gratitude – Page 40

Intentionally speaking often leads to…

Published on May 5, 2015 by Mae @ RainydayinmayLeave a comment

Sometimes my brain only makes sense to me, and sometimes I have the most honorable and best of intentions. There are times when these things play out in my favor. Then, as I’m sure we all know, in our own ways, there are other times…

My life, lately, is an other time…

After we lost the first house we were trying to buy, back in November, along with our savings, things looked a little bleek. What we needed was a time of respite to regroup and plan, but what we had was a lot of pressure from several directions, pretty much no money and even less time.

Some people do their best functioning under pressure. I may not be one of those people. At least not this sort of pressure… We ended up in a mortgage plan that wasn’t what we felt remotely comfortable with, in a house we weren’t at all excited about and with even more pressure heaped on our shoulders because of all of the renovation work that needed done NOW. Then, just when we thought we could breathe for five minutes, we learned that we had every major appliance breaking, water heater and well problems, furnace issues, a sick daughter and the list goes on and on.

That cliché’ statement about how God doesn’t give you more than you can handle? It’s bologna. I reached the limit of what I could handle months ago, and I shut down. I wasn’t my best self, I wasn’t myself. My blog sat quiet, my life sat quiet. My marriage became a conversation about money, parenting struggles and home repair.

It’s frustrating when you do the right thing and it blows up in your face. Like trying to be there for your ailing parent by creating a home for them. Like giving your landlord six months notice because it’s the nice thing to do. Good intentions are great, but they are not certainties that things will work out. Was it a mistake to offer to bring my mom out here? Probably. But what was the alternative? We haven’t learned the answer to that. We’ve had the worst eight months of our lives as a result of trying to do the right thing, and the end isn’t in sight. Our sixteen year old has not been exempt from what she has lost/sacrificed as a result of this mess and yet we keep going because, well, what choice do we have?

We desperately need that ten grand we lost last November, and are sort of fumbling through life, trusting and trying not to worry…

And so, my brain made sense to me and my intentions were good when I accepted a job that had me working weekends and a weekday or two. The shifts were doable, and it was temporary. I would make nowhere near the money we needed, but it was money. With Chw traveling, often weekends are our only time together and this was a devastating development but we agreed (together) that the ease of some of the financial stress may be the balance of the lack of time. I went in to the job being assured flexibility when I needed it, and knowing that in return weekends would be a given. I was prepared for that. What I was not prepared for was the belittling when I needed to put a date regarding Gen’s school schedule (three weeks out) on the calendar so I wasn’t scheduled. Every time something like that came up, it was an issue. Then, as fate would have it, I was side swiped by a woman pulling out of Target.

Anyone who has had a car accident knows what follows… Adjuster meetings, physical therapy appointments, auto body shop appointments, etc. And then I thought, what about physicals? Dental appointments? Repairmen scheduled at my house? It would be stress forever, and I would be continually disrespected and insulted every time I had to be a mom or, God forbid, take care of myself… So, I quit. Which was both really sad because I had fallen INSTANTLY in love with the company and was excited to be there, and a tremendous relief because the amount of anxiety/stress that dealing with my boss had caused was so unhealthy.

It was after my decision that my husband said he didn’t want me to work outside of the home. But, the money. And then he shared the stress it put him on to imagine juggling everything that I take care of, and trying to manage our lives while he’s traveling, not to mention how we’d never be able to visit our out-of-town daughter and her family, (something I hadn’t even thought of). So, the reality is I need to try to make MORE money from home. Work HARDER at home. This completely overwhelms the crap out of me, and so my knee-jerk reaction is to look the other way.

And seriously, I’m not going to lie, I was really looking forward to interacting with adults out there in the outside, on a regular basis. Ha…

But anyway, my point with this harrowing story is that life is not the way our agenda bullet-points it out to be, and sometimes that really sucks, but it’s also ok. Are we happy about this mortgage nightmare? no. But, we ended up loving this house. Though I’m not a fan of living in a reno zone, I absolutely love what we have done. And do you remember wayyyy back when I shared how Gen HATED the prospect of our house and how she would never have a friend over? Well she is so surprised by how much she loves our house that she brings it up quite often. It’s home. It’s a work in progress, but it’s home… If we knew, a year ago, what we know now, would we do things differently? Yes. But I think we’d still want to end up sleeping under this very roof so we’ve got to trust at least something is headed in the right direction…

