Sick

All three of us have been sick this week. Not anything that's kept us at home - just your basic cold, complete with congestion, coughing, and scratchy throats.

Kaitlyn has actually been sick for three or four weeks now, but we've been to the doctor three times (once for her regular check-up) and each time it's been announced that, aside from her cough, everything looks and sounds fine.

We are celebrating my birthday with my family tomorrow night (my actual birthday isn't until Tuesday) but other than that, we're hoping to lay low this weekend. We may even skip church on Sunday so we can sleep in and take it easy.

Now for some good news... My mom and my sister continue to have positive follow-up visits with their doctors. Here is my sister's latest blog entry about a recent doctor's visit. They also were in the paper last week with a nice story about their victory over cancer. Here is my sister's post about that, including a link to the article.

Considering what we were going through at this time last year, I guess a cold isn't all that bad. :-)

Reconsidering

I've never thought about getting an iPhone. I've never even considered it. But this post from Ryan at This is Reverb, sharing what might be the best app ever (especially for parents of young children,) has made me pause to reconsider.

As seen at Walmart

On Tuesday night I went to Walmart to fill a prescription for Kaitlyn. Of course the pharmacy was incredibly busy, and of course "the slow one" was on duty. (As told to another customer by the employee at the drop off counter, in regards to the pharmacist on duty.)

The good news is I had about 40 minutes of uninterrupted alone time to wander around and shop.

The bad news is I spent extra money.

The good news is I got some things for the house, and we have the extra money to spend.

Anyway, I saw a few interesting things.

1. They are starting to put out their Christmas decorations. I actually had fun browsing the aisle all by myself. I don't think I've ever looked at Christmas stuff without having to maneuver around lots of other people. The lesson here is if you want to look at Christmas decorations in peace and quiet, you have to do it in mid-October.

2. I found two of these 6.5 inch round bar boards on clearance. I've wanted to get some new cutting boards, but most of the time I just need a small surface for slicing an apple, cutting the ends off carrots, etc. I think these will do the trick, and you just can't beat clearance!


3. I've been looking for bins that I can use in Kaitlyn's room to help organize her toys, that can slide under her bed. Last week I bought some big under-the-bed containers which work, but weren't exactly what I want. As I was wandering through the kitchen section last night I found simple, white, plastic dishpans that are the perfect size. And, they were 1.88 each. Now that I think about it, they also would be perfect for our family room downstairs. We have white shelving where we keep toys and games, but I need a little something extra to organize that space. Looks like I might be headed back to Walmart for more dishpans.
4. In my new decorating quest I've been on the lookout for a comforter set for our bed and a new shower curtain for our master bath. I've found a few where I like the design, but not the colors, or vice versa. Last night I saw that Walmart has both shower curtains and comforter sets in solid colors, and in colors that I've been looking for. Maybe that's the route I need to go...

5. When I was done with my shopping I went back to the pharmacy, only to discover that my prescription wasn't done yet. (See previous comment about "the slow one.") While I sat on the bench and waited, a woman stepped up to the counter and had the biggest dose of attitude I have seen in a long time. Her conversation with the pharmacy employee could have been a Saturday Night Live sketch. The employee deserves a medal for the patience and tact he displayed while trying to help her.

6. Public Service Announcement: When you have PMS and have 40 minutes to kill in Walmart, it's really best to not go wandering through the bakery section. You might end up putting some peanut butter cookies in your cart.

And you may or may not bust them open in the car and eat one (or maybe two) on the way home.

You may also eat a few more (ahem - maybe even half the package) after arriving home.

Just what I needed

Cake Wrecks

If you've never visited this site, you must stop by sometime soon. Tonight I went all the way back to the beginning posts and I laughed so hard I thought I might fall off the couch. For me, the funniest ones are the misspelled cakes, incorrectly punctuated cakes, and cakes where the the decorator took the instructions a bit too literally.

I hope you "enjoy" looking at the cake wrecks as much I do.

Speaking of decorating...

In my last post I wrote that I was finally ready to decorate our house. I planned to start in the living room and/or the master bedroom.

