Briannah

I have never framed art, full confession I'm taking our photo to Hobby Lobby to get them to do it. We have a really ridiculously expensive but ridiculously lovely black and white photo printed on photo board instead of paper that I need to get framed. This is htat art piece I fell hard for fyi. https://www.etsy.com/listing/69376478/blue-beach-starfish-original-seascape?utm_source=Pinterest&utm_medium=PageTools&utm_campaign=Share

We're not building anything new in the kitchen, we're painting over the ugly cabinetry and counters, and the tutorials require sanders. It's a large sanding area, and Nikki has already informed me he's not doing an area that big for multiple times (you have to sand the entire area each coat of the cement) if we go the faux cement veneer by hand. But all the brands look the same to me, none of them stand up and scream 'I"M QUALITY I"LL LAST!". None of them even look that sturdily built, and I guess sometimes I live in my childhood and want to buy thing that will last for 30 years like grandpa did. We're first sanding to rought up the counter to increase adhesion, then sanding for smoothness of what we put on it before we seal, not to strip anything. The nifty thing is we found a diy one for painting the cabinets, no pre-sanding needed, just use chalk pant and it adheres fine, covers well, and the site did a two years follow up and it lasts. SCORE! And I can't really help sand thanks to carpal tunnel I picked up from years of retail and my insurance is unwilling to pay for surgery since Im mostly functional, just hurty on repetitive action things which I no longer do to make a living since the last 11 years I was working were in an office instead of the scanning/cooking tasks that caused it, so Nikki gets his way here. And in the worst case zombie apocalypse scenario I can use it to be a zombies brain in. The saw is to build the built-in bookshelving and possible lock-in wood wall slats(light weight locking slats that just go on over your existing walls and we can easily fix the living room walls!) to cover the panel issue in the living room that will require a LOT of precision cutting thanks to some really unfortunate architectural choices in there.. And the craft table Nikki wants to build that folds up and is really small when we are using the spare room as a guest room. Both of which will also require large scale sanding after finish apparently, in addition to the saw for him to cut all the pieces. It's a lot of wood cutting as I understand him tell it. Would it help if I pm'd you the links to some of the projects?

I'm going to start banging my head on my desk in numb misery. Researching good brands is painful, the reviews are HORRIBLY boring reads and I want to spork out my eyes. How many things can anyone say about a power sander? I did make a little progress despite the mindnumbing horror, found one that catches dust through the pad, so while I have no iillusions it will catch ALL the dust, minimizing as much as possible sounds good in theory. Nikki and I are both a wee bit lazy on the manual labor part, and sanding down a whole kitchen by hand sounds...painful. Right, don't wear gloves, because I won't be able to feel anything. That is generally my experience with gloves of any kind. I have a weird aversion to sleeves too, although I do force myself to deal in the winter. So that is a great relief, thank you Emma! We do have the power drill and a bunch of bits, but we need some sort of power sander for the kitchen and power saw for building the built in bookcase/shelving unit in the office and the folding craft table thing I found, we're sorta settling on a convertible guest room/craft room for the offsprings old room. So when we have guest there is a place to put them, and when we don't it will function for his art/modeling and my scrapbooking/origami/whatever new thing I decide to try next. And we plan to work very slowly. Grandpa was a big proponent of checking and rechecking until you have what you are going to do in your head for sure, and testing it out (hence the weird dollhouse thought) to practice. I'm not entirely useless to Nikki in this, I got a B+ in woodshop and learned a lot growing up with Grandpa. But Nikki is definitely way more skilled and forepersonlike in this mess. I'm sorta the idea/slave labor assitant! STill super excited about my art though. I can't wait til he has time to paint it!