A rubik’s cube, gofer and a goose walk into a bar…

Published on April 28, 2015 by Mae @ Rainydayinmay1 Comment

Have you ever taken on a project, felt like you were finally making some progress and then the world came crashing down around you? Me too. And Chw… Quite literally, actually, poor guy! Amidst his demanding work schedule and our absolutely crazy work schedules that we’re trying (albeit a little unsuccessfully, it feels) to mesh together, we try to get projects done with the house. There are so many though and we are so overwhelmed that I’m afraid we aren’t accomplishing anything. It’s a one small task done, three major repairs needed sort of thing. Case in point, over the weekend he decided to paint our half bath. It’s a small room that really only needed paint, a new faucet and new flooring. In comparison to the rest of the house, this is all very simply… We picked up a great little faucet, have paint and are going to go the cheap flooring route because, honestly, we’re tapped and that’s just the way it is. So, there’s my awesome husband, post primering this complicated and tiny room when he notices a soft spot in the ceiling. He touches it, thus spending the rest of the day buying drywall (and to think we’d gone SEVEN DAYS without a trip to Home Depot! Another record broken!), re-drywalling the ceiling after taking care of the water damage and finding the source. An entire weekend of work and the room sits, unpainted… When will we have time to tackle it again? Who knows.

Have I mentioned here, that I’m going back to work? I’m pretty nervous and excited. It’s been pretty nerve racking balancing my schedule with Chw’s and throwing Genny’s regular babysitting schedule into the mix. I’ll still need a work from home schedule for writing so it’s kind of like I’m managing the schedules of four people that don’t fit together in any way at all. Super fun! It’s all just until may windfall comes in though, then we’re retiring somewhere warm, sandy and tropical. That should be any day, I’m guessing… Since I refuse to live in the land of pink unicorns and rainbow slides though, I’ll keep on trying the Rubik’s Cube of our calendar and renovating this old house one centimeter at a time. And oh yeah, now that it’s nice out we’ve actually seen what our yard looks like and it too needs a ton of work. Discouraging, to say the least. (though the giant gofer who lives under our deck seems quite happy with things.) *Note to any gofer familiar readers: He’s adorable but will he hurt my dogs? Should we get rid of him? If the answer to this is yes, is there a non violent way to do this because he is adorable, BUT we are practically roommates…

Speaking of gofers… We have lived in “city” for far too long, I guess. (even though we’ve never actually lived in a real city where dogs poop on concrete and stuff) Living on a lake is a whole new bit of amazing. We love the sunsets over the lake, (until the trees bloom and we can no longer see the lake anyway) and the geese coming in to the lake have been amazing! Every day feels, sounds and smells like camping except we have a full kitchen, comfy bed and shower. It’s fantastic. Every day we see fat squirrels, bunnies, hundreds of birds. (and of course, our friendly gofer tenant) I’m really looking forward to a lazing morning of tea and reading, out on the deck, as soon as the Cube aligns enough to make it so.

The tools we need… and yet.

Published on April 14, 2015 by Mae @ RainydayinmayLeave a comment

Several years ago my mother began saying the things that parents begin saying, about how everything that was hers is actually mine, and how this one antique is mine, that piece of furniture is mine, etc. Being her only child, it was kind of a given, but this was something she wanted to talk about when ever she got into that taboo-topic-of-funk, which was quite often…

Then, a few years later we made a trip down to see her because she had a double mastectomy. While we were there, my husband decided to play handyman around her house. This meant he had to go into the tool shed which had once been my step dad’s. These tools hadn’t been used in years. My husband was amazed at what lay in there and said something to my mom about a few of the things. She immediately grew irate about how these were her tools and we could not have them, when she was dead then we could have them. (Two key things to note: 1- my mom, bless her heart, is a possessor. She loves to own, collect and have things. Her things. 2- no one asked her for the mentioned tools, my tool-loving husband merely said something like “Hey mom, you’ve got some nice *insert tool names here* out there.”)

Was he hurt? Meh. We’re used to the often abrasive and totally unpredictable way she can be. It will all a bit silly and we’ve learned to just laugh to ourselves, shake our heads a bit and move on.

