Time Passes

So a friend and I were having this discussion over lunch - time passes. Yesterday I was at another friend's house at the tail end of a toddler's birthday party. That is my definition of CHAOS - a house full of toddlers! I remember when that was my house. But it's not that way anymore. Time passes. The first five years of my eldest's life seem to go by so much slower than the past five years. She started school and suddenly time started to fly! Now she is ten and...

It has been almost a month since I last posted.

Where did the last four weeks go?

I know where last week went - I survived! That is all I did, but I DID survive. My husband was out of town all week and I had a migraine headache for four of the five days! Each day - I got up; I got us going and the girls to school; I went to work and did what I had to do; I came home and did what I had to do for the girls; I put them to bed and went to bed. No laundry, no cleaning, no TV, no blogging, no anything that didn't have to be done.

This week I am back to my normal schedule. This is my question - does life get lost in the "normal schedule" or is the "normal schedule" life? In true Orthodox fashion, I think the answer is yes. Yes, life consists of doing normal things in a normal fashion. And yes, I think sometimes I miss the very special moments in the normal-ness of my life. That special hug that happens everyday, but won't way too soon when they are all grown up! That special smile that says "I did something great, be proud of me!" That moment of thoughtfulness after a long day that says "I love you." Things that happen every day and can get lost in the 'every day'.

I am realizing today that I am very blessed and I need to cherish every moment!

(My friend also reminded me over lunch that I am almost 40. Maybe that is where all this maudlin thinking comes from! ;-)

Weight Watchers

But what I really wanted to blog about this morning is the fact that I feel like I am always hungry!

So three years ago I lost about 20 pounds. Got down to a good weight for me. A pre-pregnancy weight! Then over the past two years I put on about 10 pounds per year and, bamm, there goes all my progress. This is the first time I have been through this particular cycle. I lost and gained weight, of course, with both my pregnancies, but I consider that a different thing. This was just plain sloth and gluttony!

Two weeks ago, looking for the motivation to lose those 20 pounds again, I joined Weight Watchers. And I persuaded a couple friends to do it with me! Now I am realizing how much work it is to lose weight! And regretting the inattentiveness that enabled me to gain those 20 pounds back. Bad habits of snacking and not exercising snuck up on me without me even realizing it. And bad habits are hard to break.

I get home from work about the same time the girls get home from school and we all have a snack. Even if we don't need it or aren't hungry, I think sometimes. Now I am hungry then cause my body is trained to eat then. So I have replaced that with 30 minutes on the treadmill while the girls do homework and lots of water If I really need something I have an apple or a cheese stick. Although usually after exercising I am not as hungry.

The Weight Watchers plan is becoming hard for me to follow after 2 weeks too because I feel like I am always hungry. I'm not. I actually have been eating well. I eat what the family eats. I just eat smaller portions than I used to. I do miss the chips and the white bread and the sweets. They are not good for me though and they add up so fast (which is what I have forgotten over the past two years.)

So last week I had lost 2.4 pounds and we weigh in today. I will keep you posted as to my progress. I don't think it will be that hard to take that 20 pounds off again in the 16 weeks I will be doing the program. (I could stand to lose a bit more than that, but that is my first goal.) I do hope this time though that I will have learned my lesson and work a bit harder to keep the 20 off.

Tired this morning - late night movie

I stayed up too late watching a movie last night. We were watching a couple of Chuck episodes that we had recorded and when that was over, the channel the TV was on had this movie called "Bonnie and Clyde". We knew it wasn't going to end well, but I didn't really know a lot about their story so we watched it all the way to the bitter end: (Spoiler alert!!! ;-) They died a gruesome death caught in a trap by someone they trusted, killed by a TX ranger who had been following them for some time.
The interesting thing was that what drove them into the bank-robbing business was the Great Depression. Times were bad then. Strange similarities to economic time today - failing banks, house foreclosures and joblessness abounded. But at least we still have drinking water and food. I pray daily these days that it doesn't come to that again anytime soon.

New Toys

My job issues me a computer and since I teach and do some work at home like lecture prep and grading, they have issued me a laptop. Well, apparently, my laptop had gone out of warranty, so they just switched me over to a new laptop. I love it! It has taken me a couple of days to get everything fixed back the way I like it, but it is really nice! When I was first issued my laptop, they asked me if I wanted a Mac or a PC. Since the first available was a Mac and my husband is a big fan, I decided to try it. I have really loved it. It took a bit of getting used to at first, but now I always go to the left to close windows. I have been trained!
New toys are so much fun! (Especially when they don't come with a big price tag!)

Two revelations I had today

I have been working on developing my personal prayer life. We do prayers as a family, but I am very bad about doing them by myself. So Father has assigned me to do the Jesus prayer for a minimum of five minutes a day as a start. It is amazing to me how difficult it is for me to remember to do this every day first of all! But I have been doing better recently and today I had two revelations because of it. I even had to pull over and write the second one down. (Yes, I have been doing my prayers in the car. It seems to be the time I remember to do them.)

