I am a quote junkie

I love quotes. Anywhere is a good spot for a quote. Esp a blog. :) (Courtesy of one of my favorite stores Successories)

"Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow."

"The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude."

"Excellence is never an accident, it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intellegent direction, skillful execution and the vision to see obstacles as opportunities."

"The desire to grow is powerful and natural. Find the courage to sacrifice what you are for what you could become."

"When the path appears, don't hesitate. Start where you are and take what you have. Thoughyou may not know exactly where the road will lead, be asured that you are already prepared for the journey."

"This is the beginning of a new day. You have been given this day to use as you will. You can waste it or use it for good. What you do today is important because you are exchanging a day of your life for it. When tomorrow comes thisday will be gone forever; in it's place is something you left behind. Let it be something good."

"Passion: There are many things in life that will capture your eye, but very few will capture your heart. These are the ones to pursue. These are the ones worth keeping."

"Excellence is the result of caring more than others think is wise, risking more than others think is safe, dreaming more than others think is practical, and expecting more than others think is possible."

AND MY PERSONAL FAVORITE

"A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house that I lived in, or the kind of car I drove...but the world may be a different place because I was important in the life of a child."

Things I learned today at the OU game.......

1. Your husband can complain about taking the trash outside when it's cold but he will stand in the snow and wind for hours watching a football game and if you dare peep that you might be cold you will promptly be told to suck it up!

2. Your husband may not cry at his parent or grandparents funeral as to appear strong and "together" but no man can make it thru a touching football opening game ceremony without weeping like a baby.

3. It never gets old hearing 10's of thousands of people in a packed stadium singing the national anthem all together.

4. You are never too old to make an ass of yourself in public by drinking too much and falling down. (not me. some old men i observed at the game. they were at least 65)

5. I can never go anywhere without running into someone that my husband knows somehow. I have no anonymity at all.

6. Being outrageous is not an attribute of youth. I saw plenty of outrageous older women today with excessive fur coats, ridiculous hats and heels so tall that they were in another altitude.

7. Apparently red pimp hats with yellow feathers sticking out can be worn by middle aged white men too. Who woulda thought?

8. No matter how close you think you parked to the stadium when you walk out of the game it's 4x as far as you remembered.

9. I'm addicted to run on setences. They are my favorite.

And this should sum up most of my sooner experience today. I will be defrosting myself for the remainder of the evening.

#2 for the day.......I guess I'm especially pensive today

The second post in one day. I hope my few and far between fellow bloggers can keep up. LOL. JK. It’s been a very quiet day at work. There are only 3 of us in the office. The phone hasn’t rang. The door hasn’t opened. I have a little work to do but I’m kind of dragging it out. I also brought a book with me today to inspire a little motivation. I love reading books and don’t get to read often enough. I just happened to read a passage that related directly to the post I created this morning before I ever even opened the book.

“I want my children and grandchildren to think of me as someone other than a worn-out woman. I want them to look back and see a loving person who always had time for them, who made a difference for Christ in the world, who spent her short time on earth doing something that mattered.”

I agree with the woman who wrote these words. I want my children to feel that I always have time for them. I think it’s time to rid myself of the “ups” syndrome. Fed up, hurrying up, and catching up. I am at least one of these ups at any given time. How sad. As children we grow up with these big dreams of what our lives will be like when we are grown. None of my dreams included any “ups”. As a teenager it feels like ahead is a wonderful adventure full of freedom and choices and joy. I don’t think that is naïve dreaming. After all that is what most people dream for. So it must make some sense somewhere along the line. I’m on a mission to prove that being grown up doesn’t have to suck. Grown UP does not = fed up, hurried up, catching up. Not too long ago Beth lended me some wise advice to just stop and listen so I could hear what the Lord was trying to tell me. I think he’s saying “Slow down!” Life really is a gift. I know that there is a lot of hard work to be done to succeed at certain things, but life should be enjoyed too. I suppose that if letting the house go from time to time will provide my children with the experience to feel that I always have time for them then that’s just what it will be. They might think, “Mom always has time for me, but her house is messy.” But that’s okay. One day they’ll have to learn to balance life too and might skip cleaning a few times too. :)

She has no space left in her day for Him, much less for following where He might lead.

