Giving Thanks: My Poncho

I have this poncho that I picked up at the Salvation Army thrift store a few years ago, right after we moved into our house. It's ugly 1970s burnt orange and dark brown, with fringe, and my husband hates it, but I love it so much. I break it out every year this time of year, and I wear it almost continuously until spring comes and the house gets warm again. It's machine knitted and it hangs down past my knees and covers my arms, and it's pretty much like a wearable afghan. I think I like it better than I would a Snuggy, because it's loose and gives me plenty of freedom of movement. I would be a very sad Jean in the winter months without my poncho, and I'm so thankful for that day I turned around in the Salvation Army store and saw it hanging on an end-cap display and knew I'd found the winter clothing equivalent of my soul mate. I ♥ my poncho.

Giving Thanks, Days 1-3

I wanted to use this space to write each day about something I'm thankful for in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, but thanks to NaNoWriMo I've fallen behind on everything that doesn't include adding new words to my novel. But better late than never, right? So here are three things:

My two legs. My husband, an amputee, is always telling me I should be grateful that I still have two strong legs, and I am. He usually tells me this when I start to complain that it's too cold to get out there and do my 45-minute walk, or too hot, or that I'm too tired, or whatever I've pulled out of my litany of excuses that day, and I know he's right, so I get out there and walk. And as I walk, I say a prayer of thanks that I'm still able-bodied and healthy, and that my legs are strong enough to carry me.

Related to this, I'm also thankful for my strength, and I don't mean the emotional strength that has been amply tested over the last two years. I come from hardy stock, and the women of my family aren't the sort to stand daintily back and let the men-folk handle all of the heavy lifting. We get in there and git 'er done. I very rarely come across a jar that I need my husband's help to open, and I'm definitely someone you want on your team on moving day. The only caveat to this is that I have a weak lower back, and if I'm not diligent about keeping my core strong, I can really hurt myself trying to move heavy stuff by myself if I'm not careful.

And as long as I'm being thankful for physical attributes, let me add a word of thanks for my hips. Yes, you read that right. Most women, it seems, would love to give up their hips and have the figure of a 12 year old boy like Hollywood tells us is oh so fashionable these days, but I'm grateful for my curves, especially my hips. They serve as extra hands when I'm carrying laundry or groceries, they can open and close doors, and they can knock someone over if I need them to. If the day ever comes for me to give birth, they should make that whole process a little easier, and I look forward to the day when I can rest a child on them. So I really don't mind if all of this leftover Halloween candy I'm failing to resist ends up going straight to my hips.

What are YOU thankful for this month?

This is what's keeping me together

1. Prayer. God is my therapist, y'all. I tell Him everything.

2. Matt. We both have our up days and our down days and times when we're unbearably grumpy and irritable, but for the most part he's so supportive and considerate of my grief that I have to remind myself that HE'S the one who just lost his parents. And then my heart breaks for him all over again, and I pull it together to be the supportive one and let him lean on me for a while. It's a give and take, and I'm trying to give as much as I take, but I know I couldn't get through it without him. All that, and he cooks, too. I love that man.

3. Healthy eating and exercise, which are both something I'm just getting back to. Since Rob died, we've been riding the fast food junk train again, and I've been pretty sedentary. Because when you feel too depressed to cook you tend to eat a lot of crap and not feel like working out, but that makes you feel even worse, and it's a sick, vicious merry-go-round of bad eating and not moving and feeling worse and worse. I'm finally sick and disgusted enough to force myself to get off of it. I'm getting back on the Cake or Baby? wagon, and choosing Baby. And I'm getting off of the couch and going outside and walking once and a while. After just a few days of this I'm already starting to feel better. I'm sure the warm weather and sunshine and fresh air are helping, too.

