This Abundant Life

Finding balance & accepting the lows

I've been feeling kind of blah for the past few days.  Joey and I got in a fight last night and I feel guilty and sad and resentful.  It's strange how our relationship is always on such a high that when we have a fight, I feel like Anne of Green Gables - I'm in the depths of despair.  A friend (She's a Personal Coach in the Portland area, and she's really empathetic and wise!) once gave me the advice to ride the wave when we hit lows, and my life has gotten so much better since I started doing that.  I still feel sad and depressed.  I just accept it for being a low, part of the cycle of my life, and know that it will be over soon.  I used to become so irrational when we'd fight, which would cause us to fight even more.  I'd think that it was a huge crisis, instead of just being a part of the cycle of our relationship.  I'd think, "Oh my gosh, we're falling out of love, our relationship is doomed...blah, blah, blah..." and by the time I stepped back from my thought progression, I'd be thinking, "No way are my kids spending Christmas with him and his new wife!" 

See, now I feel better already thinking about how far I've come.

Another thing I've been thinking about is how when things are really, really good with Joey and me, I am less productive with work.  But when we get into a fight, all of a sudden I am a machine that can't be stopped!  (I must sound like a total basket case at this point.)  I wonder if the shift is a good thing, or if I need to find more balance in this area.  Is the lack of productivity somehow contributing to us fighting?  Or is the sudden ambition simply an effect of the fight?  I'll have to mull that over I guess.  My parents always said that boys were bad for my studies though...

Morning walks

We've been walking with Joey to work every morning at 5:30.  I love being up and watching the sun wake up and Joey and I have the best talks.  I was laughing, thinking about all the random things we talk about.  We talk about everything from Norwegian Death Metal to genetically modified foods.  We also vent about life's little frustrations.  We've really been able to connect more.  I feel like I learn something new about him every day now.

The blackberries are ripe and Lu always has to have a bunch of them.  Then of course, she has to say good morning to the chickens and horsies and moo-cows.  The pigs are gone.  They went to the fair and never came back. 

I have to walk up a huge hill to get home.  It makes me huff and puff.

When we get home, Lu usually asks for "eggy dop soup," or as they say in Human, "Egg Drop Soup."

Eggy Dop Soup

serves 2-3

about 3 c. chicken broth (homemade makes it 1000 times better)
a few handfuls of Swiss chard (or spinach, kale, etc.)
a few cloves of garlic, sliced
a T. or two of Tamari or dark soy sauce
salt and pepper
1 egg per person

Heat broth and Tamari, salt and pepper in pot on stove.  Add chard and garlic before it boils.  Put eggs in a bowl and beat lightly until combined.  When broth is boiling, turn heat off and pour in eggs.  Stir in circular motion to make "threads."  I eat mine with a little squirt of Sri Racha hot sauce.  Lu does not.

This has been a really great way for me to get Lu to eat dark greens.  And I am always feeding her bone broths to help strengthen her teeth and overall immune system.  And of course eggs are filled with wondrous goodness for all!

I took a little break from the 7 Habits book to get deep into Full Moon Feast.

 

I bought it a while ago and skimmed through it a bit and tried some of the recipes, but I started reading it all the way through a few days ago and am almost done.  I think you have to be ready for a book.  If someone makes you read a book or you're pressured into it, you're just not going to get much out of it.  But anyway, I was ready to read it and I really liked it a lot.  Basically, the book is divided into chapters that are named after each moon.  The moon names are names that ancient peoples called that particular moon.  For instance, this Saturday, we are about to have the Corn Moon, when ancient people would begin to harvest their grain.  So in each chapter, she talks about different issues surrounding food, with an overall theme that we should go back to some of the ways of our ancestors because it would be better for our health and the environment.  In the Corn Moon chapter, she talks about how important corn was to Native Americans and how screwed up the corn industry has become.  This isn't really news to me, but she does a great job laying out all the problems. 

