Sometimes the best plans are the ones that don't happen

I had a busy night planned for tonight. The local Panhellenic Alumnae board had a meeting tonight at 6:30 and as the VP I needed to be in attendance. So my plan was to come home, wash dishes while the dogs potty, go to the board meeting then come home and get some house work done. 

Pretty much the only thing that went according to plan was I did eventually make it to the meeting. 

I came home, started the dishes then got a text from hubby. So rather than finish the dishes I talked to him while the dogs ran around outside. 

Then I realized I was running late, threw on a hoody and ran out the door. Without my notebook...I ended up getting lost on my way to the meeting so I was not only 10 minutes late because of talking to Adam for so long but another 15 minutes late because I got lost and thought I knew better than my GPS (which it turns out I did I just turned one block too soon so instead of saving 5 minutes it took another 10 to get where I was going) 

Then after the meeting I realized I was very close to my friend Kim's house. And since today was Kim's birthday and she had had a hard day I decided she (we) needed wine and cupcakes. I stopped and grabbed the necessary supplies and headed to her house. 

Once I got there I had the most wonderful evening. We each had a glass of wine and just sat and talked for over an hour. It was so relaxing and just wonderful to hang out. I didn't get my cupcake though, her son is just too dang cute and hoodwinked me into promising it to him tomorrow if he comes home from school with a green bear (think a stoplight for behavior) so I guess ill just have to eat a chocolate chip cookie before I go to bed. :) 

Now I am home, completely relaxed and while the other housework didn't get done it can wait. I did finish my dishes at least. 

Good night world, hanging out with my friend was way more important than any cleaning I might have gotten done in the same 1 1/2 hours. 

Does Adam being in the Navy make me less happy?

Would you be happier without the military?

As many of you know I'm participating in "The Happiness Project" over at Spouse Buzz and so far I can honestly say I am making progress.  All of my craft projects have been completed and put away so I no longer have half-finished projects sitting around the floor to trip over and I changed my sheets last night so my bed is officially cleaned off, and I sleep a lot better without all the clean clothes piled up on hubby's side of the bed so I'm sure that will help make me happier :)  

Today Amy at Spouse Buzz posted a blog post that addresses a question we asked in our group discussion.  "would you be happier without the military", the majority of people in my group said yes which is reflective of the current responses to the poll on Spouse Buzz but for me, I was a dissenter in the group, I said no, and here's why:

Do I like being separated from my husband, no.  It sucks.  Who would like being separated from their best friend?  But I also realize that other jobs cause separation also and in this current moment in time I would be no happier without the military than I am with it.  This is different from saying that I am happier with Adam being in the Navy than I would be if he were not in the military at all.  There are positive and negatives to both and both would affect my happiness level.  I just think the net effect of the two would be zero.

Now ask me this again in six months when I'm yelling at Adam for leaving his socks on the floor again...then I might say we need more deployments to be happy :)

(For Amy's post visit  http://spousebuzz.com/blog/2013/10/poll-happier-outside-military.html )

Happiness Project Progress report

So here are the goals I have set for the first month of my happiness project:

COMPLETE 1-finish any half finished projects I have in the living room and/or put them away, & don't start any new projects until after homecoming-By October 16

STARTED 2-get the clean laundry off of my bed folded & put away-By October 19

STARTED3-get the clean laundry I have kicked off the bed rewashed & put away-By October 23

4-find homes for the clutter in my living room-By October 26
(October 26 is my God Daughters 1-year birthday party at my house so I have to get this stuff done by then.)

5-Organize my sheet music/hymnals on shelf besides piano (November 2)

6-Organize kitchen cabinets (November 9) (I may have found someone I can pay who will do this for me. We just have to work out a time. She is going to organize my kitchen cabinets, Adams closet, and help me finish unpacking the 1,000,000 boxes of books I still have in the garage.)

So as you can see progress is being made and I am on my way to meeti my deadlines. Now just to keep up the momentum. 

Happiness project update

So when I got home tonight this is what my living room floor looked like from the different projects I had going on. 

I finished both diaper cakes, put together baskets for the two people I will be booing tomorrow at work and finished the presents I'm making for my fellow FRG officers & the Ombudsmen. (Ill post a picture of those later, I'm not sure if any of the officers read my blog or not but just on case. 

I also got this sign in the mail that I plan to hold at the pier for homecoming. Isn't it awesome! :)

My goal for tomorrow is to get all of the craft stuff organized and put away before bed. Wednesday will begin my laundry journey so stay tuned :) 

The Happiness Project

Have you read the book The Happiness Project?  I haven't but I fully intend to.  SpouseBuzz is hosting their own happiness project right now and my group just wrapped up our first meeting.  I'm so excited for the potential this project has to help me meet other amazing women and hopefully insert more happiness into my own life.
Apparently one of the ideas of the happiness project involves taking things one at a time.  So my first to-do item is to break cleaning my house down into sections and finishing each item individually, so dear blog readers...here is my breakdown of things I am going to take one at a time and hopefully get them all done by my deadlines so here it goes.  (Note we meet on Sundays but I work better with Saturday deadlines.)

