Rage…Bring It On

June 14, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Rage...Bring It On at Structure in an Unstructured Life

photo credit: Kuzeytac via photopin cc

The storm blows in; a big one. I stand on the front porch, cold rain trying to reach for me. I usually hate storms. But I stand and smile. I fight the urge to step off that porch into the downpour. Let the cold water from the heavens wash over me…wash it all away.

Bring it on. Rage. God, Mother Nature, the universe…whoever brings the wind and torrential rain in buckets. Be angry. Thunder, lightning, rage. Bring it.

It feels good for someone bigger than myself to be angry. Today wasn’t a bad day. Nothing went terribly wrong. But the devil is in the details. The mundane is what gets me. The monotony of do this and finish that. Hurry up to get here and there. Take care of this and that. It can be exhausting, this every day, this being on the verge.

The verge is a tiring place to be. On the verge of crazy. On the verge of exhausted. On the verge of broke. On the verge of giving up.  I want to rage. I don’t even have a real reason to, but I want to. Instead I complain about schedules and milk spilled on the living room rug.

Then I stand on that porch, and I feel someone bigger than me rage. Feel some heavenly, other world force be angry, for no reason I know of. I feel the wind forced and the rain thrown and the lightening hurled. I feel less alone in this craziness. I feel less like a failure. I feel like someone else knows what it’s like.

So now I sit in the powerless dark with a toy flashlight and a hardbound notebook and a pen, pouring my words out on a cream colored page with black gel ink. The storm ebbs and flows and I’m trying to decide if I’m still angry at life or if the rage has passed on like the wind and rain seem to have done. I try to tell myself to wake up tomorrow with a new day attitude and I wonder if I will take my own advice.

Sometimes I rage for no real reason. I don’t know if that makes me normal or broken. But either way, I peer into the pitch black night and hear the wind through the trees and the rain on cement and at least I know I am not alone. Bring it on.

Filed Under: Happiness Tagged With: , , , ,

A Letter to My Unmarried Self

February 7, 2013 by 6 Comments
photo credit: MikeOliveri via photopin cc</a

photo credit: MikeOliveri via photopin cc

Dear Not-Yet-Married Self,

I know you are impatiently waiting for that ring. I know you keep hoping it will be held up to you from a bended knee on the next date, or at the next event, or to mark the next milestone. I know you are envisioning the wedding and everything that goes along with that magical princess day. I know you are wishing introductions included “husband” rather than “boyfriend.”

That will all come. But there are things you should know. Tales from the other side that you should hear.

Marriage is not meant to solve problems. It will make some problems easier, like shared bills and double incomes. It will make some struggles easier as you will have someone to share them with. However, it will create new problems and struggles. New ones that it will be your responsibility to solve. Not your way, but a new, together way. Some of those problems will be small, but some will be big. And you will have days when you long for the problem of semantics in introductions.

Marriage does not make him love you more. Putting rings on each other’s fingers while dressed in the most elegant of attire does not create or multiply love. Building a relationship together will grow love. Respecting him and listening to him will multiply his love for you. And, ironically, love yourself more and you will surprisingly find him doing the same.

Marriage will not be like the movies. You will not know what the other one is thinking without saying a word. Marriage will be real and sometimes raw. You have to put your Hollywood expectations aside and get real. You have to communicate with him if you want him to know what you are thinking, which isn’t always romantic and magical, but it is real and honest.

There will be times when you will want to walk away. Times when you will picture packing up all of your stuff, or all of his, and walking away. Times when it will seem like it shouldn’t be this hard, or you shouldn’t fight this much, or things should just be better than they are. There will be times where in the midst of your running away fantasy, you will find yourself desperately praying that he never walks away.

You need to learn to see the little things, because that is where you will most often find his love. Notice that he always lets you pick the restaurant. Appreciate that he always, always drives and knows that you hate to. Pay attention to the folded laundry and the clean kitchen when you walk in from a day of work when he had a day of home. Realize that the hand on the small of your back in the middle of a crowd is just as romantic, and possibly more loving, than the sizzling kiss between the sheets.

Listen. Listen. Listen to the feelings behind his words. Listen to the words he is saying and listen for the ones that he is not. Stop talking in your head while he is talking in your ear. Listen.

Marriage is difficult. But solving those problems will give you a sense of pride, one that you share together. And those storms you weather side-by-side, the struggles, the learning to communicate, the finding out what listening means, the discovering how big the little things are, will create a life. One that is beautiful and strong and so much more real than fairy tales and movie scenes.

Yes, the proposal, the ring, the dress, the day will all come. But so much more than that will come with it. A marriage. A lifetime of listening and apologizing and loving. A world of small moments and gentle smiles, not of grandiose declarations of love in cinematic locations. More tears and laughs and sighs and smiles than you will ever be able to count.

Be patient, for something wonderful will come.

Love,

Me

 

 

Filed Under: Marriage, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

Why Buying a New Couch Was a Good Decision

July 13, 2012 by 4 Comments

Our comfy new couch!!

A lot of people would say buying a new couch was not a good decision for The Coach and I to make. I can see why people might think that. We could have put the money toward bills, into savings, or bought something that was more of a need than a want.

The cost was only one factor in our decision. And honestly, for us, money has never been a top priority, which has been both a blessing and a curse.

In recent years, we have realized that priorities other than money and financial stability are much more important to us. Happiness has definitely moved up to a top priority for us, which is where our couch purchase comes in.

