Frightening Discovery

So when I woke up this morning and entered the bathroom this is what greeted me:

So Brian is trying to either:

1. Electrocute me
2. Kill my poor hair straightener
3. Send me a passive aggressive message that he would like for me to put my hair straightener away

The thing is, you have to wait for the hair straightener to cool before you can put it away so that means it stays out more often than not. I didn't realize it bothered him quite so much. I guess I'll have to find some way to threaten the lives of the slippers that he leaves laying on my dresser EVERY SINGLE NIGHT.
At any rate I guess this is better than waking up to find a horse's head in my bed.

Ideal Woman

So here is the song that I referred to by William Shatner that the leaders of the marriage retreat used (as one of their many wonderful music selections). It's from his album "Has Been" which was produced by Ben Folds, one of my all time favorite musicians. I may have to purchase the whole album. It looks fantastic.

Enjoy!

Olives

We have now reached the point in the winter where my skin, which is olive toned, no longer has a hint of any sunshine ever hitting it. It is gross. People with fair skin look beautiful this time of year, but I, with my olive skin, look sick and disgusting. Currently, I am the same putrid green color as the sweater I am wearing. I am like the child the wicked witch of the west threw up.

Marriage Retreat Reflections

It's hard to know how to report on the marriage retreat. I left feeling really warm and contented. It was such a positive and uplifting experience. And it wasn't really religiously tilted. There was some scripture but it came more from the perspective of an experienced therapist and clinician and all that she has gleaned from her work. (And the leaders love NPR, which immediately endeared them to me.) The leader, Beck Unternaher, with the help of her husband, John Blosser, decided to focus on the positives of relationships, relating that the happiest marriages are those that tend to focus on their strengths rather than weaknesses. So that's what we did. With the use of colored pencils and pens, little craft projects, the use of delightful Cd's (including a hilarious William Shatner song), and dialogue exercises, we built an image of what is strong and healthy about our relationship.

We learned that 69% of all conflicts in marriage are unresolvable. Most felt very freed by this knowledge, while it made others feel somewhat hopeless. I like it. We might as well let go of the things that aren't going to get worked out and focus on what we can.

We learned about "the dream in conflict" and about bidding. I learned that when Brian decides to give me a blow-by-blow of the current temperature on a long drive that he is bidding for my attention and I shouldn't get annoyed and start screaming about how I don't care about the current temp. The conversation referred to went something like this:

Brian: It's 6 degrees.
3 miles pass
Brian: It's 8 degrees now.
5 miles pass.
Brian: I can't believe it's really 9 degrees in Leesburg. That has to be wrong.
2 miles pass.
Brian: It's back down to 6 degrees.
1 mile passes.
Brian: I bet it's going to be 8 degrees in Warsaw.
Lisa: You are such an old man. Why are you obsessed with the temperature?
Brian (hurt): Fine. I'm not going to tell you what temperature it is anymore.
We enter Warsaw. I feel bad.
Lisa: So what is the temperature?
Brian: I'm not telling you. You're a jerk.

So, we learned and laughed a lot. This retreat was AMAZING and I would gladly attend one again. (Especially one led by Beck and John.)

Marriage Retreat

Marriage: 1 a (1): the state of being united to a person as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law.

Retreat: 1 a (1): an act or process of withdrawing especially from what is difficult, dangerous, or disagreeable.

This weekend Brian and I are attending a marriage retreat sponsored by our church. We will be withdrawing from the difficult, dangerous, and disagreeable state of being married from 6:00 p.m. Friday evening through Sunday at noon. And can I just say that it is much needed.

Alright, there might just be another definition of retreat: 3: a period of group withdrawal for prayer, meditation, study, or instruction under a director.

That's more like it. We will be getting away to focus for a few days on strengthening our marriage. I feel really energized by this idea. Even though I think that Brian and I have a pretty strong relationship, there are always things that we could improve - and why wouldn't we want to do that? Why wouldn't we want the best possible marriage?

I am mystified at some of the responses I've been getting to going to this retreat. Most involve laughter, derision, and feelings of sympathy directed at Brian. Oh yes, poor, poor Brian. His wife loves him enough to want to spend a weekend with him improving the quality of their relationship. I know he feels like, "we're fine - so why can't we just keep putzing along in the exact same fashion that we currently operate in."

But then there are responses of interest and well-wishes by other individuals who have had wonderful experiences at retreats or just think it sounds like a great idea. One lovely woman at church wrote us a note urging us to "pretend you are way up in Alaska without a care in the world." Nevermind that if I were in Alaska right now I would probably have many cares: avoiding getting attacked by bears, trying to keep my log cabin warm, living without any sunlight, etc... But she is taking the idea of withdrawing and retreating to a whole new level. I love it. I'll probably pretend I am on a warm, sunny beach. (Note to self: pack swimsuit.)

I don't know what this weekend will hold. I hope it doesn't include: Brian and I fighting in front of others, me crying during group exercises, Brian screaming "I RETREAT, I RETREAT," or divorce. I hope we come out the other side renewed, with fresh ideas and perspectives. I hope it's the ultimate Valentine's weekend.

February Challenges

Brian and I recently took on a couple of challenges. The first challenge came out of a conversation in our Sunday school class that ended with several of the couples in the class committing to observe "Meatless Mondays." Brian has been really fussy about it. He gets the point. But he doesn't like it.

