Day 12 The Contentment Journal, June 13, 2019

Today’s prompt: What are 3 things you are thankful for relating to your health? Eeeek!  Okay I came up with 3:

1.  I am grateful my pain is controlled with rest, heating pad and pain medication.
2.  I am grateful my asthma is well controlled with medication (inhalers).
3.  I am grateful I can walk around a 2 block radius each day with my rescue chihuahua.

I really am grateful as I know there are people who are much worse off than I am so I try to keep that in mind.  Actually I have a very close person, my sister.  She is having a horrible time controlling her pain without knowing what her true diagnosis is.  She hopes to find out when she visits John Hopkins in October.  We talk on the phone a lot, supporting each other.  She lives 2 states away from me.

I’d better get a few things done while I feel good.  Our record breaking hot weather is over and it is cooler today, though I still need to water our flowers and shrubs. I need to refill the chicken’s food and I need to feed my dog and hopefully walk her, but first I am going down to have breakfast with my mom (almost 90) at her assisted living facility that is just over a mile away!

Day 11 The Contentment Journal, June 12, 2019

Prompt: How is your work different than when you first started? What changes and growth are you thankful for in your role.

I could go on and on about this. I will try to be less wordy than my usual. I am a wife, mother, grandmother, mother in law and daughter.  I am also a sister and friend. I am not employed, unless you count the very light bookkeeping I do for our business.

I have been striving to have a clean and organized home for over 40 years. I have been retired for almost 3 years.  I love investing my time and energy into my home and my family.  I am available to help out whoever needs help.  I am more available to my elderly mother as her dementia worsens.  Any stress is self-imposed.

With my fibromyalgia I cannot always do it all or I need breaks, quite a few breaks. It has been a huge change to go from working woman with family to a homemaker.  It would make sense I would be content since my first choice in a career was a home economics teacher.  I loved sewing soooo much I wanted to teach others.

My husband did all the grocery shopping and cooking when we were raising children.  Now I am trying to do 99% of the grocery shopping and about 75% of the cooking.  My husband and I trade the cooking chores, especially on the weekend.   Depending on my pain levels I try to do prep work in the morning and if I don’t feel up to cooking at 4:30 in the afternoon, I leave it for DH and he never complains.

I had journaled my thoughts for Day 11 before I showered today.  So I meditated on the prompts and my thoughts.  Just as I stepped out of the shower, I heard this from Deuteronomy 14, towards the end of the chapter talking about giving: And God will bless you in all your work.

I felt this was meant for me, meditating on my “job” and that God will bless me.  Amen.

Day 9 and 10 of The Contentment Journal, June 11, 2019

My computer needed to be charged last night, like it was completely dead, had just enough power to tell me it needed to be charged.  I don’t think that has ever happened! Luckily I did write my thoughts for day 9&10.

Day 9 Prompt: What are 3 things you are grateful for about your spouse or special person-Actually I just talked about him and how being together for so long (since 7th grade) it’s pretty easy to take each other for granted.  But 3 things:

1. He is a total partner. He doesn’t care about “roles” in a marriage.
2. He did 99% of the grocery shopping and cooking while raising our children.
3. He works really hard so that I can be at home now that I deal with chronic pain on a daily basis.
4. He NEVER complains if the house is a mess.
5. He will do almost anything for our girls.

Examples: One year our oldest daughter was home from college for Christmas. She was going to school in Klamath Falls, Oregon. We live on the coast of California.  We checked the weather and of course a big snow was going to fall in the Siskiyou Mountains!  She started home and after about an hour we found her backpack with her school books she forgot in her hurry to get on the road and to try to get in front of the coming storm.  She had a little Honda Civic that is not exactly a good car to drive in the snow.

We called her and she said she would stop and wait for us to bring it to her.  My husband said “No, keep driving I will bring it to you”.  So he got in his car and drove the 4+ hours to her home. He handed over the backpack, got in the car and turned around and came home. She had made it home just before it started to snow.

