General Stuff

Okay so there's a few relatively exciting things going on around here.  The first and biggest being, we're in the works to get a new drain field! Yay! To those of you blessed to be on city water and who don't understand what that means let me give you a basic run-down. In the country, every thing that gets flushed or goes down the drain goes into a tank buried in the yard or something called the drain field. If all's going well anything solid should go to the tank where it can accumulate and eventually be pumped out and the liquids should end up in the drain field where they get dispersed into the ground. When your drain field goes however, everything ends up in the tank and you go from needing pump outs every three or more years to needing them every three months. Especially now that there's four people in the house instead of just my mom we've been doing all kinds of things to mind how much water goes down the drain. We collect and throw out water we use for dishes, and occasionally even our bath water. >_< It's not fun. And I'm SO happy it's getting fixed finally. We may end up being displaced for a day or two while they work on it, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. I wanted to post some before pictures though because they will have to rip up almost everything in our front yard and take down part of our fence. So I wanted to post some before pictures.

I've also decided to try to make a project of working on the backyard. Mom's back problems have ended up meaning she's let a lot of go over the years and while nature is great, we have a fairly large back yard and I'm pretty unhappy with how nature has taken it over. So here's the before pictures of what I have to work with. If anyone has any ideas for what I can do with the space I'm open to them. I'd like to do some raised bed planters, and Mom threw out the idea of a play set for the kids which I really like the idea of as well. But we'll see! 

Yeah that last one is a little scary. >_<

And then lastly there's still fence damage done by one of the hurricanes and one day I'd like to look into how much it'd cost to repair it.

Also for those of you who haven't seen it already, I actually started a blog for the children. I wanted to keep sharing what they write and I wanted to have a place where it could be stored and hopefully not lost, so I decided a blog would be great and I didn't want to overwhelm mine with their stuff, but here's the link to it in case you're interested in following them: 

http://thingsworthremembering.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/things-worth-remembering-10/

And now I just leave you all with a few funnies I've encountered over the last few days:

Great Expectations

This has been a week where I feel I've been bombarded by the concept of expectations. It happened to be a central theme of this month's local needs part in our congregation, as well as it being at the core of this week's lesson in the fighting anxiety program I'm using. It's been one of the most challenging lessons thus far for me to deal with because of how conflicted it makes me feel. On the one hand I recognize that it's something that's plagued me and held me back for most of my life, and on the other hand I feel like some are worth clinging to and I can not mentally back down from them. For those of you that are able to get through what I'm about to write, I really am interested in hearing your thoughts on this topic. For those are you that choose to opt out, I don't blame you.

The first page of this week's lesson contained a list of objectives, among them were some points I agreed with and some that I'm having trouble reconciling with my primary mode of thinking as one of Jehovah's Witnesses. The main one being the goal "to recognize that our attitude, beliefs, and mis-beliefs are responsible for much of our stress, anxiety and depression." I understand that it's important to try to face the world with realistic expectations. Life won't be fair. Not everyone is going to want to be friends with you or will even like you. People will disappoint you. But I really don't like what I'm being told there. The most recent example I could see of this in my life was the break-up of my marriage. Based on my expectations as one of Jehovah's Witnesses, my mate should not lie to me, my mate should not fool around with someone else, etc. And yet that and so much more is exactly what happened. So the stress, the anxiety, the depression that resulted from that is from what, my unrealistic expectations? I'm simply adopting a victim mentality and I'm wrong for thinking this is not how it should be?

People will disappoint you, it's a fact I completely and totally mentally accept. But when someone completely and utterly blows it, I'm left sitting there clinging to my belief of what they should have done and feeling like I'm not wrong at all for having my expectations. It's as if the two ideas can't co-exist. But, I guess that's where forgiveness comes in. That's one of Jehovah's expectations of us too. It's the only way I can imagine being able to reach acceptance of both the fact that people will disappoint and that people have standards to live up to that they should be able to follow.