It's interesting how things go in cycles, isn't it?  Of course, the moon has it's cycles, the seasons have their cycles, and ancient people (heck, even people 100 years ago) realized that and worked with the cycles of nature.  Cycles are constant.  They are a gift.  They are predictable and constant, but when you screw with them, you begin a new cycle.  We don't think about that today.  Ancient people realized this.  Take corn, for example.  We decided to subsidize corm farmers to grow more corn.  (OK, I don't even know where to jump in on the cycle here.)  Big agriculture business decided to cash in on this.  Now we have more corn than we know what to do with.  But we can sell it for cheap now, so we can feed animals with it, and this is cheaper than grazing.  So that starts a cycle of unhealthy and cruelly treated animals.  We can also use it to sweeten sodas and pretty much all your packaged foods.  This starts a cycle of bad health in humans.  It's even cheaper for Mexico to buy corn from us than it is for them to grow it themselves, as they have been doing for hundreds of years.  So this starts the cycle of joblessness and emigrating to the USA, where we need cheap labor for all the corn farms!  Of course, I'm not even touching on genetically engineered corn.  A lot of people think that this is no big deal, because "there are no studies" that show GM corn is unhealthy, but do we really need a study to tell us that it's a bad idea to eat corn that repels insects?  Can't we just use good old common sense?

We have created a lot of crazy effed up cycles in the past 100 years.  I hope we can figure out how to get back to respecting the earth's cycles. 

Sliding and letting go of guilt

My big girl flies off of slides now.

I have been wanting to talk about this "Daily Groove" message from Scott Noelle of EnjoyParenting.com.  It's about detoxifying parental guilt: "Our culture conditions people to believe that their worth depends on their behavior, so that when your behavior is "wrong" you doubt your self-worth, i.e., you feel guilty. But if you knew absolutely that you are worthy of love and respect — unconditionally — you'd never feel guilty. You'd simply feel "off" whenever your behavior was out of alignment with your values. That "off" feeling would be a welcome sign that you need to adjust your course. And with your self-worth beyond dispute, you'd be confident in your ability to get back on track."

It's such a great point, that when we don't measure up to our standards, it doesn't mean that we're not doing a good job.  It either means that we are having an off day or we are expecting too much of ourselves.  This is a wonderful lesson to teach our kids as well.  If their behavior is challenging one day, either they are having an "off" day, or our expectations of them are too high.  We should think about factors that could lead to the behaviors - hunger, tiredness, sickness, insecurity because of some other factor like being in a new situation, being around too many people, etc.  Barring any of that, it's time to rethink our expectations.  If we go into this believing that our children are good people and want to be good, I think we will have an easier time getting to the bottom of what is going on.

But really, a great way to teach these lessons of compassion and understanding to our kids is to treat ourselves that way too.

Scary Dino Face

Apparently, this is the face that Scary Dinos make.  They also make a growling sound.

Today is supposed to be around 92 degrees.  Yuck.  But not as disgusting as Phoenix.  Blech.

More on my book, the 7 habits, discussed a few days ago.   I am finding that this book is very in line with my parenting beliefs.  The first half of the book takes you through steps on being independent, and the second half takes you through the importance of interdependence.  The author discusses the "Emotional Bank Account" that we have with people.  The analogy goes that you have to continuously make positive "deposits" in order to have good credit with people, including your children.  If you're continually depositing negativity and impatience and not depositing trust and respect, people will expect that from you and you won't have good credit with people.  I thought that was a really good way of looking at relationships with our children.  If I show Tania that I'm a good listener, then she'll tell me things.  If I show Tania that I'm an interrupter or an evaluator or a scolder, then she might not tell me things.  If I tell Lu "NO" 95 percent of the time, maybe she'll come to expect that I'll say no, and not ask, or start asking with whining.  If I say no 5 percent of the time, she may give me the credit of mostly saying yes, and believe that there might be a good reason for no.

I'm sure this is all really obvious stuff, but it turns on lightbulbs in my head.  I also find it strange that this book was written in 1989, when my parents were involved in Tough Love.  My parents totally had this book!  I wonder why none of this resonated with them.

Sunday mornings are nice, real nice

This is just a gratuitous photo of Lu.  I can't get enough of her pigtails.  Oh, and I think I have figured out how to put photos on Typepad now.  Yesterdays post had me enraged.  OK, just uncheck the "wrap text around photo" box.  I keep thinking that Blogger was easier, but I think I just need to get used to a different system.

