My husband - the most important relationship

Reverb has another really good prompt today. I can't resist answering it.

Considering the idea that nothing lasts forever: what was the most important relationship that you fostered in 2012?

How will you continue to nurture it in 2013?

My husband is the love of my life. We've been married for over seven years and I am so incredibly grateful to God for bringing us together. The first couple years of our marriage were tough as I battled some old abandonment issues. But my husband meant what he said in our vows - he has stuck by me no matter what has happened.

This year, I spent over two months in Michigan helping my husband's parents. Before that trip, we had only been apart for a week. By the end of my stay in Michigan, I was desperate to get back to him. Even though I knew that I was needed in Michigan and happy to help, I missed my husband something fierce.

Every so often, I have to remind myself what it felt like to be apart. It's so easy to take my husband for granted because he works from home and we are around each other almost 24/7. Sometimes my selfish nature emerges and I want things my way. I can be short tempered and take advantage of my husband's very giving nature.

In 2013, I want to continue to deepen our relationship. I know that I have flaws, that human nature is to be selfish, but with God's help, I hope to become a better wife. I love my husband more than I could even think possible and want to be the best wife possible.

Good news!

I didn't post yesterday because it was my husband's birthday and our seventh wedding anniversary. Yes, on the same day. It was not intentional! We eloped and happened to have that day off work. But my husband likes to tease me and say that it's "all Cassandra, all the time." He says our anniversasry overrode his birthday. Plus, my birthday is only six days after his. We have all of our fun at the same time!

The vet called today with the results of Bruno's urinalysis. Everything was normal! So far, Bruno has been an angel, no marking. I know it's still too early to tell if it will be permanent, but I am cleaning like crazy to avoid him marking places he used to mark. Hopefully that will help. Our house is slowly starting to look less scary under the blacklight.

Not much else is going on. Since Bruno doesn't have to go back to the vet anytime soon, maybe we'll be able to afford an ironing board out of our next paycheck. Then I can start quilting again! Oh how I miss it.

Hub's is working so I'm going to reply to a few emails. Ta-ta!

Plans? What plans?

I had plans for this week. HA! They have been completely thrown out the window. There are a few things I still want to do this week but we'll see how much actually gets accomplished. Supposedly, my hubby will be working at a client all day on Friday so I should be able to be very productive.

Tonight... we are doing something crazy. We are going to the midnight showing of The Adventures of Tintin! Then, first thing tomorrow morning, we are doing a 90 minute yoga session. I'm sure we could have timed these two events better, but tonight is the theatre release and my husband has been looking forward to it for months. He grew up reading the Tintin comics and was really excited when he found out they were making a movie.

I hope I'm able to achieve some level of coherency tomorrow! I'm sure we'll be tired but it's worth it to make my hubby so happy!

First spelunking trip - in photos!

Starting up the trail

We're hiking up there?

Almost to the cave!

Climbing down through the cave entrance

Hubby looking amazing

Tiny tunnel I was crazy enough to crawl through

What's on the ceiling?

Cool formations!

Massive stalagmite

It's taller than I am!

Most of the spelunking group

Light at the end of the tunnel

Colorful bug

Hubby and I at the top of the trail

View from the top

Hiking back down

Souvenirs!

My husband

Please forgive me for gushing about my husband for a moment. See, today is his 32nd birthday. It is also our 5th anniversary. It was not intentional that we were married on hubby's birthday but I had taken a vacation day to surprise him and we ended up eloping.

I am so grateful to God for placing such a wonderful man in my life! My husband balances me. Where I am rash, he is thoughtful in making decisions. His laid back ways are perfect for countering my go-go-go attitude. We don't always see eye to eye on decisions, but we're a good match.

I love how my husband is thoughtful, kind, loving, sincere, and level headed. He loves me even when I don't like myself. I am so blessed!

This year I'm doing acts of service for his birthday gifts. Hubby is working tonight and we're not sure what time he will be done. I promised him I'd stay up and have dinner ready for him when his work is finished. He had a hard time picking an entree for his birthday dinner but he was very quick to request pumpkin pie for dessert! I have a homemade one baking as I type this.

When trying to decide what I was going to surprise him with as a gift, I thought of his desk. The poor man puts up with my clutter. Somehow, tons of my paperwork, notes, and various other items had drifted over to his desk. I thought it would be a nice surprise to clean up our game shelf, remove the games we never play, move the movies to the newly open space, and dust his desk. It's so cluttered (with my junk!) that it's gotten pretty dusty.

I'm a sucker for Before and After pictures so I took some. This first photo is of our game shelf and I was half way done cleaning the middle shelf before I remembered that I wanted photos for my blog post. Oops!

