Two Days in Paradise.

The day after Valentine's I had off for a comp day (parent-teacher conferences). We were excited to actually get to spend two full days, uniterrupted, together. Because it has been a year since we have been bowling together (I would say a year and leave it at that, but I think I might have been bowling this summer, like once, maybe?) We ventured our way to Sterling for a fabulous meal of Taco Bell, and then we went to the bowling alley. We were only about 6 frames in, when the lady working at the alley made us leave. I was really upset. She gave us a gift certificate to come back another time, but I don't think she realized what a rarity it was for us to be able to be there and go to begin with! It took a lot from me not to cry. I know it wasn't a big deal, and it really wasn't her fault, but it's something we don't get to do very often, and she was kinda raining on my day date.

After I finished my little pitty party, we ventured over to Bomgaars which got their second shipment of chicks in. We bought 9 last week when the kids were visiting, but the green egg layers (Americanas) didn't come in the first shipment.  When we bought 9 we were only planning on 6. This time we were only going to get 1 Americana, but we both felt really awkward asking for just one chicken, so we ended up with 3 and rationalized it that we were making it an even dozen.

Our 2 Americanas and 1 Sicilian Buttercup.

Wal-mart was last on our list, where we were only going to buy sour cream and milk. But they had all the gardening stuff out, and we just bought all our trees and bushes for the garden from Gurney's but didn't get any seeds so I convinced Chris we needed to get our seeds for our garden too! He made so much fun of me because of how excited I got over a packet of seeds. He knew I loved Easter and Springtime, but I guess he didn't realize how much!

Chris also suprised me with a boquet of tulips! I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE tulips. They're probably my second favourite flower (next to Sunflowers of course!). I was so excited, (and of course okay with it because it wasn't valentines day or roses!) Every time I walk into the kitchen I make a comment about them.

But they are so beautiful! And I adore them.

Saturday we went to the hay auction and then kind of sat around the house and dinked around. We took the "window treatments" off of our kitchen windows. We also hung a few frames and pictures that we've been meaning to get to.

Again dummy-me, I forgot to get a before picture, but the "treatments" were just 6 in pieces of wood attached to the front end of the cabinents, so they weren't even true window treatments.

(After I took this picture, I realized we REALLY need to do something with this light fixture. It is UGLY and DIRTY!)

These are the kitchen signs I hung. Totally got them off of pinterest- free printables. Man I love Pinterest! This only cost us $3 for the frames that I found at the dollar store, and they look really nice and just gives it a little something extra.

The more time Chris and I spend together the better it gets. It's so much easier to get stuff done to the house when we're off together than just one of us trying to get stuff done on our own. We are slowly making progress, and making this house a home, and making it our own.

Lovely Days

So I don't believe in celebrating Valentines Day.never have. People just thought it was because I was always single, but even in a committed relationship, still not a fan. Mostly because I don't like how it's turned out (so much like Christmas, where people ask for certain things) and because I don't believe in having a specific day to celebrate your love. I tell Chris that I would prefer the unexpected gift on any other day, where there is no expectations and everyone and their mother isn't celebrating as well.

Either way, both V-Days Chris and I have been together have passed by rather uneventfully. Last year, I told Chris I would break up with him if he got me anything, but wasn't sure how well he'd listen, so I got him a card and a gift just in case. Lucky for me, my Christopher is a listener, so I was prepared for naught, so I kept the gift for his birthday and gave him the card. It was a super snarky one anyway, so it really did fit the non-lovey-dovey-ness we were going for. Something along the lines of how I know I can be difficult and mean etc. and then you open it up and it says how totally worth it I am.

This year, we were in our fiscal fast for Valentine's (coincidence? I think not.) so I used some sticky notes to make this little number for when he got home from work:

 

 

The Yellow and Blue (because those are "our" colors) say 'I <3 YOU BECAUSE...' and the pink ones shaped in a heart are all the reasons why I love my Christopher.