So. Nikki and I talked it over, and are going to start working on the actual renovations after the cruise, so around April. (Vacation! I can't wait!) Prime issue #1 - asthma. Most of the things we want to do involve a lot of particulate dust matter, I can NOT be in the house with that all closed up in the winter, so it has to be in the spring when it's warmed up enough to open the house for at least 20 minutes (the amount of time I'm told it takes to recirculate the air on the average house). And preferably the entire time work is ensuing so fumes and dust can go outside and not into my admittedly overly delicate lungs. (I already have the face masks to further protect them in place!). Issue #2 - the kitchen will be unusable for at least two weeks most likely. So my plan is crockpot cooking on indoor weather days and grilling outside on outdoor days. I have enough crockpot and grill recipes to easily make this not a hardship. So that is why we're waiting to actually start things. So right now it's research and decision phase. This went from a hey, we can afford to fix the counters babe comment to a OMG we can fix it ALL! Or at least as much as we can do in spring and summer. Which brings me to... power tools. I feel wholly unqualified for this. And I have a sort of conspriracy theory mindset about most powered items, from kitchen appliances to tools to electronic devices, that they're made to fail to keep siphoning my money. I don't know if it's just paranoia on my part (Dad did a GREAT job of convincing me that everything I touch turns to trash) or if it really is that bad with the corporations now. But since I have more free time than Nikki, I'm going to try to dive in and figure it out. At the very least I need some sort of power sander and power saw. There was this power saw on youtube I saw a while ago, it was sort of a tool box looking thing, that could reconfigure in a great many ways to be a variety of powered saws meant for people who wanted to work on things in small homes like apartments and no garages to house a workshop. I own a house, but we have no garage, and the basement floods when the river does so it's unlikely that it would work out to try to turn it into a workshop. As it is I made homemade shelving outta concrete blocks with wooden slats that I put rubbermaid tubs on to get any storage out of it at all. The concrete blocks stand up well to the water and are cheaply replaceable if they do start to erode for some reason. I feel REALLY outta my depth. Just between us girls here, I'm freaked out of my mind to touch anything in the house, thanks to Dad's lingering voice in my head. But I'm going to plunge ahead, read and reread the tutorials, and practice small projects to test the skills. Nikki said I should make a doll house when I mentioned that to him, and test it all out on that. LOL Then he's like when you're done you can sell it on Etsy. I can't tell if he's serious or kidding me. LOL Sometimes I wish I'd only had Grandpa growing up. His is the voice that whispers in the back of my mind I can do anything. I think I would have been a very different, unhappy person without his influence in my life. Have any of you done any major do it yourself remodeling? Any knowledge you'd like to bestow upon me? I'm determined to reject both my dad's thinking that I destroy everything and his teachings that this sort of thing is for men only. We women can do anything! Roar! (Okay, maybe more like a squeak, but whatever, right?) And...it's fun that it's something Nikki is into to. I like doing things together, and our tastes coincide on a lot of things, more than they used to because he's more open about what he actually likes these days! He does have an unfortunate color palatte sometimes though... And...he's going to make me my painting. I found a gorgeous simple ocean painting, and I really really wanted it, but it's $300. I know, not much for art, but I'm CHEAP until our debt is paid down, and then NIkki gets his electrolysys. Or lasering. I forget which he decided to go for, whichever. HOWEVER...Nikki used to paint. And hes' certain he can recreate the paintings for me. I did get him a lovely art set for Xmas, with a folding easel and the basic tools to get him restarted in his art since he expressed interest, it was so sweet for Nikki to offer my beloved ocean painting. Todays hidden lesson for me in all this, I let myself be powerless in many ways because I let people tell me I was, that all the things I wanted were outta my reach. And I contented myself living in my means, and with what I had, and was happy. But...I'm not powerless, and I can change it, fix it, make my life better. I just have to work harder than someone who has the money to pay someone else to remodel. Now here's hoping our house doesn't get hit by a car the day after we finish. Cuz that's a thing, it happened to a family I knew, I was in the house at the time when suddenly a loud bang and the place just suddenly exploded into dust, like someone ran through banging dirty chalkboard erasers together at an insane speed. The people who lost control of the car hit it so hard they moved the right side of the house six inches backwards off the foundation. The bathroom was at an odd angle for weeks until the insuarnce arranged for cranes to lift it and right it and repair the broken parts, and you had to hold onto the toilet, it was crazy.

It's been raining since New Year's eve. And our life experience SO color our emotional reactions to things. We always assume that humans think rationally, but rational thought really goes to problem solving, while life experience and subconscious go to the deeper choice and reaction issues. I always liked rain. However, since 2007, if it rains more than one day I'm deeply uncomfortable and want to start moving everything I own upstairs. Our town flooded that year. It took somewhere between six and eight weeks of rain, no just a few days, but my brain doesn't care. Its the conditions that created a situation which threw my world upside down. And this was a MINOR flood, nothing like what goes on fairly regularly with the Mississippi river. My basement flooded out and there was some danger potential, as the breaker box, hot water heater, and furnace were all in that water. We had to carefully get a pump into it to get the water out without touching any of the water in case it was electrified, and there was a very real potential of fire form a situation like that I understand, but we had a shelter to go to if needed. So it wasn't a safe situation, but it wasn't imminent danger of drowning like some people have faced. But all the loss of the things we had stored, all the cleanup, the worry about the structural safety of our house (especially since the basement stairs broke off and floated freely around down there), and the sheer amount of work after to clean it all up so we could get it professionally bleached (or whatever they put on it) to control the health issues of post flood sewage in the basement (I'm talking storm drains sewage, not the toilet ones). There was no power for a week, that made cleanup hard. And the whole town stank like you wouldn't believe. So while it wasn't as bad as it is for others, it was pretty bad during the event. And...it only happened once in the time I've lived here, and once when my grandparents moved here the second year I think, but now it colors my thoughts and feelings about the rain. And it changed the look of my town. Lost of neighborhoods are gone now, and just grassy fields left where they were. Rationally, I know it's not a threat to me unless we start hitting the four week mark that I need to start thinking about it. But the reality is that on that second day of rain, both Nikki and I start checking the river's height on the town page. We start eyeing what to move upstairs. Because brains and psyche are NOT rational. It's a good reminder to myself to stop and remember not to expect rational thought from big issues from people. It doesn't work that way. We all think it should, but brains and emotions don't work on rational. Rational is how to fix the leaking faucet, how to move the possessions out of the way of the flood. The emotional brain provides the impetus to actually fix that faucet, and when to start moving those things. And that part isn't rational, it's deeper in that rooted in a series of complex instinctive and learned behaviors related to survival. Our brains haven't cuaght up with the modern world, and they still function on survival instinct every day. That is where the fear of unknown and different comes from. It's why change is slow, and not fast. Because we have to train our brains that those feelings aren't actually helping us survive or function better as a group. Patience is they key. It's not about rational thought and statistics, it's about countering that deep emotional instinct and life experience part to effect real change.

