Goodbye, Fort Bragg
I cussed my husband out for the first time. It was 1 am, and he was slamming cabinets and drawers in frustration from having had to spend so much time priming the walls, which is the exact reason he didn’t want me to paint them back in 2016. The attitude wasn’t helping. This was the night before we were meant to move out of our military housing and move on to the rest of our non-military lives. On Tuesday, two women came to pack our things, which were moved out by two functionally fit men on Wednesday. They left us with all the things we set aside to get us…
I Got Rid of 60% of My Clothes
I finally got around to clicking on Tidying Up with Marie Kondo instead of watching another episode of The Office on Netflix. I was surprised to learn Marie Kondo doesn’t speak English and expected the show to be annoying. Instead, I found Marie charming and whimsical. Her disposition is very light, happy. One thing she can say was “I love mess!” So she’s some sort of fairy. The first episode was about a family with two kids, and mom was too overwhelmed to handle the mess. I related to that on a spiritual level, except I’m not overwhelmed by the messes, they were just not at the top of my priorities. Dad was…
What I Learned in My Fourth Year of Marriage That Changed My Life
My fourth anniversary was on Thanksgiving this year. I hadn’t known that was possible because I thought Thanksgiving was always the last Thursday of the month, and my anniversary, November 22nd, is more than seven days from the end of the month. We All Have Problems Last year on Thanksgiving I decided I would ignore all my marriage problems for the next year to see if they went away because maybe they were in my head. My husband had been deployed to Afghanistan when his dad died at the end of November. He came home on the first of December. At the end of the trip to lay his father…
Gifts for the Athlete in Your Life
As an intentional gift giver, every year I search for gift guides to help spark ideas for gifts for the people on my list. Athletes, gym rats, fitness buffs kind of have the same MO; they need the same stuff. Browse this list for ideas for the fit people in your life! This post contains affiliate links! I may be compensated if you make a purchase through the link. Thanks! Water Bottle Gym Heads are always trying to drink more water. Support your friend’s hydration goals by gifting a handy, (but admittedly obtrusive in some settings) gallon sized water bottle. Does carrying around a gallon of water seem completely ridiculous? Camelbak’s…
How to Give Gifts People Want
The Lord loves a cheerful giver. I’m usually a cheerful giver. My hyper-analytical nature usually enables me to come up with thoughtful gifts. But I do feel stressed when I don’t know someone well enough to give them the quality of gift I would want. This post will show you a process for selecting thoughtful gifts in an organized way so that gift giving isn’t stressful as it tends to be. One of the principles I live by is not to bring clutter into this house. My aversion to clutter is complicated by my guilt about throwing things away. As a result, I often decline free stuff, other than candy,…
3 Ways to Practice Gratitude
How many Thanksgiving dinners have I attended where the family members were made to state something they were grateful for? Enough to know we all could use a little help to experience gratitude more often in our lives so that we aren’t grasping at straws. The answers always range from surface level- an xbox, to practical– job, to sincere– grandma still being with us. Not inherently bad answers, but would those be our answers if we were inclined toward identifying things that we are thankful for? What if we didn’t have to think of things that we use often or that people in worse situations don’t have? What if we…
Pumpkin Spiced Latte Macarons and Why You Should Make Them
I started baking on a whim. I threw together some cake mix cookies before work because I had been non-committal about attending a coworker’s baby shower on my lunch. I was new to the team and didn’t know her, so I couldn’t genuinely celebrate with them. (I could now.) Actually, I remember that someone asked if I was okay. Surprisingly, everyone loved the cookies. I ended up making them again by request and gaining the confidence to try other things and ultimately took on the the fabled macaron. Macarons Macarons look fancy, which signifies the level of skill they demand. There are hundreds of articles, videos, and blog posts about…
Site Update
At the beginning of June I migrated from wordpress.com to self-hosting. I basically went from blogging lite to the paid version. I started talking to a designer I found on Facebook Marketplace who was going to maintain my site for $50/month. After I finally got the site content migrated to the new host (a two-week debacle), he informed me he would have to host my site or I would need to pay $500 for a one time service. Because I needed to be able to cut ties with him if I wasn’t happy with his work, I did not want him to host my site. At Youtube’s suggestion, I decided…
