The search continues

So what have I figured out in a week's time? A fat lotta nothing! lol No, no, let me try to think more objectively for a moment...

1. Despite my love for and knowledge of animals I probably shouldn't work in any field having to do with them. My guidelines on how they should be treated and kept even at a minimum are strict and SOMEONE will always fall short turning things quickly into a big mess.

2. I've done retail type jobs to death and though I seem to be good at selling it just doesn't hold my interest. It becomes too much of a grind. It starts out great as I learn the products! My whole sales technique is to learn the products inside, out, and compared to others then simply tell customers about them honestly, the good, bad and ugly. I don't do pressure sales, period, but I do like partnering with a customer to help them find what's really right for them. I think I need something more mentally stimulating. Plus in sales it doesn't matter how much you sell, there's always a push to sell more and more and more which starts nudging you back towards the high pressure approach. What on earth is wrong with gaining in customer loyalty and satisfaction to count on word of mouth bringing in new customers for that sales growth? It's slower. That's it! The bosses want bigger profits and they want it now, now, now even if it means having to stay on that treadmill because you lose out in customer loyalty and satisfaction in the long run.

3. Working in restaurants seems to be even worse than retail, mentally void.

4. I tried a few plant nurseries thinking that with all there is to learn about gardening/landscaping and such it'd certainly be mentally satisfying enough but if someone mistreats a plant somehow I just don't get quite the same kind of hacked off as I do if it was an animal. Unfortunately there was so much to do simply maintaining the stocked plants that I never really got that mental stimulation and it too turned into a grind of water, pick off the dead bits, repot this, find a way to display that...blah.

5. I did daycare once and in some ways I simply loved it, especially when I was switched over to the babies that were about 12 months old! No matter what kind of bad mood I'm in nothing can magically turn it right around instantly like a baby! That particular job ended up having the same drawback as working with animals did, though. I could not, would not abide someone not treating those children as I thought they should be treated! No one at that daycare seemed to agree with me but I still say that keeping a boy in the 2-3 yr old room in a playpen all day every day so you don't have to deal with him is abusive.

Two ideas that I keep coming back to are nursing and psychology. Psychology I've kind of put on the back burner just because I don't know if I'm ready to go through quite that much school at my age! Nursing, on the other hand, would only take a minimum of 2 yrs of school and opens up realms of possibilities. Home care? Pediatrics? Pallative/Hospice? I volunteered for a Hospice for awhile before I moved away and found that caring for someone that is dying didn't bother me at all. I would feel pangs of sadness, of course, but I also felt great to be able to give some joy and comfort to people like that. But would it really fulfill me?

What about Ob/Peds? It would be a huge, awesome thrill to help babies come into the world, care for them, help new parents learn what to do, and all!! That just sounds like the best thing in the world to me!! But could I handle the dark side of the job where we lose a baby? It might help exorcise my own demons about the loss of Jonathan and who could sympathize with a woman who's just lost a baby better than another woman who has also lost a baby? But it might just rip that wound in me wide open again every single time. I just don't know which! What would I do if I didn't approve of how someone was handling a baby? What if I did something accidently that lead to the injury or even death of a baby??? Could I handle that??? It sounds like a possible minefield to me!

Pallative/Hospice type nursing wouldn't hold the same kind of risks for me but it wouldn't compare to the possible joys of Pediatric nursing either. Surely the joys would make the risk worth it? In that it would be similar to my days of animal rescue, at the sad, hard times you hold tight to the good times and remind yourself that you can only do what you can do, you have to hold on long enough to reach that light at the end of the tunnel because there'll be more there that really need you. Or am I just in the wrong ballpark completely with this? Am I idealizing the role of a nurse? I know that a lot of the job would be the mundane, dirty, hard stuff like changing soiled sheets, giving meds, paperwork, getting barfed on...but ANY job is going to have it's less than fun and pleasant side! Maybe I should push the idea of nursing aside and think about other options but what? Am I simply asking that to put off making an actual decision?

Searching

What am I still looking for? I'm content with what I have in life so far. A family, home of our own, my horses, those are all the things that I really wanted in life but there's something still missing. I've searched my heart and mind more times than I can count and sometimes I'm not sure but sitting here at the computer right at this moment it's clear that there's something else. And it's not the usual "I want/I need" type of thing because I could easily list loads of those! I'd like my van fixed so that we have two working vehicles again. I'd like to go to Pagan Spirit Gathering this year. I really want to do some more scuba diving. I need to figure out why these things from my past still hurt like they do, get some closure and put it behind me. But no, I think there's still some fundemental element that I need to be fulfilled. I believe what I'm looking for is a job!

So what's stopping me? I don't just want a job. I want to really do something that fills in that last spot in me! But what? That's the biggest thing holding me back, I think, not knowing what job to do! All my life right up till college the only thing I wanted to do was be a veterinarian. After working in a pet shop, running a rescue, and all the other animal related things I've done in life I'm actually grateful that I didn't become a vet! Having such a big part of my life subjecting myself to seeing an endless parade of animals suffering from ignorance, abuse, and neglect just might have ruined me. As much as I love animals and as qualified as I am to work with them in a variety of fields I really think that it's best I don't include them in my professional life.

There's things now and then that grab my interest, becoming a Bradley instructor , scuba instructor, certified hypnotist, pet sitter...that list is darn near endless but my interest in them fades out. Since I don't have to work at all in order for us to stay afloat financially I want to find something that I love! I want to be one of those blessed people that get up in the morning feeling happy that they get to go into work! So what would I enjoy that would hold my interest long term? I think it might be people.

