Not tonight

TONIGHT I WILL NOT SIT ON MY BUTT AND EAT FOOD AND GAIN WEIGHT THAT MAKES MY BOOBS LOOK AS BIG AS PAULI CANADY'S HEAD.

GOING TO THE GYM!
THE END!

Happy day

So it has been one of those days where I have felt incredibly lazy and unmotivated.  So finishing up the day I thought it would be a good idea to look back at the things that made me happy today. The phrase happy day suddenly made me think of this:

Ahem..onto the things that made my day happy. 

* Amber Gerhart introducing me to pinterest

* A clean kitchen

* Delightfully crisp fall breeze drifting through my window

* A husband who just wants a hug when he gets home

* Eric Church and one of my favorite songs





Happily Exhausted

I am happily exhausted after a fabulously wonderful weekend away in Ohio.  It has been my favorite study weekend since I started going as a teenager.  Nathan Lewis gave some great classes on Esther.  He also told me to say Hi to all of you from him and Suzanna as well.  It was really great to see them!!  It was also very wonderful to see my Colleen there this weekend as well! 

This is the weekend where fall officially begins for me.  The air is crisp and so nice to get outside and "play" and sit around a bon fire.  I got to pet a miniature horse named Charlie, who was oh so cute.  I played corn hole with my husband and we dominated every team that we played (including my cousin Jonny and his wife katy...who are usually the best at the game).  Went through the corn maze in which something hilarious always happens.  For me Angie and I found it hilarious that we were walking through the maze with the maze creator and she could not figure out how to get out.

I was also very happy to get a little cuddle in with my cousins new baby Amos (who was born the same day as Colin).

Finally, this picture makes me very happy.

Katy, Abby, Kimmie, Me, and Angie.......the old married ladies.  Been friends with the Ohio girls for a long time now, and this picture  just makes me happy that we are still going to this study weekend and sitting around this same fire just like we did 10 years ago. LOVE IT

It's all good

Well friends, thanks for letting me vent a bit last night.  I am feeling much better today and happy to put yesterday behind me.

It was just one of those rare nights when Mark and I were both stressed and frustrated about the same thing....which makes everything seem a bit worse then it is.  So anyhow we talked and realized we are still okay and will survive the financial burden and I went to the gym to work off the frustrations.

So for the moment I am enjoying the wonderfully chilly fall-like weather and very much looking forward to our weekend away.  Very excited to get back to Ohio and spend time with Tim and Annalee and do those fall like things that I love.

Having a bon fire and playing corn hole make my life happy.  The end.

Fail

Our car broke this week. It wasn't a sudden thing, but one of those gradual things that needed to be addressed.  Unfortunately, it put us in the hole.  So now our credit card is not happy.


That has culminated in providing me with a pretty crappy evening.  I can look at the situation that we are in and realize that it is my fault.  I look at the strain on Mark's face and realize it is because of me.  With a now maxed out credit card and living paycheck to paycheck we are feeling the strain of a single income.  It makes me feel worthless not to be able to contribute financially, especially when we are feeling the strain of it more and more.

I can now apply to work in canada.  But that is the thing...I have to APPLY to work. Which means spending another couple hundred bucks on an application and waiting who knows how long for it to be approved.  Then the actual going out and finding a job.

I am just beyond frustrated with life right now.  I don't even know how to describe just how defeated I feel.  I don't even recognize who I am anymore.  The person I was when I left LA 3 years ago is nowhere to be found.  All of the challenges of the past few years have definitely gotten the better of me.

HAVEN'T I LEARNED THIS STUFF BEFORE??  Haven't I had this lesson??  Haven't I already dealt with the aimless wandering thing already in life?  Everything I am feeling, haven't I felt it before?  Haven't I dealt with it before?? 

I am just frustrated.  Not sure I am even making any sense.  Anyway...we are going to Ohio tomorrow night for the Ohio Study weekend.  Nathan Lewis is speaking, so it will be nice to see him and Suzanna.  Plus to spend time with all of my old friends in Ohio, and to have typical country, fall fun. (bon fire, smores, corn maze, corn hole).

Stuck

So I have been stuck in a rut.  I feel like if it's not one thing, it's another.  I kept telling myself that the reason that I had stopped running was because there was something wrong with my foot.  After a year and a half of not running on it, I put an arch support in, and it seemed to be fixed.  I ran 2 miles and felt good.  Then I pulled something in my back.  That thing in my back has kept me from the gym this week.  The real reason is that I am being lazy.

In general, I feel like crap.  There is no drive, no motivation for literally anything.  I can't get past the negativity I keep throwing out there about how much I dislike Canada, and how to face the fact that I may never teach again.  I don't have friends here, and have been disconnected from my close friends because of where I live.  I know there is light at the end of the tunnel because we have plans to move back to the US.  But I am still stuck in this rut.  I try to be positive of how things are right now for awhile, but that eventually fizzles out and I get frustrated and angry about it all over again.

It makes me wonder if I have learned anything from my past.  I heard a song today that just got me thinking about...everything. 

"And every tear that had to fall from my eyes,
And everyday I wondered how I'd get through the night,
Every change, life has thrown me,
I'm thankful, for every break in my heart,
I'm grateful, for every scar,
Some pages turned,
Some bridges burned,
But there were lessons learned."

Listening to it, I started contemplating the way that I am looking at things.  While this isn't where I want to be, or what I want to be doing with my life, I have to believe that something good will come of it.  I need a major change in attitude, because it is only hurting myself. 

SO as I was contemplating all of these big life things today, I got a really good idea!!!  As time goes on I will let you all in on it.  In the meantime I will leave you with something that has been making me really super happy:

In-Laws

I had a conversation today where I learned about 2 people who were at that moment in time irritated with their mother in-laws.  It often seems to be a common theme in married life that you are continuously irritated by your spouses parents, and vice-versa. 

I think there was a time when my family was chatting one day and Ann started complaining about her mother in law.  My dad just laughed at her and said you think your mother in law is bad?  He said, "after one of you was born grandma and grandpa(my dads in laws) came to visit and your grandma yelled at me about the horrible condition of our house, and how could I let her daughter live like this, and she told me to get a toothbrush and get on my hands and knees and scrub the kitchen floor."  We all laughed and asked, what did you do.  Dad started laughing, "I got a toothbrush and I got down and cleaned the floor".  A prime example of a nightmare mother in law....but I think that was mostly because my grandmother was crazy, and never nice to anybody.

Irregardless, after hearing a story like that I am thankful for the mother in law that I do have.  Certainly she has her own quirks but nothing that has ever really irritated me.  If I were a more uptight person I could have been bothered by one thing that she did....
Her and Mark's grandma made quilts together.  They decided to make one quilt for each of the grandkids(mark, his siblings and first cousins on the cooper side).  They were going to make enough baby quilts for each of them to get one.  So whenever someone in the family has gotten pregnant, they got to go through the pile of quilts and pick the one they wanted.  There are only a few left.  So one day we were visiting them on the island and she pulls me aside and explains about the quilts.  But she says there's only a few really nice ones left and she would let me pick out the one I wanted now.

I can imagine that at this point many people would go crazy saying that my mother in law was putting all this pressure on me to conceive....but I did not see it that way.  She really didn't put any pressure on the situation at all, and explained that she just wanted us to have a nice one.  Fair enough(except the only ones that were super super cute were all girl ones, so I better have a girl cuz that pink and green butterfly quilt I picked was adorable)

So in summary I don't have any mother in law issues.  While I would hate to have a mother in law like my grandma, or this lady I think everything else is just silly stuff that people make bigger than it should be(something i've seen my sister to time and again).