Merry Christmas!

We had a wonderful beginning for our Christmas season. We went to the 8:30 PM Christmas Vigil at Immaculate Conception. We were planning on going to the 7:00 PM mass at St. Mary Magdalene, but then weren't sure if it started at 6:30 or 7:00 and their website didn't have the information posted. Since Immaculate Conception did post their schedule, we went there.

The girls behaved amazingly well for 8:30 PM. Lenora did talk an awful lot and she has a very rich voice for a toddler, which carries nicely - except during Mass, when a more easily lost voice would be nicer. There were some amusing conversations with DH whispering "Hush, it's time to listen," and her saying, "No! Stop talking. You need to be quiet," in a voice just a little quieter than her normal speaking voice. Otherwise, I found myself able to participate in the Mass more than usual. I don't know if I'm finally adjusting to Mass with two toddlers or if two toddlers are finally adjusting to Mass with me, but lately I've actually found myself hearing most of the reading and a good portion of the homily.

On Christmas Eve, the girls went to bed around 11:00 PM - very late! Then DH and I stayed up until 3:00 AM putting together their new kitchenette, adding the red decorations to the Chrismas tree, baking cinnamon-creamcheese swirl bread (that I, sadly, undercooked but was still yummy) and stuffing stockings. Note to self: Stop procrastinating on quitting your procrastination habit.

The girls slept in until 9:15 the next morning, which we were duly (and dully) grateful for. For breakfast, they had a slice of cinnamon swirl bread plus the contents of their stockings - an orange, and lots of candy (plus some stuffed toys). We had covered their kitchenette with a blanket, so it went undiscovered - until just as the Becas (made-up word for one set of grandparents) walked in, where they found an excited Iliana who had just pulled the blanket off of her toy kitchen. They couldn't figure out why she was so excited, since they didn't realize that she had just discovered it! The girls loved their new toy, played with it for about 30 minutes straight, and wandered back to play some more throughout the day.

We talked with the Becas, the girls opened a few more presents, we ate lunch and pie. We discussed how happy we were that, if nothing else, the recession has diminished the pressure to buy gifts this year. We are all introverts (except probably Iliana), and gift-giving and receiving is often more stressful than enjoyable for us. There are so many customs and expectations piled on Christmas gifts; while it's sad that people are tight on money, I'm glad to see the outrageous pressure being reduced a little and the focus returning to the spirit of the season and love of Christ.

This Christmas season was very educational for us. We didn't quite have the Christmas we hoped for, but I'm not sure it was achievable this year anyways. We could have had the decorations, everything done "proper", and two stressed-out parents, or we could have had the laid-back celebration that we did have. I think we chose the better part of the holiday, mostly, but now I have a much clearer picture of what I want this holiday to be for our family.

The question now, for me, is how to celebrate Lent and Easter richly. I don't want it to feel half-hearted at all. But that is a rambling musing that belongs to a different post.

Labor-saving snow!

There's a tree in our yard that I had been mildly thinking about removing, since it blocks sun in what could otherwise be a nice place to expand my garden. However, removing a tree is a lot of work, so I didn't worry about it too much.

The tree has been taken out by the snow. It's a fairly small tree, only about six feet tall or so, and well away from the house. The only thing it hit was another tree, which it is currently propped against. It's the Leaning Tree of Pisa!

And our cat is eating our kindling. We finally got around to trying out our fireplace, and we're loving it.

It's snowing again, too.

I love having this house when it snows. It's so warm (especially since we realized the flue in the ireplace was open since we moved in), and looks gorgeous in this weather.

We need to revise our Christmas plans now. We were going to head up to San Juan Island and visit DH's parents (his dad and dad's wife), but there's a bit too much snow for that. Now we're trying to see if the girl's grandparents (DH's mom and her SO) will come to visit in the morning, to watch the girls open presents. Well, there may not be much "opening" - I'm not sure that I can find the wrapping paper, and a couple of the gifts are too big to wrap. Since I only got them "several" gifts total, that doesn't leave a whole lot else! I think the girls will enjoy large, shared gifts best this year. They'll get more individual gifts as they grow up and their interests diverge. I think we avoided overdoing it this year, which is great.

My poor rose . . . there was one last rose left on my bushes, and it's now been quite thoroughly frozen. I suspect a number of my plants will be gone once this thaws. And we'd better find a chainsaw so we can turn that fallen tree into firewood.

Snow day at work!

This is truly lovely.

Six inches of white, fluffy snow with more still falling. I'm at work right now and relaxing with a cup of coffee while my computer runs automation, after a surprisingly fast commute - given that there is much snow and ice on the roads.

Fortunately, there aren't many people stupid enough to drive on the roads today unless they have to. Those of us who are so stupid had to be careful of snow and ice, but if you are careful to drive in the emptier parts of the road then at least you don't really need to worry so much about other people (incidentally, my carpool driver referred to us both as "idiots" first, so he won't feel maligned by this statement). On 520, this lack of dense traffic was important - the snow was obscuring the lanes entirely. On one part of the road, two "lanes" had formed where there were normally three, and later there was just snow all over, and people just gave each other lots of room and didn't even try to stay in a "lane".

We saw an articulated bus whose rear had swung out and narrowly missed a guardrail, as well as a truck that spun out in the middle of the freeway and was perpendicular to the flow of traffic. However, because there were so few cars there, he didn't hit anyone and just slowed traffic down a bit. We saw several spinouts on the sides of the road - I was surprised that msot of the cars having trouble were the big ones, not little ones. We picked up some people who were walking down a freeway exit; we couldn't tell what had happened, since they had poor English, but I'm guessing that their carpool broke down or slid out.

I think I'm the only one here for my entire floor - possibly my entire building. The quiet is unnerving. The cafeteria is closed, but the coffee machines in the kitchenette work fine, as do the vending machines. I should be able to get a lot of work done today.

Ideas for quick, frugal, filling meals

I occasionally write up my ideas for cooking on a budget - both of time and of money. As a geek, I love lifehacks (tricks that make life just a little bit easier), and as a working mom short on time who used to be a SAHM short on money, I have experience with both frugality and saving time. So I have a nice little bag of tricks by now.

Rather than continue to re-write this, I thought I'd throw a list of thoughts for recipe ideas and cooking lifehacks onto my blog. These are quick notes - leave a comment if you want a specific recipe in detail, and ask for as many as you are interested in. I will post them in the comments as they are requested. I may take as much as a week to get back, if I've lost the recipe and need to recreate it and test it on my own family first. I only get time to cook on the weekends.

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I like marinades, personally. Cut meat into small pieces, and soak over night. Or make lots of marinade at once and then freeze several batches of meat, to save time. The marinade soaks in as the meat freezes and thaws.

Then you have many choices:
- Saute; Put the meat on pasta and use the marinade in the pan as sauce.
- Saute; Add pasta sauce - white sauce or tomato - for a more standard pasta.
- Saute; Put the meat on rice and pour the marinade in while the rice cooks to add flavor, or use marinade as a sauce.
- Pour your marinade mix, raw, into a crockpot with vegetables, beans, barley, etc. and some extra water or broth to make a stew. If you leave extra cooking time, the meat can even be frozen. Serve with bread.
- Saute, ideally in a wok; add veggies to make a stir-fry. Serve with rice.
- Cool sauteed meat in the fridge and throw it into a green salad with nuts and red onions, plus any other salad stuff that sounds good (cheese, peppers, fruit). The extra marinade makes a wonderful salad dressing.

Since lots of small pieces of meat add a lot of flavor to a dish, marinades of small pieces of meat work great for frugality (meat is the most expensive part of our grocery bill).

Marinade ideas:
- Olive oil, oregano, basil, garlic, balsamic vinegar, diced onions, and maybe a little red wine (alchohol will cook out) works on almost any meat (but mediocre for tofu, and use white wine w/ fish).
- Hoisin sauce, green onions, oyster sauce, soy sauce, vegetable oil, and sherry or white wine vinegar works great for a stir-fry or asian food - this works for chicken. beef, and tofu - but I am not sure about pork (might be too salty) or fish (*should* work).
- Olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, tarragon, white wine vinegar, and pepper works great on chicken and probably would be good on fish.

To make your own marinade recipe, use an oil, include a vinegar, citrus juice, and/or alcohol to help dissolve flavors that won't dissolve in oil, and add spices and veggies or fruits with strong flavors like onions, peppers, and citrus. I did a strawberry-balsamic vinegar marinade once (when strawberries were on sale, of course!) that worked well with beef :-)

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You can buy bulk freeze-dried veggies online at http://www.honeyvillegrain.com , and I've found these useful for prepping gift meals or cooking ahead. Give meat in a freezer bag and a mix of dried veggies, spices, beans, or stew-grains like barley and cracked wheat in a ziploc bag with instructions on how much water to add. That way, the meal doesn't take up as much freezer space but still lasts until they need it.

Lentil soups, for crockpots. Barley-lentil is filling, has complete protein (grain + legume), and you can make a soup with only dried ingredients. Add beef, ham, and/or mushrooms for more flavor; shitake mushrooms can be bought dried, although you may need to price-hunt to get a decent price - I see them for 5 times as much in some stores as in others.

Bean chili - mix spices and beans ahead of time and store on a shelf. Add additional veggies or meats day-of if desired. Try using cinnamon, sliced almonds, and mixing in lots of black beans and some raisins for a different type of chili (ask if you want a recipe). Skip the tomato and use lots of white beans, peppers, onions, and chicken broth with your chili spices for a white chili.

Potato soup, with green peppers and left-over ham or bacon.

Fried rice - left-over rice fried with veggies, ham or pork (other meats can work too, just add more salt or soy sauce), and eggs cooked in veggie or canola oil (garlic and onion recommended). Add a little soy or other Asian sauce for flavor, or sesame oil, depending on preference.