And then this morning we noticed that our neighbors were having a garage sale. So we wandered down to take a look.

They had a complete girl's bedroom set for sale. For $40. When our neighbor saw us looking at it, she said we could have it for $25.

Sold.

I guess we're doing Kaitlyn's room first.

We're off to get some paint...

Let the decorating begin!

If you've been reading my blog for the past year, you know it's been a doozy of a year for us. We moved into our house on August 4, 2008, in the midst of several other major events. (You can read about some of it here and here. And here. And here. Oh yeah, and here too. I'll just stop there.)

It seems like we'd get through one issue just to have something else come up. We've dealt with cancer (x2), a fire, an accident, job changes, a biopsy, and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting by the grace of God. We've had additional changes and stresses this year, mostly stemming from work issues that revealed some heart issues that affected how Mike and I communicate that we then had to work through which is oh so tiring in and of itself.

All year long I've looked at my house and thought, I need to decorate. I need to do something with this place.

Decorating involves oodles of decisions, and decisions have never been my thing. (Although I'm working on that - not every decision has to be the RIGHT decision so I'm trying to learn not to pressure myself into being a perfectionist. Also, if I get it wrong every once in a while, who the heck cares?) And decisions about decorating have definitely not been at the top of the priority list this year.

Therefore, my house is incredibly bare, uncoordinated, and random. Things landed where they landed because it was the easiest decision to make at the time and was the most functional. We also have all of the nails from the previous owner's pictures in the walls, and a prominent place on the living room wall that needs some repair and some paint.

I've kind of beaten myself up for this. I've thought, we've lived here for x months now, why can't I get my act together? And then I would sigh and realize that I didn't have the mental or emotional capacity to care. And I'd move on to something else that comes more naturally for me, such as collapsing on the couch and watching TV.

About two months ago I started to care, but I felt completely overwhelmed at the thought of trying to do something with the house.

About two weeks ago, I started getting excited about decorating. I started tearing pages out of magazines that had good ideas and inspiration. I started wandering through the home section at Kohl's, Target, and Walmart. I started looking at my house and furniture with new eyes, looking for potential.

I've been reflecting on all of this - it's been simmering on the back burner a few days. I've been trying to define and analyze why things have unfolded the way they have. Now that things have settled down I look back and realize just how hard this year has been. If I got a new job, I would expect it take, say, a month for me to get acclimated. A month for my routine to be upset and for other areas of life to be a little unsettled while I figured out the new job and how to coordinate it with our day-to-day routine.

I would expect the same thing for moving to a new house.

If I got sick and was down and out for a week, I would expect it to take another week or two to get back into a routine.

If a close family member had surgery and I wanted to be available to help, I would expect my daily activities to get disrupted or suspended for a week or two, or more depending on the circumstances.

When I look at all of the major events that have happened and think about how each of them would normally interrupt life for x days or weeks, and then when I consider that several of these events happened all in the same week/month for me, well, it's no wonder that it's taken some time to get back to "normal."

As these thoughts simmered on my brain, I had another thought. When I get sick, I go through three phases. Phase #1 is the dead-to-the-world part - I'm sick, don't bug me, I don't care what is happening with the house, just leave me alone and let me sleep.

Phase #2 is the part where I'm feeling better, and I begin to notice all that has gone downhill during phase #1. I see everything that needs to be done, I care about it getting done, but I just don't have enough energy to do anything about it.

It's in phase #3 that I both care about everything AND have sufficient energy to work on getting it done.

I realized that the past two months have been my phase #2 for this crazy year. Things finally slowed down, we were finally making progress on some big issues, God had worked to heal up a few things, but I wasn't fully recovered. It's like I wrote in this post about digging around on the ocean floor for treasure - the activity had stopped, but the dust hadn't yet settled.

I'll admit that in thinking all of this, I felt guilty. Guilty because I felt that my issues from this year weren't as bad as what my mom and my sister had been through, and look how great they are doing! But I have to stop that line of thinking. I am where I am, and too many times I disqualify my own emotions because I compare them to someone else and judge that I have no right to feel xyz because Joe over there appears to have had the same experience and he's doing just fine, thankyouverymuch.

