Sunday check up…

I haven’t written much lately, but that’s only because I have nothing interesting to say, other than the fact I went to Target this week and walked around with my fly down. That’s hardly worth reading really.

Please, please, please keep your fingers crossed, prayers, and your visuals for me to get a job. I have faxed my resume everywhere, applications are out, I wasted no time and hit the ground running upon my return from Maine.

I decided to start doing a weekly thankful list- that I will post every Sunday. It’s good for the soul to be reminded of things that you are thankful for, even when you don’t feel things are going very well. It’s uncomfortable actually… but it’s healthy.

This week, I am thankful for…

1.       A fax service that allows you to fax things right from your computer to a fax machine, and vice versa.

2.       My sheets. I really love my sheets.

3.       My cell phone. I feel truly alone here, and the cell phone keeps me connected to loved ones.

4.       Coffee.

5.       The way Sasha wouldn’t leave my side upon my return. If I moved from one end of the couch to the other, she would too just to be near me.

6.       The way N & B give me fun challenges that keep my life interesting. Like, 14 days of chicken- how many different ways I can make it for dinner and keep their bellies happy.

7.       My dependable vehicle.

8.       That I picked the right degree program. Although intimidating, the more and more I learn, the more and more I find that I could be very happy doing what I am studying for. I look forward to being at service for clients and finding out the truth.

9.       Snow plows.

10.   Hope.

 

Building…

A common theme in so many areas of my life is something called transference. Transference is when you take a reaction of something you experience from someone, and you direct it at someone else, who isn’t necessarily the right person to direct it at. I really believe that everyone has been at least once the giver and receiver of transference. Have you ever had a bad day, come home and snap at your dog for something that happened at work? Or wife? Husband? Sister? Brother? Etc.

When my therapist brought this term up to me, it called attention to so many people and events in my life. The more I paid attention, the more I saw transference – not only in my life but also the lives around me.

I also realized there is so much of it.

Pain has such a domino effect. It’s so important for us to have healthy boundaries in our lives. I’m realizing now more than ever how much I have allowed my boundaries to be broken. In order to reinstate those protective walls, there has to be change. As a very special person in my life has said to me, “When you do the right thing for you for a change, it doesn’t make you the most popular person.”

My hopes is that I can restore a healthy being in myself, and get some monkeys off my back. After that happens, I hope to help others once again- in a way that doesn’t cost me so much…. until then, I’m busy establishing those boundaries.

I wrote this poem this week, it is also posted in the About Deanna section:

I was once a beautiful sandy beach.

In the beginning.

The tide has come in, the tide has gone out

Stripping away my beautiful coastline

Taking my sand

Their expectations roll in

Silencing me

Crash over me

Sometimes subtly

Sometimes for more

No sand left.

You cannot ask the tide to stop

For it will always come, on time

Close down the beach

For repairs.

Establish boundaries

The waves cannot break.

I will meet you, where it is healthy for me.

Where we can both

Enjoy my beach together.

                                     ~DLHR2008

 

 

The pews in Kuwait…

(I’m determined to create the weirdest post titles ever.)

Well, I noticed only two of you voted… tired of voting this week, are we? Current word count is 4851. Can I do this? YES I CAN!

Funny urban dictionary phrase of the day: PEWS. Do you have pews? Its Post Election Withdrawl Symptoms.

“The feeling of general depletion and emptiness in the few days after a presidential election. Caused by the sudden withdrawal of any campaign coverage, sound bites, or pictures of babies being kissed. May be accompanied by aimless clicking on news websites looking for something to read.

*NOTE: This condition has been observed in people whether their chosen candidate won or not.

Wife, to her Doctor: “I’m worried about my husband. Ever since the 4th, he’s just been sitting at home wandering the New York Times and CNN for hours on end.”

Doctor: “I wouldn’t worry about it. He probably just has an acute case of PEWS. He should be back on his feet by the end of the week.”  (taken from the Urban Dictionary)

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Interesting phone call yesterday.

My phone rings.

Me: Hello?

Caller: Hi, may I speak to Deanna *?

Me: This is she.

Caller: Hi, this is ** with FRG. I just wanted to call and let you know that your husband has landed safely in Kuwait, their estimated time of arrival in Iraq is *.