Or perhaps it's true that our beliefs sometimes are the cause of our anxiety or depression, but it doesn't mean those beliefs are wrong. I think sometimes as humans we tend to take something and run with it. Jehovah has the expectation of us that we give him our best. That's not an unrealistic thing for Him to ask of us. But everyone's personal best is different. Someone could very easy take that basic belief, of us having to give Jehovah our best ,and then build unrealistic expectations for themselves around that belief. Attainable goals are one thing, but it would be completely unrealistic for someone in my position, a single mother of two to create the expectation that my best should be going to Bethel, or my best should be serving where the need is greater in another state or another country, or I should be pioneering.

That brings me to another aspect of the topic, at least in my case I think only a small fraction of my problems with anxiety come from my expectations of others. I would say the much larger issue is my expectations of myself, and dealing with the question of what will other people think? I can trace this type of behavior and thinking all the way back to when I was a very small child. I commented recently on another friend's blog about how when I was very small I used to want to design my own board games but I would often get frustrated and give up because I couldn't make it perfect. I also remember wanting to write as a child and young teen, but I was most attracted to writing either science fiction or something historical in a medieval setting. And every time I would even try I would get overwhelmed by all the little things I didn't know, that I expected I should know in order to write it well, or accurately. It seemed like the people who wrote the best stories had been highly educated or had done extensive research that was just beyond my patience to do, and unless I could match that level it would never be any good, so I abandoned almost every idea that came along until I just stopped generating them.Thankfully I've found other creative outlets over the years, and it gives me great joy to aid my children with their creativity. It's my hope that if I can continually encourage them they will continue to exercise their imagination and have healthy directions to channel it.

The opinions of others has mostly been a stressor in my parenting and my spiritual activity. Again unreasonable expectations of myself rears its ugly head. For years now I've been telling myself that I was raised around the truth, I've been baptized __ number of years and I should be at a certain level that I'm just not at. I feel like if I give a comment that's just a simple, answer the question type of comment, in the minds of others they'll hear it and think I'm strange or behind where I should be. I love working in service when I can go to a door by myself, because I'm far more nervous about my partner hearing me make some sort of mistake or not be very good than I am of the householder. And to compound it I know that sort of thinking is unreasonable and people would just be happy I'm doing what I can, but it's like I can't make myself move past it. But I'm hopeful I can work past it.

I've definitely made some progress on the parenting front. There was a period of a few years where every time I would catch someone giving me or my kids a look, especially if they were acting up, I'd take it very personally. I immediately thought it was them thinking critically of me or them. Sometimes it would even prompt me to discipline or punish them just to show the person I was doing something. Which would then make me feel guilty because why on earth should I parent based on the expectations, or perceived expectations of another person? I'm slowly but surely coming around to the point of view that what other people think, doesn't really matter. I need to do what's right for my children and myself as long as it's within line with Jehovah and his principles. I shouldn't compare myself to my parents. I'm not them, and my children aren't me. If someone wants to turn around and glare at me because my kid is making a little more noise than they'd like, I'm now entirely likely to glare right back at them until they turn back around. Don't think know staring is rude?

So anyway, these are basically all of my thoughts on the subject of expectations. They're still slightly jumbled and they're something I struggle with, sorting what's realistic and healthy and what's not. But I think this helped. Any of you that waded through this mess, please let me know who you are, and next time we meet I owe you cookies. Seriously.

Prompt Me

So I have a bigger more serious post coming up but I thought I'd throw this one out there first. Lately I've been finding myself doing a lot more writing in my free time. Most of it has revolved around how I'm feeling, and trying to think through what's going on with my anxiety issues, but I've also found myself wanting to write just for fun. I've written a couple of pages about my current RPG character, but I'm a little frustrated with it, mostly because I think I spend too much of the time in her head and what she's thinking rather than having her DO stuff or interact with others. I think my hang-up is I don't feel like the other characters belong to me so I'm reluctant to have them say or do anything. lol

But anyway I remember when I was back in school I often did well with writing assignments I received from my teachers, so I thought maybe it'd be fun to fulfill some prompts. If any of you have any ideas I'd greatly appreciate it if you shared!

Preschool Storytelling Cont'd...

...and now the continuation...