I confess, I'm being a bit cheesy here. I always kinda snubby my nose at the resolution thing, because people make them and then forget them January second in my cultural experience. But there are things I want to do so here goes. 1) My kitchen makeover. Aside from the fact that I found actual educational tutorials on how to do something about it all affordably, Nikki was actually excited about my ideas and has the skills I lack in the excecution. And a thanks here to my Grandpa again for giving me the skills I don't lack, because he was always happy to explain what he was doing and teach me about it, and never really bought into the 'girls aren't into things'. 2) Found a really low cost beautiful result flooring idea, that Nikki really loved so explore if this is a potential solution to getting the carpet out of the upstairs and off the staircase (the last of the carpeting in this house, carpet is really unhealhty, and when you are asthmatic and also have a mold/dust/fungi allergy, it's really bad for peeps like me) without having $8,000 to spend on it and again we have the skills between us to do it. This ties into 3. 3) Keep working on the health makeover. We are making progress, but it's easy to say hey, I fixed this one thing, DONE! But the reality is good health really is a lifestyle not just fixing a problem, so...lifetime endeavor. 4) Learning to better identify actual barriers vs. internal mental barriers. My kitchen could have been fixed years ago, if I'd had the idea or information of all the possible options I have that are and have been affordable. It honestly never occurred to me that there WERE affordable options, (three kitchen projects, two for under $100, and one about $300 will completely change the room and make the house much nicer). I just assumed that it would need a full remodel with constructions and thousands of dollars to do anything about it. I think I have this sort of house lack of knowledge and internal barrier thinking on a lot of things, and time to reexamine that and start educating myself not just on how to be a good person (that took a lotta self help thanks to that weird upbringing) and how to help Nikki's depression and such, but how to just do basic day to day living and better organization in going after things I want. 5) More cowbell.

And another potential path to dealing is that like so many other things, holidays are cultural expectation. We are taught these feelings and expectations for the time of year, it's not a natural biological/brain chemical response. We have the choice inside how much weigh to put on this cultural construct while we are figuring it all out. It takes a lot of years, I know, but from personal experience I know it's possible to take a good look at our actual lives, and adjust our internal feelings about them, which has been the absolute best remedy for me personally in dealing with the change, and I'm in group a, the really dysfunctional, trying to have tv perfect holidays, then back to the day to day crap. Realizing after several years that it's just another day altered by the cultural understanding which I never really fit into all that great anyway. This is not a slow process, and not right for everyone, but if you think it might be right for you it's completely worth persuing and can be done. How I ended up on the path is this. We have a holiday here called Sweetest Day. It's basically a second Valentine's Day that Hallmark made up to sell cards in thier off season between the summer wedding season and the winter holidays. I had never heard of it growing up on the east coast where it didn't catch on, and my freinds in Jersey still tell me they've only ever heard about it from me when I ask outta curiousity. So I watched people scrabble about to make it a 'perfect holiday' for their so's like they do in feb for Valentine's day, and it was a revelation. Holidays are just social made up things, and I had the choice to participate or not. (Once someone wrote down the name of the holiday for me and I understood it, I kept makeing swedish meatballs because I thought they were saying Swedish Day and I Thought it was some heritage celebration locally like the German Festival they do annually in Toledo with all the food, not just beer). And I didn't feel left out, or alone on years I didn't have either a boyfriend or girlfriend at the time. And that made me stop and look at the other holidays, and realize...they're the same. So now Christmas isn't a huge deal other than having a bit of fun looking at all the bling all around town and a nice family dinner with gifts. And if the gifts and family dinner went away, no big deal. Because I spent years working out my internal feelings vs. the cultural ones I was taught and get externally reinforced. It was...freeing. What other paths have you guys taken? I'm curious what my other options were aside from Monica's excellent suggestions and the one I took.

