Bumps in the road....

The closer we get to a huge life change, the more rocky the road we travel to get there becomes.

It is to be expected, and honestly at this point in my life, I am an old pro in rolling with the flow.

There are some things that still throw me for a loop, and anything happening to my kids or Jack affects me in a big way.

Jack was in the hospital for 6 days last week.

He had an attack of diverticulitis.  Long time readers know that he was diagnosed a few years ago, when he got an infection so bad that it almost killed him.

This time, he knew what was happening, and had me take him to the E.R. at the first sign of trouble. The down side was, I had been up for 24 hours prior, and was in town with my Mom when he called. I went to a doctor appointment with my Mom for some moral support, and had not slept yet, since I had planned to sleep when I got home. I ended up having a late lunch with Mom and we had been having some pretty deep conversations when Jack called and told me he needed help. He did not want to call an ambulance because he had Alex, and did not want to scare her, so Mom and I rushed home and she took Alex with her while I took Jack to the E.R.

We got there at 5 pm and after a couple of CT scans and blood draws they determined his white count was through the roof and wanted to keep him. He finally got a room at 3 that morning. I had been awake for 38 hours by that point. I was in no shape to drive so I got a couple of hours sleep on a pull out chair and  finally went home the next morning when I was in a better position to drive. Mom kept Alex the whole time, but I only got to go see Jack once, due to gas money issues. I was very unhappy with him being gone. Luckily things were not as bad as they were last time, because he went right in at the first sign of trouble, but it was still very painful for him. It is impossible to rest in a hospital, so he was tired and grumpy, and missing home. He had to spend Father's Day alone in there. While I did not cry or anything, I still hated being apart from him. In the almost ten years we have been together, we have only been apart at night twice, once the first time he went through this, and the next when I broke my ankle and had to stay with my Mom since he had to work and I could not be alone for a while. It was hard. Not only are we husband and wife, we are each other's best friends, and we do not handle being apart for long very well.

I spent a lot of time cleaning and doing stuff around here to keep busy, and talking to him often on the phone.  On the 6th day his white count was within normal parameters and they let him go home with prescriptions for antibiotics at home. He is still tired, but feeling much better.

I am happy he is feeling better and that I have he and Alex back home, where they belong. My family is my center, and I do not feel right when they are not with me.

We had his last appointment with his back doctor on Monday, after he was released from the hospital. His Dr. is retiring from the place he was currently at, and he is moving to Destin to open a practice there. I was sad..I have known that doctor for over 20 years. He operated on my father and several other people I know. He is almost like family at this point. He gave me a hug and shook Jack's hand, wished us luck, and asked us to keep in touch, and let him know how things turned out, and that he was handing us over to his old partner, who is staying there in the practice. His partner is a good doctor too, we actually saw him first before we requested his current doctor when we found out he was available. There is really nothing to be done medically right now...they can't fix him, and we go for our first mediation next month. So now we try to move on with our lives and adjust to the fact that Jack will never be as he was before he got hurt. Jack is still struggling with the acceptance part. I am just happy he is alive and able to continue with his life, even if it is not in the same capacity as it was prior to the injury.

As for me, I had my nerve test almost two weeks ago, and I am still waiting to get an appointment to meet with my neurologist to get the diagnosis from all of my tests. My Mom's neurologist said it sounds like I have MS to him, and he is not the first person who has said that, and I will be honest, that has crossed my mind many times too. If I have not heard back from him by Monday afternoon, then I will call Tuesday and see if I can get some information.

In other news, we dyed Alex's hair pink for the Summer. I will take some pics soon and share, I have to make some room on my memory card in the camera for them. It looks really awesome, we both love it. After we find out what happens with the mediation and I no longer have to be sure and look respectable by other people's standards, I am thinking of dying mine Lavender. I am ready for a drastic change.

That is all that is going on for now. I will be making some changes around here soon, with the blog and my home. I want to make a new layout and tweak some things on the blog, plus get back into my recipes and  book posts. Plus I have some book reviews to write. On the home front, I am about to go through the house and declutter a lot of the dust collectors we have, and donate them to my favorite thrift store, which feeds the homeless with the funds they take in. I also have a good bit of clothes to go through and donate, and some other things. When we move, I intend to only take the furniture, our clothes, the kitchen stuff, and our personal keepsakes. I am donating everything else. I have been hauling some of this crap around for 20 years and I am over it. I need room for new memories.

I want a fresh start in our Forever Home.


That sums it up for tonight.

What have you all been up to over the last couple of weeks? How is Summer treating you?

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So many things...

I have so much to write about, so many ideas bouncing around in my head that I hardly know where to start.

