For My Matt

I know this is a little late but I wanted to post something for my Matt in celebration of our anniversary. I was going to post the Shania Twain "Looks Like We Made It" song that we danced to at our wedding (who could have possibly guessed that song would come to mean more to us as time went on? We only picked it then cause it was easy for you to dance to! haha) But I chose my latest and greatest for you my dear which is "Realize" and "Magic" by Colbie (the later of which was the only one I could find to put on my playlist). Everytime I hear them they make me think of you and how glad I am that I DID realize before it was too late that you are my better half. The "Magic" song make me think of how you love for me to tickle your back with my finertips at night but also expresses so much of how I feel about you.

I can't survive without you and thats the truth. With all thats happend to us I never thought it possible to feel so happy, especially so soon but you make me happy with all the small things you do like waiting up for me every night I work just so you can give me hugs and kisses even though I know you are so tired. When you still open my car door for me. When you tell me everyday how beautiful you think I am. When you play with our boys all roudy-like and swing them around and flip them. They love that! When you do jobs that aren't typically yours like cook dinner or clean the house just to make my life easier. For ALL the little things you do! You mean everything to me and I'm so glad that we never have to "miss out on eachother now." Thanks for sticking by me and giving me so much that I truely don't deserve.

Take time to realize,
That your warmth is. Crashing down on in.
Take time to realize,
That I am on your side
Didn't I, Didn't I tell you.

But I can't spell it out for you,
No it's never gonna be that simple
No I cant spell it out for you

If you just realize what I just realized,
Then we'd be perfect for each other
and will never find another
Just realized what I just realized
we'd never have to wonder if
we missed out on each other now.

Take time to realize
Oh-oh I'm on your side
didn't I, didn't I tell you.
Take time to realize
This all can pass you by.. Didn't I tell you

But I can't spell it out for you,
no its never gonna be that simple
no I can't spell it out for you.

If you just realized what I just realized
then we'd be perfect for each other
then we'd never find another
Just realized what I just realized
we'd never have to wonder if
we missed out on each other now.

It's not always the same
no it's never the same
if you don't feel it to.
If you meet me half way
If you would meet me half way.
It could be the same for you.

If you just realized what I just realized
then we'd be perfect for each other
then we'd never find another
Just realized what I just realized
we'd never have to wonder
Just realized what I just realized

OoOoOOo

missed out on each other now
missed out on each other now





Magic

You’ve got magic inside your finger tips
Its leaking out all over my skin
Everytime that i get close to you
Your makin me weak with the way you
Look through those eyes

[C:]
And all i see is your face
All i need is your touch
Wake me up with your lips
Come at me from up above
Yeaaaa, oh i need you

[V2:]
I remember the way that you move
Your dancin easily through my dreams
Its hittin me harder and harder with all your smiles
You are crazy gentle in the way you kiss

[C:]
All i see is your face
All i need is your touch
Wake me up with your lips
Come at me from up above

[B:]
Oh baby i need you
To see me, the way i see you
Lovely, wide awake in
The middle of my dreams

[C:]
And all i see is your face
All i need is your touch
Wake me up with your lips
Come at me from up above

[C:]
All i see is your face
All i need is your touch
Wake me up with your lips
Come at me from up above
Yeaaaa, oh oh da da da do do do do do
Ahhhhhh, i ….. i need you

The Best Part About Hard Things

This is a short blog to celebrate the fact that I felt I hit a milestone! Today was the most wonderfully difficult day I think I’ve had in a while. In fact I was just telling Matt the other night that things were going really well. So well, that it scared me a little. It seems in my life there is always a calm before a storm. I worried about when that storm would come and burst my happy little bubble...and today it did.

Today I ran into someone from my past that hurt me quite a bit. I wrote her a letter months ago of forgiveness but I’m ashamed to say that many a nasty thought has passed through my mind about this woman since then and I thought should I ever bump into her, one lined zingers and a couple swear words were locked and loaded (just kidding, I’m not a swearer really...I’m a lady!). But to my own astonishment, something wonderful happened instead. I stopped her, asked her how she was and gave hugs.

You know what was the best about that? I felt like I was that same on paper as I was in person. It was true! I had given forgiveness for something thats been really hard to let go of and STUCK BY IT!

Know whats even better than that? The way I feel right now. I feel FREE! Like a weight has been lifted that I didn’t even realize was dragging me down. It really makes you stop and think “Boy, our church leaders really DO know what they are talking about when they say forgive all.” After today I have gained new insight that the rewards from this are NOT for the receiver...but for the giver.