So Kittynail said, "We're going to make Twister man. He winds everything around town. He was spinning all the houses around until he threw them into a volcano."

Stingraysharp said, "I'm going to cut all the sea creatures for their DNA."

Mousecutter said, "I'm going to get all of my rats to bite all the people and then get their DNA in their mouths, then they spit out all the DNA to make Sharkman!" He could become big or small, with big eyes and big legs and sharp teeth and he could do two things of hour. 

So then Kittynail created this monster. It looked like a shark and a beetle because it was round and white. And he made a whole army of those two monsters. And they charged into battle and Kittynail said, "We're going to use our biggest gooey monster and all our weapons!" 

Then gooey monster said, "I'm going to spray out all my goo on the men!" The slave army was about to die. But their was a knight. He didn't get killed because he had armor. And the goo bounced off the metal and hit the bad man. The knight went back to his palace and said, "We're going to build a big wall like the great wall of China," and they painted it like a giraffe and said the magic words.

And the royal dog discovered a man who was really a monster in disguise. But he caught the royal dog and the knight tried to stop him. The monsters hands could turn into any weapon, so it used its gun hands to shoot at the knight. But it didn't go through because of his armor and it went back at the monsters gun hands. So the knight took the royal dog and game it some royal chicken dog food.

Kittynail and Stingraysharp said, "We're going to flood the Upworld Skyworld where Thor lives. We'll capture Thor and put him in a kitty dungeon to take his hammer!" There's lots of kitty scratching there to scratch his armor off, so they made Thor his slave and took his DNA. Then Kittynail got bad DNA from his kitty chamber, where all the bad DNA was, and threw it into the lava with Thor's skeleton, and eyeballs, and he became Lava man with lava eyes.

(to be continued...)

So wow...Thor taken down by Kittynail and his minions. Some heavy stuff there. lol

Preschool Storytelling

So Ian has been dictating a story to me all day that I thought I would share with you. I keep asking him if he's almost done and he keeps saying no, so I'm putting a stop to it for the night, but I wanted to type up what we have so far. So I present to you:

The Kittycoppers, The Police, And The Superhero Called Megapoo

By Ian Reed

Once upon a time there was Mousecutter and Stingraysharp. His boss was named Kittynail. His nails could stretch to 140 pounds in a row. And then they had to fight a competition. So Kittynail sent his couplers to win the competition. And then he got the magic potion as a prize inside a magic box. 

And then he used a laser and made him into Antman. Then one time he made a robot and used it to capture a wild, big, shark fish to make into one of their couplers. And Kittynail said, "I need all the creatures I like, reptiles with sharp teeth, and send them to my lab."

They wanted to put the robot mask on the reptiles to make a shark. Then Kittynail sent another coupler, called Stingraysharp to cut the grass short to mix all the animals.

So Kittynail said, "We're going to travel in this huge, flying, mechanical box to see this famous alligator who swam around catching everything it could find. It even jumped on land and catched a grasshopper. I want to catch a grasshopper and make it into one of us. And I want to catch the famous alligator too, and mix it together- half grasshopper and half alligator." 

So they caught all the animals on sea and land to make a huge monster. It was going well but then they fell in the water so they started looking in the sea for animals. Then they went out.

Kittynail said, "Let's swim and find the golden reptile, made of gold, and it can go on land, even in dirt, and it can go 13,16,17 miles of hour." 

Stingraysharp said, "I'm going to cut all the plants we're going to eat." And then he turned into a stingray and then back into himself. He can cut with his fins and turn into anything in the sea. So he cut until he found a magic box, full of magic diamonds, and gold, and magic potions that would make him strong. Kittynail wanted some too and Mousecutter. Stingraysharp gave some of the potions and diamonds, but he made more potions and said, "Let's take all the water around the city."

Kittynail said, "Let's go so we can swim in the deep blue sea!" So he sent one of his couplers to find a magic gun from a sea man who was really a sea monster.

The gun was called Gapperairy, so the monster turned into a shark and left his cave to look for his gun. It shot out water with magic stuff in it. So the sea monster sent one of his goblin monsters to catch other monsters.

