I'm getin too old for this

but I'm never too old for anniversary chocolate

October 5th Josh and I traveled to Asheville to paint the town for our anniversary. Watch out NC, you won't be the same after we leave.

Recently Asheville has been our go to getaway place. It's where I go to get back in touch with my artistic side. Great food.  Good music on every corner. Great shopping. And the art galleries and handmade crafts are amazing. I know we could probably get the same thing in Greenville or Spartanburg but we'd have to look a lot harder for it and I'd rather just drive an hour and a half for everything I want to be in walking distance once we get there.  I've also fallen in love with a clothing store there that the upstate can't even compete with when it comes to style and price.

Yeah, overall Asheville just has a feel that I'm more comfortable with. Around here everyone seems to be competing with what everyone else is doing and trying to keep up with the Joneses. "Oh what 31 bag is that?" "Is that the new cc purse?" "Did you get the lastest (insert whatever is trendy now here) yet?" Seriously it's just stuff-expensive and plain looking stuff-people.

In Asheville you are encouraged to be yourself no matter how weird or silly or odd yourself is. I've never really felt like I fit in anywhere.  But there I fit in when the trend is not fitting in, but being yourself.

I digress. We got there and had lunch at the White Duck Taco Shop. Yummy.

Then we checked out some local pottery, jewelry, and glass mosaic shops. Awe inspiring.

Then we did some walking.  Went to an antique store. Huge. Started to get sore.

Visited some other stores. Interesting. Officially sore.

Bought some clothes. Much needed. Newly rejuvenated.

Went to dinner at The Early Girl Cafe. So yummy but bloated and miserable and entering first stages of food coma.

Walked some more. Soreness back. Food coma started

Saw Annie Get Your Gun at the community theater. Ready to fall asleep and go home at intermission.

We get out and Josh says he's not ready to go home yet. At that point all I could think about was my bed and how long it was going to take for me to get there. But Josh rarely gives me a chance to stay up past 10, so I agreed we would stop at a rooftop resturant to talk and hang out till we were ready to head back to reality.

Folks I was so exhausted and sleepy I was actually nauseous. The drive home, which started at 11:00, was awful. I was so nauseous I had to stop at 2 different fast food restaurants to try and order some carbs to settle my stomach (Apparently 24 hours does not mean in continuous order at some restaurants).

We finally get home at 1:00 and I barely get my clothes off before I climb in bed.

I get up the next morning for church and it feels like I haven't slept in 2 days. What is up with that?  I stay up past 11 now and I'm completely useless the next day.

What happened to that girl from 6 years ago that worked all day, drove to Columbia, picked up a friend, drove to Atlanta for a concert, drove back to Columbia, dropped off the friend, drove back to Taylors, got in bed at 5:00AM, slept for 2 hours, got up and went to work the next day?

Oh yeah, I used all that energy on having babies and trying not to lose my mind.

Getting older sneaks up on you quick. One day you can do something like go hiking, the next year you try the same thing and it nearly kills you.

But, you know, I don't really mind. It's alright that I can't stay up all hours of the night or run a marathon. I'm enjoying the simple things in life like spending time with family or sleeping. Singing in the choir or pushing the ladies on the swings.

Getting older is not so bad. We still look pretty good for a couple of pre-geezers. Just as long as I age as well as wine. Cozy in a comfortable environment with someone to give me a spin and knock the dust off everyonce in a while.

Running from the Swiss

Stopez ze crazy woman!
(Or however the Swiss talk)

I am a highly sensitive creature. I have an acute sense of smell, taste, hearing and touch. I get headaches if things are too smelly, too bright or too loud. I get chills when I walk outside from inside or to inside from outside. Regardless of whether the temperature is hot or cold.

My hormonal cycle is the same way. Depending on the day of the month it can effect almost ever aspect of my life. My mood, my desire for intimacy, my motion sickness, my headaches, my sleep, my appetite, my weight, my acne, my back and hip pain, even my nails and the dryness of my skin.

