November 30: Writing Prompt #334-Tattoo...You?

Do you have a tattoo? If so, what’s the story behind your ink? If you don’t have a tattoo, what might you consider getting emblazoned on you skin?

No, I do not have a tattoo, but I do have a couple of stories about getting ink.  When one of my high school friends turned 18 and wanted to get a tattoo, I went with her for support.  The idea of getting a tattoo is fascinating to me, and I can’t say I haven’t considered it before, but I have never been able to decide definitively where and what I would have emblazoned on my skin for the rest of my life.  So, at 18, I merely lived vicariously through another’s first tattoo experience. 

Several years later, on my way back to the states for a vacation while residing on Kwaj, we stopped in Hawaii for a couple of days, and I caught a bus with another friend (another resident of Kwaj, traveling through Hawaii at the same time) to China town in Honolulu and supported her while she got a tattoo, although it was not her first like my high school friend.  Again, I was curious and happy to be there for her as neither of us knew the area, and I didn’t think she should go alone, just in case.  

That’s the extent of my experience with tattoos thus far, and I still don’t know what I would consider getting emblazoned on my skin. I am still just as curious about it as I ever was, and I often admire other’s tattoos, it’s just not enough to cause me to take the leap and actually get a tattoo for myself.  I’m not sure why….just never felt inspired to do it.   Who knows when or where that inspiration may hit, if it ever does.  If it does, I should have quite a story to share about how I finally came to decide upon and get my tattoo. 

November 29: Writing Prompt #333-Humble Pie

Tell us about a time you found out after the fact that you’d been mistaken and you had to eat a serving of humble pie.

I’ve been thinking about this one a lot, and I believe the most humble pie I’ve ever had to eat at one time was given to me when I offended an entire culture without meaning to.  I wrote about this situation not too long ago in response to a previous prompt.  It was tough enough to write about then, so I won’t recount it again here.

The fact is that there’s plenty of times I’ve had to eat a sliver, a slice or even a whole pie of humbleness in my life.  I make mistakes regularly.  I say too much and sometimes to the wrong person or at the wrong time or using the wrong words.  I sometimes fall into gossiping with the crowd too much or judging others before myself.  I am selfish; I am argumentative; I can be too emotional.  I don’t always look at the situation through the eyes of the other person, especially when it’s a person or situation close to my heart.  I sometimes think that I know best….I am prideful. J In a nutshell, humbleness doesn’t come as naturally to me as I wish it did.  The positive thing about all of this is: I am also able to look inward at myself, listen to others, and hear them when they tell me I am wrong.  I may not always accept it in the heat of a moment, but I can come to terms with it fairly quickly and easily and eat my pie with an apology and a humble heart. 

What’s been on my mind and heart lately, though, is concern that there are those out there I have hurt or offended unknowingly, and I may never have a chance to make amends.  I’m not one to want to “go to bed angry,” so it is tough for me to accept that there are some relationships, friendships, etc…that serve a certain purpose in our lives for a short time, and then they are gone, sometimes without any explanation.  That’s one of the negatives of social media, in my opinion. You can often “find” these people, but they may or may not “accept” you as friends OR they may accept you for a time, then “un-friend” you.  This may not have anything to do with me personally, but that “not knowing” and “things left unsaid” is hard.  I’ve had friends that were a part of my life, things happened, and then we moved apart, but we had closure. At some point, there was a “no hard feelings” moment between us. I’m okay with that. I don’t need to re-hash it. It’s the “I didn’t know there was a problem” between us that’s challenging.  But, I think it’s something we all go through and have to accept.  At least, I hope that’s the case.

People will come and go, and they are not always meant to be a permanent part of our lives.  I would never purposely hurt or offend anyone, so if I have done that to you, I offer my sincerest, heartfelt apologies.  If anything I have written has caused you to feel uncomfortable, that’s not my intent. The blog is mainly for me and my own “therapy,” and I realize that I will never be able to please everyone all the time, so I guess I’ll have to accept that.  Just as there are those I am less comfortable around in my life and those with whom I have painful associations, others may feel that way around me, and that’s just life.  I have become better and better at letting go over the years, but this is an area that’s still a work in progress for me.  I believe I may have a lot more humble pie to eat before I am done. 

November 28: Writing Prompt #332-Keeping Up with the Jones’

Tell us about the one luxury item you wish you could afford, in as much detail as you can. Paint a picture for us.