Me: <I look up, I see Neil walking into the garage..> Really? Because he’s standing right infront of me.          < chuckle.>

Caller: Oh. Um. Okay, I’ll take your name off the key caller list.

 

It’s snowing, but I’m still weeding.

 

Summer may be over, and there may be 7 inches of snow on the ground… but I am still weeding.

The past four weeks, I have been accused of some pretty interesting stuff. From being called crazy, telling me that I have a few connections loose, or even insinuating that I slacked off on a position that I have just because I chose to do something for me (briefly) for a change. For a moment, I blamed myself. I was trying to justify the actions of insecure people who feel its better to judge than to try to understand. Every time someone laid into me, I blamed myself. The beautiful thing about sensitive people is that we actually care how we make others feel or where we did wrong.

My loved ones and confidants told me to consider the source. So I did. I wrote out every single issue that I had and everything that seemed wrong with my relationship with that particular person. I wrote out all the issues they had with me (that I knew of), or previous times things didn’t seem right. In all of these people, I realized, not one truly knew who I was, or even gave a lick of care about what was healthy for me, instead they accused on what seemed right to them.

The sad thing is, for a moment I regreted all the times that I helped others out. How what you have given or how taxing it is on you becomes quickly forgotten the moment you decide you can’t give them anything at the moment. There is nothing right about this. There is nothing logical about this. The ending result only can be one of two options: Allow it to continue to happen, or weed through your garden of relationships and discard the ones that bring you nothing but trouble.

I hate weeding.

To them I say, thank you for helping me realize that I can do a better service elsewhere.

To them I say, you are forgiven, but you are not welcome anymore.

“All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all of my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me. You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.” ~ Walt Disney

 

I could kick myself…

I’m really convinced that God knew what he was doing when he created our legs, but especially our kneecaps.

If our legs could bend forward at the kneecaps, like flamingos, then we could kick ourselves all the time when we feel that we did something wrong.

Can you imagine what this world would be like, watching people kick themselves at the grocery store, mall, watching tv, in school, in traffic, cleaning house, on the computer, etc.?

We would most likely have bruises, possibly broken bones and lets just say it wouldn’t be pretty.

Especially with steel-toe boots.

 

Expectations…

There is a million things swimming through my head and I wonder if I am past the point of no return. In the midst of things falling apart between Neil and I, Lauren has announced she will be getting married (in the next two months) to a guy she has only know for 2-3 months.

There are certain expectations of me that are there because I am married to Neil. They battle the expectations I have of myself. I am forced to choose to lower one side of expectations, but I feel I have been lowering the wrong side for a very long time.

So the battle rages on. What I want and what I love seem to be two different roads. What do you do if they aren’t the same thing? Do you go with what you love, and tuck your what you want’s away so they are out of sight and out of mind? Or do you go with what you want for yourself and prepare to let what you love go? Or, do you go for what you want for yourself and separate just enough so the expectations of you are lower?

This is as clear as I can put it, even though it doesn’t resemble anything clear, what so ever. The mucky waters are spinning, and I can’t concentrate on anything long enough before the next thing hits me.

 

 

Meet my prized pony…

The interviewing for WMYH is still going on, people are in the works but I think the majority of the reaction I get when I approach someone is that they have to think about it. I think even the happiest people I know are having to even take time to think about what makes them happy, but I find it rather interesting that we do have to think about it. We can remember our bank account numbers, pin codes, telephone numbers and people’s addresses, and we can even recite verbatim recipes, but we don’t know off the top of our head what makes us happy?

There are a lot of thoughts swirling around in my head, and they are active day and night. I’m having a hard time deciphering which is which anymore, and what I really want. I feel like this will change in time, but for now I just don’t know. What makes this worse is that there are a lot of lives to be affected by all of this, which puts even more pressure on me to do the right thing. I’m constantly thinking of creating unique ways to make this into something that works for both of us, but I have come up with very little.

Take my hair for example. I boast about my crazy hair and what a nuisance and pain it is, but to be honest, its probably one of my best physical assets, aside from my eyes. When it is “done”, aka not done on the fly and out the door method, it actually looks really nice and a lot of people comment on it.