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Casserole ideas:
Farmer's Breakfast: Use tater-tots, hash browns, or diced fried potatoes as a base. Layer bacon or ham on top. Pour uncooked scrambled eggs (mixed w/ milk, pepper, salt, etc) on top. Bake in oven.

Meatloaf - stretch the meat by adding more eggs and grains (we use oatmeal and the heels of bread that no-one wants). For variety, try adding spices to give it a different "feel" - we do fajita seasoning for Mexican, and oregano, basil, tomato, garlic for Italian.

Bread pudding, for breakfasts. Or cobblers, if there is a good fruit on sale. Mix quick-cook oatmeal, dried fruit, spices, and dried milk for fruit-and-cream oatmeal mix.

Crust-free quiche. You can mix up the dried ingredients ahead of time and just throw eggs, leftover meats and veggies, and maybe some cheese in, and then cook. I think Rikki-san is the one I learned this from.

Stuffed green peppers can be frozen ahead of time and microwaved before serving.

Shepherd's Pie is ground beef & veggies with mashed potatoes on top and freezes wonderfully. Thanks to Annaberri for letting me on to this secret.

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Other thoughts that have helped us save money:

- If you have friends in the restaurant business, try asking them where they buy their food - our local restaurants use "Cash and Carry", and that's where we now buy our bulk goods (wish I had a good alias for this person so I could thank her without giving out her name!).
- Use eggs, tofu, and milk or cheese to make meals more filling without expensive meat.
- Check out http://www.allrecipes.com and try an ingredient search whenever you have something you want to use up, but don't know what to do with it. Epicurious.com has similar functionality, but tends to use more expensive gourmet ingredients.

More on debt and investing

We are going to be able to pay off our debt more quickly than I thought. Which is good, since we probably won't get much of a tax return. Even without making the slightest attempt to curb our spending, we are chipping away at the debt. In the spendiest part of the year. While stocking up on meat and freeze-dried goods on top of the holiday spending.

As for our tax return being small, I took the maximum amount of exemptions that we qualified for, and have paid very little in income tax. With buying the house, we may get something back. I'm just not sure.

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Someone wisely commented on how I really should have more $$ in savings on my last post - about 10 times more - and wondering how I could feel more secure with investments than savings. Well, it's not entirely rational, but there is a psychological reason I prefer stocks: I am less likely to touch them than savings.

Let's face it, the biggest risk to my savings isn't the economy or Microsoft's stock price. The greatest risk is my own bad spending habits. I am unlikely to lose even half of my savings from market volatility. If I did, though, I'd still have 50% of the money I set aside in the market. On the other hand, there are much higher odds of me spending 100% of my savings for a non-emergency if it's just in the bank. Then I am left with no savings at all, nothing but some stuff - or, more likely, memories of eating out unnecessarily and some extra pounds around my middle.

I get emotionally involved with saving through investments in a way I just don't about savings in the bank - something about the gambling nature of it all, the possible big win someday. Paying off credit card debt has a similar emotional force for me. In the end, that emotional force matters more than a set 3% rate of return in an online bank or the potential 20% loss due to market volatility and needing to withdraw at a market low. I just can't trust myself to keep $$ in the bank for very long, once I get past about one month's buffer. But I'm darned if I'm going to sell stock at a loss for anything less than an emergency, or keep paying those credit card APRs forever! For that, I will be the most frugal gal in town!

Plus I get a 10% discount on MS stock through the employee purchase plan that can help offset volatility. So that also helps me feel more secure about buying MS stock. Yes, I know I should diversify, but I really can't try to do this perfectly right now until our household gets more organized and I have more time. And that 10% buffer is too enticing. Then, too, the odds of MS tanking and wiping out all of my investments are really low - although anything is possible. So I'm putting all of my money there, until things calm down and I have a chance to think and say, "What do I really want to do with this money I'm saving each month long-term, now that I'm used to setting it aside?"

My poor, sweet 401(k)

So I, uh, looked at my 401(k) just now. I basically contributed for the employer match until right before the market started tanking last spring, and then had to take a break so I could manage our other finances. Um, yeah, about that employer match?

Gone. Entirely. With a little extra to boot. Even *with* the employer match, I've lost about $30 (-34.9% YTD change).

BUT! I'm going to be able to start investing in my 401(k) again very soon. So hopefully I'm getting some great bargains now, and will make back the money I lost and then some. Plus I'll be putting some money into my employer's stock purchase plan. The stock is selling for about half what it was earlier this year . . . yay! Of course, this means I won't be paying off my credit cards as fast (we went back into debt recently, in addition to the mortgage of course), but my gut says that we'll do OK on that anyways, and we're better off building up our savings right now. I find that it's easier for me to save by investing than by putting $$ in the bank, so that's what I'm focusing on. Having a large savings account somehow just doesn't make me feel very secure - but having $$ in investments does.

The cultural weirdness of being a breadwinning mom

I've started realizing that the label "WOHM" does not work well to describe what I do. Recently, I've run across the phrase "breadwinning mom" - and it's the phrase I was looking for in this post on searching for labels that fit me well.

So, why is it weird to be a "breadwinning mom"? Well, first of all, there's my friends. My husband and I have relatively traditional family values, and believe that having a parent care for the children is important and that family comes first. Because of this, the families we get along with are traditional families - including lots of SAHMs. In other words, my closest female friends have a schedule that is very different from mine. During the times that the working spouse traditionally gets the kids out of the SAHP's hair, I am caring for the kids and they may be getting a much needed break from their children. Is this impossible to work around? Well, no! Of course not. But still, it's just one more thing that takes a little more work.

Then there is that reoccuring theme of "expectations". Our society has some really weird expectations of breadwinning moms, a strange mesh of working-mom and breadwinner responsibilities that has a lot of wrinkles to iron out still. A lot of this is based in our strange expectations of SAHD's, which is a blend of working-dad expectations and SAHP expectations. Basically, what I see is that breadwinning dads expect a SAHD to do everything a SAHM does (and call him 'lazy' if he does anything less, although he may do it in a "manly" fashion, or with less precision and tidyness) - but women (two-income, breadwinner, or SAHM) are more likely to expect a SAHD to care for the children and do a little housework. In other words, they expect him to treat child care as a day job, and not try to integrate in the many other responsibilities of a homemaker. The problem is that this means that the breadwinning mom carries the responsibility for managing the home, according to these expectations. It's taken me some time, but I'm starting to realize that men - naturally - have a better grasp of the breadwinning role and how to make it work. I need to look to their lifestyle first, and then modify it to fit me as a woman and mother. Unfortunately, there really aren't mixed gender support groups for breadwinners the way there are for stay-at-home parents; support groups are more a "female" thing.

Finally, there is the new appreciation I have for the life of a breadwinning dad, for the role that men have filled for generations. There has been a renaissance of appreciation for the SAHM in recent years - a long-overdue celebration of a role that has lately been viewed as mindless, unchallenging, and unimportant. However, there are challenges for breadwinner dads that I think many moms don't understand. I'm going to put a line divider here, because the rest of this post is about breadwinners, in general.

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CHALLENGES OF BEING A BREADWINNER

Firstly, a breadwinning parent is placing his or her home and children largely into someone else's care. It helps that this person is a loving spouse and a partner in life's journey, but there is still that lack of control over so many small aspects of life that is very stressful: Everything from your daily nutrition to the values demonstrated to your children is put into another person's care. Having a spouse who doesn't value something you do - from having clean clothes for work, to healthy meals, or to letting you know about the family's day - is much more difficult when that person is in charge of caring for your clothing, shopping for and cooking your meals, and providing for your children's healthy growth and development. I'm beginning to understand why traditionally men need to be the head of the household: Otherwise, it is easy to have your needs neglected or feel like you don't matter as much because you aren't home as much. This plays out differently when the gender roles are reversed - women stay more involved in family life and parenting as breadwinners, including even having the children turn to them first when they want comfort, even though children are around Dad more. However, it's still a factor for women, I think.

Then there is the stress of having THE job for the family. Even a small reprimand from my boss gives me the jitters now (especially since I was so close to being fired so recently). Even when my husband didn't earn enough to cover our expenses if I was fired, I knew we could stretch our savings or use the credit card to cover the gaps until we fixed the hole in our income. This is true no more, and it changes my responses to household issues. When my clothes are not washed frequently enough, my first thought is "How am I going to keep this from impacting my job? No one wants an employee in stinky clothes". I worry more about my health, and want to excercise and good nutrition so that I can do my best at work. I care more about getting sleep, and am less patient with dealing with the kids in the middle of the night or bedtimes that run late and cut into my sleep. Because I am more stressed about my job, I am also more stressed about those aspects of homemaking that impact my ability to hold my job.

And finally, there is the challenge of context-switching, from the busy office where I *need* to know what's going on and be "in tune", to the home environment where I really am out of touch with the details and my frustrated spouse is having trouble understanding why I don't know where the pepper is (made more confusing by the fact that I once knew where everything was). I understand, now, why breadwinning men are so "useless" around the home: It's not incompetance, it's simply that locating daily objects requires tons of tiny little facts and bits of knowledge that someone who is outside the home ten hours most days and who doesn't manage the home just doesn't pick up.

Some of these breadwinning-men difficulties are more difficult to deal with as a mother, since there is an absurd expectation that I will, through my womanly magic, not have these same problems and continue to be a homemaking maven, the working Super-Mom extrodinaire! At the same time, I have a key advantage over most men: I've been on both sides (all three, if you include two-income homes seperately), so I can see how these attitudes develop. I could head off my husband's frustration by showing how our different sippy-cup locating skills were caused by his skill, not by my incompetance. I'm understanding now how women are actually more likely to sell traditional female work short than men, resulting in the strange expectation that anyone should be able to jump into homemaking work at the drop of a hat and do it as well as an experienced full-time homemaker. I'm understanding that homemaking work isn't as easy as homemakers think, but it is, in fact, years of practice and thoughtfulness that give them their unrecognized expertise.

So curious, that appreciation for breadwinning starts with appreciation for homemaking - but it does. Once you grok fully that "Homemaking is hard, important, and has a huge impact on the family" you suddenly understand why breadwinners can feel unwanted and out of place at home if they don't get some say over the family - why, basically, giving men respect is so important in traditional families. In reverse-traditional families, this seems to play out more as having strong communication between the man and the woman, so the woman doesn't feel out of touch and gets listened to. You get why breadwinners may complain about homemakers who don't take charge of the household fully - we complain because it MATTERS, and impacts us and our ability to care for the family as breadwinners (understanding how complaining shows respect for the work a person should do and communicates valueing that work - when phrased appropriately - was important, in our family). You can especially understand why us breadwinners seem to be less "with it" at home than second-income parents (most working moms) or SAHPs - that it's not incompetance, but rather unfamiliarity with a job that relies heavily on prior experience homemaking in that specific family and house to truly excel.

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I know I keep covering similar ground to this post in my blog, but I'm trying to refine what it is about a reverse-traditional family that is so difficult for so many people trying this family style - and why we have so much trouble discussing these problems openly. SAHDs who don't do their housework duties (and, if you look deeper, home management in general) without a huge push is a reoccurring theme among many families I've talked with (interestingly, mainly in relatively new SAHD families), but a woman who says HER family is experiencing this gets a significant backlash in many circles where she should be able to get support. For a breadwinning mom to say she needs support, even, is to invite criticism. Needing support implies that she is doing something challenging and worthwhile, and somehow that seems to take away from the challenges her husband is facing as a male homemaker and from the worthiness of his work. I believe the truth, of course, is that open support for breadwinning mom challenges would add to the support available for men - but that's another post, and this post is already long enough to be three posts.

Car is working

Just an update, since I mentioned our car being out of whack.

It looks like the battery was probably low, but not dead. I turned the car on part-way once, but it didn't quite turn over; the theory is, that drained the battery enough that it wouldn't restart right away. It started fine on Monday, however. We still need to minimize driving until we get it looked at, but odds are pretty good that we just need a fresh battery.

Crazy-ish week update

Just a quick "What's up" post. We had a couple of mild-craziness events last week that deserve a mention, although they seem to be not really such big deals as they could have been.

We had a trip to the ER for pain and a fever for me on Monday evening. No one figured out what the pain was from, and the fever seemed to be unrelated. I missed two days of work while recovering from the fever, but otherwise there really isn't much here other than that "it happened" and it shook me up a bit. Oh, yeah, and reminded me how much I love having health insurance. DH was a superstar during this, and didn't even get upset about being stuck at the hospital with two toddlers until almost 10:00 PM while they checked me out (about 4.5 hours).

The other mildly crazy thing is that our only car has broken down as of last Friday. We'll be getting it towed today, probably during my lunch break. If repairs are expensive, we might end up just getting another junker; we can't afford another car right now, and probably couldn't get credit to buy another car with a payment. Either way, we might now be able to drive for an unknown period of time.

The good news is that our family is dealing with the hecticness from this very well, which is pretty amazing considering how rocky things have been lately.

Well, some dreams came true

Not all the laundry is clean, but a lot more of it is clean now than was clean at the start of the evening. The counters were barely touched. However, I also managed to do a couple of small "low-hanging fruit" things - easy tasks that will really make a difference (albeit a small difference).

I also managed to give myself a papercut.

My plan for the rest of the night is not to go to sleep at a reasonable hour like a responsible, mature adult; but rather, to stay up late eating, playing computer games, and folding loads of laundry as the dryer finishes up until DH comes home from his party.

What astounds me is that Lenora has not woken up once yet tonight. Maybe she got it all out of her system last night.

Or maybe she's saving it all up until the early morning, when I've finally gone to sleep.

Le sigh.

One of those milestones

Well! Another day, another new skill for the girls. This one, however, is not a new word in the vocabulary or a new trick on the playground toys. No, this is one of those milestones parents dread.

Lenora has learned to turn doorknobs. That's right: She now possesses the ability to let herself out of her bedroom. We can only hope she will use this power for good. Snd be too tired to get out of her room at night, given the recent middle-of-the-night "Mommy" screamfests - have I mentioned here yet how, two nights before Halloween, she spent three and a half hours straight (no exaggeration) screaming for her mommy? And even DH going in five or so times to calm her down and get her to sleep again didn't help a bit? Oh yes . . . here in the Ellison household, we live in interesting times.

Tonight, however, is a welcome break from the norm. The girls went to bed without any trouble, probably because DH and I have gotten back "in tune" with each other over the last few days. And I am rather gleeful to have DH out of the house, visiting his friends for a birthday party. I mean, come on, it's probably been years since the last time we had an evening apart from each other. I certainly don't want this to happen all of the time, but there are also tons of things I've been wanting to do that have been getting put off so that we could spend quality time together. Also, the cause is noble: One of his good friends that he's known for years but hasn't seen much lately is celebrating a birthday, and I would love to see DH maintain his relationships with that circle of friends.

Of course, there is the potential for chaos to ensue while he is out; Iliana is sick (Lenora was sick last Wednesday, rather spectacularly, while we had friends over, and these girls are great about sharing), so there is the off-chance of a huge mess being made in the middle of the night. But, hey! I managed nights alone back when DH worked late, when both girls were infants and were spitting up or vomitting on a nightly basis. At worse, it'll be just like the good ol' days.

So unless that happens, I am going to indulge in a treat I rarely have the time or energy to enjoy anymore: Housework!

(Oh, how my views have changed since becoming a WOHM! But now I dream of clean laundry and counters . . . and tonight, dreams will come true!)

We need a right to not murder

I think we need a new right in this country: The right for no person to engage in an act that they reasonably perceive as directly contributing to the death of an innocent human being. Therefore, no doctor could ever be legally required to enact an abortion or prescribe euthenasia medication. No pharmicist could ever be legally required to fill a prescription for abortive medication or legal suicide medication. An argument could be made about whether paying taxes for these purposes is "directly contributing" to these acts, and that would need to be resolved. Birth control (the Pill, specifically) would also be an edge case; I believe medical science defines the start of life as implantation, not conception, but I believe that the numbers of people who believe life begins at conception is enough to clearly demonstrate that concerns about the Pill being an abortifacient fit the "reasonable concern" clause.

This could prevent hundreds of potential horrific human rights abuses involving the deaths of innocent people. Many of the worst-case abuses that pro-life people fear could be mitigated with this clause, as those who don't want to participate in these horrors will have legal grounds to oppose them, at least through non-participation. And don't humans at least have the right to avoid directly participating in the murders of innocent humans?

A quick thought on the FOCA

This post is, by no means, intended to share much of my opinion on abortion. I hope that those who know me IRL have no question as to what my beliefs are: Abortion is killing innocent humans; the only reason I distinguish between it and murder is that I think most women who choose abortion have been misled to believe that the lives they end are not yet human; I believe murder requires intent to unjustly kill.

But I didn't intend to write about my understanding of abortion in this post. I just wanted to point out a couple of lines from the FOCA:
The Freedom of Choice Act

(3) VIABILITY- The term `viability' means that stage of pregnancy when, in the best medical judgment of the attending physician based on the particular medical facts of the case before the physician, there is a reasonable likelihood of the sustained survival of the fetus outside of the woman.

...
(b) Prohibition of Interference- A government may not--
(1) deny or interfere with a woman's right to choose--
. . .
(B) to terminate a pregnancy prior to viability; or
(C) to terminate a pregnancy after viability where termination is necessary to protect the life or health of the woman; . . .

Although I still don't like the FOCA, I am glad to see that it does not confirm a woman's right to a late-term abortion (barring the gigantic loophole of part (c)).

Comments on actions we can take to prevent the FOCA would be appreciated. I was shocked that I-1000 passed. I suspect that it is too late, that the FOCA will pass anyways, but will pray for it to somehow fail. I think people fail to realize that the FOCA (and all laws allowing abortion) are essentially declaring that an entire group of humans beings will be denied their most basic right, their right to life. We simply have not done due diligence here; we have not justified this step down the slippery slope.

However, I think that even if the FOCA does pass, abortions will still drop. I think that 40 DFL and other movements are changing our culture, and that will be far more effective than legal changes in the medium term. Take my words with a grain of salt; I am an optimist, and see hope everywhere. But the FOCA cannot halt the very real change in people's hearts (nor can it halt the information from scientist's research) that is seeing evidence of human life and being starting at conception.

"Please don't lick the sidewalk"

I was praying outside an abortion facility the other day with a friend, and Iliana tagged along (which deserves a post of its own). My little girl was (of course) a little bored, just hanging out while the big folks prayed (and chatted a bit, too). The title of this post is one of the amusing things that came out of my mouth. Other gems included:

"Don't drink water off of the street! Ewww!"

"Please don't lick the pole."

"Please don't walk on the umbrella. It's not ours."

Overall, she was actually very well behaved (I don't say 'please' when I get frustrated). Still, when she gets bored she backslides into the "oral" phase again, and everything goes into the mouth. Especially puddles. What is with this fascination with drinking from strange things, like gutters and bathtubs?

Lenora, on the other hand, was left at home for the day. *She* has been deciding not to sleep lately.

Last Thursday, Lenora was awake from 3:30 AM until 7:00 AM yelling for Mommy. Daddy went in multiple times to help her to bed, and each time she cheered up and happily went to bed and got kisses. Within five seconds of him leaving each time, she was back at the door yelling and fussing for me. I'm lying in bed, knowing I'll be exhausted at work the next day and thinking, "If she is this stubborn at 2 1/2, she'll have no problems resisting peer pressure when she's a teen."