I’m sure that this storm is far from over. I’m sure there will be many more hailstorms of trials and thunder and lightening that lie ahead for the next little while but for right now all I can say to that is bring on the rain!

I want to take a moment and celebrate all our recent accomplishments! Big or small. You cleaned out your junk drawer, yay! You ran a marathon, lets hear about it! Tell me at least one thing that you did this past week that you are really happy about. Then I want you to stand up and do a little victory dance. Mine slightly resembles Elaine from Seinfeld...Pretty scary that I teach dance huh?

Get this Seinpost

Helping or Haunting?

The past is a horrible and wonderful thing at the very same time. Parts of it make us smile, parts of it have the ability to find our elusive and genuine belly laugh. Parts of it make us cry and others can take us from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. Human lives are so intertwined and complex though that it’s hard sometimes to remember the good without remembering the bad. You’ll see that if you’ve ever made a real mistake in your life (and by real, I mean one you would take back all together if you could) then even a good walk down memory lane can be interrupted by a bad decision or person who hurt you. Unless you have selective memory loss, which I’ve noticed is more of an active choice rather than a disease.

Heres what always happens to me. Something will strike a chord and I’ll remember something from my past. If it’s bad, I start doing something else to get rid of the thought. If it’s good, sometimes I’ll stay zoned out for several minutes thinking about it. But inevitably if I stay in dreamland, it isn’t long before any kind of bad memory will rear it’s ugly head to ruin the moment. Always. So I guess that’s why I try not to think about the past much anymore. At all. But is that a bad thing, or a good thing?

Even our “bad pasts” serve a purpose. Just like a child who touches a hot stove for the first time, the burn reminds us that we never want to do that again. But it’s such a shame that our beautiful bodies have to carry the scar as a reminder that all would have been better had we listened the first time when someone warned “don’t touch that!” The question might be then, how do we WEAR our scars? And I’m talking any scar. Self inflicted or imposed by another.

Are they bright burning scarlet S’s? Do we cup it sorrowfully with our hands to symbolize that someone has hurt us and that the wound keeps us in constant pain? Do we look at it constantly to remind us of the vendetta we carry? “My name is Inigo Montoya! You killed my father, prepare to DIE!” Do we hide them as best we can with long sleeves and band aids to avoid personal criticism? “Bow to the Queen of Slim. The Queen of filth! The Queen of Putrescence! Boooo!” (sorry, Princess Bride just has some GREAT quotes in it for me today!)

The great thing is that, like so many things, it’s a choice. It’s a conscious effort to keep your scars however you may. A conscious effort to keep your past wherever it lies. The other good comfort is that the Atonement can heal all. Looking at any gaping wounds you may have right now, it’s hard to see that a full recovery could ever take place, but it can….if you let it. It takes time and patience but the biggest reality to remember during the healing process is that there is a life happening right now. YOUR life. And if you let the scars from your past take over your thoughts too much, one day you’ll wake up and find that the time you’ve spent wishing away the past is just another thing you’ll wish you didn’t do. After all, “time spent wishing, is time wasted.” How true that is.

Work Horror Stories

So about a month ago I started training as a waitress for the Macaroni Grill. It just opened here in Helena and we are actually the first store in all of Montana. Hurray for Helena! Anyway, training has been ridiculously grueling. Lots of memorization, table etiquette, etc… I’ve been doing alright with it though.

This past week was our first time serving real customers. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we did a charity event for St. Peter’s Hospital Foundation where the restaurant donated all the food that was served and I as a waitress donated all my tips. It was all for a good cause plus it gave us all a chance to practice. Therefore, people basically got to come in, enjoy a free meal while we spilled drinks on them and served them cold food at the wrong table. It was great. I actually did pretty well those three days. Not one spilled drink or wrong order. All my customers were satisfied and when they heard that I was donating my tips for the evening I got more than a couple $100 tips put towards the foundation. I was feeling good and ready for Thursday when I would keep my first night of tips.

So Thursday came and I’m weaving in and out of tables, executing every task with perfect form, so much so that when the biggest party of the evening came in all the managers looked around in panic of who would be able to handle it as a server. ….This is where the evening goes bad. I should probably mention that everyone in the restaurant was doing a pretty dang good job considering that half of us weren’t chiefs, severer, or bartenders 2 weeks prior. They probably picked me to take the big party more because I was the first one they saw and didn’t know what else to do. Before any of you get ahead of me…I did great with this table!…..it was the cute young couple that got seated in my section right next to them that suffered.

