Um–ouch!

Hey, guys. How have you all been? A few nights ago Nick and I had a brief DD related conversation, and he assured me that he’s not done with it. There’s been no real change, but I’ve not given him any reason to punish either, and it made me feel better just to hear him say he’s still on board. He did say that he’s aware of the need but that there just hasn’t been any time to take care of it.

On another subject, yesterday was exciting, but not in a good way. I was carrying Daisy down the stairs along with a cup of tea and a bowl of banana bread I had been feeding her. About halfway down my foot slipped, and I (we) went flying headlong into the wall at the bottom. Fortunately I threw everything but her and had her wrapped up like a football by the time I hit, so she wasn’t hurt, and the extent of her involvement was a very glancing bump against the wall after I hit and was rolling down to the floor. She was certainly frightened by it all, but her tears lasted less than 15 seconds, and she was happily playing in the spilled tea and bread crumbs while I lay there and tried to make sure I wasn’t going to pass out. That was purely God, because I certainly wasn’t capable of any sort of planning in the 7 or 8 steps distance to the landing. Also purely God was the fact that I came through it with just some scrapes and bruises.

I did have a bad moment where I thought I was going to lose consciousness, so I called my dad to come over since it was just me and the baby, but the spell passed pretty quickly.

Today I’m very, very sore, and I’m finding that I’m banged up more than I initially realized. I have some bad bruises on both knees, my left calf, left shoulder, and left elbow, as well as scrapes on both knees, the back of my left thigh, and my left shoulder. I also have a bruise coming up on my chin, not surprising since that’s what made first contact with the wall, and hard enough to have left a pretty sizeable dent in the sheetrock. I also busted my lower lip against my teeth when I hit. The worst of it though is probably my left ring finger. It’s not broken, but it was jammed hard enough that I knew to switch my wedding ring to my right hand before I even made it out of the floor. Tonight it’s purple and swollen, although I can still move it without it being excruciating.

Anyway, my dad came over and went to pick Morgan up from school (at that point we were thinking driving might not be the wisest decision), and Nick came home to take care of me. Fortunately his workday was almost over anyway, so he won’t lose any pay over it. So that was my Monday. How’s your week going?

Still blessed

Ok, ok, I know it looks like I gave up on DD and fell off the face of the earth, but I promise that’s not what happened! I’ve just been crazy busy lately. As far as DD, well, there’s been some small mention of it on my part with some small not-completely-oppositional response on Nick’s part, so here’s hoping, anyway.

Something VERY cool happened yesterday. Well, to back up just a bit – on Christmas Eve we went to celebrate with Nick’s extended family, and Nick’s cousin B was there. Now B used to weigh somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 pounds, but a couple of years ago he had gastric bypass and lost a ton of weight. He’s even had the surgery to remove his excess skin, and he looks just great.

Anyway, we started talking about my photography business, and he said that he’d be interested in booking a portrait session, because the only formal pictures anyone has of him are pre-weight loss. Now I would have been happy to do this for free, just because he’s family, and it would make me happy to do something to help him celebrate his transformation to a healthy weight. But what he offered instead was to bring me his copy of Photoshop CS5, the very newest version and way up high on my wish list of things we really can’t afford but that would make my life so much easier! Yesterday he brought it by and installed it for me, and I’ve had so much fun playing with it!

In other news, I’ve been playing around a lot with different craft projects, and I’ve decided to open an Etsy shop just as soon as I can get some inventory built up. There are so many easy, inexpensive things I can make, from hair bows to magnets to coasters, and maybe I can bring in a little money that way. My friend R loved the coasters I made for some of my family for Christmas, and today she met me with some supplies to make a set for her to give as a birthday gift. I’m not charging her to make them, but the supplies she brought me will make many more than just hers, so I’m still coming out ahead.

This week is pretty tight money-wise, so I’ve not been able to go out and load up on supplies like I’d like, but I’ve got enough to make a few things anyway. Nick didn’t get to go to school last week because of the snow, which also caused his work to be closed for one day and open late another day. It also kept most of the customer’s away, and the New Year’s holiday hurt us too, so his check was a lot smaller than we needed. BUT, that just gives God a chance to really shine in taking care of us. In fact, we were in this same position this time last year, and this happened.  

Anyway, I’m off to bed – church in the morning!

Yuck!

We’re all sick here. I HATE being sick! It’s nothing serious, just colds all around, but I wish it would be done with already. We had an unexpected snowstorm today, and the ground is covered, so school will probably be out tomorrow. Morgan is in better shape than the rest of us, so she’s been going to school this week, although Nick missed work yesterday. Anyway, not much point to this post, just complaining a bit. Hope you’re all feeling well and having a great week!

A wise man once said…

I was cleaning out my inbox this morning, and I found this quote in an email from The Generous Wife:

He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has. Epictetus

And I realized that it didn’t take me too long at all to quit zeroing in on my blessings once November passed, and I need to try to regain some of that focus. So for today, here’s a Gratitude Post.

