's shouting them from a mountain top with a megaphone and a state-of-the-art karaoke system....along with a refrain that sounds a lot like "nanny-nanny-boo-boo" or the more conventional "nee-ner-nee-ner." I wouldn't be surprised to see my short-comings broadcast on the Mega-Tron during half time at the Super Bowl tonight (They do have half-times in football....this much I know! That's when the bands play!! Do they have Mega-Trons too? I honestly don't watch football; I was a band-mom....the only part of the game I ever cared about was half-time.......and I'm completely clueless about every other aspect of the sport). Anyway....in addition to being sad, I'm also easily distracted. Oh look! A Squirrel!
Any way............I decided that it was NOT okay for me to feel this way. I had to stop it. I have the power to call out a liar for the thieving thief he is and say ENOUGH. STOP IT. I am who God says I am....and He says that I'm an overcomer. He ways that I've already won. HE says that I'm precious to HIM and that I matter enough to die for. I had to spend a lot of time praying over these promises this afternoon and saying them out loud. Sometimes, I have a problem believing even God and what He says about me......and like so many, many times before.....I had to claim that verse, "Lord, I believe! HELP my UNBELIEF!" as my very own.
I read through so many verses and then I started browsing Pinterest to find some quotes that might speak some truth to my broken heart. Here is a sampling of what I found. I think I might even write some of them on some pretty paper and post them in my closet, in my office, in my car......heck! I might as well tattoo some of them on my forehead. I need reminding a LOT. Sometimes I can be very hard-headed.
"Everything you do is based on the choices you made. It is not your parents, your past relationships, your job, the economy, the weather, an argument, or your age that is to blame. You and only you are responsible for every decision you make. Period."
"Don't mix bad words with your bad mood. You'll have many opportunities to change a mood, but you'll never get the opportunity to replace the words you spoke."
"There are two primary choices in life: To accept conditions as they are or accept the responsibility for changing them."
"Be selective in your battles; sometimes peace is better than being right."
"They may forget what you said, they may forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel."
"Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim."
"When something bad happens, you have three choices: You can either left it define you, left it destroy you, or you can let it strengthen you."
"You are responsible for how you feel, no matter what someone does to you. Remember you are always in control of your thoughts, so choose to feel confident and adequate rather than angry and insecure."
"On particullary rough days when I am sure I can't possibly endure, I like to remind myself that my track record for getting through bad days so far is 100% and that's pretty good."
"It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do."
"Be an encourager. The world has plenty of critics already."
"A moment of patience in a moment of anger can save many moments of regret."
"Every day may not be good - but there is good in every day."
"Our days are happier when we give people a bit of our heart, rather than a piece of our mind."
"Sometimes not saying anything is the bet answer. Silence can never be misquoted."
""It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful."
"Maturity begins when we're content to feel we are right about something without feeling the necessity to prove someone else wrong."
"We can do difficult things."
"The cure for anger is delay."
"Never trust your tongue when your heart is bitter."
"Courage does not always roar. Sometimes it's the quiet voice at the end of day that says, "Try again tomorrow."
"Blowing out someone else's candle does not make yours burn any brighter."
"Stars can't shine without darkness."
"Your life is a work of art; if you don't like what you see, paint over it."
"Jealousy comes from counting other's blessings instead of our own."
"What you allow is what will continue."
"You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine."
"Your mood should not dictate your manners."
"Growth is painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don't belong."
"Worrying doesn't stop the bad stuff from happening, but it does stop you from enjoying the good stuff."
"Know that taking a step backwards after taking a step forward is not a disaster; it's more like a cha-cha."
"Most people don't listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to respond."
"Anything that costs your integrity is too expensive. You can't afford it."
"Success isn't just about what you accomplish in your life; it's about what you inspire others to do."
"Before you judge someone else, stop and think about all that you have been forgiven."
"What we see depends mainly on what we look for."
"A relationship is like a house; when a lightbulb burns out, you don't run out and buy a new house. You simply fix the broken light bulb."
"It's not who you are that holds you back - it's who you think you aren't."
"Talking about our problems is our greatest addiction; break the habit. Talk about your joys instead!"
"I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance, but by our disposition."
"No matter how you feel: Get up. Dress up. Show up. Never give up. "
"Never left a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved."
"A party without cake is just a meeting." - Julia Childs (I know that this is not deep philosophically speaking - but I just love Julia Childs.....and cake!) :)
"Just because you are angry, doesn't mean you have the right to be cruel."
"Today will never come again; be a blessing. Be a friend. Encourage someone. Take time to care. Let your words heal and not wound."
"One kind word can change someone's entire day."
"Strength doesn't reside in having never been broken - but in the courage to grown strong in the broken places."
"Shame says that because I am flawed, I am unacceptable. Grace says that though I am flawed, I am still cherished."
"Whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report; if there be any virtue or praise, think on these things."