Best wishes on the healing! I think Karen's advice about the hydration is really good.

So was trying to start sleeping a bit earlier so I'm up during the day, Nikki missing me chatting with him on twitter at work, but my body wants to sleep 4 am to noon. And I went to bed at 1 last night, and failed spectacularly to sleep until 3. LOL So while I was failing I had my ipad and was browsing Pinterest, and found the home decor section. Now if you all knew me and my lazy home decorating skills, you'd be laughing right now. Hard. But there were interesting things there, and...projects. And Nikki loves the ideas I presented for the new kitchen look. We're going to take the colors for the cabinets and walls from the laminate, so the room has a sense of cohesion. I think I need to start pricing sanders, I don't see either of us spending hours on hand sanding our counters. Projects that are more affordable to give my ugly kitchen a facelift. My kitchen is REALLY ugly. Other than the nice laminate floor we put in that looks like rock tile. It has one faux wood counter and one white counter. Both are dinged up to high heaven. But Pinterest had a counter makeover using this 'feather coat' concrete stuff. Sticks to any surface apparently, and I can add a faux concrete finish to my counters. Both trendy and solves the mismatch problem. Just a bit of troweling and sanding, no special skills needed. The bag is like $15, and my counters are not big so one bag will do it. If anyone else has a similar issue, or just loves the look of the concrete counters but doesn't have the money, lemme know and I'll post the project link in the comments. AND it had a recipe for do it yourself chalk paint, which adheres better to smooth surfaces like cabinetry but it rather expensive paint, so I can deal with the ugly dinged up cabinet finishes and make the kitchen look cohesive without spending a ton. The one big thing I'll need a couple hundred dollars for is a new sink, we've been looking to find time and money to replace that for a while. Might as well do it when we have to take the old one out to do the counters so there is no 'edge' at the sink anyway. The point of this post: I'd just done...nothing. In my head it was super expensive and out of my reach to do anything about it, so I just dealt with it. But now, really starting to look around at things like this on the internet, I'm realizing that a lot more is actually under my control and fixable than I ever realized. I'm about to turn 45, and just starting to figure life out. It's never too late, and if you're a late bloomer go for it anyway. I'm working on my total life makeover, mental, body, and environment. The hardest part was to get up and start doing it, and not sit around and complain it's all out of my control. I can't have my dream house in Jupiter, sure there are actual limits, but I don't have to miserable with what I have and can do something about making it better in small stages, and then someday I"ll suddenly be there, and realize I fixed things one tiny step at a time. I spent my whole life thinking you had to be able to do the whole thing all at once or it couldn't be done, and that was a trap. I climbed out of the trap, and Pinterest helped. That is SO weird.

So. Monday was gorgeous all day. SIXTY degrees outside. We hadn't done the Toledo Zoo Lights yet this year, so I called Nikki at work to find out if he wanted to go, it was a work night but it's not terribly late. Thought it would be fun not freezing to death for once. So we get in the car to go, and it starts misting a bit. Then it starts pouring. It was the soggiest zoo lights ever! We bought a great big red and white umbrella and were congratulating ourselves on dealing with the rain when the wind started, an we nearly blinded some poor dude walking behind us when the umbrella turned inside out. After getting well and truly soaked, we stopped in the Carnivore Cafe. They had turned the old cat house into a cafe and you can eat in the cages! Silly fun. And my hot chocolate lid fell off and poured all over me. LOL It was the silliest night, but still, romance happened despite it all going wrong. Just proves perfection is so NOT the key to romance.

LOL You have never seen me completely lose my mind in the presence of a tiny garter snake. Phobias are fun! I can handle heights, spiders, bugs(except maggots, so gross), whatever, but things have to have LEGS, FINS, WINGS, or something. Some sort of limbs. I love all limbed reptiles, but not the limbless ones. The legless lizard freaks me out to. I'm convinced the biology peeps are nuts and lying to me, that's a snake. Hm...blue crab mabye...but don't quote me in stone on that. Grandpa used to take me to Assateague Island a lot, I love that place, it's a rolling island off the coast of Maryland/Virginia. If you've ever heard of the book Misty of Chincoteague (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misty_of_Chincoteague) book series, they're written about Assateague and it's sister island Chincoteague. There's a herd of wild ponies on Assateague (with a fanciful origin story of a sinking spanish galleon, but most likely someone was using the island as a natural corral and never went back) and you can camp on the Maryland side of the island with the ponies roaming around, it's awesome. They come right through your camp site as they please. Waking up to find one looking int the window of the camper at you was amazing. Once a year on the Virginia side they round them all up, swim them on the channel between the islands, and auction off the foals to support the fire house and other emergency services on the island with a large fair, best crabcake sandwhiches ever, quite the spectacle. People who buy them though need to be aware they're only ponies because of the high salt content in all the vegetation stunting their growth, if you take a foal and feed it nutritious food you will have a full horse. I love Assateauge so much, we're going to try to orchestrate a camping week this summer. One summer I got within a foot of a great blue heron, I'm not sure who was more starlted, bird or Bree. But one of the things you can do there is crabbing by these docks, and we had a little too much fun and had a little too much crab, so we brought it all home and shared with the neighbors and unwittingly unleashed the Great Crab Plague of 1992 I think it was. One neighbor put them in her tub until it was time to cook them, and they got out and chased her and her husband around the apartment. Another's dog got curious and apparently went streaming through the apartment yelping with a crab hanging off it's tail like a streamer. LOL They weren't very big, but had to be at least 5 inches across to keep. The ranger station gave out these little flexible plastic red crab rulers, very helpful. I nearly lost a finger on that trip, since neither Grandpa nor I live near any good crabbing spots we opted to by the $5 cloth net instead of the $20 metal net. We didn't realize the reason the metals nets are there (they're like solid metal baskets on a pole) was that those little crabs are manaical about getting tangled in the cloth ones. So I wasn't as careful as I should have been trying to untangle it, and it got a hold of my hand just under one of my finger knuckles. A nearby fellow fisher realized what was happening. Now to my point of view, I'm in incredible pain in my hand, and a strange man grabs me and is pushing me down to the dock facefirst more or less. So I'm screaming bloody murder, Grandpa is completely stunned, and no one milling around knows what to do. But the minute he got my hand in the water that little sucker let go and I was free! Apparently he was quite the crabber, and told us to be REAL careful aroudn them, if they get you on the knuckle their pounds per square inch is enough to take the finger. OY! And then he taught us how to tell a male from a female for that species (the bottom markings were either a half circle like a dome building, or a tower shape like the washing monument, and if it was a cone shape the crab was changing sex). I wish we'd caught him, I totally would have eaten him in vengeance. But I ate one of his relatives instead.

So we went up to Toledo to do some shopping for xmas, much more selection up there than our town, and our favorite calzone place is on the way, so awesome lunch. And while we're shopping, someone calls out to Nikki, and it took me a moment to place him, but it was our former roommate. Sweet guy, and it was lovely to catch up. I said he and his family should come down and I'll cook a dinner, and we could make the details on Facebook. He said he thought I'd quit using it, it got dark on my wall. To which I replied my Dad getting on Facebook made it really weird...and he looked at me and goes, "Yeah, I saw all that. I couldn't believe he was backtalking everything you said and did, and wondered why you talked to him at all." It was...a wonderful moment. Someone not really all that vested in making me happy analyzing the interactions objectively, and telling me I'm not crazy. After all the family gaslighting that I"M the problem (and even though you firmly try not to believe, it works it's way in when that is normalized since you are a child), it was really comforting that someone else was mindblown and not telling me that I have to forgive and accept my father because that's just the way he is. Best Christmas Gift ever. I had been all geared up to defend myself again...and just got patted on the head with a you did good sorta moment. And I only have a few groceries and one more person to buy for tomorrow and I'm done. WOOT!

Not a problem, I just wish I could remember what I siad to just rewrite it. But you know me, happy Bree, no problems with a technological goofup. Now if you 'll all excuse me I'm going to go resume laying down and begging my body to hit menopause and stop trying to harm me.

​It's gonna be! We went to buy some more food at the kitchen was nearing empty, and found a heated mattress pad with dual controls for a reasonable price. Score! I particularly like the ability for both Nikki and I to set temperatures according to our comfort, so I'm not freezing him and he's not roasting me. I am a temperature wimp, to hot or to cold and my body gets upset. LOL Nikki has a much greater tolerance of temperatures in both extremes. I envy that sometimes.

It's SEVEN degrees outside. Seven. Seven is a TINY number when talking about degrees. It's so cold in our back computer room that I think I could use it as an extra food freezer while waiting for the space heater to warm up the room. (the kind that is like a little radiator with heated oil inside, not the kind you can accidentally poison yourself with in an enclosed space, that's important!). I'm torn between massive cleaning to keep my body moving to try to generate heat or a warm fuzzy blanket and burying my head in the sand til spring. I have been having a blast since Nikki let me slip outta the workforce, but I have never been so appreciative of it until the reality of today, that I absolutely do not have to go outside in it, I will not be triggering any massive asthma attacks because I am staying inside, and I get to make the choice between blankets and a video game because Nikki is awesome and makes sure I have everything I need to survive the winters rather than my only option being yet another trip to the emergency room because I can't breath. Modern medicine has managed to control my asthma with every trigger but this one. Cold sends my lugs into flying temper tantrums of lung rage that they then vent by trying to kill me. But it used to be pollen, dust, mold, exercise, sleeping, and well...existing that used to trigger it, so yeah, go doctors, you have improved my life. This post has been brought to you by the letters c, o, l, and d.