My mind has been racing for days with ideas for the overhaul I am about to do on the house, for the blog, for things I want to create, things I want to do on the fan page. I have been trying to write them all down as they come to me, but as they tend to hit me at night when I am trying to go to sleep, that can be hard to do at times. I do not have a nightstand or anything, so keeping a little notepad is out of the question for now. BUT, I am about to move my bed, so once I do that, I will have room for a little table. Right now my side of the bed is against one of the walls.

Anyway, there are sooo many things I am going to be doing. I have decided to make the month of February a "Project Month." I am going to spend all of this month working on the house. Moving things, redecorating ( with things I already have ) painting, and getting things "right."

We finished the bulk of the kitchen table and chairs Monday and brought them in the house. I still have to paint the tiles on the top, but that is an inside the house job as I need it to be climate controlled for this particular paint to dry quickly. I am so thrilled with the table already. It has been so nice to sit here and eat together, and to have work space other than my desk and the very limited counter space I have here. Once I paint the tiles, which will be this weekend I think, I will do a dedicated post just for it instead of throwing a few pics of it in to this post. I want to be able to post them all at once so you can all see it from start to finish. I am really proud of us, it looks great and it really made the house feel so much different. More homey. It made me want to do so many other things. Hence the project month.

I will have to do most of it myself, as Jack is unable to do much still. He had two back to back MRI's today, one with contrast dye and one without. The radiation makes him really sick, so he was not feeling well at all when he got out of there. I had to drive home. We stopped at a grocery store and spent the last 22 dollars to our name to get a little food to hopefully get us through till the 9th when my stamps come in, but 22 bucks does not go very far these days. This month sucked, as we had to renew our insurance policy and renew the tag on the truck this month. We had to get an extension on our light bill, as we could not afford it. We will probably not be able to afford it on the 14th, which is when it is now due either, especially since our rent has been raised...but at least we have power until then. I have borrowed all I can borrow and asked everyone I can ask, so there just is no where else to turn.

So instead of dwelling on what I can not change, I will work on what I CAN change.

On to other things, Vickie at Aoibheal's Lair, who was participating in the Ten Things Thursday with me, has decided to move on and stop doing the Thursday post. She said she feels it is time to move on, and that it is hard coming up with a theme each week. I totally agree with her on this. Even though I "created" the weekly meme, I, too, find it increasingly hard to find ten things to write about in such a manner. So while I am not going to stop doing it totally, I am no longer going to try to do it weekly. ( Not that I have managed to do so in the last few weeks anyway LOL ) Now I will do it when the mood strikes me. I am also tossing around ideas in my head for a couple of new segments here on the blog. Not an every week thing, because I have learned that my life will almost always prevent me from posting when I am "supposed" to, so I will post them on the day they are named for when I get the chance. I have beaten myself up emotionally over my blog so much, because I feel like I should be here every second of every day, writing away, when the reality is I have to write as time and circumstance allow. I have noticed that when I stop bullying myself about it, I tend to write more, and the words come a lot easier than if I am screaming at myself that I should be writing.

I feel big changes coming. I hope that some of them are good for once.

Strange Tides...

I have felt this shift in the Universe for a couple of weeks now. Since the 21st to be honest, but I am not sure if that is because of an actual shift in the cosmos or if it is just in my mind. Either way, I feel it.

I have a hard time sitting still these days. I seem to always be doing something, and if I am not, I feel restless and discontent. I am in an organize phase, and a cleaning phase. Nothing is clean enough, nothing is organized enough. This is not a bad thing, but it is different for me. I am always cleaning or doing something, but never with this sense of urgency. It feels like if I am not cleaning then it will mean the end of the world.

Very strange.

I am also finding myself out of patience. I am no longer willing to constantly explain myself, to try to make people understand me. I am tired of trying to stuff myself into someone else's box, tired of trying to find some shred of common ground to get people to accept me, or to see I am not so different from them, so they do not feel uncomfortable.

The truth is, I am a lot different than most people I know. I am more comfortable on the darker side of things. Not evil, not bad, just darker. I like dark humor, I like dark colors, I like dark clothes. There is nothing wrong with that, or with me, it is just who I am. All my life I have been trying to get people to accept and understand me, and I am just no longer willing to do that. I am a great person. Sure I have made mistakes, and I am far from perfect, but who hasn't?

I am at the age to where you either accept me or you don't. I am me, I have always been me, and I grow and change just like everyone else. Who I am at my core, however, has never changed. My father used to tell me that "With age comes wisdom" and he is very correct.  The older I get the more I learn about myself, and as of late, I am learning how other people actually see me. People that I thought were very close to me do not talk to me as much, especially since it was made known that we were in need. People in need tend to make other people very uncomfortable, even if that need is never mentioned between them. Like they are just waiting to be asked for help. I would never go directly to anyone and ask for help, especially from people I am close to, because chances are I know how much they might be struggling too. When I wrote that blog post, throwing it all out there, it took everything I had to do it. It goes against everything I believe in.  But I did it in a way that made it easy for anyone who wanted to and was able to help could do so. I did not schlep door to door of my friends and family and ask for anything. I could never do that. I am also finding out how people I thought were close to me really feel about me. Someone very close to me hurt me terribly not long ago, and I am still reeling from it, from the shock. I have no desire to go into details, with anyone about it, nor will I, but it has hurt me to my core, which is not easy to do.