Yes, I purposely put the one sticky note by itself off to the side.  There is a purpose behind it, and it also kinda worked as an end point! Double plus!

Chirs might get a little upset I shared this one with you, but it makes me laugh, and it is something he says almost daily.  And because this is my blog, for me, I'm putting it here.

We started watching "Next Great Baker" because of my weird fascination with Cake Boss.  On the season finale, Chris told me what is on the right in this picture.  Oh that boy :)

This is the one that is an "end mark".  It says "I can!" It is often a phrase uttered from my mouth when he asks why I love him :D We're so silly sometimes. Just looking at this makes me giddy.

I think little things like this are what Valentine's Day are supposed to be about!  Not about roses (which are "eh" anyway) and Candy and gifts and. and. and.  It's about expressing your love for one another, and Chris and I can do that without spending money.

Hibernation

I had started a post several times in the past two months. It is a very dark and difficult piece for me to write, and I kept getting stuck at the same place. I noticed the post is becoming easier for me to write, but that's because I'm getting further away from the subject. Maybe one day I will post it, but today is not that day. I just have been struggling with trying to get the words out to describe what I've been going through, that I haven't been able to do much else, and haven't been able to write anything. Today I woke up happy. I felt like I woke up out of a deep, horrible sleep much like a "hibernation" from my old self, that takes place through the winter for many animals.

This week (all but Monday because I was at school until 8 o'clock because of parent teacher conferences) I have gotten home and either gone for a walk or a jog. Yesterday was not a great day, and I got home a little later than I planned. I debated about what I should do when I walked In the door, because I wouldn't have enough time to go for a run. I decided to just go for a short walk to the end of our property line and back (about a mile and a half). Even though the wind was biting on the way back home, it was quite refreshing.

The dogs came with me and ran ahead in front of me and I feel like they too felt quite refreshed. I feel like we were coming out of hibernation. This morning I woke up and played "squeaky" with Pippin for half an hour, and he seemed a lot happier too. I think we are all starting to peek out from our winter's sleep and adjusting to our new lives and starting to embrace it. Things haven't been weighing as heavy on me lately and I am so happy with my life. I am happy with how our house is coming along and we are able to do a little Something every day. I am happy with our "baby chickens" and excited we will have fresh eggs at the end of the summer. I am happy that we ordered our garden supplies and we will have fresh raspberries, and strawberries, and apples, and corn and squash, and peas, and beans. I am happy with our lives.

I am so at peace right now, and I am so happy.

Islands

Growing up, I watched my parents fight on an almost daily basis, and I swore up and down I was never getting married. I swore it. I knew me and I knew that I could probably never meld my life with another person.

After turning 17 and graduating from high school, I entertained the idea of MAYBE getting married, then once I was at college for a year, I once again swore off the idea. I had plans for myself, and none of them included a man.

After dating Terry on and off and on and off again for a year, I told him I would marry him. That is one of my biggest regrets in life. I knew I never wanted to marry him, and I knew I probably never would. it wasn't fair to him or myself, but I loved the attention, albeit most of the attention was negative, but it was attention nonetheless. The relationship ended badly, though I don't know how else it could have or would have ended.

After Terry, I once again swore off marriage. I was alone and I was happy. I went to New Zealand, graduated university, started my first "real" job, had my first house, lived on my own, all by myself, and I was happy.

When I met Chris, I figured it would never evolve into much more than a platonic friendship. He would be someone my age to do things with outside of my job. But we fell in love, hard and fast.

Considering how small Yuma was, there wasn't much else to do. Chris and I were at each others house daily, making dinner, playing games, or watching movies. It broke up the monotony of my day-to-day and I looked forward to talking to someone other than pubescent tweenagers.

We decided we were going to get married in January and he proposed in April. Because we didn't want to live together before we were married, we got married 4 months later.

It's really hard for me sometimes, because I was so happy being alone, and sometimes being married is so hard, that I question why I ever got married in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I don't regret marrying Christopher, but being married is hard.

