Let Me Count The Ways

Thanks all for the good advise and encouragement on the previous "Ways" post. It is certainly not always easy to keep a good marriage going. I'd say our marriage is good but I did wonder about that changing from the person I once knew. I wondered how "normal" it was and how people dealt with it. I don't usually spend much time reflecting on how my husband was when we first married. Usually only comes up when I'm mad. Really mad. Which, fortunately, doesn't happen ALL that often. Still, it is a valid consideration and you all gave me something to think about.

I think it is very easy in marriage to slip into survival routines (those with children know what this is) and stop taking time out for ourselves as a couple. Our lives have tended to revolve around our children. In some ways this has been great of course, but we've neglected our relationship as husband and wife to give way to mother and father I think. Even when we manage time to ourselves, we're usually too mentally drained to enjoy each other. Trust me, we have mentally draining children.

I do also think there is merit in the suggestion that depression in men often comes out in anger. In fact, when several family members were dying and there was a great deal of stress, my husband went on an anti-depressant. He is loath however to taking medications and once things got back on track a bit, he stopped taking them. I don't know though that he suffers currently from medication required depression. I just think his plate has more on it than he can digest.

Anyway, thanks all for the advice and understanding. Be sure to give me your opinions on the blog below regarding my husband's shirt. Thanks!

Your Opinion Please

Opinions please! I am making a shirt for my husband that I'll give him for his birthday. We used to have shirts that had the last name of the player we were hosting and we would wear them to the games. Now I want to make a shirt that has the last name of all the players we've hosted over the years. I'm debating though on what to put on the front of the shirt. The team these kids play for is called the Gems. Here are some things I've thought of for the front of the shirt:

1. Proud to Host
2. Gems Host Parent
3. Host Parent
4. Proud host Parent (done each word vertically with host in smaller letters)


The back of the shirt would then list the last names of the kids we've hosted. I know the ideas I came up with aren't very clever or anything but I don't want to go over the top with it. Personally I like 1 and 4. Whatever goes on the front would probably have on word per line ie..

Proud
to
Host

Feel free to come up with your own if you don't like any of these options. Consider however that I have to pay per letter to have it made. Thanks for your help!

How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count The Ways

I wonder, I know people change and the person you are married to often is not the person you married. But I wonder if the reason's why you married them are still there. My husband is definitely not the man I married. Neither am I. We both have changed in big ways over the last 10 years. In some ways I suppose we have not changed for the better. In many ways we have.

I was thinking tonight though, mostly because I was mad. Really, really mad. My husband has changed in aspects that were the reasons I married him. Did that make sense? The things I loved most about him, he's not anymore. I just wondered if that is the way it is or if that's just our case. I don't know if the things he most loved about me have changed or not. Probably so. I think one of the things he liked best was that I made a mean Jack and Coke. :<) Now I not only don't make them for him anymore, I encourage him to stick to beer.

Of course, being married is full of adjustments. It is a committment and it is hard work. I knew that at the beginning, just as I know it now. I am surprised though at how much my husband's basic personality has changed. Some characteristics I expected would never change. My husband was always much like a big teddy bear. He could be pretty ferocious when necessary, but mostly he was the softest, nicest person I knew. I took a lot of lessons in generosity and kind heartedness from him. Now? Anger is an adjective that suits him more a great deal of the time. Course, our lives are full of things that were not factors years ago. Still, it's a pretty big about face.

It's something I've failed to curb. Perhaps it's something I've even contributed to, I don't know. But one of the reasons I married him was because he was the anti-anger. He was easily one of the kindest men I had ever met. I respected that. A lot. I hope that this course runs full circle, that those great parts of the man he once was will come out again.

All The ZZZ's

Last night my husband climbs in bed. 30 seconds later he says "I can't sleep". 30 seconds is a long time for him to still be awake. Generally as soon as he lays down, he starts snoring. I can't imagine what that must be like. I lay for an hour, sometimes more before going to sleep. He considers 30 seconds to be insomnia. Unbelievable. Within the minute he is snoring away having "conquered" his battle with sleep.

Normally I will climb in bed, say my prayers, and then begin the process of laying there. Trying different positions. Checking the clock. And then the real trouble begins. I start to think. I'll think about the day I had or some issue I encountered. I'll dream up big schemes of ways to help people without getting "caught". That usually leads to dreaming up ways to get my sister's goat. Sometimes I'll actually put these schemes to use, sometimes I don't. The card hunt for my friend's birthday was a concoction of late night sleeplessness.

