Sanity

When I first started working in Houston, I made an agreement with my employer to work 80% (4 days a week) so I could have dedicated time to finish my dissertation. Once I finished my dissertation, I considered increasing my hours to full time. But another opportunity opened up in late spring. In May of last year I started working at The Grief Resource Center (TGRC) one day a week. That job has seriously helped me maintain my sanity here in Texas.

Ceramic hearts made by our participants and volunteers.

There are so many reasons that my one-day-a-week job is awesome. It is my first true opportunity to work with other counselors and helping professionals, which I missed more than I can describe. It has really helped me develop more of a community here so I don't feel as isolated. And the people - the people I work with are fabulous. It is such an affirming, positive place which is so good for my soul. Because of those people, it has also been a really supportive place for me when I've needed it. The final bit is that the work and the growth of the organization are challenging in new and fun ways.

One of the new challenges associated with TGRC is that we're trying to increase our business security and viability. We are currently in the process of starting a counseling program where before we were only providing support groups. As part of that process, I am going to transition over the next couple of months to full time at TGRC. I cannot describe how excited I am about this.

An image from our Silent Lights Remembrance Service this past winter.

Sometimes it's amazing how the timing of things seems to happen right when you most need it.

Thanksgiving

I know you're probably thinking, wait, it's almost April, why are we talking about Thanksgiving? I didn't put pictures from Thanksgiving on this little blog so I thought, why not now? I don't think anyone really cares that I'm 4.5 months late.

We had a wonderful couple of days around Thanksgiving. My FIL, MIL, one of my SILs and our nephew came down. We had a nice Thanksgiving feast where we cooked something like 30lbs of turkey (one very large bird, one smaller bird for day-after frying, and two breasts) and had something like 20lbs of turkey left over. I may not be exaggerating here. I just saw some in the freezer this week. Maybe we should eat it! Anywho, here are some photos from the weekend.

The water was cold!

 

We make our own snow in Texas.

It's a new year thankfully

If life is a bit like seasons, this past year felt mostly like a damn cold winter. Yep, I said it. And dammit, we live in Houston. It's not supposed to feel like that! It's supposed to feel like this (and yes, this is one of the main reasons I tolerate living here):

I wrote a really really long post about all the crap that was a part of last year but I did that while I was feeling a high level of self-pity and decided it was mostly junk.

Wikipedia defines self-pity as "the psychological state of mind of an individual in perceived adverse situations who has not accepted the situation and does not have the confidence nor competence to cope with it." I would describe my self-pity as being tired, really freaking tired. Exhaustion does not lend well to coping.

Somewhat ironically, I had a wonderful conversation with a woman at work yesterday about self-pity. Her husband committed suicide sometime ago. We discussed how self-pity can be and is often a very helpful process but it can easily suck you in such a way that you are left in an unhealthy place. Thankfully, my self-pitying experience is over for now and left me with no permanent scars!

This past year was trying. Admittedly I like to see the bright side of things and be positive and I tried that for awhile. Sometime during the year a very dear friend told me that I don't always have to see the bright side of everything. She was right of course and I gave myself permission to work on owning the not-so-great feelings. Which meant that for a lot of the fall and winter I wasn't exactly happy. Naturally, I didn't really feel like writing about recipes or house decorating or what not. Hence the sparse blog updating.

While I struggled with (and continue to struggle with) some life things like purpose, career, etc, the primary theme of 2013 centered around medical issues. I have been more than lucky in my life as it relates to my health so this past year was a huge deviation from my normal. Suffice it to say, I can confidently recommend a good number of specialists if you ever find yourself in Houston and in need of some sort of physician-specialist. But as of right now, things are pretty good, so no worries on that front.

That's a brief update. My plan is to actually blog more - I even have another post in the works. I'm also hoping to have some photos of the bathroom to share next week. We're in the process of finishing things like molding and other finishing stuff that honestly really sucks. Here's to hopefully completing this thing for good this weekend!!! :)  I cannot express to you how much I would like to walk through my bathroom and not see a hammer, a drill, various small construction items, a shop vac, etc littering the path and counter.

And because the post has a lot of words, here are some fun photos (to me at least).

The only decorating we did for the holidays and I might leave them up all year.

This is what happens when the husband is out of town.

Keeping me company while I was sick.

The didn't sit perfectly for long.

She wanted to join us up front during the drive to North Carolina.

Master Bathroom Remodel: The end is near

A quick HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the husband!! We took a little time out of our busy weekend to celebrate his birthday last night. He rocks and has really done so much awesomeness in the bathroom. I'm super lucky to have him as a partner in crime (and everything else)!!

Don't get too excited - when I say the end is near I mean that our deadline is only three weeks away!  Scary! We have definitely made some good progress but we still have a decent amount to do. The month of October was out of control. The husband was home 11 days total. That only made working on the bathroom slightly challenging (sarcasm). Plus my schedule was kind of ridiculous too. Suffice it to say FLEXIBILITY is the word of the month for October and November.

Despite our schedule issues, we accomplished a ton in the month of October and this past weekend. Here's where we are now:

Tiling is 85% complete. We need to finish the half wall and around the tub. Then we need to grout. The plan is to have the husband finish the tiling this week. I will be out of town Thursday through Sunday so we plan to grout (definitely a two-person job) the week after I get back.

The counter top guys came and installed the counter top and the ledges in the shower area. Yay!!! (Please excuse the mess that goes along with our construction zone)

We demoed the closet, patched and cleaned up the walls, and painted. It was a lot of work but it looks a lot nicer now in all of it's cleanliness. (There once was an ugly shelf where the ladder is below - you would never know now!)

We planned our new closet organization system and had a date night trip to Ikea this past Saturday night - dinner included. I am most definitely ready for normal weekend nights full of things other than busting our asses. (I lovingly refer to this kind of paper as checkerboard paper)

And just to remind you of the floor, here's a picture of the closet floor. The husband is pretty amazingly talented (and patient)!

We don't have a ton of stuff left in the bathroom but the timing is a little challenging to get it all accomplished. We need the carpet in the bedroom and closet installed before we can start working on the closet - that will happen sometime this week or next.

It will be a busy November but totally worth it. And since it's our family birthday month (mine, the husband's, and both dogs), it will indeed be a wonderful birthday present for us all we we finish it! Shadow will be happy she doesn't have to follow me around the construction zone and Gracie will be happy for the quiet.