All of these things are annoying to deal with every month but the weirdest symptom by far is the effect it has on my dreams. 

I have some really strangly messed up dreams. The kind that make you wake up ashamed or mad and feeling like you need to repent for something you didn't even do or even had any control over. 

So when I woke up a few mornings ago scared for my life I wasn't surprised but I was still disturbed. 

The dream started with Josh and I on a mission trip to Switzerland with a group of people I didn't recognized. I was 8 months pregnant. 

Why I was in another county and bloated as a tick is beyond me, but let's move on.

So it started off well. We did some sight seeing in what resembled the Grand Canyon on some donkeys. I felt more like the virgin Mary on the way to Jerusalem than a missionary. 

On our way back to the headquarters I started having complications and was rushed away from Josh to a local "hospital." Although it looked more like a WW2 medical tent. I was sedated and blacked out. 

When I came to I was completely alone. Laying on a gerney. Hooked up to an IV. It was dark except for the outside light shining through the flaps of the tent. I tried to get up but everything looked fuzzy and I couldn't move. I managed to sit up and swing my legs over the side of the gerney and move toward the sunlight. 

Suddenly a swiss nurse comes rushing from behind me and yells, all Swiss like, that I cannot move. I've been given heavy sedatives to prepare me for an amniotic fluid test to see if the baby is in distress. 

Confused I ask where my husband is. She tells me he is working with the missionaries and hands me a postcard with a picture of where he is ministering. Still confused I flip it over and Josh has written me a message. I can't remember what it said but after reading I was overwhelmed by fear. 

I started ripping whatever was hooked up to me off and struggling toward the flaps to make a run for it. The Swiss nurse starts yelling and two burly Swiss male nurses grab me by the arms to pull me back in.  

"I have to get out of here! Nothing is wrong with me!  I want to go home! I won't let you deliver this baby!  Let me go!"

I was given a shot and passed out again. Limp, I was carried back to the gerney. 

That is when I woke up. 

Bizzar, right? What's ever more weird is that this is fourth time I've had this type of dream in the past year. 

It all goes the same.  I'm pregnant, I'm taken into the hospital, they force delivery, I fight for my life and the life of the baby and  sometimes I escape, only to run to my midwife and she tells me she can't help me. 

Our marriage counselor mentioned that dreams are really just insight into something you consider unfinished business. Unless you are pregnant and those dreams just have a mind of their own. 

I don't know about the unfinished business part. Perhaps in an average person's dreams (by average I mean people who are not controlled by their hormonal demons that come in the night to constantly remind them of the failures of their past). Maybe it is an insight that I will never safely be able to carry another child to birth.  Maybe they are just dreams manifested from my fears. Maybe it's just something I ate.

The whole thing kind of peeves me off if you want to know the truth. I had been forgiven for my sins when I accecpted Jesus Christ into my heart. I do not dwell in my past and I do not repeat my sins. I am a new person 100 times over and yet my dreams continue to haunt me with reminders of my twisted past. If anyone out there is a distant descendant of Daniel send them my way. Maybe there is a cure for morbid dream control.

One thing is for sure, I would really like to have some occasional dreams about rainbows and lollipops or, you know, whatever else untainted people dream about. 

5 years and more in love

I really love my husband. More now than I ever have. This statement in itself is amazing to me because if you would've asked me a year ago how I feel about my husband and my marriage I might have told you something like "Eh. They're alright." Which, is sad but, the good news is that it got better. A hundred times better. And as we are approaching our 5 year wedding anniversary I just wanted to share how happy I am and how it didn't use to be that way.

Once upon a time Josh and I locked eyes across bays at Kia of Greer and I knew I had to have him. He could do a tire rotation and an oil change faster than a crew in the pits at Nascar (or whatever they call it). He had a presence that you couldn't deny.  When he was in a room he owned that room. Being 6 foot, 7 inches kinda of has that effect on people. But before I could even have a conversation with him he quit and took a job towing cars.