Well, fortunately DH (Dear Husband) and I both have strong stubborn streaks as well, and we had no problem outlasting her . . . kind of. If you look at things right. Well, no, actually, we caved in. *Ahem*. See, since Lenora is allowed to get up at 7:00 AM, I went in then and talked her back into bed. Once she got what she wanted, she went back to sleep. Naturally, Iliana slept through the whole thing. It's probably the soundest sleeping I've ever seen her do. Hrmm . . . that makes me think - maybe Iliana would sleep better ALL the time if we played a recording of a screaming child at night?

I probably shouldn't try it. If we do that too much, the neighbors might call the cops.

Thursday night went fine (thank you, O Lord, for a good night's sleep to rest between our parently trials) and Lenora woke up much less sleepy on Friday, in time for Halloween. We went trick-or-treating at Microsoft and in our neighborhood, with the girls dressed as fairies and joined by a friend and her four children.

By the end of the night's excitement, the girls were covered in stickiness; I wanted to wash my hands every time I came in contact with them. Iliana, in particular, was sticky. This may have had something to do with her sucking on two lollipops at once, and then rubbing them all over her face just for the fun of the gloriously sticky messiness of it all.

My husband, in his great wisdom, ordered the girls to the bathtub shortly before we got home.

That night, Lenora screamed until after midnight. And again, I caved before she did. I really hope she doesn't ever give us the silent treatment when she gets older. If she does, it could be years before we hear her voice again. I can see the diagnosis now: "PVM, Parental Vicinity Muteness, caused by acute stubborness."

She did nap while Iliana and I were out, and now seems to be returning to a less stubborn pattern of sleep. That is to say, she has been keeping the screaming down to less than an hour before naps and bedtime and we have high hopes of her returning to her previously normal pattern of going to sleep happily after a small bribe of kisses and hugs. Please, don't anyone tell her we enjoy the kisses more than she does! She still seems to think she's coming out ahead with this deal.

This is a good approach to the environment issues

I love No Impact Man. He's a REAL open-minded liberal. As in, he works to engage people from all parts of the spectrum to support his cause.

More importantly, he thinks in a manner that feels, to me, very Catholic (although I doubt he is even a Christian). He believes strongly in stewardship of environmental resources, in loving our neighbors as ourselves, in forgiveness, and in striving for a greater good. And he believes in working together to achieve this with those who may believe differently in other areas, for the greater good.

He writes this excellent post on what he calls "environmental effectiveness". Basically, this is the idea that we want to get the most good for the least resources. Well-used resources which make people happy and fill their lives with opportunity are "environmentally effective". The beauty of this concept is that it captures many of the issues with environmentalism in a way that "sustainability" does not. It emphasizes the importance of human quality of life in a way that the environmental movement tends to gloss over. How many times have we heard the banal, despairing statement that the Earth would be better off without humanity? And how many times have we felt horror that someone should have such disregard for the virtues of their own species, horror that someone should be so willing to disregard OUR personal value, in favor of animals and pristine vistas? More specifically, in favor of animals unloved by humans and vistas unseen by humans? Humanity does believe, in general, that we are better and different than animals. Environmentalism needs to (and ought to) work with that belief.

Here is the link: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008905.html

Building a foundation

Lately, I've been passing up a number of opportunities to help out others around me. I've intentionally been limiting how much effort I will put into anything above and beyond my most basic roles: Mother, wife, employee. The result is a very insular way of living that isn't returning into the world the gifts that God gives our family. Yet I think it is what God needs me to do right now. While I want to construct a life that will praise God as beautifully as any church, I need to start with a foundation: A family that can bear the weight of God's Will for its members.

This foundation needs to involve the entire family; I cannot create it on my own. I lack a certain level of control or independence in my life. I cannot do anything or give anything without my family also doing or giving. Even something as simple as cooking a meal for a friend who is going through a busy period requires a gift from my family. If I cook when the children are awake, my husband must watch the children with less help from me for a little longer. If I cook when they are asleep, it takes from the time my husband and I spend together as a couple, watching TV or playing video games. My husband didn't sign up for a wife who is never available to share his passion because she wants so much to fit in with her friends, and this may be part of our problems lately.

Part of me is embarressed that I'm choosing playing video games with my husband over helping a friend, but on closer examination I realize it's actually a very shallow embarressment. My situation isn't the same as the other women, where the homemaker of the family is the one drawing the family into their community, and I shouldn't be measuring myself against them. A large part of what is going on in my head is a less-shallow version of keeping up with the Jones'. The big difference is that I'm trying to keep up in an area of real value, the area of helping my friends, rather than in the area of "fancy car" or "nice house" - but otherwise, the situation is very similar. Following the caring example of a friend out of love is good; feeling guilty because I am not as helpful as my friends is honestly a little silly.

My friends already have foundations, at least for this part of their houses, and they are able to meet the needs of their community without me. Right now, I need to give my family the things they need to feel comfortable signing up, as a family, for this kind of simple ministry and making it part of our family's work. In this, I really miss the short stint I spent as a homemaker. During the time when my husband was at work, I had complete leadership over the family. I could do as I saw fit, provided I was fulfilling my responsibilities to my children. I no longer experience that sort of leadership of our family, and I find I really miss it.

No, really, I still exist

I haven't posted for a long time. I also have been withdrawn from friends, family, and so on for a while. After all the craziness around my taking leave, I suppose it makes sense that a few people are getting worried.

So, some reassurance. I've been absent mainly because I'm focusing on just the couple of things that really matter, and trying to get a solid foundation under our family. We've missed a number of social / prayer events lately due to normal illnesses that run around in the fall plus the girls giving up naps but still really needing them. We're trying a new schedule at home, and it doesn't leave me much time to make phone calls. And I'm not going out of my way to get involved with the opportunities around me to help others until we figure out what is going on with DH so that he and I can sit down and talk about how much involvement he can encourage, and at what part me giving my time becomes a burden to him.

On the DH-and-I front, I really think counseling is getting somewhere since we switched counselors. We've had three sessions with each counselor, and I felt like we didn't get anywhere at all with the first. In contrast, this counselor has covered the main path that our conversations for the past year have been meandering along, and by the third session we were discussing new things that have barely been touched on.

Even better, DH has scheduled an appointment to be evaluated for depression. I know that it really helped me to work with professionals to figure out if I had a problem - and I was really happy (albeit embarressed) to learn that I did, and that there was an easy fix. I think DH is starting to see that he is probably in a similar situation, and that the family needs him to be healthy and active. Just realizing that he probably isn't healthy seems to have helped a lot. I can understand why; "I have a medical issue" inspires a lot less guilty than "I am lazy" (or, in my case, "I am a bad wife"). I really hope we get a useful diagnosis; I can't believe that my husband is healthy right now. He's definitely getting closer, and I can see him trying - which is a huge step in and of itself. But I would really like to have back the man who supported me and his children in so many ways right after he became a father.

And for myself, being healthy again is wonderful. I can still tell when I miss my iron pills, but I can now miss a single dose without feeling the effects. It's not until I miss two doses that I really feel yucky. I'm not intentionally missing doses, mind you; I just have to pay attention more now that I don't start feeling yucky prompty around the time I was supposed to take some more medicine. Of course, I'll feel better once I get over this cold; I guess I'm not really all *that* healthy right now. Meh, whatever; overall, I'm doing better.

Wow . . . speak, Lord. I'm LISTENING!

In my last post, I talk about a "pull" I'm feeling. It hit me, near the end of that post, that I'm doing something very big there: I'm acknowledging my belief that this "pull" is probably God's grace - and not just my own desires or subconscious. That's either a large step closer or a large step further from where God is calling me to be: I'm either right, and acknowledging a deep and beautiful truth, or I'm delusional and letting my pride and arrogance guide me into thinking I can know God's will in this way. This calls for prayer. I definitely believe it is the first option, that this is a deep truth, but my reason for believing that is the "pull" itself. It's circular. Then again, don't we trust our senses and reason for similarly circular reasons? Because our senses confirm themselves. Because our reason assures us that our reason is correct.

It's the three together that I find shape my perception of life: the "pull", which I believe is grace and conscience; the senses, which I believe are honest interpretations of the physical world around me; and reason, which I believe is a real talent humans have that allows us to draw new conclusions from the information available to us. The leap for me is to put what I believe to be my way of experiencing conscience and grace, separate from reason, on a parity with the senses as a way to gain knowledge about the world. It's a bit more difficult to accept this "pull" as real information, because I can't confirm my experiences with others as well. We lack a vocabulary to describe the experience of grace as richly and clearly as we can describe our experiences of sight, sound, touch, and so on.

My approach with any new, basic paradigm is to "try it on for size". While at some level I've accepted these experiences as real in the past, I've also kept a strong mental buffer that I could just be making this stuff up. Is it okay to let that buffer down, or weaken it? Can I trust these experiences in a way that is more like how I trust my own sight? Is this sense real at all, real but highly distorted (possibly by sin), real and very trustworthy? Can I experience "hallucinations" of this "sense" much the way I might imagine I hear DH saying my name - only to find out it was a radio announcer saying the words "and the"? So it's time for a trial run: Act as if the paradigm shift I'm considering is accurate, and see if I continue to have greater confidence in the new model of my world than in the old.

I may be just kidding myself, but I may also be learning to consciously use a new set of "eyes" for the first time ever. Yet even if there is some truth to this idea, I also need to be prepared for another possibility: Maybe this is God's grace that I experience, but maybe I am not meant to understand it. Yet part of me responds, "Surely God would want us to understand enough to know that we can trust Him! If He is calling so hard for us to listen, through His Word, surely there must be something reliable for us to hear!"

So, uh, God? I'm listening. Are you willing to give me a microphone check? Huh . . . wait . . . I'm suspecting . . . that I'm hearing one, and it says, "40 Days for Life, test, test".

Now, the big question . . . do I post this, and risk sounding like a crazy person, speaking of senses that don't touch the physical reality? Or do I play it safe and just leave it in draft form, saved on the server but never made public?

If you are reading this, then you already know what I decided.

40 Days for Life

Tomorrow is the start of 40 Days for Life, a pro-life effort to save lives of unborn children and bring our nation closer to protecting our most vulnerable, least vocal members (or at least, they should be members . . . but humanity has this tendency to try and exclude other humans from our group, and this time the excluded group can't fight back).

I've been a little out of the loop, but God has sent enough tugs that I looked into it - just in time. I think this is as He intended it. A quick round of prayer suggests to me that I don't need to go out of my way to seek out a visible role in this campaign. If God wants me distributing literature or participating in the vigil, I have this feeling that He will drop the opportunity into my lap. So on that front, I think I'm being called to "Let go and let God."

On the other hand, prayer and fasting have that familiar "pull" to them. I'm still praying on this, but looking at committing myself to 40 days of praying the Rosary daily and fasting from milk, tea, and coffee. Actually, I've been meaning to do these things anyways for health reasons - but my own good alone is somehow not enough motivation for me. To do these things for others is easier, and God will understand what I am giving - and will use the health benefits that I receive, I believe, to bring me closer to a place where I can be more actively and visibly involved in His work in the future.

The other thing "tugging" at me is to make a few phone calls. I know people who are also being pulled by this issue. I think I need to make sure a few of these people know what God is guiding right now.

The girls slept well . . .

They started their nap at 3:30 PM yesterday, or so DH tells me.

They woke up at 5:45 AM this morning.

We did go in and change them into diapers at almost 9:00 PM last night. They did not eat dinner. DH and I played video games and ate dinner at our keyboards. It was almost like being in college again. This morning, Iliana got a huge kick out of being awake before the sun (she's going to LOVE Washington's winters - she'll beat the sun up almost every day in a month or so!).

Cooking!

Okay, I know . . . most people cook. It's not a big deal.

But I still love getting time and energy at the same time to throw together a meal. I made peach cobbler and a "The Works" quiche (kielbasa, onion, green pepper, and olives). Actually, it ended up being three quiches.

The peach cobbler was made with rehydrated freeze-dried peaches, and looks AMAZING. I modified a berry cobbler recipe from my aunt, which requires you to sprinkle sugar over the finished cobbler and then pour boiling water on top. The result is a sort of "glazed" crust on top . . . yummy.

I think I take extra pride in my cooking because I am NOT a SAH parent. For me, this is working outside of my specialization, so when I do well I feel extra proud.

A big thanks goes to my husband, for finding the pie plates that were still packed in the garage. Thanks also goes to my children, for staying asleep long enough for me to get it all into the oven and then blog about it.

Next time, I'm going to try a berry cobbler. I have freeze-dried strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries hanging around as well.

Can "Food" be a love language?

There's a neat book about "love languages" that I borrowed from a friend recently, which has the premise that everyone feels most loved when love is expressed to them in a certain way. This way of expressing love is a person's "love language". The five languages discussed in the book are Words of Appreciation, Acts of Service, Quality Time, Physical Touch, and Gifts. I'm not sure it's quite that simple - five precise categories and that's it - but the basic idea that some people express their love differently from others, and it behooves us to learn their "language" so they can hear our love for them, seems solid.

If I do have a single love language, Words of Appreciation seems likely for me. But Acts of Service seems likely as well, especially one particular act: Feeding me. Food is love.

However, I also note that being given a meal falls under most of the languages. What better quality time is there than a family dinner? What better gift than a home-cooked meal? What greater daily act of service than providing someone with the food they need to live? Even DH's request that I stay seated when I rise to get the girls more milk makes me feel special - because implicitly, he's saying "You deserve a break because of all the things you do for us. Thank you. I love you" I can hear the Words of Appreciation clearly, even though the actual words are, "Stay seated. Geesh, I can handle it!"

I'm a great translator ;-) And exaggerating slightly for comic effect.

Last night, DH made a special meal with me in mind. Spinach, meat, peppers stir-fried with peanut butter and coconut milk and served mixed with noodles. We sprinkled Thai spice on ours, but left the kids' food plain. Yummy - but also very high in iron, and stuff that will help asorb iron. Just that morning, we'd learned from the 'Net that non-heme irons (not from meat) asorbed better when eaten with heme iron - and DH planned a meal for me based on that information.

I mean, wow. That's caring - hearing a little bit of information, and then figuring out a way to apply it to make your spouse healthier and happier, that very same day.

I just ate the leftovers for lunch. And I'm in love. I'll try to remember to give him a hug - his language seems to be Touch.

P.S. I cooked up the rest of the spinach for a side-dish for myself, and was eating it. The girls insisted that I give them some of Mommy's Food, and then gobbled it down. It's funny how making a food just for myself makes it seem "special" to them. This, plus chanting the name of the veggie, is how we got them to love broccoli too. And zucchini. ZU-CCHI-NI! ZU-CCHI-NI! BRO-CCO-LI! UGH! YEAH!

We rarely limit the amount of treats we let them have - we're more likely to limit their veggies (because DH never cooks enough!!! ;-) If we have something sweet to share, we usually just let them eat as much as they want until it's gone. The trick is that we don't share with them most of the time - we just wait until after they are in bed.

Back to work

I'm back at work, and things seem to be going well. I think the big advantage of having time off from work ended up being space to get medical care. Apparently, my poor performance at work wasn't due just to stress. I was actually low on iron as well. I don't think I was anemic, but I was definitely close enough to be getting many symptoms - fatigue, dizziness, restless leg syndrome (which impacted sleep . . . which caused fatigue . . .), irritability, and depression. I am now taking 16 times the normal daily recommended iron in pill-form with vitamin C, and am doing much better.

Returning to work was a bit scary - but mostly because I wasn't sure I would be able to function better once I got back. In fact, the first day, last Friday, I didn't function well. I was almost falling asleep in meetings, exhausted by the time the day was over, and worried that I wasn't going to be healthy in time. Some dear friends were very nice to me when I stopped by after work, and I felt better in time to sleep well that night.

In retrospect, the issue was probably that I'd figured out I was supposed to be taking six pills of iron, and not just one a day, a mere two days or less ahead of time - and the iron simply hadn't built up yet. I was probably actually sicker than I was when I started leave (more on that later) when I started the supplements, near the end of leave. Over the weekend, I seem to have rebuilt up the critical amount of iron so I can function pretty well - I'm still getting tired and short dizzy spells in the evenings, but I'm enthused about work again.

So, why did I have iron deficiency? Often, this can be a sign of a much more serious issue - cancer, internal bleeding, and other yucky stuff. You will be happy to know that is probably NOT the case here. Most likely, I ran short because I donated blood, and apparently can't replenish my iron as quickly as many other people. I need to check with my doctor a bit more, and will badger him about further testing - but this explanation really fits the evidence. For example, things got a lot rougher after the move - and, looking back at email, I did donate blood about two or three weeks after the move. Before that, I remember getting despondent around December to January. I assumed that it was because covering for my teammates on vacation kept me from learning my own position and that was demoralizing, especially when the new person joined and I still didn't know what MY job was - but I actually also donated blood around late December, too.

And there's a big silver lining. DH and I are finally dealing with some major relationship issues that were unsurfaced by all of this. You know, the ones I've been blogging about? They weren't just products of my iron deficiency or bad mood, and they weren't my fault (although I certainly haven't been helping things get better lately, either).

So, looking at the results of being sick:
1) I came close to losing my job and lost some of my coworkers' confidence in me.
2) Our finances are really bad right now. We're scraping by for the next six weeks.
3) DH and I are finally working on a chronic problem in our relationship - in the past, the main person working on fixing things has been me. The chronic problem, of course, is that responsibility in our family hasn't been balanced appropriately. DH is finally taking on the main responsibility for working on this problem - and other responsibilities are shifting as well.
4) We got to see what happens when I can't function well, which clearly underscored the importance of #3. There really has been too much depending on me.
5) Following from #4, DH is seeing how important he is to our family from a new perspective: He is seeing how he can be strong when I am weak - and how critical it is that he volunteers to be strong. This next statement probably won't surprise anyone reading this blog - but dads / husbands matter! And not just as a paycheck or daily child care. Yet, I've been shocked by how many people are happy to give men a "pass" on participating fully beyond their basic 9-to-5 duties.
6) I now am healthy again, and have a better idea of what being healthy looks like. I think I might have been low on iron before and didn't recognize it, in retrospect. That probably won't happen again.
7) I am now better prepared to promote my expectations of my partner, and better able to trust in my ability to be reasonable. I spent a lot of time looking for outside confirmation that what I was asking from my husband was, in fact, reasonable. In retrospect, I know the answer: My expectations were not reasonable. I expected far too little, and the fact that DH was still struggling to meet those very low expectations was a symptom of a bigger issue and a sign that he needed some help from someone else.
8) I now know the value of considering the possibility that the other person is contributing to a problem as well, instead of assuming that if I do things differently or "get it right", I can make the problem will go away on my own. Recognizing other people's failings can be a good thing, if done with charity.
9) I got a month to spend with my family, with no parent working outside the home. "Some things, money can't buy." I'm saving my vacation time so we can do this again - have a long period of time, at home, just being together doing normal things.

A lengthy, wordy list (but hey, what did you expect from me?). The summary: Career and finances are in a bad position, but we're poised to make the most of it with flying colors. So things will probably continue to be annoying for a while longer as I repair my career and we get finances back on track. Then we'll probably regain our ground and have enough momentum to "get ahead", and then get enough wiggle room to make some changes and get a bit more "control" over our lives - although maybe "influence" is a better word; we never really get full control over anything in life. But we do get a lot of influence - if we keep our eyes open for it.