Sometimes I'll think of my brother. I'll remember his last weeks. Then I'll lay there and dream up ways to fight Pancreatic cancer. Night time is when I will relive the things I've said to people. If I've been angry with someone, night time is when I will wish I'd kept my cool. It was a night time self evaluation that made me regret being so mean about Mrs. Money.

If I could go to sleep at night, I might be able to actually put my foot down about something!

On rare occasion I'll drift off to sleep pretty quickly. More often than not though, I'm laying in bed wishing sleep would come. I'll have gone to bed half an hour before my husband but he'll come in, lay down, and be asleep before I am. Oh how that drives me crazy! So unfair. He get's all the Z's and I'm left staring at the ceiling.

The Other Mothers

I may have mentioned before about how often my family has kept my niece (my brother's daughter). My brother's wife never really wanted to have kids. For a long time that was Ok with my brother too. Then I think he started to want to have a family but she still didn't. They went that way for a while but then her mom got cancer and it was her mom's greatest wish that they have a child before she died. So I think all this pressured my brother's wife into agreeing to have kids. I think she came around to the idea but it definitely wasn't her idea.

Anyway, after she had my niece, she took a rather small role in raising her. Then my brother got sick and since he died, my niece has spent far more time with my family than with her mother. My sister has pretty much been raising her. It's sad but we're glad that M (niece's mom) is willing to leave her with us rather than with whomever she can find - which is what she did the few weeks she still had her daughter in with her before leaving Texas.

We all love my niece (S) and are careful not to make M mad for fear she would just up and disappear with S. We're glad to have S with us as much as we can. We just want her to be with family and with people who love her.

Here is an exchange that occured between my daughter and S (they're 6 months apart).

While at my mom and dad's house, there was a dead bird in the yard. My daughter says in a sad little voice "Oooh, that bird is dead! It's babies are going to be missing their mommy!". This was my nieces reply "Ah, that's Ok, there are other mommies who can take care of them".

I thought that was a pretty clear insight into both of their lives. My daughter would have had no concept of any other mommies taking care of kids. She's a one mommy girl. For S though, it's pretty much a way of life. Pretty sad for a child who has already lost her daddy to not have a solid mommy too. Perhaps though it's better for her to feel that way so she doesn't fear being left with no one.

The New Player

Well, we are beginning our summer of baseball. One of our players is here. The other was supposed to have been here but he is from Colorado and his car broke down on the way. He should be here tomorrow. The kids are excited. Our player who is here has gotten moved in and is getting settled. He seems nice. He's 19 - barely. I feel so much older than these kids than I did just 3 years ago. Back when I was still in my twenties. Ah, but he seems like a good kid. He's a bit shy. Say's he's a slow to warm up kinda guy. His older brother is here too but doesn't stay with us. He's the assistant coach. We met him tonight. They had an exhibition game against the local legion team. They stomped butt of course but the other team is made up of area high schoolers mostly. This player, I guess I should call him something so let's say he's umm, J. Anyway, J is a second baseman. He had a good game. Seems to be a good baseman and a good baserunner once he is on. He doesn't have a very high batting average though. He did alright at the plate tonight though. So we'll see what the future brings.

Husband has been getting our swimming pool ready to open. Should be ready in a couple of days. We have to get a new liner after this season though. That's a bummer as they are rather expensive for a pool the size of ours and it being inground on top of that. I hate big, unplanned expenses like that.

I haven't kept up with my blogging the last couple of weekends. New schedule, new routine. I'll get settled and get back into it though. Now I'm thinking I'd best head to bed since I don't know when our new player will get here tomorrow. No doubt if I stay up late he'll be here at the crack of dawn or something. Well, beginning of summer ball marks the beginning of summer for us. Oh, BTW, I saw Mrs. Money tonight at the game. Puke. I was torn though. Part of me wanted to thoroughly dislike her and part of me wanted to just brush it off and even play nice with her. I'm very good at being a funnily sarcastic person but I suck at being a vengeful hateful person. I suppose in some ways that is good but sometimes it really bites to not be able to be "unnice" (new word) to a not nice person. It all comes back to my being a professional fence straddler...."I'm sure she has some good qualities...".

Am I the only person who can't just not like someone? I always have to follow my statements with a qualifier: "I don't like her. *slight pause* Well, it's not that I don't like her, it's just that......blah blah blah". But I don't like Mrs. Money. Right? Right! Of course I don't like her. But then I see her and she smiles and seems happy, talks cheerfully to someone and I think, maybe she's not soooo terrible. AHHHHHH. I just don't know. Satan himself could go around in a bunny suit and I'd fall for it every time.