Lately I have really reflected as to why it is so hard for me to be with someone else, and I think I have pinpointed it to a few reasons.

First of all, I have never seen a healthy relationship. What does one look like? How do they communicate? How do they work together? My parent's marriage was all about lies and deceit. Each of them were on their own boat paddling in different directions of each other away from the island in the middle of nowhere. It was always my mom expressing how she was a better parent than my dad, and my dad telling us not to tell mom. Mom pretending to care but really only ever caring about herself and how she appeared to others. The more I look at our family/home life the more I realized how unhealthy it really was.

My parents never taught me how to properly resolve conflicts. All I ever saw was yelling and screaming when one or the other of them was upset. I don't know how to calmly and rationally express how I'm feeling, because I was never taught, and I definitely never saw it.

I'm not making excuses, merely I am admitting my own faults. I see my weaknesses, and I know how they came about, what I don't know is how to "fix" it. I don't know how to communicate my feelings other than shutting down or exploding. That's all I know how to do.

I feel bad that Chris has to deal with me in my broken state. He is so patient and kind and forgiving when I get into my little ... moods, and he never wants to give up and leave. I offer to leave him almost daily so he doesn't have to deal with me any more, but he never takes me up on my offer. I know I need to get better, I need to figure out how to better myself, how to rationalize my feelings, and how to express them in a more mature way, but I don't know how.

When I get in these ...moods, it's basically to a point of no return. I have to let it run its course before I can get back to normal. I have been this way for as long as I can remember, and it's never really been a big deal until now. Now I see it affecting the one I love more than anything in this world. I lash out against him and I hurt him more than I help him, and it's really not fair to him, but I don't know what to do so I no longer hurt him.

Compassion

On Thursday, I woke up with pain behind my right eye. I figured it was because I fell asleep watching Psych with my glasses on. So I got up, showered and rushed off late to school, like I do any other day.

Well after driving to school the pain behind my eye got worse and worse and worse, and I started to get sick to my stomach. If I was focused on something at close range, like my computer or a book, it wasn't bad, but every time I moved my head it got worse and worse. I tried to teach my first class, which made everything even worse, because writing on the board then turning to students and talking and looking for hands and keeping students on task, so doing my job basically, made me feel dizzy and lightheaded. So on top of stabbing pain in my head and feeling sick to my stomach, I no longer could even stand up. I gave my students some easy group work to do and sat down at my desk. I have NEVER had pain in my head like that before. I debated what to do. I felt like I could probably make it through until I was done teaching and then drive home, so that's what I resolved to do.

During second hour, as I was at the board, I could no longer stand up and became so light headed I had to sit down. I didn't know what was wrong with me, and every time I looked up things were blurry and tunneling in on me. I texted Chris to see when he was coming into Brush to drop off cattle at the sale yard. He told me he already did, and was headed home. I wanted to cry. When I told him what was happening, he pulled off the road and turned around to come get me. I called down to the office and told them I was leaving at lunch time after my third hour (Chris was mostly home, and it would take about that long to get to the school).

As I climbed into his truck to go home I started crying. I was in so much pain, and I had never, ever left a job early. Not once. When i got home I was pretty much debilitated. Chris cradled me and got me medicine and fed me lunch. I love that man so much.

I realized a few things on Thursday:
1. I love Chris more than words can express, he sacrifices for me daily, and I don't thank him enough for that.

2. I need more compassion. Chris took care of me and let me cry in my pain on Thursday. I didn't have that much patience or compassion for him when he was sick. I was so overwhelmed and frustrated and exhausted that I couldn't even look at him or talk to him without getting angry. That sounds horrible, but I'm being honest, and I was ready to leave because I couldn't take it any more. I felt alone and helpless. That was selfish of me, because guaranteed Christopher probably felt that in such a greater magnitude than I did, but he never said anything.

3. With how badly I was hurting on Thursday, I can't even imagine how Chris has been feeling the past 3-4 months. Mine was an isolated incident, but I can't imagine waking up day in and day out with that feeling. I don't think I could handle it. I also realize just how incapacitating it really is.