It was the classic story….A handsome man (which I recognized as a manager from Costco) and a beautiful girl out at the newest restaurant in town, on their very first date. The romantic mood was set when she ordered a glass of wine (followed by the whole bottle) and he cautiously ordered water. Classic. I practically glide up to the table, drinks on a tray in hand. I reach for the wine, place it in front of the woman. I reach for the water……but it’s not there! Oh no! It’s tipped off the tray…all over his lap! It was so horrific that by the time I got the towel off my shoulder (which I carry at all times) everyone was laughing. They really were great about it. I moved them to a drier table and served them an appetizer on the house after my manager made a quick apologetic visit.

I must have said sorry 100 times throughout the rest of the evening and they both told me 100 times that it was alright and even left me a generous tip. But it doesn’t stop there. When I went home that night to recount the whole story to Matt I suddenly realized that I might have charged them for their appetizer that was supposed to be free! The next morning I got up, made a couple loaves of homemade bread and swung over to the restaurant to talk to my manager. I told him what I thought I’d done and he gave me a $20 gift certificate to Macaroni Grill that I stuck in with the bread and headed to Costco. Like I said, I didn’t know the guy, but I knew I’d seen him working at Costco. He wasn’t there so I left the bread in his box (one loaf for him and one for his date) and the gift card with a note inside that said “Sorry again for spilling that water on you. Hope you come in again soon. –Amie PS- I’m a much better bread maker than I am waitress.”

Everything else has been going well for me and my new job. For the most part all my coworkers are highly energetic pleasant people and recovering from Thursday night was a little easier as they all took turns recounting a few horror stories of their own. All in all, I’m still sad to be spending time away from Matt and the kids, but it pays the bills for now while Matt knocks out his degree. Then he’ll be supporting me for the rest of my life. I think I’m getting the better part of the deal!

Since then I’ve gained a new appreciation for work horror stories so, if you have any of your own, please share them after the beep. ………Beeeeep!

The Painter

I have become thoroughly convinced this week of a theory I’ve had stewing in my head for quite some time. The theory is this: Everyone is a painter. An artist of the human psyche. Let me explain….Everyone you come in contact with gets to know a little about you. You paint them a picture so to speak of what kind of person you are. There are endless ways to accomplish this but, mostly it’s through word and deed.

The question is, what kind of painter are you? Despite the various different types of actual artists, there exists only two kinds of psyche artists: the realist and the abstract.

Here’s the difference between the two. The realist paints things how they are, how things lay exactly. Nothing is distorted or misinterpreted. They therefore paint an honest, precise picture of themselves to others. The abstract on the other hand, is at the complete opposite end of the spectrum. The abstract painter, for one reason or another, paints things a little unclear. This is done in many ways. More often than not though it’s done by leaving things out. The infamous white lie.

Say for example you are on a diet and you have a diet coach. You tell your coach you are going to the store to buy food. However, you conveniently leave out the fact that you are going to the store to buy a candy bar. Even though the part about you going to the store to buy food is true, the fact that you left pertinent information out makes the entire picture you painted in your diet coach’s head abstract.

What I’m talking about is a little more deep than that of course. What I’m more referring to is when people pretend like things are okay when they truly are not. When we have problems in our lives, be them big or small, but we keep them hidden. I know you know what I’m talking about. For the most part, everyone I’ve met has been an abstract painter at least once in their lives. Not even the most perfect realist is real ALL the time. I don’t believe it possible. But why? Why do we do it? Is it cause we are ashamed? Is it because we know we need help with something but don’t know how to ask? Is it for the simple fact that we don’t like getting other people too involved in our lives? Is it cause we feel like maybe there IS no problem if we don't pay attention to it? I donno.

It’s easy for me to write about this because, unfortunately, I have been on both sides of this fence. All those reasons listed above, and more, are reasons why I’VE been an abstract painter in the past and why I still feel the tendancy to be an abstract painter in the present. I’ve boiled it down to the fact that it must be natural human tendency to not appear weak. What we don’t realize however is that the inability to ASK for help and share the burdens with family, friends, or even professionals... is a weakness in itself.

From my own personal experience I’ve learned that it’s best when I’m a realist. I feel better when I paint things clearly. It forces me to be honest with others, but probably more importantly, it forces me to be honest with myself.

My stepmom once told me that Satan is really good at making small problems grow bigger when they are kept inside our heads. The scriptures talk a lot about sin happening in dark or secret places. I’ve come to see that they aren’t just talking about your physical surroundings. We must recognize that our minds CAN BE those dark and secret places. It’s kinda scary for me to think about because I can’t escape my mind as easily as I can a room or a building. It’s much harder to change a train of thought than it is to find a bright green “EXIT” sign.