First, I realized how praying more often makes me more conscious of my own sins. The more I spend time with God, the more I realized how separated I from Him. I know, this is elementary for some, but for me this is a revelation! I'm slow that way!

The second one I am going to transcribe from what I wrote when I pulled over in the car:
I must live in a state of "preparing for my next confession." I cannot be forgiven my sins and then just 'coast' until a week or so before I am 'supposed' to do confession again. This is what true repentance is - a constant awareness of my separation from God.

I have never gotten confession because it always seemed so forced. Little did I realize how much I really need it! I think I have always viewed it as a duty, something I did because it was required for all good Orthodox at least 4 times per year. And how awkward that is, trying to figure out what to confess during those times! It reduced the time I spent examining my own heart down to the week or weeks of fasting leading up to "doing it". ICK!
I am beginning to realize what so many of you already have figured out - I need to live in a state of preparing for confession or as I have heard so many times quoted of St. Isaac of Syria: "This life is given to you for repentance. Do not waste it on vain pursuits." He's not talking about just the fasting times. He is talking about my entire life, every day, every hour, every minute, in the very busy-ness of my life.
Realizing all this suddenly makes praying easier and more desirable. Not a chore to check off my to-do list. But my to-do list is so long sometimes that praying has to be on there in order to ensure it happens. God is loving and kind though and meets me in the five minutes I give Him.
I met God today. In five minutes.

Life is calming down

We had a big weekend - two parties at our house.
The first one on Sunday evening was a graduation party for a very long time friend who just finished his master's degree (with a 3.97 GPA!). We did a surprise party, called it pizza night which we routinely do on Sunday evenings, but his wife invited their family and all the church and a bunch of other friend too. She ended up inviting about a hundred thinking only half of them would come. But she didn't count on how beloved her husband was amongst all our friends. So we had 71 people in my house! And outside my house cause we didn't all fit inside!
Then we did something much smaller to celebrate Labor Day - just two other families. My husband has been wanting to try something he calls a 'mixed grill'. He did a smaller amount of about 5 different kinds of meats - chicken (rubbed in fresh thyme and rosemary), pork (marinated in lime and garlic), steak (marinated in sesame oil, sushi vinegar, and wasabi paste), brats (soaked in beer), and some italian sausage (he left that one alone). It was really yummy! (I turned the leftover chicken and sausage into cacciatore last night with a yellow pepper, onions, and mushrooms and a can of chopped tomatoes - again really, yummy!)

Now I am back at work and while, life is still the usually hectic-ness, it just doesn't seem as stressful. Migraine week is over. My husband worked 200+ hours in about 2 weeks getting ready for classes to start. That is now over. The big surprise party is over. Now we just have the usual day-to-day routine with school & homework, work & lesson prep, church & choir, ballet (2x per week now). Life is good! Busy, but good!

Got to go have lunch with my girls!

Overwhelmed by Emotion

The past two nights I have woken up about 5 am from a terrible dream. Not the same dream both nights, but both high emotion dreams.
The first night I was saying goodbye to my very best friend who was moving away and in my dream, right before I woke up, I was on the floor in a fetal position sobbing. When I woke up, I felt like I had been really crying.
This past night in my dream we had been away from church for a couple of weeks and when we came back, heretics had taken over and had changed everything away from the traditions of the church. I was so angry about it, my husband actually had to restrain me from doing bodily harm to someone. When I woke up, again, I felt like I had actually been through those emotions.
Do dreams actually mean something? (My husband asked me what I had been eating!) The first day kind of made sense because we are actually having to say goodbye to a family we are very close to who are moving far away. And in the second one, we actually have missed quite a bit of church recently. But I am wondering if these dreams have more to do with the overwhelming amount of stress, especially emotional stress I have been under with the start of school.
It will all be over on Friday! I need the long weekend! I think I will try to get some peaceful sleep.

First Day of Class

Today I taught my first day of class for this school year. It is always nerve-racking! Every year, no matter how many times I have taught the class before. I don't sleep well the night before and the butterflies in my stomach going into class are big enough to fly several hundred people across the Atlantic! I don't even want to know what my blood pressure was this morning about 10:00am!

It was interesting to me coming out of that class though how many things don't change from one year to the next. Every class has what I call the 'answerer' - the person who always raises their hand with an answer for whatever the question might be. And there are the quiet ones (usually more than one) who sit there and never give you any feedback at all. Every once in a while you see a look of interest or a nod, but they never answer any questions.
And in my subject field everyone falls into two catagories: the scared and the bored. The 'scared' are afraid it is going to be hard and not even close to accomplish-able. (How I love to disprove them!) The 'bored' are confident in their abilities in the subject and just really don't think they need to be there. (A much smaller catagory in my field and obnoxious to have in class!)


All in all, I am glad the first day is behind me.

17th Anniversary!