Today I’m thankful for:

Morgan’s new glasses. The eye doctor we use was running a special before Christmas for $1 eye exams. My in-laws had told me that they wanted to take her after the holidays to get new glasses, and I was able to take advantage of the $1 exam so that her prescription would be up to date. It had just run out in November and hadn’t, as it turned out, changed at all, but it had to be renewed for them to make her new glasses. She had picked out her old glasses herself, but she pretty quickly grew to hate the way she looked in them. They also ended up eventually getting pretty scuffed up, as glasses worn by an 8/9 year old will tend to do. Unfortunately we hadn’t had the money to buy her new ones, so it was a blessing that my in-laws offered. The doctor’s office was running a special for 2 pairs for $99, so they ended up getting her 2 pairs, plus a year’s worth of insurance on her favorite pair.

These cookies. Oh. My. Goodness.

A few months ago I ordered a set of postcards for my photography business from www.overnightprints.com along with a calendar for my brother and his wife for Christmas. When the order came the postcards were missing, so I called them and they reprinted them and sent them out. Last week they randomly sent me another set. Yay free stuff!

Nick gets to go back to Atlanta for another round of classes for work next week, and while I’m not looking forward to him being gone again, it is another step closer to him achieving his ASE certification, which will mean a raise at work along with some other benefits.

Windows Live Writer. I just discovered it, and I love the way it functions with Blogger.

Have a great day!

Brightening it up a bit

So as you can see, I have a new template. Well, actually it’s the same old template, but I played with the colors a bit. It may get old for me, but I’ve got the old version saved if it does. But I figured, hey, Valentine’s Day is just around the corner – why not?

Resolutions

Well, it’s that time again – time to make resolutions to keep or at least strive for. This year I hope to:

Grow my photography business to the point that I at least double my investment.

Get my laundry completely done and keep on top of it.

Do more crafting! This year I made almost all of the Christmas gifts that left our house, and not only did it save us a ton of money, but everyone seemed to love them!

Along those same lines – get a Silhouette machine. This is actually something that Nick and I will both use (rather, I will use it for him). I think I’ve mentioned that he and a couple of his friends are trying to get a custom car business off the ground in their free time, and we would use the machine to cut stickers to sell and to make heat transfers for t-shirts.

I want to learn how to sew on a machine. I got a nice sewing machine for Christmas about three years ago, and it’s never been out of the box. It’s not that I don’t want to use it – it’s that I have no place to set it up. I’m not sure how to go about remedying that, but I really would love to find some room to do not just sewing, but the rest of my crafting as well, and I'd love to be able to get back into origami as well.

I want to try to keep my house within about 15-30 minutes of being ready for company at all times.

I want to be better at couponing.

I want to get Daisy’s room completely organized. I hate to admit it, but right now it’s still half full of stuff that got dumped in there while we were putting down the new flooring in the rest of the downstairs. Her bed and the area around it and through the middle of the room are clear, but her pack-n-play is full of toys that belong to both her and Morgan, and they need to be seriously paired down.

I want to have more company over this year.

I want Morgan to be able to have more friends sleep over.

I’d like to have more date nights.

I want to get to know Jesus better.

How about you guys – any resolutions for you?

A New Year, a new era?

Thirteen years ago Nick spanked me for the first time. Six years after that we introduced the concept of domestic discipline into our marriage, and it changed our marriage entirely. Seven years later, DD seems to have died a quiet death. The day just past was the 7 year anniversary of DD for us, and as I expected, it passed without mention.

It’s been a couple of months since there was any form of discipline happening, and it’s been nearly as long since there’s been so much as a mention of it. A few days after this spanking there was another one promised for the same thing. I had ended up staying up all night the next Tuesday night, albeit with good intentions. Nick had an early meeting the next morning, and I was trying to make sure he got up on time. When I woke him up and he realized I hadn’t been to bed, he let me know that it would be dealt with. I asked him if we could try to take care of it soon, and he promised to try to do it the next day. Obviously that never happened. Nor was it ever even referenced again.

Honestly, I didn’t want the spanking, and I certainly hadn’t been trying to earn it, but I have to admit that the broken promise felt an awful lot like not caring. Much the same way that the birthday spanking he promised never happened. Sort of like how the birthday spankings for 2008 and 2009 never happened either. It’s not like this is the longest we’ve ever gone without any kind of spanking for punishment or play. There was, after all, the seven month hiatus of 2009, although that was during my pregnancy. But this feels different. All the other times we went through dry spells as far as actual activity, Nick still made verbal references to his authority. This time around it’s as if he’d never taken on the responsibility in the first place.

I’ve purposely refrained from bringing it up because I just haven’t had the spare strength to deal with the inevitable feelings of insecurity and burdensomeness. And I always told myself that I’d let it go if it ever got to the point that it was no longer doing our marriage any good. It seems clear that we’ve reached that point.

There’s a tiny voice in the back of my mind saying “See! I told you he doesn’t love you enough to do this without you pestering him!” And while I can mostly dismiss that as my insecurities bubbling up, I have to admit that there is some small truth in it too. And so it has come down to this: Does he love me enough to ever really wholeheartedly make a commitment to having a DD marriage? Or do I love him enough to not try to make him? The fact is, I can’t answer for him, although I suspect what the true answer might be. But I can answer for me. The question really boils down to this: “Do I love him more than I love me?” and the answer is yes, of course I do. And so I have to let it go. It may be that I’m wrong (as I have been before), and if so, I’ll be glad to be so. But this time I have to be the one to make a real commitment to being the wife he needs me to be, the wife that lives under his authority by never making him exercise it. After all these years, I think I may be getting the hang of it.