"Your life is a result of the choices you make. If you don't like your life, it's time to start making better choices."
"Don't feel bad if people remember you only when they need something. Feel privileged that you are like a candle that comes to their mind when there is darkness."
"Even the darkest hour only has sixty minutes."
"Forgive them. Even if they are not sorry."
"Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It's thinking of yourself less."
"The grass is greener where you water it."
"Conflict cannot survive without participation."
"Every person has at least one secret that would break your heart."
"Be kind to everyone. Everyone is fighting a battle."
"Love, peace, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control."
"When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that the fire department usually uses water."
"You are responsible for how you act, no matter how you feel."
"An ugly personality destroys a pretty face."
"Those who are the hardest to love need it the most."
"It's better to light a candle then to curse the darkness."
"When you are happy, you enjoy the music. When you are sad, you understand the lyrics."
"Live like there's no midnight." - Cinderella
"You can tell more about a man by what he says about others than by what others say about him."
"Don't be pushed by your problems; be led by your dreams."
"The pursuit of excellence is gratifying and healthy. The pursuit of perfection is frustrating, neurotic, and a terrible waste of time."
"You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world and there is still going to be somebody who hates peaches."
"Comparison is the thief of joy."
"Storms make trees take deeper roots."
"Integrity means basing your decisions on personal values rather than personal gain."
"There are three choices: Give up, give in, or give it all you've got!"
"Motivation doesn't last. Neither does bathing. That's why we have to do it every day."
"Envy is an illusion. When something good happens to someone else, it takes nothing away from you."
"Write your troubles in the sand and carve your blessings in stone."
"There is more mercy in Christ than there is sin in me."
"Raise your words, not your voice; it's the rain that grows the flowers, not the thunder."
"Treat everyone with politeness, even when they are rude. Not because they are kind, but because you are."
"The only person you should try to be better than is the person you were yesterday."
"The reason we are so insecure is because we are comparing our blooper reel and behind-the-scenes footage with everyone else's highlights reel."
"Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for a boat to save; they stand still and shine."
"Most of the pain we deal with is only in our thoughts."
"Follow your heart, but take your brain with you."
"Some people look for a beautiful place. Others make a place beautiful."
"A river cuts through rock not by strength, but by persistence."
"The food I eat is either the most powerful medicine, or the slowest kind of poison. It's up to me."
"Your most effective ministry will come out of your deepest hurts."
"Exercise should be about rewarding your body with endorphins and strength; not about punishing it for what you have eaten."
"If you speak when you are angry, you will make the best speech you will ever regret."
"If you want to feel rich, count all you have that money can't buy."
"At the end of a day, focus not on what's tearing you apart, but what's holding you together."
"You are free to chose, but you are not free from the consequence of that choice."
"Don't change yourself so that people will like you. Be the real you and the right people will love you for who you are."
"Peace doesn't mean that you aren't in a hard place with no trouble; it means that you are in the midst of those things but still have a calm in your heart."
"Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate."
"Our backgrounds and experiences influence who are, but we are ultimately responsible for who we become."
"Don't believe everything you think."
"People aren't either wicked or noble; they are like chef salads with good things and bad things chopped up and mixed together in a vinaigrette of conflict and confusion."
"A bad attitude is like a flat tire; you can't go anywhere until you change it."
"Your beliefs don't make you a better person. Your behavior does."
"Fear is a liar."
"Sometimes you have to do what you don't like to get to where you need to be."
"You can't start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one."
"Integrity is telling myself the truth; honesty is telling the truth to others."
"The bad news is that time flies. The good news is that you are the pilot."
"Life is a sequence of moments called "Now"."
"It's better to be a Proverbs 31 Woman than a Victoria Secret's Model."
"Don't let a bad day trick you into thinking you have a bad life."
"Be okay with where you are, even if you want to change it. You have to start somewhere."
"If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you; if you are determined to learn, no one can stop you."
"Don't try to hard to fit in; you were born to stand out."
"Stop wearing your wish bone where your back bone needs to be."
"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by the way he climbs a tree, he will spend his whole life believing that he is stupid."
"We can make ourselves miserable, or we can make ourselves strong; it's the same amount of work."
"The cause of most of man's misery is sacrificing what he wants most for what he wants now."
Well, it may not be the fount of all wisdom......but it did give my mind something to chew on for a while, and reading all these wise sayings (along with some earnest prayer) did pull me out of my Sunday afternoon blue funk. The truth is.......I really can't believe everything I think. I tend to think too much. Over think. And then I end up chasing my tail. So.....anyway. I think I will write some of these down as reminders for the darker days when Debbie Downer is my happier, more well-adjusted cousin and I'm beating my head against the concrete wall of manufactured and pretend discontent and disappointment.