In toddler news . . .

Lenora likes liver (and Iliana doesn't). Lenora also can sing her entire ABC's, although she sometimes forgets and skips 'N' and "TUVWX' (and instead sings, "Q, R, S, Y and Z"). Today I actually tried a little phonics exercixe on her, using the Dr. Suess ABC book and having the girls echo back words starting with each letter, and then ending the page by having them just make the sound of the letter (so, 'puh, puh, puh' for 'P', or 'mmmmmmm' for 'M'). We started with 'M', and they stayed interested all the way until 'V', when they lost interest because the sound was too tough (and they'd already done about a dozen letters, having great fun - I was amazed!). I don't think Iliana understood the exercise as anything other than fun noises, but Lenora is starting to recognize letters and had that intent manner that tells me she is learning and piecing things together. Once she figures out that those symbols make WORDS, I think she'll learn to read very, very quickly. It's probably a year or more off before she connects those dots - but she's getting a glimmering of it already.

I admit: I want my children to learn to read young. I learned young, and loved it soooo much! I am so excited to be able to share this with my children, and thrilled that one of them is showing interest. Actually, she's more interested than I ever expected at this age! But then, Lenora is really sensitive to our feelings . . . she may know how much this matters to me, and be working on letters because she can tell it gives her a special relationship with me. And it does - Iliana and I have more similar personalities, while Lenora is more like her Dad, so sharing a love of words with Lenora is extra special to me.

Iliana's not as interested in her letters, but I'm definitely seeing the "twin synergy" kick in. That's what I call the effect where one twin learns something, and then the other twin picks it up without any more work from us - even though it's not in her personality to work on that skill. As parents, DH and I focus on teaching whomever is easiest to teach a particular skill, and almost always the other sibling will go through a spurt in a couple of months, and almost catch up with her sister before returning to her "favorite" skills to develop once more.

Iliana continues to "test" a lot - I think she will always push boundaries more than Lenora will. She is just so curious. However, she is definitely starting to get the hang of self-restraint, and is mastering the art of charming people (except when she is tired - did I mention that she takes after me?).

Both girls are thrilled with all the kids they've seen lately. The older children of our friends are amazing with these little girls, and really look out for them and love to show them new things. I'm seeing their care reflected in how the girls play and care for their dolls (and our own care . . . Iliana's dolls get a lot of timeouts, always administered by her with glee, but they get lots of hugs too).

For the first time ever, I'm starting to see the behavior that DH sees when I'm gone. The girls are getting used to me being home, and sometimes will go play by themselves instead of clinging around me constantly, fussing and screaming unless I'm directly interacting with them. It's taken them over a week to get to that point, but things did start to smooth out after the first two days of leave. I'm amazed by the games they play on their own - their imaginations have become so much richer lately, and they are starting to act out small stories now. The other day I learned that they were driving to the zoo in their toy car to see the monkeys with their Bahka. "Bahka", by the way, is Iliana's made-up name for her grandmother, possibly derived from the thousands of books in Grandma's home. It's the only baby-word that has really "stuck" in our vocabulary.

Anyways, I'm still totally a first-time parent, revelling in all the new differences I see in my children. And obsessed with my kids . . . I sometimes feel embaressed by how single-minded I can be towards my kids, and I notice I often forget to talk about someone else's kids once in a while. Hopefully I'll grow out of that. I'm working on it, but I think it's harder with twins. It's not just my child that is amazing, it's how DIFFERENT they are. I still can't believe I got such ideal children - they are so much like the twins I daydreamed about while pregnant, with different personalities and richly enjoying each other's company. Except they listen better than I expected. I rarely have to threaten with timeouts, and even more rarely have to follow through on my threat.

Of course, they haven't gotten old enough to really start bickering yet. Or rebel.

Shopping trip!

DH and I finally realized that we could postpone our mortgage payments until the 16th if we pay a fee of $6 - meaning we will get another paycheck first. I put enough money into savings to get us through September (since our income will be going entirely to the next two mortgage payments), and the remainder is more than enough to get us through August with a little left over for much-needed "large item" purchases.

Our first "large purchase" was a shopping trip to Cash 'n' Carry. We spent a lot - over $200 - but walked out with soooo much meat. I broke all the pieces of meat up into sandwich bags - some diced for soups, some sliced for "snacks", some cut into "coins" of sausage, some cut into "steaks" of ham and turkey. In my experience, that is just the right amount of meat to use for one meal (which usually lasts us for dinner and lunch the next day, since we usually make soup or stir-fry or something with it). We have thirty bags from today's trip alone! Add in the meat we already have, and we have about 2 months of meat now in our freezer :-) Plus we have some cheese, condiments, spices . . . I'm happy.

I'm working to organize a get-together with a couple of friends to make a bunch of freezer meals together in a couple of days, as well. I'm also going to mix up some bags of dry spices, beans, grains, veggies, and mushrooms to make crockpot soups and chiles - just add meat! All in all, I'm feeling pretty good about the food situation when I go back to work.

I've set aside Tuesday to Thursday to just focus on food preperation - Bjorn has agreed to take the girls out while I work. Right now, we're actually focusing on laundry and clothes - getting everything washed and put away, and figuring out what the "right place" is for everything. Then we'll go to San Juan Island to visit Bjorn's parents for the weekend. Once we get back, we'll focus on unpacking all of the boxes in the garage and getting things in general organized and put away around the house for a week - and then the last week, I get to focus on the garden (which is fun, but hard work), and will return to work on Friday, September 5th.

I'm hoping that we can start pretending I'm "going to work" as the date draws closer - having me work outside for most of the day, just coming in for lunch, while Bjorn handles everything he'll be handling once I return to my real work, and keeping an early schedule - getting up at 5 AM, and going to bed right after the girls.

Leave of absence from work

I'm going to be taking a leave of absence from work starting tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be able to do my job better after taking a break. And hopefully that will be enough to keep my job.

Going without an income is going to be a financial stretch. But this is a good job, and losing it will be a longer financial stretch - and finding a new job would be a huge mental hurdle right now. It's really hard to sell yourself when you feel like a loser *and* you just got laid off.

I've been trying to tell myself that it's okay to just enjoy the time off and not feel guilty or like a failure because "I ought to feel bad, it's my fault I need to take time off". I thought I was prepared to be positive - but then I go to blog about it, and I feel like I should be expressing remorse (yet another benefit of the blog - it uncovers bad mindsets I might not otherwise recognize until it was too late).

I can't really afford to take all the blame right now (even though it *is* all my fault, 'cuz I'm SuperWoman and should NEVER fail at anything! And should be completely independent of those around me and never need help or support!). I know it's irrational to think this is entirely my fault. The last thing I need is to get depressed right as I take time off of work, and spend 30 days wallowing in self-pity. I can be really good at wallowing . . . not exactly a skill that gets listed on my CV :-P

Daily prayer

I've needed to add regular daily prayer into my life for a long time. This is gaining especial importance now that the girls are becoming old enough to actively pray with me (and prayer is becoming easier - it's so much easier to do something "for the children and family" than "for myself").

Enter this website: Daily Catholic Prayer. Simple, but good.

I've been trying to remember to say grace before meals, at least at home. The girls are eager to join in the ritual of prayer, even though they do not fully understand it. Children are so eager to say, "Thank you!" I need to add prayer in before bed as well, but ritual prayers alone do not feel right to me.

I think examination of concience is perfect, however. The girls are so eager to be polite and "nice". "Thank you", "I'm sorry", and "Please" come naturally to them. Saying one of each before bed, to God, seems so natural and . . . right. And ageless. These words are appropriate at all stages of life - they are limitless in their capacity for sophistication and expression, and grow as we do.

Maybe someday we'll be ready for daily Mass or Rosaries, but for now I'll focus on a humble foundation. This temple for worshipping the Lord is not yet ready for a steeple.

My favorite gem: A prayer for work.
"Direct, we beg You, O Lord,
our actions by Your holy inspirations
And grant that we may carry them out
with Your gracious assistance,
That every prayer and work of ours
may begin always with You,
and through You be happily ended.
Amen."

What kind of job I'm looking for

First, my background:
- I have a BS in Computer Engineering from the University of Washington, which is a pretty good school for CS (it's often ranked next after Berkeley - around the 5th / 6th best school in the country when I graduated).
- I have 6 months experience as a software development engineer intern.
- Since graduation, I have worked in the test discipline.
* Nine months as an Software Test Engineer contractor at Microsoft (MS) (working for Volt)
* One year as a Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) contractor at MS (working for Volt)
* Eight months in current position as MS SDET in Internet Explorer
- I may be making a career switch to development - but need to conduct some informational interviews first to learn what QA outside of MS looks like.

I'll post a link to my resume once I get around to updating it.

So the first thing I actually need to do is to conduct informational interviews at various companies to see what their 1-2 years experience test development and entry-level software development work is like. I've heard that testing outside of MS is very different, and I'm not sure I'm interested in a test career outside of this company.

Right now, what I need most is contacts for informational interviews with software development professionals and software testing professionals in a variety of companies. I will not be looking for a job in these interviews - rather, I will be trying to decide what kind of company I am interested in working in, and whether I want to continue my career in software testing or make a career move to software development. If I spend time on unemployment, I will *need* to make contact on specific jobs, so I should use this time to figure out the big picture information I will need to make those contacts useful.

