Back again! Finally!

After an whole entire month and a week without internet I am finally back up and running! WooHoo! I am seriously excited, I have missed being able to actually sit down at a real computer and type with a keyboard rather than having to do things from my SmartPhone. I get so frustrated with those little itty-bitty things. And yes I realize that somehow that probably makes me sound a lot older than I am. Oh well. So be it.

The move went really well, or as well as any move with the military can go and we are getting settled in nicely in our new location. I am loving being able to live somewhere with actual weather and a decided lack of gambling. I am not loving all of the in-house wildlife that I am encountering however. The sheer variety of insects here is daunting. Also we apparently have at least one mouse in the house, so as soon as all of the people finish setting up the satellite today I will be heading to the store to get the stuff to kill that problem off.

I will start taking pictures again soon to post for you all to see, how we are getting things all set up and organized, don't worry I won't post any pictures of any mice I am lucky enough to kill.

Now comes the job search, The husband is off to work and the girls are off with family, so I really have no reason not to jump into this search with both feet.... other than the fact that I am petrified to death. I have been a stay-at-home Mom for almost 7 years now, so the whole idea of getting out there and going back to work is a little daunting. Not to mention that I hate being judged and really, what is a job interview other than asking someone to judge you. So that just stresses me out. Anyway, wish me luck.

Coming to the end.....

Last year at I posted one of my most popular posts ever when I talked about resolutions and goals for the next year. (If you want a reminder here it is) I talked a little about making goals that were motivated by peer pressure and feelings of inadequacy. I made three goals for the year 2011. So the question for today is did I do it?

Well, I can say with certainty that I tried to avoid judging myself through others peoples eyes. So number one is a success.

The second resolution well it was much harder. I am horrible at not judging myself and in loving who I am. I am very self critical to the point that sometimes I spend all day stressing out about things. It's a flaw, a huge one.... and I guess another thing to add to this list. I have a horribly hard time accepting who I am as who I am supposed to be, in every aspect of life. I am constantly seeing what "might" be and never appreciating what is there. So I guess that means that number two was a failure is a work in progress.

Number three. Well I tried. I really tried to be more helpful and friendly and to hold my tongue more when I wanted to give someone a piece of my mind. I know I wasn't successful 100% of the time, but I hope that I was at least most of the time.

All in all I think that 2011 was a wonderful year and a success. I am blessed to have the family and friends who love me for me even when I struggle to do so. So thank you to everyone in my life who helped to make this an amazing year.

It's the Busiest Time of the Year!

       Oh my goodness what a weekend it has been. I keep thinking that things are going to get better before they get worse. I love the holiday season but sometimes the constant go, go, go that it brings with it can really wear a person out.
       This weekend we kicked off our holiday season with four, yes four Halloween/Fall Festivals. Two of them were school carnivals and they were packed. The girlies loved every second of them even with the zoo that they were. They both loved playing all of the carnival games that were set up. P-nut was especially proficient at the ring toss games, and won some pretty amazing prizes. AJ was great at the skill games like bowling. Face painting was another favorite as were the balloon animals. Today we went to a kids party for my husbands squadron. That was an adventure to say the least they had it set up half inside and half outside on the lawn. The automatic sprinklers kept turning on, soaking all of the kids in their Halloween costumes and causing mass panic. Tonight was interesting, it was time for the Junior High Youth at my church to have a costume party and carve pumpkins. Surprisingly enough it was not nearly as scary as it sounded. The Youth were great, there were no problems, and the pumpkins turned out great.
       Next weekend we have more Halloween plans including a birthday party which should be lots of fun. Then some Trick-or-Treating on Monday night. After Halloween the festivities really start. I am hosting Thanksgiving this year for the first time all by myself and it is starting to panic me a little, so I am sure you will be hearing all about that as time goes on.
       Time for bed with a good book and a nice tall icy glass of water. Night all.

U - is for Unmotivated

Although I am not feeling this way today, thank goodness, I actually feel this way a lot of the time though. I have these lists of things that I need to be doing, but all that I want to do is sit and watch the Cooking Channel or play a game on Facebook. I often sit there and wonder what it is that makes me feel like that is more important or me interesting than living my real life.

I gave up Facebook games for lent. I am pretty sure that I shared that already. After the first few days of feeling like I needed to be playing them, I found that I didn't miss them at all. Now at the end of the season of lent I find that I really don't want to restart any of them. It is amazing how much more motivated I am to live my own life when I remove that addiction from it. So I have tripled my motivation to do things in my home and with my family by removing one of my excuses to keep being unmotivated.

