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.

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!

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 ;)

Is it over yet?

Last night we unexpectedly had two friends over visiting for one of our Game Nights but told them right off that I was feeling awful. One of the poor things had the very same ICK as I do so we all decided to just hang out together and chat instead. My dear, sweet, wonderful husband filled me and our sick friend up on scalding hot rum toddies! So by the end of the night my hubs was off driving our well friend home while I made up a bed on the couch for our sick friend to stay the night since he was too full of toddies to drive home and much too cozy in front of our fireplace to go home to a chilly house.

Determined to get a few things done I got up at a fairly decent hour this morning and after a nice, warm bath felt like I might grudgingly live through another day. But I made a mistake! I sat on the edge of the bed to put my shirt on! Though the bath made me feel less like every joint was being sawed apart and more like I'd just been very lightly worked over with a baseball bat I felt heavy and icky and the softness of the bed was just too much. The next thing I knew I was screaming myself awake from another nightmare, rolled over to see why my husband hadn't shook me out of it like he usually does, and found that it was 3 pm! Ugh! So I shoved myself out of bed, still clothed, and started dashing around trying to catch up on everything I'd planned to do today.

Until my husband talked me into sitting in my comfy chair with my laptop. A whole day wasted on sleeping and World of Warcraft??? *sigh* Yeah. But I have to say I do feel somewhat better this evening and hope to get some good sleep and wake up feeling better!

The best laid plans

Yesterday I promised I'd post or die trying! I was also hoping to spend the day happily reading other people's blogs, catching up with what's going on in their worlds, and generally taking it somewhat slower today after several days of hard work. That plan was sent right out the window with the blaring of the alarm this morning. It turns out the husband wanted me to go with him to his dentist appointment so we could finish up Yule shopping afterwards. He said it'd be ok if I didn't go with him but I could tell that he really wanted my help picking out presents so...ah I have trouble resisting my husband when he gets that look! And there was no reason I couldn't write up today's post in my notebook then type it in when we got home.

So after his appointment I had a whole post ready to go about personal responsibility, he had some dazzlingly clean teeth, and we were off to spend some money on the kids! As we walked into the mall I accidently caught the eye of a saleslady at a kiosk and she had That Look that we all know! It says "I WILL accost you, a polite brush off will NOT work on me, and I WILL do my level best to seperate you from every cent in your wallet." She was cute and knew just how to make us stop long enough for her to get into her pitch. She simply stepped squarely in front of my husband, talking to me with a nice, warm smile, handing me a sample of something saying, "Come, let me show you something." Ah well, I figured there'd be no harm in letting her practice her sales speech, demo, then give a nice "no thank you" and leave with the little free sample. Oh how I underestimated this little sorceress!

She was selling skin and body care products with minerals from the Dead Sea in them so I actually thought that it would be fairly easy to say no at the end. I would like to be a girly girl from time to time, do my hair, put on a little makeup, wear a sexy lil dress but in reality when??? I rarely leave our property at all and I just can't see getting all dolled up to scrub a toilet or brush the horses so trying to sell me beauty products is near impossible anyway. Add in the normally RIDICULOUS price these sorts of things usually sell for and it makes it even easier for me to resist. I explained to her that I simply didn't have occassion to pamper myself with things like she was selling, I care for the house, a good number of animals, and live with five males but she expertly turned it around on me.

I had this pretty little thing with long, brown hair, gorgeous soft brown eyes, a pert little nose, and rosy full lips telling me in a firm throaty voice with a seductive little accent that all these things are part of what's so fun about being FEMALE and it was even more important for me having to deal with so much that ruins my nails and skin. She held my hand buffing a nail, rubbing scrubs, peels, lotions, and such into my hand and forearm, gently playing with my hair putting little waves and curls into it weaving her spell with expert ease. But my children won out and I'm proud to say that I kept saying that I simply couldn't do it, that money would buy just one more toy...when my husband wordlessly handed her his bank card. As we walked away he said, "merry Christmas, sweetie." I thanked him and said I only had two questions. First, what had made him do that? He laughed and said he just couldn't resist how I was just melting like warm putty in the salesgirl's hands! My second question was that of course if I got a present he should to so what did he want? He thought for a bit, hemmed and hawed until we were in the privacy of the truck then replied that he had to wait until we were alone because everything he could think of involved me in various forms of undress! Gods, once again, thank you for this man!!

We arrived home to find several people there because one decided that he was going to make homemade ziti for all of us. Lots of marvelous food, talking, laughing, and a few beers later I found myself looking back over today. It wasn't at ALL what I'd planned and it left me 56 minutes to compose and put up this post but I gotta say it was a GREAT day!

P.S. Not only was I simply twitterpated by the salesgirl, not only was she and oustanding salesperson, but her demonstrations proved to us that these products are honestly great! I'll be the guinea pig and let y'all know after a week or two of using them what I think about the products we bought today. In the meantime if you'd like to take a look go to http://www.obeyyourbody.com/