One of the major lessons God has been teaching me is to not squash my emotions. I do that too much, and it doesn't make them go away. It only means that at some point down the road I either explode or implode.

Um, so where was I?

Oh yeah, putting my house together and decorating.

I'm really excited about it.

I doubt it will be perfect, or that it will happen overnight.

But that's ok.

I've found several blogs that are inspiring: Living with Lindsay, Nesting Place, and Gracious Southern Living. There are many others that I've bookmarked and look forward to reading.

It seems that I have a lot of friends who are going through transitional times right now. If you are going through a transition and are feeling guilty because you aren't focusing attention on [insert unrealistic Martha Stewart-ish expectation here], I give you permission to stop. Give yourself some grace.

If I can organize myself enough to take before and after photos of my progress, I will. Actually getting them posted will be another story.

(But I refuse to feel guilty if they don't get posted.)

The cow, part 2

If you missed the first part of the story, you can read it here.

When Mike arrived home from work after my crazy cow conversation with Kaitlyn it was one of those moments where I said, "Here - take your daughter," as soon as he walked in the door. I really thought my head was going to explode from her incessant talking and questioning about the cow.

We finally moved on to other things that night, but little did I know that it would all start again the next morning while on the way to the sitter's house. I'll spare you the details - just imagine a conversation similar to the one I recounted in my first post.

After we went for a few rides on the conversation merry-go-round I said an exasperated prayer. Was this a spiritual issue? Had an irrational fear taken root in her mind? Or, was this the product of an over-dramatic imagination at work? Lord, give me wisdom!

I decided that prayer is always a good thing and told Kaitlyn that we were going to pray about it. And pray we did. If there were any evil spiritual forces at work in her mind, we prayed them right on out of that minivan.

After the prayer she sat in silence for a minute or two, then said, "Mom? Can we pray for the cow?"

Pray for the cow? Oy.

This reminded me of the last time my mom watched Kaitlyn during the day. Kaitlyn suddenly starting talking about a monster and attached herself to my mom with a death grip. She was tense and fearful, and clung to my mom until finally falling asleep.

When she woke up, she told my mom that Jesus had come and kicked that monster out. Then she wanted the monster to come sit with her at the table while she ate lunch. Seriously? First you are deathly afraid of the monster, and then you make friends and want to share your pudding with him? **sigh**

There has been more talk of monsters since these two incidents. I'm thinking this is simply a phase, but then again there is that thought of what if there are times when she is really afraid and I'm acting like it's no big deal?

This is the part of parenting that I didn't realize would be so hard. The fine line between what is harmless and should be ignored, versus what is harmful and needs to be dealt with. What if I think it is harmless and blow it off but it turns out to be a serious concern? What if I think it is harmful and I make a big deal out of it, when really it was harmless until I started meddling and trying to fix it and then it turns into something harmful?

Talk about a merry-go-round.

I was thinking about this tonight and realized that it's only the start of the parenting merry-go-round of what ifs and guilt trips. She's not even three - I have many years ahead of the "is this harmless or harmful?" debate. In the midst of the barrage of thoughts and possible future scenarios that flooded my mind I realized that I, using my own skill and logic, will never be able to handle this thing called parenting.

The next revelation that came to me was the importance of building my relationship with God. This is the only way I'll stay sane - knowing that the One who loves Kaitlyn more than I'll ever understand is leading me and guiding me. Knowing that I can't go everywhere she goes, but He will. Knowing that He will give me discernment, and that His power is made perfect in my weakness. Oh what peace there is in that!

For now I will take the monster issue one day at a time. I've heard other parents of preschoolers talk about their kids being obsessed with monsters so I'm not going to freak out about it. (We have enough drama in our house without me throwing more into the mix.)

Nevertheless, you can be sure that we will avoid taking Kaitlyn to Chick-Fil-A for a while.