I am tired of defending my life choices to people. I live in BFE because I wanted to be closer to my parents and my kids, and because of the schools. I am with Jack because I love him and feel he is my soul mate. I am not with other people because I was not meant to be, or for whatever reason was the case at the time. It no longer matters why, because I am with the person I love more than anything aside from my children. I am not working because when I left work, I was simply paying for the babysitter and the gas to go to work. There was no profit. Now, I am unable to work in the jobs that are most likely to hire me, even if the economy did not suck here, and the jobs I can do will not hire me because even though I have  the knowledge, I do not have the college degree to go with them. My older kids do not live with me because I made stupid decisions when I was younger, and I could not afford to take care of them. They are better off where they are, I fully admit this. I have the desire and the love and the knowledge to care for them, but I do not have the resources to do so. Plus, to be honest, my mom NEEDS them, she needs someone with her. I am not Christian, Wiccan, or any other religion because I do not agree or believe in those religions.

Those are the things that seem to matter to people. Where do you live, where do you work, where are your kids, what religion are you, and who are you with, and why. So there it is. Never mind that there is so much more to me than those things. Never mind what kind of brain, what kind of heart, what kind of soul I have. Most people have no desire to know those things about me, unless they match up with what they themselves believe in. There are a few that do, but very few. When I meet someone new I automatically start trying to explain myself, so throw my life story right out there, so they can go ahead and judge me or not judge me and we can either maybe develop a relationship or they can go on their merry way. I have no problem explaining myself to new people, but it is tiresome and old to keep repeating myself and trying to justify my right to believe the way I want to believe over and over again to the people who have been in my life for some time. It will no longer happen. I am done. Either you have accepted me by now, or you don't. No longer will I explain myself or justify my beliefs to people. This is just the way I am.

This is going to be an interesting year. I am learning new things and working my way through several things internally. My surroundings are changing as well, as I clean and organize...and my personal life is is also changing, as new people come in to my life and as people seem to be leaving it. There are people who have become so very special to me and I am grateful for them.

Everything is changing, and while some of the lessons will be hard and might hurt, I can honestly say I am excited to see where the tide takes me....

Now that I finally have this post out of the way, as it has been brewing for several days now...there will be many more to come soon!

Do any of you find yourself having to repeat the same things over and over to the people in your life?

On reinventing yourself...and a hard decision..

I have been thinking a lot about the reinvention of self.

I have certainly done it, and most people probably have. Changing the style of clothes you wear. Changing hair style and color. For those of us who blog, changing blog names, making new ones. As I said, I am reasonably sure that most of us have gone through this process at least once.

I have noticed something though. Some people seem to do this constantly. Every week, or month, or every few months, they totally overhaul their lives, or something about their lives, only to end up the same exact way they were before. Then they announce some big new change, a total revamp...and they end up right back where they were before, facing the same problems, having the same attitude, going through the same issues over and over again.

I have learned that you can not run from your problems. You can not run from yourself. You can make all the outward changes in the world, but if you do not change who you are at your core, then you are always going to end up right back where you started. If you have a bad attitude, or if you blame everyone else for your problems, you can change anything you want, but if you do not change your attitude, or take some personal responsibility for your life, you are just wasting your time and effort. Six week, or six months from now, you will be right back at square one, with a new name, a new face, or a new wardrobe, but until you change your outlook on life, none of it will matter.

Instead of trying to change the outside, try changing the inside. Consider that if you keep having the same issues over and over again with other people, maybe it is not the other people's fault. Maybe it is YOU that needs to change, not them.

Keeping things fresh, and having a little shake up every now and then are very good things in my opinion. Repeating the same mistakes over and over again while wearing a different (metaphorical) outfit changes nothing. It took me a long time to realize this. I spent so much time blaming my parents for my mistakes, or saying that I was a victim of circumstance, so since it was not my fault, then it was also not my fault that nothing ever changed inside of me. I stopped growing and learning. I spent all my time being bitter and angry, feeling betrayed and victimized when people supposedly did me wrong. What really happened was people got tired of my bullshit, and decided they were better off without me. I realized I was that person that everyone walked on eggshells around, because they never knew when I was going to blow up, or flip out on them, or get up on my high horse and be totally bullheaded and unreasonable about something. I was a walking time bomb.