4. My bass. I'm still focusing on the fundamentals and building up my calluses and my hand strength and dexterity. I'd probably be a lot further along if I could devote a couple of hours a day to practicing like an actual musician, instead of just 30 minutes here and there like the hobbyist that I am. But it takes every ounce of my concentration to hit the right notes and make them sound halfway decent, which is great, because it gets my mind off of all of the stressful and sad things, and for that 30 minutes I get to just exist and make a joyful noise. It is awesome.

5. This blog. It's helping me to talk about this stuff, which is why there's been a sudden increase in posting. Some of you might wonder why I just talk AT you here on the blog instead of talking TO you, but I'm still at a place where I just need to get stuff out without having to answer questions or field advice or--and I'm well aware how selfish and awful this is of me--hear your problems, too, no matter how big or small. I'm trying to pull myself out of this place, because I don't enjoy it. But I'm still there, too mired in my own crap to even contemplate dealing with anybody else's, and I continue to withdraw and feel like the horrible friend that I am, and hope everyone will just be patient with me until this passes and I'm up to two-way personal conversations again.

6. You guys--here, and on Facebook, and Twitter, and in e-mail, who let me know that you're thinking of us and we're not alone, and that I'm not crazy, and that it's okay to still be weighed down with all this grief and dealing with it the best I can.

7. Demand Studios. It's not my favorite gig, but it's a safety net, and knowing it's there is helping to ease my worry about where our next mortgage payment is coming from, as well as the stiffness in my neck and shoulders and the tightness in my chest that I feared was maybe becoming permanent.

8. Pete. You know that we're crazy pet people, right? Well, we're craziest about our tiny dog. He is hilarious and sweet and the cutest thing ever, and he's usually the brightest spot in our day.

Thanks.

Just a quick note to say thanks, everyone, for all of the birthday wishes, cards, comments, posts and etc. It's amazing how much these little things mean, and how warm and fuzzy and loved they make me feel. I've been having kind of a tough time of it lately, and your thoughts were especially helpful in getting me to cheer up and enjoy the day. So, from the bottom of my heart, all the way up to the top: thank you.

Sleep. Pee.

Great muppety Odin*, I'm sleepy. I'm starting to wonder if I'll be able to make that party tonight. I hate to miss it, but I'm having some serious inability to keep my eyes open happening over here.

I'll go. I just might have to nap in the car on the way.

Do you know what's sad, though? As I was shopping for her gift, I realized that since her birth I've actually seen Dakota in person a whopping 5 times. My nephews were always such a big part of my life, and I of theirs, that it's strange to have this little niece (once removed) who barely remembers me when I do get to see her. I had a hard time buying her a gift because I don't even know what she's into. I know 1 seems a bit young for her to be "into" anything, but I remember shopping for Ash's first birthday with the certainty that I couldn't go wrong if I got him some kind of toy vehicle or anything having to do with the Wiggles.

For Dakota, I had to settle for a more generic toddler toy. It's still cute--it's a little plastic puppy that she can drag behind her when she walks, and as she goes it will bark and wag its tail and wiggle its ears. I'm sure she'll like it. But it has a bit of an impersonal feel to it, being that it's not really tailored to her personality, because I don't really know her personality. That makes me sad.

Sad, but still profoundly grateful that she's made it this far.

*Buffy's improving my vocab once again. Whee!

What it's all about.

Remember this wee slip of a premie that was once my grandneice Dakota? Well, here's the cutie-pie today, all 11 months and twenty-some-odd pounds of her.



She'll celebrate her first birthday in a few weeks. God is good, y'all.

At Least It's Not Fescue

I was in a weird mood yesterday. I didn't sleep well the night before, and as it tends to do, sleep deprivation made me introspective. Sometimes, introspection makes me all nostalgic. Such was the case yesterday. It was the kind of mood that gets me to sign onto Classmates.com under the pseudonymous account I've set up there (99% of the time I don't give a squirrel's nut about 99% of the people I went to high school with, and I don't want any of them to know about the 1% of the time that curiosity gets the better of me) and see if I can glean any news about the 1% of schoolmates with whom I was actually on friendly terms. It was that mood that also got me to Google the rock band of This Girl I Once Knew.