The reassurance that we have though is that when we open our minds to others, when we share things that are bothering us or tempting us, it’s like unlocking a door that floods the dark places of your head with light. Bright light! Does that mean that the problem immediately goes away? No. But it’s much easier to deal with when you can see it clear and plain in front of you instead of remaining ambiguous and intangibly lurking in the dark corners of your mind.

Two things I’ve learned and then I’ll end this post for today. One, I have found through personal experience that being an abstract painter is draining, physically and emotionally. It’s not worth the effort at all. And two, at some point and time, your abstract pictures WILL collide with reality because reality is the place we live (most of us anyway) and it’s inescapable. When that happens, how will you feel? How will your loved ones feel about your relationship with them when they see that there was a problem and you didn’t trust them to help?

Here's the challenge for today. If you have something you are struggling with and you know it’s a problem…share it. Find someone you trust. Even if it’s a professional you’ve never met before. Even if you just say it out loud to yourself in the mirror. After all, the very first step to fixing a problem is admitting that there IS one. If things aren’t okay, don’t pretend like they are. For the first time or maybe even the billionth time in your life, take the paintbrush you’ve been given... and paint someone a real picture.

Favortie Winter Memories

The cold wind that has swept through this city leaving a cold chill on the back of every one's neck has been a brutal reminder that winter is just around the corner. The summer days of playing in the hose and swimming pools are gone and I've been debating when would be the safest time to tuck away all my shorts and t-shirts and break out all my long sleeve shirts and jackets from storage. As I reached for a second blanket at 2 o'clock this morning I decided... today is the day.

I'm not sad to say goodbye to summer. Since I migrated from San Diego where the weather is a constant 65 degrees, I've come to love all the places that are home to the 4 seasons. Winter has become my favorite season. I love being out in it but I love even more the bitter cold days when you can crank up the heat inside and snuggle down with a pair of wool socks and a hot cup of cocoa to watch the snow fall.

Every time the weather starts to change like this the feel of the cold and the barren trees remind me of different memories. One of my favorites is waking up as a little girl on cold mornings such as these. I'd drag my sleepy blanket out of bed and slip on a pair of socks. We had hardwood floors in our house (as we always did being the daughter of a hardwood floor layer)and as tired as I was I'd always muster up the energy to get a running start from my bedroom carpet onto the hardwood hallway and sail right into the kitchen. There were three floor heaters in the kitchen and 3 bar stools, one for each of us as my 2 sisters were either already out there or right behind me. We'd place the bar stool over the floor heater, drape the blanket over the bar stool making sure that all edges touched the floor, and climb inside. The cocoon of warmth it created was enough to make me stay there, knees tucked into my chest, smiling until my mom lured me out with something hot for breakfast.

I love thinking about that memory and I'd like to know what some of your favorite winter memories are to get us all excited in anticipation for the first leaf to fall.

Away From My Desk

I'm on vacation visiting my sister and when I went in to pounce on her bed after her hubby got up (as is tradition in our family) she told me the cutest story I had ever heard. She said that one day her little 4 year old girl asked her "How do you make a baby?" and my sister said "Well....daddy helps me."

A few days later when they were ridding in the car she turned to her dad and asked "Daddy.....can you make a pony?"

This'll be my last post for a while. I won't be back at my desk for about 3 weeks.

The Given Good

I just finished listening to a book on tape by S. Michael Wilcox called “Receiving Divine Help When Your Prayers Seem Unanswered.” It was given to me by a very dear friend and it touches on so many great topics. Most of it has to do with perspective on life and towards the end he quotes C.S. Lewis. You’ll have to forgive me cause I was too lazy to look up the exact quote on the internet and just typed it out as I heard it on the cd so some of the punctuation and wording might be incorrect. Anyway, C.S. Lewis says…

“You can not in your present state understand eternity. But you can get some likeness of it if you say that both good and evil when they are full-grown become retrospective. All this earthly past will have been heaven to those who are saved and all their life on earth too will then be seen by the damned to have been hell. That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering ‘no future bliss can make up for it.’ Not knowing that heaven once attained will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And they say of some sinful pleasure let me have but this and I’ll take the consequences, little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take in the quality of heaven and the bad man’s past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why at the end of all things when the sun rises here and twilight turns to blackness down there, the blessed will say we have never lived anywhere but in heaven. And the lost will say we were always in hell….and both will be right.”