2nd example: Our youngest daughter is married to a Marine.  She got married about 7 weeks before her 19th birthday.  She is the baby of the family.  At one deployment (I can’t remember which, may the first when she had been married for about 11 days), the last leg of her flight home, from San Francisco to Humboldt, (from North Carolina) she got bumped.  It was 11:30 and she could not get the last flight to home.  She called home so upset, crying.   My husband told her to go to the USO and he would come and get her (even though it’s a 5 hour (at least) drive from Humboldt to SFO.  He got up from bed, got dressed and drove during the middle of the night to San Francisco.  He got there about 4:30 a.m. and picked our daughter up, took her to breakfast and then drove back to the airport and put her on the flight home, driving back himself.  She later told us that knowing her dad was coming made all the different. Also thank God for the USO!

Our middle daughter, he drove our older Camry from Humboldt to Charleston to give her the car after her 10+ year old Honda Accord finally died (with well over 300,000 miles on it). He was followed and pulled over in Arkansas on some made up transgression.  He was actually profiled because the car had my disabled plates on it and heck we are from Humboldt.  After DH got out of the car to go to the trunk and show him the insurance cards, after much questioning as to where was he going, why, why isn’t your wife with you, etc etc, the state trooper asked if he had a 215 card (medical marijuana).  Um NO! Ha Ha great story.  He tells it better.

So yes I can think of lots of things I appreciate about my husband.

Day 10: What are 5 needs in your life that you get met every day-

1. Shelter-I love my home. We raised our daughters in this home (older girls were 6&8 and I was about to birth #3 when we moved in). It is just the right size for us.  The lot is the right size to enjoy without being overwhelming.  We have room for a garden and chickens and our front lawn is big and we have lovely landscaping that beautifies it, well I think it does!
2. Food-We have plenty of good food pretty much at all times in our home.  We have strawberries, raspberries and blueberries in our garden and we have an expansive pantry and freezers with plenty to eat.  We did not have enough food while growing up until it was just my two older siblings and I.  I think this may be partly why we have so much!
3. Clothing-I have plenty of comfortable clothes to wear and a washer and dryer to clean them.
4. Creative/helping-I have a wonderful creative outlet in the form of my sewing room and my extensive fabric stash. I have plenty of lovely fabrics and the notions and tools to make wonderful gifts for people (just finished two 49er aprons for a friend for Father’s Day). I have a nice sewing machine, a very nice Serger and the Accuquilt Go that saves my shoulder when cutting out quilts. I bond with my granddaughters (Ally is making her first full sized quilt at age 10!). In fact Ally named my sewing room The Fun Girl’s Club Room when she was quite young! I also have the garden which is, in some ways, a creative outlet with the flowers.  I love to make quilts for kids! So many quilts I have made over the years, a few for friends of friends whom I have never met.   I also have the tools and have rediscovered embroidery.  I have some nice yarn and a large collection of knitting and crochet needles.  I can create to my heart’s content.  I enjoy making fairy gardens with the girls and have a nice selection of items to make them. In fact we spent Sunday with the girls and that’s exactly what we did! Then after dinner’s fairy garden making, Ally started sewing on her quilt!

Love/companionship-Well I have a good husband and we enjoy watching the same TV shows, well most of the time. When sports are on, I go to my sewing room with his blessing.  I have a nice group of ladies I sew with twice a month, I have my daughters , and I have a couple of women friends who I could call on if I needed help.  I have Lila, my rescue chihuahua who wants to go everywhere with me and can tell when I am getting ready to leave and goes to the front door and will literally spin in circles she gets so excited!

I kind of forget how much fun it can be to make things for other! The quilt on the left I made for my two granddaughters in 2017. I have enough fabric from the two kits I purchased from Fat Quarter Shop to make at least one more!  The aprons were gifts for twin 3 year olds, who belong to a close friend of my middle daughter.  I helped with them for about 6 months after they were born.  They turned out so cute!

