Oh just admit it Nava, in your world fluffy puppies, kitties and unicorns dance on rainbows for your amusement. 
Sometimes I think I should have stayed in teaching. If I had, I’d be near retirement. Then again, I’d also have had thirty-five years of the aggravation that made me leave in the first place so I did myself a favor there. I’d be a worse grouchy ol’ bear than I am now and who wants that!
Whoa - wait a second, **swampy **- are you saying that if my daughter sticks with teaching, she’s going to end up like you in 35 years??? :eek: I need to get that girl to a career counselor!!!
Lunch time. I need the break - these super-hot drawings are turning my brain to mush. Or I might be over-thinking it. Stoopit brain… anyway, I’m having the last of the leftover N.O.T. soup for lunch. Tomorrow, I’m thinking I’ll have some leftover beef-veggie soup. Soup is easier than sammiches - dump it in a container and go! Yay for easy!!
**CatDude **- Yanno, last time I ran a defrag, I thought I’d done something wrong because I didn’t see the purdy colors. Glad it’s not just me.
… but I don’t like dancing puppies…
It’s worse than you think – if I understand correctly, she already resembles **Swampy **in some ways. For instance, she likes men… 
NO, no, no… The unicorns are dancing. The puppies are fluffy. I’m not sure what the kitties are doing… 
The kittes are jumping the fence, is what they’re doing! Well, little orange one is. I still keep a pseudo-rein in on Dresden, because although he could easily jump the fence Little Orange Cat climbs over to get out, I just don’t quite trust him to not get lost. Her, I don’t worry so much about. I guess I think he’s dumber, or something. >.<
Morning, all! 'tis a Monday; shouldn’t get past the low-90’s today, that will be nice. By next week I should be able to start wearing all the sweaters and light throw-ons I have been pulling out of storage.
Off to wrangle coffee!
CatDude and FCM: Isn’t there something you can use to expand the display? It’s been a while since I ran defragmenter on anything, but I think there was a button I could hit to get the pretty colors.
I decided to stay home today since I was running a slight fever and, as a plus, was coughing and sneezing. Most of the sneezing seems to have subsided, but I’m still having a few couging jags, mostly because my throat believes it is dry despite gallons and gallons of liquids in the past few days. Am currently making chicken soup.
Because I’m not a good patient, I’ve distracted myself by finding all the brownie recipes on the blog: Brownies: Fudgy Brownies, Peanut Butter Dot (Brownies), Irish Creme Brownies; Cheesecake Brownies, Peanut Butter Chocolate Brownies, Mocha Brownies (Linked from post on Pioneer Woman appearing on GMA). Also I created a label called brownies so that you can find them all from the list of categories on the right.
I also have a parental unit with “standards.” Of course, her professed standards for me are something between Maria in the Sound of Music and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, but with less chutzpah and more fashion sense. Sadly, she was not blessed with a glamorous girly-girl daughter, so while she appears to be proud of my professional accomplishments, I think she still imagines a glammed-up version of me that would be that much better than the real me. I don’t think she’s actually disappointed (any more), but still likes to project her vision of me onto me, if that makes any sense. (More a control thing, than anything, really.)
When this aspect of her standards comes up in conversation these days, I just smile, nod and change the subject as quickly as possible.
I’ve consumed some chicken soup in the meantime and am now going to indulge in a nap, I think. Followed by knitting.
Hugs all.
GT
Many thanks (baking spree ahead :D). Try some echinacea (if you don’t have ragweed allergies or other medical issues that contraindicate it) or some lysine and get well.
I CANNOT GET RID OF THIS STOOPID COUGH AND CHEST CONGESTION!
I have consumed what feels like gallons of mucinex and robitussin, and still little improvement for almost 2 weeks now.
What am I supposed to do? I can only take certain things since I am pregnant, and now I think I may have thrush…this sucks
Can I have pomeranian puppies instead? Given how they look when grown up (can you apply that term to poms?), they have to be the fluffiest puppies ever.