(Hopefully hubby isn't embarrassed by me posting photos of his desk, but the mess is mostly mine!)



We sold the tiny bookshelf we used for storing movies and video games so they all ended up piled on the back of hubby's desk.



And here is the front view of hubby's desk. Now that I can see the After, I can't believe he was willing to put up with it! But he didn't complain, other than to occasionally offhandedly mention that his desk was getting kind of bad.



And here is the After photo of our game and video shelves. The top shelf isn't really organized yet but I wasn't sure how much time I would have before hubby came home. I'll get to it eventually.



Here's the back of hubby's desk now that almost all of the videos are moved. He likes using a boxed set of DVDs to keep the speakers taller than the monitors.



Lastly, the front of hubby's desk. SO much better!



Hopefully he likes it!

Surprise from my hubby

I woke up in an incredibly bad mood. There's no excuse for it, though I could try. There's just no excuse.

Hubby ran to the store for a couple grocery items and came back with a surprise.



There is no way I deserved these and I was really humbled. My hubby is so sweet.

Flexibility, cookies, and a sick kitty

I had grandiose plans for today. Haha. Best laid plans? There's a text somewhere in the New Testament that talks about people making plans and how they should say "IF the Lord wills, we will do such and such." That was basically my morning.

Hubby has been working late nights and I've been staying up to keep him company. I think last night we went to bed around 11. I woke up at 6 and stumbled out to the living room. After nearly falling asleep just sitting on the couch, I decided I needed to go back to bed. I promptly passed out for another two hours.

After getting up, hubby was immersed in phone calls with clients. During that time, I ensure that the clients can't hear me in the background. That means I don't have much I can do. I can either read or do something on the computer or... that's about it.

Around 10:30, I finally got my chance to make cookies. Yay! The batter mixed up really well. It smelled great. It baked nicely. And... my peanut butter cookies didn't taste like they contained peanut butter. They were pretty good, just not peanut butter cookies. Some of the reviews mentioned that, but other people said they tasted great. I will either have to continue looking for the perfect peanut butter cookie or tweak this one so it tastes like peanut butter.

I realized how poor some of the quality of our ingredients is. The cookies are supposed to be sugar free, other than what is in the tiny bit of maple syrup. My cookies were not sugar free. The maple syrup (fake, cheap stuff) contained high fructose corn syrup. The almond milk had added sugar (I didn't know that!). And the peanut butter had added sugar! I thought I had bought a natural peanut butter without added sugar. I guess not... So much for sugar free cookies!

My kitty is sick, I think. He's been hot to the touch since yesterday. He's extremely clingy and really likes sleeping on my pillow when I'm in the bedroom. Poor baby. :( He's eating a bit less than normal, but still eating. I'm just going to watch him and see if he gets better on his own. I really don't want to take him to the vet and get him shot up with medication. Hubby reassured me that we will spend money to take him to the vet if it comes to that. I just want him to feel better!

I hope this post doesn't sound all doom and gloom, because I did have a good day. It just wasn't what I expected!

Cookies!

I'm going to make peanut butter cookies for my hubby first thing tomorrow morning. Shhhhh... Hopefully he won't find out until they're coming out of the oven!

Today

Today's been an interesting but fairly laid back day. I went to bed last night at 8:30 and woke up this morning at 7:30. For some reason, I've been needing a lot of sleep lately. Yesterday I woke up before 6 and had most of my housework done before 9! Today I was still eating breakfast at that time.

I had an awesome banana/strawberry/spinach smoothie for breakfast. Then I completed all of my housework. After that, I spent over an hour studying Japanese. Then I took a nap. haha. For some reason, despite my 11 hours of sleep last night, I needed an hour and a half long nap. Bummer. There went my afternoon!

Hubby is working tonight. He's doing something server related for a company, which means he has to work during that company's off hours. He's scheduled to work from 10 to 6:30 tomorrow morning, but thankfully, he's working from home. I thought about staying up all night to keep him company but hubby said he'd rather I got a good night of sleep tonight and was available and cheery for him tomorrow. I get a bit grumpy when I haven't had enough sleep...

So that was my day. Productive in the morning and not so productive in the afternoon. I really wanted to quilt today but it just didn't happen. I need to set aside some time for it like I do with my Bible study and my Japanese studies.

My Bible study still continues with the topic of death and what happens after death. I thought I was coming to the end of my texts, but one text today gave me six more to study! I just follow all the cross references and now I have pages of texts. I still have two pages of texts to look up but who knows how many more texts that will provide. I had no idea that the Bible said so much about death.

My Japanese studies are going really well also. I'm planning on taking the JLPT N5 this December, which is the easiest proficiency exam. Theoretically, I could push myself to take N4 but I'm not sure I'll be ready. I want to pass so that I have motivation to study next year. For me, failing is unmotivational. I've learned a bunch of vocabulary plus the following sentence structures:

it is...
it was...
it is not...
it was not...
I am...