People are endlessly fascinating to me but they also scare me to death and I worry that I don't get along well with them. I don't know why though! For instance, we've now gone to this new church in Austin three or four times and everything's great so far. We've met quite a few very friendly, interesting people which I've enjoyed immensely! I like them just fine and they seem to like me just fine but I know that the longer I'm around these same people the closer I get to a day when I don't like them and they don't like me for some reason. Maybe I'm too strange. Maybe I don't accept other's shortcomings easily enough. Maybe I'm not confident enough in myself. Hmmm this is something I'll have to really think about. I'll letcha know more about it next Tuesday.

The dance

I've only just realized it's this dance I do, tell some secrets, maybe get brave enough to peek out of the closet, then, scared to find myself so vulnerable, run to bury myself back in the deepest, darkest corner of the closet I can find. When the world doesn't end I start to wonder why. I get curious about what's really going on out there. So I creep forward to nervously peer out again. In times past I just might decide not to look out of the same peephole. I'd see what the view from a different one was like. This time I recognized the steps in this dance and thought I'd use this peephole again to see if I can see any of the same people. Eh the bottom line is I missed some of you and thought I should at least drop in an update instead of running away =)

Son #1 is grounded for bad grades which is really unusual for him. He's normally the type of student who's worst grades are usually Bs so the first time we let him slide with a warning to fix it. This time we had no choice.

Son #2 has dodged a bullet labelled "sexual harassment" only because he's never been in Trouble at school before and the girl's dad isn't pressing charges. You know, I fully understand that they were all just messin around writing and drawing on each other and the girl allowed him to draw on her back but did he have to draw a penis and balls with an arrow pointing down at her butt saying "insert here"??? I know, I know, all he thought was it would get a few laughs from the other kids and the girl wasn't upset about it but it was still wrong on many levels. Needless to say he's grounded like we've never grounded a child before this.

Son #3 is STILL grounded for bad grades!

Thank the Divine, Son #4 is, at least as of this very moment, not in trouble!

Son #3 is facing heart surgery. He's had SVT for some time now but a week or so ago it acted up twice in one weekend while they were digging a fire pit outside and the second one we had to take him to the hospital to get his heartrate back down. Since it seems to be getting worse instead of him growing out of it they did an exam and tests to see if this surgery is an option. We're coordinating with the doctors right now to get it done as soon as we can. They'll run a line up the artery somewhere around the hip/groin area up to his heart and simply burn out the extra nerve that's causing the problem. His mom tried to block having it done but quite frankly we just ran right over her on this one. Of course there's SOME risk, there always is no matter how tiny, but it truly is a very small risk and in return he may never, ever have to deal with his heart racing painfully out of control like this ever again. HE wants it done! We think it's worth it.

Me? I've just been doing a lot of the usual, really. Exercising, taking care of critters, wrangling kiddos, cleaning house, playing World of Warcraft... The horses are coming along nicely! I thought poor hubs was going to have a heartattack yesterday when I casually announced that I was going out to ride the gelding. After some initial nervousness though everything was just fine just like I knew it would be and it was a fun ride.

Today it actually snowed enough and stuck long enough to do something with it! Two snows in one winter??? So much for global warming. Hubs and I made loads of snowballs at strategic locations, waited till the boys got off the bus, then started a massive snowball fight. After we started to make a snowman but someone put an odd lump of snow on him so he became a snow-woman. Son #1 then went off to make a snowman he could pummel to bits while I started on a whole crowd of little snowmen in a tribute to Calvin and Hobbes. Hubs went off back to show Son #3 how to make a snow fort and Son #3 decided instead to make a snow angel on the trampoline. I'll have to go out later to finish my C&H tribute but we were finally frozen enough to run inside for awhile to warm up with some nice hot cocoa. *sigh* I may hate the cold but I love the memories you can make with it. The only thing missing is my other two boys.

My first fail

Today I'm making this short and sweet for ya! I stumbled over this website a few nights ago and got so hooked into it that I stayed up hours past when I'd planned to go to bed because I wanted to see every single picture. They're cute! They're cuddley! They're downright hilarious! Today I give you My First Fail.

My birthday weekend

My birthday isn't for a few days yet but since this was a child free weekend we kinda considered this my birthday weekend anyway. Saturday I really did a whole lot of nothing! Most of the day I played, yep, WoW but I did cook dinner. When I was growing up my father made a tuna casserole that I really crave sometimes. It's just a warm, filling, comfort food for me. Unfortunately all four children uncharacteristically agree on this one thing if not many others and that's they HATE tuna casserole! Now hubs and I are the sort of parents that choose what goes on the dinner plates and the children can like it or lump it but we don't go out of our way to torture the poor things either so tuna casserole is something we save for when the boys are all away. With all of them at their other parent's houses this weekend that's exactly what we decided to have and it was so good!

We had planned to go to this UU church in Austin that we've gone to the last two or three Sundays again this morning expecting a newcomer's orientation but I also wanted to go check out the Wildflower UU church. When we looked the newcomer's orientation wasn't listed on the website of the church we've been visiting but the Wildflower church was having one so we instantly decided to give the Wildflower's a go. Despite mixed feelings about the whole day I'm really glad we did!

The day started out really rough! I got up a bit extra early because I was in the mood to go out as an actual girl today, dress up a bit, curl the hair, the whole thing. First I just couldn't feel good about any of the clothes I tried out. I've always been a very tiny woman so with this extra weight around my middle right now none of my clothes fit right! But I persevered and found something that I thought was good and went off to put the now hot curlers in my hair...only to find that it's been so darn long since I played with curlers I've lost the knack of it somehow. The darn things just didn't want to stay in place, bits of hair kept unwinding itself to stick out every which way, and as I'm struggling with this it was time to wake hubby up.

