I'm sitting here this morning at my computer, and I'm listening to Josie and a friend play in the background. They're probably making a mess (yup, they are), but I don't care --- they're happy and they're playing well together this morning. I've been up since 6am, walked to my friend Elizabeth's house, played Dance Dance Revolution (which is NOT my forte), and walked home to my family waking up. It was gorgeous out this morning, with heavy fog and thick frost and new snow. And it got better after I downed 6 cups of coffee, too!
I'm so looking forward to spending some time with my daughter at the end of the month. We are going to Phoenix for a good friend's wedding. We are staying in a fabulous hotel, and it'll just be us two -- Tim had plans to go to Alaska steelhead fishing in April, and we can't afford to have him go on both vacations. So I get my daughter all to myself. I'm kind of missing the weekends with Tim gone hunting. Now that she's getting a little older (almost 4!) those weekends are becoming so special. I know that all too soon she's not going to want to spend the weekend with me. She'll want to go her friends' houses (although I really hope we are the house that all her friends want to come to!) and she'll want to talk on the phone and go shopping and drive around with everyone but me.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE having Tim around. He's still coyote hunting and fishing, but it's not as gung-ho during the winter as other times.
My January has been spent on focusing on being Positive. I'm a part of a bible study and we're working on Beth Moore's Living Beyond Yourself. A friend suggested I read The Power of Positive Think by Norman Vincent Peale, and it has been such an eye opener, too. I'm starting to understand what constitutes as a negative thought, and how to counteract them. Doubting myself has been a HUGE obstacle in my life. I continually found myself thinking that I really couldn't do something, that only those breakthrough things happened to other people. I'm now realizing that I can stifle those thoughts and tell myself I CAN do that particular thing, and I CAN see a breakthrough myself. I'm committing to Allison Lamarr's 30-Day Sprint, and we'll see how I can ramp up my professional life in February!
I'd love to hear from women who are wanting to change any area in their life, be it their Physical Health, Social life, Spiritual, etc. Let's all make some positive changes this year!
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Most of my immediate family's vacations stem around visiting our extended family. We live 2 hours from Tim's parents and 6 hours from mine. We adore both of them and they are so loving to us and their granddaughter. Each set has different ways of showing love, which is so unique to their personalities. I've never read this book, but I have learned some interesting things about it from Sheri: The 5 Languages of Love by Gary Chapman. From our past experiences and our personal preferences, each of us is molded into a style of showing and receiving love (kind of like a thumbprint, I suppose!).
I often think about my own Language of Love in times of extremes, when Tim and I are very much in love and when Tim and I are struggling. Most often, in the times of struggle, it tends to be a personal war within my mind. Some "slight" on Tim's part (I use that word loosely because it often is perceived by me but not even acted out by Tim) will send me into a narcissistic down-spiral. This is what Tim's passion for hunting has done to me in the past. I used to tend to perceive Tim's hunting as him leaving ME. Which, in 99.9% of hunting cases, I would say is wrong for most couples. The men (and women) who hunt do physically leave the house and the spouse and the girlfriend and the family, but they are not leaving their feelings for the aforementioned. They are leaving the 'real' world to visit the more beautiful Real World. It is a breath of fresh air, literally. It's a freeing of the mind to be surrounded by nature, a vision of the world that God intended. It's an amazing experience to be alone in nature without being connected in any way to any one else. In our world of hustle and bustle, of loud noises and unending music, of instant and constant connection to the world through wifi and cell phones, we forget that we can be a powerful person of one.
Our extremely passionate hunters have a strange desire to be connected to the land. In it's gentle folds and rugged peaks, they find the animals that they are hunting. They scour USGS maps and Google Earth looking for just the right creek or canyon. They walk unending hours to reach a point where few others are-or have ventured before. How exciting and exhilirating!!!
And then there's our reality, when we HWs feel like we've been "abandoned" yet another weekend during hunting season. We tend to not feel kindness that we are giving our Hunters the chance to experience this amazing Earth. There is little-to-no compassion when they get home exhausted because they've just traipsed to the top of a mountain and back. And of course any kindness and compassion that was held in the beginning of the Season is sure to wane by the end of the Season.
There is a responsibility on both the Hunter and the Hunting Widow. Without kindness or compassion, there is no love. But Kindness and Compassion work in mysterious ways... If one partner shows the other more kindness and compassion, the receiving partner will show more in return. Maybe it's as small as buying an extra bag of Trail Mix at Costco because you think your Hunter could use it. Or maybe it's as big as acknowledging that you've been gone and hunting 4 weekends in a row and your Hunting Widow is frazzled and needs a break from the kids, so you stay home. Each of these acts of kindness and compassion, in turn, will soften the receiver's heart into showing more kindness and compassion themselves.
Isn't it amazing how easy, yet how hard, this can be!
I often think about my own Language of Love in times of extremes, when Tim and I are very much in love and when Tim and I are struggling. Most often, in the times of struggle, it tends to be a personal war within my mind. Some "slight" on Tim's part (I use that word loosely because it often is perceived by me but not even acted out by Tim) will send me into a narcissistic down-spiral. This is what Tim's passion for hunting has done to me in the past. I used to tend to perceive Tim's hunting as him leaving ME. Which, in 99.9% of hunting cases, I would say is wrong for most couples. The men (and women) who hunt do physically leave the house and the spouse and the girlfriend and the family, but they are not leaving their feelings for the aforementioned. They are leaving the 'real' world to visit the more beautiful Real World. It is a breath of fresh air, literally. It's a freeing of the mind to be surrounded by nature, a vision of the world that God intended. It's an amazing experience to be alone in nature without being connected in any way to any one else. In our world of hustle and bustle, of loud noises and unending music, of instant and constant connection to the world through wifi and cell phones, we forget that we can be a powerful person of one.
