Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

      After a year of blogging almost everyday I am taking a break from the internet to enjoy time with my family to celebrate Christmas and New Years.  I am delighted that my husband and children will all be home to enjoy the season together.  

       At this time I want to thank each and every one of you for your visits to my website throughout the year to read my words.   Thank you for your kind comments and your continued encouragement of my writing. 

        I wish each and every one of you a very merry and blessed Christmas and a happy and prosperous new year.  May G0d bless you all!  See you January 2013 when I will give you more glimpses into the life of a trucker’s wife and will be back to blogging once again.

Kitchen Catastrophes

     Kitchen catastrophes happen to the best of us.  I will say before I begin that I have went a long time since breaking anything or dropping anything I just took out of the oven on the floor. I haven’t flooded the kitchen lately either.  I have been really good.  Life has rolled merrily along without any kind of calamity, until yesterday.

      Yesterday after seeing both kids off to school I went about making my usual diet breakfast of one poached egg, one piece of toast, and glass of orange juice.  Since my husband is gone more than he is not, I save all the papers our kids have done at school for him to see when he finally arrives on the scene.  Up until yesterday I kept those papers on the microwave next to the toaster.  I didn’t pay any never mind that the stacks of papers were a little close to the toaster, I just popped in my bread and went about my business.  Before long I noticed a burning smell. Confused by this, I went over to get my toast and realized to my horror that the pages closest to the toaster had been scorched.  Oh $hit and sunny Je$us!  There is nothing like starting the day by trying to burn down the house to get the ole heart pumping a little faster.  Needless to say the papers are in a different location now.

 

       The day progressed.  I spent most of it wrapping Christmas presents and am proud to say that little task is finished.  Life marched on and I did my thing.  It wasn’t until I was cooking supper when the real catastrophe happened.  I was standing at my stove turning the chicken I was cooking.  I had Brussels sprouts on the back burner.  Like so many times in the past, I placed a glass lid over the pan so that the water would come to a boil faster.  The glass lid had come with one of my deeper skillets.  Before I knew what hit the glass lid exploded into a million tiny glass pieces leaving only the metal ring that once housed the glass and the round handle.  It scared the living $hit out of me!  I had to dump the Brussels sprouts and clean all the glass off the stove before I could prepare a plan B of green beans.  I would have never dreamed that would have happened and I am sure I lost 10 years off my life from the experience.

         Who would have thought a lid manufactured for the sole purpose of covering a hot pan would explode and shatter like that?  I sure didn’t, not in my wildest dreams.  I guess you live and learn until next time when I give you another glimpse into the life of a trucker’s wife.

Holiday Stress-BFF 251

     This time of year holiday stress and depression go hand in hand.  What causes the stress?  In my experience, it can come from a lot of different angles.

 

       Christmas time is usually the time when you have to tolerate family reunions with people that don’t give a rat’s a$$ about you any other time of the year.  They get together not because they have any desire to see you and celebrate the holiday, but because they feel an obligation to.  To me this is just bull$hit.  If you aren’t good enough to bother with the rest of the year, you don’t need to bother at Christmas either.  These same bunches of dysfunctional folks thrive on chaos and only bother to invite you because they feel it is the Christian thing to do.  In my opinion, I would rather pass on these gatherings where I feel like the bastard at the family reunion: unwanted and scorned.  Unfortunately, as much as they feel obligated to invite, you feel obligated to attend because it is family and by all that is holy it is Christmas.  The result is that conversation is stilted and the atmosphere is about as comfortable and welcoming as a broom shoved up you’re a$$ sideways.  I realize that some families enjoy each other’s company and look forward to and enjoy the holidays together.  I am happy to say that as far as my own little family of four, we fall in the later category.

       Let’s face it, one of the biggest stress causes in my book during the holidays is stretching money to cover all the added extra expense of Christmas plus pay the bills.       When you live paycheck to paycheck, the money situation can be a real challenge.  Amazingly enough, somehow Christmas always comes and is just as joyous as the year before.   There is the running around trying to find the best prices on the gifts and making that almighty dollar go a little farther.  I felt blessed this year to have my husband home to do our Christmas shopping.  There have been some years he hasn’t been.  There have even been some years where he had to leave on Christmas day and we scrambled around trying to fit everything in on Christmas Eve.

