Life is good

I have had the great pleasure of spending the weekend at Michael's this weekend. Unfortunately he had to spend time baking hay so I also had the opportunity to watch tv and crochet which was truly relaxing and awesome. More unfortunately I made a mistake in the thing I was making and spent this morning frogging it.

Friday evening I went to Bible study at the pastor's house with Michael and several other couples. I saw some of them at church this morning and I'm on my way to making friends here. This is a great feeling.

I also realized it's just not that far here from my house and there is no reason I can't come here for part of the weekend and then be at home too. Today after church we will change my oil and head back to my house. I'm hoping we can go through some things in the red barn. We have plans to start paring down my stuff more. Michael is a huge help.

I spent part of yesterday making friends with his horses. I feel like they will be easy to start. I hope to bring my round pen down in the next month or so. I especially like his stallion and I am sure I'll like him even better after he if he a gelding.

don't rain on my parade

For all the naysayers,  dream crushers and reality biters of the world:just don't. of course I worry about being wrong, getting it wrong and feeling stupid. sometimes there is a connection that is inexplicable and complete and makes no sense to the outside world. there is no logical way to explain these feelings so we go on faith, and hope for the best. sometimes you meet someone so amazing and so perfect that there is nothing to do but surrender. of course time will tell and prove or disprove the feelings but for now I believe in love at first sight. how could you not of a man with a farm, tiny house, horses,cows,  dogs and cats who opens doors and brings yellow roses.

How do you really know?

I have been negotiating various new relationship since my divorce. Some have been with girlfriends and some have been dating people. I have dated several people since I'm out in October. Most were not serious but we're just me stretching my wings and seeing what it felt like to be a single person. Most of my friends said to not get involved with someone but to take time and learned who I am. Only, I have always felt like I knew who I was so while I understood their advice I did not necessarily agree with it. I had other friends who have told me their tails of how they we're divorced but then quickly met somebody that captured their heart and they found themselves in a relationship again. Most of these stories are very positive and happy. It seems sometimes you just need the right person and all logic goes out the window and you feel for them love that you never expected to feel.

I have had one such experience , though brief , since my divorce. I went out with someone who I thought was the whole package. And I was completely wrong. He was not at all who I thought he was and after 2 months all the small and discrepancies that he told me about himself came to light and that was the end of that. It left me feeling embarrassed and gives me pause for the future. How do I know if I found the right one? What if I find that feeling again and I'm afraid to trust it and miss out on something real? How do you really know if the person you think you love is really the one you love forever? And when you're pretty sure they are the one you love forever how do you tell the people who have watched you flounder and make mistakes? When do you stop worrying about what your friends say and just Plunge in because you're  sure you got it right this time?

These are some of the things I am contemplating this morning. The thoughts fill my heart and my head with Terror and with a warm sense of peace that maybe I'm on the verge of getting it right this time.

Sunday is for rest and reflection.

After spending kind of a weird and melancholy day yesterday I am in a much better place today. I have the opportunity to work with a local massage therapist doing a couples massage and I went to town crabby became how much happier. I'm not really sure why other than being able to help someone else feel better and spend time with another person always improves my mood especially if the person is as pleasant as Audrey, the other massage therapist.

I was, for the most part embracing the lonely day on Saturday, knowing that my daughter was going to come visit today. However last evening she called and said she'd be unable to make it because her truck is still in the shop. I confess this made me pretty sad. I need some help working on things that take two people and there's the fact that I had bought tequila for us to make watermelon soaked margarita whatever's that we found on Pinterest. Of course they were for me, because Maggie doesn't drink. ;-). After her call I admit to being pretty sad and feeling lonely and kind of sorry for myself. However, I pulled out my yard and started working on the next row my project and my mood did improve pretty quickly. After all, it's not as though she didn't want to visit. I had made ice cream for us to eat. I doubt I'll be any left by the time she gets here but it was a healthier low-carb version of ice cream. So she might not like it anyway. It has strawberries and a banana,which you don't taste, and coconut milk just a tiny bit of Stevia. Only has 200 cal, which I consider to be a huge win.