It should be pretty clear by now that I love my husband like crazy but perfect he's not and one of his faults is he is a pain to get up earlier than noon! He sleeps through alarms so I have to wake him up myself and I like to wake people up nice and soft. It's nasty to get jerked or startled out of sleep suddenly! So I woke him up and after a little bit of gentle coaxing for him to wake up, wake up, no, REALLY wake up went back to fighting with curlers but stayed alert because he has a habit of falling back to sleep. When I didn't hear him get out of bed in a few minutes I gave a slightly frustrated "sweetie, PLEASE get up!" to which he snarled back " I AM up!!" Oh boy. It was like he flipped my bitch switch from zero to "she's gonna blow!!" all at once! He stood in the bathroom doorway for a minute while I ripped the curlers back out of my hair growling under my breath. He apologized which I really did appreciate deep down but at that moment it was going to take me a minute to come back down so I gave him the bathroom, went to just tie my hair back in a tail, and change clothes to something plainer and simpler. By then the angry had gone out of me and I started crying!

I went back to the bathroom, softly told him to come back to bed, stripped and climbed back into bed cuddling down to comfort myself. He came over to me and knelt by the bed to pet my hair concerned about my sudden turn around. I told him that it simply wasn't worth it to me. I wanted to have a nice weekend with him and if that meant sleeping late together then doing whatever around the house that's what I'd take. I was tired and frustrated and scared about going to a new place anyway and just wanted to go back to sleep but I also reasoned that the church wasn't going anywhere so we could try again next week. But he kissed, petted, coaxed and pleaded with me asking me not to let one buttheaded moment from him spoil the day until I gave in.

We got there a few minutes late after an hour and a half drive but settled down to see what we'd see. The group was much larger than I'd anticipated but otherwise pretty much what I expected to see. The reverend was an extremely striking woman, very slim with short cropped hair and an easy magnetism with a generous dash of a sense of humor. I really liked her. Just after the service we called ahead to the house where the orientation was being held to make sure that they had room for a pair of sudden drop ins but they assured us that it was a case of the more the merrier. We were sure that'd be the case but thought it would be more polite to call ahead just to be on the safe side since we hadn't been there before to sign up in advance.

It was a very lovely house where we were welcomed warmly, pointed to refreshments, bathtrooms, and told to make ourselves at home. Just glancing around I felt like a little kid wanting to explore everything! I noticed right off several things that indicated we shared some common interests with a sunroom full of new plants coming along, a loom with a partly finished weave on it, display shelves full of rocks, shells, and fossils, and lots of books including some on foreign languages. We chatted, my social phobia kicked in pretty bad making me feel extremely awkward and like I was running on and on to avoid uncomfortable silences, but I enjoyed it nonetheless and tell myself that no one but me probably thought me a freakish blabber mouth. There were several people there in particular that caught my attention in some way as someone that I might really like to get to know better. Overall we really felt like this group might end up being a better fit for us personally than the other church so we'll definitely be going back at least a few times to explore how we and they may fit into each other's lives.

Then we went to the mall where I bought a dress I think I really like and a few pair of fun earrings. I'm trying to relearn how to be a girl and social! When we got home hubs asked if I would put on the dress to show him while he went to feed the horses. When he saw it he had his doubts for a minute. I adjusted it thinking it might need a blouse of some sort under it to be considered decent enough by the social standards which had my confidence starting to sneak out on me but it's a dress that fits with ties behind the neck and one in the back so shifting everything around, tightening this and loosening that, I managed to cover more of my chest and the top of my panties while keeping it secure and comfy. When he drew me down on the bed with him for a little cuddle we discovered a bonus too, it's a very silky but light, thin material so the more he petted me the more he wanted to pet of me which heated up rather quickly!! The dress didn't stay on very long then we had a nice nap snuggled up together. So there were some ups, downs, and bumps in the road today but I'd call the whole weekend a success.

Random thoughts

We are childless for the entire weekend! That's a good and bad thing for me. On the one hand I miss my babies to the point of almost physical pain but on the other hand it is really nice to have all that responsibility lifted from me for just a little while. So I'm both ok and a little depressed at the same time.

Normally on a Saturday I'd be doing laundry while playing WoW because the game has a little alarm clock so I can relax between loads without losing track of time. Not today though. Today the silly breaker won't stay on so I'm stuck until the hubs makes a fix that'll stick! We've replaced that one breaker several times over the almost two years we've lived here. The wiring in this place is just weird!

My father sent me a card with a little birthday money in it. He was hell to live with, drunk, volatile, verbally/emotionally abusive on his best days and sometimes physically abusive. I cut little holes in the side of my matress to hold a few knives and practiced drawing them sometimes just in case he got really crazy. Our bedrooms didn't have locks on the doors but I discovered that if I pushed sneakers under the door really tight it made it hard enough to open the door that it might buy me a few seconds. Isn't that crazy? A child self teaching tactics like these? But these particular problems of the past are easy to talk about and don't really hurt or make me angry anymore. I've dealt with these, carefully sifted through them, reached my conclusions, and buried the bodies. All I have left is the memories. It was awful at the time and left me with quite a lot to work through in my early adulthood but no big deal now. It's just what I had to get through to get where I am. I'd never, ever live with my father again but I've reached a peace when it comes to him where I've forgiven him the past. Now I can admit that for all his faults and problems there are some things I can really count on him for, not many but a few, and one of those things is he never forgets my birthday. I love you, Dad.

A visit to the dumps

Here I am, depressed, and I don't really know why. Yesterday was actually a great day for the most part! I decided to have a day off, just play WoW all day, had some quality time with hubby that left my legs shaking (have I mentioned lately how much I love that man??? lol), and one of my favorite dinners, spaghetti. After dinner we were playing WoW when I decided I'd join some of our guildmates for a series of attacks on the enemy cities just for funsies. It started out fun but along the way I got killed, reported that I couldn't rejoin the group because an enemy had me staked out, and they simply left me behind. Just a game...no big deal...what else do you expect on that game...but my recent bouts of loneliness took the opportunity to jump me.