The ironic thing is, we’ve spent the last 10 months turning our lives completely upside down so that my mom has somewhere nurturing and safe to live that is not a nursing home. At her insistence, we’ve entered into a risky mortgage and the levels of stress we’ve taken on are beyond high. We did all of this willingly because we believe it’s the right thing to do. Throughout this time she is sorting her things and selling them, etc. Except for one or two things it hasn’t been an issue because I am not much of a possessor/collector… One thing she has been adamant about though was having my husband come down to New Mexico to go through my step dad’s tools to see what he wanted. Finally they agreed this could be done over the phone and the date was set for this past weekend. Imagine my mother’s shock when she went out to the shed to find most of those tools gone…

On one hand we’re grateful we didn’t spend money we don’t have on a plane ticket for nothing. On the other hand we’re sitting thousands of miles away facing the reality that someone has been robbing my unwell, living alone mother, for God knows how long. She admitted the shed hadn’t been locked in “quite a long time”, and all we can think, as she continues opening her home to people while selling her things and downsizing is “what happens next? Will they grow bolder?”

A few years ago, Chw tried to tell my mom she had some really nice tools out there. Rather than sell them, or share them with someone who could use them, she kept them hidden away because they were hers. What could have blessed her financially or through other ways now only leaves her vulnerable and a victim. It’s much like this move situation… 18 months ago she knew she needed to start preparing for the “next phase” of no longer living alone, but she chose, after a fresh bout of depression, to ignore it. When the topic came up again last summer, we were called to action and she agreed enthusiastically to move here UNTIL we bought a house dependent upon her coming (the sale of the home she lives in, that we own) and she changed her mind. She has since changed her mind again and agreed to come, but set so many stipulations that are NEVER going to be met, and time is running out. We’ve made it very clear to her the damage she is causing and she tunes it out, like a child. Once again, she keeps herself in a vulnerable situation where she will end up either forced into a facility or seriously injured from a fall beforehand. (there have been some close calls the past couple of months already.) She should be TERRIFIED not to move forward, but she isn’t.

And I want to shake her and knock some sense into her, but isn’t she just human? Don’t we all have things in our lives where we do know better but we still pretend otherwise? We text while driving, we drink while driving, we smoke, we eat unhealthy, we cheat on our spouses. We __________. (For the record, I’m not saying I do ANY of those things, nor am I saying that because I don’t, that I’m any better than someone who does.) We all don’t make the choices that are in our best interest, in the moment, because it feels easier to stick with the familiar and we love easy… but the result is a lot of the time we hurt ourselves SO much more in the long run. We have all the tools we need to make our lives better, and yet we choose our unhealthy ruts 9 out of 10 times.

Here’s to cleaning OUT our sheds of the stuff we need, sharing our excess with the world and moving on to something better when it’s what is truly better for us, even when we’re scared!

that one time at my surprise pity party…

Published on April 1, 2015 by Mae @ Rainydayinmay3 Comments

There are a dozen-hundred things mulling about within my brain. It has been an awfully long month of march. Emotionally exhausting things which I, to tell you the truth, hadn’t expected to take their toll on me emotionally.

For one, while I knew that it would be challenging living in a partial renovation state, I underestimated how utterly exhausting it would be. When we work on a project, or bring some-little-something to the state of completion, I am elated. I feel a calm wash over me and a reaffirmation that we can do this. As my husband jet sets off to yet another business trip, and I’m here surrounded by boxes, tools and equipment though, this defeat rises like bile. It isn’t that I want it done right now, as much as I just want something done. Some space that is finished. Some area where I can drink it in and take solace that we’ll get there…

Then there is love… Though it’s not love, nor is she pretending it is, for which I am glad. My youngest has a crush. It’s months upon months old, but it has reached a dramatic climax over these past few weeks and emotionally I’m wiped out. Young hearts are being shaped and molded and her heart is special. She has certain struggles that others might not understand… Going through this has been so much more difficult than I’d expected.

I’m so far behind on a work deadline that I laugh and joke about my *insert air-quotes here*deadline because honestly I just want to curl into a ball and cry about it. I’m taking on another work project that I’m so unbelievably excited for, but I’m just a ball of ooey-gooey something over all of it… It is the right thing to do. Both are. They are my Best Yes decisions… But I’m not sure how to get from here, (here= complete unorganized, overwhelmed and unsupported chaos) to there.