I think I"m going to have a find an alterer, a few of my favorite pieces would be sad to lose and I'd like to hold on to them longer.

​Thank you Emma! I went to the back of my closet, and pulled out an old pair of jeans. I haven't fit in these things in ages, but I figured what the hey. The worst that could happen is they don't find and I send myself on a spiral of obsessive failure freakout. But..I'm in them. And for the first time in ages my pants aren't falling off since I'd been walking around in patns a full two sizes too big for me like an idiot. LOL Now I have to go get on the rower for the next six hours or so...but man that cookie butter milkshake was so worth it.

I think a little bluntness solves so many problems. Of course, I've been accused of being overly blunt int he past, so I may be biased to your worldview.

So between the cats and a very clumsy Bree trying to get the house ready for the holidays, I look like I tried to go ten rounds with a thorn hedge and a few with a hammer, but I'm making progress with everything. A little triple antibiotic ointment does wonders for cat scratches by the way. Ocean swimming does better, but I live a couple states away from that option now. Oh, the days when I was only an hour away and could go all the time and soak up that wonderful water. I don't know why it works, it just does. I swallowed down the lies the dismorphia whispers, and ordered non-stretchy pants in a 30 waist instead of the usual 34, just to see, and they fit. I did lost more weight, and my pants are not in fact falling off my body becuase they stretched out, but because I stretched in. Of course, my brain doesn't want to deal with it. But you can't argue jean shorts sizes. So then I had Nikki shop for me and got a few more dresses for the boat in the actual right size for me. And I'm creeping up on my first goal, woman's size 24. I started at 38, am slowly getting places. I managed to organize with Nikki's dad and stepmom for an upcoming group vacation, that was fun. The more people involved in anything the crazier it gets. But we'll all be somewhere warm and nice on a boat for Nikki's fortieth. The house is actually starting to get organized, and I have unloaded tons of junk that I don't have to deal with to keep it clean. Developing new habits to overcome that rough upbringing I whine about. LOL Some success. Have learned to make some tasty new things, Nikki is pleased with my efforts on the culinary front definitely. The living room is ready for the tree to come up tomorrow. The front house is all done up in lights, a little guady, but hey, I live in a town that has SEVERAL impressively gaudy houses so mine looks underdone. Seriously, there are a couple so full of stuff you can't even see the grass under it all. It's crazy. Counting the days til staycation for my birthday and our anniversary (18th), which coincidentally begins right after Nikki's overtime season ends. Yay! For four weeks it's basically been work, eat, sleep, and occasionally manage to notice I'm in the house and say hi. LOL Worked four weeks strait without a day off, poor thing is exhausted. I'm impressed that he remembers my name at this point! Hugs to everyone, I hope you all have a glorious holiday whatever you celebrate, even if it's just the celebration of a free day off, and hope everyone has great fun and stays warm if you're not lucky enough to live in the warmer places.

​You and me both. The world will eventually get better, I believe that. Some day. Just not today.

