Back from the business trip to the desert. Weigh-in this morning shows me .20 pounds higher than last week, and I laugh. Then I go look at my face in the mirror and see how poofy I am and say “hec, I’ll weigh myself in the morning on Sunday and count that weight as my total for the week.” Probably have some water retention from salty foods, or chlorine absorption from the pool, or just the difference in high desert and sea level.

What does that laughter mean? That I have a healthy relationship with my food and my life. The trip away was great, I had opportunities to enjoy new flavors, opportunities to be active, I lived and worked in balance and truly enjoyed this business trip. So lessons from CKU have “stuck”, my prayers are being answered, the exercises in living and eating mindfully are sticking. I’m sure I will continue to have ups and downs, right now I am just ever so pleased with where I am.

Marriage is its own path

My hubby, good man that he is, is also quite talented at finding certain buttons to push for me, buttons of dissatisfaction, confusion, and unhappiness. He’s been diagnosed with some severe learning disabilities, has above a 75 percent hearing loss in each ear, and (undiagnosed, but my belief) is probably Asperger type autistic. Every day is some kind of effort for me to learn to accept who he is, enjoy the fine talents and qualities he brings to our marriage and my life, and to remember that he is doing his best always. Unfortunately, there are days when I’m just not very good at looking at the half-full glass. Instead, all I seem to be able to focus on is what’s missing in that glass. <sigh> Makes me feel bad when I hurt the hubby’s feelings over something he cannot change. Also makes me feel bad when my own needs or wishes can’t be met.

Thinking about this in the early morning light today, I realized life is so much more complicated than I ever gave it credit for! I think when I was younger (or maybe before I met this guy who became my hubby) I really did believe that anyone could grow up to be anything, that all it took to be successful was hard work and putting one’s mind to something. But some things are just not possible for some folks, some folks will struggle every day with some aspect of living that I simply take for granted. Every time I come up against some piece of this knowledge I feel humbled and blessed. Humbled that I have been so arrogant in the past, blessed because there is so little that has been a true struggle in my own living.

To balance out the fact that I even wrote the ways I struggle in marriage, here’s a short list of the characteristics of my hubby that I am grateful for (in no particular order): he’s handsome, his height is perfect, he is absolutely loyal, he is always affectionate, he is gentle with children, he’d give you the shirt off his back if you needed it, he brings laughter to every day, he brings me “presents of the day,” he’s pledged to be mine forever (whatever forever may be).

Office 2007

This is my first blog entry typed in Word 2007. That’s right. Got my computer up and running, now I’m playing in the new versions of applications. So far, I’ve had two terribly grumpy sessions, and a few pretty nifty sessions. Change and computer upgrades are an eternal part of my life. It’s better for me to look for what is good so that I can share it with others, rather than bemoan the fact that things don’t work the way I remember in Windows XP.

Pictures

I’ve missed placing pictures on my blog this week. But I think I finally got the camera figured out, so I should be able to begin posting again this week. Today’s picture: my mother’s day gift from my hubby was a garden wagon. We used it to go to the Farmer’s Market, and I pulled hubby and grandnephew around the market, much to the delight of most of the men we passed.

Not much else for now. Summer schedule starts at church tomorrow (one service instead of two). Hubby and I are planning our summer vacation options. And today almost makes me believe we will finally be able to turn off the furnace for the season!

Shalom alechem, -otter