     
                            When I was younger Christmas’s were hectic and stressful as we rushed from one relative’s house to the next.  It was stressful making sure we had everything we needed to have for each place over and above all the running around.  While I miss the people that have died over the years and getting together to share Christmas with each of them, I don’t miss all the running here and there frenzy.  I have found I enjoy staying home with my husband and kids opening presents, enjoying a special lunch, then feasting on a dinner fit for a king, while playing with all the kids new toys.  While I am still the perfectionist I have always been, I have mellowed with age and feel I enjoy Christmas even more when it finally comes.

        Christmas can be an overwhelming and stressful time, but it can also be happy and joyous.  This year it offers more together time with my kids and husband that I not only eagerly look forward to, but that I intend to enjoy and savor until next time when I give you another glimpse into the life of a trucker’s wife.

       

One Song, One Thousand Memories- BFF 248

     Everyone has that one song that when they hear it produces an avalanche of poignant memories from the past.  Since this prompt was posted I have racked my brains for the one song that produced that reaction in me.  After much analyzing, I have finally chosen one.  With Christmas only a little over a week away it seems only fitting that I choose “Silent Night”.

       “Silent Night” was one of the first carols that I learned growing up.  Sure I loved “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” and “Frosty the Snowman” but it wasn’t till much later that I got the words memorized.  From grade school through my early twenties I was involved singing in a choir.  There was never a Christmas season that went by that singing “Silent Night” wasn’t on the agenda.  It was the song that the choir would file into auditoriums singing in the darkness while holding a single candle.  It was always so cool!!  Over the years my voice went from a first soprano to an alto and because my voice lowered in register as I aged I got to learn virtually all the female singing parts of this particular song.

 

       When my babies were born I always would rock them to sleep singing this song.  It was a song I can easily sing.  It seemed as appropriate as “Rock a Bye Baby” to use as a lullaby and I always did.  I would snuggle my precious bundle close and sing the melody of every single verse.

   

     It remains to this day to be the one song I don’t need sheet music to play on the piano.  I remember exactly how to play it and can play most of it from memory.  I would spend hours at my piano (when I had one), playing Christmas carols during the holiday season always beginning with “Silent Night” and finishing with “Silent Night”.  It is a song that brings me peace.  The year my Grandma died two days before Christmas, it was the song that would bring tears as it continued to soothe. 

         Just yesterday I was thrilled to hear my daughter play “Silent Night” perfectly on her acoustic guitar.  I found a free website online that had free tabs for just about every Christmas carol you could imagine.  Inspired she huddled over my laptop and played each and every one that caught her fancy until her fingertips hurt.  Then she copied down the tabs carefully to add to her growing library of songs she can effortlessly play.  As my life continues I am sure that the strains of “Silent Night” will continue to mark it and intertwine with my memories until next time when I give you another glimpse into the life of a trucker’s wife.

 

A Call for Action

     After the tragic events in Connecticut, I know I am not alone in wondering what kind of sick world we are living in.  Sadly, this kind of tragedy is happening more and more.  What possesses these people to take a gun and go in and kill random people?  I often wonder why G0d allows things like this to happen.  Is He trying to tell us that we need to have better control over who is allowed to possess a gun?  The world has gone nuts when parents can’t even send their children off to school with the certainty that at the end of the day they will see them again.

       I am shocked, appalled, and deeply saddened.   With two precious children of my own, fear gripped my heart sending each of them off to school not knowing if tragedy would strike here.  You just never know.  I breathe a sigh of relief each day I see them step off their buses and run into my waiting arms.  My heart and prayers go out to the parents that were robbed of this.  It is beyond awful.  When will someone step up to the plate and make laws that would prevent a tragedy like this ever happening again?  The sad part is that things like this will continue as the world continues to spiral out of control.  The scary part is tragedy could strike any of us, anywhere.  Other nut jobs will step up to the plate and have their own killing spree so they can have their one moment of fame before they turn the gun on themselves.

      The bottom line is we can’t live in fear.  We must soldier on and hope for the best.  We must pray that the families touched by this senseless tragedy find peace and that our elected officials have the balls to get tough on gun control laws so things like this cease to become frequent occurrences.  This is a wake up call to our elected officials that are sitting pretty in the capital making more money than most everyone else to bicker amongst themselves getting little done.  It is time to $hit and get.  It is time to take action that will matter.  Unless measures are taken, I fear these senseless killings will continue until next time when I give you another glimpse into the life of a trucker’s wife.