Any way............I decided that it was NOT okay for me to feel this way. I had to stop it. I have the power to call out a liar for the thieving thief he is and say ENOUGH. STOP IT. I am who God says I am....and He says that I'm an overcomer. He ways that I've already won. HE says that I'm precious to HIM and that I matter enough to die for. I had to spend a lot of time praying over these promises this afternoon and saying them out loud. Sometimes, I have a problem believing even God and what He says about me......and like so many, many times before.....I had to claim that verse, "Lord, I believe! HELP my UNBELIEF!" as my very own.
I read through so many verses and then I started browsing Pinterest to find some quotes that might speak some truth to my broken heart. Here is a sampling of what I found. I think I might even write some of them on some pretty paper and post them in my closet, in my office, in my car......heck! I might as well tattoo some of them on my forehead. I need reminding a LOT. Sometimes I can be very hard-headed.
"Everything you do is based on the choices you made. It is not your parents, your past relationships, your job, the economy, the weather, an argument, or your age that is to blame. You and only you are responsible for every decision you make. Period."
"Don't mix bad words with your bad mood. You'll have many opportunities to change a mood, but you'll never get the opportunity to replace the words you spoke."
"There are two primary choices in life: To accept conditions as they are or accept the responsibility for changing them."
"Be selective in your battles; sometimes peace is better than being right."
"They may forget what you said, they may forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel."
"Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim."
"When something bad happens, you have three choices: You can either left it define you, left it destroy you, or you can let it strengthen you."
"You are responsible for how you feel, no matter what someone does to you. Remember you are always in control of your thoughts, so choose to feel confident and adequate rather than angry and insecure."
"On particullary rough days when I am sure I can't possibly endure, I like to remind myself that my track record for getting through bad days so far is 100% and that's pretty good."
"It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do."
"Be an encourager. The world has plenty of critics already."
"A moment of patience in a moment of anger can save many moments of regret."
"Every day may not be good - but there is good in every day."
"Our days are happier when we give people a bit of our heart, rather than a piece of our mind."
"Sometimes not saying anything is the bet answer. Silence can never be misquoted."
""It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful."
"Maturity begins when we're content to feel we are right about something without feeling the necessity to prove someone else wrong."
"We can do difficult things."
"The cure for anger is delay."
"Never trust your tongue when your heart is bitter."
"Courage does not always roar. Sometimes it's the quiet voice at the end of day that says, "Try again tomorrow."
"Blowing out someone else's candle does not make yours burn any brighter."
"Stars can't shine without darkness."
"Your life is a work of art; if you don't like what you see, paint over it."
"Jealousy comes from counting other's blessings instead of our own."
"What you allow is what will continue."
"You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine."
"Your mood should not dictate your manners."
"Growth is painful. Change is painful. But nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don't belong."
"Worrying doesn't stop the bad stuff from happening, but it does stop you from enjoying the good stuff."
"Know that taking a step backwards after taking a step forward is not a disaster; it's more like a cha-cha."
"Most people don't listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to respond."
"Anything that costs your integrity is too expensive. You can't afford it."
"Success isn't just about what you accomplish in your life; it's about what you inspire others to do."
"Before you judge someone else, stop and think about all that you have been forgiven."
"What we see depends mainly on what we look for."
"A relationship is like a house; when a lightbulb burns out, you don't run out and buy a new house. You simply fix the broken light bulb."
"It's not who you are that holds you back - it's who you think you aren't."
"Talking about our problems is our greatest addiction; break the habit. Talk about your joys instead!"
"I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance, but by our disposition."
"No matter how you feel: Get up. Dress up. Show up. Never give up. "
"Never left a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved."
"A party without cake is just a meeting." - Julia Childs (I know that this is not deep philosophically speaking - but I just love Julia Childs.....and cake!) :)
"Just because you are angry, doesn't mean you have the right to be cruel."
"Today will never come again; be a blessing. Be a friend. Encourage someone. Take time to care. Let your words heal and not wound."
"One kind word can change someone's entire day."
"Strength doesn't reside in having never been broken - but in the courage to grown strong in the broken places."
"Shame says that because I am flawed, I am unacceptable. Grace says that though I am flawed, I am still cherished."
"Whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report; if there be any virtue or praise, think on these things."
"Your life is a result of the choices you make. If you don't like your life, it's time to start making better choices."
"Don't feel bad if people remember you only when they need something. Feel privileged that you are like a candle that comes to their mind when there is darkness."
"Even the darkest hour only has sixty minutes."
"Forgive them. Even if they are not sorry."
"Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It's thinking of yourself less."
"The grass is greener where you water it."
"Conflict cannot survive without participation."
"Every person has at least one secret that would break your heart."
"Be kind to everyone. Everyone is fighting a battle."
"Love, peace, joy, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control."
"When tempted to fight fire with fire, remember that the fire department usually uses water."
"You are responsible for how you act, no matter how you feel."
"An ugly personality destroys a pretty face."
"Those who are the hardest to love need it the most."
"It's better to light a candle then to curse the darkness."