On Fear And Phobias

I have a fear of bridges. Sometimes when I drive across them, my knuckles turn white as I grip the wheel. I've been known to snap at someone for not watching the road close enough while crossing a bridge.

I have an even bigger fear of flying. Actually, I don't fear flying so much as I do crashing. It's simply something I don't want to experience. I've jumped off the high dive at the public pool twice in my life. I didn't like it. Somehow I view flying (and conscequintly crashing) as a really, really big high dive. No thanks.

These (barring any tragic thoughts of something to do with my children) are my great fears. And as great as they are, as gut wrenching and heart pounding as I find them, they are nothing - nothing to my phobias. And I have two of them.

I don't have any great fear of spiders. I spare no love for them, but no exceptional fear either. Bugs? Bugs are another issue altogether. Fear truly is not a powerful enough word for the emotion I have towards bugs. I don't have any levels for how frightening a certain type of bug is over another. Nope, I give them all the benefit of the doubt and rate them all at extreme. In my area the June bug is most prevelant so perhaps I loath them more but pretty much any bug will elicit the same response. And that response is panic. Sheer, unadulterated, mindless terror. And when I say mindless, I mean mindless. I once tried to exit a moving vehicle when I found myself sharing automotive space. My door was open and my body was in full flight. Only the seat belt held me in. Which is bad enough in itself except that I also happened to be the driver of the vehicle.

Absolute mindless terror. For a bug. Though I can admit to that reaction as being extreme, it simply is beyond control. All thought seems to exit my mind. Why else would I leap from a moving vehicle, willing to let my own car careen on driverless?

This weekend my sister-in-law was driving her vehicle when I noticed a bug on the inside of my window. Again, the seat belt held me from moving too far and I was crying out about a bug and the window. Unfortunately my initial plea didn't make much sense (again the mindless thing) and it took her a minute to realize what was going on. Then, finding humor in my terror, she told me to roll down my own window. Desperate to get as far away from the bug as possible, I finally was able to release the catch on my seat belt and in my haste nearly sent the buckle through the window pane while I flung myself toward the back seat. Needless to say my sister-in-law didn't find that quite so funny.

This however is what seperates fear from phobia. My fears may be a bit unreasonable but my phobias? I become unreasonable. I simply lose ability to reason. I don't know why I experience this over bugs but bugs definitely do it.

The other thing that does me in is guns. Now don't get all up in arm (ha ha), I'm not into the politics of gun control in the least. I simply become mindless when around guns. My husband thought to break me of this one time and took me out where he target practices, stood me in place and put his shotgun in my hands. I became so terrified I started crying. For a moment he wouldn't take the gun from me and for me, it felt like an eternity. I was absolutely terrified to move. I stood stock still bawling my head off.

I didn't realize that it is standard safety for policemen to have their hand readily over their gun when they approach a car that they've pulled over at night. Thankfully my husband was driving cause when I saw the cops hand on his gun I was so terrified I could neither move nor speak for some time. Then I started bawling and felt like I'd run a marathon.

My husband is an avid hunter but the guns had never been in our house. For years they stayed at his parent's. Then when I had my major surgery and wouldn't be able to go downstairs in our house for over a year, he moved them (at his parent's insistance) into our basement. It was nearly 2 years later that I discovered them. They are still here but locked in a cabinet and each has a large trigger lock and all ammunition is stored outside of the house. I still don't look at the cabinet though, just knowing they are in there. I have no issue with my husband hunting or his use of guns but they simply terrify me. I also believe they have no business in a house with children but we've taken about as many steps as we can to make them uneasily useable.

So. Those are my deepseated fears and phobias. I'm just wondering how common phobias are. Right now I know no one with a real phobia like I experience. None of my friends or family experience anything like it. Surely it can't be all that rare though.

So what makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck?

Day in the Life of the Parent

I received this in an email and thought it was funny. What is so tragically funny is how it is an exaggeration that has such an element of truth in it. To me it totally surmises the raising of young children.


WHY PARENTS DRINK!

The boss of a big company needed to call one of his employees about an urgent problem with one of the main computers. He dialed the employee's home phone number and was greeted with a child's whisper.

"Hello."

"Is your daddy home?" he asked.

"Yes," whispered the small voice.

"May I talk with him?"

The child whispered, "No."

Suprised, and wanting to talk with an adult, the boss asked, "Is your Mommy there?"

"Yes."

"May I talk to her?"

Again the small voice whispered, "No."

Hoping there was sombody with whom he could leave a message, the boss asked, "Is anybody else there?"

"Yes," whispered the child, "a policeman."