The first thing that came to mind is a Vitamix.  We watched a demonstration of this latest, greatest $600 mixing machine at Costco a few months back and even my son tried the green vegetables blended into a creamy Dixie cup of yumminess.  Also, it would take some of the burden off of my husband coming home and cooking entire meals for his family every night…it’s such a complete meal making machine even I can use it to make delicious tortilla soup, green smoothies, and more. J  Although, I have to say this is not necessarily a luxury item I can’t afford. We have bought more expensive items and used our savings to pay for them, but it’s something I can’t bring myself to “afford” at this point in our lives. 

So, if I am perfectly honest, the ONE LUXURY item I wish I could afford would be a home on a river with a view of the mountains on a few acres of land close to the best schools for my son and my husband’s and my places of work.  We did recently see a place close to what we would like in the small town of Tenino not too far from where we live now, and it was on a river with 4-5 acres of fenced land surrounding it, and with the shop my husband so needs and wants (in fact it was TOO MUCH of a shop), but it’s a little too far from my son’s school and our work places (or mine, specifically) and more than anything, it was not within our budget.  I wish it was, and maybe that’s something we can aspire to….something we can save our money to be able to purchase something in the future, land we can build and retire upon and have a place for ourselves, our children, grandchildren, and pets to roam and enjoy nature.

November 27: Writing Prompt #331-Fear Factor

People are afraid of all kinds of things: spiders, the dark, or being enclosed in small spaces. Tell us about your greatest fear — rational or irrational.

My greatest fear? Failing as a mom.  Rational or irrational?  Well, I think mostly it’s an irrational fear, but there’s always a bit of truth to our fears.  I struggled with my boys when they were toddlers, not having any family nearby and a husband who was at work a lot and emotionally unavailable to me when I needed him most. Mentally and because of my lack of experience with children at the time, I had a hard time being the best I could be for them when I was going through so much in the years before my divorce from their dad. Then, there’s all the decisions after the divorce in terms of custody and differences in how they are being raised when they are with mom versus dad, and it’s certainly not been an ideal situation for them to grow up in. 

Fortunately, I began to realize, when I entered the career world of childcare when the boys were 3 and 5, that I knew so little about being a parent. Thankfully, I learned so much about how to guide them and about their growth and development through the training I was required to complete for my job as a school age care program instructor, but was it too late?  I hope not. Don’t get me wrong, my boys are both very good boys, but I don’t take much credit for that. I think I’ve just been pretty lucky and blessed to have a God and His Angels watching over them since they were born. 

Having been a child of a dysfunctional family myself, I know the toll it takes on young ones, and I know that my parents each did the very best they could with where they were in life at any given moment while raising us, just as I did.  But, I can’t help but feel that maybe I screwed up one too many times along the way, and I can only hope and pray that they forget about the times I yelled too loudly or hurt them with my rash, emotional words of the moment. I can only hope and pray that they forgive the fact that their parents split up early in their lives, and that they ended up in two different homes being raised away from each other for a majority of their short childhood.  I can only hope that my inadequacies as a mother do not translate to them feeling any less loved, blessed, or confident in the wonderful young men they are becoming and in knowing that God has an awesome, perfect plan for them, no matter their imperfect upbringing and imperfect parents.

As long as they know that their Creator loves them more than anyone else in their life ever could, I hope and pray that will be enough.  Love covers all else, right? That’s what I believe at least. I hope if they learn nothing else from their childhood at home with me that they know LOVE and what it really is, not because of me, but because God speaks that into their hearts as He has mine.

November 26: Writing Prompt #330-To Boldly Go...

An impending new year gives rise to reflection and goal setting. What will your goals for 2016 be? It’s never too early to start thinking about self-improvement!

I actually have already been thinking about some goals for 2016, but I’m not sure I want to share them just yet.  I do have some unfinished goals for 2015 still, so I would like to take the rest of this year to see if I can complete those first or at least get a good solid start on them. Of course, one of those goals was to finish THIS 365 day writing prompt challenge, and I am happy to say that so far, I’ve been successful on that count, but to remind me of what I still need to do, I have reposted my 2015 resolutions here:

January 2, 2015-For one, I would like to find a way to be of service to others in my new home state in 2015, whether that be volunteer tutoring at a Boys and Girls Club or being part of a organization that helps the less fortunate in our city, I am not sure yet, but it’s something I am going to start researching when I get back home.  I also want to join one of the weekly running clubs that I discovered within my first few months in WA, but have not gotten my butt out to join yet.  To go along with that, I have the usual goals of health and fitness, including eating better and better and exercising more and more consistently (thus the running club resolution).

Wish me luck! It could be that I’ll be extending some of these to 2016.