"When you are happy, you enjoy the music. When you are sad, you understand the lyrics."
"Live like there's no midnight." - Cinderella
"You can tell more about a man by what he says about others than by what others say about him."
"Don't be pushed by your problems; be led by your dreams."
"The pursuit of excellence is gratifying and healthy. The pursuit of perfection is frustrating, neurotic, and a terrible waste of time."
"You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world and there is still going to be somebody who hates peaches."
"Comparison is the thief of joy."
"Storms make trees take deeper roots."
"Integrity means basing your decisions on personal values rather than personal gain."
"There are three choices: Give up, give in, or give it all you've got!"
"Motivation doesn't last. Neither does bathing. That's why we have to do it every day."
"Envy is an illusion. When something good happens to someone else, it takes nothing away from you."
"Write your troubles in the sand and carve your blessings in stone."
"There is more mercy in Christ than there is sin in me."
"Raise your words, not your voice; it's the rain that grows the flowers, not the thunder."
"Treat everyone with politeness, even when they are rude. Not because they are kind, but because you are."
"The only person you should try to be better than is the person you were yesterday."
"The reason we are so insecure is because we are comparing our blooper reel and behind-the-scenes footage with everyone else's highlights reel."
"Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for a boat to save; they stand still and shine."
"Most of the pain we deal with is only in our thoughts."
"Follow your heart, but take your brain with you."
"Some people look for a beautiful place. Others make a place beautiful."
"A river cuts through rock not by strength, but by persistence."
"The food I eat is either the most powerful medicine, or the slowest kind of poison. It's up to me."
"Your most effective ministry will come out of your deepest hurts."
"Exercise should be about rewarding your body with endorphins and strength; not about punishing it for what you have eaten."
"If you speak when you are angry, you will make the best speech you will ever regret."
"If you want to feel rich, count all you have that money can't buy."
"At the end of a day, focus not on what's tearing you apart, but what's holding you together."
"You are free to chose, but you are not free from the consequence of that choice."
"Don't change yourself so that people will like you. Be the real you and the right people will love you for who you are."
"Peace doesn't mean that you aren't in a hard place with no trouble; it means that you are in the midst of those things but still have a calm in your heart."
"Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate."
"Our backgrounds and experiences influence who are, but we are ultimately responsible for who we become."
"Don't believe everything you think."
"People aren't either wicked or noble; they are like chef salads with good things and bad things chopped up and mixed together in a vinaigrette of conflict and confusion."
"A bad attitude is like a flat tire; you can't go anywhere until you change it."
"Your beliefs don't make you a better person. Your behavior does."
"Fear is a liar."
"Sometimes you have to do what you don't like to get to where you need to be."
"You can't start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one."
"Integrity is telling myself the truth; honesty is telling the truth to others."
"The bad news is that time flies. The good news is that you are the pilot."
"Life is a sequence of moments called "Now"."
"It's better to be a Proverbs 31 Woman than a Victoria Secret's Model."
"Don't let a bad day trick you into thinking you have a bad life."
"Be okay with where you are, even if you want to change it. You have to start somewhere."
"If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you; if you are determined to learn, no one can stop you."
"Don't try to hard to fit in; you were born to stand out."
"Stop wearing your wish bone where your back bone needs to be."
"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by the way he climbs a tree, he will spend his whole life believing that he is stupid."
"We can make ourselves miserable, or we can make ourselves strong; it's the same amount of work."
"The cause of most of man's misery is sacrificing what he wants most for what he wants now."
Well, it may not be the fount of all wisdom......but it did give my mind something to chew on for a while, and reading all these wise sayings (along with some earnest prayer) did pull me out of my Sunday afternoon blue funk. The truth is.......I really can't believe everything I think. I tend to think too much. Over think. And then I end up chasing my tail. So.....anyway. I think I will write some of these down as reminders for the darker days when Debbie Downer is my happier, more well-adjusted cousin and I'm beating my head against the concrete wall of manufactured and pretend discontent and disappointment.
Groundhog Stew, anyone?
Well, today is officially Groundhog Day. And they say that Old Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow....so that means 6 more weeks of winter. Anybody else up for some Groundhog stew?
You know how in the movie, Groundhog Day, Bill Murray has to live through the same winter day about a gazillion times? Yeah. Feels a lot like actual winter to me. Every. Single. Day.......cold, cold, cold. The alarm rings and I have to climb out of my warm bed to face yet another cold day.
Winter is so difficult for me.....Oh, it's fine until after Christmas....winter-wonderland, snowmen, North Pole, Santa, sleigh-rides, jingle bells, dashing through the snow and what-not......and then, come January, I'm pretty much done with it. The next two-three months are essentially just miserable for me.
