February 28: Writing Prompt #59-First Light

Remember yesterday, when you wrote down the first thought you had this morning? Great. Now write a post about it.

The scene when I woke up this morning:  my dog was lying in between my husband and me (which seems to be one of his favorite spots to be), but instead of sleeping, he had his head lifted up, looking toward the window.  My first thought was: “What are you thinking, Gunner?”

There are many, many things I love about my husband, and one of my earliest recollections of my falling in love with him is linked to his love for animals, all animals.  We were riding our bikes from point A to point B when he was still a resident of the small island of Roi-Namur, and suddenly in the quiet of the moment, he spoke to the birds in the grass beside us. At first, I questioned…did he just speak to the birds? The next time it happened, I just smiled, realizing that yes, he does speak to birds and dogs and octopus and any other creature of the animal or mammal world that he comes across.  AND not only does he speak to them, he speaks for them, often relaying what he believes they might be thinking out loud.  There’s something about this trait of his that truly endears me to him. 

During our years on the island, neither of us had a pet, so we loved to meet and visit with other’s pets, and we frequently “pet-sit” for our friends on vacation. We would talk about what type of dog we would like to get when we finally moved back to the states and what life would be like with our pet.  So, within 8 months of our MAJOR life change move from overseas to WA, we adopted Gunner. And boy, did we pick a pet that would consume our life as much as the thought of him consumed our minds during our many “pet conversations” in the islands. 

I only had 2 dogs and some fish as part of my 39 years of life before Gunner, and one of the dogs was not ever really a big part of my life. All I remember about my brothers’ dog, Puppy, was that he was very scared of thunderstorms (living in AL in the spring is NOT the place this dog needed to be), and if he was not inside when the thunder and lightning started, he was out of there, and I’m talking over the chain link fence and far away out of there! He usually came back if we couldn’t get him inside before the storm, until he didn’t.  I’m not even sure how long we had him or where my parents got him from, but I always felt bad, not knowing what became of him.  I wonder what my brothers’ memories are of Puppy? I don’t think I’ve ever actually asked them. 

Priscilla (or ‘cilla for short) was the shorthaired dachshund my mom and I picked out from a pet store in the Madison Square Mall not long before my dad and my two brothers moved out of the house (my dad because of the divorce and my brothers to head off to college).  ‘Cilla became OUR protective, little guard dog, spoiled, untrained, and very, very LOVED. J  Unfortunately, she only lived about 4 years. Having been clipped by a car trying to chase after a dog four times her size across the busiest street in our neighborhood may have done her in.  There were no marks, no vet visits for the accident, but within 2 years, her bowels gave way, her back legs stopped working, and the only humane thing was to put her to sleep. It was devastating for my mom and me. She took care of us during those first years of transition from being a family of 5 to a family of 2. 

And now there’s Gunner. I had forgotten how much responsibility comes with a dog. I had forgotten how needy they could be. I had forgotten how much I could fall in love with a dog and worry about his well being.  Over the years, I have picked up my husband’s habit to “speak for the animals,” so when I woke up this morning, I looked at Gunner and wondered what he was thinking, then I answered my question for him, “When are we getting up and going outside today?” is what I believe he was thinking.  So, my first thought this morning was of him, and my first thought upon arriving home each afternoon during the week is of him and where to take him to run, where to go to allow him his much needed exercise.  It’s like having a new baby.  I miss him when we are away, and much of my daily life is taken up by his needs and wants when we are home.  But, that’s okay, I so missed having a pet since the loss of Priscilla, and Gunner needed a home, so we are serving each other’s needs and wants! J

February 27: Writing Prompt #58-Comedy of Errors

Murphy’s Law says, “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” Write about a time everything did — fiction encouraged here, too!

Bonus assignment: do you keep a notebook next to your bed? Good. Tomorrow morning, jot down the first thought you have upon waking, whether or not it’s coherent.

So, writing fiction is NOT my strong point, but I do have an actual experience that illustrates Murphy’s Law pretty well, I think.

It was 1997, and my mom and I were preparing to take a plane to Hawaii the next morning for my wedding and move from AL to Kwajalein.  Needless to say, it was a nerve-wracking day, and it started with my discovery that my plane tickets to Hawaii had been packed out with my household goods. YIKES! (Don’t forget that in 1997 there were no e-tickets, so if you lost the paper ones, oh well.) After spending a good portion of the day figuring out how to get me BACK on the plane (which meant my mom had to put the one-way extra expensive ticket on her card-my limit wouldn’t allow it), we headed back home to get our clothes washed up and packed. Well, that was not meant to be either. The washer (or was it the dryer, mom?) broke.  Either way, we could not complete the process at her house, so we had to go down to the local laundry mat and finish our clothes late into the night before our early morning flight.  It really seemed that anything that could do wrong did that day. Heck, I was already pretty anxious about flying, getting married to a man I had not seen in several months, moving my entire life to a small island in the middle of the ocean, etc….then all of this? Made me question what I was doing, but I knew in my heart God was directing me to make this change.  I needed it for so many reasons that I was not to discover until later. 

