The Distant Future

Day 2: Where You'd Like to Be in 10 Years

This is hard for me.

Where I'd like to be?

Well, I could either go all outrageous or all realistic.

In 10 years, my oldest will be turning 18, we'll be planning his graduation party and his college acceptance letters will be coming in. The youngest will be 13 and a half and contemplating a future without his big brother around so much. They will probably have moved into separate bedrooms.

I hope to have most of the yard landscaped and the improvement projects done. We'll still be paying on the house.

I hope to have a book out there, maybe several.
At the very least, I hope to have a job that contributes to a retirement fund.

I hope we've been on some family vacations.

I hope to be comfortable with my weight and activity level.

I hope to be able to look back on my 30s and say I lived them as best I could. I guess that means checking a few items off my bucket list. If we get to do family vacations, that's easy enough.

Most of all, the next 10 years will be full of parenting and fighting the battles that go with child rearing; spiritual, emotional, and tactical.

Outrageously, I will have won multimillion dollars in the lottery, constructed a green-er, self-efficient mansion in the woods with a lake and a barn and a small cabin for camping like the boxcar children and have plans for a pirate-themed waterpark. After we get back from a couple years of cruises, and RV trips across the country, of course. :) I also will have planned a Ficly Convention.


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Happy New Year, My Love!

Day 1: Your Current Relationship

When you think about living a new year to its fullest and cherishing moments and people because they are most important to you, you think first and foremost about your closest circle of friends and family. No one is closer than your spouse.

I am so fortunate to have someone who has been with me for almost 12 years, almost 9 years married, who still thinks I am beautiful, still puts me and our relationship first, still wants to take me out on dates, and still misses me enough to text me 3 times a day from work.

There are times during the day when something happens, maybe a cute kid saying, maybe an ironic commercial, maybe a stupid driver on the road caused a freak accident, and I just want to tell him right away. He's still my best friend.

I recently became so enraged at the kids, I was yelling and nagging and raving and making them cry, and he just grabbed me by the shoulder and shoved me out of their room. I needed that. It was not positive parenting. It was not helping anyone, except me a little to get the frustration out, but I could have done it in a healthier way. I had to go back and tell my kids that I loved them so they wouldn't have bad dreams. My husband knows my limits, and he stepped in to keep me from doing more damage. I am far from perfect.

He cooks dinner (and often breakfast and lunch), reaches for the stuff on the high shelf, fixes my car, shares my thought patterns, changes diapers (though we'd better not have to do that much longer!), washes dishes, and earns the money. Despite the ranting I sometimes do about the heinous things like leaving milk and cereal in the bowl in the sink, he's a great man. He gives massages, pops my back, and keeps me warm at night. He makes me laugh almost every day. Those are the 4 things I love most!

What makes a marriage work is good communication, compromise, and equality.

• Share your feelings,
• Use separate bathrooms at times,
• Help each other,
  
• Do things for one another and together,
  
• and Keep the spark alive, if you get my drift.

Thank each other, hug each other, kiss, find moments alone, and keep your promises.

One of the best things to do is share your dreams: your goals, your reasons to save money, to motivate you to sit at the computer instead of mopping the floor (okay that's me), and your bucket list.

This is followed by showing you love them, saying you love them, and explaining why, right at this moment you can't do what he asks because you have a naked toddler to chase down, a spill to clean up, and muffins in the oven ready to come out.

I asked him what he wants to see me change in the new year and his response was exactly as I expected: "This is one of those Does-this-make-my-butt-look-fat questions that starts fights. You are perfect as you are." And when I explained that I hadn't meant it that way, he said the other half of how I expected him to, "You have the same goals as last year, you just need to implement them this year." Yes. And I asked if that was sad, because it is sad to me, and he said, "No. You just need to focus on a plan." He's right, and I have been thinking these exact same things.

Happy New Year, My Love, and a toast to making plans!


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New Year's Eve

This is it, New Year's Eve, the time of self-reflection and promises to do better.

And I'm sick.

I'm really too sick to care right now.

Tomorrow I'm going to start 30 days of blogging, perhaps, we'll see. I'll try to do most of the list, anyway. Found it linked on my friend's tumblr and stole it. I'm going to share!


There are a few I may change, as this is one of many 30 day challenges and there are no real rules. So ha!

Or maybe I'll do this one:

day 1 - your favorite picture of yourself and one interesting fact for every year you’ve been alive

day 2 - your thoughts on death

day 3 - your thoughts on religon

day 4 - your most significant childhood memory

day 5 - discuss your feelings on the word “love” and the way it’s used in today

day 6 - your all time favorite movie

day 7- talk about your idol and how they influence you

day 8 - ten things you’d like to say to ten different people, without using names

day 9 - your favorite blog

day 10 - a picture of your favorite relitave

day 11 - your biggest fear

day 12 - a picture of the place where you were born

day 13 - discuss your first kiss

day 14 - your thoughts on drugs and alcohol

day 15 - your celebrity crush

day 16 - ten things that make you smile and a picture of yourself smiling

day 17 - discuss your greatest fear and your greatest dream

day 18 - a picture of your best friend

day 19 - a picture of yourself and someone you don’t actually like

day 20 - talk about where you go/went to high school

day 21 - a picture of your first boyfriend/girlfriend

day 22 - a time you felt like ending your own life

day 23 - your biggest regret

day 24 - a picture of you when you were younger

day 25 - a picture of your all time favorite band.

you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna teach my son how to do an art project because all I feel like doing is coloring one of those intricate patterns like you see on 70s floor tile. yeah.



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