Our extremely passionate hunters have a strange desire to be connected to the land. In it's gentle folds and rugged peaks, they find the animals that they are hunting. They scour USGS maps and Google Earth looking for just the right creek or canyon. They walk unending hours to reach a point where few others are-or have ventured before. How exciting and exhilirating!!!
And then there's our reality, when we HWs feel like we've been "abandoned" yet another weekend during hunting season. We tend to not feel kindness that we are giving our Hunters the chance to experience this amazing Earth. There is little-to-no compassion when they get home exhausted because they've just traipsed to the top of a mountain and back. And of course any kindness and compassion that was held in the beginning of the Season is sure to wane by the end of the Season.
There is a responsibility on both the Hunter and the Hunting Widow. Without kindness or compassion, there is no love. But Kindness and Compassion work in mysterious ways... If one partner shows the other more kindness and compassion, the receiving partner will show more in return. Maybe it's as small as buying an extra bag of Trail Mix at Costco because you think your Hunter could use it. Or maybe it's as big as acknowledging that you've been gone and hunting 4 weekends in a row and your Hunting Widow is frazzled and needs a break from the kids, so you stay home. Each of these acts of kindness and compassion, in turn, will soften the receiver's heart into showing more kindness and compassion themselves.
Isn't it amazing how easy, yet how hard, this can be!
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Roo Pouch
Thank you for all of the wonderful times, 2009. And 2010, please bring new and exciting things to HW!!! With Love, Amber :-)
It's been awhile, I know and I apologize for the absence. I'm going to be frank (actually Amber, hahaha *grin*) with you all and let you in on my little secret... Men will want to skip to the next paragraph, but I'm assuming only women are reading this! I weaned myself off of my antidepressant and it didn't quite work. I believe it may have been too close to going off of my birth control pill, but whatever it was, I had some crazy physical side effects and eventually the emotional side effect took place. *sigh* All is better now, and I'm ready to tackle my little world again.
First of all, if anyone has read previous blogs, I happen to sell Mary Kay. (((I will not try to coerce anyone into buying or selling MK in this blog, but I will say that it is a wonderful company with strong integrity and amazing products!))) OK, so the week before Christmas we have this White Elephant Gift Exchange party at my Director's house, and we can bring spouses along. So I drag poor Tim to this party after work, the night before we leave for 2 weeks, and he's sooo not impressed. We get there, eat some good food, have some good company, and fast forward to the Gift Exchange: There's about 30 people there, the gifts are being opened one by one, there's some gift stealing, etc. One of the prettiest and sweetest consultants opens her present to find a True Authentic Tanned Kangaroo Scrotum. Trust me, we're laughing so hard at that point, and it gets Tim's attention. He HAS to HAVE this scrotum bag. His turn comes up and you better believe he walks right over there and steals it, and he's so proud of himself! And can you believe that no one attempted to steal it from him after that? ;-)
Look, no seams!
It's said by the Aborigines that carrying around a Kangaroo Scrotum shows manhood. I don't know if it applies to our culture or not. I may have to ask Tim's friends if he seems like more of a man now than before the sack...
I came out of the party with a Comic Book Bible, which sounds pretty cool---except that I brought a Bible as a Gift... I think God is trying to tell me something! Yikes!!!
On that note, I'm going to go catch up on my Bible Study; we're reconvening after the Holiday madness at 6am at the local coffee shop tomorrow. It's good to be back in the old routine.
It's been awhile, I know and I apologize for the absence. I'm going to be frank (actually Amber, hahaha *grin*) with you all and let you in on my little secret... Men will want to skip to the next paragraph, but I'm assuming only women are reading this! I weaned myself off of my antidepressant and it didn't quite work. I believe it may have been too close to going off of my birth control pill, but whatever it was, I had some crazy physical side effects and eventually the emotional side effect took place. *sigh* All is better now, and I'm ready to tackle my little world again.
First of all, if anyone has read previous blogs, I happen to sell Mary Kay. (((I will not try to coerce anyone into buying or selling MK in this blog, but I will say that it is a wonderful company with strong integrity and amazing products!))) OK, so the week before Christmas we have this White Elephant Gift Exchange party at my Director's house, and we can bring spouses along. So I drag poor Tim to this party after work, the night before we leave for 2 weeks, and he's sooo not impressed. We get there, eat some good food, have some good company, and fast forward to the Gift Exchange: There's about 30 people there, the gifts are being opened one by one, there's some gift stealing, etc. One of the prettiest and sweetest consultants opens her present to find a True Authentic Tanned Kangaroo Scrotum. Trust me, we're laughing so hard at that point, and it gets Tim's attention. He HAS to HAVE this scrotum bag. His turn comes up and you better believe he walks right over there and steals it, and he's so proud of himself! And can you believe that no one attempted to steal it from him after that? ;-)
Look, no seams!
It's said by the Aborigines that carrying around a Kangaroo Scrotum shows manhood. I don't know if it applies to our culture or not. I may have to ask Tim's friends if he seems like more of a man now than before the sack...
I came out of the party with a Comic Book Bible, which sounds pretty cool---except that I brought a Bible as a Gift... I think God is trying to tell me something! Yikes!!!
On that note, I'm going to go catch up on my Bible Study; we're reconvening after the Holiday madness at 6am at the local coffee shop tomorrow. It's good to be back in the old routine.
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