I don't like being cold; I don't like goosebumps, chilblains, chapped lips, dry skin, runny noses, static cling, dead brown grass, naked trees, frost bite, shivering, scraping frost off my windshield, the lack of manual dexterity while wearing gloves, stiff achy joints, sharp, arctic winds, wearing 10 layers of clothing, or slipping on ice. I don't like short, gloomy days that start off gray - only to fade to even more lonely darkness at the early hour of 4pm.
Our forecast for tonight includes a "winter weather warning": Sleet, Ice, and Snow. Or as I like to think of it: Ick, Blah, and YUCK.
I have spent a good portion of today in protest of winter; dreaming of warmth.....of sunny, springtime days with balmy breezes and soft green grass that I can run through with bare feet. I even switched my winter body wash out for an 'Aruba Coconut' scent that comes in a bright teal blue that is the exact color of the Caribbean sea. I'm listening to the Beach Boys and singing along with "Cocomo" and dreaming of palm trees swaying in the sunshine and the lazy summer time. I'm longing for the joy of digging in my garden dirt to plant flowers, herbs and vegetables! I'm craving hunks of red watermelon that dribbles sweet juice down my chin with each luscious bite. I am already planning picnic lunches alongside bubbling streams on rocks with soft mossy green carpets with a canopy of lush green leaves overhead to give shelter from the sunshine. I swear I can feel the wind of my face during motorcycle rides and feel my hair whip around in the turbulent wind as we drop the top on the convertible and speed along country roads......where we can hear the crickets and katy-dids chirping along the fence rows. I can almost hear the cheery tune of the icee-man's music-box, announcing the sale of his sweet, icy drinks from the back of his pick-up truck. I can feel the pure joy of gleefully splashing barefooted into a puddle after a summer afternoon thunderstorm and see the magical sight of a thousand twinkling lightening bugs dancing in the soft evening shadows, enticing me to come play hide and seek with them. Daylight lasting until after 9pm beckons me to linger outside....to pull a few weeds, walk around the neighborhood ,or just sit on the porch and relax with a glass of ice tea.
But........according to folk-lore, we have six more weeks of winter weather to look forward to. Six more weeks of flannel pajamas, hot soup for dinner, fuzzy socks, snuggling under quilts, frosty windows that look lace-covered, and wooly sweaters. Six more weeks of cozy nights, nested at home to keep warm. Six more weeks of possible snow-days. Six more weeks of hot-cocoa and hot tea; six more weeks of sitting by the fireplace; time to dream and plan for spring. Maybe it won't be too bad, after all.
Meanwhile......anybody have any good recipes for groundhog meatballs? I've heard it tastes just like chicken!
You know how in the movie, Groundhog Day, Bill Murray has to live through the same winter day about a gazillion times? Yeah. Feels a lot like actual winter to me. Every. Single. Day.......cold, cold, cold. The alarm rings and I have to climb out of my warm bed to face yet another cold day.
Winter is so difficult for me.....Oh, it's fine until after Christmas....winter-wonderland, snowmen, North Pole, Santa, sleigh-rides, jingle bells, dashing through the snow and what-not......and then, come January, I'm pretty much done with it. The next two-three months are essentially just miserable for me.
I don't like being cold; I don't like goosebumps, chilblains, chapped lips, dry skin, runny noses, static cling, dead brown grass, naked trees, frost bite, shivering, scraping frost off my windshield, the lack of manual dexterity while wearing gloves, stiff achy joints, sharp, arctic winds, wearing 10 layers of clothing, or slipping on ice. I don't like short, gloomy days that start off gray - only to fade to even more lonely darkness at the early hour of 4pm.
Our forecast for tonight includes a "winter weather warning": Sleet, Ice, and Snow. Or as I like to think of it: Ick, Blah, and YUCK.
I have spent a good portion of today in protest of winter; dreaming of warmth.....of sunny, springtime days with balmy breezes and soft green grass that I can run through with bare feet. I even switched my winter body wash out for an 'Aruba Coconut' scent that comes in a bright teal blue that is the exact color of the Caribbean sea. I'm listening to the Beach Boys and singing along with "Cocomo" and dreaming of palm trees swaying in the sunshine and the lazy summer time. I'm longing for the joy of digging in my garden dirt to plant flowers, herbs and vegetables! I'm craving hunks of red watermelon that dribbles sweet juice down my chin with each luscious bite. I am already planning picnic lunches alongside bubbling streams on rocks with soft mossy green carpets with a canopy of lush green leaves overhead to give shelter from the sunshine. I swear I can feel the wind of my face during motorcycle rides and feel my hair whip around in the turbulent wind as we drop the top on the convertible and speed along country roads......where we can hear the crickets and katy-dids chirping along the fence rows. I can almost hear the cheery tune of the icee-man's music-box, announcing the sale of his sweet, icy drinks from the back of his pick-up truck. I can feel the pure joy of gleefully splashing barefooted into a puddle after a summer afternoon thunderstorm and see the magical sight of a thousand twinkling lightening bugs dancing in the soft evening shadows, enticing me to come play hide and seek with them. Daylight lasting until after 9pm beckons me to linger outside....to pull a few weeds, walk around the neighborhood ,or just sit on the porch and relax with a glass of ice tea.