I've had a friend for about a year. Nikki and I met him online, and we all hit it off and became good friends. Through the internet, they live several states away. But still. Ten years of chatting is a long time, and real friendships form. So...several years ago he had a full on psych meltdown and vanished, and his wife reached out to me (thinking I was having an affair with him and he'd come to the other woman, unaware I was part of a couple and it wasn't like that) and she and I struck up a friendship because I was there for her while he was missing and the aftermath. Then she was there for me after I was victimized with something else, and the friendship endured, back and forth every time something went crazy in our lives. I don't have much in common with her as far as interests and hobbies, but we have a common ground of really bad ex husbands that left scars and the trials of life for us have been similar. That creates a strong bond, even if we can't dish on the latest anime or tv show because we don't watch the same things. Nikki doesn't have the relationship with her I do at all, she's just someone I know to him, but he's outraged by what is happening all the same because he's a good person who doesn't like seeing others hurt. That makes me happy. The rest makes me really sad. So, as per the workings of our friendship, she reaches out to me because something stressy is going on. And I settle down with a glass of coke zero ready to listen, offer any useful advice I may have, and just let her unload. I had no idea what was coming. My friend, my long term dearest friend who I trusted with SO many things in my head, he ATTACKED her and one of her CHILDREN. *floored* I was both completely stunned and not surprised at the same time. I mean, I know the psych issue was bad, and I had been trying for months to talk him into getting into therapy, but you know, you can't force a person to get help. You try because you have to, and I tried every logic and emotional appeal that I could, but it didn't matter. And now here we are. And it's gone into full on stalking like the kind that you see on the discovery channel tv shows because obviously she left him after the attack. And I'm just floored. So I did giver her useful advice on what to do with a stalker, having endured that myself (although mine wasn't a relationship based stalking, mine was a crazy woman with borderline personality disorder), and tried to be what comfort I could. You never see it coming, ya know? Even knowing there were issues, there was nothing indicating this. He'd had simple breakups with other women in the past, no crazy. Maybe his condition degenerates with age? I don't know. No one involved would have ever dreamed this would happen. And isn't that what they always say when you watch those shows? It really is easy to be blindsided. Even for people alert to odd behavior. We were more worried about him harming himself than other people, and boy we were mistaken. But when I'm not trying to help her, I'm just sad. Sad that someone I LIKED would be that kind of person. Sad for the friendship that is obviously over, this is a huge dealbreaker for me given my history and the fear it's causing my other friend and the children (they are hers, not shared, so at least she can cut him out entirely and not have that complication!). But...ten years of shared history and memories don't just vanish, and there is a mourning phase. And sometimes I have an instinct to try to rationalize it away so I don't have to lose that. I know better, but I do understand why so many people protect loved ones that might have done something, it's not that easy to throw away a person. Especially parents. So...even though it's kinda hurting, it's a good life lesson in perspective about not really understanding other people's choices until you're in the situation and learn how your own feelings and life experiences play out in how you deal with it. I'm not sure how I would react if it was someone ever closer to me like my child or husband, or one of my lifelong friends. I guess it's not surprising we can never really know what is in another person given we don't really know what is in OURSELVES until we are confronted with something and have to go through it and learn who we are in those moments. It's so important to make choice, and not just act on instince I think. My instinct says he's ill, not his fault, but I realize this is a defining moment of who I am and who I'm going to be. Nothing in that was okay. He was alerted to the fact that he needed help, ignored it, and hurt someone. Even if it was driven by the illness, he wasn't so bad he didn't know he needed to do something, he just chose to not deal with it, and someone got hurt. That isn't okay, and even if I'll miss him, I can't condone it by going on. So that is who I am in this, the one who chooses to say not okay, and we're done and support the victim. Yay morality.

Thank you Emma. She did it again. Apparently Nikki didn't take her to her crate when he went to bed, but she put herself in her crate before I went, so I thought she had, and she came downstairs when we were sleeping and ate the rest of the homemade bread I had out in the kitchen to dry out to make french toast. *headdesk* This dog is out to get me this week. So now Nikki and I have a strict protocol that whoever goes to bed first must take the dog with her or make sure the other person is aware to stop this scavenging monster! And today it's hit the funny stage. Yesterdays temper is today's laughter I suppose.

I've never been on your road, but I do understand it is a hard one and I think you handle it with a great deal of humor, grace, and self-awareness that will help you on this journey. I wish you all the success in the world and an awesome life to fill your future!