I have no friends. No one really cares except my husband and children. Considering my social phobia, being Pagan/bi/and another secret that I haven't yet named, and that our local community is very Bible Belt-ish I'm not likely to make any friends.

And this leads me in a downward spiral dropping me in an unelegant heap face down in the muck of The Dumps. Jan. 27th I'll be 39 years old... I already feel like I'm having the first symptoms of menopause. How lovely! I had to have Panic Disorder hit me unusually early in life and now I may get to experience menopause earlier than average in life. No friends... No career and not likely to ever have one... I feel fat and dumpy from this persistant extra 50 lbs... My skin is breaking out like crazy... Instead of my usual patient, unflappable self I can go from happy to dark and sullen in the blink of an eye...

Blah, blah, blah, whatever. I'm gonna go play WoW. Hope your day is going way better than mine :)

This and That

I don't really have one cohestive blog post right now but I do have several things running through my twisted lil brain so I figured I'd just toss em all together! First, true to our New Year's vow to improve ourselves including spiritually and socially we've been visiting a new UU church for the past few Sundays. It's a nice place, friendly people, and I'd really been looking forward to their Morals and Ethics discussion group. We made it to yesterday's but I have to admit I was a bit stunned at the direction the chat went. We were presented with a story of an 80 yr old woman and man, both widowed with children, who got married then after one year the man needed to be admitted to a nursing home. The woman went into the marriage with a good bit of money while the man had none. Medicaid would only pay for his expenses if they had used up all their own money first so the question was should they get divorced. The general opinion of the group was she should divorce him to protect her money! Wow. That bothers me.

Training is going so nicely with the horses and dogs!!

Since Son #3 is still grounded he doesn't have a whole heck of a lot to do except sit in his room and read. On the one hand he's got a book that he's enjoying (it's about a dragon which he's just mad about!!!) and getting some great reading practice in. On the other hand he's feeling a bit shut away from the rest of the family which we don't want. Today I wanted to keep up his grounding, of course, but still get the poor kid out and with us some so since it was such a pretty day he came out to help us with outdoor work. Then he tells his dad that he needs more lunch money. His dad did a little calculating and said the kid should still have a good bit in his lunch account. So Son #3 comes clean. Along with buying lunch he's also been buying up a load of extras like ice creams, chocolate milks, and whatever other junk food they offer. This isn't the first time he's done this and we've told him that he's not allowed to do this! If he wants something extra every now and then that's fine but he needs to ask us for the bit of extra money that will cost before he buys it so that we can keep track of what we're spending where. What is with this kid and the lying, sneaking around kind of stuff???

And for the best surprise of my day today Lauren from
The Lauren Daily Experiment has gifted me with an award!!





That's a really cute one too. It reminds me to keep on learnin to make lemonade with those lemons! lol Thank you so much, Lauren! And now for the award rules:

*Put Lemonade Stand logo on your blog or within your post.
*Nominate 10 blogs you really enjoy
*Link the nominees within your post
*Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog
*Link to the person from whom you received this award

Which I'm off to do right now so adios, amigos!! Vaya con Dios! Hasta la pasta and all that groovy jazz!

A scene

Disclaimer: To any that identify themselves as hippies I can assure you that no actual hippies were harmed during the enactment of this scene. Also my second son actually does not think these terrible stereotypical things about hippies. He simply thinks it's funny to poke fun at Son #4's tender heart by spouting various outrageous things sometimes in the time honored tradition of brothers torturing each other for amusement.

I adore my children! They can crack me up with nothing more than a look but some of my favorite funny times with them happen when they're just playing, being themselves. Today is Saturday and so of course I'm in the laundry room when...

Son #2, marching through the hallway militantly: Down with hippies! Make war not love!

Son #4, wandering along behind him: There's nothing wrong with hippies! They can be really nice people too!

Me: So what's wrong with hippies?

Son #2: They're dirty, stinky, tree huggin, commies!

Son #4: Hey I don't stink!

Son #2, picks his march back up heading towards the bedrooms with Son #4 still following and protesting

Son #2: Make war not love! Make war not love!

Suddenly there's a ruckus, scream from Son #2, maniacal laughter from Son #4, Son #2 comes tearing past the laundry room screaming "Make love not war! Make love not war!" with Son #4 in hot pursuit holding a toy knife aloft cackling happily.

Son #4: Mama! I'm a hippy murderer!!

They collapse at the foot of the stairs, Son #4 giggling as he repeatedly pokes his brother in the stomach, Son #2 twitching and moaning as if in death throes.

Me, stepping over them carefully: Just give me a second to get past your murder scene so I can get upstairs, sweetie.

Once upstairs...

Hubby: What are they doing?

Me: Oh Son #4 is just stabbing Son #2 to death.

Hubby: Oh. Is he at least using a good, sharp knife?

Me: No. He's using a Bionicle piece.

Hubby: Ouch. That's gonna be a slow painful death.

A surprisingly ok day

We had our game night last night. There's three people that come over to play with us and we generally have a good time. I may've mentioned before that roleplay games are like an adult form of pretend. You pretend to be a character that you've made up according to certain rules, your gamemaster (or Game Orginizational Director as my husband likes to think of it *smirk*) thinks up the entire world and other people in it, then manuvers you into whatever interesting situation/adventure that he's made up all according to certain rules. It's playing pretend, creating entire stories together, and doing crazy things that you would never do in real life! Some people think it's silly, childish, and geeky but we enjoy it.