I am especially interested in companies that match any of the following points:
- Are in or very close to Everett
- Have great benefits, especially health benefits
- Are concerned with making the world a better place, either by directly working towards that goal (like Catholic Charities . . . but I don't think they're hiring for my role right now) or by taking steps to give as a company and encouraging giving and volunteering by their employees (MS does a great job with this)
- Are full of enthusiastic, active people who really love what they do
- Have room for flexible schedules for employees (like 7 to 4 schedules instead of 8 to 5, or "just get the work done and be here from 10 to 4" - like at MS)

I'm still working out what my needed and desired salaries are. I'd prefer full-time work with a great company, but contract work at a company that I *think* is great would be OK if I can find a good, small, personal contracting agency.

Yeesh. Re-reading this post is giving me the shakes. It's very real. The only thing I've been through in my life that had a similar emotional impact was finding out that we were expecting twins. Of course, my first reaction there was happiness - but then I started reading about the health risks and challenges, and I was really roller-coasting emotionally for a while, between excited anticipation and fear. Here, the first reaction was being upset - but the roller-coasting is pretty similar. As long as I keep pushing forward when I'm feeling optimistic, I should be able to coast through the down-periods and just focus on prayer until I'm ready to get back to work again.

I know other people who have been through similar problems before - so that's an advantage over the twin pregnancy. I can talk to friends who have been through this before. Obviously, it's not the end of the world. The really scary parts of job loss are fairly far down the road - a lot of things have to go wrong before we're really in trouble.

More of an update on the job issues

I have a bit more information about what will be happening with my job. It's bad and good. I can say that I expect to be working at another company in the near future, and I don't expect to be fired.

I'm almost looking forward to things changing now. If I ignore how much my knees are shaking, that is. I'm trying to figure out what I want to get out of this change - dreams I was putting off because things were just settling down and I wasn't ready to change things up again - and this situation is also giving our family a much-needed shake-up. Our family seems to struggle with luxery and comfort. We hang together much better in tough times.

Please pray for us to be given to from the gifts of the Holy Spirit, espceially fortitude. And give thanks to St. Ignatius for that wonderful truism, "Pray as if everything depended on God. Work as if everything depended on you." I may be paraphrasing - I've never read the original text, just others quoting him. But those words describe very well what I need to be doing right now.

I'm on the clock right now, so I need to get back to work (I guess this is my 15 minute break - I don't usually take those, I normally blog during lunch or just before or just after work). I'll post on what kind of job I'm looking for during lunch, in case anyone has any practical help to offer - and also because I need to firm it up in my own head.

Thank you for your comments and prayers. I can't tell you how much they help.

Prayers please

I have good reason to think that if I don't start doing better at work, I may lose my job, and I'm feeling very scared. I don't know if I can deal with yet another round of changes while I'm still feeling exhausted from moving and all the family stress. I don't have much optimism left right now. Logically, I know we'll get through this one way or another,that God is there - but emotionally, I'm just tired.

I'm hoping I can pull everything together enough to keep this job. I suspect I'll actually feel better once I get through the shock - although it shouldn't have been such a shock. I knew things were going badly. In a way, it's good to have my intuition confirmed.

I was hoping to have a little energy to start looking at the presidential candidates. Guess I'm not going to get that for a while.

I'm trying to pull myself together enough that I don't break into tears on the bus. I cry very easily, so that's going to be tough. I'm feeling a little bad about feeling so bad - a friend of a friend recently learned that she had cancer,then learned that it could be contained. I know people go through harder challenges, but I just wish I didn't feel so darned guilty for putting my family into *this* challenge.

Got a lot done this weekend!

This was a great weekend - lots happened, lots got done.

We started out taking a walk as a family to the local produce store. They give major discounts for cash but we only had $15 in bills, so it was kind of fun to pick out the best values and get the most possible for our money. We walked out with four nectarines, four yellow apples, 2 lbs. grapes, two bananas, 10 lbs. potatoes, a coconut, 4 baby avocados (cute, but turned out mediocre), and 2 mangoes. I was pretty happy with that haul :-)

We went home, ate fruit, and the girls napped while DH and I did a few chores and then played an online MMO for a bit. When the girls woke up we just hung out for a couple of hours, but tempers started fraying as we headed into the evening. Finally we just packed up, gassed the car at the cheapest local station, grabbed food from the AM PM, and went to the beach for an inpromptu picnic. Everyone had fun and came home tired.

This morning, we dropped the girls off at the grandparents, then went out for pho (cheap Vietnamese soup - wonderfully delicious). We talked a bit about how to organize things a bit better now that DH is in charge. He said he'd be interested in me making a regular meeting agenda, so I'll get around to that when I get a little time. We're doing our meetings twice a month, the 1st and 16th.

Then we went to Mass, and got the wonderful treat of praise and praying without being distracted by our children or by accusatory glances from older members of the congregation. After Mass, I planted the five tomato plants and pepper plant that the grandparents had given us - after first uprooting a huge patch of daisies and clearing out a little more of the evil "corner of weeds" growing up behind the shed. When the girls came home, we watched a couple episodes of "The Adams Family" together (nursing . . . sigh) while DH cooked spaghetti squash and hotdogs, with cheese on the side - and then headed back out so I could get in another hour of weeding. The corner of weeds is now almost done, and it was impressive - containing no less than 5 weeds over 6 feet tall, most of which had fallen over under their own weight, as well as a multitude of other random plants. I found a few surviving flowering plants hidden under the vines, milkweeds, and grass, too!

And now DH is cooking a little extra food for us, enough that I will be able to take some of it in to work for lunch tomorrow! I am quite happy indeed.

When the rain stops, God sends rainbows and roses

We all know the old saying, "When it rains, it pours." I want to add my own addendum to that - the title of this post. When it rains, it pours, but when the rain stops then God sends rainbows and roses.

I've been telling myself that lots of parts of life are going through waves - they have their upturns and their downturns. Normally things are heading downhill in just one or two areas at a time, and I feel buffered by the upturns. This time, I felt like there were gradual downturns pretty much everywhere. But when you get to the bottom of the downturn, you usually hit an upturn. And since everything went down at the same time, now everything is going up at the same time, for at least a while.

So we're getting rainbows - the natural fallout from a storm. There's the joy of rebuilding a strained relationship (because relationship building is more fun than maintaining). Free and easy smiles look much prettier when they haven't been seen for a while. They are our reminders of our wedding vow to each other that things will never get so bad that we try to wipe out the past in a flood of rain and misery (what else can divorce be?) and start over - we can always keep working from where we are, and will always keep trying again "until death do us part".

Then there are the roses - the fresh, good things that come up as a result of the storm, that would not flower without the rain. DH's growing pride in our home, still seeming a touch fragile, but definitely sprouting. The clean home from the maid service that cleaned for the first time yesterday (but the pre-cleaning we did - led by DH - was the real win). There's my deeper understanding that even meddling that someone else says they wants - is still meddling, and is still getting in the way of them doing it themselves. Sometimes even a marraige needs tough love (oh, dear, that means it'll be my turn some day . . . LOL).

The rain analogy continues further - the mess and debris that builds up in our heads is cleared away a bit more after the storm, like dust washed away from leaves and rocks, and the world seems fresher, cleaner, somehow better defined. We can see better the things we care about, and even the air is clearer - allowing us to see further, to view mountain peaks in the distance and grasp better the bigger world around our little niche of life.

True, the ground here is still a bit soggy, and will stay that way for a while. However, that's no reason not to go outside in my bare feet, soak it in, and marvel for a bit.

And now - it's time for me to put my metaphorical shoes back on, take one last look around - and metaphorically head back inside my all-too-literal office and get back to my very literal work.

Getting organized

I'm starting to finally make progress on the pile of disorganization in my life!

I'm using a system called "Getting Things Done" (GTD), described in the book by the same name by David Allen. I like it because it gets to the heart of what I like about most organization systems, and because it works well with computerized tools.

What I like about the basic structure of organization - the list - is that it gets things off of my mind - but until I read GTD, I didn't realize that fact. What I normally don't like is that I don't follow up with my lists, because it's so hard to find the information I need without reading the whole list and sorting through it mentally. GTD has some ways to handle that. and with an online system like "Toodledo" to help, I'm now able to look at my to-do list and, at the top, always see the things that are most important to me right now. With computer features like filtering and sorting, GTD becomes very, very powerful.

For example: The main question I ask at work is, "What should I be doing right now?" I look at my GTD list, and filter by context (work), date (I don't want to see anything that can't be started until tomorrow), and actionability (I have items in my todo list that can't be started until something else is done, and they are labelled to reflect this). Once I have all the actionable items I can do today at work, I sort them by due date and priority (Toodledo rolls these together into one concept called "Importance", and so I just use that), and then by how long the work will take. I do the shortest tasks first, just to get them off of my mind.

The flip side is that I need to regularly add items into my list. I handle this by writing everything down in a notebook when I am away from my computer, and then adding it into my system once a day (I have a repeating top-priority todo for this that is automatically added every day for me by Toodledo). The final part I haven't done yet, but it is to go through the system once a week or so and make sure the list is in order - delete outdated items, readjust due dates, and generally clean house.

So far, this system looks good. Someday I'll read back on this post with 20/20 hindight, and know if it really worked for me or not - maybe I'll leave myself a comment?

Hrm, a benefit to the online diary: I can write notes on my entries when I look back at them from future years. That's a fun idea.

I need to write more on WOHPs - what does a good WOHP look like?

This blog is starting to become the diary I've always wanted to keep, but never felt motivated enough to maintain. I love the perspective I get from the comments - not just support, but also subtle questioning about my thinking. Hence three entries today - I'm going through a shift in thought, and documenting it in my diary.

This post is my thoughts about how giving up on responsibility at home has a flip side - I need to start living up to and thinking about my responsibilities at work. Until this point, I've been stressed about home and family. It's more important to me, and what I really care about, so it's what I've been writing about. Home is still important to me, but I've made a decision to conciously spend less time on caring about it. A SAHP is someone you can trust with the things that are most important to you in the whole world, and that is what I am trying to do. I've given myself permission to be disappointed with my husband, and that seems to be important. But while I was focusing too much on things that aren't my job, my actual job has slipped badly. I need to spend some time being disappointed with myself :-) And think about how I can be supportive and encouraging for myself, too.