I knew This Girl in college -- my first attempt at the U of OK when I was actually college-age, not my more recent and successful return. She didn't actually go to school there, but she was the good friend of a good friend who did, and she and I were friendly by association, hanging out with the same people, going to the same parties, sometimes even hanging out with each other. She was one of those Fabulously Cool types, all cultured and well-travelled and ueber-talented and always gorgeously put together, who made me feel like a completely inadequate dork poseur. I never felt I could truly be friends with her because I felt like I could never be cool enough for her. Not that she ever said or did anything to make me feel that way, mind; she was also a genuinely sweet person with a fun and self-depracating sense of humor. But she gave such an impression of being so much more than adequate at everything she did that all I could see when I was in her presence were my own faults and how I failed to measure up.

Taking all of this into account, I should have taken her a little more seriously when she said she was going to start a rock band, and not been so surprised when it actually turned out to be somewhat successful. But you know how it is when your friend says s/he's going to start a rock band--90% of the time you both know that it's just wishful thinking, and if they do go so far as to actually assemble a group of musicians, they probably won't make it out of their parents' garage. But This Girl is someone who actually does the things she sets her mind to. Before long, she and her critically-acclaimed local band were packing up and moving to LA to be bona fide rock stars--headlining at famous LA clubs, national tours, rabid groupies, the whole works. We kept in sporadic touch via e-mail, and I tried to keep up with the band's doings, but somewhere in there we lost touch, as I had already lost touch with most of the rest of our friends from those days.

I haven't checked up on her or her band in years, or given either that much thought, until yesterday. For some reason, she was on my mind. So I plugged TGIOK's band name into Google. What I learned is that the band is now defunct. She's living in north Cali and is starting a solo career, and also has a few other creative and business ventures going. She appears to be doing well, and also appears to be even more fabulous than ever.

Somehow, this news bummed me out. Not that I'm not thrilled for her and her successes; but just as I did back in the day, I suddenly find myself using her extraordinary life as a measuring stick for my own ordinary self, and coming up wanting. She's a few years my junior, which just adds to my sense of failure and mediocrity. She's thirty now, and spent her twenties living a dream and building a great life for herself. I spent my twenties floundering and struggling to figure out how this whole adulthood thing works. She has numerous successes already behind her. I have numerous false starts behind me, with hardly any finishes. She's right where she wanted to be by 30, and I'm nowhere near where I thought I would be by the time I got to my thirties.

The grass on her side of the fence is a lush, tropical garden.

But, y'know, the grass on my side ain't so bad, either. It's Bermuda--ordinary and not that pretty, but hardy in bad weather and still very green and fun to walk around barefoot in. I may be a mediocre wannabe with vague entrepreneurial aspirations who is still struggling to jumpstart a writing career and bring some semblance of fabulousness into my life. But you know what? I still believe I'll get there. It might happen ten years later than that girl back at OU who couldn't decide whether to girlcrush on or resent the hell out of This Girl She Knew ever dreamed it would happen, but it will happen.

In the mean time, I have a pretty fantastic life. I have a husband whom I adore, and a good job that I actually like, and... okay, I'm not so thrilled with my current living situation, but that's only a few months away from improving. I have a bright future. I'm still on the way up, and all of my successes are ahead of me.

I think, what with my ADD-ish tendencies to get really excited about a new idea, tackle the implementation with all I've got and then peter out and not see it through, that I naturally get depressed when confronted with someone who actually has the drive and ability to make something out of their talents, and This Girl is, to me, the embodiment of drive and ability combined with talent and energy. But I know that I shouldn't measure my life by anybody else's. I live according to my own time-table, and I've always been a late bloomer. If it takes till my forties to finally write a book that's fit to publish, by the time I'm fifty nobody will care that it happened ten or fifteen years later than I expected. So I just need to keep writing, and stop comparing myself to other people, and remember that I love my life. It's mine and it's good and it's going places.