When I woke up this morning it was almost 9 o'clock. I can almost never sleep past six or 615 because Bailey typically needs to go outside early in the morning. She has been having a bladder leaking problem so last night I left her outdoors so I wouldn't have to worry about her leaking on my furniture, my floor, my bed, or me. I also thought if she was having issues having to P she could do it outdoors. I probably need to run her to the vet. This is something that is happened before but not recently so I'm not sure what's going on. In any case, I made coffee and flipped on the television. It just happened that Joel Olsteen was on the TV.

As a rule, I don't watch television ministers. They typically do not interest me and I tend to be a little suspicious of anyone who is that popular with that many people in one location. Looking at the mega churches on the television makes me feel like the minister is really a rock concert artist or performer of some type rather than a man of God. I know that Joel has lots of detractors as well as people who like him a great deal and I'm not expressing an opinion about that one way or the other because I don't know. However, this morning he has a message for me I needed to hear. He said if you find that peopleare vacant from your life maybe it's God telling you that you need to turn to him. I have definitely been recently guilty of trying to fill the holes in my world with other people. I have felt a huge shift in the group of people that I call friends. Some I have grown closer to. Some have pulled away without me even really understanding why. In that case I honestly don't feel like I have done anything to closet and my efforts to fix it have gone unnoticed or unwanted. So one of the Scriptures he quoted was Gideons choosing of his army to fight. He had so many men and God said it was too many but he didn't trust God to provide the right number. In the end he fought his battle with 300 men instead of 30,000 men and one. I have been thinking a lot about this. In the past I have liked to have many different friends so that I can always have someone to do stuff with. However since I have moved I have only had a few friends that are close by enough to actually see. This is further made difficult by the fact that they are not always available when I'm available. So I have increasingly learn to rely on myself more. And then, not wanting to wear out the friends that I have, I have been adding more and more alone time. I think ultimately this is a good thing. But it has been a bit of a lonely path. There are one or two friends in particular who seem to have decided that they need to let me go. All of my efforts to reach out have gone on unanswered. One of the friendships I thought had been repaired but then it seems to have gone south again for no apparent reason. Part of me wants to ask why, and part of me knows that it really has nothing to do with me. And that I just need to let that one go.

It is hard to see your group of friends shift and change. I tend to not like that much change. I like living in a new place and I like living in the country but I did not want to lose the people that I felt were my emotional support. I understand a little bit of why I have lost them but at the same time I do not take full responsibility. They were the ones who convinced me to leave in the first place and then they decided that they didn't like the life that I was building. A few have come back around and we have sorted out our differences but others have just remained elusive. I am someone who prefers to talk it out even if we are going to disagree but I also know that not everyone feels that way. Some people prefer to just quietly fade away and just let everything go if life doesn't go the way they think it should. In the end, I will emerge a stronger person with better friends and a stronger reliance on God. Everything will be okay.

One of my dear friends sent me a meme on Facebook the other day that told me I had permission to rest. This was very important to me. She is right. I do not always take the time to rest that I should. So today I am filled with things I could be doing or should be doing or maybe out to be doing and instead I am sitting in my chair watching some television trolling Facebook and crocheting. Every now and then I get up and I move around. I change a lot of laundry I hang some up I take them down I sweep the floor. I have to feed horses later and I will probably also ride today. I will probably go to the storage building and bring some things in the house to put away this week. But mostly I have decided I will do nothing today but I don't want to do. It is Sunday which is a day of rest. Rest does not always mean sitting around in my mind. My father always said rest is whatever you find enjoyable.

Next weekend family will be in town for Maggie's graduation which is Monday, June 20. It is in Azle if anyone would like to attend. We are very proud of our graduate and excited to see her start her next venture

As usual I have dictated this blog through Dragon dictation. Any hilarious or misspoken typos are just that. Let me know and I will try to fix them.


