Daybook

http://thesimplewomansdaybook.blogspot.com/

FOR TODAY: July 25, 2012

Outside my window... Powder blue sky, a few lonely clouds, green grass, oak trees, manicured lawns and big brick houses.  It's still hot although it's 7pm.  I'm nestled in my comfy neighborhood back in Texas after a week in Florida. 

I am thinking...about so many things...the kids..the bills...my schedule...  I'm thinking about Brent at boot camp and wondering how he is handling all the challenges in his training.  We heard from him about a week ago, and he sounded good. He said he is learning a ton.  The Colorado theater shooting happened while we were on vacation, and I've been thinking about that a lot too.  The shooter...the victims...guns...going out in public etc..

I am thankful...Sierra made it safely on her first solo drive to Lubbock.  She and I are so different with highway driving.  I learned how to drive in Washington DC and have always been a confident driver.  She is scared of driving on the highways and has never made the trip by herself.  She looked up an alternate route that kept her on major highways without a lot of interchanges.  She went back to school early to get a job before rush starts and found a job waiting table right away! 
     I'm thankful Zoe and Sierra are getting along better now and have come a long way in developing their sisterly relationship.  I've always wanted to have a sister.  They are lucky to have each other.  They are seven years apart, so it's been kind of rough sometimes with both of them in different stages most of the time.  I think this summer they both realized what it's like to be in the other one's shoes and are starting to understand how lucky they are to have sisters even though there is a big age gap.
     I'm thankful for getting to spend today with Thomas (since Sierra left for college and Zoe is sleeping over at Joe's mom's).  He is such a good sport when I want to drag him around for girl stuff like getting my nails done today and registering Zoe for dance classes.  We had some lunch and went to the pool.  He said, "hey mommy - win/win - you can swim laps and I can go down the waterslides!"  He joined me in the lap lane for a while and then we played in the family swim area too.  He is working on going all the way across the pool and today asked if I thought he might be able to become an Olympic swimmer one day.  I told him he can be anything he wants. It just takes work and practice.  He seems turned onto the idea of exercising today.  That's awesome. 
     I'm thankful for Joe.  He is my rock, my soft place to land, and my person.  He is the strong husband and father in the family.  He takes care of all of us. He works really hard to support us and the lifestyle we have.  He loves me just they way I am and supports me in whatever I want to do.

I am learning... to develop my blogging habit.  I've been working on it off and on over the years and now that I'm home full time again, it's fun to get back to writing down some of the many thoughts that run through my complicated mind.  It gives me a way to structure my thinking and to share my thoughts with my friends. 
     I'm still learning guitar.  I downloaded the Ultimate Guitar app on my iPhone and I love looking up songs that I hear to play.  I'm getting better, but I still have a long way to go.  I would still love to get better on my electric guitar, just need to carve out more time to practice.
     I'm also learning Trigonometry.  I need to write a blog about my love affair with math to explain my history, but suffice it to say I didn't know I liked math or was good at it until I became a teacher.  I want to go back and keep taking classes as time allows.  I've downloaded the Trignometry class from Khan Academy on my iPhone too, and I watch the online lessons and do the practice problems.

In the kitchen...grass fed beef is thawing.  Thomas wants Hamburger Helper Stroganoff tonight (yuck!), so I will probably stir fry some veggies with the meat separately and then make the stroganoff with the rest of it. 

I am wearing... my bikini (we just got home from the pool), black nike shorts, and a lime green tank top that says LIVE LOVE SURF Pensacola <3

I am creating... this blog!  Working on writing about my life and my thoughts without fear of who reads it. 

I am going... to PT tomorrow.  Still having lots of back pain, working on core stabilization and spinal strengthening. 

I am reading...can you believe I'm still on Hunger Games? I think I started it months ago. I'm almost at the end, but I hate reading fiction!  HAHA.  I like to read, but I gravitate to non-fiction.  I have to work on my fictional reading habit just like I have to work on my writing habit.  I'm so much more of a math and science person.  I read a ton of news articles and non-fictional stuff every day, but I admit reading fiction is like pulling teeth.  I saw Hunger Games, and I liked it and heard the books are better, so I'm trying.  I'm toward the end where Katniss and Peeta are still in the cave. She has the extra supplies and his leg is healing, but they are still there.  I've seen the movie, so I don't really care to finish the book, but I heard the book is different, so I do still want to finish it sometime.

I am wondering... how to handle a situation with my mom.  We've had a long history together, and although I know she loves me, I am not able to have a relationship with her.  We haven't spoken since Thanksgiving. She came here and got really upset and changed her ticket and left early then blamed everything on me.  It's very complicated. I hate that we don't have a relationship but I don't know how to fix it.

I am hoping... to lose about ten pounds.  I will write a separate post about diet and my allergies.

I am pondering... what makes some people so into facebook and others not.  The other day, Joe and I were talking about facebook like we often do.  I'm a big fan and am an active user.  I have lived in many places and experienced many things, and I know people all over the world whom I communicate with via facebook.  I've always been an extrovert, so it makes sense that I love social media.  I connect with people in real life too, but seriously I have many friends who live in facebook land, and without facebook I wouldn't be able to keep in touch, see pictures of their kids, or hear about their lives.  I frequently tell Joe about things I post and ask him if he has seen them.  His usual answer is no.  If something's important, I'll ask him to go and look at it and tell me what he thinks about it.  Since I've been blogging again recently, I decided to also create a facebook 'fan' page for my blog...not so much to amass fans (although that would be great) but to have one place for all my blog posts instead of having them mixed throughout my timeline obscured by other posts about what I'm doing or what I'm listening to or links to other interesting sites or pictures I've posted.  When you create a page, you invite people to 'like' it so they will get your posts in their news feeds.  I invited all my facebook friends to like my page, and I noticed my husband, my most important person in the world didn't like it yet, so I asked him if he got the invitation or if he had read any of my recent posts.  His response was, "I never think to check facebook."  I was speechless.  The words echoed in my head again as I struggled to understand them.  We don't live on the same planet.  I have to try NOT to check facebook too much.  How can people never think to check facebook?  My first impulse is to explain it by saying he has both his parents and had his needs met as a child, so that must be why he doesn't reach out to others as much as I do.  (I didn't have both parents, I didn't have my needs met as a child, and I've always reached out to friends for connection and validation to compensate).  I've always been a "friends" person.  These days many of my friends live in the computer, so I'm always thinking about connecting and learning things and sharing ideas and expressing myself.  If you're reading this, you are probably like me. You're online on facebook or have arrived at my blog through twitter or the daybook or what have you.  I truly ponder what makes people so different on a basic level like that.  Why is it so easy for Joe to never think of facebook?  His answer is that he is too busy in the real world to care about the virtual world.  He reached over, poked my leg, and said, "I like you Susanne and I like Susanne's World.  I just like Susanne's real world."  That meant a lot.  It's real, and it counted way more than getting 100 likes on facebook.  I'm sure there is a happy medium between never checking facebook and checking it all the time.

I am hearing... Alaine, "Sacrifice"  I still remember the first time I heard this song, on the way down the mountain on our last day in St. John, USVI in 2007.  I thought it was Madonna!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ll1VxrFARU

A favorite quote for today..."Be yourself. The world worships the original."  Ingrid Bergman

One of my favorite things... got a mani/pedi today!  Thomas was happy to come along with me because the ladies let him sit in a massage chair. He loved it!

A few plans for the rest of the week: PT and allergy shots tomorrow, allergy shots for Thomas on Friday, a little shopping to get the kids ready for soccer camp next week. Grocery shopping at Sprouts!

A peek into my day