Saying goodbye

Grandma Shirley said goodbye to this world at 7:05 am PST today. While we will miss her so very much, her suffering is now over. She gave the good fight, lasted so much longer than the doctors told us she would that her final peace is much appreciated. We will say our final goodbyes on March 29th.

The end is near

It is a sad day. We got the call that both of us have been dreading getting from our respective families for a while now. I honestly expected to get mine before DH got his. Unfortunately for him, that is not the case. DH's grandmother is in the hospital. She will not be coming home again. She has been fighting lung cancer for, I think, 2 years or so now. She far outlived early expectations. However, she has congestive heart failure and this is the end of the road. She had a good life, raised 6 productive, competent children who in turn have raised productive, competent grandchildren and they in turn are raising the great-grandchildren. She is a woman of strong faith. She will be going home to God and grandpa Bill. We will all miss her. May her passing be peaceful and mercifully quick so she and those left behind do not suffer too much.

We love you Grandma Shirley! Tell Grandpa we miss him too!

Between a rock and a hard place

I am so frustrated right now. We have been planning for about a year now to go to Alaska with my parents this summer. We were going to take our camper and they were going to take their travel trailer. My mom has wanted to make a trip like this for literally YEARS. My dad's health is not great and I don't know how long he will be able to make a trip like this. My daughter and I have made decisions for her 4-H projects based on the fact that we thought we were going to be gone for the entire month of July.

Now just a week ago with no prior discussion, my DH announces that we are not going. Says that we can't afford it. He sold some stock late last year and put that money in savings to supposedly help pay for the trip. Now he tells me that it is not enough. BUT he has not discussed any of this with my mother. I feel that if he is going to make this decision unilaterally that he should be the one to explain it. Of course he blames the money problems all on me. I spend all the money or so he says. As I said, I am so very frustrated. I want to go on this trip. I want my parents to be able to go on this trip. I am angry at my DH for not even opening a discussion about this at all. He just announced this decision when my DD asked him a question about when we will be getting back from our trip. At the very least I think this warranted a discussion between the two of us before he announced it to the kids.

Okay, vent over. Time to go pour over the finances again.

Blogger Challenge: Superheros

The Scrapshare blog challenge this week is issued by Kelly Belle.

The blog challenge this week is if you could be ANY superhero, who would it be and what special super-power would you enjoy using the most? You can use some of the well-known Superheroes (Superman, etc....) or make up one of your own.

Hmmm, super powers. I have never been a big fan of the superheros. In fact, I really can't remember who the female superheros were or what their powers were. So that leaves me with making up my own superhero.

So my superhero would be the female version of The Pacifier. You know Vin Diesel's character. He comes in, takes over a household and inside of one week he has the kids in line, the house in line and everything in its place. He caught the bad guys too. The superpower I want is the superparent part. I would be able to get the kids to obey the rules, do their chores and homework all with little fuss. My superpower would include the ability to communicate effectively with all kids at every point in their lives. Oh, I would get a secret decoder ring to figure out when the kids were in trouble or needed guidance. It of course would tell me exactly what kind of advice to give too. Yeah that sounds like my kind of superhero, intuitive, compassionate, parent, excellent housekeeper and child psychologist all roled into one. Anyone know where to get that secret decoder ring?

Blogger Challenge: Personal Goals

Oops, after doing well for a few days I fell off the blogging band wagon again. So here it is the end of another week and I almost did not get the SS Blog challenge done again. This is week 5. I still need to do weeks 3 and 4. I will get to them soon. I hope. So for this week from Pamela in MA:



As women we all spend time putting others first, worrying about them, taking care of their needs, scheduling their lives with little time left over for ourselves.

For this week's challenge: What is your most important personal goal for the year? What are you doing that is just for you? How are you trying to improve yourself?

Truthfully, I have a hard time thinking in terms of goals. I guess I always see it more as wants. Sometimes those wants have enough of a priority that they happy and other times well, they don't. So that is something I need to work on.

I often feel incompetent when someone asks me about my goals and I don't have an answer for them. This was the case with my now defunct CM business. My upline would ask me about my goals for my business and I would look at her blankly. My goal, if pressed, was to have a successful business. And she would ask, but how are you going to get there and I would give her another blank stare. Probably why eventually my business went nowhere.

Okay so those are my excuses but the reality is, it is a deeper seated problem. I lack self-confidence. If I set a goal, I will fail. That is the statement I hear in my head. Now someone is going to be asking the big question. Is she depressed? Is there a problem here? No I don't think I am. I find joy in many things. I just lack self-confidence. I talk myself out of good ideas. I posted in one of the other challenges about my dream of being a teacher. It is a great dream. It could even be a fabulous long-term goal but then the doubts come back. Could I handle other peoples' children day in and day out? Could I make it through school...again? Where would I find a job anyway? What about all the activities that my own children are already involved in? How would it all balance out? You see where this is going?

Oh and there is the fact that I am just not very good at holding a job. I am a homebody. I like the life I have currently.

But I have digressed a long way off the point of this particular challenge. Pamela wanted to know what my goals are for THIS YEAR. So I have thought about it. My goals, as I see them now are thus:

Improve my photography skills, through practice and online tutorials.
Do more scrapbooking, making a point to get 2008 photos printed and scrapped as we go. And make some progress on the backlog.
Learn more about the cool features of my photoshop elements program and designing papers and elements for digital scrapbooking.
Keep better control over my spending and the family budget so as to pay for our planned trip to Alaska this summer and start making some indentions in the mound of debt we have.
Lose weight and be more healthy by making weight watchers and the treadmill much more prominent in my life.

Okay, there they are. My goals. In black and white which means I actually have to do something about them. Check back with me in December.