I still don't feel like I could carry any sort of conversation in Japanese but I'm starting to understand sentence structure and some of the vocab in Japanese movies. Maybe next year I'll be able to watch something without the subtitles!

Loving my family

Today was a low productivity day, but I'm okay with that. My brother is stationed in Iraq until next summer. He was on-line this morning and really wanted to play games. We spent almost two hours playing an on-line version of Pictionary. How fun!

After he went to bed, I washed the dishes and picked up around the apartment. I spent an hour learning Japanese this afternoon and then took a nap. Hubby's receiving emergency work calls almost every night and we're both really tired.

So all in all it's been a very quiet day. I'm trying to remember that relationships are more important than feeling like I've been productive enough. I have a hard time relaxing when I feel like I should be doing something. But taking a nap with my husband or spending some time playing games with my brother (who I won't see for another year!) is way more important than a pristine house. Now if I can just learn how to actually relax!

Bad choice

I snapped at my husband tonight while we were at the supermarket. He wanted me to pick a spaghetti sauce that I would like and I just wanted him to make a decision. I should be thankful for a husband that cares more about my preferences than his own instead of getting aggravated.

I am thankful.

But all those verses in Proverbs that speak of the importance of taming the tongue have obviously not taken root in my heart.

Regular posting

I really want to return to regular posting, at least 3 posts each week. I have things to write about and I've been thinking about a number of issues (homeschooling, health, homemaking, leisure time, etc). My husband has been having a very busy and stressful week at work and that somehow rubs off on me. When he's harried and rushed, I stress. I wish I could be a peaceful island in the midst of his busy storm but I become stressed as well. Hence, no posting this week.

In lieu of a deep post, I am leaving this quote. It has spoken to me and continues to challenge me to bigger and better things. May I always continue to learn and strive toward betterment!

"Conviction is worthless until it converts itself into conduct."
~Thomas Carlisle

Missing a day

I'm not exactly happy about it, but I've decided to skip my Bible reading today. The schedule allows for two miss days but I haven't missed anything thus far. I'm at my brother's house until tomorrow and there is no quiet here. The house has been full of people all day, sometimes up to 30 at a time.

My dad, his friend, and myself went to church this morning. I've been begging to attend church here each time we visit, but I've never been able to get anyone to take me. Thankfully, my dad decided that we would go this morning. The church service was really nice. The church is small, as this is a tiny military town. The people were very friendly and I was happy to spend an hour worshiping God in the middle of this crazy day.

I'm really glad to spend time with my brother, but I miss my husband. I love the life we have together and I like the routines, our time together, and my own bed! Sometimes I feel silly missing him so much when I'm rarely away from home and usually only for a weekend at a time. But we've been married only four years and I still want to spend every single day by his side.

Disappearance

I didn't mean to disappear for over a week. Last Tuesday, we were notified of a family emergency. With less than two hours notice, I was on my way to Texas. After a harrowing 22 hour drive (a good portion in a snowstorm with almost 0 visibility) we arrived in Dallas.

Christmas did not go as planned. I find this especially ironic because I was struggling just over a week ago with plans with my hubby that had fallen through. Hubby and I had guests visit over Christmas, an old college friend and also my sister-in-law. We were eagerly anticipating their visit but I had to leave 12 hours after our first guest had arrived. I never even saw my SIL. Oops.

I arrived home late yesterday afternoon. Our friend left early this morning. At least I got to see him before he left. Hopefully we'll be visiting my SIL this spring to make up for my missing her visit.

Now I feel like I've fallen so far behind. I missed a week of cleaning. I have tons of laundry to wash. I was planning a couple of blog posts for the holiday season but never wrote them. Hubby and I haven't finalized plans for New Years. Because of the emergency, I missed my weekly call with my grandparents (it totally slipped my mind).

God protected myself, my brother, and his wife on our long drive to and from Dallas. My father is doing better and hopefully will not have another trip to the ER. Hubby had a good visit with his friend and sister while I was gone. I have much to be thankful for, even though things did not go according to my plan. Funny how that works.

Blessings of the financial kind

God is so very good and I am so very proud of my hubby!

Hubby met with his boss today to discuss his job performance and how hubby feels about the company thus far. He walked away with a raise and a bonus! Praise the Lord!

Hubby's boss also gave him a $50 gift card to the Olive Garden so that hubby can take me out on a date. It's the boss' way of saying "thanks and I'm sorry" for taking up a good portion of our evenings and weekends in October. Hurray! We've never spent that much money at the Olive Garden. This means we'll be able to get an appetizer, two entrees, and dessert! What a treat!