It took most of the people I care about basically walking out on me and my bullshit to realize that until I took a long hard look inside myself, and realized that the only person who was making me a victim was me, I was destined to be alone and miserable. My marriage suffered, my relationship with my family suffered, my friendships suffered. Granted, not ALL of the fault was mine, there were some cases where whomever I was dealing with was just a jerk or something, but most of the time, I could place a good portion of the blame squarely on my shoulders, even if it was a situation like I am in now. Someone is in my life who is not good for me, I do not like this person's attitude, or their outlook on life. However, because I care for this person, I allow the relationship to continue, even though I am unhappy, and need to get out of it. I am not being what this person needs in their life, and they sure as hell are no where near what I need in mine. So even though it is the person's fault that they are the way they are, the blame is just as much mine because I let it continue.

The funny part in all this is that I hate to be the bad guy. I hate to be the one who walks away. I hate to be considered a quitter, or a bad friend, or whatever the case may be. So I have let it continue, knowing that the relationship is not what I need, and since I am not getting what I need, I am not giving what they need either. I just can't stomach it anymore. To much has been lost, I have had to fight to hard to get back what was taken from me, and I just do not want to do it anymore. The person has not changed in years, and from what I see, they never will. The backlash is inevitable.I will be talked about, probably slandered, and told to anyone who will listen that I am a bad person, because that is how this person works. Know what? I honestly do not care any more. That no longer scares me, because the people in my life who care about me know me, and know who I am at heart. I do not hate this person, in fact I have cared for a long time, but I just can not stomach the relationship any longer. No amount of external reinventing will change who they are inside, and after years of witnessing this, I fear they will always be this way, and that makes me sad, because if all that icky energy were channeled the right way, this person would be the best friend one could ever have.

I have been agonizing over this decision for weeks, and it was a simple thought and resulting picture that brought it all to a head, and I realized that I will be okay, and just as importantly, the other person will be okay as well. We both deserve better in life, and this stagnant friendship is only dragging us both down. So I am freeing us both tonight. My decision is made. It will hurt, and it will probably hurt us both, but I have to do it. I have worked to hard on myself to be drug backwards, and it is like looking at myself in the past. I am moving forward, and the person I see ahead of me will never be obtained until I get away from those who keep me rooted to who I was in the past.

I have learned these lessons the hard way, which is how it usually works for me. Nothing worth having in my life has ever come easy, which is why I know this has to be done. I speak from a place of understanding and experience, not a place of " I do not like you anymore, kick rocks." I hope this person finds happiness within THEMSELVES, not from external trappings and through other people. Because unless you can look hard at yourself and realize your own faults, you have no room to be pointing out any one else's in my opinion.

So that is where I am tonight. Making hard, but much needed choices. So we can both move forward in our lives, what ever direction that may be. I know the other party will not believe it, but I end this relationship with no ill thoughts or wishes, I truly hope that this person is happy and will continue to be so, and will experience great love and friendship. I really do. I still care about them, but I just can not do this anymore. What was had is now lost, and I do not see a way to get it back. So I am walking away, even though it is hard and pains me to do so.

So folks, I guess the moral of the story is this:

Have a great week everyone, and take some time to do some inner reflecting, what you find just might surprise you...

Memoirs of a Crazy Pantheist Witch?

I have been out of commission over the last few days due to my hand, and I have been using that time to do a lot of thinking.

I have been struggling to find a niche for what I am. I am a Witch, yes, but I was having a hard time finding a term to describe how I see God. I am not a religious person, and never really have been. I am not Wiccan. I am not Christian. Nor am I Hindu, or a Buddhist or anything else of that nature. I have posted before about seeing God or the Goddess as multifaceted manifestations of the self, but that is not really true either.

I called myself "Spiritual" but that is not accurate either. I have had so freaking many conversations with people of all kinds of religions and felt only a partial kinship with ANY of them. I was at a loss as to how to describe myself so even I could understand it, but I knew there has to be a word out there for it. I even tossed around the notion of using agnostic, but that is not right either.

I do not believe in "God" or "Goddess" in the typical way. I do not think there are a zillion different deities that govern a zillion different things, or one wrathful God that preaches about love while he killed millions of people for not blindly following him, and in whose name more death and war and horrible crimes have been committed. I do not have any resonance with the Wheel of the Year or a lot of other Wiccan or Pagan things. Nature, the Cosmos, the UNIVERSE is what resonates in me. Everything is connected. Everything is energy. I do not believe in a Creator God/ess. EVERYTHING is "God." I am Divine. That rock outside, that blade of grass, that speck of dirt, all those are Divine. Everything is perfectly awesome and connected just as it is. Everything is energy to me, which is why thought can manifest itself into tangible things. Jesus was no more Divine than my next door neighbor in potential,  Jesus was just more dedicated and enlightened than my next door neighbor. In my way of thinking anyway. Every night I pray, but I pray to the Universe. Miracles are just thought and will manifested. Massive amounts of energy directed to a central cause. Some people can wield that energy better than others.

