Blog

A Blog

This new year, I’m trying to grow my positive tree. So the goals are to try to be more kind, grateful, and less cynical. I can try to be more kind by watching my words and trying not to say everything on my mind. My therapist helped me to start a gratefulness activity (if you will everyday). For example, mainly trying to remember to appreciate my husband and what he does for me instead of what he doesn’t do. My goal is to list something I’m grateful for everyday and I intend to start here. Less cynical….ehh, that might be the hardest one. But I did learn that while I like to be on my high horse thinking I seek knowledge and love in an objective reality while pointing fingers at others and joking about their inability to live in reality, I’ve also not been living in reality. A part of me knows changing things and the way they’ve been is improbable and out of the realm of reality, but I’ve just been hoping that people’s actions would change. Sometimes you can’t get what you want, so you have to adjust. It just sucks when the other person doesn’t want to join you in effort but that’s nonetheless. And my therapist suggested I pick up the slack even more and see how things go and also and most importantly, to list something, at least in my head, or preferably to write it down I thought, one good thing about my husband or something I’m grateful for about my husband.

Jan 1st- I’m grateful my husband was affectionate, asked me to dance to our song, and helped cook a prime rib, collard green, black eyed peas, cornbread, mac and cheese and sweet tea dinner 🤤🤤🤤

January 6th-He bought me pretzels and cookies from Tanger 😍 He’s so sweet with gift giving, especially knowing I love food most of all.

January 7th-He picked up lunch from Mickey D’s and I had my counseling appointment where I decided with my counselor’s help, I was going to do this every day. I was supposed to do a blog anyway, so I might as well start here.

January 7th- He kissed me in the shed randomly playing pool.

January 8th- He had a skin cancer burned off of his back and has been a champ and was affectionate and light spirited today. We went to Walgreens to buy bandaids, fill his burn cream, and he wanted a calendar but they didn’t have one. Then we went to the grocery store and he bought the groceries and I bought Dairy Queen for lunch then cooked potato soup and cornbread for dinner. Steven made a fire. He also helped me this morning by walking out to the office to help me with an assignment I was stressed about and he just remains so calm when I’m a crying mess. He lets me vent, he vents with me about life and it doesn’t feel like he judges me like most people probably would. He’s so easy going.

January 9th- He came out to the office twice where we got to vent to each other about Walgreens and other things and talk about the news like the fires in Cali. He sat and watched 2024-25 The Challenge (Battle of the Eras) Final with me.

January 10th- Stayed home this Friday because it snowed very minimally and watched the Real World all day. He bought me some brownie mix from the store when he had to go. And he was affectionate with me at bedtime.

January 11th- The snow had melted. It was a cold day so we watched a JonBenet Ramsey Documentary on Netflix, The Challenge Season 11 and played alot of pool in the evening. Today I was thankful that my husband is a great, pleasant friend and we can laugh and joke and have fun just us.

January 12th- Today I’m grateful that my husband and myself are more similar than different. Dr. Mayo, my first psychology professor taught me that studies show birds of a feather flock together and it is not true that opposites attract. I do see the drawl of opposites and my husband and I are different in alot of ways. I think at our core, we’re alike but of course I’m the woman and I’d be more emotional and what if he was just as emotional? I mean, not that I need that or anything. But he remains calm where I have freaked out about little things. He remains calm. And that’s definitely, probably, most likely (🤣🤣) a good thing. So in that way, I guess opposites do attract. Today we played pool on this Sunday afternoon with a friend and ordered pizza delivery from the one place that will deliver. He put the ground beef for the taco meat back in the fridge rather than let it finish thawing out today because I joked I didn’t want to cook (just a joke) as I’m PMSing and he thought then we’d just order pizza. By near 4 I was starving and he ordered it. I’m grateful for food he gives me. And this morning he asked me if I wanted an eggo waffle (from ones he bought on his trip to DG randomly yesterday when he also got the brownie mix). That’s a first at having one of those in a minute.

January 13th- A Monday. Today I’m grateful he came to the car, even got off the phone with a buddy turns out, to help me bring in stuff from my Walmart run. I went by myself and got a head start on Valentine’s Day since I suck at giving him gifts and basically didn’t get him anything for Christmas. He also needed a calendar so I got him a funny dog confessions calendar. I really wanted to get him the Sports Illustrated one for SaGs bc they had a selection indeed lol. He was thankful for the juice, calendar and cookies and gave me a hug and kiss and said thank you. He also vacuumed.

January 14th- I’m grateful he worked on cleaning his room today and he bought groceries.

January 15th-We played pool together. I’m grateful we have this in common and have fun. Basically talk about anything.

Where have the days gone? I honestly couldn’t think of anything Thursday I guess.

January 17th- Today I’m grateful he grabbed a toilet paper holder for my grandmother’s bathroom for me after I called and asked him next time he was in the hardware store to grab one because hers broke.

