Day 3: My views on Drugs and Alcohol
Too easy: They are BAD!
Just watch some documentaries if you don't believe me. Read the paper. Drunken drivers die, or cause deaths. Drug babies fill our education system with special needs that could have been prevented, and continuing users put their children at risk for abuse and neglect, often sending them to foster care.
What about social drinking or mild overuse of prescription meds?
If you've been raised to drink sociably and responsibly, stopping when you're buzzed, then don't drive home. Have a nice time! Have a glass of wine with dinner. It's supposed to be good for your heart. But if you can't tell when to stop, or desire to drink more, then you are abusing the privilege.
And if you overuse your meds, you still get fired from your job.
There is not a gray area for me. I don't know why this is even question. It's not an issue for debate or discussion. Drugs and alcohol are bad, period.
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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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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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