I'm happy to say, after taking two of Chris's migraine pills (OTC, don't worry I didn't take any of his heavy meds) I felt a lot better. I have had a dull ache since then, but it isn't bothersome, and I can still accomplish what I need to get done.

It's crazy how much you can learn from such a small moment in time.

Written

So I really am terrible at keeping a journal. It's weird really, I love to write, and I do it all the time. But when it comes to keeping a daily journal, it doesn't happen. What's even worse, I am more likely to write {personal} things on this blog than I am to write it in my journal. I've even tried buying cutesy journals in hopes that it would entice me to want to write because they are adorned with flowers or sayings or beautiful pictures. Usually, I only get one or two pages filled in before they become another neglected "thing" of my past.

I think it's because I was raised with computers. Everything I've ever written from the time I was in the second grade was to be typed. Sure we did some handwriting activities, etc. but even our simple journal entries were to be typed. The short stories I write {for school} are usually handwritten, but beyond that, I have to type anything I write. It's almost a curse really, because there are things I want to document, but I don't feel the Internet, and especially Facebook, is the place for me to record and share those feelings. That being said, I also know me, and know that unless I record these things that are happening and the feelings I experience, I won't remember them.

So as much as I hate it and don't want to be one of those wives who document everything on their blogs, I feel it has come to that time in my life that I need to do so. Really, after looking at it, there are more pros than cons, so I just need to suck it up and start documenting my life. I know it's not ideal, but I have found several websites that you can utilize and put your blog posts into a "year" book. So I can still have the tangible evidence of writing things down, even if it's not in my own, scribbled hand.

Ding Dong the Doorbell's Dead

So our house is old. Straight up that's All there is to it.

Well, we have updated it with some fresh paint which has been SO refreshing. I'll post pictures soon, we still have a bit of trim to paint before it's finished, but it already looks 10x better. I think I've ranted about this before, but our house was painted 10 different colors when we moved in. Now the downstairs (minus the hallway and laundry room) are all painted. Now our front room and tv room is one color, our dining room and kitchen is one color, and the bathroom and bedroom are one color. Much better.

I am actually surprised at how well I did taking pictures to document the doorbell update. I wish I had done this with the rest of the house. I think you would appreciate my documentation/ pictures of the house so much better if you saw what it looked like before we started working on it.

I know Chris has a few pictures, so I'll see if I can get them to show the pre/post house look.

So far, we have installed ALL outside doors, which means they actually lock now!!!!! And we have keys now!!!! (The one door didn't close completely and two of them didn't lock, so MAJOR improvement right there, and you can probably see now a little more why I started crying when I first saw the house like I mentioned here.)

Anyway, I'm slightly digressing from the purpose of this post. We painted the dining room and kitchen yellow. It's a nice "mellow yellow"

In our dining room is where the doorbell is.

As you can see, before it looked like this, very 70s. Which is fine, and I'm sure this is an antique I just ruined and I will probably regret it when I find out how much it was worth in good working condition, but it was ugly, especially with our updated wall. It just didn't look good. I wanted to take the whole thing off, but that looked like even more work that would probably end up doing something to the wiring of the house, so Angi told me I should just paint it.


I took down the box, and took out the fabric that smelled of the 70s (I don't know how to explain it, but that fabric just has a certain smell,) and said goodbye to the regal eagle.

I spray painted the box gray and cut out a piece of fabric using the old one as a pattern.

After the box dried I took some liquid nail, and glued the fabric back inside the box. There was a piece of screen that was behind the old fabric that I kept so the shape would hold.

We thought we could just take the pipes off and then spray paint them, but after we looked at them closer, we realized that we couldn't, and if we did take them off, we wouldn't be able to get them back on.

I figured I would find something later to paint the pipes with, but when I was at school one day, Angi beat me to it.

I like it so much better now, and it actually goes with the rest of the house. (We have gray trim throughout the house except the bathroom/bedroom).