January 18th- He got Waffle House on his own without asking. He got me a plain waffle, bacon and hash browns. He’s so thoughtful when I comes to food for me.

January 19th- He out my grandmother’s toilet paper holder up on his way back from golf and picked up Jacks for dinner. He was loving at night.

January 20th- It’s getting cold outside so he spent alot of time getting firewood together. It was the NCAA championship. Kissed me goodnight.

January 21st- It snowed in the afternoon and we came home and played pool together. Glad we have this hobby together. He got me food from the local BBQ place.

January 22nd- We walked to work together, snow everywhere. We played pool, threw snowballs. We had a deep long talk. Lots of conversation and I’m grateful he was open this time. Some things from the past were brought up that gives me concerns but I’m just grateful he opened up.

January 23rd-He was sort of affectionate tonight on the couch. He sat next to me first.

January 24th-Im grateful he watches Based on a True Story with me.

January 25th- I’m grateful he was affectionate with me this morning.

January 26th- Today I’m grateful that his simplicity balances out my complexity. I made sure bacon was cooked when he got home. He noticed the smell of bacon aloud as he walked in the door, took his cooler to the kitchen and kissed me (with a mouthful of said bacon in my mouth). He proceeded to eat leftover delivery pizza from 1/25(Sat night). Then he later ate bacon. Really quiet day. I wanted to vent about my loneliness and did a little but he was having none of it lol.

January 27th- He offered and brought me lunch to work while I was on the phone with customer support all day and vented together for a minute about the day and life.

Should we forgive someone actively doing the same thing over and over? Does forgiveness mean you still have them in your life if they keep doing what they’re doing? Do you believe that family is always a priority no matter their behavior and their effect on you? These are all questions on my mind. I believe you can definitely forgive someone and still let them go. I don’t believe there’s a priority to have someone hurting you in your life. I also believe if someone apologizes for their behavior and then they keep doing that behavior, depending on what the behavior is, it’s hard to forgive. You’d just have to wake up each day “Lord I forgive her/him today.” Right? Maybe I’m wrong. These are just my thoughts. Life is so, so complicated to me. I took Psychology and Social Work to learn about human behavior and honestly, that education confused me more. I understand life’s supposed to be about making mistakes, that nobody is perfect, that you ought to forgive. Maybe my way of forgiving with friends have always been easy..I can forgive you but “Bye, Felicia.” I’ve been hurt by a lot of friends and it’s been somewhat easy to cut them off as they were just using me or had lied to me, etc. No one’s ever apologized out of the friends. Some have tried, I guess, to apologize, years later and their messages have been left in the request zone. The person lives in a different state and I’ll never see her again. Sure…I have no friends that I see in reality or any I’m close with. But to open that message… I just want to go on the rest of my life not knowing what she had to say. I do know it’s an apology of some sort. She told me “Your Mom’s a meth addict…get over it!” And she also lived with me and my boyfriend at the time and used my car and didn’t bring it back on time and just basically just used me as somewhere to stay when she wasn’t with her boyfriend. She also made out with a highschool sweetheart of mine after we broke up and somehow I erased that from my mind…until a few years ago, I was looking at notes from highschool and found notes of her apologizing for kissing him. It is truly funny how you can forget seemingly huge things like that. Since I’ve brought up my Mom, I’ll just tell you that this whole pondering is brought to you with the help of my grandmother. She thinks if I don’t want to visit my Mom in prison, that I may go to hell for not forgiving her. Her actual words were “The Bible says if you don’t forgive, you won’t go to heaven.” But then she later changed her meaning to “if you hate her”. I don’t think I hate my Mom. I just have expectations that have never been met. And I think they’re reasonable. And I have bottom lines. My grandmother has never believed me about bottom lines in addiction treatment, even though I studied a lot about that. I always tried to work out how to implement my education on addiction when it comes to “interventioning” my Mom. My grandmother wouldn’t do it, my Uncle wouldn’t do it. I tried. I have actually tried to educate my grandmother about bottom lines and that enabling isn’t love…. I guess I my pondering here, I’ve already learned that maybe I shouldn’t say “isn’t love”. I’m not sure if I have quite said it that way to her but I certainly see how I can be more aware of my wording and how it can be altered to say “Enabling is not the only way to show love.” But honestly, I just don’t believe that statement. My opinion is enabling is not love. It’s comfort…I guess… temporarily to the person you’re enabling. You’re hurting yourself by enabling them (paying their bills, raising their kids, helping them fight a court case, blah blah blah). You’re hurting the addict by not doing everything in your power to help them want and feel the need to quit their substances, therefore they continue to use (which hey, if it doesn’t hurt you, ok, but it will eventually and it was hurting my Mom). And lastly, and I think most importantly, it hurts the addict’s children. I can say this from personal experience. I can’t blame my Moms drug addiction on my grandmother. I wish no one had to be blamed for anything. But she certainly didn’t put her foot down and my grandmother continued to pay bills, do all the grown up things like get Mom’s car tag for her every year, pay her insurance, etc. Which, in turn, meant we never got to grow up with a Mom. I did, a little, and that was no prize either but she also wasn’t a sober Mom. She was for three years except pot. And I never cared about her doing that. But when she lost her job, she was already on meth and hasn’t worked since. She is a handyman, a jack of all trades, now. She cuts grass, will clean houses, tried to do carpet shampooing, and will paint inside of house. You name it. She was always so talented in so many things. But her lifestyle of hoarding, being a dead beat Mom, not coming over Christmas day until 8pm, sleeping all day, saying off the wall shit, etc. was not okay. The way she kept her house, my grandmother’s rental house…wow. I can’t even step in the house. My grandmother stopped repairing it, maybe never did keep it up as a landlord, after my Mom stopped paying rent. Sure, she’d cut her Mom’s grass. That’s still cheap rent, $400 a month. Does anyone have that as rent now? I see cardboard boxes online renting for $1,000 now, it’s so ridiculous. 