After seeing what a big difference it made in my day to day life I will keep looking for other things that I use as an excuse to be unmotivated. If it is something that I can fix as easily as I did with the games than I will do it. I challenge all of you to look at the things that you use as a reason to avoid doing the things that you need to be doing. Are they something that you can remove from your life? What is it that makes you unmotivated? Take it away, I promise that it will make your days more enjoyable.

TPT - Tea

Today's pictures is of something that I really love and that makes me smile every time I see it. Tea! I love specialty loose leaf teas. I have a pretty good selection right now, but I am still wanting more. I love that it has so many more flavor options than coffee, I love that it has such amazing health benefits, and I think it's really fun to watch the dried teas, flowers, and fruits revive in the water.

This love started when I was young I come from a family of tea drinkers, but the love for loose teas started in High School. There was a little restaurant in town called Tea & Sympathy that was located in a historic house, each room was decorated in Southern/Victorian Era couches, and low tables, some more formal and some more casual. They served your choice of one of 100 or so teas and small meals, soup, salad, cheese, dessert and always scones with clotted cream, lemon curd and homemade strawberry preserves, it was amazing. My friends and I used to take long lunches and have some quiet time with each other.

I still think of these friends often when I brew a perfect cup of loose tea. So on top of everything else I get a little smile while I remember those times. So my picture today is of tea.

Take a Picture Tuesday. part 1

Ok, I am going to start this post with a warning. I am not a professional photographer, I am not a skilled amateur, heck I think that my 5 year will pass me in skill in the next year or so. I know that composition and light are important however no matter how hard I try I can't seem to actually improve on them in my pictures. So I will take a picture of something that makes me feel something, but I don't promise it will be a good one.

Take a picture Tuesday. I have actually been thinking about this one all week. What should my very first picture be of? Should I take a new one or just share an old one that I already have. Do I share something or someone? If I do share someone there is the whole internet safety thing to think about, do I really want pictures of my kids on a public blog. AAHHHH this wasn't supposed to be the hardest day of the challenge.

So my decision. I am not quite ready to share pictures of my kiddo's I don't know if I ever will be. So sorry if you were wanting to see what my princesses but it won't be today. Then I thought about going through all of my old photos and picking one of them, but that felt like cheating. So I got out my trusty PHD (push-here-dummy) camera and tromped outside to find something that inspired me. I turned the camera on, it flashed a battery dead icon at me, and turned it self off. Well, that was productive.

So now the battery is charging and I am still totally unsure of what's going to show up as the picture here in a few hours.

What to write about.... Hmmmm.....

I am at a loss right now. You see it's that time of night when my routine kicks in. Everyone in my house is in bed, it's quiet, it's my alone time. So I usually pour myself a glass of wine, or pull out some sort of snack and play some games on FB. It's how I unwind. So now I'm sitting here twiddling my thumbs trying to figure out what to do with my time. The way I see it I had a few options. I could

a) clean, do some laundry, something on that line. But I quickly threw that idea out the window... I do enough cleaning and laundry during the day I don't think it would be relaxing.

b) watch some of the old tele. Well, I am doing that, I'm watching American Idol right now. But I have never been able to just watch tv, I feel unproductive and bored (because we all know that games are productive.

c) work on some crafts. Before I became an addict I would spend all of my down time making things, doing crochet, cross-stitch, and making my shirts. I loved doing all of this, but I don't have anything going right now, and I am not sure what I want to start.

d) Resume my before bed bible study, meditation and prayer time. This is the one I should be doing. After all the whole point of this experiment is to improve my relationships with my family and with God.

So what did I choose to do? Blog out the list of things that I should be doing so that I would see that my only option is the final one. So now that I have dragged my rambling out as long as I can I will take myself off the computer and the internet and sit in a quiet place to have some quiet reflective time. Hopefully the change from internet games to prayer and meditation as a calming and centering method will have amazing results.

~DD

Where have all the friends gone?

This is something that has been on my mind for quite a while. I see women both in person and my Internet friends (who are just as close and precious to me) who feel like they don't have a friend to lean on. This hurts my heart so much. When we were growing up most girls had their "BFF" the person who they told everything to, who talked with them, laughed with them and cried with them. But as we age it seems like that type of trusting caring relationship slowly gives way to another much more hurtful type of friendship. Once we cross the threshold into adulthood it seems like there is so much competition, jealousy and anger involved that we don't have relationships with our friends we have superficial and passing acquaintances.

