what a day, and it's only noon...

here I am procrastinating again, after having a somewhat productive start to my day.

I tackled the attic today. Nope, didn't get anything done up there, but I actually made it into the attic, for the first time since Jan 2010. It wasn't as bad as I expected. Oh, don't get me wrong. It's bad, just not in the way I expected. There's a lot of junk up there that needs to be cleaned out, but stuff that's supposed to be up there still is. But at least the demon has been faced, and I know what I need to do. It's probably not going to happen any time soon. It's getting a bit warm already to be cleaning out the attic, plus it looks like I'll need to get a small dumpster or call 1-800- Got-Junk to haul all the crap away. I'm officially declaring this a project for the fall.

I also started tackling some much needed yard work, and ended up talking to my neighbor about the fence between our houses. He's offered to replace it, and told me they'd cover the cost and do the work. While I really appreciate it, there's a part of me that is freaking out over it. I'm still struggling with accepting help. It makes me anxious when I think I should be able to handle something, even when it's obvious I can't. It bothers me that I can't pay my share, even though he's not asking for it. I'm not even exactly sure what I'm feeling, but after I talked to my neighbor, I had to come in the house because I was ready to sob.

I think it may boil down to feeling a sense of inadequacy and incompetence. Definitely need to do some work on these issues.

On the plus side, I did get my basil plant re-potted, so it should be happier now. I got some stuff done in the yard, and even better, I got the name of my neighbor's yard guy.

Okay, maybe after some lunch I can get back to being productive.

wow, pretty cool!

I don't typically log into blogger to post. I use an add-on in firefox to manage my blogs instead. So it was a bit of a surprise to see that I can check the stats for the blog now. And hey, as it turns out, occasionally people actually are reading here. That's pretty cool.

I've never really written for an audience. It really is all about me, just blurting out whatever I've needed to blurt out at the time.. And seriously, it's not like people are speeding over the interwebz to read whatever profound thing (:p) it is I've written. But still, it is nice to know that sometimes, other people do read this blog. Thank you! :)
 

I said the magic words

yep, told my teenagers that we needed to catch up on household chores this weekend, and ta-da, like magic, the boys disappeared.

I'm getting a bit resentful here. I realize that they're used to me having been home all of their lives, but they are old enough to know that things change, and with mom working now, things have to change. I'm tired of cleaning up their messes, especially in the kitchen. I'm tired of having to clear the counter and wash the pots and pans I need first, if I want to fix myself a meal.

I know this is one area their dad and I failed at, in parenting. The boys learned the ignore and hide act they do so well from their dad. But I enabled that, by not insisting the boys do their chores on a consistent basis. I'm a great one for thinking it's just easier to do myself than start a battle. Which is now biting me in the ass.

Of course, that only makes my frustration and resentment grow. And it's not getting my kitchen clean, either. <sigh>

flattered, or icked out?

went to a college open house/tour day with my two teenage sons, and while I was walking around the campus with them, I got checked out by a group of 5 college boys. As in, boys not much older than my 19 year old. (see, potential ick right there :P)

Now, if I had been with teenage girls, I'd get that it wasn't me these boys were looking at. But there were no teenage girls around, and this was more than obvious. I saw all of their heads turn towards me at the same time. Seeing as they had been behind us as I went up a flight of stairs, then they walked on another path that got them ahead of us before I saw them look, I would surmise there had been some discussion.

Really not sure about being flattered or icked out at this point...

Honestly, all I could think at the time was I sure hope my sons are as oblivious to this as they seem to be.

onto the next...

book, that is. I've finished the Brene Brown books, finally. Excellent reads, both of them, although a bit difficult for me to process at times. Not the content of the books, but how it applies directly to me. Had some moments of "I don't want to deal with this" which of course means there's something there for me to deal with and I wanted to run from it. But also had plenty of "hey, I'm already on this path" moments as well, which shows me my hard work over the past few years is paying off.

So, in the interest of continuing to have the hard work pay off, at the recommendation of my boyfriend, I am now reading No More Mr. Nice Guy by Dr. Robert Glover. My boyfriend and I are determined to have a healthy relationship, and to nurture it, and ourselves. He read this book as part of his hard work of putting his life back together after his marriage blew up, and he thought I would gain some insight from reading it. So I am.

It's a remarkably easy read. I wasn't sure what to expect before I started it, but there's a lot of good insight in the book. Some of it, such as about issues that can manifest from childhood abandonment, and what constitutes abandonment issues, is relevant for males and females alike. But the book really is for men, and about men. It's also good for women who love and are in a relationship with a former "Nice Guy."

It's interesting, and reassuring, to see how my boyfriend's and my journeys of healing have lead us towards the same direction - being our genuine selves and leading authentic lives. 

got my first paycheck :D

It kind of makes this whole working for a living seem a whole lot more real. Not that it's a ton of money, but actually getting a paycheck for the first time in almost 20 years seems like it should be a momentous occasion.

had a fabulous weekend

Despite my wordiness on Friday, I really did have a great weekend. It was great to have enough quiet time where I could just write down what I felt, when I felt like it. However, I did learn that writing in Word, the copying/pasting into ScribeFire to upload to the blog after the fact makes the formatting wonky. I think I've got that all fixed now.