Kittynail said, "Let's use all our couplers we made to make an army to attack the sea monster."

And the sea monster said, "I will use my slave army to battle Kittynail and all his couplers to get all the stuff!"

And they said, "Charge!"

And they fought with guns, swords, and electric reptiles that are in the sea and stings, a sea snake! And it turned into a snake sword!

(To be continued...)

So that's all we have for now. I personally am eager to see how the battle turns out and I'm really curious how Megapoo will factor into all this.

Soothing Imagery

As most of you know by now, recently I had my first full-blown panic attack. To those of you who have suffered with these over the years and continue to suffer from them, my heart goes out to you. It was probably the scariest thing I've ever experienced and I spent the next few weeks afterward feeling extremely anxious and fearful that I would have another attack. Every little thing spooked me, anything that reminded me of the experience of my attack would start make me feel worried that another one was starting. I will still occasionally have a sudden shock hit me and I'll feel a sharp chest pain, but it's nothing like it was a few weeks ago. 

Frankly I don't feel like my problem is bad enough to require medication (at least I hope not, since taking medication is another thing that I'm anxious about) especially since I've been learning some coping techniques that are helping calm my body down when it begins having physical symptoms of anxiety. And that's what brings me to my topic today.

I've begun a program that was recommended to me by my acupuncturist to help teach me skills to deal with my anxiety and in this week's lesson, one of the action assignments was to choose several beautiful, detailed, post cards or greeting cards. If I begin to feel frazzled or frantic about something, I should sit down somewhere comfortable and look at my images, but not just a cursory glance, I'm supposed to focus in on them, particularly the details. It's recommended I do this several times a week and then take notice of how my body feels after about ten minutes of doing this. 

I haven't tried this yet, and in fact when I went to the mall today and looked for post cards, all I found were tacky Florida ones. So this afternoon I spent some time finding imagery that I can hopefully put on my phone that way I can carry it with me. I wanted to share a few of my favorites though, and encourage those of you who are so inclined, to find and share some of what you find personally soothing or calming to look at. 

I'd also like to note that I don't intend to make this kind of thing the focus of this blog. I'm actually keeping a journal now to record details of my anxiety attacks and how I'm feeling and what kinds of thoughts I'm having, but something like this I feel could be beneficial for just about anyone, and unfortunately this is part of my life now, so it was bound to come up eventually. 

So anyway, now on to the pretties!

These two I especially love because this is a location I've actually been to. When I was 17 I was kindly invited to join friends of mine on an RV camping trip through Yellowstone National Park. On the way back to Colorado we drove through Jackson Hole, WY and saw the Grand Tetons. If it wasn't for the expense and me being unsure of how I'd handle a Wyoming winter, I swear I'd move there in a heartbeat. The beauty is incredible and I felt so happy there. I wish we could have spent more time there but we couldn't. It's a dream of mine to return there one day, and in the meantime I can look at these beautiful pictures. 

There's lots of different types of plants and colors and textures going on in this picture. It has a calming element but still has a lot of details to focus on. 

Waterfalls for me personally are tricky. I love them. BUT in terms of soothing imagery, if I look at a waterfall with an especially heavy flow or if it's very tall or the angle of the picture is taken from the edge where the water goes over, it's more likely to induce stressful feelings. It's still beautiful but it's a dangerous feeling beauty. So most waterfalls that I would consider soothing are very short in height and light on flow. 

This picture I think is one of my favorites. It's got a lovely waterfall in the background and then in the foreground are all these gnarly roots to look at. There's a lot to focus your eye and mind on when you look at something like that. So anyway, those were a sampling of what I found, I look forward to seeing what you guys find!

I want to start this post off by saying that I have complete respect in the rights of others to make choices in what their conscience will and won't allow them to see, listen to, or do. This comes up because recently I had an experience where someone was expressing an extremely negative (and not completely informed) point of view on something I was interested in seeing, and even though I never got a chance to speak up at all, it really made me feel attacked personally. It did make me think however, about how publicly interested I've been in this movie up till this point and I wondered, what if there's other people who share her views, or at least don't have a full picture of what's going on and are leaning towards the conclusions she's drawn and I've possibly been offending them?