My grandmother said she did a lot for me, people don’t realize what she did for me. What I don’t think my grandmother realizes that by Mom being who she was to her and good enough for her Mom, it meant she wouldn’t be good enough for her kids as a Mom. We missed out on a good mother. A smart, used to be attractive, common sense lady. She did always have anger issues. My grandmother loves to point out that we all do. I just express myself through crying and yeah I cry when I’m mad also. But I get hurt deeply when I hurt. Other people’s pain… I just want everyone else to be safe, happy, healthy and everything. I do want myself to be as well. As long as nothing hurts others, only hurts ourselves, ok. I hurt myself more than help myself with my own actions. So long as they don’t affect anyone else, in my opinion, who cares? But as a mother, you should be there for your kids. You should care enough and if you can’t care enough to admit you even do drugs, then you don’t care to change. You care more about your friends than your kids. You didn’t try to raise your kids. At least I have good memories. I don’t know if my brother does. How he feels is how he feels as he’s welcome to feel however he wishes. 

All this to say: it’s hard to forgive someone who keeps doing it or hasn’t admitted they do it. The way I look at it, there’s two main ways to forgive: 1) They apologize, you forgive and move on 2) They don’t apologize and you move on, alone. So it’s been hard to know where my Mom fits in. I wish she was sober. I’m angry at her for letting my brother grow up with a grandparent, for starting drama, for making weird crackhead friends (some who have stolen), for living like a pack rat, for not being a normal citizen and for wanting to spend thousands of dollars to fight cases that she knows she’s guilty of.

But also do you forgive people that aren’t neglecting you physically? A friend or a lover? What if that person keeps neglecting your needs? Do you forgive over and over again? Even if it’s not lies or cheating? When finally becomes enough? Do you forgive everyday and start anew? I guess so. It isn’t easy. Why wouldn’t people care about pleasing the ones they love? And if someone doesn’t please you how you ask them, at what point should you be frustrated? Is it forgiveness that we do for ourselves, as everyone says, or is it for the other person? Is it both? I guess it depends on the situation. Most people give up nowadays. I’m a quitter of most things. Some people never start caring. Maybe we all just live in our own worlds. 

❤️

https://amzn.to/4i106DF

Customers find the Mueller food slicer easy to use and it works well for chopping vegetables. They say it makes chopping quicker and easier, making cooking prep much easier. The slicer is sturdy and well-made with quality parts. Find it here on Amazon:https://amzn.to/3AQ3G2L

Hey, you don’t have to tackle each other at Target anymore. The pink Stanley cup is HERE: https://amzn.to/3ZeEaO8

With the winter approaching, or some cases already here (not in GA quite yet), I noticed in the past that the air in my house can get extra dry with the heat and fireplace going so I purchased this humidifier on Amazon and it does what it’s meant to do in keeping the air from being so dang dry.

Give it a try, follow the link to order on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3CBtikw

This trilogy series by Laura Thalassa, the first being book Rhapsodic, is an excellent series. It’s got a great plot, spice, fated mates, sirens, fairies and witches. The first book is free on Audible right now!

Here’s the Link to the first book: https://amzn.to/4fCc2KK

I recently started following a stay at home Mom who listened to audiobooks as she cleaned and I stalked her page for book recs and found this series. Just read Powerless and Reckless and have not read the novella (?) Powerful because it followed a different character. But wow. This series got me back into reading. I hadn’t read since the Mortal Instruments back in maybe 2012 before I went down my waste of grad school journey. I highly recommend this series. I’ll be posting many more book recs.

https://amzn.to/4eCsDMQ

As a lame duck, I love cleaning (lately while listening to audiobooks or podcasts but I really need to go back to listening to music some while cleaning). I recently bought these little scrubbing brushes and they’re great for getting in small spaces. I cleaned my dirty-ass window seals with them—PERFECT for scrubbing all that nasty dirt in any small space!

https://amzn.to/40RFZBO