If this blog is going to be my diary, it's a great place to get myself back on track. A diary doesn't have to just reflect my state of mind - I can use my diary as a tool to actually change my state of mind. Right now, I want to be thinking more about work. When I think about home, I want to be thinking about how I can appreciate and support my spouse and love my children, not about how to fix problems. Why is fixing the operation of our home my responsibility? It's not.

When I think about work, I should be investing the same kind of passion and active involvement that I was putting into my home life. True, I care less about work than about home. Nonetheless, it's my job and it is important. The fact that my work is less important than caring for children and preparing them for the world is no excuse not to do my best. My job is a critical part of my husband's work, giving him the resources he needs to feed, clothe, and care for my children so he can focus on teaching them how to live and on making a home out of our house. So expect more posts on my efforts to be a better employee as a WOHM who can (hopefully) rely on a SAHD, and fewer posts about how to get a reverse-traditional home to function.

While writing this, I had an interesting twist in my thought direction. Because of my desire to encourage and motivate DH, I've been thinking a lot about how important SAHPs are, and how difficult their jobs really are. I need to look at the other side for a bit, now. I want to keep talking about how cool the things DH does are, but I also want to start looking at the WOHP role in our home and in general, and I want to get a better understanding of it. I hear so much about WOHPs who treat their spouses like slaves and never do anything to help out, who are condescending and unfair. But what does a good WOHP look like? What do they do - and what do they not need to worry about, because they are entrusting it to the SAHP?

While writing this, it just hit me that I have very few models for this. I've never really lived in a home with a WOHP (Work Outside the Home Parent) who relied on a SAHP. No wonder I've been getting overinvolved. I really wonder what SAHPs expect from WOHPs. I don't want to be a female version of that wretched, crude, unappreciative WOHD figure at one extreme, but I also don't want to be living like a single mom - trying to "do it all" - either. Yes, I've asked DH for his take on what I should be doing and shouldn't be doing - but he doesn't have a good answer, and I suspect he doesn't really know either. He has said that he doesn't think I should be responsible for any of the work around the house, but I really don't think he should be expecting to do it all without help.

Hrm . . . maybe I should ask for a little help from those who read this blog? In your family, what are the responsibilities of the WOHP? What do you think WOHPs, in general, need to do better? What does a great WOHP look like? Feel free to use WOHD or SAHM (the normal gendered Dad / Mom versions of WOHP, SAHP) or whatever terms work for you - I'm not hung up on being PC.

Agreeing on responsibilities isn't enough

Before we actually had DH stay home, we had an agreement about how we wanted things to work. We both agreed that we wanted the kids to have lots of time with me when I was home, and we agreed that this meant that I would be doing less housework. The idea was, I would be primary parent when I was home and when I was home DH would do most of the housework that he didn't get done during the day. I would help him out after the kids went to bed, and during naps on weekends.

We have always had similar views on what housework needs to be done: Very little. I need clean clothes for work, but otherwise we just need to be covered and not making anyone uncomfortable. I do care about nutrition, but cooking can be minimal - steam the veggies, cut some bread and cheese. Clean dishes for eating do matter - reusing dishes from the previous meal bugs me. The clutter should be managed well enough that we aren't constantly losing things we need, like unpaid bills or favorite toys. Any cleaning or repair work needed to avoid permanent damage to our house or valuable property should be taken care of. Clean, clear surfaces for cooking are a major nice-to-have because I do like to cook at least on Sundays. We had a list of who did what, and chore schedules.

In short, we actually had very clear expectations. However, we didn't do one important thing: We didn't designate who was in charge of enforcing this agreement. So things kept falling back into the "old way" that they used to work - because things wouldn't get done so I would do them, or would nag Bjorn to do them, or would try a new schedule of chores but (again) wouldn't tell Bjorn that he needed to manage the schedule and make sure it happened. I still felt like everything was my responsibility, but I couldn't actually do the work - and yet we both knew Bjorn was supposed to manage things, so at the same time it felt like he was failing. We were both taking responsibility for the failures, but not taking responsibility for organizing things to avoid those failures.

I finally realized that it wasn't the work at home itself that was getting to me. It was the stress of being responsible for the work, and for everyone's attitudes. I was still carrying that responsibility from back when I was the main homemaker. So no matter how much work DH does, it won't matter until he's doing the thinking and managing work as well. No matter how little work I do at home, it won't make any difference until I quit worrying about everything else that needs to happen but doesn't at home.

Agreeing on the responsibilities - the labor responsibilities - isn't enough. You need to agree on who will manage the responsibilities as well. And that's where we messed up. The working parent shouldn't be managing the home life, but without a specific agreement on who managed things, this work defaulted to its prior owner: The wife. Me.

We don't generally acknowledge that nagging, reminding, and encouraging other family members to be involved in the home life is work - sometimes it's exhausting and stressful work. It's part of a huge heap of work SAHPs do that we don't acknowledge. They MANAGE. Social calendars, budgets, attitudes, goals . . . someone needs to organize these things, watch over them, make sure they don't go sour. We missed it. Oops.

My two new favorite phrases :-)

"Why is this my responsibility?" and "So, honey, what can I do to help?"

Weekend 1 of "risk acting like a jerk" went great. DH seems much happier, despite the eye-rolling every time I say "Why is this my responsibility?" or, "Why are you asking me? You're in charge of that." I thought I overdid things at one point, but then going back over the conversation in my head, the point where it went sour was - when I bit my toungue. When I finally said the thing I had thought was too harsh (but true), the conversation got back on track. It turned out I had misunderstood him. Gotta trust DH, gotta remember that I don't need to baby him.

I was very liberal about shirking any decision-making responsibilities related to the home. I did occasionally bring up things that were bothering me - like prepping for the maid this Thursday - but tried to focus on making sure that everyone knew it wasn't my responsibility. Nothing stinks as much as thinking someone else is handling a situation, only to find out that they had no clue and thought you were doing it. Plus this way, I'm not worried that someone will be disappointed in me - which makes it easier to say, "This is DH's responsibility. It's your work to relax so you can do well at your job."

Then after the kids went to bed, I didn't do any of the chores I care about. Instead, I asked DH to tell me what to do. From now on, he gets to figure out what is important. It's a difficult exercise in relaxation to look at a mess and say, "I shouldn't feel guilty about that. It's not my responsibility." All I'm responsible for is the small, precise tasks that Bjorn assigns me - and I refuse to take on "thinking" work, things like "Figure out what we should do."

I'm really looking forward to just doing what I'm told for a while. Every time I start thinking about something that isn't getting done at home, however, I need to carefully pull myself back and ask, "Why is this my responsibility?" Nine times out of ten, it isn't.

I can't do it all, and I'm not gonna try. If DH doesn't do things that needed to happen, I'm going to ask him how it's going to get done, so I don't have to worry about it. But the focus is on me not having to stress about it - getting the information I need to relax and trust that it will be taken care of eventually, before anything really bad happens. I will keeping asking questions and seeking answers until I can relax - and then I will stop, and trust DH.

Thanks for the support, and thoughts on my role going forward

This is a thank-you for the great, supportive comments people have left on this blog. I get very scared blogging about my personal life sometimes - afraid that I'll reveal something horrible and shallow about myself.

The funny thing is, things at home seem to often improve after I lose my temper. This time was no exception. Rather than sparking a response of defensiveness, DH responded to my temper with kindness and by rising to the occasion. This is despite lots of conversations, effort to be supportive, encouragement - yet screaming and crying for a couple of days made a difference.

This leads me to think I've actually been too patient. I am both proud and insecure - a combination which makes me scared to criticize others lest they cease to love me, and willing to try to "do it all" rather than confront them (because I can do ANYTHING, I am all-powerful! I am independent and don't need any help! Oh, wait, I was wrong, and now I'm exhausted and can't even handle my own share, plus I'm screaming at you like a harridan - oops).

There's a subtle compliment in straight-forward criticism - it says, "You are capable of better, and you are open-minded enough to listen to what I say and use that information to do better." Conversely, there's a subtle insult in saying only encouraging things when you both know one partner is falling short. I do think DH has been depressed, and I think that undermining encouragement - from me - is part of the problem. Especially combined with the obvious signs of strain and the increasingly frequent breakdowns from me. Compared to the mixed messages I've been sending in an effort to avoid putting "too much" pressure on him, screaming and yelling was probably refreshing honesty. But I can do better than that.

I guess the lesson I'm taking from this is that I shouldn't underestimate DH's ability to handle criticism about his failures. Nor should I be afraid to treat him the way I would want to be treated when I let down someone I cared about. I would want that someone to let me know I disappointed them (and I'd want to know how badly), but I'd also want to know that they still love me. If they speak up, I get more control over my life because I am more aware of the consequences of my actions - and I can change them, and become a better person. I would want that.

Right now, the question in my mind is, "What do I do if this starts to happen again?" I'm very scared DH will slip back into laziness at some point, and now I know I should speak up and trust him to listen with charity and humility. But losing my temper isn't right, either. I need to find a better way to tell him when he's not living up to his responsibilities.

I guess I'm going to need to risk being a jerk to DH on a regular basis, and practice giving him meaningful criticism even though I know I'll get it wrong sometimes. I need to be less careful and start trusting him to love me enough to listen to criticism, and I need to trust him to be strong enough to defend himself if I get it wrong. Of course I'll be encouraging and congratulatory when he deserves it too - that's the fun part! Celebrating accomplishments together!

And I need to quit thinking that I'm capable enough that I don't need my husband to act like an adult. That's not patience or kindness. That's believing that I'm better than him. And I know I'm really not.