But anyway, like I was saying, Sunday mornings are nice, real nice.  Tania went to a birthday slumber party last night, and my parents mysteriously disappeared before we woke up this morning, so it was just Joey, Lu, and me.  She wakes up saying, "Mommy, read story.  Cat Hat.  Pease.  Go pay-gound."  I don't know if you got that, but she wants me to read Cat in the Hat and go to the playground.

But on Sundays, I get to read magazines in bed while Joey makes breakfast and hangs out with Lu.  My mother-in-law got me a subscription to Real Simple, and there are about 25 really yummy-looking recipes in this month's issue.  Good thing, because I haven't cooked in a few weeks and need to get back in the swing of things.

And I get to read my book today.  I am re-reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey. 

(Yes, I definitely have the photo thing figured out now.)

The reason I'm reading it again is because I thought it would help with transitioning into being a working mom again.  I've been out of the working world for a few years now and am going from being a stay-at-home mom to running a business.  So anyway, I haven't read the book since I was like, 18.  And I really wish that I had read it when I had my first child, when I went back to school, when I went to law school, when I had my second child.  It really applies to every phase of my life!  One of the first thing the author suggests that you do is to create a life mission statement.  You sort of define all your roles in life and state your mission for each role.  I've done this and printed it out and it's on the wall right in front of me.  So when I'm working and Lu comes up and pulls on my arm and whines at me, and I can feel myself getting frustrated, I can glance at the statement and remember the kind of mother I want to be, and take a few minutes to acknowledge her and get her back to a place of feeling OK.  And when I'm wasting time online, I can look up and see everything I want to be, and I can redirect myself.

Another thing that the author has you do is to try to schedule in "Quadrant II" activities.  These are things that are important in reaching your long-term goals, but often go overlooked, because we spend most of our time tending to emergency matters (Quadrant I) and matters that seem important, but aren't really (Quadrant III).  Then, we're so burnt out that we just want to do things like watch TV or drink or do other leisure activities (Quadrant IV).  So, the point is to "put first things first."  Find a way to prevent emergencies, and find a way to not have to waste time on seemingly important matters that are not really important.  So, for me, that means that in my family life, schedule in dates with my husband, dates with my children, and special family times.  Building the relationships means building trust and creating an atmosphere where we have less melt-downs and less emergencies.  And, we are actively working to reach our true goals, which are not to make sure the kids rooms are clean or that they always have their hair brushed.  In my business, this means scheduling time to deal with marketing and networking and not spending my entire day playing phone tag with clients or dealing with things that can be outsourced.

Anyway, I'm sure as I make my way through the book again with new eyes, I'll have more to say, because I'm finding a lot of what the author has to say to be very relevant to my life as a mother and business owner.

Back in Winston, for now

We got back to Winston last night after staying in Portland for four days so that I could meet with clients.  I learned from this trip that helping and advising people, assisting them in creating peace of mind in their lives, is really satisfying.  I have definitely decided to devote a percentage of my practice to pro bono work, and another percentage of my practice to a sliding scale payment system.  A lot of parents stay up at night worrying about what would happen to their kids in the event of their death.  I would say that most people don't stay up at night worrying about what type of trust their money should go into or whether they should just put it into a money bin like Uncle Scrooge.  But everyone worries about their kids.  Poor people should be able to have guardianship plans too.

I also learned that I should listen to myself more.  I had a bad incident with a "friend" while I was there, a friend that I had previously had a bad feeling about, and well, who could really know that at age 30 I'd have to worry about where I leave my wallet?  Anyway, it made me reflect a bit about how this ignoring of my natural instincts has happened twice this year!  I need to start listening more.  But, on a more positive note, I have noticed that things are a lot different from when I was younger.  In the past, I have kept screwed up people in my life for years at a time without taking action to rid myself of drama and negativity.  These two people I have known for less than a year.  So, I guess I'm making progress?

Now, back to work and calmness, until we get the OK that we can move.