So, what do you do when Murphy’s Law kicks in for you…don’t let it bring you down. Remember that whenever thing is going wrong, it’s often because something life changing is about to happen. Don’t let it stop you from doing what you know you need to do.  Our greatest lessons often come from adversity and times of testing. Murphy’s Law could simply be a precursor to a time of great growth in your faith as long as you trust the path. 

“If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.” Proverbs 24:12

“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”  James 12:4 

February 26: Writing Prompt #57-Happily Ever After

“And they lived happily ever after.” Think about this line for a few minutes. Are you living happily ever after? If not, what will it take for you to get there?

Yes, I believe I am. It wasn’t a pain-free or straightforward journey to get to “happily ever after,” but very few of us are able to make it there without some work and suffering along the way.  But, before I go any further with this topic, let me clarify what “happily ever after” means to me. 

When I googled, “What does happily ever after mean?” I found primarily the “fairy tale Cinderella” meaning of falling in love and living a perfect life with that love forever more.  So, yes, in that regard, I’ve succeeded in having been found by the love of my life (the second time around), and although our life and love is not perfect (because no human being can claim perfection if they are being totally honest with themselves and others), it is as good and strong as I believe any marriage can be, and it continues to get stronger and better over the years, BUT this is because we are both willing to WORK at loving each other, communicate about issues, and ensure we continue to let each other know how much we appreciate each other on a regular basis. 

Now, for the rest of the story, I don’t think of “happily ever after” as referring only to love and marriage because love and marriage in itself is not the whole purpose of our lives, in my opinion.  Part of the happily ever after thing for me is what I spend 40+ hours a week every week doing, which is my job or career, if you will.  Then, there’s also what I do with my family and friends in our off time, which is writing, reading, yoga, hiking, etc…Finally, there’s raising a family and service to others that’s a part of many of our lives in one way or another.  In order to say I live in “happily ever after,” I think I need to have some measure of contentment in each of these areas. 

Sure, I would love to NOT have to clock in and out at a job each day and stay there for 8 hours. I would love to make a living writing and be around more to take care of my home and family, but when I consider that for real, I realize that I would miss my career outside the home because it is one big part of my life that gives me purpose and fulfills me.  I learn and grow as a person at work through my experiences, and I’ve made so many wonderful connections at each place I’ve been.  In fact, I just chatted online with my former co-workers last night, which brought back sweet memories, and I come home many days from work now telling my husband stories about something funny a co-worker said or did, and we laugh about it.  I can’t imagine my life without these day-in and day-out work friends nor can I imagine my life without coming home to my family and dog each night, even though most nights I’ve half-asleep when I write these blog entries because as soon as I come home, my responsibilities there take up the remainder of the day, and then I’m right back to preparing to get up and do it all over again.

When I really, really sit down to think about it all (meaning my life and its happily ever after), I can sincerely say that I wouldn’t have it any other way! I enjoy my weekdays at work and my weekends with family doing all the activities I love. I find meaning in what I do and will continue to look for opportunities to serve others as we learn more about our new hometown. So, I have my happily ever after, but part of the reason for that is due to those tough times in the past when I learned to be content no matter what the circumstances. Being content with your life requires daily acceptance and positive thinking, and that’s something life has taught me that has brought me to MY happily ever after!  

What does happily ever after mean to you? 

February 25: Writing Prompt #56-Cliché

Clichés become clichés for a reason. Tell us about the last time a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush for you.

Okay, I admit, I had to click on the link from the Daily Post writing prompt to get a clearer understanding of the meaning of this cliche. It took me to phrases.org.uk, and it said this:

Meaning

It's better to have a lesser but certain advantage than the possibility of a greater one that may come to nothing.

After reading the meaning, I really had to think about the last time or anytime this was the case for me, but the first thing that came to mind and made the most sense had to do with my children. 