My husband and I celebrated our 17th anniversary yesterday. With the sick child that had to be kept home from church and his job, which is overwhelmingly busy these days and caused him to have to go to work in the afternoon, we actually didn't see much of each other for most of the day.
We did get a babysitter to come over in the evening and managed to get away for dinner and a movie though which was wonderful! We went to dinner at a place I have been wanting to try (Nagasaki Inn) and to see a movie we have been wanting to see and were afraid would make it out of the theater before got to see it (Prince Caspian). It was a great date night! Probably made better by the fact that I think it has been about a year since our last 'date night'! We really do need to do that more often!
So 17 years! I was telling someone the other day, that we don't really have big fights anymore. Just small spats. Usually they stem from the fact that most of the time we can almost read each others minds, but occasionally when we try, we fail. And then we are misunderstood. And then we spat! But I wouldn't trade that for anything in the world! To be understood and to understand another person even most of the time is a wonderful thing.
I was listening to a podcast on marriage the other day. Apparently there is new term out there to try to explain the high divorce rate in this country: Starter marriages - you get married young and when you out-grow the first husband, you get a bigger and better second husband. Yikes! That is just frightening to me.
But the really interesting thing about this talk was when the guy asked the question: on a scale of 1-10, what is your commitment to your marriage? My immediate response was 10! After 17 years, I can't imagine life without my husband. I am always saying to my girlfriend: "You and I got 2 of the good ones!" My husband is definitely one of the good ones. He is faithful and kind. He is loving and fun to be around. He is a good father and a good provider. He always takes our family's needs into account when making any decision and will work harder and longer to make sure that we have what we need (even, and especially hard, time). He drives me crazy sometimes and I love that I know how and when he is going to do that!
I love him and I look forward to the next 17 years!

Back to School!

So my girls went back to school today and just as I suspected I suddenly have more energy (and concentration power) for my blog!

Some thoughts on going back to school:

• For the first time in 6 years of sending the girls off to school, I didn't take pictures. Which I really regret actually because all of the previous years' pictures were taken in front of the fireplace in the old house. With the new house, I would like to document the change at least!
• I don't think I have cried when dropping the girls off the past two years, although I felt like it both of the past two years! I remember crying like a baby as soon as we walked out the door the first year I had to drop off the oldest. I really boo-hoo'ed! Two years ago it was the first year for the baby of the family and again it was hard leaving her there.
  
• While I feel like crying even thinking about leaving my girls at school, when I walked into my office this morning, a sense of peace just swept over me! ALONE-TIME! There is nothing quite as noisy as two little girls! I have missed my quiet office this summer.

And now I get back to work!

Reconsidering my blog?

So I have decided that the reason I never post anything to my blog is because I read my blog list first thing in the morning and I can't think straight that soon after I wake up. Most days I never make it back to my computer when I can put two coherent thoughts together. Maybe that will change when summer is over cause I do spend more time on the computer during the school year.

Thoughts when up in the middle of the night

Yeah, it really is 3:30 in the morning! I woke up about an hour ago when I realized that I had forgotten to let my cat in before I went to bed. I tried to call her, but at 2 o'clock in the morning any calling just sounds really loud. I eventually woke up my husband (inadvertently, not on purpose!), but we never found her. We did crack the garage door just a bit so she could take refuge in there once she comes home. She loves to go outside, but (as our recent house/pet-sitter said) she always seems to want to be on the other side of the door. I think I spend more time letting her in and out than I do the dog!
So anyway, I went back to bed not sure I could get back to sleep. My ceiling fan has a tick in it. (It is bad enough, it entered into my dream before the cat being outside woke me up!) Then my nose was plugged. Then my neck started hurting. These two are always the precursors to a migraine headache so I got up to take some medicine before it went there. And now I just can't sleep! Of course it didn't help that I remembered that I had forgotten to pay a bill the other day when I paid all the bills. Or that I remembered that I needed to check on a shipment from Gevalia. So I just got up.
Now I am starting to get sleepy again so I think I am making less and less sense. I will probably read this in the morning and wonder what on earth I was thinking posting at 3:30 in the morning! I think I will try to go back to bed. My head feels better and my meds are taking effect.

OK, that's better!

I couldn't stand to go to my own blog because it was so pink. This is a much better template: still pink (which I love), but not so pink as to hurt the eyes. Now maybe I can actually stand to post stuff on my blog!

I have been on vacation for the past week and didn't have much access to the internet (ack!) or much time to write posts when I could get on (just a quick check of email). I will post more in the next couple of days on my thoughts of my vacation.

Wow! That's pink!

How on earth do I change the color on the sides of this thing? I am okay with the colors of the fonts, but would like to change the background color. Apparently that is the only color I can't change! Yikes! It hurts the eyes!

Oh, my! What have I done?!

So I was just saying two nights ago that I would never have my own blog. But today I got sucked in! I don't know how. It just seems like everyone is doing it (even my own mother - although she never posts anything new!) Yeah, yeah, I know - and if everyone jumped off a bridge. (Yeah, I probably would!) I probably won't ever post anything new either! Like I need something else to do! Well, I'll give it a try. (Note to self: must remember this is a public forum)