Tired out I drifted off to sleep quickly only to have hubs wake me up about an hour later. He didn't feel well and it was scaring him. By his check his blood pressure was just fine but he was afraid that the machine was off so he asked if I'd take him to have the folks at the little local hospital check it just to be safe. To make a long story short everything was just fine and as a matter of fact the reason he felt so off is his blood pressure was actually trending on the low side. He has a very bad family history of heart problems and quite a few personal risk factors besides so he tends to worry himself a lot about some pains and pressures. We've reduced his risks with quitting smoking (which I'm HUGELY proud of him for because it was particularly hard on him!!), slowly starting to get a little more exercise, and improving our diet some and we'll keep right on improving things a little at a time to lower his risk just as much as possible.

We didn't even get home until about 7 am but the great news is we put our heads together and figured out what the problem has got to be! When he was put on his current blood pressure meds he was smoking which added to the problem. Now that he's quit smoking the meds are making his pressure on the low side giving him uncomfortable symptoms. On top of that add that the 7 ribs all on the left side that he shattered less than a year ago are giving him different twinges, spasms, and pains with his deep seated worries about heart troubles and you get what we've been dealing with! It's such a relief when you finally figure something like this out! You go from feeling yucky, scared and helpless to getting some control over it so you feel less scared and know what your next step is going to be which will make you feel better! And by lucky chance he already had an appointment tomorrow for a checkup with his regular VA doctor. The wonderful nurse at the hospital gave us copies of his lab work and the read outs showing all the various blood pressure readings, heart rate, etc. so his doctor can see in solid numbers exactly what the meds are doing to him. It should be an easy tweak of the meds and my sweetie will be feeling much better!!

Exhausted we, of course, fell right into bed to try and catch up on a little of our missed sleep. He fell asleep very quickly and it didn't take me all that long. Unfortunately the critters, all thrown off by the weird change in our usual schedule, wouldn't let me stay asleep! The cat paced up and down on me, the dog's whined a little once, and the birds decided it was time to have a nice scream session a few times. Finally at 1 pm it was time to drag ourselves up to go get Son #1 from school early. His grades have been so good that he is excused from taking exams and allowed to come home early if he wants and of course he wants!! I felt like I'd been beaten with a bat and had a nasty headache so I decided I'd get done what I really had to get done then take a lazy day off as much as possible. I took a few aspirin, watched a show while I drank my coffee, and to my surprise felt good enough that I thought I should take advantage and do something useful!

I decided since I was just thinking about it yesterday I'd take one of the dogs out for a training session and chose our female heeler, Misty, because she'd likely be the easiest and most fun. She's incredibly smart, high energy, and hugely eager to please which is great for training if you ask me!! Sure enough she did great!! Half way through the session our two chickens, Spunky and Chickie Dee, came running over to see what we were doing. They boldly demanded and outright snatched a few bits of the ham and cheese I was using to reward Misty but also provided a little distraction which can be good sometimes in dog training. You want the dog to be able to overcome distraction in order to focus on what you want and doing it! Afterwards we walked up the driveway to do a little litter check beside the road and before we were done Son #3's bus dropped him off. Seeing a person arrive in front of our home Misty gave a little quiet growl but when I released her and she got close enough to realize who it was she was all happy wiggles. She cavorted around him for a minute then excitedly dashed back to me as if to inform me of who it was.

Misty came into our lives when hubby found her in the WalMart parking lot. He said the poor thing was dashing up to every person she saw in a way that translates from dog to human as "omg please help me I'm lost and scared and I don't know what to do!!!" Being animal people he brought her home to keep her safe while we looked for her owner. It turns out that the next day we just missed her owner at a local vet! We'd gone to the vet seeing if they recognized her so we could find her owner and her owner had just been there seeing if anyone had found his dog. She was in good condition and very people friendly so we knew that she'd been loved and would've been happy to return her. Unfortunately though we kept checking around, left our phone number, and everything else we could think of to contact her owner we just never managed to hook up with him. I'm still rather sad for him, I'd be heartbroken to lose one of mine, but she's a great dog and we're happy to have her with us. She is definitely my husband's dog!! She just loves everyone but you can tell that he holds a special place in her heart and he responds in kind.

When I brought her in I let Misty run upstairs to see her most beloved and tell him what a good girl she was which seemed to please them both a lot. Then he and I went out for a little walk around the horse pasture since it's such a wonderfully warm day! We looked to see how the neighbor was doing on building their home. It looks like they're close to pouring the foundation so they've still got a little ways to go. Both the horses followed us like puppies swearing up and down to hubs that I was a big fat liar and had not fed them like I claimed! Fortunately he tends to believe me over them so they had to be satisfied with some pets and horsey cookies. So in some ways I really expected today to just s-u-u-u-u-u-CK but I'm happy to say that it's actually been a fairly nice day after all!

Life in the menagerie

I'm just kinda laughing at myself today thinking about how much I do and how much of it involves our various animals. Without them I think I'd have so much time on my hands I'd either get something truly amazing done or go insane! Well, ok, insane-R. But really I can't honestly imagine my life any other way. Sometimes they're a pain and certainly a load of work but I believe the benefits they bring to my life far outweigh it all.

It's been just too cold for me to train the horses every day but I'm pleased that I have been out and done a few sessions with the gelding. I've worked with quite a few different animals doing whatever you care to call it, training, molding behaviors, teaching cues, and I feel that while there are some obvious differences in methods depending on the type of animal there are some basic beliefs and such that are common. One of the biggest that quite a few horse trainers locally seem to disagree with me on is that training an animal should not include pain. I feel that a trainer who has to resort to hurting an animal to get a sought after response is a poor trainer. That's exactly why I'm just getting in there and training this horse with no horse training experience all on my own. And with just a few sessions I have to say that I'm very pleased with the results!! I still have to help him get the idea of what I want him to do by waving or flicking the string at him but he really seems to be starting to understand that when I point left I want him to walk left at the end of the line, switching hands and pointing right means I want him to change direction to go right, whoa means to stop and face me, "up!" means to stop dragging his feet and pick up his pace a bit, clicking with my tongue means I want him to trot, and "easy" means I want him to slow down. Plus I'm having a lot of fun really working with an animal again like this, figuring out together how to communicate, and the excitement of seeing them start to understand.