My days are full of things that I do not want to do. I do not want to go to work today, but I am here because I have to be. I do not want to clean the kitchen or mop the floor or scrub the walls or vacuum the carpet or clean the bathrooms and bedrooms, and do laundry. Nor do I want to pick up toys, wash dishes, put all the kid movies strewn about back together and away, take out the trash, cook dinner, and set the alarm for early tomorrow to do it all over again. But, all these things must be done and someone has to do it. Somehow that someone became ME! Why did I get chosen? So far the only concrete reason I can come up with is simply because I have a vagina. I often wonder why women’s lives are so full of chores and tasks that we do not want to do. It seems very sad to me that for most of us our whole lives are whittled away by unhappy necessities and over commitments. Should doing something that I actually enjoy really have to be a “treat”? The hardest part of this for me to swallow is that to get all of these before mentioned things accomplished I have to sacrifice the quality of my relationship with others. When I come home from work and my son is begging me to play playdoh with him at the table and I have to keep putting him off because I’m elbow deep in dish water and the table is too much of a mess for him to even have space to roll playdoh I begin to feel defeated. My children will only be small for a blink of time. Are the dishes really that important? Well, if I want to keep bugs and yucky stuff out of my house then yes they are important, but how do you measure that against your own child? I have tried to convince myself that I enjoy and love housework. I’ve tried to delight in my chores. So far I haven’t fallen for it. And for the life of me I can not figure out how the house gets so messy! If I go to work then come home, don’t dare sit down when I walk in, get straight to work and do nothing but work and clean all night until I go to bed then it should be clean the next morning right? Bahahahahahahaha!!!!!! I think there is something wrong with the way that most adult women live today. This overly praised women’s liberation movement came about and while the work place adjusted to include women, the rest of women’s life did not adjust to make place for work and home and family. Any stay at home wife or mother will tell you that it is a full time job. Most say it’s the hardest job in world. My personal experience would back up that theory, but to each their own. So now with the way the financial world is I’m expected to work outside of the home and society pretty much expects me to work outside of the home also. Then I clock out, drive home and try to cram another full time job into the space of a few hours? And if there are any errands to be run then go ahead and scratch off getting anything at home done. And I won’t even attempt to discuss finding time to go back to school.

I blog about this frustration often but I never seem to make any progress with this issue. Now there are women out there that would have us to believe that this is not only possible but a joy. Or that is the perception we get anyway. What these women aren’t telling you is that they harbor a despair that says, “I have no time left for me. I have no time left for peace or prayer. I have given so much of myself to everything else that I have long since given up on reaching for hope or happiness.” A lot of these “do it all supermoms” are just bodies walking around with broken insides. I really resent them too because this perception they put out in the world is that this can be done and it isn’t a problem to do so. I wasted a few years of my life believing this concept was attainable and reasonable. Now I just laugh at the thought. YET, I still keep trying to get everything done everyday. As much as I realize that this is silliness and verbally acknowledge it I still try to do it. Talk about banging your head against a brick wall. Something has to be done about this. The world has to recognize that there is a majority of women out there trying to be everything to everyone and promptly adjust their expectations. So supermoms out there…give it up. All you are doing is lying about how things really are and making the realistic ones of us out there look bad. LOL. And please, I am not lazy. Yes, I like naps, but I am not lazy. I’m honest. I could pretend that this is realistic but then I would have broken insides too, and that is not suitable for me. I work either at my job or my home from the second I wake up until far after I should be asleep. I don’t even sit down when I come home from my job. Not even for a few minutes. The most I do is check my myspace for a few seconds and get straight to the chores. It is such ridiculousness that life should be so crowded. I have a family for a reason. That reason is so that I can love them and ENJOY them. What is the point of having relationships if you can’t enjoy them? What is the point of having a home if there is no time left to hang your hat there and rest? What, I ask you, is the point of this madness!!!! Expectations are a sneaky little devil. We don’t think about our expectations that often but they are always there in everything we do. What good does it do me to have a clean home if my children are sad I can’t play with them and my husband is so used to my pleas (otherwise known as nagging) to get up and help me get this stuff done so I can sit down too that he no longer even hears the sound of my voice!? Maybe someday my self inflicted OCD will take a backseat and I will be able to look at my messy livingroom and disasterous kitchen and think, “House, you will not taunt me today. My children are fed and clothed and time has been spent reading books together and playing games. Bedtime songs have been sung with prayers thereafter, and while I prop my feet atop this giant pile of unfolded laundry I say this is a good day!” The exhausted spirit in every wife and mother whether working or not or young or old needs to stop accepting a mediocre quality of life and relationship and make some “Me Time”. Let’s uncrowd our schedules, stop worry about what needs to be done and pay attention to what needs to be LIVED!

This is my dad

God bless his velcro shoes and puffy hat! How could you not love him? I'm thankful that this is my dad. He's smart, kind, and a fortress of patience and understanding. Most people don't get to see the real Joe. I'm glad that as I became an adult my father became one of my best friends. This picture is a perfect reflection of who my dad is to me.

You know what?