GT, I think our mothers are related. I don’t wear earrings in her presence any more because I find “aren’t you wearing earrings?” easier to deal with than a critique listing exactly why those particular earrings aren’t the best for the rest of my ensemble 
(note that I don’t even wear “ensembles”, I just drop some clothes on).
God, what a stupid day.
Good Monday morning, all!
This is indeed an interesting idea for the MMP. When I was coming up, the one thing I did NOT want to hear from either parent was that they were disappointed in me or my performance. I did not have many problems with school work until I reached junior high (middle school now). In 7th grade, we had to put together a booklet of poetry and stories. Many of the other students were typing theirs, so I asked my parents to type mine for me, which they did (I think actually my father did the typing). Unfortunately, I got a grade of C- on this booklet, but I was afraid to let my parents see that, so … I changed the grade from a C- to a C+ … and they eventually found out that I had done that, and the consequences were even worse than they would have been originally. Nothing like your parents shaming you… 
Of course it was a bigger disappointment that I had changed the grade.
On the menu in my house this week is, hopefully, barbecue pork shoulder! I am doing my best to keep from looking up the brownie recipes, though, thank you so much, GT!
I have made the chocolate birthday surprise cake/pudding twice now, my gosh that is some good stuff. I had forgotten how tasty bread pudding can be (especially when it has a layer of chocolatey goodness inside … LOL).
Happy Monday all!
Imagine for one second that person who’s withheld approval from you, for a lifetime, suddenly relents, and dispassionately declares, ‘No, yeah, I think you’re okay.’, or whatever. How do you think you’d feel? If you’ve ever been there you know, it’s an empty anticlimatic thing that fails to deliver what your imagination wants and your soul needs.
Self awareness is reached when you recognize, all the approval you are seeking, all the love you are searching for, to fulfill or complete you, to make you feel ‘enough’,( finally )-- all of that, has to come from within you.
Besides which there is a tiny little challenge/exercise that can completely shift your perspective on not ever being ‘enough’. (I warn you going in though, while it sounds remarkably simplistic, should you attempt it, you need to be aware it is extremely difficult. I’m just saying you may have disappointments from your monkey mind wanting to distract you, be prepared!) Last thing every night, as you crawl into your warm bed, remind yourself how, “I did your best this day and it was enough for me!” (Leave yourself a note beside your bed!) Simple right? Yeah, good luck!
In the end everyone has to decide for themselves if they are ‘enough’. It’s not to say you aren’t still a work in progress. No one should stop striving to be a better person. In acknowledging that you are trying your best to be the best person you know how to be, and that it’s enough, you then somewhat forcibly open yourself to accepting others, who could say those same words, with less negative judgment, I think.
Feel better, Apes and** GT**!
I’ve kind of lost focus for the day. My grandparents needed to go grocery shopping and we weren’t planning to take them until Thursday so we did that and then had N.O.L. An email that I’ve been waiting for still hasn’t shown up and an email that I sent a month ago just got answered. I’m a bit scattered and trying to figure out what to tackle next. Eventually I have to go to class tonight. Not sure what will happen between now and then.
"They fuck you up,
Your mum and dad,
They may not mean to,
But they do.
They add in all
Of their own faults
And some new ones
Just for you."
It would be easier if I were married or even had a series of long term romantic relationships. It would have given me some perspective outside of my relationship with my parents. Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened, so I grapple with it on a daily basis.
It really didn’t help that my parents have both got some stunning issues themselves. My father was delighted to have a clever, adventurous little girl for a daughter. But when I grew up to be an intelligent, independent thinking woman who challenged his beliefs? Not so much. Both he and my mom taught me that so long as I am overweight, I will never be a success. Not really. Any achievement is overshadowed by the fact that I don’t make an ideal poster girl.
Even when my weight is not under discussion, it’s a frustrating that the things I’m good at - writing, drawing, singing - are ‘gifts’, talents that magically appeared, as opposed to skills I earned by long and determined practice.
