I’m finding that my unhappiness stems from the commotion and agitation of some of the other people around me. My ex-husband and his fiance battling first degree murder charges in court and the effect on my kids and I. The change wave at work, that while overall positive, is causing many around me to feel uncomfortable, threatened even.  But these things….they’re not mine to own.  This is not my commotion or unrest.  Finding a way to ensure that my heart and mind stay serene and calm while paddling through other people’s storms…that’s the challenge.

So for my next 12 months, I’ll be thinking, living, breathing, tranquility.  My house will be a tranquil reserve for my children to forget about the drama in their father’s life. My office will be a quiet reserve for others to come, work through the changes, find the beauty in making more of a historic company. I will work to make my mind calm, collected in my thoughts, and un-panicked by those around me. And my heart will remain still with the knowledge that I’ve found someone who walks through life with me, holding my hand, encouraging me to be more, while assuring me that I am and always will be enough.

Today, I came  face to face with one of those things.  The dreaded semi-annual leadership team meeting.  [said in my most ominous, james-earl-jonesy, yet somehow still shouty tones] Now, you’re saying to yourself, hey silly girl who is not a princess, what’s all the fuss about.  Let’s start here.  It will be me and upwards of seven old men in a tiny town in the mountains for a week. That’s right.  Me…and Sleepy, Sneezy, Dopey, Doc, Happy, Bashful and Grumpy.  The agenda came out today.  It went something like this

Monday…travel today, wear comfortable clothes, eat wild animals for dinner.

Tuesday…horrible meeting, next horrible meeting, horrible meeting, but oh-by-the-way-you-can-wear-jeans-so-you-don’t-feel-so-horrible, walk a long way to dinner to eat dinner at a little hippy-dippy mexican village place.

Wednesday…horrible meeting in the morning, but looky here, team building in the afternoon.  All you need to bring is your swimsuit (GAWD-AMIGHTY Why don’t I own a full body swimsuit…SERIOUSLY), a helmet, and your last will and testament. After we’re done riding the rapids, we’ll head DIRECTLY into town to eat.

Thursday…horrible meeting, horrible meeting, horrible meeting, let’s build some more team.  This time, you can wear shorts, we’ll drive ATVs up and down the mountain for fun…maybe you should bring that last will and testament thing again. Dinner will be pleasant, if you survive.

This, same type of thing every 6 months.  Let’s get all the old men together, close them in a room together with just one woman and then figure out what we can do to build team cohesion, where build team cohesion means leave me praying for death.  Things like golfing in the rain, deep sea fishing, and poker night, complete with cigars.  I’m team building with 60+ year old Grumpy, who spends most of his time talking about the “old days” and 7 pm is “past his bed time”.   Then there’s Doc, who has been known to cause boredom-onset narcolepsy. Don’t sit next to him during any of the “horrible meeting” phase of this event EVER, or you will die.  Sitting next to Dopey can be entertaining, but it’s just like school, if you’re sitting next to the trouble-maker, you’re marked for life.  Sneezy is my favorite, sitting next to him means you get to hear about all the sick people on his plane on the way out and how that’s affected his entire body, this frequently results in WAY TOO MUCH INFORMATION. (For the love of all that is holy, I do not want to know anything about the state of either your sinus or your bowel, thankyouverymuch.)  Meetings start at 7:00 am, with breakfast at 6:30, dinner wraps up at 9:00 pm, but if you get sucked in by the big hairy spider’s web of TEAM DISCUSSION, it will last past midnight, so the dwarf named Happy will never make you feel so.  As for Bashful, I’m on to him, it’s just an act so that he can stare at my cleavage, instead of my face.  So each morning, I enter the Lair of Despair, where the thermometer is set at a frigid 55 degrees.  I set up my laptop, place my jacket and my scarf on the back of my chair and silently will Sleepy to come sit next to me.  He’s fairly harmless since he doesn’t talk much and his eyes are always closed.  Like always, I bide my time, waiting for the evil witch to hand me that poisonous apple…Hoping, waiting, PRAYING for death.

Source

No, honestly, this is all true..almost.  I can’t wait until next week.

I do not shelter my children from EVERYTHING. They were there when we had to put our beloved lab down. But, I allowed them to chose when and how they wanted to participate.  Life is hard, but children are innocent and I believe they should be allowed to be that way as long as they’re willing.In my house, for now, my middle schooler still believes in the tooth fairy, the easter bunny and santa claus. I know that he knows better, but he wants these things to still be magical and real and he’s 11, I’m not ready to tell him he can’t have that.  He has lots of years left for life to real, non-magical and, quite frankly, hard. My daughter is a natural worrier. If there are storm clouds in the sky, she’s concerned about tornados. She tells herself that if the clouds are in certain areas of the sky, that means the storm is not going to come our way. I don’t always correct her, if I know it’s just going to rain after she goes to bed, what’s the harm in letting her feel comfort.