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On good parenting

I've been thinking a lot about parenting. This is led me to think about the way I was parented and the good and bad things my parents did or did not do to turn me into the person I am today. I really should say help to turn me into the person I am today because at least part of me was me to start with and my parents help guide the way. I say good and bad things because as a parent I know that we never do things perfectly. Sometimes they hit a homerun. Sometimes I have looked back and thought that they hit a homerun even though I didn't think so at the time. But overall I would have to say that my parents did a great job and that I am very happy that I had both of them through my childhood and teenage years. It is true that they got divorced later but by then I had primarily grown up and was out of the house. Heck, I was on the way to having my own child, so at that point they're being together was neither a good nor bad thing for my development.

I have been thinking of some very specific memories. One was when I was four and I stole a flower from a neighbors house. I knew I had done wrong and I stuffed it into the trashcan. Of course my mother found it and made me go back and apologize to the lady. She had seen me in any case and the dog had barked. However, the act of making me I'm not for what I had done wrong and take responsibility shaped me from even an early age. I ended up becoming friends with the lady, named Mrs. Willis, and her dog Esky, who was a dachshund.

I remember when I was about 12, my father took me to see My Fair Lady at the starlight theater in Kansas City. I remember that it starred David Bernie and the redheaded actress that used to be on Quincy as Qunicy's wife--Anita something I don't recall her name. That was the beginning of my love affair with musicals and truly loving music and singing. He probably took me to supper before though I don't remember. And I know that he shaped how I behaved during the theater and before. He coached me on what to wear properly probably with my mother's help, and make sure that I did not embarrass him.

My parents were strict. I got spanked if not regularly, it was at least appropriately. I was put into timeout. I was grounded from television. I have my allowance withheld. And, gasp, I had to do chores for which I did not always get paid.

All of these things came to be very meaningful this past weekend when I had to young charges who would not mind. They did not seem to know how to behave in someone else's home. They did things that I would have been whipped for had I ever done them. And when I tried to correct one of them I had teenager size I rolling and mocking by seven-year-old. I thought at one point that I should slap the child but of course I didn't since he's not mine. I did actually tell him that and he proceeded to tattle to his father, who is a friend of mine. This lack of parenting on his part is causing a rift in our friendship and I daresay possibly the end of it. I have lost respect for him as a parent because the children are so well mannered. They fight with each other way more than most siblings do. They can't seem to pour their own water or get their own lunch a bowl. They can't pour milk because they claim it's too heavy and every time their father gets comfortable they suddenly need something. This is not all their fault as their dad has not prepared them to take care of any of their own needs. I have tried to convince him that he should turn them loose a little more but he is not inclined to.

While I don't know for sure, I think perhaps I was a little too independent for my mom. I think she might have liked to have done more things for me but I was a difficult child you had to do things for myself. In fact, when she reads this she will probably be amused at my attempts to parent these two children. My own daughter Maggie, is a very well behaved child. She was an old soul from the moment I met her and has never really been a true little girl. She asked intelligent questions. She never watch cartoons. In fact, the day that she walked for the first time was also the first day she ever crawled. As an aside, I joke with her that she is developmentally stunted because she never crawled. I read it in an article somewhere.

In any case, all this rambling is really just to tell my parents how much I appreciate them. I want them to know that I think they did a great job. In spite of two divorces and living in what they would not appreciate as a fine home, I am very happy with most of my life choices. I have a tiny house in the country with horses surrounding me. I have two dogs and four cats and probably a bunch of snakes that I don't want to know about. I even have satellite television as of two weeks ago because I got tired of never having any TV to watch. Yes, I am paying $50 a month for something I used three hours a week but it sure is nice to have it when I'm in the mood. My mother taught me how to crochet and how to sew. She taught me how to Crosstitch as well though I don't do it much anymore. My father taught me about finances and how to balance a checkbook and have a good work ethic. He taught me that if you owe somebody $8.02 you should pay them back $8.02 even if it seems silly to come up with those extra pennies.

I wish there were some way to parent children so that they appreciated being parented. I know that kids who are not used to restrict lifestyle don't appreciate it when someone comes in and says the word no. However, I know that I can only be who I am as a person and as a parent. It makes me sad to see what is missing from these two and their lives. However, I know that I do not alone have the power to change it.


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