I read. I wrote. I hiked. I took pictures. I napped. I spent as much time with my boyfriend as possible. We stayed at a luxury hotel. We went to a fabulous party. We er...napped, a lot. :P

It was so hard to say goodbye, but I've got some wonderful memories to hold onto, until next month.

who has earned the right to hear my story?

I’m back to reading The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown, and at the end of the chapter entitled The Things That Get in the Way, she writes that our stories are not meant for everyone, that hearing them is a privilege.

Despite the fact that I’m throwing my story out here in the blogosphere, and allowing anyone who wanders by to read/hear my story, I completely agree with what Brene Brown says.

As my marriage was crumbling, and I was desperately trying to shore up the foundation by myself, I gave my husband the privilege of reading my story simply because he was my husband, and I thought it would help our marriage if he knew my story. He abused that privilege by sharing my struggles, pain, and devastation with his other woman/girlfriend/homewrecking whore. His justification for that was that I was already sharing it all, so why couldn’t he? He also said as soon as he did it, he knew it was wrong. But he didn’t tell me that he did it until months later, when I caught him still cheating, still having his affair, and still looking me in the eye and lying to me.

The outrage I felt upon finding out that I had been sharing my story with the whore that was destroying my family was exactly because she wasn’t privileged to hear my story. She’s the last person on earth I would have chosen to share it with. The audacity and stupidity of my then-husband for thinking this whore was good enough to learn how I feel still astonishes me. That I thought my then-husband was worthy of the privilege of hearing my story astonishes me even more.

feeling vulnerable right now

I feel like I’m on the brink of some new self-discovery or self-knowledge, one that I’ve been processing for a while, and one that’s not done percolating in my thought processes yet, either. I know some of the sense of vulnerability is because there have been some big changes in my life again, recently. I’m not even close to being adjusted to the changes yet, even though they’re changes I wanted to make.

This is a scary place to be.

just....move

Went out for a hike this morning while my boyfriend had to attend work related meetings. I’ve been feeling antsy since I started working, but haven’t quite figured out the whole new life/work schedule yet, so this hike was good for me in more ways than one. It showed me that one of the things I’ve been antsy about is getting more physical activity than I’ve been getting. So now I know I need to make exercise more of a priority than I have been, and I
need to create an after work schedule that works for me, rather than just letting it happen. I think my bike is calling me.

Back to my hike now, though - I had my camera, and was trying to find some interesting nature shots to take, on different settings, so I can keep learning about my camera and photography. I'll have to wait until I get home to see how the pictures came out, since I'm mostly shooting raw instead of jpeg.

When I first made plans to meet my boyfriend for this weekend, I had visions of how good it would be for us. I didn’t realize how much I needed this weekend, for me, so I can be better for the “us.”

sigh

Met one of those women last night, you know, the ones that apparently seem to dismiss other women at first glance, unless they have a specific use for them.  Now, I only met this woman for a brief moment, and honestly I don’t even remember her name or exactly what she looks like, but her dismissive attitude towards me must have stuck with me because it came to mind this morning. It dawns on me now that it could be impersonally personal, as in she thinks she knows something about the situation between me, my boyfriend, and our exes. But she seemed to have plenty of respect for my boyfriend, so I doubt that’s the case. It was odd though, because when I introduced myself she said she knew what my name was.

And really, it’s not important. I’ve certainly been discounted and dismissed before, and I have no doubt it’ll happen again. It’s not like my feelings were hurt. But it is interesting, from a people-watching perspective. When my kids were young, and I saw other children behaving in public in ways I didn’t find acceptable, I would point that out to my kids as examples of what not to do. That’s how I’m looking at this now, as a behavior I saw in another person that is an example of a behavior I don’t want to emulate.

scatterbrained

I hope it's just because my brain is on overload with learning the new job, but I feel like I've been even more scatterbrained than normal. That is not a good thing. So far nothing catastrophic has happened. I think the worst thing has been that I forgot to pay my internet/u-verse bill. Good thing for me that AT&T has plenty of ways to remind me. lol

What bugs me more though, is that I've thought of several good things to write about, but couldn't do it at the moment I thought of them, and now I have absolutely no idea what those thoughts were. All I remember is thinking "oh, this would be great for the blog." 

I guess this is why people tweet instead. sigh. I think I'm much too wordy for twitter, though.

Okay, off to write up a to do list, so I don't forget to do something important like have clean clothes to wear to work next week.

should be sleeping

I'm tired. I have to get up in the morning. Yet, I'm not sleeping. <sigh>

I've got a jumble of thoughts bouncing around inside my head. I can't quite seem to focus on any one of them long enough to have a complete thought. Obviously I'm processing something, most likely getting a job and working. But it'd be nice if I could think more coherently so that I could write about some of what I'm thinking.