And of course- I’m so lonely. I desperately miss, not so much Idaho home (though the restaurants and boutique shopping here do not compare) but my people… I miss my people. March marked two years here and I’ve made a few surface connections. I am so not a surface relationship girl. Having a birthday and realizing that if I were to want a party (I didn’t), there is no one to invite (again) is a pretty crappy feeling… I want to be happy here. I love our house. My husband so completely loves his job. My youngest is likely as connected and adjusted as she’ll ever be. I want to not be sad for me, but it creeps up on me. My birthday month was really hard for that reason.

Then lastly, there is the whole birthday thing. I’ve never loved them. Not really. Not mine anyway… My preferred celebration is dinner with my husband and kids and time out with friends. So when neither of those can happen (I really, really miss my other two kids too) and my husband KEPT asking me what I wanted to do- I had nothing… No input, no opinion. Nothing. What I wanted to do was work from dawn til dusk on the house so the day sped by and we accomplished something, but he was only really home for a couple of days and that wasn’t fair to him. I realized, as I turned 39, that I have a list of things I want to accomplish before I’m 40 next year. I thought I’d share…

1) a getaway with my best friend. (so needed!)

2) complete a 5K. (either walking or running. Jury is out on whether my knee can run.)

3) speak in public. (even if it’s simply giving a toast or testimony)

4) do something that absolutely terrifies me. (ha! Other than speaking in public.)

5) become a regular at a restaurant, coffee bar or bookstore.

6) chase my dreams (career wise) without fear, this year.

7) travel somewhere I’ve never been before.

8) have a weekend away with my husband.

9) learn something new. (skill)

10) try hot yoga.

11) Make a new friend.

12) take a photo everyday for a year.

13) Take Gen to the DIA. (I love it there, but she’s never been.)

14) go to Mackinac.

15) get a new tattoo.

16) find a volunteer job.

17) make homemade ravioli.

18) can a season’s worth of produce.

19) get my passport.

20) write down my fears and then begin working on confronting them.

21) learn how to build a fire from scratch.

22) ride on a train.

23) mother/daughter weekend with my girls.

24) 40 random drinks or meals bought for 40 strangers.

25) go skydiving.

26) host a dinner party. (I used to do this all of the time, back when I had friends. LOL)

27) get to know our neighbors.

28) repurpose a piece of furniture.

29) publish a book.

30) get a new wedding set.

31) acquire a ping-pong table.

32) play real tennis, even if I’m laughably awful.

33) take 365 walks.

34) read 40 books.

35) see a concert of someone I really, really love.

36) see a Broadway show that I’ve never seen before.

37) attend a conference.

38) spend time with all 3 of my kids- together- and have family photos done again.

39) ride a horse (it’s been since my early 20’s)

40) make someone’s life consistently brighter/happier/more joy-filled/less stress-filled.

The moral of my March, and what I learned is that I don’t want to be sad about the sad things. I want to learn, love and grow. I learned that even when life is beautiful and there is a lot to be grateful for (and there really is) sometimes circumstances will be a little unpredictably sad and catch me a little off guard… but a new day, (or in tomorrow’s case, a new month) will come and brighten the prospects a little bit…

My belated January nutshell…

Published on February 3, 2015February 2, 2015 by Mae @ Rainydayinmay4 Comments

What I learned:

– I can’t do it all. I may want to, but I can’t. saying “no” to things is ok. Saying “this isn’t right for me” is ok too.

– I have tremendous patience for the people in my life and their behavior, but no one is excluded from the limit it reaches, and when that limit is reached, it does sadly alter our relationship.

– This isn’t a learned as much as a reaffirmed, but Parenthood really was the absolute best tv show I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing/seeing/experiencing/watching.

– An organized, well designed kitchen is worth more than the newest/fanciest home features.

– Home Depot has an answer for almost any dilemma.

What I’m into:

– Have been reading the same book all month. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s that I’m packing and working and struggling to find time to read. That being said, when I do find the time, I really enjoy it.

– Did you watch Selfie last fall? It started off a bit iffy, but it turned out really fantastic. Such a relevant and really well done show, for today’s society… sad they cancelled it. There are efforts to get people to revive it. Fingers crossed.

– My home reno idea Pinterest board…

What I loved most, this in January:

– I’ve talked about it here before, but it was one year ago this month that I discovered this product and I fell in love all over again this month! Crabtree & Evelyn 60 second hand repair kit

– Really loved the movie American Sniper.

– The North American International Auto Show. It was a lot of fun to go with Chw. While there we were introduced to the Honda Uni cub and this music video. I love Ok Go anyway, but this video is amazing!!!!

What about your january?