My first few items/areas of the house are:
1-finish any half finished projects I have in the living room and/or put them away, & don't start any new projects until after homecoming-By October 16
2-get the clean laundry off of my bed folded & put away-By October 19
3-get the clean laundry I have kicked off the bed rewashed & put away-By October 23
4-find homes for the clutter in my living room-By October 26
(October 26 is my God Daughters 1-year birthday party at my house so I have to get this stuff done by then.)

Other items I want to accomplish by our next meeting:
5-Organize my sheet music/hymnals on shelf besides piano (November 2)
6-Organize kitchen cabinets (November 9)

Who knows what my one-item will be next month but I think getting these things taken care of (especially items 1-3) will go a long way towards making my mornings go smoother and life feel less chaotic and will help make me a little bit happier.  I will post pictures of my progress as I go, and promise to try (yes try, that's my loophole in case I fail) to do a better job of keeping you updated as I go.  I have lots of blog ideas floating around in my brain I just need to sit down and type them up.

Old Friends

As we travel through life there are people who tend to float in and out of our lives.  Occasionally we meet people who we care about and want to stay in touch with.  Sometimes these people are people who we lose touch with despite our best efforts.  I had an absolutely wonderful conversation with one such friend on Sunday and I am so glad that he reached out to me so that we could get back in touch!

This friend is a very special friend, and probably the only person from my Kentucky elementary school I care to ever see again.  He, one of my girlfriends, and I all went to senior prom together.  We just clicked which in hindsight is hilarious.

Why is it hilarious? Stick around and I'll tell you all about it.  For the sake of clarity we will refer to my male friend as Guy and my female friend as Chick, clear as mud? Great lets go!

So when I was in 4th grade I moved to Kentucky and I did not fit in even a little bit.  I had a few friends but not very many, which was strange to me because I had been the super popular social butterfly in Indiana.  One of my friends was Guy.  My dad, who has never been knowing for being politically correct or for having a filter referred to Guy as "Shanon's little faggot friend," which while not necessarily being the nicest way to refer to an elementary school-er was a correct observation. (For the record I never heard my dad refer to Guy this way, I learned this later in life & he didn't mean it in a mean way, Guy was a kid who was obviously gay and dad knew it, he didn't have a problem with it that was just the word he had been raised to use to describe gay guys.)

In middle school I became friends with Chick.  On the surface the two of us have about as much in common as...well nothing in common what-so-ever.

So Guy, Chick, and I remained friends (though not in the 3-musketeers since) throughout middle school and high school.  Both Guy & Chick dabbled in the more mystic religions and witchcraft (i.e. Wicca/Earth Worship etc.) I was always the goody-two-shoes, ultra conservative, super Christian girl.  Everything I embodied and believed pointed to me being very evangelical and closed minded to "people like Guy & Chick".  But I wasn't, I never was.  I accepted that they had their own beliefs and they accepted that I had mine. We would sometimes have rather heated religious debates, getting deep into the historical context and meaning of things but we never said anything to insult one another.  And probably most importantly, I never tried to force my beliefs onto either of them nor judge them.

I don't know why but even as a dumb kid I was a little bit of a hippie.  I understood that it was more important to treat people with kindness than to try and force feed them some religious line that they had heard 100 times before.  Even Jesus ate with the sinners, and I am a sinner too--just like them--so who was (am) I to judge. Granted when I was younger I never saw it that was I just simply saw it as me being nice to people I liked and engaging in intelligent conversation but as I have grown older and had conversations with other people I realize that is what I was doing.

I am so glad that I was able to grow and develop my friendship with Guy & Chick over the years because even though I haven't seen either of them in 4 years, or talked to them outside of Facebook since then I know in a couple of months when we meet up for dinner we will pick up right where we left off and I will once again be engaged in intelligent conversation that will help me grow as a person and feed two friendships that mean more to me than most.  These two people helped shape me into who I am today.  They helped me understand that just because someone doesn't hold the same beliefs as I do that doesn't necessarily mean that they are bad people.  I adopted a saying when my super-christian friends would try to criticize me for being friends with Chick and Guy since they all very strongly believed that Chick & Guys beliefs led only to one place. That saying was "they know what I believe and I know what they believe, I can't do any more than share my beliefs, I can't force them upon my friends.  Am I happy with what my beliefs say about my friends no, but I do hope that I am the one who is wrong.  Either way, if I am right-I go to heaven, if I am wrong-I go to heaven, that doesn't seem like bad odds to me."

Now granted, as an adult I realize that that saying was a little self absorbed and slightly skewed but I do hold to the meaning of that mantra--There is no reason to be mean to someone just because they have different beliefs than I do.  I have come across many people over the past 10 years who have different beliefs than I do, and some of them have turned out to be the most amazing, caring, wonderful people I know.  And I am so glad that I know them and can count them as my friends!

Coming out of the infertility closet

So my friend Wife of a Sailor is on vacation this week and asked for a few of her blogging friends to help her out with guest posts, specifically about infertility. 

Most of my readers don't know this but I am lumped into that group. So I decided it was time to share. You can read my guest post by following the link below. Sorry it isn't a nice pretty embedded link, I'm posting this from my phone. But I promise more posts here on my blog in the near future. http://wifeofasailor.com/2013/07/16/guest-post-coming-out-of-the-infertility-closet/#comments. And