Women seem to be locked in some eternal competition with those around them, there isn't room for caring and understanding with all of the judgement and gossip. Why would you want to tell someone your innermost thoughts and fears, how you "really" feel beyond the basic answer of "fine" if you can't trust them not to judge you? It is so sad to me.

I am in no way innocent of any of this. As much as I want to say that I am a wonderful and supportive person to everyone that I meet I know that it isn't true. I look at people and their choices and wonder why in the world would they do that? I struggle with not giving other people a chance. I try not to, but it happens.

The result of this judgement is so sad to me, women feel alone, overwhelmed, and imperfect all the time. So they pretend that everything is ok, they hide all of the hurts, frustrations, sadness, and questions. They hold things inside until they all get bigger and worse and until they feel like there is no one to turn to and no one who will ever understand.

I am blessed to have some women who I can call my true friends. I can tell them anything and they are always helpful and supportive no matter how badly I feel like I have messed things up. It is my dream that every woman could break the cycle of judgement and competition and make true friends who are there for them no matter what.

Tuesday... Cleaning... Blogging

I should be cleaning right now. I told myself I would clean today. I told my husband I would clean today. I even had a whole plan on what I wanted to clean today. However, I am not cleaning today. Nope, after all of that thought, planning, and big talk I am back on the computer playing stupid Facebook games instead of cleaning. Oops. Then when I ran out of things to clean, build, and farm in my settlements, and cities I came here to blog. Yup, I'm on a roll today.

I find in ironic that I started a blog to track my ability to be that domestic goddess and now I am using that blog to avoid housework. Yup, I'm skilled like that. In my defence the house isn't bad, the kids are dressed almost picture perfect. I just have no motivation today.

Ok, I'm off, and going to put the folded laundry away. Really, I promise, unless something else that needs to be done comes up, like I get sucked into Bejewled.

Happy Tuesday!
~DD

When I look in the mirror.

What do I see when I look in the mirror? Is it the way that others see me? What do I focus on that is generally looked over or ignored by others? What I do see in exaggerated proportions so that I think something isn't true?



As I start to work on resolution number 2, I am thinking about the way that I see myself when I look in the mirror and how that view is affected by mental issues. When I look in the mirror I concentrate on things that bother me, I see issues where there are none and I take minor imperfections and they become huge. When I look in the mirror I am not seeing the true picture of me, but instead I am seeing what my mind wants me to see. Unfortunately it isn't always the positive and uplifting part of my mind that has control of what I am seeing. In my mind my zits are the size of a quarter, and I weight 300 lbs. I know that this isn't true, but I have such a hard time getting past those mental issues.

So how do I start to change the way that I see myself in the mirror, what is the best way to go about this whole change in my way of thinking? It's going to require undoing years of self-depreciating and trying to live up to unrealistic standards that are shoved in the face of people everywhere. Honestly, I'm not sure. If I can figure out how to change this the possibilities are endless. What would it be like to live in a world where we don't have to worry about out daughters hating themselves and wanting to change who they are and the way that they look? What would happen? A world where there are no thirteen year olds with eating disorders, no thirty-something women who take drugs to lose weight that they don't need to lose, no men who work out until they pass out just to look like a professional wrestler. It would be amazing.

Here we are back again with the question, how do I appreciate what I have? How do I look at myself and see the good before the bad? The way that I am going to start this journey is to force myself to do that. Every morning when I first wake up I am going to look in the mirror and find something beautiful. First. Before I start to critique, and poke and pout I am going to tell myself that my eyes are beautiful, that my hair looks great, or just that for the first time in a week I woke up without dark circles under my eyes.

Will this work? I haven't got a clue, but I'm pretty sure it can't hurt. So here is to a New Year and a new me who appreciates myself.

~ DD

p.s ~ I'll get into the whole inner beauty thing another time, don't think I've forgotten what is the most important thing ;-)

It's Friday... Yippie?

As a SAHM with a husband who is currently half a world away serving in the military, sometimes I feel deflated on Fridays. I mean really, Friday is supposed to be the end of the work week, and the beginning of fun, family time, and getting your nose off the grindstone. In my world though Saturday is no different from Tuesday and Thursday, Little Diva is out of school those days, so I don't have to be anywhere. I don't look forward to anything, the Dirt Boy is gone, so he won't be here to make it special.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining, too much. I love being able to be home with the girlies, and I am proud of my husband and what he does, but sometimes I just miss the carefree anticipation that Friday used to bring. Maybe it's time to revamp our Saturdays, time to make them something to look forward to, so that Friday has something special about it again.