The year before I left Kwajalein with my husband and youngest child was a bit of a tumultuous one.  My ex-husband had planned to leave and move back to the states the previous year, but he wanted to take both our children with him. On this, we were not in agreement, so to make what could be a very long, dramatic story short, he stayed one more year during which time we worked with the counselor at the hospital to figure out what to do in terms of custody of our boys. 

At first, I couldn’t imagine anything but both of them being with me, and I’m sure he felt the same way about both of them being with him. It became clear after awhile to our counselor that we weren’t going to give in, so she made a suggestion. How about splitting them up? What?!?!? No way was my initial response, but turns out, she was a God-send to us, helping us figure out what would be best for EVERYONE, not necessarily ideal, (but we had already taken care of ideal when we stopped loving each other and got divorced), but best for each individual involved. She met with our boys individually as well as us and with all of us together, and in a short period of time, she had a really strong understanding of our personalities, strengths, weaknesses, etc….She was also able to see how very different our children were and see into the future, so to speak, into how they would each fair in either their father’s or mother’s household as their primary homes for the school year. 

This is my bird in the hand, having at least one child be able to live with me full-time, which was worth the two birds in the bush for me.  You see, if I had not come to an agreement with my ex and my oldest son (who truly wanted to go ahead and move back to the states and live with his dad although leaving his birth home was definitely bitter sweet and still is), than we would have had to go to court and let a judge decide what was best for each of our children, individually and collectively.  There’s no way to know how that would have turned out, and it could have turned out way worse than what we have now! I didn’t want to put my boys through that. They had seen enough of their parents not getting along and fighting over things, people, them, so it wasn’t worth the pain that would cause them.  It was better to take the lesser but certain advantage of still being able to be a full time mom to one of my boys than risk taking a chance that I might have them both, and it all comes to nothing! What’s your bird in the hand?   

February 24: Writing Prompt #55-Buffalo Nickel

Dig through your couch cushions, your purse, or the floor of your car and look at the year printed on the first coin you find. What were you doing that year?

Okay, so I chose a random coin from the ceramic “Sand Dollars” jar my boys gave me one Christmas that currently sits in the laundry room to collect pocket change before or after the wash, and I got a penny from 1970. If I go with that first coin, this will be a VERY SHORT entry because I wasn’t born then.  J  So, I wasn’t doing anything.

I chose again, and this time I came up with a nickel from the year 1999.  Now, that’s a year I can tell you about.  Here’s where I was and what I was doing back then:

Where: Kwajalein

What: Teaching Developmental English classes at the College of the Marshall Islands satellite campus located on Guegeegue. In order to do this, I had to travel by boat every morning at exactly 7:10 am to the island of Ebeye (around 20 minutes or so), then wait on a cement block that served as a bench outside the Triple J grocery store for our school bus to come pick us up along with our students and travel another 30 minutes or so to campus across the man-made coral causeway filled with potholes, rusty construction equipment, and all sorts of treasures from the ocean that had washed over the causeway during high tide.  This was a part time job, so I did the same commute back around 11:00 am, catching my boat home at 11:30, and arriving just in time for lunch around 12:00 pm. Tops my list as one of my FAVORITE jobs, EVER!!  Even the commute was fun! (I’ll try and remember to share a piece I wrote about it years ago in a later blog entry, so you’ll understand why it was such a wonderful time and job for me…)

Once I arrived home, had lunch and a little time to settle after a busy morning, I headed off to my other part-time job at the base public library.  Loved this job too, but in a completely different way and for completely different reasons.  During this time, I was also occasionally writing feature articles for the small base newspaper.  It was a very good time in my life, profession wise.  I tend to enjoy being a bit of a jack of all trades and having more than one job, schedule, and/or task to do at one time, and this combined 2 things I already loved doing before I came to Kwaj (reading and writing) and gave me an opportunity to discover how fulfilling teaching can be as well. 

I was also going to school (taking classes online and some face-to-face in the evenings) during the year 1999. Actually, I was completing the last of my classes for my graduation with a B. A. in English and a minor in Business, and I was looking into starting a Master’s degree in Teaching English as a Second Language as I was enjoying my job at the College so much and knew it would make me a better teacher and help me assist my students (who were ALL second language learners) more effectively and with greater overall success. 

Those are the major parts of my life that year.  I was, of course, still in many ways a newlywed, having been married only 2 years in 1999, and we had no children at that time, so life was centered around our jobs and time together after work.  My ex spend long weekend days golfing and long days/evenings at work during the week, so I kept myself occupied during those times with my own educational and professional pursuits. For me, that was a very positive thing because it laid the foundation for what I do now, and it jump started my future career.  It was a very good year for me. J

What were you doing in 1999??