One day people from work invited me out to a local bar and who should be there but Mr. Fast hands himself. Again, didn't talk much but I did bring a date so that kinda got in the way. Apparently I made an impression though because I was invited out the next weekend and this time I left the date at home. At the end of the night Josh came up to me and stole a long, deep kiss and then left without saying a word.

Well, that was all it took. I was captivated. That confidence and guts it took to go after what he wanted really attracted me to him. I dumped the other guy the next day and Josh and I had our first date within the week.

Within a month we were living together.  Within 2 months we'd bought a house together.  Within 3 months we were engaged.  Within 10 months we were married.  And within 15 months we were pregnant.  You could say we were on the fast track.

And we rode off into to sunset down the beach in the dune buggy we had built together and lived happily ever after.

Not!

Sadly shortly before we even said "I do," we started having some major issues. If we hadn't been so blindly in lust they would've been deal breakers. But we ignored our problems and pushed forward until the lust ran cold.

I had developed a serious emotional problem from all the baggage I'd drug into the relationship and I was attempting to drink it away everyday. My drinking sometimes lead to inappropriate behavior in which I wasn't always faithful or kind to myself. Josh was struggling with an intimacy problem and was acting out in yet another way. We had both lost our jobs. We were in debt up to our eye balls and now here I was pregnant and scared. We grew to resent each other and fought to win a lot. But we pretended that everything was okay and just kept saying things will get better when...

But it didn't. No one tells you how hard marriage is before you get hitched.  Everyone's just so happy for you and we wouldn't have listened anyway. But it is hard and you have to work at it everyday.

And we did really try at first.  We started going to church and accepted Christ into our hearts and lives. I went to AA. I went to school. Josh got a new job. I got a new job. But on the inside we were both still hurting and didn't really know what to do.

About 18 months ago I thought I had all I could take and I was ready to leave. Despite all my efforts to help Josh understand what I needed from him he still just looked at me with that cold, emotionless, careless look and I knew I would never get through to him.  We didn't talk. We didn't want to spend time together and we butted heads on anything we could find to disagree on. We couldn't say anything to each other without the other getting defensive and starting a fight. We were just barely keeping afloat. Going through with the motions and hiding behind taking care of our kids. There were holes in the walls and holes in our hearts. We had hurt each other badly. So we started marriage counseling.

After 10 months of working with Tim Wilkerson at the Brewer Center we were set free to try this thing on our own. I was terrified. We had learned a lot of valuable skills like how to talk to one another,  how to understand one another,  how to work as a team instead of against each other, how to take care of ourselves, how to not chastise ourselves for having needs, what each other's needs were, how to take care of each other, what our roles are and what qualities each person has to bring to the the table.  We learned that we both have feelings and to trust the feelings and when things don't feel right, talk about it. I learned I wasn't crazy and that Josh wasn't cold hearted. Josh learned he had extremely low testosterone and started treatment which fixed a lot of the things that made him act like a jerk. But, with all these things I was still scared that we would fall into our old habits of being selfish creatures without the accountability of having a couselor.

But, I am thrilled to say that after 6 months things have grown and gotten better. In relation to that our relationship with God has also grown and gotten deeper. Yes, there have been disagreements along the way but we work things out and make plans to change and follow through. Our relationship is better than it ever had been and the love we have developed by working through all our problems is much more rewarding than the puppy love or lust we had in the beginning.

Everyday we work hard at our common goal of loving each other unselfishly and taking care of each other's needs. I can honestly say I love him more now than the day we got married and it's the deep kind of love God intended for us all along.  I am so happy with our marriage and at this moment that if nothing else ever improved I would still be as happy as ever. But if we keep working at it our love and connection to each other will continue to grow and get better. I can't even imagine the level of joy that would come from our commitment to each other.

For the first time in a long time I am excited for what our marriage and God has in store for us.

So, happy anniversary to me and to the wonderful man God blessed me with.

The Power of Frozen Peas

I love to cook and I love a cooking challenge.  I use food as a means to show people how much I care for them and I consider myself to be a pretty good cook. I got the fancy knife skills. I got the cool gadgets. Food and I, we got a groove that speaks to my soul and my creative nature.