I don't want to open things up for debate over who is right or wrong, because in areas like this it's all a bit grey and open to people's individual feelings of what they're comfortable with. I guess I'm writing this particular entry because I feel like, if given half a chance, or if I'd perceived she'd have an open mind there's a lot I could have explained to her. I was never given that opportunity, so I'm making it for myself now.

So I imagine if any of you have been reading my wall on Facebook or have talked to me in person at all within the past few months, you've heard me talk about The Hunger Games at some point.  If you take a cursory look at what the book is about you've likely gleaned that it's a story that takes place in a dystopic  future where what remains of the United States is now broken into twelve districts. Annually those twelve districts are required to select one boy and one girl, aged 12-18, at random to go to the Capitol and fight each other to the death and the last one standing 'wins.'

Understandably this is a disturbing concept. What makes this story any different, you might ask, than say the gladiatorial games of Ancient Rome?  And if this was all there was to the story and it was a celebration of violence and slaughtering children I would completely agree. But there were a lot of things this sister didn't appreciate about the bigger picture of what was going on, and which I will now explain.

The first important thing to recognize about Panem, which is what the nation is now called, is that many years prior there was a rebellion against the Capitol. This rebellion was crushed and from that point on the Hunger Games were instituted as a way of reinforcing the power the of the Captiol over it's subjects. Oh the President is all smiles as he welcomes all the boys and girls on the day of 'the reaping', as the day the tributes are selected by lottery is called, but everyone really understands this is yet another act of oppression and there's absolutely no honor in what's being forced upon them. I think that the fact it's even called the 'reaping' day tells you everything you need to know about how the Captiol views the common people.

It seems to me that I would have an easier time drawing the parallel to something like the gladiatorial games if this story were more about glorifying the violence. It seems like those games were all about satisfying a blood thirsty crowd who were eager for a good 'show.' And many people of the Capitol are that way. In a way you could also see this as a cautionary tale of the dark places reality television might lead us. (Yes, it could get much much worse than Snooki, horrifying I know, but true.) Which by the way many of the poorer districts don't even have running electricity throughout most of the year, except during the Hunger Games. The Capitol wants to make absolutely sure everyone is able to watch what happens. For these people it's not entertainment, it's persecution. But many people even in the Capitol are starting to become very disenchanted despite their luxurious lifestyles and seeds are very much sewn throughout the story of the first book, indicating that a major shake-up in how things are done could be in store.

Also I appreciated that the books are entirely from the first person perspective of Katniss, a girl from one of the poorest districts, who has to poach in the forest just to provide for her family. As you likely have seen in the trailer, her little sister's name is called at the reaping and she immediately volunteers to take her place. So everything you read is filtered through Katniss' opinions and biases and so that tends to affect how you see things. And in her mind the Hunger Games are completely abhorrent. She goes into them with the mindset of not wanting to have to kill anybody but also needing to survive so that she can get back to her family, who would likely die of starvation without her.

They are called Hunger Games because the Capitol tends to suck the districts dry of what they produce and only give back the barest people need to survive and all too frequently that isn't enough. However the winner of the Hunger Games is compensated with a fancy new house and as many provisions as they could need for the rest of their lives.

So I guess what I'm trying to say in all this, is that I've never gotten the feeling that these stories are a celebration of violence. Yes it does happen, you can't get through hardly any story of conflict on this level without it, but it's not promoted as a positive. And to me personally that matters. Over-all the story is so much more than this one particular Hunger Game. Big picture it's about bringing about a much needed change to people who have been suffering for so many years, and getting them out from under this oppressive regime where people might get whipped nearly to death just for going into the forest to try to find food. More narrow focused view it's the story of a girl whose primary focus in her life is protecting and providing for her widowed mother and little sister.

So if any of this has helped clear things up for those of you who didn't know much about it, then I'm glad. If you have any further questions I'm open to them. But yeah I just really needed to get all of that out, and I hope it was as informative for y'all as it was therapeutic for me. :)