Some days . . . sigh
In our case, those first times Mom said “thank you” (at the prompting of a friend who threatened with ending the friendship if Mom didn’t start treating us like human beings), or that she gave us a compliment which didn’t backhand us all the way to Greece, our reaction was along the lines of “did you hear what I heard?” “I did, but I’m not sure whether it means what it would mean from someone else.” “Oh, OK, so it’s not me who’s nuts.” “Hell naw, it’s still her.”
My brothers are what anchors me to the rest of the family, but also the main reason I haven’t ended up still more nuts than I am. Having someone to check whether you’re losing your mind comes in handy very often when my maternal family is involved.
But isn’t self awareness about pausing and probing to understand why, when finally delivered the acknowledgment you’ve so long pined for and craved, when it’s delivered your response is deflection, immediate and with humour. Anyone can stumble through life, but self reflection requires more of us.
Do you also use humour to deflect compliments when you receive them? (From everyone, or just your Mom?) Don’t you think it’s telling, when you see such a thing in women? It always gives me pause.
The first time I remember receiving a gushing, sincere, non-backhanding compliment, my reaction was disbelief. I was 19 and I couldn’t remember getting one, ever. I’d just done in less than one hour some work which my bosses thought would take several hours; they pointed this out and also that I’d been able to perform by myself a step for which they’d thought I’d need help (changing the floppy - I’d figured out how to expel it and that the second one had to go in in the same exact position).
After the revelation that, despite all previous evidence to the contrary, I could be deserving of actual praise, I learned to compare myself with others without that shite I’d been taught, where what was praiseworthy in others was not in me, and I discovered there were many things which I was good at - it was the standards of my parents and teachers that were screwed.
Nowadays when I receive a compliment, I say “thank you”.
And the reaction with the bros wasn’t humor, it was disbelief. Mom behaving like a human being? Srsly? We would have thought that was about as likely as Montserrat Caballé becoming a catwalk model.
Nava you can replace the fluffy puppies with fluffy gerbils or hamsters.
Much fun at irk. I have two of the state PTB here. Right now they are at N.O.L. so I have a little respite. So far all I’ve heard is how good things look, how I’m on target for most of the goals, that I’ve done a good job with clearin’ up a lot of the mess I inherited and all that there stuff. Oh, and new person starts next Monday. A big YAY for that. This afternoon we go through files. I actually requested this as even though progress has been made, I know there’s stuff that needs to be fixed still and need some input.
The beerverages I drink at men’s night tonight shall be well deserved.
Overslept today, but that’s okay it’s Monday. I don’t have to work until 6PM.
I just remembered my son really did wake me up to drive him to school, it wasn’t a dream. My truck is parked in the street instead of the driveway, so yes I really did go out.
My father use to be verbally abusive and because he drank you never knew from day to day what was right and what was wrong. He would go off telling me I was worthless and useless, and how could I be so dumb. They he would raise his arms and look at the ceiling and say ‘God, what did I do that was so awful that I deserved to be punished with a daughter like this?’.
One day, I’d had enough of it and well I won’t repeat the words here but lets just say I told him where to go and what to do to himself when he got there and that NOBODY HAS THE RIGHT TO TALK TO ME THAT WAY, INCLUDING HIM! My mother froze, nobody ever talked to my father that way. I was waiting for the backhand.
My father got very very quiet and then he looked at me and said, ‘You are absolutely right’. He never did talk to me like that again and from that point on we were able to repair our relationship and actually get along.
I’ve heard we all have tapes running through our heads, of all the things we heard as we were growing up. I think the things my father was saying to me was the tape running through his head that his parents said to him. A lot of times people say what they are feeling about themselves, and a lot of times they really aren’t listening and don’t realize how much it hurts.
The things your father says to you is probably what his father said to him.
In my metaphysics class we learned that not only is there personal karma, but there is family karma as well. You’re pregnant now, you have the chance to break the cycle and change the family karma. You know how it feels to be abused and you recognize it, you have the chance to change it. If you do nothing else in life other than make that change for future generations, maybe that makes you more than just ‘good enough’.