One of the next things I want to add into my schedule is some real training sessions with the dogs too. They're wonderful dogs, we love em dearly, and since we're very critter friendly people their little idiosyncracies don't bother us usually but it can be a little chaotic and embarassing when other people come over! It's something I've heard and have learned is absolutely true, professional dog trainers often have some of the worst trained dogs! lol The problem usually is that when you've been training dogs all day every day for a living you just don't feel like doing it when you get home. I don't have that excuse though! My dog training procrastination comes from the fact that it's not challenging anymore. I speak dog and know just what to do to teach them a cue while training a horse is something a little familiar but still all new. Ah well naughty me! Maybe I'll ground myself to my own room...wouldn't that be great??? lol I'll just have to think up some way to make it fun again.

And something that will never change about my life is dealing with the obstacles of living with cockatoos. Folks, lemme tell you something with all sincerity, the larger birds, amazons, cockatoos, macaws, etc. are NOT domesticated animals. They are still wild animals and therefore can be unpredictable, dangerous to some degree, and not whole living in captivity. They can certainly adapt to some degrees to living with people, some better than others, and made more people oriented by being hand raised by people from the time they hatch but they are still ruled by certain instincts and desires that we interfere with that leaves them at times frustrated, unhappy, unfulfilled, neurotic, viscious, and self destructive. Hand fed young birds usually start off very cuddley and sweet making them very appealing but when they reach sexual maturity all they know is they have the overwhelming urge to mate. If that means tearing through someone to get to mate then that's what they'll do because that's how nature has programmed them. And what's more natural to a BIRD than to fly free??? But they can't do that when we make them pets. I love my two umbrella cockatoos dearly and do everything I can to enrich their lives but a part of me just weeps for them because I do love them so much. I wish they'd been born wild and free even though that means I wouldn't have them in my life. It's on my mind particularly today because Lilly nailed me GOOD this morning.

We rescued Lilly from life with a woman who didn't have time for her anymore and her husband who was openly hostile and abusive towards her so she was just stuck in a cage too small for her without anything to do. That's the exact equivalent of taking a baby and for the first 2-3 years of her life giving her all the love, attention, and mental stimulation you can then suddenly locking her in a cage with very limited movement, ignoring, yelling at, sometimes even throwing things at or hitting her, with no toys or anything other than watching others move around day in and day out. It's horrifying and leaves scars! As a result Lilly hates males with a passion! From the first time I saw her she climbed right up on my arm happy and excited but if any male gets too close she lunges out doing her level best to tear a chunk out of them. She even leaves my arm to chase after any male she sees to try and get them! This morning my husband went to kiss me, I put one hand on Lilly's head to control her momentarily, and in complete frustration she bit the daylights out of my thumb! These birds have beaks that I've seen go through a coconut shell like it was tissue so I know she didn't bite as hard as she could've but I've still got two nasty holes, one on either side of my thumb. You really can't discipline a cockatoo, anything you do just makes them angrier and therefore tougher to handle next time, but when one of them gets too out of hand like this I put them back in their cage to "cool off." It's just one of the things you have to accept when you bring one of these birds into your life! If you can't take a bite then you shouldn't take a bird into your home in the first place.

I wouldn't have things any other way though. I'm an animal lover and I understand the good, bad, and ugly in each of my critter babies. They're family. It's not always easy living with them but it's not always easy living with my husband and children. My husband and children even claim that it's not always easy to live with me! They're completely wrong headed on that score but I just chalk it up to one of the things about them that I've learned to live with *snicker* They've got some bad habits but who doesn't? In reality if I could put everything it takes to have them on one side of a scale and everything that I get back from them on the other I know that they give me more than they take. What else could I possibly ask for from them?

Mistakes

There's loads of mistakes I've made as a parent but there are a few things that I feel I've handled darn near as perfect as it gets of which I'm pretty proud! One of those things is I've been scrupulous about putting the blame on the deed instead of the child. An action may be a dumb thing to do, have negative consequences, or be bad but I have and continue to stress that they are good, smart, wonderful children who sometimes make mistakes just like everyone else. It's a reminder that we can all use no matter what our age. That guy that really cut you off in traffic earlier today is not a jackass. A jackass could never learn to drive a car at all, forget the mental capacity because they don't even have the physical capacity! Cutting you off may've been a jackass thing to do though. See the difference? Some people say "Ah it's just words, the world needs to be less touchy!" and in some cases I do agree with that. I don't bristle in Pagan indignation when someone wishes me a Merry Christmas and is one example of something I think some people just need to chill out about. But when it comes to the difference between calling a person a name and putting a label on a person's actions I do think it's a very important distinction!


This is on my mind right now particularly because one of our boys is in Big Trouble. We've got four boys so to avoid giving out names I'll just number them in order of age. We have to really stay on top of Son #3 when it comes to his grades for various reasons but the bottom line is he's plenty smart enough he simply doesn't do enough. He puts in what he thinks he needs to and normally does quite well with A/B report cards. In our house we tell them that of course we would be thrilled to see straight As but we're also very happy with As and Bs as long as they've done their best. When a C pops up we raise an eyebrow, ask what the problem is, and after considering the bigger picture may even hand out a punishment such as no electronic entertainment for a bit. Ds and Fs we start to get serious about! No one's perfect and it's easy to see how a child with an A or B could make a mistake or two and have their grade suddenly drop to a C but lower than that tells us that there's more going on than a mistake or two!