He talks a lot also about the given good versus the expected good. Everything that comes from God is good. If we ask for bread, he will not give us a stone. Now it might not be the specific KIND of bread we asked for. We may have asked for white and he gave us wheat, but it is still bread and it is still good. Thus the wheat bread is the given good and the white bread is the expected good. I thought of how many times I have become bitter and ungrateful for the given good in my life because it wasn’t what I expected, exactly how I wanted it, or in the time frame I hoped to receive it. I fail to recognize that it is a blessing to have everything exactly the way it is (assuming that you are doing high-quality things with you life).

Some specific examples of common mind frames I could think of to help you with personal application might be men who pray to support their families and are blessed with a different kind of work than they had anticipated. Women who pray for jobs and are blessed with the occupation of motherhood. Young men who pray to serve a fruitful mission and come back having baptized not one, yet planted many unseen seeds. Parents who pray to have children of their own and receive them through adoption. Young children who pray for their parents to stay together yet don’t experience a whole home until they are fathers and mothers of their own families. All are given goods which we should be thankful for yet sometimes we sulk in sorrow because it’s not what we expected. It’s been an eye opening experience for me to try and forget the expected good and try harder to see the given good that God has blessed me with.

I give S. Michael Wilcox 4 stars in my book and would recommend his material to all.

Freedom Of Speech

The problem with running a blog like a newspaper column instead of the usual photo album (like my other blog is) is that when you talk about things, you can never really post what you WANT to say. I just spent the last half hour writing a funny, witty little shpeel on an experience I had not too long ago, but couldn’t post it because I was sure the degree of offense would have been severe. This is because 99% of my audience is family and would interpret my writings to be about them.

Ere go, let me preface this blog with a disclaimer. I think a lot of times we might read these things and think “oh my gosh! They wrote that about me!” which then leads to heart warming feelings, feelings of embarrassment or maybe even feelings of anger and resentment. Which is the problem with writing to an audience who knows you. There is no REAL freedom of speech. Haha. Women especially have this problem. I know because….I’m a woman! It’s just what we do. Probably has something to do with the on going belief that the world revolves around us.

Let me just clear up ahead of time that this blog is not about you. Whoever you are, however you are related to me, I’m not talking about anyone. Although it’s a blog about families, these are simply thoughts that have transpired more from too much in-depth thought rather than personal experience. So, back to the show!

In the real, political, business-like world things work a lot more differently than they do with families. We can put our opinions and suggestions out on the table without hurt feelings or tears. “It’s not personal, it’s business,” “Freedom of speech,” all plausible excuses for speaking boldly and to the point of the matter. But you can’t be that way with family. Why? I’ll tell you why in one word…..Emotion.

So the question is, where does freedom of speech go when he runs and hides with any sort of family tie? Ha! I’m gonna put that on a bumper sticker and make millions! “Freedom of speech runs and hides with any sort of family ties.” Brilliant!

The point is, when you invite emotion to come sit down at your honesty table, honesty doesn’t stay for long. If he did, he’d be quickly drop-kicked out the front door by “hurt feelings,” or “offensive!” But what about when there’s something that NEEDS to be said but is hard to say? What if it’s unpleasant? What if there is no easy or delicate way to put it but if you don’t say anything, the silence could be more detrimental? What would you do? Say it and then give a fake grin as you twist your index fingers into your dimples? “Smile! What I just said was hard to take buuuuuuuuut.,,, ‘if you chance to meet a froooown, do not let it staaaaay!” Cause that ALWAYS works for me. Ha! Yeah right.

I’m not speaking as if I stand above this problem. Oooooh no! I do my fair share of fist pounding and feet stomping whenever someone has the courage to say something to me. Ever heard of the “boom heard round the world?” That was my tantrum when someone first told me I didn’t look good in yellow. And why would I do that? NOBODY looks good in yellow! It’s easy to explain actually cause you see, the same button that’s used to make my “wall of defense” shoot up is also connected to my “overreaction button.” Try it and you’ll see what I mean. I get defensive and loud and emotional, all at the same time.

There are times though that I am able to hide my reaction and pass it off like it didn’t matter much but the hurt feelings always rear their ugly heads no matter how hard I try to suppress them. It’s more often than not waaaay past the appropriate time to say something though and my frustrations get taken out on the wrong people, Example:

Matt: “So, do you want cereal or eggs for breakfast?”
Amie: “I LOOK GREAT IN YELLOW!!! ….ahem, excuse me, ummm cereal.”
Matt: “Whoah. Cereal it is then!”