I have spent the whole day crying about my grandma. She is weak and suffering and I will lose her soon. Her brother passed away and today was his funeral. I couldn't be there with her because I'm only 1 1/2 weeks into my new job. They said I could go, but with my grandma being so bad I thought I had better save the leave in case I need it for her. I've been so sad all day. She forgot who I was which nearly killed me. She keeps asking to "go home". My grandma is my hero. She is a woman who refuses to accept weakness and has never allowed herself to be so. Now she is so weak and fragile and there is nothing she can do about it. She would rather go on to meet the Lord than to live this way. She misses my grandpa. This day has sucked and then sucked some more. I feel guilty for not being at that funeral with her. I feel guilty for not even being there to give her a hug. She is one of the most important people in my life and I am not sure what I will do without her. Sad songs kept coming on the radio at work. There was this one country song (I don't normally listen to country unless I'm a little depressed) about this old woman in a nursing home and her daughter went buy to brush her hair and remind her that she is someone's hero. Waterworks. Everyone at my new job thought I was a basketcase today. I should have just left rather to appear crazy. Anyway, I moment ago I was looking at my myspace page and noticed the Daily Bible Verse I have on it. It was the right verse for the right moment and made my heart a little lighter. "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go." Joshua 1:9

So there you have it people. Be strong and courageous. The Lord is with you. Even on a weepy sad day when your heart breaks for someone you love. There's always a reason. There's a plan bigger than we can see. The Lord knows when her time is right and he already just told me that I have no reason to be afraid because he is holding my hand. Yours too.

FYI

Hello to all my readers! LOL. All 3 of you! Just in case you were wondering I love my new job. I was irritated with the lady that was training me but she IS really nice. I feel bad for giving her a hard time (well I didn't to her face). She is very kind and reminds me a lot of my mom. Today I got to work on my own all day. The 3 days I was there last week she and I worked together all day. But I catch on pretty quickly and today they turned me loose. I did a great job. I was 30 minutes late to work though. Arg!!! I got stuck behind a 6 car pile up and it took me an hour and 10 minutes to get there. I called to let them know and they were pretty cool about it. I guess half my office got stuck in the same traffic jam so it wasn't such a big deal. At the end of the day I stayed 30 minutes late to make up the time and they kept trying to shoo me out the door. They would say, "You better go so you can get ahead of the traffic" or "You better get home to those babies of yours!" I insisted on staying though. It's only my 4th day and I was already severely late. I wasn't about to leave without making up my time. After all I have a 90 day probation period to complete. Anyway, my job is going well. I like all the people in the office. Everyone is very friendly and has gone out of their way to get to know me. I'm not shy and that helps alot. I just talk to whoever is next to me about whatever I'm thinking of at the moment. I fit in well there. Which I was really nervous about that before. Anyway all is good in the world of Sara.

I'm reading a great book. It's called "The Worn Out Woman". Synopsis: For the woman with a full life and an empty spirit. It has a lot of good information in it. There are some tips I've found to be helpful. There are also a lot of references to scriptures that can be encouraging when we get weary. It has excerpts of other women's stories too. It's a great read. So if you find yourself overwhelmed seeking this elusive "balance" that life is supposed to have check it out. I impusively bought it because the title appealed to me. It's turned out to be a much better book than I anticipated. Because really.......I have 3 children (27, 4 and 2) a house to clean, laundry to do, a dog to walk and care for, a mom to look after when dad is gone, a mom in law with alzheimers who is getting into the latter stages, and a host of friends to keep in touch with. However I find that the energy doesn't drain quite so quickly when my soul is full. For a while there all I could say to God was, "There is a hole in the bottom of my soul and my all my energy is draining straight out the bottom. So Lord patch the hole and fill me up!" Now I'm beginning to feel full again! It's been a great last week or two. So yay for me.

I'm looking forward to seeing Phil and Jackie next week. So far I know that David and Shirley are coming to the birthday party. If anyone else is coming let me know. I could use a head count for cake purposes. I hope you all come. I would love to see you. And as an added bonus I'm sure I can get my children to make you smile. :)

Have a great week everyone! I love you all!

There is always a paper trail

My new job is going well. The lady who is training me and will subsequently be my boss is a dimmly lit bulb. I can't tell who is training whom. LOL. She's very messy and unorganized. It's driving me crazy. The desk we are at is like a paper swamp. I feel like I'm caught in a pit of quicksand, but it's paper I'm sinking into. At least she can half way function on the computer.

Caden's birthday is in 10 days. It doesn't seem like it's been 4 years already. He's such a little ball of sunshine all the time. I'm happy he's mine.

Macy has begun popping her little hip out to the side and strategically placing her hand on her outward hip when she is making a point. Then she points her finger toward you authoritatively. It's quite amusing. I can see the strong little woman in her already. I have to hold onto my hat with her. I'm glad she's mine too.