Not so long ago Son #3 had a bad grade and hid the report card from us until his teacher forced him to call us from school. A D or F on a report card will definitely get a child grounded in our house but to lie about it on top of that...all I can say is that's one of those times that you tell the child to go to their room for awhile to let you cool off and think because you don't want to rip their little head off! He just brought another report card home with an F on it. We asked what happened and he said he didn't know. That's not an acceptable answer for us and the boys know it so we told him very firmly that we expected him to find out and let us know. The next day I was in our closet hanging up some clothes when Son #3 got home and I asked...

Me: So did you find out what happened in English?

Son #3: Uh yeah, I got a zero on a paper and it counted twice.

Me: What kind of paper was it?

Son #3: Umm...I don't know.

Me with a serious, displeased look: Now you know that we expect you to find out these things, ask if there's any make-up or extra credit you can do, and so on. When you make a mistake you try to make it right somehow, right? Was this a paper that you did in class or as homework?

Son #3: We did it in class. It was one of those things where you read something and then answer a bunch of questions about it.

Me starting to feel suspicious at his fidgeting and strangely reluctant answers (not to mention the problem with his last answer????): How did you get a zero? You mean that you didn't get even ONE answer right?

Son #3 starting to sweat bullets: Uhh oh no I mean I didn't get a ZERO but I got a really low grade!

Me turning to stare at him tapping my foot: Ok I'm getting a funny feeling here. Is there anything you want to tell me before your dad gets home?

He broke down completely and told me the whole story. It turns out he's known for several weeks now what happened. He had a book report to do and "kept forgetting and getting distracted." Uh huh. And when I asked what the distraction was? Video games, of course. As a matter of fact, failing to do a book report then lying to us about it is exactly what happened the last time he brought home a failing grade! So I took a deep, deep breath and with the calmest, softest voice I own told him to grab a quick snack, go to his room to do homework, and not to come out of his room until I called for him. I would tell his dad, quell any knee jerk reaction his dad might have to rip him limb from limb, then call for him when it was safe so we could all talk about the situation.


I can only conclude that this sort of thing is a result of that bit in the brain that doesn't develop until later in life, something in the frontal part, I believe. It's supposed to be why they don't always make logical, well thought out decisions and show a decided lack of good judgement at times. At least that's what I'm telling myself repeatedly!

Magic, Love and New Beginnings

So four days later I get to finish telling you about the important part of New Year's! I've mentioned before that my husband and I have a few things to overcome within ourselves individually. I deal with depression and a few anxiety type disorders and he also deals with depression and anxiety type disorders, mainly PTSD from his experiences in Desert Storm. It's normally very tough for him to feel like he's physically fit enough to do most things but he can't shake the intangible damage inside. In *some ways* mental damage can be harder to live with than physical damage. If he'd come home paralyzed no one would think twice about it but because he appears just fine physically people often assume that he's just an unemployed deadbeat. Even if they know about the PTSD many people that haven't had to deal with mental illness can't understand why you can't just get medical treatment to fix it and get back to life. It tears me apart inside but sadly these attitudes are so prevalent even today that he even buys into some of it himself which only makes things that much worse!! New Year's evening he was telling me that he felt bad. He says he feels useless, out of shape, terribly lonely, that he's falling behind on things we said we wanted, and so on.

Thankfully though I'm still getting over this awful cold or whatever it is that's been trying to kill me off I've been in a decent place within myself so that I could help him. It often works out that way between us which is a blessing in our lives, that we each have someone who truly understands what it's like and is usually in a strong place where we can help lift the other one up. First I dismissed his self denigrating remarks! Just late last April he was thrown from a bucking horse and broke almost all the ribs on his left side. He not only broke the ribs he broke them BAD! The doctors were amazed first that they used an ambulance instead of getting a copter for faster transport to the closest major trauma hospital and next that with all the jagged shards of rib flung all over inside of him he somehow miraculously didn't shred his lung! They warned us that it would probably be at least a year to heal and another year until he'd learned to live with the new aches, pains and twinges that he was going to have from it for the rest of his life. So everything he had to complain about is nothing more than the natural result of healing from such a bad injury!

The next step was to figure out together what WE are going to do about it. I've always believed that if anyone in my family has a problem our whole family has a problem! I normally don't do New Year's resolutions because too often the goals tend to sound great when they're made but in the long run turn out to be pretty unreasonable for one reason or another. Instead of becoming a tool for self improvement I end up feeling guilty and "not good enough" yet one more time in a lifetime full of those negative feelings! But I felt that my wonderful husband needed some kind of goal just then to shoot for so I broke my rule but tried to do it wisely. I simply vowed that in 2010 he and I both would try different things to improve upon these things that were bothering us. And that's the key, my friends! Set a goal that you know you can achieve to help build your confidence and give you some momentum with which to achieve more! You have to build some things up one step at a time starting with one humble step.

We haven't done TOO much, it's only been four days after all, but we've already taken some steps on our road of improvement that I feel pretty darn good about! For social opportunities we've decided to give the Unitarian Universalist churches in Austin a try and visited one of them Sunday. I've had nothing but wonderful experiences with UU really! The people that gather in UU churches tend to be, in my experience, some of the most open minded and accepting people anywhere who share several things in common with us. I've been conditioning our tack in preparation for some serious work on the horses with or without a round pen. My poor sweetie admitted to me that since his injury he's been a bit scared at the thought of getting on his horse. I decided right then that I was going to go out, work on the horses on a regular basis, get up riding, and simply show him by example that what happened to him was a chance accident that doesn't have to ruin his enjoyment of horseback riding. We both miss our scuba diving horribly! Our last dive was the 2008 annual Christmas Dive a local dive club does each year! It's far too cold to do any regular diving right now but we did check into a new dive shop in Austin and have plans that when the weather turns warm enough again we'll pack our gear, go to the UU service on Sundays then hop over to Lake Travis for a little diving (maybe even a little more socializing at the same time if we dive at Hippy Hollow!!).