That happens because no one likes a critic. Simply put. No one likes to hear bad things about themselves and when people (mostly family) get close enough to see that we do actually have a bad side it puts everyone between a rock and a hard place. You are wonderfully close and you now know them well enough to recognize that they have problems yet you can’t say anything because….you’re too close! Say for instance your wife snores at night (and no before any of you try and see how my examples are related to me, I don’t snore). Lets say it’s not just any snore either. This is an earth shattering, mind numbing, makes you have bloodshot eyes of insanity at 3 am kind of snoring. There’s a surgery that can be done to fix her, but your afraid in telling her that you’ll hurt her feelings because snoring isn’t normally a womanly feature. What could you do? Your damned if you do and a wired insomniac if you don’t!

Obviously you have to plug the same principle into a scenario of your own to really see the problem but you understand the predicament. And it extends into all kinds of relationships. Sisters afraid of offending brothers, husbands afraid of hurting wives, parents afraid of driving away their children. Ahhh if only there was a simple solution to the problem. With all the advancements we’ve made in the world with the human psyche, there’s nothing out there that can bring freedom of speech back into families. We can open a man’s brain and make him involuntarily lift his right arm but we can’t tell our brother that he has an addiction problem, our wife that she snores or our children that they are flirting with a line of disaster without emotions creating a divide. Maybe some day, some day we’ll find a way to figure it all out.

As Good As It Gets

Now I know I talk a lot about my therapist (which btw, I saw him at a church function yesterday and almost called out “Hey Dr. Bean!” Haha!) but he really has some good points. From my last session I was expressing some concern over a certain matter that I have been quite impatient on resolving and he looked at me and said “and what if it doesn’t get resolved? What if THIS is how it is always going to be? For the rest of your life. …..What if this is as good as it gets?”

After getting lost in thought for an embarrassingly long time, I looked up at him and I could tell that he sensed a little bit of my despair. He then added, “if you knew ahead of time that this was going to be the best that it ever would be, would you have tried as hard on YOUR end to resolve the matter?”

The answer of course was no. In a physics class I took back in college (which I LOVED) my professor gave us some good advise along the same lines. It was around finals time and all of us wanted to know exactly what percentage of our overall class grade would fall under this last test. You see, because afterwards we were all going to pull out our calculators simultaneously and calculate (in a worse possible case scenario) how low we could score on the test and still get the final grade we hoped for. He looked back at us and said, “I’m not going to tell you. If I tell you and you calculate that number, that is what you are going to get on the test. I think you will all score higher without that number in your head.”

And so it was in this scenario for me. If I knew or calculated what the outcome would be before hand with this certain relationship, my mind would have relaxed a little bit so to speak and I wouldn’t have tried as hard.

So, I guess it’s good in the end that we aren’t all-knowing, future predicting geniuses. Who can expect more of you if you are trying as hard as you can? It really is a satisfying feeling and has brought much closure for me.

Husband Shopping...

So I've been sick as a dog these past couple days. Some sort of stomach thing the doc.s have been trying to figure out for some time now, but can't. Anyway, I've been too sick to do practically anything, including grocery shopping....

Simple right? You give the hubby the list, he gets whats on the list along with a few other things that just "fell" into the cart like Ding Dongs, which haunt me every time I walk by them in the snack isle, and turnips cause I said to buy some vegetables that were on sale and ...they were on sale! This was a much more dangerous trip though because I was too incoherent from pain to even make a list so he was flying solo on this one. dun dun duuuuuuu.

Yes it was a little scary to watch him go out the front door but here's the strange part...I love Matt shopping. Men shop like bachelors. As women we are organized shoppers, we think about what we want to make for dinners for the week and we buy accordingly. More often than not if you're on a budget, like I am, that means you have to pass up a lot of the things you'd like to get even if they aren't considered "junk food." Take for instance blackberries. I looooove blackberries. I love them so much it hurts sometimes when I pass by them in the produce isle and once again cannot touch them because they have a big yellow price tag in front of them that says $4 for 1/4 a pound. This tag of course creates a force field around them that hums with the quiet warning ..."hummmm 1/4 is not enough to satisfy hummmmmm you'll need at least 5 boxes .... and you can't do that if you want to buy boneless skinless chicken breasts hummmmmmm." Damn that force field!

Men however never seem to have this problem. In fact, they have a whole different strategy. I call it the 2 bite rule. If it can be eaten it in under 2 bites, it's in. So you end up with a bunch of small snacky items like the before mentioned Ding Dongs and turnips (on sale and can devour in one bite). You also get lots of things like potato chips, pizza bagels and poptarts. It's mortifying to my girlish figure! I feel like I've gained 10 pounds just watching him unpack it all! And ya know what.....I love it!

Of course I do! It's the only guilt free way to have these things end up in my cupboards! If I go, theres no way I'm going to get what I want. I get whats "best." But if I send Matt, I'm bound to get everything with a forcefeild and nothing that takes over 2 minutes to heat up in a microwave! You can't live like that all the time, but I say, let the man do the shopping once in a while and give yourself a treat. No lists. Just tell him you need FOOD. He'll get you what you really need.