So one day I decided that I would grow my hair, long… so that I could chop it off at an acceptable length and give the rest to Locks of Love. So I grew it. Grew it. And grew it some more. I needed a haircut badly but I knew that if I just held off long enough I would finally have a long enough ponytail to give to L.O.L., and enough hair for me to keep attached to my head that I don’t have a sudden heart attack from sudden-hair-chop syndrome.

Friday was the day.

I walk into the salon and I announced that I wanted my hair cut. There were only three hair ladies in the shop and no customers. So naturally they fused over me and said how long my hair was, and asked me a million questions and I watched their reactions. They started to reminiscence and share stories about when their hair was long and what they could do with it. Eventually they got busy and got out the rubber band and the ruler.

After putting my hair in a ponytail, one hair lady carefully measured the pony to the appropriate length for L.O.L. Not too much, not too little. She got the hair clippers (don’t worry, it wasn’t Britney Spears style), and clipped the ponytail off and handed me what resembled a French tickler.

My hair. My gorgeous hair. I stared at it while she finished off my haircut and styled it appropriately. I looked at my pony in admiration which was now laying next to my purse. I grew that, I thought. I can’t give much, but at least I can give my hair.

I took my pony home and showed Neil, who was afraid of it. I kept catching my cat Nemo attempting to whack it to death. To me, it was beautiful and it felt like my baby.

I got online to get the address of where to send my prized nine inch pony. While I was thinking about how I was going to answer the regular post office questions, “Is it fragile? Liquid? Breakable?”, my eyes glanced across the words on the L.O.L. website, “Hair must be a minimum of 10 inches, no exceptions.”

What?! No! I have nine inches here. Hair lady told me it only needed to be 7 inches. I have nine inches!

No exceptions. My prized pony is now trash bag food. And now my hair is REALLY short, which would have all been worth it if my plan had worked.

I must start all over again.

Coincidence?

 

Four paws tribute…

I have a dog. Her name is Sasha.

I should say the family has a dog, but anyone in the family would tell you that she clearly belongs to me. Even though Neil picked her out, and Bmer walks and feeds her, they still claim she is mine.

Sasha came to our house when she was four years old. She was skinny and rough looking, a black and tan shepherd with hints of a wolf stance. Having a bit of a mystery to her, it took us awhile to understand the kind of dog she was and get comfortable enough that we could co- exist in the house peacefully.

I really didn’t develop a strong relationship to my dog Sasha, until Neil deployed. The morning he deployed she came with us as I dropped him and his stuffed duffel bags at his company’s doorstep in the pouring rain, shortly before sunrise. As I drove home with tears streaming down my face, Sasha took her usual riding position: back legs on the rear seat, front two legs on the center console, staring intently forward. It was that morning when I really noticed the way she rode in the car, how protective she looked. While waiting at a stoplight, I turned to my right to really admire the way she gazed steadily on – as if she was begging for a chance to protect me. When she realized I was looking at her, she turned her head towards me and licked my cheek, where my salty tears had traveled.

In the days following Neil’s deployment, Sasha seemed to pick up where he left off. If I needed to run errands, she would happily come with me and sometimes I would sweeten the deal for her with a drive-thru ice cream from McDonalds. At night, she would curl up next to me where Neil would normally lay, and sleep while I read my books. She would lay in the kitchen while I was cooking dinner, and gobble any scraps I purposely (sometimes) dropped. Late at night after the girls had gone to bed, she would lounge with me on the sofa and keep me company with her long sighs.

The most troublesome thing for me while Neil was gone was sleeping in peace. Knowing Neil was gone made me scared, the girls were my responsibility and should anyone enter the house I would have no way of really protecting all of us. Amazingly, even though Sasha fell alseep on my bed, during the night she would always move to lay on the top of the stairs. Knowing she was there and that she would bark should an intruder enter, made me feel comfortable while I dreamt.

My favorite time with Sasha of all, is on the campground where my father lives. There she could be off a leash and lead us on walks to the pond. There while I stood on the doc enjoying the view, she would go in for a dip and explore the world around her but never once losing sight of me.

I just read a terrific book called The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski. It’s the story of a boys love and relationship with the dogs he raises amidst his family drama. It’s about the loyalty of the canine companion. It’s about the relationship where no words are spoken, and the bond is remarkably strong.

This is a tribute to my most overlooked friend of all, Sasha. I wish you could read… but I think you already know.