We're talking about and planning lots of different things along the same lines but the important thing is we're exploring what will work for us, not making unreasonable promises to do everything we discuss and try on an ongoing, regular basis! So really if you look at it we've already fulfilled our New Year's resolution just with the very small things we've already done! We want to keep that momentum going, of course, but from here on out it's all gravy! lol There's my "love" and "new beginnings" I promised to tell you about from New Years. The "magic" part I'll just leave you to wonder ;)

Happy 2010!

Last night was what it's all about, magic, love, and planning new beginnings. This time of year is pretty hard on my husband because this is the same time of year he shipped overseas into a nightmare that would follow him the rest of his life. So we figured we'd kick back and stay up most of the night watching movies together to take our minds off everything. Just for you guys and to make up for the sheer SUCK of my recent posting history here in the Closet I'll start ya off with some movie reviews.

First we watched Righteous Kill which we thought was really great! It got under my skin especially deep because I can have a very strong sense of justice sometimes. I want to see the "bad guys" get what's coming to them and it seriously gets to me if they don't! That's something my husband and I share! In the movie two cops, partners played by Al Pacino and Robert Deniro, have been on the force together for a very long time when they catch one case that becomes a turning point for one of them. A little girl has been brutally murdered by her mother's boyfriend but he's going to get away with it. Unable to cope with the thought of this monster going free the partners plant evidence to make sure the guy is convicted. For one cop justice has been served even if it needed a little push. For the other cop this only opens the door to the possibility that he could do more good on the job serving up his own justice to villans that slide through the court system while using his status as an officer to shunt suspicion away from himself becoming a serial killer. Definitely two thumbs up!!

The next one we watched was Jennifer's Body with Megan Fox. I really enjoyed this one too but I think you probably have to be in a certain mindset to appreciate it. It was pretty clear looking at the synopsis that this movie should've been a typical second, maybe even third, rate "horror" depending heavily on gore and T 'n A. Jennifer is your usual high school cheerleader, popular and smokin hot! Her one obvious idiosyncrasy is her BFF, Anita aka "Needy", who doesn't fit with the usual high school Beautiful People. Needy is sweet, shy, and somewhat nerdy with a great boyfriend in the school band, Chip. One night Jennifer and Needy go to a local dive to see a band from the city, Low Shoulder. After the bar burns down Jennifer gets in the van with the band despite Needy's pleas not to go with them. Later that night an all new Jennifer visits Needy who's home alone. Jennifer's new look comes straight from Hell's best boutiques, blood spattered, ravenous, unnerving screechy noises, and projectile vomiting some truly nasty black goo! But the next day at school Jennifer seems to be back to her old self, if a trifle more insensitive than usual, leading folks to believe that Needy might just be blowing things out of proportion. As the movie goes on Jennifer kills, Low Shoulder experiences a huge upswing in popularity (that seems almost, dare we say, *magical*???), Needy tries her best to figure out what to do, and Chip really pulls his head out of the sand a little too late. If you liked the movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer you might like this one since it mixes psuedo-horror with a small sprinkle of over the top campy comedy relief though Buffy did it better, in my opinion. And just a little heads up, whatever you might think -- hot babes in a bad horror flick definitely equals at least a tiny bit of T 'n A -- there is not one single T or A shown in this whole movie!! If it had I might've thrown in another quarter to half a thumb more based just on how scrumptious Megan Fox is but as it is I'll give it a tentative one thumb.

And last we watched Paranormal Activity. I'd heard really mixed reviews about this movie but in the end this one turned out to be a true gem for a horror hound like me!! It's insanely simple with only four actors in the whole movie and only a teensy tiny bit of blood at all but the suspense and fear factor ratchets up steadily! A young couple, Micah and Katie, buy a new tract home only to find that a frightening presence from Katie's past has followed her so Micah decides to capture it on film. The whole movie is done as if taped with the camera that Micah buys for this purpose. Katie brings in a psychic hoping for help and explains that she has had the same unnerving experiences when she was eight years old, again at 13, and moving hasn't seemed to help. Katie has a healthy fear for whatever it is that's been terrorizing her. Micah starts off openly jovial and disrespectful about the entire thing. Micah's off the cuff idea is to find out what the entity wants and give it to him but the psychic warns him that what the entity obviously wants is Katie! As the movie progresses it becomes clear that Katie is going downhill fast and seeing this along with his own investigations going no where leads to Micah growing more and more frustrated, angry, and maybe even scared? Clearly ignorant in these matters Micah only makes things worse at every turn committing pretty much every mistake a person can make when dealing with a hostile entity leading to a disasterous conclusion. One thing that really makes this movie a treasure for me is having a fair amount of knowledge about hauntings I can really appreciate that most, if not all (depending on what you believe), of this movie is entirely plausible. This movie now holds the coveted spot with me of being one of the only TWO movies EVER to come the closest to actually scaring me (and this one blows the other one away)!! I'm borrowing hubby's so I can give this one FOUR THUMBS WAY UP!!!!!

Now I'd PLANNED to get to the more personal parts of this post but honestly two of the kids come home tonight leaving hubs and I little time left alone together and throughout this whole post he's been teasing me to distraction! I promise to fill y'all in on the rest of our time last night but right now I'm going to do my best one more time to kill him with a huge, goofy grin on his face! After all, a girl's gotta have her priorities!