Now, I am not a vegetarian and I don't even want to become one. I respect the vegetarian lifestyle a lot but I believe meat, in moderation, is a healthy and important part of a diet. (Also, I'm afraid that if we all stopped eating meat at once there would be a bunch of feral pigs and cows and I would walk into my back yard and find stray pigs rooting around there.) However, we Americans have taken something healthy and natural and turned it into an all-you-can-eat extravaganza. One person in our class had heard a report that many rural Chinese are only able to eat meat on holidays. Many have moved to the cities where they can earn more and consequently can now eat meat once or twice a week. Once or twice a week!!! Americans can easily eat meat three times a day! Bacon at breakfast, cold-meat sandwich at lunch, and meatloaf at supper. No problem.

Another person in our class had heard a report that if each person in the middle class in China would increase their pork intake by 10 pounds per year (roughly one pork chop a month) they would starve the rest of the world. This is due primarily to the grain that it would take to feed the pigs and the farmland lost for growing the grain and hosting the pigs. Now, I don't know if this report is totally accurate but still, we thought, in the converse, what could happen if Americans ate 10 pounds less of meat each year? Would we help? So some of us have decided to give it a try with Meatless Mondays. This is mainly to raise our own awareness, to keep us thinking about the rest of the world and to fight the American seduction of over-consumption. And it should be a health benefit to cut a little meat from our diets. So far, I have not eaten meat on a Monday in 2009.

The second challenge came through me taking a hard look at our finances and nearly suffering a coronary when I saw how much we spend dining out. I was trying to figure out where we could save some money. "If we get a different phone plan maybe we can save $20 a month or if we up our deductible on the car insurance we can save $15 a month...OR IF WE NEVER WENT OUT TO EAT WE COULD BUY A NEW CAR EVERY MONTH!" Okay, it might not be that extreme but it was ugly. So I have deemed this challenge "The Great February Dine-In." (You may be realizing that I do much better with lifestyle changes if I view them as a challenge and give them a catchy name.) It is an attempt to see if we feel any major difference in our finances if we don't eat out at all. I'm hoping by the end of the month I'll have excess cash to throw on the bed and roll around in. We tend to spend a lot because of being busy. "We have a meeting at the church tonight...let's run through the drive-through on the way." Or if I get home late from teaching piano lessons and am too tired to cook, we order pizza. We fritter away a lot this way. So, I'm attempting to plan ahead a little better and adjust my food desires.

We really do love to go out to eat. We love to try new restaurants and visit favorites and we really try to support locally owned restaurants around here. But so much of the food we were eating, we didn't even really enjoy. It was junk that tasted bad that we ate because we're busy. The good news is that we really love to cook. And we cook at home a lot, it was just shocking to see how much we don't cook at home.

So far so good. Until Brian came home last week with an email he had printed out from work. Da-Lite's sister company in the Netherlands was sending over some employees to tour the plant and build rapport with the Warsaw employees. To build rapport, they scheduled two meals for Brian to attend with them at the two nicest restaurants in Warsaw! So during The Great February-Dine In, Brian was able to go to two of my favorite restaurants, Cerulean and Noa Noa, for free. (We go to Noa Noa on our anniversary or very special occasions, it is our favorite restaurant in the world probably.) Needless to say, my bitterness was great. So last night was Meatless Monday (which Brian totally didn't observe) and I didn't really feel like doing a bunch of cooking for myself. So I made some deviled eggs for my main dish. Turns out, deviled eggs don't really make a great main dish. And they turned on me during the night and, long story short, it ended with me curled up in a ball on the bathroom floor at 2 in the morning. Not good. Tonight my supper was equally sad: Vienna sausage I found tucked in the corner of my pantry that someone had given us two Christmases ago, some stale crackers, and a few olives. It's 11:00 p.m. and I'm feeling okay. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

So I don't know where these challenges will take me. I'm sure we'll be back to dining out, we just enjoy it too much. But maybe we'll make dining out really count rather than being a second rate convenience meal. And maybe we'll learn a few lessons about our over-consumption habits along the way.

Where Did January Go?

Basically for the month of January, I hibernated. I slept a lot, watched a lot of movies snuggled under blankets, and, oh yeah, I knit a lot. In fact I knit instead of blogging...or reading, or checking email, or reconciling my checkbook, or talking to Brian, or cleaning, etc...

I think one could say it has become an addiction. I've even signed up for a social networking knit and crochet site, Ravelry. Brian called it my "one true love" last night. But it's a productive true love.

Here are some of the things I've created:


London Beanie for Brian that is just a little too small for him.

:(

Approximately 20 pairs of the classic Grandma Troyer Slippers knit in two months. This one is for a Bears fan.

My first sock. It wasn't even that scary. Okay, it was a little scary. And I still need to make the second one...

Fiddlehead Mittens. This was such a fun project. I took a class to make these and they have a cozy alpaca lining. Mmmmm. But I am not going to lie. I am not very functional while wearing these. I have dropped many things while wearing them, one was a large cup of Mountain Dew in our car. Oh well.

I'm currently trying to gear up for some other projects but for now I'm taking a little break and knitting a dishcloth.