The Joys of Non-Parenthood

I had my first ever pregnancy scare over the weekend. Talkin' 'bout good times.

Apparently my being ill screwed up my cycle and made me an entire week late. I suspected all along that the sickness was the culprit, but about three days in I started to get a little uneasy and decided I'd better lay off the rum until I knew all things were as they should by. By day five I was on the verge of freaking out, and also really thirsty for some of Matt's imported beer, so while I was at the drug store picking up various cough and congestion remedies for Matt (who went to the emergency room Thursday morning, since Urgent Care was closed for the holiday, to get started on his own lovely antibiotics, but that's fodder for another post), I picked up a test kit.

Soon after I got back home, nature called, so I gave myself the test. The instructions said that the results should appear in two minutes, but could take as long as ten. After about a minute the negative sign appeared, so I set it aside and went to distract myself for another nine minutes, deciding to wait and make sure before I started celebrating. When I came back to the bathroom, Matt was standing at the sink, and the test was gone.

"Did you throw away the test?" I asked.

"Yeah. You were through with it, weren't you?"

"I guess. Did it still say negative?"

"Yes," he assured me. Then, "There was a plus sign. That means no baby, right?"

"Um. What?"

"A plus sign means you're not pregnant, isn't that what you said?"

".... Crap. What? Let me see that test! Was there really a plus sign?"

"Yeah. Why? Wait, does that mean you are pregnant?"

"Yes! Crap! Get out of my way, I have to dig it out of the trash and make sure!"

"No way," he said, not getting out of my way. "Are you yanking my chain?"

"NO! Plus sign means pregnant! Lemme... oh. You're yanking my chain, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Dude. That's just not something you do.*"

"I can see that now."

My husband is such a comedian. HA HA HA! Except not. Anyway, there is no bun in my oven, which has clearly disappointed my uterus to no end, because today she is punishing me severely, but at least she's confirming that the minus sign knew what it was talking about. All is right in my world.

In other baby news, over the long weekend we had one cousin show up with her son's new puppy, and another cousin brought his baby girl by to see us. Both were cuddly and warm and too cute for words, and any baby jones I may or may not have been feeling lately has been thoroughly satisfied. Although now I kind of want us to get a puppy.

During those few days that we considered the possibility that I might be pregnant, Matt and I had many discussions about how great kids would be some day but that day is definitely not today, as there are so many different ways we want to improve upon our current situation first. Of course, we knew, if it happened we'd have it and we'd love it and we'd both do the best we could with the resources currently available to us; but I know this for certain: as much as I might pine to hold and play with a baby from time to time, when that happens, I'm still all too happy to hand them back to their parents the second they become fussy or needy. I'm just not yet ready to be a mother. Thank God I still have more than nine months to get there.

*My true reaction was somewhat more volatile, to be sure, but I'm trying to keep it family-friendly in here, so it's not fit to print.

Gratitude Journal, vol. 5

1. I'm grateful that my husband and I can argue in a way that's respectful and actually facilitates communication and solves problems.

2. I'm grateful for my husband, period.

3. I'm grateful for autosave, even though I had it set to too long an interval and lost half a scene when we had a power outage yesterday afternoon; and I'm grateful that I was able to remember most of what was lost.

4. I'm grateful to have a job that not only allows me time to write (most days), but also doesn't mind me using company resources to do so.

5. I'm grateful both for and to all of the people who have shown an interest in and/or support for my writing.

Gratitude Journal, vol. 4 - UPDATED

Now is a good time for me to resurrect the Gratitude Journal and try to get my attitude back into positive alignment. Without any whining or further ado, here are five things for which I'm grateful:

Coffee. Seriously.

Midol. Even more seriously.

Free lunch. Because my company is celebrating Employee Appreciation Day today with free burgers for everybody. Woo. Update: Hot dogs and baked beans, too! I mean it, you guys, my company could not have picked a better day to bless me with free comfort food.