When I was in collage you know what I did the first time I went grocery shopping for myself? I bought a whole watermelon. I took it home, cut it in half and sat down with a spoon so that for the next 10 minutes I could use that spoon to dig out and devour all the heart of that watermelon. Best watermelon I ever had. I eventually shared the less sweet leftovers with my roommates but for the first time, that melon was mine. ....All ....mine. Bought and paid for with my own money and by gally, I was gonna eat it however I wanted to! Rebellious I know, but those were the collage days...wild and fancy free. I should have put a bumper sticker on my bike that said "I live on the edge, I eat the heart first." Then if the whole world knew Robin Hood Prince of Theives by heart like I do, I'd add "with a spoon... cause it'll hurt more you twit!" Course then it'd be so long it'd be less like a bumper sticker and more like an all over bike decal. Details details.

Anyway, my doc wants to do an ultrasound tomorrow morning to check things out. She told me to eat simple, easy to digest foods until then as to not irritate my tum tum. Hopefully when she spreads that ice cold jelly around with her magic wand and sees those jalapeno stuffed olives, the awkward silence from a patient's total disregard for her doctor's orders won't last too long. After all....it's not ever day that the husband does the shopping.

The Night From H-E-Double Hocky Sticks

Ya know theres nothing in the world like the sound of someone throwing up. It’s basically the only horrible sound in the world that people feel the need to imitate whenever they hear it. Last night I woke up to such a noise. Ahhh the stomach turningness of it all! Jake, my oldest son of 3, woke up last night puking his little brains out. Poor kid. What started out at midnight as hefty chunks every hour continues on this morning as dry heaves every half hour.

So, while Matt stayed with Jake hovering over his porcelain throne, I went to the kitchen to get a rag under the sink. We have some nice size windows in our house during which at night we always close the blinds to keep from being the neighborhood fish bowl. I saw as I came in that the blinds were not down however and I thought about closing them before I turned on the light to walk across the kitchen in my underoos but the sound of Jacobs puking made me irrational and a little panicy so I decided just to flip the switch and make a poor attempt to double over like a 90 year old grandma simultaneously try and shielding my womanly parts with my scrawny arms. Who would be up at midnight anyway? ...Apparently the neighbors across the street and all their friends, that’s who!

Well the puking continued on till 3:00 am which put him in our bed after having exhausted all my fitted sheets and pillow cases from not being able to make it there in time to help him open his half awake eyes and aim for the bowl. While he curled up next to Matt, I decided to make a run to the local gas pump and get some 7UP which I knew probably wouldn’t help anything much but my dad always did that for me when there was nothing more to be done and it always made me feel special if not better.

So I slipped on a pair of warm ups and a sweatshirt, did my best to throw my hair up into a halfway decent ponytail and wipe the mascara out from under my eyes. I took a glance in the mirror to see what the damage was….ha! The clerks were gonna think I was a drug addict on a munchie run. I pretended like I didn’t just get scared by my own reflection and grabbed the car keys.

As I opened the door to the mini mart I tried to push out the background music playing in my head of an old western scene where the dusty streets are deserted and two blockheads are about to do pistols at dawn. Ooooo eee oooo eeee ooooooooooo, wa WA waaaaa. Not a sole in sight, not even the old bar keep. I got what I needed and sat at the counter for a few minutes before starting to make those gestures. You know, the ones you know have to be done to get someone’s attention, but once they go past your lips they make you feel a little silly? Like, “ heeeeleeeooooo?” sometimes I do mine in a British accent “eny won hoooome?” I was there for so long making these silly noises that I finally decided just to leave my dollar on the counter and go home when suddenly an old crusty woman emerged from the back looking a little off and shaken. Mid-day I wouldn’t have thought twice about it but something just felt a little out of place so I asked her "Are you okay?" to which she replied "I am now." Weird I thought.

When I got back into the car my imagination took over and I thought of a series of possible events which could explain the odd feeling I got from the whole situation. Maybe she was being held hostage! Maybe the robbers were in the back and hopped that I would just leave my money and move along, trying to be kind and generous robbers, but I stood there singing greetings for so long they decided to send her out to take care of me. Ooooor!, Maybe she was a drug addict who was shooting up in the back and was so out of it that it took her a while to realized that the ringing in her ears wasn’t a side effect from the drugs, it was ME out front trying to get her attention so that she could take my stupid 99 cents and I could get back to my puking son! ...or she could have just been taking a smoke break and didn’t hear me come in the door. All A+ possibilities. I was leaning more towards the robber situation though so when I got home I made a quick jingle to the police to send some officers over there to check on her.