Sometimes, though, even a good cook can have an off day.

Yep. That is what happens when you turn on the wrong burner and melt a bag of frozen peas.

While laughing at this big mess I thought "what the heck is wrong with me?" It was just supposed to be a simple meal before we headed off for church. Popcorn shrimp, peas and mac & cheese.  Nothing glamorous. So why in the world did I make such a rookie mistake?

I mean I make cheesecakes, lasagne,  ducks, eggs benedict, gumbo all from scratch and I can't even manage to cook frozen peas without nearly catching the house on fire?

Then it hit me. It was too simple. Instead of treating my cooking and my ingredients with care and respect I just threw them around like they were a bag of poo. I got a bloated head and a cocky attitude that a simple meal didn't need my time and passion as much as a made-from-scratch meal did. I didn't even start cooking until 30 minutes before we were supposed to eat.  So, God knocked me off my high horse. Because He doesn't delight in the proud.

I'm just thankful it only takes a melted bag of peas to put me in my place and bring some humility into my heart. Years ago He had to be a lot harder on this stubborn gal.

I know one thing is for sure. I won't be underestimating any more simple meals any time soon. And I have the inbedded squished peas in my concrete to remind me of that everytime I step up to the stove.

Catchin extra zzz's

Hey. Hey mommy. Are you ready to get up yet?

My girls have been driving me nuts with their sleep schedule all of their lives.  Nothing is ever the same except their bedtime. One week they get up at 7:00. The next they get up at 8:00. Every once in a while they even stretch it to 9:00. It would be nice to know when those early days are going to be so I don't stay up ridiculously late blogging about how hard it is to parent them. Heck, it would even be nice to know when those late days are going to be so I can enjoy sleeping in late and not jump up out of the bed worried someone has spontaneously combusted and the house is burning to the ground around me.

I love to sleep. But once I'm up there is no going back to bed until at least 11:00. My brain and my body just will not shut down before then. And when I'm woken up before I've had a full 9 hours, well, I didn't get the pet name "bear," for no reason.

Some time ago, after daylight savings time, I realized Delores was starting to grasp how to tell time.  She could tell you the hour of the day at least. And I thought "Yes! This is my chance!" I got a wall clock we had laying around and put it in her room just to see how she would react to it.  The dagum thing ticked so loud it woke her up in the middle of the night and then she woke me up. Obviously, the complete opposite of what I was going for.  So, I took it out of her room and waited to see if she would adjust to the time change. She didn't.

So, I set out on a mission. To find the almost perfect alarm clock for her room.  If you can't tell, when I set out to get something I already have it in my mind what qualities it should have and how much it should cost. If I can't find it, then I don't settle for anything else.  This of course has its pros and cons.  I don't buy a lot of stuff I don't need but then sometimes I have to go without. 

Three trips out and three stores later I had it. All mine! Let me tell ya, there are not many more things that can make me feel better than that. 

She was so excited about it. It was pink with pink numbers and it didn't tick and it lit up. She has been talking about it and showing it off for days. Poor little child had know idea that her new prized possession was really just a prop in her mother's diabolic scheme to sleep in. Muah ahahahahah!

We discussed the features off the clock and counted the numbers and discussed how the little hand tells the hour. Then I told her "Ok, now when you get up in the morning you can't come out of your room until the little hand is on the 8. Think you can do that? " She was all for it.

I have to admit that initially I felt bad about tricking Delores. We tell them the truth about everything from where babies come from to Santa Claus. But I figure you have to find things you can laugh about to get you through all the madness besides all the funny, cute stuff kids are supposed to do. That's one of the joys of parenting, right?

It's a good thing I didnt let my guilt get the best of me. I have had 2 glorious days of sleeping past 8:00. It actually worked! And she is so proud of herself she comes flying into my room with her clock to show me she did it.  Not really the way I want to be woken up but, hey, I'll take that if I can catch a few more zzz's.