But at his house, my son is allowed to play Call of Duty and see Resident Evil, because her son does. In my house, this is a no-go. Who needs to see the digital representation of war or truly horror filled moments when you can play baseball with guys with no arms. At his house, my daughter was told that she will get breast cancer some day because my maternal grandmother had it and eventually died from it.  In my house, they know that Grandma Birdie taught me how to quilt and sew, made them so many things in their infancy, and loved them more than they will ever remember.  At his house, my children were told that nothing “Australian” could come into the house, because her ex is from there…and they hate that. In my house, we love and embrace truly Australian things, like koala bears, kangaroos, and Crocodile Dundee. At his house, they know that their dad and his girlfriend met on Match.com and that they will likely never get married again, because that just ends in divorce and divorce is ugly. In my house, they learn that Mike loves them as if they were his own children and that he is committed to both them and me. They know that we will plan the wedding together and that we will all go into this relationship knowing that divorce is not an option.

It breaks my heart to hear some things that my children hear or know or do when they are not with me.  And it’s so hard to choose which battles are worth fighting and which are better left alone. All I know how to do is love them fiercely when they’re with me and do everything I can to let them be little.  I regret that I cannot protect them as often as my heart desperately wants to.

She could make us laugh until it hurt. She owned the room, just by walking in.

She commanded attention.

She was my support. She was my friend, no she was my sister.

At home, she was mom.  She was nurturing. She cultivated her boys to be good men.

But she was weak.  She was subdued. She was quiet so that he could dominate the house.

She chose to leave……

Then she met him.

He was energetic. He was charismatic.

He made her feel beautiful again. He showed her a good time. 

He told her she was amazing. He told her he loved her. He told her she should be like him.

Then he told her she was nothing. He told her she would lose her children. He told her no one could love her.

He was manipulative. He was controlling. He broke her.

He broke her nose.

He broke the walls in her house.

He broke her computer, her phone, her relationships.

With her friends, with her coworkers, with her sons.

He broke her spirit.

In the end, he took her, but I won’t let him win.

I will remember her strength and I will be strong.

I will remember her love and I will nurture as she would have.

I will remember her ability to light up a room and I will have confidence.

And I will work every day to remember the real her…the her before him.

Because she was my friend and I loved her.  And though I couldn’t save her, I won’t let one day go by without thanking God for the thrill of knowing her.

When I’m ready

I don’t know what it is, but the last couple of weeks have been really hard for me.  People ask me what’s wrong, why I’m crabby or upset and I try to tell them.  But putting it in words, just makes me feel selfish and petty.  Little things bug me lately.  I can’t seem to not sweat the small stuff.  I read the comments and the quotes about choosing happiness…and I do in small increments of time, but right now…it’s so hard. 

I was mowing my lawn last week…and with all that “alone time”, all I could do was, literally, seethe about all the things currently irritating me (one being the fact that I was mowing the lawn.)  Suddenly, I became aware that my whole thought process was about how angry I was…about stupid little things.  I looked up in the sky and directly above me was a dark black cloud that was churning and moving.  My first thought was…rain.  And then I noticed that nowhere else in the sky were there even clouds.  That this little black rain cloud had developed right over my yard, me….and my very negative thoughts.  It was a haunting awareness of my thoughts and my state of  mind. I worked hard for the remainder of time that I was mowing to think of other happier things…and the little black rain cloud slowly broke itself up, without ever truly raining.

 I’ve tried in recent days to remove myself from this place.  I have a lot of people that are relying on me heavily right now…and that prevents me from being able to really address what I need to with me.  More notably, I’m aware that there are people that want to help, but my inability to feel secure about what’s really bugging me prevents me from asking or allowing for help.  I’m hopeful that as the stresses of this week draw to a close, I’ll be allowed a little time for me…to work on me, to build me up again…to really hear what is bugging me, so I can work it out and move beyond this. 

I really don’t like to think of myself as sad, depressed or unhappy.  In general, I’m not.  But every once in awhile, a little black rain cloud parks itself, beligerantly, over my head.  Somedays, it’s all I can do to look up at that little cloud and pray for it not to rain down on me.