But........according to folk-lore, we have six more weeks of winter weather to look forward to. Six more weeks of flannel pajamas, hot soup for dinner, fuzzy socks, snuggling under quilts, frosty windows that look lace-covered, and wooly sweaters. Six more weeks of cozy nights, nested at home to keep warm. Six more weeks of possible snow-days. Six more weeks of hot-cocoa and hot tea; six more weeks of sitting by the fireplace; time to dream and plan for spring. Maybe it won't be too bad, after all.
Meanwhile......anybody have any good recipes for groundhog meatballs? I've heard it tastes just like chicken!
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
There are worse things I could do.........than pin a pin or two..................
Okay. I will just admit it. I have a problem.
Hello. My name is Amanda. *(Hi, Amanda.) And I am addicted to Pinterest. Or I could go with......
Father, forgive me.....for I have pinned. It has been 30 seconds since my last pinning.
Yes - I am totally addicted to Pinterest. It started out innocently enough one afternoon at work when a friend said, "Hey! There is this really cool website I think you'd enjoy where you can put things you like on bulletin boards and save them!" It was the beginning of the obsession.
It started innocently enough with one or two boards....ideas for my craft room and recipes. It has grown from there to over 70 boards with over a million pins. I have immersed myself HEAVILY in pinterest.
I browse faithfully week after week, night after night....making my menus and planning my grocery list. I find craft projects and inspiration for home decor. I have a board for my dream-house, my garden, party ideas; I even decided that I had to break down my recipes into categories, for I could never find the ones I wanted because I had pinned too many!
It wasn't enough to just have boring boards named "chicken" or "fish" or "beef"........much to pedestrian. I had to come up with clever titles (some of which make no sense to anyone but me!) My current recipe boards include: "Pork- The Other White Meat!" "I feel like Chicken tonight!" and "Where's the Beef?" and "Something Fishy!" and "Saucy - like ME!" and "Fudge, Fudge, Call the Judge!" and "Patty Cakes and Pretty Pies" and "That's the way the COOKIE crumbles" and "There's an AP for that!" (Appetizers), and "Bread and Butter" and "Beautiful Beverages" and "Very Veggie" and "Tutti-Fruity" "Bread and Butter" and "Side Dishes" and "Puddins, Parfaits and Such" and "Breakfast Foods: Scones, Donuts, Muffins and such" and "Cupcakes!" and "Frutta Divine!" (wine) and "!Cinco de Mayo!" (all my Mexican food fixes!) and "Soups and Stews" and "Pasta" and "Crockpot Cookery!" and "Popcorn!" (yes - a whole board, dedicated to popcorn. Please don't judge.) and "Candyland!" and "IceScream 4 IceCream!" and "Sammies" and "Can-Can, I think I can!" (canning and preserving) and one whole board dedicated to coffee: "Ode to the Most Magical of all the Beverages!"
And those are just the ones dealing with food.
I have "Craft Room Ideas" and "Nerdy Stuff I Love" and "Downton Abbey" and "Big Bang Theory" and "Things I want to make" and "Picnics" and "Gardens" and "Travel" and "Things for my Kitchen" (Mostly dishes and kitchen gadgets that I covet), Porches, Odd houses "Home is where the Art is", "Inspiration" (mostly Bible verses and pithy, sage one-liners chock full of wisdom), I have one board that's nothing but pictures of Bento boxes!! Hundreds of artfully packed Bento boxes. I have one board for Japan (which, in conjunction with the Bento board - are nods to my daughter's favorite things); I have a board for pinning Marketing Ideas, a board for things on my bucket list, a board for aprons (because I love them) and books (because I really love them).
I have several holiday and seasonal boards: Spring, Summer, and Autumn (and I just realized that I'm evidently prejudiced against winter!!); I have boards for Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Valentine's Day, and even April Fool's Day.
I have a board for pinning the styles of clothing/jewelry and shoes I like (simply titled "My Style") and a board for all the places I've called home "The Green, Green Grass of Home" and one to celebrate my heritage "Southern as Sweet Tea!" I have one called poignantly "If I ever have Grand-babies some day...." and one called "Nursing" with tons of stuff about my profession. "How to Know How" on DIY things and "Homestyle" with ideas for home decor. "Is it Really Healthy" shows off pins of wacky diets and detox plans that probably don't work.....but it makes me happy to read them and wish they would. I have one whole board that is nothing but pictures of porches. Because porches are cool.
This brings me down to my 2 favorite boards......probably the two with the most pins, as well. I have one board called, "Just for Funnsies" where I pin jokes, e-cards, cartoons, and basically, anything that cracks me up. And I do loooooooove to laugh!!