Wondering what a cop would be doing at his employee's home, the boss asked, "May I speak with the policeman?"

"No, he's busy", whispered the child.

"Busy doing what?"

"Talking to Daddy and Mommy and the Fireman," came the whispered answer.

Growing concerned and even worried as he heard what sounded like aHelicopter through the earpiece on the phone the boss asked, "What is that noise?"

"A hello-copper" answered the whispering voice.

"What is going on there?" asked the boss, now truly alarmed.

In an awed whisering voice the child answered, "The search team just landed the hello-copper."

Alarmed, concerned, and even more then just a little frustrated the boss asked, "What are they searching for?"

Still whispering, the young voice replied along with a muffledgiggle:

"ME."

He's Been Drafted!!

Hooray! The baseball player who has lived with us the last 2 summers called us tonight to tell us he'd been drafted today to the Cincinnati Reds. He was drafted as the 12 pick on the 12 round of the first day of the draft. I'm so happy for him! He's such a great kid and so sweet. He and his family are celebrating but he took time out to call us to share his big news. I couldn't be happier for him.

I'm Baaaack

Oh man! What a totally exhausting weekend. My niece graduated from high school Sunday. I went down to my sister's on Friday morning to help get ready for the weekend. This will be her middle child leaving the nest. I think my niece has a pretty good head on her shoulders and will do well in college. It's so amazing to see them grow up. Graduating high school is a pretty big marker. My niece was just a little girl when I was in college. Now she's going. It doesn't seem possible that she could have been so young when I was in college and now she's graduating. Amazing what 10 years can do.

So I helped my sister get ready to host a graduation party. The food display could have been in a magazine. We dipped chocolate and put out a spread. My sister has a lot of longaberger products so all the food was set out in expensive baskets and serving ware. The fruit was in a bowl surrounding an uncut pineapple and garnished with grapes. It was all beautiful. A bit over the top perhaps though. My sister is very into appearances. Well, she definitely set the bar. It was nice though. She had 3 scrapbooks noting my niece's high school career and she also put out papers from grade school that she had saved.

Just a small sad element that my brother wasn't there. He set a lot by education and he would have been very proud of my niece. I'd thought for a bit during the ceremony that it was too bad he wasn't there to see her graduate. Then they mentioned something about how unusually small the class size was, only 52 students. (gasp, I know) But the odd thing is, 52 is the family number. It's my brother's number. He was a big sports player and his jerseys were always 52. The number became a big thing in our family. I thought it interesting that that was the number in my nieces graduating class. It was almost like him saying, "I'm here. I woudn't miss this".

Well, I'm exhausted and headed to bed. Big day tomorrow cleaning and stuff. Our baseball players come this week for the summer so I have to get their rooms ready and all.

I Am Not Helen Keller

I'm not a historian, but I love historical fiction. I often read about people who are ill or whatnot and everyone around them is trying to get them to rest etc etc but the person is determined to do something. Another theme is how pregnancy used to be considered a delicate condition.

I've got a beef about today's attitudes. Nowadays, you're expected to work when you're ill. It's not the working when you're ill that I have a problem with, it's the expectation. It's no longer admirable to push yourself. It's expected. And so much so that it is unnoticed when you do. But the negative feedback is profound.

A person with disabilities/limitations is expected to "overcome". It used to be doing so would be admirable. Now, it's the par. Now it's the expectation for disabled people to be Helen Keller. Lance Armstrong is not a role model, he holds the bar of expectation.

When I was pregnant, I worked the full term of my pregnancy. In fact, I went into labor while working and finished the shift. And lemme tell ya, 9 months pregnant didn't matter. I was still expected to lift patients, make the rounds on the same work load, and even work with the same dangerous diseases that I was when I wasn't pregnant. All the "equal rights" by people who weren't going to have children or men who never would be pregnant made sure of that.

Instead of taking care of each other, we're taking care of ourselves and to hell with anyone else.

Back to my original point though, I'm tired of battling the Helen Keller syndrome. At 27 I found myself with legs that didn't work right following a surgery to fuse my back. While I've managed over the years to learn to function with pain and legs that I couldn't feel, sometimes just doing is exhausting. Most of the time you wouldn't know I had any disabilities just by looking at me. Sometimes I feel just living with these limitations ought to be enough. But no. To have respect, you have to reach the exceptional. I have no desire to be exceptional. I am who I am and would like to be accepted as such. Unfortunately, unexceptional brings a host of disdain. My sister often tells my I need to "get a life". I have 2 young kids and a husband. I have a life. It's just not Helen Keller's.