That I have a husband who is very loving and patient with my hormonal, irritable self, even when he himself is feeling crappy and grumpy.

That I have a God who is in control, and I need to remember to trust that and stop worrying about every little thing.

Gratitude Journal, vol. 3: Being grateful that clever titles aren't mandatory

Things for which I'm grateful:

1. Matt, as usual. He's so sweet sometimes it hurts. Of course, he's also such a total guy sometimes that it balances out the sweetness and makes it bearable. And vice versa. Either way, I'm glad I get to marry him.
   
   
2. Hair dye. It's not that I mind looking older, but I do mind not looking the age I still think I am in my head, and my white hairs keep betraying my lack of wrinkles. Thankfully that's an easy fix.
   
   
3. Speaking of getting older, I'm grateful that James Marsters is still gorgeous. Even in pink.
   
   
4. That I got to be in this job long enough to learn new skill sets that I can put on my resume. And that my boss likes me well enough to write me a glowing letter of recommendation.
   
   
5. That in a couple of weeks I'm going to get to take a well earned rest. By then I'll have worked here 11 and a half months without a vacation. I'm ready for a bit of time off, even if it's just a week. Hopefully, it will be just a week.

Gratitude Journal, Vol. 2 - Everything is Gonna Be All Right

1. I'm grateful for Matt, because he's just so damn precious. And I'm grateful that he's over whatever stomach bug was having its way with him on Monday. I'm also grateful that he was all smiles and good attitude this morning when I handed him a copy of The Pocket Idiot's Guide to Being a Groom.
   
   
2. I'm grateful to have spent the last year -- much longer than I expected when I first took this gig -- at a job I love, with a boss for whom I love to work. And I'm grateful for the experience I've gained here that will, hopefully, keep me from falling back into the secretarial pool.
   
   
3. I'm grateful to belong to a God who will supply (and has supplied) all my needs according to His riches in glory, and that I don't have to stress out about what I'm going to do next or how I'll pay my bills while I'm between jobs.
   
   
4. I'm grateful that I can get into size 10 jeans! Not comfortably, yet--there's still too much gut overhang for me to wear them in public. But they look good in the butt and crotchal regions, which is progress over a few weeks ago when I first tried them on. Size 10 has been my goal since I first started losing weight long, long ago when I still wore a size 20, and I'm practically there. Yay!
   
   
5. Last and kinda least except not really, I'm grateful that there is new Veronica Mars tonight, and that I remembered to set my VCR to tape it while Matt and I attend church, and that I'm all caught up on previous episodes so I can watch it when I get home and know what's going on. Also yay!

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Gratitude Journal, vol. 1 - An Attitude of Gratitude

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God;

and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.

Philippians 4:6-8

I've decided to start a gratitude journal. My hope in doing so is two-fold: one, that it will help me to keep things in perspective and stay positive; and two, that I'll be able to encourage Matt to follow my lead and help him practice being a bit more glass-half-full. Feel free to comment and share things for which you are also grateful. I think we could probably all use a little encouragement and perspective to help us remember that we really don't have it so bad.

So... Five Things I'm Grateful For Today:

1. Matt. That he loves me, that he's my best friend, that he's willing to try harder where he needs to, that he knows exactly how to cheer me up when I need it. He's such a wonderful blessing, and I'll never stop being grateful for him.
   
   
2. That my holiday pay finally showed up in my bank account for both Christmas and New Year's, and was just enough to cover the cost of the speeding ticket I got last week.
   
   
3. That I and all of my nearest and dearest are (mostly) healthy. Including Matt, whose last doctor's visit told him just exactly this. Same goes for all my pets.
   
   
4. That I'm getting married. I'm getting married!!! This year, even! Squee and hallelujah!
   
   
5. That it's Friday. Yeah, okay, that's an easy one and should count as a freebie. But seriously, y'all, I'm so grateful that this week is over. Also, there is new BSG tonight, and I'm most grateful for that.

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