Weathering the Storm,

Angi

I dropped my kids off at their father’s at bed time and raced to his house for a celebratory drink and early bed time.  **Side note:  Who the HELL goes on vacation on a 5 am flight??? Me apparently**  When I got there, much to my dismay, he was working.  Because he’s a computer geek for a bank, his hours are highly variable.  He assured me that he’d still have a drink with me, we’d just have to celebrate in the office, instead of the bedroom dining room.  I poured us each a drink and went about putting the last few items in the bag.  I was wrapping up my fidgeting and stopped in to see how his work was coming.  I’ve almost got it, he said.  I sat with him for what seemed like an hour, quietly watching him work.  Then I kissed him on the head and told him I was heading to bed, as it was already 10 pm.  I was going through my nightly routine when I heard him get up from his desk and head into the bedroom.  I assumed he was giving up and turning in too. But when I got to the bedroom, he wasn’t there…he was back in his office.  I teasingly chided him for being too committed to his job and started climbing into bed.  He came in, grabbed me gently by the shoulders and turned me around.  He said a few things, equally awkward and sweet, and then in the most tender way, asked me if I’d marry him.  Now, with all the impending beauty of sunsets, beaches, oceans, boats, romance and RUM…this was the LAST thing I had expected, but I said the first thing that came to my mind.  I said, “Of course I will.”  It wasn’t a spectacular moment, not one for the history books or a Lifetime movie, but in his way, it was VERY romantic…and a moment I’ll never forget. 

This is where one would assume the proposal was over, however, it wasn’t.  After a sleepless night of anticipation, we were sitting quietly on the plane and he leaned over to me and whispered, “you never did actually say yes”.  I grinned coyly at him and said, “I didn’t?”  He assured me I hadn’t and repeated my words to him.  With a twinkle in my eye, I said, “well if that’s the answer you’re looking for, you’re going to have to keep asking.”  And ask he did. 

Day 1: He asked when we landed in St. Thomas.  “I’d love that”, I said.

Day 2: He asked as we watched the sunset from the balcony bar in the hotel. “Sure”, I giggled.

Day3: He asked on the boat, as we headed towards St. Johns. “Mmmhmmm,” I affirmed.

Day 4: He asked from atop the highest point on St. Thomas, as we shared an amazing rum drink and took in the view. “Okay!” I toyed with him.

Later that night, when we returned to our room, there was a live band playing on the patio directly below our balcony.  We ordered drinks to the room and sat outside, listening to them play and reliving the amazing moments of our trip, thus far.  The band slowed the tempo down and we danced together, so close and almost still, under the moonlight.  It was at that moment, he said, “Will you marry me.”  and the only answer I had for him was…yes.

So when Mike and I were first dating, I made some stupid off-hand comment about never getting married again.  And for just a split second, a look of hurt flashed across his face.  I never said those words out loud again…although, there was still a part of me that thought that.  Then months later, we were arguing about something small, and we both recognized early on that it was me…carrying my baggage of my past relationship.  He said to me, “I’m not him…let me make my own mistakes.”  And it hit me, like a ton of bricks.  Just because I’d failed once, didn’t mean I was destined to fail again.  In fact, I was now armed with experience and knowledge of what can happen.”  And so I let him be him…and he failed and I failed, but we did it together.  And when we fail, we talk about it.  And when we hurt one another, we talk about it.  And when we are feeling lonely or needy, we tell one another.  I learned to be vulnerable with him.  That if I tell him my feelings, he will listen and he will HEAR me.  I learned that a relationship is never cemented, it’s one day at a time.  Every day a blessing, every day a battle, every day important.  So Mike and I, we talk, every day.  We talk about little things, we talk about big things.  We share our frustrations of work.  We share our successes at work or fitness or parenting.  He and I, we’re a team…every day.

So when he asked if I would spend the rest of my life with him, the only answer I could have possibly given was yes.  (Well, actually I said, sure…which led him to ask me about 6 more times over the next 4 days until he heard the answer he truly wanted, but that’s a story for another day.) Because, together we will build a marriage, one brick, one talk, one kiss, one day at a time.  Never forgetting that to say I do, is to say I will, each day for the rest of my life.

Anxiously Engaged,

Angi

But I have spent the last three days thinking about it.  And baggage, while a heavy troublesome load some days, also allows us to carry the courage to resolve little things before they become the big things that hurt in the past.  We have places to house the lessons we’ve learned.  Baggage holds dear the secrets that we’ve kept to ourselves but somehow when we let those secrets out of the bag, we grow.  We’re stronger in our own right.  We’re stronger in our relationships. In the end, our load is lighter, because someone is eventually willing to help us carry our baggage.

With a fuller heart and a lesser burden,

Angi