Busy, busy bee

I think the craziness has already started. Yesterday was busy, busy, busy.

I woke up at 7:30. That's really late, even for me. I usually wake up between 6:30 and 7:00. The temperature dropped 20 degrees overnight. I had to wear jeans, socks, and a sweatshirt all day! Ate breakfast, sent hubby off to work, and talked to him during his 45 minute drive.

After hubby arrived at work, I settled into work. My contract assignment took two hours. Then I washed all the dishes, vacuumed, ironed clothes, made lunch, ate lunch, and washed more dishes! I washed and hung up a load of laundry. I took a 10 minute break to talk to a friend on the phone. Made dinner when hubby called to say he was on the way home.

Hubby had a last minute work assignment so I curled my hair and then talked to my mom on the phone for a bit. When he was finally finished with work, we left for our date. We stopped by the mall first to spend a $10 gift card I received for my birthday. I found some really pretty lipstick for $10 and the store was nice enough to not charge me any tax. Free!

We drove over to the Phoenix Art Museum and attended a lecture on the newest photography exhibition, a survey of portraits that covered the entire history of photography. The lecture was okay. We learned a bit about the thought process of the curator when she designed the exhibition. We also learned about the history of the most famous Winston Churchill photograph. After the lecture, we browsed through the European painting section and visited all of our favorite paintings. Then we drove home and crashed into bed!

The day was very busy, didn't slow down from start to finish. I had wanted to work on my Nano prep a bit but never had time. Now it's almost 3PM Thursday and I still haven't worked on it!

Tis okay. Making peanut butter cookies for my hubby was way more important. Now that all my chores are complete, the cookies are baked, and the laundry is hung, I need to get to work. Nano starts in three days!

Celebration!

Today is my hubby's birthday as well as our fourth wedding anniversary. Hubby and I became engaged in September 2005 and the following month we decided to elope. I had already requested hubby's birthday off work to surprise him. When we started seriously talking about eloping, I spilled the beans that I had scheduled a vacation day on October 14th. I'm not sure if that's considered romantic, but it worked for us!



Thank you, darling, for four amazing years together. I praise God that you have enjoyed another year of life and that He has given us a wonderful year together. I pray that we will have many more years together growing in God and closer to each other.

Second schedule attempt

I attempted another scheduled day. It is going fairly well... Before my schedule started this morning, I wrote my three Morning Pages, exercised, took a shower, ate breakfast, and had Bible study with hubby.

10:30-11:00 - Housework
11:00-11:30 - Research
11:30-12:00 - Housework
12:00-1:00 - Lunch/Free Time
1:00-1:30 - Update prices/add items for sale on Half.com
1:30-2:00 - Read blogs/Check email
2:00-2:30 - Housework
2:30-? - Play Scrabble with hubby :)

The only thing left on my schedule is some character building for my novel. I was doing really well with the schedule but hubby is home and he was very agreeable to playing a game of Scrabble with me so I decided to toss out the last hour of my schedule. I've accomplished everything on my to-do list for today.

Tomorrow will be a return to unscheduled days. I should have contract work tomorrow morning and that's always a priority over everything else. My contract work is first come, first serve so I watch my email very closely and drop everything else when work is assigned. The faster I can finish the initial assignment, the more work I am assigned until everything has been completed for the day by all the contractors. I like having the ability to work more hours than the initial assignment but it makes planning hard as I'm at the beck and call of my emails!

Work, bathrooms, and other distractions

Change of plans. My goal today was to clean both showers and toilets. I've scrubbed at the window above the shower in the main bathroom and cleaned the shower walls. I started scrubbing the tub but it's going to need a lot of work. I'm really sweaty now and my arms are tired. That's what I get for not giving it a really good cleaning in ages.

I think I'm done with the cleaning aspect of today's six most important things list. I have the opportunity to put in several hours of paid work today and I'm going to jump on that chance. My paid work is sporadic and today I have the chance to get a few hours in, whereas I normally only get a few hours each week or two. We need the money so I'm going to concentrate on that today.

Hubby and I are going on a date tonight! This plan assumes he gets off work on time as he's working in the office today instead of at home. We're going to the Phoenix Art Museum to see the Phantom Sightings: Art after the Chicano Movement and Charting the Canyon exhibits. Wednesday evenings are free admission for the general public.

Excursions

I was honored today to accompany my hubby on some of his work appointments. He had to drive to three different locations around the city and drop off some equipment. It was nice spending time together in the car, just talking, no distractions.

There are a few other thoughts floating around but I don't feel prepared to put them on paper. I think I'll go take a cold bath to cool down. Even with the AC running occasionally, it's still hot!