I started searching for the term, finding a few that kind of meant what I felt, but not close enough for me to say "That's IT!"

Finally I found the word, which was right under my nose the whole time, but not one that I had enough knowledge about to make the connection.

The word was "Pantheism."

According to Wikipedia, "Pantheism"  :

 is the view that the Universe (Nature) and God (or divinity) are identical.^[1] Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal,anthropomorphic or creator god. The word derives from the Ancient Greek: πᾶν (pan) meaning "all" and θεός (theos) meaning "God". As such, Pantheism denotes the idea that "God" is best seen as a process of relating to the Universe.^[2] Although there are divergences within Pantheism, the central ideas found in almost all versions are the Cosmos as an all-encompassing unity and the sacredness of Nature.

That right there pretty much sums up how I feel and look at things in a nutshell folks.

Everything is connected. Everything is God.

All these bells and whistles, spells and rituals, churches and worship, mean virtually nothing to me. NOTHING. The Universe is my sanctuary. I fully understand that those bells and whistles are just as real and important to others, and do not denounce their belief in them. That is what is so great about it.To each is own...and because of the nature of the Universe, all those things can be as real as one perceives them. I was just looking to find where *I* fit in, because where I was at was not it. People have told me I must not believe in anything since I do not worship a God or even a Goddess. I always told them " It is not that I believe in nothing, it is that I believe in EVERYTHING!" I believe we are capable of anything we set our minds to because we are part of the Universe, we are part of that collective energy, and energy is the motivation behind every single thing that happens in the Universe. I have such faith, so much that it hurts sometimes, but had no way to describe it in a term people could understand.

I made a comment on a fellow blogger's post that said I was tired of explaining my faith to others, defending my faith to others. I was tired of trying to educate people into understanding what "religion" I am so they can wrap their minds around it. I just wanted to practice my brand of faith in peace. I am of NO religion. I just AM. I am part of the Universe, and the Universe is a part of me.

I normally do not even like using the word God in the religious sense because I am of no religion and it does not really apply to me in the sense that most people view the word God or Goddess. I am not going to Hell. I am not going to Heaven, or anywhere else. When my time is up, I am going to die and be cremated and scattered somewhere of my choosing, and I will STILL be part of the Universe. My personal energy might start all over again somewhere else, or it might not. I do not know, and I do not care. All I know is that everything is sacred to me. Whatever I choose to do with my life, or my body, or my mind, is possible because I am a part of something that makes it all possible. No one can make choices about my life but me. No God can tell me I can nor can not have children, or how many, or that I must cover my head when I go out in public, or that I can only wear dresses, or can't eat meat on Fridays, or anything else, unless that is what *I* choose to do. It allows me to live my life by my own creed. It allows me to learn from my mistakes, to grow and to change, and to keep my own council. I am harder on myself than anyone or any thing could ever be. I hold myself in check and walk that line because it is the right thing for ME to do. No one else is capable or allowed to make my life's decisions but me. Circumstances and my feelings on a subject will of course influence it, but no one is qualified to live my life for me.

This does not mean that I am not human and do not have likes and dislikes and emotions that dictate how I feel and what makes me ME.

I find it amusing that the "symbol" for Pantheism is the spiral, and I have long been fascinated and drawn to the spiral for years, as personal friends can attest.

I am still working it out in my mind, letting things fall into place, but I finally feel that I have found my "word" that best describes what I am in a way that others can understand it. I am still a Witch, but you can be anything and still be a Witch.

I know this is all a bit disjointed, and there will most likely be more posts about this, in a more cohesive manner, but for tonight, I am jubilant and relieved that I have found something that speaks to me, that explains to some degree of how I look at things. To know that I am not alone in my way of thinking. It makes so much more sense to me now as to why I was taking bits and pieces from different faiths and fashioning them into my own. I just thought I was eclectic, but because all those different faiths are parts of the whole, it made sense that different things appealed to me. The labels and sectioning off are things that humans did, and at one time, everything was One. To me, everything still IS One.

Everyone should follow the path that feels right to them. There is no particular path or brand of faith or type of religion that is any better or worse than the other. What matters is that it works for you, that is uplifts you and fills you in the way faith should. I do not have to like another persons path, but I have to respect it. That has been one of the hardest lessons to learn, and I am STILL learning...but now, now that I feel I know where I am in my own faith, I can be more tolerant and respective of others. It was hard for me to be happy for a person in their niche when I was searching for my own. Granted, there are still going to be times when I learn something and will say "WTF??" but as I said, I am only human, and my feelings are my own and valid, even if they differ from yours, just as yours are valid as well.

I hope this made some kind of sense to my readers, but even if it did not, it finally makes sense to me. My mind and spirit are quiet and at peace, after years of uncertainty and trying to find my way, to find my place.