Happiness

NaBloPoMo asks:

“Are you happier working or relaxing?”

      What can I say?  On those rare opportunities when I get called in to work at a school I am so happy I could just $hit because I am making MONEY!!!  Every little bit helps!!   I like being busy.  I don’t thrive on house work, BUT, I can’t help myself from doing it.  Too much clutter makes me batty.  At some point I must clean whether I like it or not.  Yesterday I cleaned out my closet and found jeans I haven’t worn in I don’t even know when.  The best part was when I got the idea to put them on and I could not only get them over my ass but I could snap them and zip them without them sucking my will to live.  I felt like doing a happy dance.  Losing weight has its happy moments!  Not only that, I have room in them.  Life is good!

 

      For the rest of the time when I am not writing and working on my blog, which actually isn’t like work, I have made relaxing into an art form.  I read, I write, I comment, I crochet, I watch movies, and I laze about.  I am hopelessly addicted to Spider Solitaire now that I have figured out exactly how to play it.  Ah yes, relaxing is a good thing.  Are you happier working or relaxing?  If you think about it you might as well choose to be happy.  After all life is entirely too short until next time when I give you another glimpse into the life of a trucker’s wife.

Focus on This: Christmas Tree

The Hardest Job for Me

NaBloPoMo asks today:

“What do you think would be the hardest job for you to do?”

      I didn’t even have to think about this one!!  I could never ever do what my husband does, never in a million years!  He is an over the road truck driver who hauls flat bed loads.  Although I would love to see the countryside like he gets to I would absolutely HATE not being home for a month.  I would miss my family entirely too much.

        Another factor that would make me a bad candidate for truck driving is that I am completely hopeless at backing up a vehicle.  I can not back a small vehicle to save my life let alone an eighteen wheeler.  It freaks me out. I am the person that will park a mile away from where I am going so that I can pull through to a space that I can easily pull out of.  When I was learning how to drive my dad suggested I practice parallel parking in the driveway.  So I got in my car and prepared to back into the space that was between his Ranchero and my mom’s Mercury Marquis.  I backed up and took out the side of my dad’s Ranchero!  It was one of those “Oh $hit” moments I will never forget!  My dad came running out of the house waving his arms yelling for me to stop!  After that he didn’t think I needed to “practice” any more and eventually insisted that I park in the yard where I could easily turn around far away from his and my mom’s vehicles.  Eventually he had a turn around asphalted in the front yard of his house specifically for my benefit.  When I finally went to take the driving test for my license the driver’s examiner told me specifically what to do to guide my car and parallel park.  Because of this, I passed the test.  He must have sensed that I would never handle it on my own!

        Besides the fact that I don’t do reverse well, I realize there is a lot of hard work involved in hauling flatbed.  My husband has to climb up on loads taller than his truck and balance his a$$ on the wind in all kinds of weather while he tarps.  I could never do that!  I would be terrified I would fall.  While I used to climb around on the heavy machinery my dad hauled when I was a kid, that was a whole different ballgame compared to the steel or whatever that is stacked a mile high on his trailer.  Not only does he have to climb great heights and balance, he has to be able to hurl heavy tarps over the top of the load to the other side so he can tie them down.  I can just see me completely exhausting myself and never accomplishing that feat or spending the whole time gazing in horror at what I am expected to do and thinking to myself “You have got be $hitting me!”

        The last little tidbit which would rock my world if I was an over the road driver would be the paralyzing fear of getting lost and of being surrounded by traffic on every side.  I find that very claustrophobic.  I can do it, but I drive through big cities with a death grip on the wheel literally $hitting bricks alternating between praying and cussing.  While being the wife of a truck driver can be a lonely life, being a truck driver gone all the time would be much worse.  Just you and the road as the time passes and minutes turn into hours, days, and weeks.  It is a lonely life and not for everyone.  I would be so home sick!  While there are times when I would love to have a job and travel all over creation like my husband, I am much better off at home and out of trouble until next time when I give you another glimpse into the life of a trucker’s wife.