So it's crazy busy season at Nikki's job and he hasn't had a day off in weeks. He MIGHT get one day next weekend, but it's also equally possible he'll work five weeks strait with no days off until the Christmas shutdown for the eve and day. And while he's upbeat about it, all the overtime is paying for our next cruise this spring for his birthday and his dad and stepmom are going (I love his dad, his dad is awesome. His stepmother stresses me out, shes a nice person overall, but she gets randomly weird without warning and creates really awkward and unpleasant moments out of nowhere and talks in a kindergarten singsong voice ALL the time). So that keeps him going. And in an effort to make his home time as great as I can, I spent an hour in the kitchen working on an awesome lunch. I pan fried some boneless chicken in butter, onions, and garlic, then cut it up and tossed it with four cheese tortellini and dressed it with a roasted garlic alfredo sauce after I added some extra carmelized garlic and onions to the sauce, all the while baking some fresh bread. I laid it all out on the table so he'd see it the minute he got him, and I went to the bathroom. For a minute. And when I came out...you got it...my miscreant thieving pooch was standing on a chair helping herself to our lunch. And she absolutely knew better, the minute she saw me she immediately went into the guilty phase. *headdesk* So we went out and had a nice lunch, but all that effort. At least there didn't seem to be enough onion to make her ill, onions are not healthy for dogs and I don't let her eat them. It's impossible to watch this dog 24/7, she gets into things. Two years ago there was an emergency vet run after she at THREE POUNDS of Christmas cookies. Her stomach was SO distended she couldn't stand up when I got home, and did she stop eating them at some point? No, she ate til they were gone and she couldn't stand up. *shakes her head* She didn't get to the bread, so we ate that for a snakc later, and I saved a bunch and sliced it up and am drying it out tonight to make french toast tomorrow. And...I was so mad. I didn't do anything about it but whine a bit, but sometimes the small things just get to you, ya know? People are always saying don't sweat the small stuff, but sometimes it's just about how you feel inside and not about the actual trigger of those feelings. Nikki gets me however and didn't try to put down my frustrations or minimize the annoyance while focusing on figuring out what we wanted to do now that lunch was gone. He has learned a LOT in therapy, and we have a connection better than we ever had before. And he just lets me be me, even when it's irrational and disproportionate as long as it's not manifesting in a way that would harm someone. They say people can't change, but the reality is we change every day. Sometimes a lot, sometimes a little. And when we spend an effort to change together, the pay off is huge. We set a game day for Thursdays to just do something fun, connect in a fun way with no stress. Mondays we have a conversation slot for anything that is on our minds, in a completely safe zone. Anything can be said, and nothing is left inside festering. Saturdays are hobby days, where I join Nikki for movies (he's way into movies, I'm not, but I bring whatever I want into the living room and work on it while watching the movie with him, compromise between my ability to just sit and watch something that makes my add crazy and his enjoyment of it). And it sounds so silly, and it did sound silly even to me when I came up with the plan. But...it's been several months now, and it's working. We don't stick strictly to the schedule, sometimes the talks are Tuesday for example and moves are Sunday, but they get done every week regardless of what day. It flies against the grain of everything I had been taught by my family about how marriage works, and I was hesitant to bring it up to Nikki, but he and I were talking about it the other day and he loves it. He doesn't always think to tell me things on his mind in the bustle of our day to day live, so cuddling up on the couch with a hot chocolate for talk time focuses him on letting me in, and gets me to open up a lot more than I do normally when I'm in the mulling it over phase. And he can poke at the add and dysmorphia in that setting without freaking me out. Things can be worked out. But only if you let yourself feel your feelings. I guess my moral of the day to myself is it's okay to be stupidly angry that my silly grand romantic dramatic plan & presentation were ruined. It's not about the dog behaving badly, or the actual food, but about all the effort I put into it and expectation of a romantic lunch time and making Nikki happy that got ruined. It's okay to be mad. It also got stupidly cold here, so I caved and gave Nikki the thermal underwear and parka jacket I got as Xmas presents. His old one was ratty and he's never liked shopping for boring old necessities. He'll shop til the end of time for cool tshirts or dresses, but getting him to spend five minutes replacing worn jackets, socks, underwear, etc and it's like I just kicked his pooch. LOL I felt bad watching him freeze when I knew I had these warm things hidden away. I'll have to get something else for under the tree now. And it really did get stupidly, abruptly cold. It's snowing. And it was raining earlier, so I'm very happy today that I don't have to go to work and deal with the ice sheet hiding under the light powder dusting. I need to make a list of staples I want to stock up so if we get any bad storms we can afford not to care about grocery shopping for a week or so.

Thank you for reading them! I was thinking about the whole sorry mess of marriage in relation to several recent conversations with a variety of friends looking for advice/comforting listener on a variety of topics, including the ever terrifying friend of mine attacking his wife and one of her children, and now he's stalking her after she left him. Man is that a mess, and I backed the hell away from him fast, he's not the person I thought he was obviously. Gyah. But it all stirred up a lot of thought on the whole thing. And how pervasive that 'you have to do it just like I do' really is. It seems like I don't know anyone who doesn't have to constantly defend the state of their marriage to others. Children, how many people are involved, what races are involved, religions, money, behaviors, etc. etc. Why are we on the culture as a whole so obsessed with external validation of our own situations by forcing others to mirror them or getting a cheap superiority thrill at their expense by labeling them lesser for those differences if they refuse to change to please society? Did we lose the ability to live and let live individually, or did we never really have it? I don't understand my world. I just live in it. I think you have a very realistic and empathetic view of what is going on in your house, unconditional acceptance of a person for who they are versus unconditional acceptance of her sense of self and her own feelings. And you're right, it doesn't really matter why. It could be as simple as her romantic/relationship maps just do not work at all for women, and if so that is immutable. Or it could be a series of complex life and social experiences that can be mutable, but only if she chooses it to be. And unless she makes that choice, you're right, the result and dealing with it maturely is what matters, and you are so elegant at that. And at understanding that sometime letting go IS acceptance. You're so far ahead of so many other people. When you talk about her your words ring with the knowledge between trying to make it work and accepting that you can't force it, and that is a joy to hear these days especially. If only my former friend could understand that. So I tell my son all of this, and let him make of it what he will, but when he hits my age, he won't be sitting here wondering why no one really talked about marriage as a whole. The ups and downs. I've been criticized before for talking openly with him about most things, 'children don't need to know their parents baggage', but I really disagree, and children SHOULD see thier parents baggage, and that their parents handle it, and are willing to talk about how they handle it, where it comes from, and prepare their children for doing the same instead of just 'good luck, we don't talk about those things'!