Anyway it all made out to be a very strange night. Strange indeed. Things are almost back to normal today. Although I’m a little ashamed to admit that as I took the trash out to the alleyway this morning I was halfway hoping to see the Exon station tapped off with yellow caution tape and investigators scouring the perimeter just so I would feel better about my wild imagination. No such luck. It may just be a cold hard fact of life that I’ve been blessed with an overactive imagination that is amplified when I’m awake after 3am. *Sigh*

As for Jake, he is feeling much better. Still a little weak but he’s content for now to encourage his little brother to stick his finger up my right nostril as I type so they can throw back their heads and laugh historically. Yup... back to normal.

Dr. Bean

My therapist looks strangely similar to Mr. Bean which is a little distracting to me when we are in session. I am able to concentrate when he is speaking to me but when I am speaking and he is listening it's amazingly difficult to keep from laughing because he puts his hand to his chin and gets an intensely pensive look on his face. When I'm done talking I almost halfway expect him to stand up and do a small skit using no words but only body language to tell me what I should do with my life. I tell ya what, the imaginations of my mind make it incredibly hard to concentrate sometimes on matters at hand.

Take for instance a hypothetical situation. Say for example a friend comes to me and starts telling me about her cat. Cats automatically make me think of one cat in my childhood that was such a sickly cat who had diarrhea all the time. We used to call her Lady Bain the Poop Stain. Now the poor kitty's condition wasn't very funny but the name was hilarious! So while my friend is just finishing telling me how her cat recently died, I'm still giggling a little about Lady Bain! See what I mean!!? My mind is against me I'm telling you!

Anyway one of these days my therapist is going to be sitting there telling me I have a rare form of dementia and I won't be able to stop laughing because sometime during that speech he's gonna make this face....

Whats all the halabalou about?

This is a blog dedicated entirely to the whims, wants, and desires of my very own heart. Therefore it's hard to categorize it into a stereotype, for instance: this is a blog for mom's, this is a blog for fishermen, or this is a blog for the boogie man, who we all know lives under the bridge on Dehsea Rd where I grew up. Nope, there is no rhyme, reason or regularity to these rants. I simply discovered one day after the loss of a very good computer friend that I miss so very much the creative writing and debating I used to do.

Let me start out by describing a bit of myself for those of you who don't know me or perhaps even those who think they may know me yet have much to discover. Why, I had an eyeopening experience on the subject of defining myself just the other day! It came when my husband and I were watching the series Scrubs. As we sat there enjoying the wit and humor of hospital colleagues working together with long-winded outbursts, comical embarrassments, and romance, we decided to try and determine which character was most like ourselves. My husband of course was the main character J.D. A smart, slender yet toned, tall handsome intern who has a little bit of a geeky side. Mine on the other hand was a little harder to find.

*Enter Jordan* And there she was... I was horrified! Every time I try and describe Jordan she comes out sounding extremely mean and selfish with an outspokenness that zeros in on the insecurities people wear on their sleeves....and I'm not going to willingly own up to THAT! All I can say is if you want to get a glimpse into Amie Post's head go rent an episode of Scrubs and see Jordan in all her sarcastic glory. The best way I can think to describe it to you is this way.....have you ever walked away from a debate or argument and spent the next 2-3 hours dreaming up all the wonderful words and phrases that would have slammed your opponent so hard you're sure it would have sent them running home to Mommy? And ooooh how you wish you could have thought of those catchy one liners hours ago when you where still in the debate? Yeah.... I'm not one of those people and neither is Jordan.

Unfortunately we both have been blessed with the instant ability to say whatever on our mind and, more often than not, with a bit of a sting. The difference between Jordan and I though is that Jordan's character says these things right out loud and I, on the other hand, am still mastering the ability to not even think them at all! I really honestly and truly want to be a sweet, kind, sensitive person that believes theres good in everyone but that Jordan in me is a hard woman to stifle! It's a work in progress.

I should probably note however that the 24 years practice I've had thus far on this particular problem has given some improvement. On the whole I really am a cheerful person. I enjoy doing things for other people, taking long bike rides with my kids, eating green apples and sitting in the sun. Jordan really only comes out to play if A.) you annoy me or B.) you make me mad. Aside from that however, I have absolutely no problem being Amie and tying and gagging Jordan. If God has blessed you with a nasally voice however or you do NOT believe in the existence of a watermelon heart, chances are you'll meet Jordan first.