So yes, I live with chronic pain every day, but I have a lot that I am so grateful for. If it’s a really bad day I mostly sit around, but I am grateful also for my doctor who prescribes the medications that help me to enjoy my life! So grateful for Cynthia Rubio, MD, my retired rheumatologist, who got me started on those meds and am so grateful my internist continues to prescribe them.

My husband understands or anyway does not complain about when I can’t do anything.  He just pitches in and does what needs to be done. I am Grateful!

Day 8 of The Contentment Journal, June 9, 2019

Today’s prompt: What have you learned and what practices could you take into the next week?

I have learned I can keep a 7 day commitment to myself and live intentionally.  I hate that word sometimes, it is overused.  I guess I would call it to live with my blinders off and making choices instead of just plowing through the next thing in front of me.  Instead I want to look at what I am doing and choose what I am going to do.  Live with choosing the next right thing that I need to do.

I have learned that I can eat a cookie and still lose weight.  I learned that if I blow it, I can just start right back and don’t look at it as a complete failure and I can’t do this (whatever “this” is).

I can water-pic my teeth every night, even when I just want to go to bed, and wash my face with application of serums.

I can clean up the kitchen instead of leaving it even if I am tired.  It only takes about 5 minutes.

I can thread my Babylock serger and use it! (that was a biggie)

For the next week I am going to continue to keep the commitments to myself and add another one: I am going to do every single item on my Ultimate Home Checklist along with keeping my commitments to myself.

In looking at the coming week, I have sewing group on Wednesdays and afterwards, fish dinner at the Elk’s Club where my husband will be doing orientation.  Yes we are officially old! My husband is joining the Elk’s Club.

It would be really easy to just sit home in front of the TV every night, but I know that is not good for us.  I really think I would enjoy going camping to the campsites that the Elks have around the country.  I like doing things for other people (remember I’m an obliger). My husband is a great cook and he can use his skills for good (fundraisers, etc).

I have the aprons to finish, I am learning to stop waiting until the last minute.  In fact when I finish these, I am going to start on my granddaughters aprons for their birthdays.  All three granddaughters (10, 5, 4) all have summer birthdays.  I am doing a No Spend 2019 to save the money for Disneyland at Christmas.  My husband and I will be paying for the VRBO. Here is a picture from our last trip to Disneyland in September 2016. I’m with my two older daughters and my two granddaughters.

Okay here I go, starting the second week of The Contentment Journal.

Day 5 of The Contentment Journal, June 6, 2019

What would devastate you if taken away is Day 5’s prompt.  Well that’s easy! My family, any one of all the members of my family, many of my extended family, like my sister that I depend on so much for unconditional support.

I think it easy to begin to take one’s spouse for granted when you have been together as long as my husband and I have been.  I am working hard to be a good wife to him.  That is a part of these 90 days to be the best wife/mother/grandmother/daughter/sister/friend that I can be.

I have a hard time managing my home when I have other demands on my time.  I am slowly learning to STOP that thing I am hyper focused on and make dinner.  I intentionally did that yesterday at 4:05 after spending about an hour sitting up my Babylock Evolution Serger.  I don’t use it as much as I should.  I would like to intentionally get better at using it.  I have patterns for clothes for my granddaughters I would like to make.  I am in the middle of making aprons for a friend for Father’s Day.  Aprons are super easy and I was happy to do it when asked.

I again kept the commitments to myself yesterday.  I am feeling good about today.  I have financial duties to do and then some cleaning and finally into the sewing room I will go!  It’s a gray day and I am hoping the sun comes out.

My body is feeling better this morning than yesterday so I am going to continue to let my body recover from too much yard work too many days in a row!

Day 3 The Contentment Journal, June 4, 2019

Today’s topic was way easier than day 2.  In reflection over the home you are currently in, what were you most grateful for that day?