The other board is named "Joie de Vivre!" (The Joy of Life!) and onto this board, I pin ANYTHING that makes me happy. There are no rules.....it can be completely random, but if it makes me feel happy inside, I pin it! These are my 2 "GO-TO" boards when real life gets to be too much for me. On bad days when I am grumpy, irritable, out of sorts and whiny......I can scroll through all of these insanely sunny and happy images and it will literally turn my day around!! Talk about some powerful voodoo, huh?
Some of the things on my Joie board would make you scratch your head and wonder WHY on earth would this woman pin this picture on a Joy board? The answer is simple: It makes me happy. I don't know why. I don't care why...it just DOES. There are very random and diverse images on my Joie board - including (oddly enough) lots of pictures of chickens. I have NO idea why seeing pictures of chickens brightens my day, it just does....and that is enough. I'm afraid to analyze it too much. I don't want to spook away the magic of it! I don't know the deep psychological root of the cause, but I cannot look at pictures of chickens and silly old roosters without cracking a grin.
Kitties, Puppies and Baby Elephants all find a place in my Joie! Pictures of little kids AND puppies or kittens = Happy, Hapy Kryptonite! Little kids dancing, old ladies laughing, sunlight shining through trees, snow-covered fields, riots of wild-flowers, baby feet, old men's hands, church windows, fireplaces aglow, fuzzy socks, rustic old barns, a kid splashing in a puddle, dew drops, a foggy morning, a good book and a mug of tea, clothes hanging on a clothes line, a little girl praying, a full moon over a mountain, birds in a nest, a swing hanging from an oak tree, horses in the snow, a monkey smoking a cigarette, a pig wearing leg-warmers, fresh baked bread, a squirrel drinking lemonade from a straw, a canoe on a peaceful lake, daddies and daughters, a llama riding in a taxi-cab, little boys in cowboy boots, a manual typewriter, a bale of hay........I could keep going for a gazillion more items (and it would continue to sound like "A Few of My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music!) ......but essentially.......just about anything that makes me happy! When I scroll through these pictures, my heart lifts a little......and it carries the corners of my frown upwards for the ride! Even on my saddest days, even when my heart is breaking........there is a reminder of all the good and perfect gifts in life. The simplest joys. The little things. Daily Blessings that we take for granted.
They say that time you enjoy wasting is not time wasted.......I prefer to think of my pinning as constructively saving up recipes and smiles and sunshine......and storing them electronically for those rainy, sad days that are bound to come along. So yes.....I do spend an inordinate amount of time "pinning stuff" and scrolling down page after page of images and some of it is ridiculous and silly.....some of it is raunchy and not very nice.....some of it is useful, some of it is downright hilarious and some of it is just fluffy entertainment. Some of it is informative and some of it instructive. Some of it is inspiring!
In the words of Rizzo (one of my favorite characters from Grease.....an unlikely heroine, I know...but I can't help but love her moxie.) "There are worse things I could do....."
Hello. My name is Amanda. *(Hi, Amanda.) And I am addicted to Pinterest. Or I could go with......
Father, forgive me.....for I have pinned. It has been 30 seconds since my last pinning.
Yes - I am totally addicted to Pinterest. It started out innocently enough one afternoon at work when a friend said, "Hey! There is this really cool website I think you'd enjoy where you can put things you like on bulletin boards and save them!" It was the beginning of the obsession.
It started innocently enough with one or two boards....ideas for my craft room and recipes. It has grown from there to over 70 boards with over a million pins. I have immersed myself HEAVILY in pinterest.
I browse faithfully week after week, night after night....making my menus and planning my grocery list. I find craft projects and inspiration for home decor. I have a board for my dream-house, my garden, party ideas; I even decided that I had to break down my recipes into categories, for I could never find the ones I wanted because I had pinned too many!
It wasn't enough to just have boring boards named "chicken" or "fish" or "beef"........much to pedestrian. I had to come up with clever titles (some of which make no sense to anyone but me!) My current recipe boards include: "Pork- The Other White Meat!" "I feel like Chicken tonight!" and "Where's the Beef?" and "Something Fishy!" and "Saucy - like ME!" and "Fudge, Fudge, Call the Judge!" and "Patty Cakes and Pretty Pies" and "That's the way the COOKIE crumbles" and "There's an AP for that!" (Appetizers), and "Bread and Butter" and "Beautiful Beverages" and "Very Veggie" and "Tutti-Fruity" "Bread and Butter" and "Side Dishes" and "Puddins, Parfaits and Such" and "Breakfast Foods: Scones, Donuts, Muffins and such" and "Cupcakes!" and "Frutta Divine!" (wine) and "!Cinco de Mayo!" (all my Mexican food fixes!) and "Soups and Stews" and "Pasta" and "Crockpot Cookery!" and "Popcorn!" (yes - a whole board, dedicated to popcorn. Please don't judge.) and "Candyland!" and "IceScream 4 IceCream!" and "Sammies" and "Can-Can, I think I can!" (canning and preserving) and one whole board dedicated to coffee: "Ode to the Most Magical of all the Beverages!"
And those are just the ones dealing with food.
I have "Craft Room Ideas" and "Nerdy Stuff I Love" and "Downton Abbey" and "Big Bang Theory" and "Things I want to make" and "Picnics" and "Gardens" and "Travel" and "Things for my Kitchen" (Mostly dishes and kitchen gadgets that I covet), Porches, Odd houses "Home is where the Art is", "Inspiration" (mostly Bible verses and pithy, sage one-liners chock full of wisdom), I have one board that's nothing but pictures of Bento boxes!! Hundreds of artfully packed Bento boxes. I have one board for Japan (which, in conjunction with the Bento board - are nods to my daughter's favorite things); I have a board for pinning Marketing Ideas, a board for things on my bucket list, a board for aprons (because I love them) and books (because I really love them).
I have several holiday and seasonal boards: Spring, Summer, and Autumn (and I just realized that I'm evidently prejudiced against winter!!); I have boards for Christmas, Easter, Halloween, Valentine's Day, and even April Fool's Day.
I have a board for pinning the styles of clothing/jewelry and shoes I like (simply titled "My Style") and a board for all the places I've called home "The Green, Green Grass of Home" and one to celebrate my heritage "Southern as Sweet Tea!" I have one called poignantly "If I ever have Grand-babies some day...." and one called "Nursing" with tons of stuff about my profession. "How to Know How" on DIY things and "Homestyle" with ideas for home decor. "Is it Really Healthy" shows off pins of wacky diets and detox plans that probably don't work.....but it makes me happy to read them and wish they would. I have one whole board that is nothing but pictures of porches. Because porches are cool.
This brings me down to my 2 favorite boards......probably the two with the most pins, as well. I have one board called, "Just for Funnsies" where I pin jokes, e-cards, cartoons, and basically, anything that cracks me up. And I do loooooooove to laugh!!
The other board is named "Joie de Vivre!" (The Joy of Life!) and onto this board, I pin ANYTHING that makes me happy. There are no rules.....it can be completely random, but if it makes me feel happy inside, I pin it! These are my 2 "GO-TO" boards when real life gets to be too much for me. On bad days when I am grumpy, irritable, out of sorts and whiny......I can scroll through all of these insanely sunny and happy images and it will literally turn my day around!! Talk about some powerful voodoo, huh?
Some of the things on my Joie board would make you scratch your head and wonder WHY on earth would this woman pin this picture on a Joy board? The answer is simple: It makes me happy. I don't know why. I don't care why...it just DOES. There are very random and diverse images on my Joie board - including (oddly enough) lots of pictures of chickens. I have NO idea why seeing pictures of chickens brightens my day, it just does....and that is enough. I'm afraid to analyze it too much. I don't want to spook away the magic of it! I don't know the deep psychological root of the cause, but I cannot look at pictures of chickens and silly old roosters without cracking a grin.
Kitties, Puppies and Baby Elephants all find a place in my Joie! Pictures of little kids AND puppies or kittens = Happy, Hapy Kryptonite! Little kids dancing, old ladies laughing, sunlight shining through trees, snow-covered fields, riots of wild-flowers, baby feet, old men's hands, church windows, fireplaces aglow, fuzzy socks, rustic old barns, a kid splashing in a puddle, dew drops, a foggy morning, a good book and a mug of tea, clothes hanging on a clothes line, a little girl praying, a full moon over a mountain, birds in a nest, a swing hanging from an oak tree, horses in the snow, a monkey smoking a cigarette, a pig wearing leg-warmers, fresh baked bread, a squirrel drinking lemonade from a straw, a canoe on a peaceful lake, daddies and daughters, a llama riding in a taxi-cab, little boys in cowboy boots, a manual typewriter, a bale of hay........I could keep going for a gazillion more items (and it would continue to sound like "A Few of My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music!) ......but essentially.......just about anything that makes me happy! When I scroll through these pictures, my heart lifts a little......and it carries the corners of my frown upwards for the ride! Even on my saddest days, even when my heart is breaking........there is a reminder of all the good and perfect gifts in life. The simplest joys. The little things. Daily Blessings that we take for granted.
They say that time you enjoy wasting is not time wasted.......I prefer to think of my pinning as constructively saving up recipes and smiles and sunshine......and storing them electronically for those rainy, sad days that are bound to come along. So yes.....I do spend an inordinate amount of time "pinning stuff" and scrolling down page after page of images and some of it is ridiculous and silly.....some of it is raunchy and not very nice.....some of it is useful, some of it is downright hilarious and some of it is just fluffy entertainment. Some of it is informative and some of it instructive. Some of it is inspiring!
In the words of Rizzo (one of my favorite characters from Grease.....an unlikely heroine, I know...but I can't help but love her moxie.) "There are worse things I could do....."
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