I walk the spiral path, I always have, and I always will.

The space in between...

I know I have been kind of quiet these days. Nothing is wrong, just lots of little things going on.

For starters, you all know we have been working on some house projects. New tile, Jack finally fixed my cabinet drawers, I bought paint for my bedroom in the most gorgeous Sapphire blue, and some pink and teal paint to sponge paint Alex's walls. She decided instead that she wanted to take the 40000 cookie cutters in all kinds of shapes a friend gave me a long time ago and paint shapes on her walls. I am down with that! 

Jack is also going to make doors to cover our built in pantry, and little doors to cover the open cubbies on my desk. I love my desk and have posted pics here before, but as I was saying on a friend's blog ( Seriously, check her out. Her blog is Secret Agent Soul Truth and she is awesome. Tell her I sent ya! ) as much as I love my desk, I still do not feel it is "my perfect writing space" because of the open cubbies, and since the desk can be seen as you walk in the door, I have a bunch of decorative stuff on it instead of using it as a functioning writers desk. With the doors, I can hide my stuff so to speak from looking jumbled or cluttered when it is filled with the things I create with. It thrilled me when out of the blue Jack suggested he make hinged doors for each cubby without me even mentioning my plight to him!

Speaking of Jack, I do not know what has gotten into him but he has turned into Mr. HandyMan and I love it. Now when I mention something I would love in the house he jumps on the idea and tries to figure out how we can do it, or something similar. He is planning on building a small covered deck out the back door to put the washer and dryer on so we can slide the two pantry cabinets we have into the space they use, thus turning the 3 cabinets on the wall into more pantry space, and the cabinets will slide right into the space the washer/dryer vacates, making a pantry wall so to speak. I am thrilled with this idea.

Before I paint my room I want to figure out the best way to arrange it so it looks better and is more functional. Right now everything is just crammed in where it will fit due to the smallness of the room and the largeness of my bed. No, I will not get a smaller bed, we fight on my queen size for leg room as it is lol. I like to sleep sprawled on my back now due to my torn rotator cuff in my shoulder, and he likes to sleep diagonal for some reason.

So I want to see if we can make more sense of it than the way it is now. I just know that something has changed in his mindset and I am reaping the benefits of it.

Let's see, what else? Oh yeah. We went to the lake for the first time in a couple of weeks yesterday, and met one of my oldest friend and her family met us there. I have not seen my friend in two years and it was wonderful to spend time with her and her family. I am so in love with her and her husband and her two precious kids. I think ( and I hope ) we will all be spending a lot more time together in the future.

School starts back on the 18th of August, and in another week or so it will be time to switch things back around and get Alex and myself back on a "school" schedule, meaning earlier to bed and earlier to rise. I am ready to be honest. Staying up late may suit my inner self but it can be lonely and a little boring when no one else is really around. ( Except for two of my best friends, they are night owls like me but even they have to go to bed or work at times lol )

I have a couple of other things I want to write about but I feel they deserve posts of their own so I am going to close here. Yes I KNOW I say that and seldom write about whatever it is, but this is meaningful to me so it will happen lol. Another one of those changes I keep alluding to!

Have a great week folks!

It is time...

Actually it is long overdue. I sit around 8 months out of the year, bitching about the size of my ass and then how it is to hot outside to do anything about it, that I can not afford to go to a gym, how my *insert body part here* hurts, and a myriad of other lame excuses I tell myself to not get off my ass and lose some weight.

My outlook on myself is a big mess of conflicting emotions. I am comfortable with my physical self and totally uncomfortable at the same time, and it can change at the drop of a hat. I am can be filled with killer self confidence, not giving a crap what anyone else thinks of me, and then Jack will come home and go to touch me in some affectionate way and I close up inside, suddenly feeling 400 pounds and horrendous looking. ( Which is no fault of Jack by the way, he is perfectly happy and attracted to the person I am now, inside and out, sometimes overbearingly so...)

I have known since I was a young teen that my personality and attitude and the way I carry and present myself more than make up for any physical imperfections I have or think I have. Oddly enough, when it comes to the outside world, I really do not care what people think when they look at me. They either like me for me, or they do not, and I do not lose sleep either way. However at home, alone, I look in the mirror and think "Wtf happened to me?"  When did I get so complacent that I allowed myself to get this way? ( By MY standards, not society's unrealistic ones. ) I know WHEN it happened. When I got sick, and was diagnosed with a potentially fatal health condition, I left my job as a restaurant manager, took a few weeks off to get some tests done, and figure out how my life had to change ( not much it turned out ) and went back to work and then got laid off 2 months later, I got depressed, and became a statue. I sat ( and up until recently, as in days, still did ) on the computer constantly, eating because I was bored, because I was depressed and feeling sorry for myself, and because food was my constant companion. Now before you get the wrong idea, please do not have the mental image of me stuffing myself full of candy and junk...I am not that kind of chick. I ate ( and still do eat ) healthy stuff, just a lot of it, therefore making it UNhealthy.

Add to that the facts of I do not like the heat ( I am red headed, very fair skinned, and am very prone to getting burned and heat sick ) I like bugs and biting creatures even less than hanging out in the Florida heat, and I have a bad knee that I have had multiple surgeries on, and you have a woman who never went outside unless she had to. Winter has always been my favorite time of year until last year, when it was so freakishly cold for so freakishly long, and I used that to increase my list of excuses as to why I sat on my ass all day, every day.

My bad relationship with food goes deeper than that, I had a father who would constantly tell me as a child that I was fat, when I was not,he was not a very nice man, we lived out in the woods, with no kids, so food was my friend. I got over that, only to turn into him when it came to how I looked at myself later on. It did not help that after I had my second son, who was about 6 months old, and I had just had the first of my knee surgeries and was walking around on crutches, that my son's father, after having a conversation with my dad, came up to me in my parent's kitchen where I was making our son a bottle, reached around my and grabbed my stomach and JIGGLED it, asking me why was I still fat, was I pregnant again? I was horrified. I was in the best shape of my LIFE when I was pregnant with my son. I weighed 120 when I got pregnant, and I walked everywhere as we had no car, and I only gained 28 pounds with him, and he was a TEN pound baby when he was born. At the time of him grabbing my stomach like that, I weighed 130 pounds...that is it...I was 19 years old, in pain from surgery and doing my best to take care of our infant since he was no help, and he did that to me. So it comes as no surprise that I am the way I am about food, but that is not a good excuse to continue to be that way anymore.

Now I am an intelligent person, and I knew what I was doing was bad for me, but I am a horrible procrastinator, and I fully admit I will put off things as long as humanly possible. So I told myself I needed to eat less and exercise more. Eating less was not a problem, in fact, I got so good at it I only ate once a day, at dinner. Oddly enough, that made things worse. I was still sitting in this chair 15 hours a day, online, and the eating once a day was sending my body into "starvation mode" which is when your body thinks it has to store every bit of food as fat since you are not giving it enough regular fuel to do what it needs to do in a normal way. I made plans with online friends, to co-diet so to speak, but did not follow through. I could not bring myself to eat small meals 5 or 6 times a day as recommended by health experts, because that seemed excessive to me, especially because I was not increasing my physical activity enough to warrant me eating all that extra food. I was going to start walking, but never did, for a few reasons, one being there was a guy on the loose in my area kidnapping and beheading women and dumping them in the national forest not to far from where I live, and because I live in Florida, and it was Summer. Nuff' said.

Then about two weeks ago I was having a conversation with Jack about something, I do not even remember what it was about, grocery shopping most likely, and I ended up getting irritated with myself over my weight. I said to myself that enough was enough and something had to be done, I had to get up and do something instead of sitting in this chair all the time. Then this Monday that just passed Mother Nature decided to give me some motivation. It was 56 degrees outside when I went to take Alex to the bus stop. I felt that spark I get when Winter sets in, and in a spur of the moment decision, I got her on the bus, and instead of going home, I turned right and proceeded to walk down the loooooong dirt road adjacent to my road. I have been walking every morning for four days now. I take my pistol now, since you never know when I might need it, I DO live in the woods, with wildlife all over the place, and for protection against any human who decides fat people are not so hard to kidnap after all. I feel better every day, I walk 3 miles every morning, and on the first day I went, when I reached the bridge that is my turn around point, I was blessed to see a beautiful brown barn owl ( Owl is one of my totems ) 4 feet from my face, sitting at eye level on a branch at the little creek the bridge crosses. I spoke to her and she hooted at me a few times, and I thanked the Mother for giving me her blessing and showing me that I was doing the right thing.

Today I came home and got online to do some research. I took out bad fats from our diet ( not that there was many, I am not a fried food fan, and I seldom use oils or butter unless I have to ) a while back, I cook healthy, but I know there is more to it than that, so I spent my morning checking out various tips and advice and lifestyle change plans so I can help myself even more. For the first time ever, I am excited and feel that I can actually DO this. I have made small changes, I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that I will have to actually eat to lose weight, which is easier now since I am walking, I actually get hungry, and that calorie counting, something I had always scoffed at or thought was for people who had no will power, is actually a pretty vital tool for some people in their quest to have a healthy lifestyle. I live in the south, and grew up on sweet tea, and since I have been walking I have been doing my best to only drink it as dinner, and drink water the rest of the day. So far since Tuesday I have done pretty good. I did have a soda last night, because I have been getting migraines which I attribute to the lack of caffeine from laying off the tea. So I took a BC powder and chased it with a Pepsi, but I also learned that as long as it is in moderation, I can have just about anything I want. The point is not to diet, which is a short term thing, the point is to make a life change, to where this becomes the norm for everyday life, not something I do to lose a few ( Okay a persons worth ) of pounds.

Part of why I am writing this is to put it out there in black and white, to have some sort of accountability for my actions, because if I tell others, then the chances are better that I will stick to it, even though I am doing this for me, because the thought of someone asking me how the weight loss is going while I sit here day after day is a little horrifying to me. I have made so many internal changes over the last 2 years, and now it is time to start working on the outside. I want to see my kids grow up, to maybe play with a few grandchildren one day, not die of a heart attack or diabetes at an early age because I was to lazy and to busy letting my past influence my future. My new life started Monday. I hope to make it last until I draw my last breath...

My new dress...

I finally changed my layout for the season. I was looking for something with a Fall motif, but came across this kick ass black cat layout and had to have it lol. So this will suit me well for a couple of months when I change it for Winter.

I have a busy weekend ahead of me, we will be at my parents house all weekend ( as we have been the last 3 out of 4 weekends ) and I am looking forward to it. The last month has been great, we have been spending lots of time over there and everyone has gotten along and good times and food were had by all yay!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and enjoy the good weather for those of you that have it!

Blog Pimpin' for October!

Yes, I will be revamping my own, I am starting the work on that as we speak, but right now I want to mention two long awaited events that we in the Blogger universe look forward to all year! It is October, and you know what that means!

First off we have the highly anticipated 31 Days of Halloween over at Confessions of a Pagan Soccer Mom. Mrs. B has some awesome giveaways and wonderful guest bloggers for the entire month! Check her out every day for a chance at winning something new every day, and to read the fantastic guest blogger and Haunted Blog Tour participants!

The other October Thing of Awesomeness is from LJ over at A Racing Mind. Her 31 Days of Horror is a personal favorite of mine, as I love horror movies, and last year I added a few to my viewing collection that I was not aware of before thanks to her! This year should prove to be especially creepy, especially for me, because her theme for this year is spiders, and as you all know, spider freak me the hell out and will send me screaming for the hills. I have actually been trapped in my house due to a massive Banana Spider making a web that spanned my entire front door ( on the outside ) and I refused to leave until Jack got home and transplanted her lol. So go check out her 31 Days of Horror movies series and check it out!

As for me, I am currently looking for a new Fall layout, as I enjoy the cool temps outside. I have my house open and music playing and I have been enjoying several cups of herbal and fruit hot tea. This is the beginning of my favorite time of year, and I feel the long anticipated "Fall Rush" which is what I call that spark of life and energy that usually fills me this time of year. Look for more posts from me in my new fall dress soon, but in the meantime, go to the awesome blogs above and have some fun!

Time for a new direction again...

Yep. It is that time again. Time where I feel the need for change, and since Jack refuses to move the furniture anymore, I decided to change the blog a bit. Not my layout though, because I love it lol. 


This time it will be change of a different sort. I love to write but I am one of those that suffers from chronic writer's block. I have a pretty routine life, not much changes from day to day, so I feel like I really do not have much to write about. However after beginning my Music Monday ( which made me giggle since most did not know what to make of the song I chose hahaaaa ) it got me to thinking. Maybe my blog needs a bit more structure. Now I am still rolling ideas around in my head, but a lot of people write certain things on certain days, and while I do not want to be rigid and ONLY post those things as some do, I would like to use these things to get my fingers out of the pockets of inactivity and onto my keyboard. I am hoping that would bring me some inspiration and get more in the habit of writing daily.


I am also doing my best to get back in the habit of commenting on other people's blogs. I usually do not get around to reading the daily posts until later in the evening, and I find by that time a lot of people have already commented, and I find that some of them have already said basically what I wanted to say, so I feel me repeating it is pointless. Then I worry about people thinking I do not care or that I do not read, so I stress about it lol.


This all is just another part of my personal revamping that I am currently going through, and hopefully as things change here, I will feel like I have more to write about. The rest of this weekend will probably not reflect that, as I am unusually tired, I went to bed at 10:30 last night and slept almost 12 hours, and for me to go to bed at 10:30 at night is about the same as a normal person going to bed at 4 in the afternoon for the night lol. It is just not me. But I decided to listen to my body instead of fighting it, and I slept like the dead last night, but I feel much better today for it. So I am going to take this weekend to take it easy and stuff, think about where I want to take this blog, and use the "back of my mind" to mull some things over. Monday things will kick off with another Music Monday and then after that I will hopefully have the other days fairly planned out. I am hoping that once I am here typing my daily, it will give me the motivation to continue on with other entries about other things. So, we shall see where this takes me, and I hope you enjoy coming along for the ride!