We moved into our home August 1987.  We still live here.  I was due with our 3rd daughter in 10 days.  DH had arranged for a few friends to help us move as we were told the house would close on August 7th.  Well of course the funding did not get transferred and our realtor told us we could not get the key, even though all paperwork was done, approved and we were just waiting for the bank……who actually owned the house.  A bank president had lived here before us and they bought it from him when they transferred him and his family.  Well I was hugely pregnant and could have that baby at any moment so I got the phone number and called the person who said we could not move in until the money transferred.  Back in those days transfers did not happen over the weekend like they do now.

Let’s just say he changed his mind after talking to me and we got the key.   Our home……I truly love our home.  It is a modest 1650 square foot home, ranch style, built in 1964 in literally the first development in our small rural town in Northern Coastal California.  When I was a child, the rich people lived here.  Haha…

My older daughters were 6&8 when we moved in.  My cousin and her husband were in our area from the Sacramento Valley.  We were sitting around our dining room table and she said they could help us move the rest of our stuff.  I laughed and said, this is all the stuff we have.  Boy has that changed!

So my feelings were I was actually worried, very worried.  We did not pay rent for almost 9 years living in my childhood home that was honestly a dump, but hey it was free!  It enabled us to save and buy a beautiful 1 acre lot that we sold and bought the house.  We had planned to build a house and the land was almost paid off when I found myself pregnant again! We felt building a house and having a newborn in that little dumpy home was more than we could do. I sat up all night, literally all night going over and over our budget making sure we could afford it.

We could and we did.  I was, though, so so happy to have forced air heating.  That was the biggest thing to me, followed by wall to wall carpeting except in the kitchen and bathrooms.  Of course now, almost 32 years later, we don’t have as much carpet, but I still am so happy here.  KT was born 17 days after we moved in (of course I was late again)! I brought that newborn home, to the only home she lived in while growing up.  Good memories over the past 32 years…..

Okay onward,  commitments to myself! The sun came out yesterday, early, not when we woke up, the cloudiness and fog disappeared and by lunch it was sunny.  I had the marinara sauce going on the stove and I dumped it into the crockpot, turned it on and got ready to spend the rest of the afternoon outside! Of course I took Isabella into the garden area with me and only had to shoo her out of the strawberries once.  I ended up going out of the garden into our chicken area and moved flower pots around.  They were just a big mess of pots and flowers and I spent time arranging, putting 5 small pots up on the ledge of our chimney that is surrounded by our patio.  I lifted a bigger pot into the wheelbarrow and that was a bad idea.  I got it in and that’s as far as it got.  I did push and pull other big pots around on the patio and it is looking better.  Of course I overdid it and could barely walk into the house after weeding and working for a few hours. Why do I do this to myself?

I did my habits I am trying to establish at bedtime.  I did wash a few things that did not fit into the dishwasher instead of letting them sit in the sink overnight. Washed my face, did my teeth…..I did 5 wall pushups all day every time I went into the bathroom.  I am going to add a quick pickup around the house.  I hate it when I get up in the morning and my slippers are not where they belong!

Luckily dinner was made since DH made a big batch of burritos on Sunday morning and had left a few out for us.  I made some coleslaw which involved dumping the bag of coleslaw mix into a bowl and adding 1 tablespoon of Maries dressing and 1 tablespoon of Bolthouse.  I stuck the burritos in the oven to heat and crisp up and viola’ dinner.  That heating pad sure felt good while I ate my dinner in my recliner!

Speaking of food.  I put about a tablespoon of my homemade lemon curd into plain greek yogurt and it was super yummy!  That will be my snack today.  Not much left of the jar of curd after making ice cream on Memorial Day, lemon ice cream adding the lemon curd and crushed strawberries as it froze up.

Okay I need to watch some videos on how to add links because I will link up the recipe.  It’s delicious, refreshing and made with half and half which I always have on hand so it’s easy to decide to make since we keep the ice cream bowl in the freezer so it’s always ready to go!

Busy day ahead of me including a fundraiser tonight for our granddaughter’s theatre group.  Up and at em’!