So how did a new couch make us happier? The Coach and I, like most married couples with young children, have struggled to find that time and the ways to connect in the midst of the chaos of this stage of life. We discovered, however silly it might sound, that sitting together in the evening made a big difference in how close we felt to one another.

We used to have the same routine every night. Get the kids to bed, pick up the living room and kitchen, then I would sit on the couch and he would sit in the chair. Sometimes we watched something together, sometimes one watched while the other was on the computer or reading. But we sat in separate spaces.

In an effort to work on our togetherness, we began sitting together on the couch in the evening. This made us feel much more like we were spending time together, even if we weren’t always doing the same activity. However, our ten year old couch was not comfy. For either of us.

So buying a new couch has made it far more comfortable to sit together in the evening. And sitting together in the evening, is a very good thing for our marriage. I don’t expect everyone to agree that buying a new couch was a good decision. I know a lot of people think it was a stupid reason to spend that much money. But for us, there isn’t a better reason than happiness to spend money.

Do you choose to spend money on things others think are stupid, or poor choices? What are your good reasons?

Filed Under: Happiness, Home Tagged With: , , , , ,

How To Have A Cheap Date Night

April 12, 2012 by 1 Comment

Date nights can be hard to come by, especially once you have kids. And once a date night includes paying for a babysitter, dinner, activities, etc. it can seem like an impossibility to get a night for just you and your beloved. 

But that couple time is pretty important in a marriage. Enter figuring out how to have a cheap date night. A couple months ago, The Coach and I pulled off a fabulously fun evening and spent next to nothing. Here’s how we did it. 

  • Babysitting was provided by The Coach’s parents. I know not everyone has the option of grandparents willing or close enough to take the kids overnight. We are very blessed to have this opportunity. But if this isn’t an option for you, consider trading an overnight stay with a friend – she takes your kids for a night, you take her kids for a night.
  • First stop was the bookstore. We love browsing bookstores. And browsing is free. We each got to look in our own interest sections, then we found some funny books, some interesting books, and even some racy books to look at together! All for free!
  • The next stop was free wine tasting. We are lucky to live in the heart of the fruit belt and thus have a large number of wineries near us. Most wineries offer free tastings of their wines. We picked a local winery and learned about and tasted three different wines.
  • Then we headed to dinner. We had purchased a gift certificate through Groupon for a restaurant in between the grandparents’ house and our house. Our Groupon got us an appetizer, a soup or salad each, two entrees, two desserts, and two glasses of wine – all for $40. A fancy dinner for two for $40? You can’t beat that! If you haven’t signed up for Groupon yet, check it out here.
  • Our final stop was home. Home minus the kids can be extremely quiet and relaxing! A perfect way to wind down from the evening! 

We have a date night planned for this weekend as well. Our gym offers a parents’ night out once a month. We signed up for three and got a 25% discount – making it $6 per kid for about 2 to 3 hours of babysitting. We are planning to eat dinner at home, then head downtown for a drink and some browsing in our downtown stores. We live in a touristy town, so we have a lot of fun shops, but hardly ever get to look in them because we have the kiddos with us. 

A fabulous date night can be accomplished on the cheap – you just have to get creative! 

(Disclosure: The link above is an affiliate link, and I will therefore receive a small amount of compensation for referrals. I only promote sites, services, and products that I actually use and feel will benefit the readers of my blog.)

Filed Under: Budgeting, Marriage Tagged With: , , , , ,

Why We Went to Bed Happy Instead of Angry (At Least This Time)

March 13, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The Coach and I planned a date night this past weekend. Since we had no money and no babysitter, we planned a stay-at-home date. I found a link on pinterest of 30 questions to ask your spouse, so I whittled that down to 10. Then I made a super cute (if I don’t say so myself) invitation for The Coach with my digital scrapbooking goodies. I included the list of 10 questions and told him to be prepared.

I had expectations for the evening. In my head, I was picturing us sitting together on the couch, a glass of wine in hand, going though the questions and having great conversations about them. Kind of like those getting to know someone new kind of dates you have in the beginning of a relationship. I was all geared up for some bonding.

The problem was, I hadn’t shared these expectations. And the other problem was, The Coach had his own set of expectations which he had not shared, either. So by partway through the evening, The Coach was thinking the evening was a rousing success, while I was completely disappointed.

You see, The Coach had started thinking that maybe I had something I wanted to say and that was why I had chosen those particular questions. So he had set out to really be a good listener throughout the evening to make sure he didn’t miss something important. However, really concentrating on listening meant The Coach was not really concentrating on talking. So the conversation seemed rather one-sided to me.

By the time we went up to bed, it was clear we were not on the same page. But perhaps the best part of the evening was how we handled not being on the same page. A couple years ago, I would have gone to sleep angry and thinking he didn’t care about me because he couldn’t even talk about a stupid list of questions. The Coach would have gone to bed angry thinking that I didn’t care about him because I didn’t appreciate how hard he had tried to listen.

Instead, we talked about why we weren’t on the same page. We realized that we both had expectations that we had not shared. We realized, and more importantly accepted, that neither of us was trying to ruin the evening, we were simply doing what we thought we should do based on our own expectations. So we decided next time to be more clear about what we hoped the evening would be like. We’re not going to write a memo detailing the expected outcomes, but we might mention that we are looking forward to having a really good conversation, or we can’t wait to listen to what the other one has to say.

So our stay-at-home date was not nearly what I expected, but it actually ended up being better than I imagined.

Filed Under: Marriage Tagged With: