Counseling and How I Love Spokane (Or should I say shopping?)

Just so you all know I am also seeing a professional Christian Counselor, who I am seeing today! I really love living in Spokane and cannot wait until I have time and have the money to go to some of the great Christian conferences and CONCERTS they have here! I was born to live in the city, I swear it!!! Why I was born to a farm family I will never know, but I love all the PEOPLE in the city! Not to mention the malls, and little shops, and thrift stores, galore! I swear Spokane has more thrift stores than I've ever seen in my life!! Not that I've been able to take advantage of it much. Moving and all the extra expenses of living here have left us with so little money, I haven't even been able to shop at thrift stores!!! Yikes!!! That, and, of course, for a time Josh took away my debit card. I also didn't have a checkbook or cash or anything. I mean, I could have gone to the bank to get money, but I would have really had to go out of my way to defy him to do that. He did that to keep a roof over our heads instead of letting me drink us out of a home!!!! Anyway, I'm looking forward to the shopping when we have some money for such nonsense! We're spending the money for counseling even though we don't have it. They've given us a great deal, but it's still hard. ANY amount of money would be hard at this point, but they can't afford to see me for free. I'm grateful for it anyway, and AM NOT going to throw it all away again with another drink...or 10...or 20...or 50,,,or....You get the idea. Anyway, hope you all have a great Monday!!!

And obviously I've had my coffee since earlier :)

Love,
Shellie

Monday Morning

Ugh! It's Monday morning and I have to get the kids up in just a few minutes! They have something here in Spokane called "late start day" and you would think it would be on Monday or at least Friday! No! Of course not!!! That would be too logical! It's on Thursday! They start school on those days a half hour later than on the other days. That morning is a welcome blessing by the end of the week, but it's followed by one more normal day before the weekend. Sort of crazy if you ask me! Can you tell it's early in the morning? For those of you who know me well, you know I'm NOT a morning person!!! When I've been drinking Vodka really helped, but I don't do that anymore. At least not today. And for 40 days in a row now. I need to be grateful! Gratitude is a very important part of my program, so I'll think of some things to be grateful for....after I've had some coffee. There's something to be grateful for. COFFEE! And another day of sobriety! Thanks for indulging me for a moment! I'm going to go get kids up now!

They Didn't Turn My Internet Off!!!!

Ya'll, they still haven't turned off my internet!!! Eeeeekkkk! This addict is sooooooooo happy!!!! Yay! And sick! Miserable sick! So, I went shopping today and thanks to the Big Mama blog and her "Fashion Friday" posts I feel like I really know what's in style, so I wasn't totally shocked by what I found at the mall. Usually, whatever is the new trend makes me go, eeeewww, do I have to wear that, when I get to the mall finally after being holed up most of the winter, in the springtime, but not this year!!! Thank you, Melanie!!!! Never met you in person, but I sure hope to someday! Almost got to meet you in Houston, but nope. Didn't happen this year! Maybe next time! But I got a dress with this diagonal black and white stripes that I am going to look so great in tomorrow night, IF I can find my nylons, dress shoes (either white or black, either one works!At least I got that to work with!), makeup, jewelry and hair stuff, if needed. My hair generally looks good as is anyway...I have awesome hair, so that's good!! In all of this mess, I have to find all of that and we are doing a ton more cleaning and packing tomorrow and so we have to get up and bust a move and be done by 2, so I can get a shower and get all gussied up, get the kids to wherever they need to go, which we've only got two of them figured out so far! It's a good thing they didn't get around to shutting off our internet today, because that is the only communication Jeremiah has with the Couch family, our pastor's family. He's best friends with their boy, Caleb, so it's good that he still can communicate with Caleb that way, so we can make sure he gets where he needs to go in time. Angela, we have to get to her friend, Lucy's house before 3, and we have to be out of here by 3! We have no idea what we're going to do with Chloe! The only friend of hers, who's parents I know, is not available this weekend, Jeni's daughter's sick, so she can't stay there! I'm hoping maybe the Couch's (grammar? Not sure how that works?) can take one more kid. Seems she'd blend right in and probably play with their 6 year old, but that's why I'm having Jeremiah talking to Caleb online! Why in the world do we not have their phone number? I have no idea! I really hate it when I talk to myself on here, but hey, this is what I do in my head all day long, so welcome to Shellie Paparazzo's brain:) I promise I won't let you in too far. It gets pretty scary in here sometimes, as you know. I really haven't let you in on the really bad stuff! I know! You're scared! Me, too!!!! Believe me! I told you, I hardly sleep. Now you know why :) Okay, but seriously, I don't know how I'm going to box everything up, and THEN get beautiful to go to this fancy dinner thing in SPOKANE!!!! Really?!!! Couldn't they have waited a week?!! Just for us?!!!! So, we have to leave by 3...come to think of it, I should probably start getting ready at 1;30! Yikes! This is insane!!!And I still don't know if my youngest will have anyone to stay with!!! Double yikes!!! So, we'll get back, probably around midnight, if not later! Then, get up Sunday morning to get ready for church, go to church, come home, load up the moving truck, and finish cleaning the house and go to the hotel!!! Then, get up Monday morning, do some last minute errands we forgot to take care of and drive to Spokane to unload and get moved in and hopefully start getting kids registered for school and what not. So insane!!! And, ya'll, I do have my kids cold and it's awful! I just want to sleep! Is that too much to ask?! Apparently, it is!! I'm dying here! Please pray for me and my family and that we won't kill each other, and by that I mean, that I won't kill anyone, because I don't think they will, although, with Angela in the mix that's debatable, and oh, yeah, Jeremiah has his moments, and so does Chloe, and oh, boy!!! Does Josh ever have his moments!!! I know he won't mind me saying so. He knows it, I know it, everyone who knows him knows it, so it's all good. So, pray for us. This is going to be crazy and stressful and hopefully God will give us lots of peace and supernatural strength and energy for the task ahead...and some good cough medicine that doesn't knock you out might help, too! Don't think I have any of that around here. Might have to work on that! Bye for now!

Goodbye,Moscow! We'll Soon Be Saying Helllllllooooo Spokane!!!

Well, I thought I'd say goodbye for a few days. I'm going to miss all of you and just miss blogging! I love it! But I need to get offline and get down to business taking care of all of the things I should have been doing all week!!! They're turning my internet off....Ummmm...well, today now. I'm not sure when, but we have an appointment to get our internet hooked up in Spokane on the 13th, so it should only be a short time, but I've never done this moving thing before with an entire family moving out of a house, so I can't predict when I'll actually get back on here. I'll try to take lots of pictures to show you some of the things that will be part of this experience. Maybe even some pictures with some of my favorite people that I'm going to miss so much here in Moscow! Some are coming to help us move, so that'll be great! I know of at least one family that will be here and I understand Josh's brother-in-law, Danny, will be here helping for sure, and I have no idea who from Real Life will show up, but it should be exciting! Goodbye until at least Tuesday most likely!

More Of The Last Week In Moscow

Well, Chloe is sick :( She's been coughing a lot ever since we did some major cleaning and packing this last weekend, stirring up some major dust! Which she and I are allergic to. It really didn't bother me as I took on the task of scrubbing out the water stains in the bathtub, which took HOURS, even with the miracle that is Bar Keeper's Friend. No, it isn't an alcoholic, that would be me! I would imagine it's a cleaner that a Bar Keeper came up with to get rid of tough stains in his bar. Well, it works great on bathtubs, too! I plan on keeping this stuff on hand all the time from now on as I imagine most places we live will have hard water. I've never bothered before. I just figured that when you live in Moscow, it's just something you have to put up with. That was before someone who cleans houses for a living looked at my house and told me this stuff would take it off. I'm not going to bother with the sink or toilet. The bathtub was the worst and took way too long. Just let me tell you, if you think you want a giant Jacuzzi bathtub, just imagine cleaning it!!! I'm thinking it's not worth it at this point, but then, since we never got the jets working, I never really got to enjoy it, so I might have thought it worth it if I'd gotten to bathe in it WITH the jets going! That never happened though. I'm looking forward to the hot tub in the hotel next Sunday night before we take off for Spokane. Yes, we're going to stay at the local Best Western after we pack up the house and leave on Monday morning after taking care of a few last minute things we forgot about doing (like getting our mail forwarded! Oops!). I'm sure there's probably many things that we forgot about doing in all the craziness. It's not like we've ever done this before. We've lived in Moscow all of our married life, so all of that stuff was still pretty easy to take care of after we moved being in the same time. This is all new and totally crazy!

Anyway, I did mention that I think Jeremiah is obsessed with Wrestling right? Well, I'm listening to him Wrestling Chloe right now and teaching her to Wrestle! Yes, I think obsession might be an understatement! Wrestling season is OVER bud! Get over it! Nope. Don't think it's going to happen. He's already asked if we can put a Wrestling mat in the basement at the new house. Yep, he's hooked :)

Updates And Last Week Here!

Okay, y'all! It's late, but I wanted to say hi and just update you on a couple of details. We went to my son's final wrestling tournament of the year. The most important one. The one everybody in their conference, league, or whatever they call it wrestles against each other in their individual weight classes to see who the best wrestler's in each weight class are. Well, without too much fanfair (although I'm sure he would love some) my son, Jeremiah, beat everyone in his weight class (or at least beat those who'd beat others) and got 1st place, a golden trophy (yes, a trophy) and just the awesome feeling of being the best 120 lb junior high wrestler in our area! Yay, Jeremiah! He's totally hooked and his former wrestler daddy is pleasantly surprised, actually thrilled would be more like it! This is the first year he's shown any interest in wrestling. Josh and I agreed when we first got married, that even though we were both college athletes and obviously had had dreams of cheering our own children on in the sports we love, we would not push our children in any particular direction where extracurricular activities are concerned. We did mention to him several times, casually, when he was little, that Moscow has a pee wee wrestling club. Josh would have had him on the mat at 5 years old if he'd seemed at all interested. He was much more interesting in sports where you kicked, hit, or carried a ball in some way. Football, soccer, and of course, baseball! Many of you know my sports were Cross-Country and Track, which are basically the same thing, since all I ever did was run long distance. Okay, I tried the shorter distances as a junior high student, but I sucked as a sprinter! And that is an understatement, trust me!!! I'm of the impression, personally, that anyone who has the heart for it, can be successful as a runner. Obviously, some with certain body types will be more successful than others, but successful none-the-less. In other words, you might not take home trophies, but you won't be dead last either. I was usually somewhere in the average range, middle of the pack, when it came to running, though, I got better and won a few awards as time went on. I often wonder how far I could've gone if I hadn't let the loser I was dating before Josh talk me into quitting, but looking back does no good where that sort of thing is concerned. I made the choices I've made and I have 3 adorable children and an adorable husband to show for it, so I'd say I've done okay. I may not be the skinny little runner I used to be, but at least I can raise my children well. I must admit moving to Spokane has got me thinking about Bloomsday, which I always wanted to run in. I'm totally out of shape at the moment, but maybe I'll walk in it this year and then if that doesn't get me wanting to run again, I don't know what will! I love competition. I love having others to pace myself against! I love the crowds and the cheering and just all of it! I miss that and I think getting myself in that environment might just get me interested in running again, at least to get myself healthier. I'm not doing a very good job of taking care of God's temple as I did back then, when I didn't even think of it as God's temple! You know, except for the alcohol, marijuana, and cigarettes! Those obviously weren't good for me! I was pretty good about staying off of that stuff during track and cross-country season, though, cause I was very focused during those times. My son is planning to go out for track at his new school, just like he was planning to do here this year as well. This will be his fourth sport this year. His health teacher, after checking his vitals, dubbed him a "sports addict" and an "elite athlete." I guess he has the resting heart rate of an elite athlete! The "sports addict" thing is kind of obvious! How many kids do you know who play 4 sports a year, are obsessed with football and baseball stats and win championships there first year wrestling? Yeah, that's what I thought! Not many! My son's a stud! It'll be interesting to see what the girl's will do. So far, Chloe wants to be a cheerleader and possibly a runner. That's going to be the girl after my own heart, I'm telling you! Then, there's Angela! All she mostly wants to do is act and sing! She's my little performer. The others are somewhat interested in that themselves, but not as much as she is. She is obsessed. She didn't get a part in the Missoula Children's Theatre production (which would have made this last Saturday insane, but we'd have figured it out! We've done it before! Three kids running in three different directions. We knew this would eventually happen when we decided to let our kids pursue their own interests instead of pushing them to do what we like to do.) and even Jeremiah said at lunch on Sunday after Angela saying that even the girls that did the auditions said this was their first year in professional theatre that it was "obviously a rookie mistake, not giving my sister a part." Yep, even Jeremiah admitted after last year that Angela's an acting genius! The girl loves the stage and the stage loves her, I'm telling you! We're actually thinking about getting her to the tryouts in Spokane that are happening right after we get there, so she'll have another shot at the Missoula Children's Theatre, plus they have year-round acting groups up there, so we'll definitely get her doing a lot more performance type things. That's what she loves, so that's what we're going to help her do. She would also love to play hockey, but that gets a little too crazy for our time and budget. I've heard much about many opportunities to be in the theatre at little or no cost in Spokane. It'll be exciting to see what God has in store for us up there!

Josh headed to Spokane tonight where he's going to camp out in our house that we're renting and get on a plane tomorrow morning to fly to Tucson, Arizona with some other scouters. There's going to be a conference and a lot of golf playing going on! He deserves it! It's good that he's getting some time to relax before the big move, even if it happens to be while I'm having to finish cleaning and packing without him! I'll get my chance this summer while the kids are all at camp with Josh! I know I'll be spending at least a week or two at home by myself, so it'll all work out. We'll each get our time of rest and relaxation, which is going to be much needed after this crazy year! I'm looking forward to it, but right now I need to get some sleep! I've got to get the Champion and his sisters up tomorrow morning for school by myself :)

Random Stuff You Didn't Care To Know :)

Okay, I've been wanting to write to y'all today. I'm not really sure why. It's just an itch that I have that must be scratched. There's nothing new and significant happening in my life today that wasn't happening yesterday. I could give you a few boring details, though, which is probably what I'll do! We've discovered two new holes in our air mattress since my plugging it with m heel and they are all near where my buttocks would be resting while I'm sleeping. All on my side of the bed, so each night as we discovered we'd lost air by morning I would begin the search for the leak. Our only conclusion? I must have a prickly butt? That was actually Josh's suggestion. I feel so loved. Wouldn't you? :)

Let's see? What else? I painted my fingernails yellow and green. I'm sure you feel so much better knowing that:)

I enjoyed a livestream this morning with a few of my sister's in Christ and of course, Beth Moore teaching. She talked about trouble and affliction. Two of our favorite things, right?:) Don't you just love it when teachers pick such joyful subjects?:) No, seriously, though, it was a good lesson and I'm sure you can still watch it using the link on her blog. Or you will be able to. They try to make the lesson available to those who missed it or the one's like myself, who were too busy chatting with sisters we recognized from the blog to really be paying real close attention :) So, I won't really say too much about that right now, because well, I don't really know exactly what she said myself :) I wasn't really listening that closely! I knew I could go back later and listen to her. I only had that half hour to chat with the others. I do know she taught from Psalm 25, cause that's where my bible was turned to, since she told us to do that first thing :) I don't think I read it at all! I'll have to do that later, too! Right now I'm starving and it's very hard to eat and type at the same time, so I'll see ya'll later :)

Business And Addictions

Have y'all noticed that we can now reply directly to each others comments on here like they do over at WordPress! Such a cool feature! So much easier to find comments someone made to your comment this way, not that it's hard on my blog, but blogger friend's I have who get a lot of comments, it will be soooo much better now! I love it! And I love seeing my replies directly under your comments!!!! That is the one feature that had almost made me want to switch to WordPress, but I don't really know how to do that without losing the things I've written here. I don't want to have to start all over with a totally new URL that I have to send y'all over to and have to bounce back and forth between here and there for a while until my posts over here are irrelevant to my life, which I doubt will ever totally happen if you know what I mean, but you also know what I mean about it not being important enough to look and see if something was said that I need to respond to. There's a certain amount of time I'd need to keep tabs on these posts. I'm also having an issue that the email address this is attached to won't exist in just 8 more days, which I also will not have internet at that point, so you won't hear from me after the ninth until we get hooked back up in Spokane, most likely with Comcast, so my roadrunner account will no longer be. I love gmail and opened up a new gmail account for all of my personal mail (I already had one for business purposes and facebook and twitter and all that that I don't want cluttering my personal email account :)) but since I actually liked it better than my roadrunner webmail I decided to go ahead and go with that. Plus, I can use it wherever I'm at. I won't have to worry about my email being connected directly to my internet provider so I have to change it every time I move or change providers! That's just a pain! I wasn't worried about it here, cause I knew we'd be here awhile and never would leave Time Warner, since they are the only cable provider and cable is by far the best high-speed internet money can buy in my opinion (which is why we'll be with Comcast up there.) We're not on the fastest cable internet, but it's still pretty good. We'd have to pay more for the faster one, which would be worth it, but won't work in our budget. We still stick with cable though, even though it costs a tad more, because we're just that addicted to the internet. Anyway, the problem I found is that you can't attach another google acount to your blog! I really don't want to open up a hotmail account or something just to have a valid email attached to this account, but I may have to. Ugh! Just what I needed, 3 email accounts!

And, of course, the addiction issue brings up it's own problems! I'm going to be like "detoxing" for that few days or maybe even up to a week (Dear God, please no!) I hope Josh is addicted enough to not let that happen, but then he has his iPhone, so he's all wired everywhere he goes anyway! Grrrrrrrr! Yes, I was in withdrawals two summers ago for about 2 weeks at Camp Grizzly, the land that technology forgot! My cell phone didn't work there, no wifi, nothing!!! It was torture! It was totally inhumane!!! My husband fixed it last year and brought our router! Praise God! We've been saved!!! I still haven't decided whether or not I'm going to Camp Grizzly again this year or staying home like I ended up doing last year. I wasn't going to go, but us moving to Spokane changes things a little, and with everything that's happened I'm not sure I should be so far from a recovery group or counseling or whatever I end up doing up there. I've waited so long for something like this to happen so I could actually build a support network, like an actually effective one with people who are available to me for real and understand me! It will be hard to start getting that established and then leave for two months! I just don't know about that. Maybe we'll just see what happens when I get there. We'll have to play it by ear and see where I'm at with that by the time we have to leave for Camp Grizzly about mid-June. Maybe I'll go for awhile and come back sometimes for a week or 2 at a time, or I'll stay and go to Camp Grizzly for a week or two at a time? The nice thing is is that even with me not having wheels that is possible, because someone (usually the business manager) at Camp Grizzly has to drive to Spokane about once a week to turn in some stuff to the main council office so I can catch a ride with whoever is coming that way one way or the other if I make those arrangements ahead of time, so something will work out to where I can spend a little time at our beloved Camp Grizzly at least during the summer! Yay! I was hating the idea that without wheels my choices were the whole summer at Camp Grizzly, or no Camp Grizzly! Normally, I'm an all or nothing girl, except when I like both options :) That's a really bad quality to have by the way, the all or nothing thing. Gets me in trouble a lot! Can't have a spotless house, so why bother cleaning! Can't get straight A's so who cares about school! Why just drink one beer when you can have the whole case! See where this is a problem? Don't give me a piece of pie! I want the pie!!!! The whole darn thing! And yes, I eat like this, which explains why I'm only 5'2" tall and 170 POUNDS!!!! Yikes!! Look on a height weight chart. That's not good! And no, I'm not big boned! If anything I have tiny, skinny little bones. You should see my arms! They're tiny!!!

Anyway, back to "detoxing." Whether it be physical or emotional I've had to "detox" from so many things in my life it's not even funny!!! As my friend Christie would say anything I try it's been "ismed." Alcoholism, chocoholism, you get the idea! I'm an addict to the core of my being! I'm obsessive to the max! Ask Josh, me "detoxing" is a pain! The one he probably remembers more than any other is the one thing I actually stuck with long enough to become physically addicted. I really never drank consistently enough to have to physically detox from alcohol. Well, okay, I always got a little bit of a headache after a few days, but that's about it. Not even a super bad headache. Nothing a little ibuprofen couldn't handle and me be completely function. And you're not allowed to laugh when I tell you what it was :) Okay, you can if you want but you can't make fun of me, that's the rule! It was Pepsi! Yes, I tried to slowly drop one 12 oz of Pepsi a day, and finally got down to one a day, which I kept trying to drop, but I'd get this horrible headache that would make me nauseous and EXTREMELY CRABBY!!! Somebody suggested I drink half a Pepsi and dump the rest! What?! Are you stinkin' kidding!!!!!! No way! That's precious fluid! I just couldn't do it!!! So, I finally decided I just had to drop that last soda cold turkey and deal with it! I literally laid in bed moaning and clutching my stomach for 3 days like a heroin addict!!!! I'm not kidding!!!! It was ridiculous! At one point Josh said screw it, I'm going to get you a soda! I practically attacked him! I don't know where I got the strength! I cried desperately, "NO! YOU CAN'T DO THAT TO ME! We'll just end up back here doing THIS all over again! I'm not doing this AGAIN! I HAVE TO DO THIS!" So, he didn't, but he and the kids went to his mom's house cause no one could stand me for another second! So, yes, I ended up doing that all by myself! I have no doubt now that if I had to and really wanted to do that for alcohol I could. So far I've never had to, like I said. I drank in such short binges that while I'm psychologically addicted I never got super addicted like that physically. Not to alcohol. It's still weird to me that I did that with Pepsi of all things when I didn't do that with alcohol or marijuana or cigarettes!!! Totally nuts! I'm pretty sure I'd do that without internet! Haha!!! Let's not find out, okay? Deal? Thank you. This is one of those addictions I have no intention of recovering from. That, studying God's Word (ummmmm, no stinkin' way!), coffee, and.....I'm not sure what else. I'll have to get back to you on that. :) I'm sure I have zillions I'm unaware of! After all, I'm just an addictive personality!! The funny thing about the Pepsi thing is years earlier Josh had joked that I would be the founder of Pepsiholics Anonymous one day. Hmmmm, maybe I should start this in Spokane :)

So, I will be emotionally a wreck while madly cleaning, packing all the last minute things and all those last 3 days since I won't be able to contact any of you! I threw out all my phone numbers without realizing it! Yikes! Moving mishaps, I guess. These things happen. Also, an emotional wreck while trying to move IN! Yikes! This is going to be scary!!!! Picture me with a look of terror right now. Yes, that's right. Just like that :) So how are all of you?

Crying Out To Jesus (and other things)

Okay, I'm sitting on my bed, or I was sitting on my airbed (yes, still sleeping on an air mattress. Will be for a while.) with my heel over the hole the cat put in it to keep it from leaking air quite as quickly, until my leg got to tired from being in that position as I read others blogs, so now I have my knee over the hole which probably isn't as effective. Josh is getting a repair kit later today to fix it. The cats not allowed in our room anymore. We're pretty sure she did it with her claws. Ugh!

Anyway, I've been busy. Not busy packing, which I should be. Not busy cleaning, which I also should be. Busy doing laundry? Well, yes, of course, I'm always busy doing that! It's the never ending, all consuming chore!!! At least I don't have to use a broom to do the job, right Angela? :) Sorry, most of you will have no clue what I was just talking about, but I'm sure it will at least get a smile from my friend, Angela Gifford. And by the way, if you're wondering, yes, I did name my daughter after her. The one who's walking a very thin line right now. But you're all probably wondering what I'm so busy doing, since I'm not busy doing the things I should be doing right now. Well, if you read my last blog post, which was in the middle of what I was busy doing, you'll be glad to know, I've been busy reading scripture, crying out to God to just plain "help me!" (ever done that?) and to please change my desires, because as you know, I was desiring alcohol, which is an incredibly self-destructive desire of mine along with many other unhealthy desires I have, but I'm not as concerned about those right now. Which, actually, I must admit I felt much better and MUCH less concerned about getting drunk after I ate a Cappucino frozen yogurt with tons of different types of chocolate toppings that my man brought home from Jamms last night. Awesome place! If you have one near you, go!!! I love it! It's a little expensive, but it's a great treat once in a while! It just opened up here last summer and I'm in love. I only wish I could also visit the spa next door, which my daughter, Angela, did last weekend with her friend, Lucy, who goes to the spa all the time. She decided to treat Angela last week to celebrate her birthday a little late. Lucy and I share the same birthday, so I always remember her birthday. I'm still not speaking to Angela about such matters, because I have never in my entire life had a pedicure and the only time I had a manicure it was at a beauty school, so it wasn't really professional. Her hands and feet looked amazing and she kept telling me about the cool things they did to her feet that felt soooo good and I glared at her :) Anyway, thank you, Josh! You are my hero!!! How about a pedicure next time :) I'm just kidding. I know we can't afford that. I have no idea how you pulled off the fro-yo, except that you sacrificed for me, cause that's just how awesome you are! So, that's me right now. And, honestly, feeling a lot less of a desire to drink. I think about a whole lot more than just that now. Thank you, Jesus! I'm sure there will be a lot more temptations to come and a whole lot more pain as I work through things from my past. The hurt and the anger is surfacing so much, and you can ask my family, I'm extremely crabby, so pray for them, too, if you think about it.

The Pain Is Too Much

Well, it's been quite a week. Yes, I've allowed Angela to live. I'm sure you're all happy to know that. And I'm pretty sure you all knew that I would. Still frustrated, still fighting with her often, still trying to convince her that, yes, sometimes life is hard, but you got to do what you got to do, and if it requires you to work a little harder than you were hoping to have to.....ummm,sorry, we've all been there. You're just going to have to work that much harder. What really sucked is, this week is Missoula Children's Theatre, and yes, we did decide that she has been working very hard to try to get her grades up, and yes, she could do MCT. For crying out loud it only comes once a year! It was going to break my heart to have to tell her no and I'm not sure I could've done. So, obviously, that's not the part that sucks. When she came home yesterday evening I expected her to be in a rush to get fed to get back to rehearsals. She wasn't in a hurry at all. In fact, she'd already been to Wendy's with our friend, Holly, and her daughter (Angela's friend) Maggie, who she did the tryouts with and carpooled with last year as well. Turns out the reason Holly took them to Wendy's is she picked up two heartbroken little girls from tryouts. Neither of them got a part. I guess they had some very young, college age girls running the tryouts. They didn't pick most of the people who were in the play last year, even those, like my daughter, who had leading rolls last year. Being the stubborn, hard-headed child that she is, Angela made it a point to give them a piece of her mind, which as you know, can get pretty ugly. She wasn't happy because she said they laughed at her. I wasn't happy either, and when she told me some of the other very talented kids that didn't get parts (who I've worked with in the past volunteering at the school) who've ALWAYS gotten parts in the past, I was shocked. I told her not to worry to much about it, because obviously this particular group, unlike the group last year, doesn't know talent when they see it! I don't want to hear any talk about how I might be biased, but I'm going to tell you right now, that besides my own daughter, I know a few other very talented little girls who will not be in the MCT production here in Moscow this year. I also know of at least one, who will be, who I would've never picked in a million years...just sayin....and there I might be a bit biased too, because this little girl isn't very nice to my little girl :) Do you ever find that interesting, how you can absolutely despise an 11 year old child, because they don't like your kid? I distinctly remember the first time that I discovered that I have retractable claws and fangs that I have absolutely no control over. They instantly appear the moment I sense that one of my children is being threatened in any way!!! It didn't surprise me that I was very protective of them with adults that I sensed didn't like them, but the first time my five year old boy came from home from kindergarten in tears and I had an almostly overwhelming urge to kill another child with my bare hands (you will be happy that I reminded myself that I can't protect him from prison, so I resisted) I was in total shock! How does this happen?! All I have to say is if you're in my presence and you say anything derogatory about or towards one of my children, I am not responsible for what might happen to you! I have no control. That's all I'm going to say about that.

Now, onto another topic. Alcoholism! It continues to prove itself to me that I'm not cured and probably never will be. I still want to run for that bottle anytime I'm upset, stressed, angry, whatever. I've had a lot of stuff stirred up in me through reading Beth Moore's sister, Gay's, story on the LPM blog. She has helped me to see that alcoholism really is an incurable disease that I cannot control. Thankfully I know someOne who can :) Not that that keeps me from struggling. Between that, my own desire to seem genuine, the stress of moving, the loneliness of not having an accountability team where I'm at right now and not knowing how long it will take to get that established in Spokane, and just plain not having anyone safe to talk to about all this stuff one on one, plus Changes That Heal, plus Breaking Free, is stirring up so much pain from my life that I have not dealt with, that it is absolutely making me want to run straight for the bottle. Why that? Why not cheesecake? Why not ice cream? Why alcohol? Well, too be honest with you, as great as those things are, they just don't have the power to anesthetize the pain that alcohol does, and being a rule follower, I don't like to break the law, so illegal drugs are not an option. I want alcohol and I want it now. What's really making me mad is I have to walk to go get it. I don't have a car, and my husband's being a real pain, telling me I don't need it. What is up with that! And to be honest with you, some of the pain that's been stirring up, relates to him, too. He's ignored some things, chosen not to set boundaries, where I think he should. I feel unprotected and I feel my children are unprotected by him, so I'm a little irritated with him. For not understanding, even though I understand it's hard to understand me. It's hard even for other alcoholics to understand me. I'm kind of weird, you know. I'm more of afraid of getting caught than anything else. I don't want any of the people from AA or CR to see me with alcohol! I honestly don't care if I drink. I know that's terrible. I wish nobody cared. I wish I had never told anyone how much I love to drink so I could just drink and everybody would leave me alone. I feel like a fake, cause I've been dry, but not really sober. I want to drink. I want to throw in the towel and say who cares? I want to for so many reasons I can't share here! But I've been dry for 18 months outside of any recovery program. I don't have a counselor. I don't have a sponsor. I don't have any accountability partners. I've tried to establish those in the past, but no one's been consistent with me. I know one who would have been, but I don't think she really gets it. She's not an alcoholic, she didn't grow up in an abusive home, she has never, that I'm aware of, been physically or sexually abused. She has no idea what that's like. I need someone who has a clue about these things and is completely non-judgmental, totally accepting of me right where I'm at, and will love me no matter what. Even if I screw up sometimes. Even if I screw up a lot. Cause to be honest with you, telling me how I should feel or what I should think has not helped me. If I could do that, just instantly change how I think and how I feel without talking through things, I'd have done it a long time ago! I know God's Word. That's the frustrating thing. I'm in it daily! I've been in it fairly consistently all of my believing life, which is almost 17 years!!! What I'm wanting to do is have one last binge and then go to a meeting, cause then it feels real! Right now it doesn't feel real at all. Nothing about me feels real. I don't seem like a genuine alcoholic. I never drank enough, consistently enough. I don't feel like a real Christian, cause I'm obsessing over things I know are wrong. I don't even feel like a real abuse victim, because others have been abused much more violently than I have. So, my parents said some mean things to me and they didn't give me the love I needed. They didn't listen to me or care how I felt. Yeah, my dad hit me sometimes, but never with a closed fists and never left a mark on me. At least not that I ever noticed. I was kinda trying to hard to avoid him and just about everyone else who might hurt me, to notice. And yeah, I was sexually assaulted, but I was never all out raped. What am I whining about anyway. Get over it, Shellie. It's not that bad....and yet, that doesn't work for me. I hurt. I feel neglected. I feel abused. I'm scared of people. I'm afraid that they're going to tell me my parents were right. I am hopeless. I am stupid. I can't do anything right. And I've sort of gotten that, maybe not in those exact words, from people who were supposed to help me. People who were supposed to love me. That I can't really have a relationship with God and know what I'm hearing from Him, because I'm not smart enough. I can't know my own heart, cause I'm not smart enough, so I can't possibly know what He's calling me to do. I can't know these things for myself. I need others to tell me what to do. I need to stop caring what I do or what kind of things I'm interested in. I'm not supposed to have interests. I'm not supposed to have desires for my own life. I'm supposed to stay home and only care for my family and do what my husband tells me to do. And, oh, my gosh, how dare he suggest I think about what I want! I'm not supposed to want anything! I'm not supposed to be my own person! I feel guilty for liking to write. I feel guilty for wanting friends. I feel guilty for wanting help! Why should I feel guilty about these things? Because others have told me they're sins. Others have told me I can't have desires apart from caring for my family. Others have told me I don't deserve better. After all, I deserve what Jesus got, and I get that, but I NEED more than that. And I think God understands that, which is why he let Jesus take my punishment so I wouldn't have to. So, all I'm asking is that people quit hurting me. I'm tired of being hurt. Is that too much to ask? I wish somebody would just hug me and tell me it's okay to hurt, that it's okay to cry and let me cry on their shoulder, maybe, just a little. And tell me that they're sorry that all that stuff happened to me, instead of just telling me to get over it. If I could I would, but it's not that simple. Very few people seem to understand that and they're not in a place where they're able to spend time with me and help me. Also, I know that I have this anxiety issue that causes me to choke up and not be able to speak. I'm terrified of people. I'm terrified to tell them of my pain. To be really real with them. I'm not sure I can, but I need to. And I need someone who understands that too, someone who has the time and the patience to sit there and wait until I figure out what words I can used to describe what I'm going through, and wait also, for me to get up the nerve to say what's going through my head, out loud. That's going to take a very patient person. I'm not sure such a person exists. Cause I'm scared of all of you. I may not seem like it in person, but notice how personal, how real I get with you? Not very. I'm scared how you'll react to the real me when I'm right in front of you.

The STRONGEST Strong-Willed Child

Have you ever had one of those days that you realize you've repeated a zillion times in the past with the same child and all your doing is going in circles with that child and you're so totally done you don't know what to do? Yeah! This has been one of those days. The Angela drama continues. I'm telling you this child misbehaves, complains that we punish her, whines and cries about it...LOUDLY!!!!!! and there's nothing you can do to stop her! She gives me a headache, makes me want to do things I won't talk about for fear I'll get in trouble for just thinking them!! I seriously was trying to figure out (in my head, anyway), how I was going to be able to send her to military school or boarding school or whatever those places are you hear about that parents who can't stand their children send them to! Or are just super rich and really busy and don't have time to bother! Or their kids are really smart, etc. etc. etc. ...you know the place I'm talking about. I don't even know if they actually exist. I just know I want to send this daughter whose name didn't work out so well for me to one of those places.

The current problem? Well, she's not passing some of her classes, largely because they're harder classes for her and she doesn't want to do the hard work of doing the assignments that don't come easy to her. She manipulates me into doing them for her. She won't listen to my attempts of just helping her and gets me to do it for her. So I've quit "helping" and told her she has to figure it out herself, so what did she do? Quit doing her homework, so she's failing. Then, she got mad cause we took some priviledges away. We informed her that's what happens when you don't take care of your responsibilities. Jeremiah got taken off the baseball team when his grades were bad, we take away her theatre stuff when she misbehaves, cause his thing is sports and hers is theatre. Yes, we've told her this a zillion times as well. Apparently, the rules shouldn't apply to her. Hmmmm. At this point I'm not caring. I was tired of hearing her whine and cry for HOURS so I said, "Fine, play on the Wii. I don't really care." That's it. I'm just done caring. Last weekend when I wouldn't make her the food she wanted at the time she wanted it she threatened to go to the neighbors and ask them to feed her telling them that her parents don't feed her. Some of you may recall we had an issue with this same child shouting out the window on the way home from school when she was punished, that we beat her, and then she tried to run away when I stopped at the gas station to get gas. I don't know if I brought that up on here or not, but yes, the issue of accusing us of abuse or neglect because she didn't get what she wanted has happened much in recent years. I fear much of this is my fault, since as a very depressive mother who tires easily I tend to give in way too often! Especially when she was a toddler. Not only am I a depressive, but I found myself pregnant with our third child when she was just over a year old and her brother was 3, so yes, you could say I was E-X-H-A-U-S-T-E-D while pregnant with a toddler and a preschooler. I pretty much let them do whatever they wanted in the house as long as they were safe. When I did have the strength and energy to discipline her I swear I felt like I nearly beat her half to death, I had to spank her so many times in a row, because STRONG-WILLED is an UNDERSTATEMENT with this child! She first openly and obviously defied me when she was only 9 months old!!!! I know they say that is developmentally impossible, but trust me when I tell you I KNOW what I saw in her eyes as open defiance. She first reached for something that I said no to which she quickly pulled her hand back indicating that she clearly understood the word no (we had slapped her hand while saying no to her many times and she's not stupid. She figured out what that word meant pretty quickly!). After that she looked at me, made sure I saw her and with that defiant look on her face she reached for it again. I don't remember what "it" was, but that's not the point! I knew I had quite a battle ahead of me with this child! Her brother did the same sort of thing at the same age, but he proved not to have nearly the perseverance of this girl!!! Oh, my! You have NEVER met a child who could throw a fit longer or harder than Angela Paparazzo!!!! I would almost be impressed if I wasn't the one left with the tasking of raising her! I laugh when I hear people say things about their toddler like, "Can you believe he threw a temper tantrum for 20 minutes!" Please!!!! That was a good day! Try an hour and a half!!!! I kid you not! I had a friend who came over at naptime when she was clearly tired and needed a nap, despite the fact that she didn't want to. I finally put her in her room, shut the door and told her to stay or else and she screamed and kicked the wall for an hour and a half before she finally fell asleep!!! This easily depressed mama didn't always have enough stamina to deal with that, so, yes, she often got what she wanted! I don't know how a child is just born like that, but I swear she was!! When she was three and four years old when I got up and was preparing to fix breakfast, I would sometimes ask the kids what they would like for breakfast, and if it was reasonable (like not candy bars) and we had it, sometimes I'd make it, other times I just made whatever I decided to make, like a normal mom (or I think that's what normal moms do. I have no idea. I've never been one or known one:)). Anyway, even if it was a breakfast she had chosen herself, once it was done, she inevitably would want something else instead and I would say, "No, you are going to eat what I made you." She would say "NO!" and I would basically tell her to sit her hiney down in her chair and eat what I made her or starve! She would put her hands on her hips, look up at me very defiantly and say, "You're not my boss!" I promise you I proved I was! But this was what we went through every morning for about two years. Once, getting curious, I decided to ask her if I wasn't her boss who was, and she said very matter of factly, "I'm my own boss!" She was four at the time. Oh, boy! Yep! I had me a tough one and I am at the end of my rope!

I do have to tell you when she told me she was going to tell the neighbors we don't feed her, I first said, "Go ahead. Have fun with that." I really didn't care. I knew if she did it would never come to anything. We've been through the CPS crap before with a neighbor that doesn't really like us. Besides, I also knew that deep down, she knows how the system works. If they did actually think there was something to it, they'd take her away, and she doesn't want to be taken away. She adores her daddy and loves shopping (mostly) with me. She wouldn't know what to do without us and I wonder if she actually knows that she wouldn't get what she wanted in "the system" either? I mean she's been to other people's houses and seen other kids get punished, so I think she's old enough and smart enough to figure out that all moms and dads have rules and some sort of discipline they adhere to. Granted she hasn't been in the most stable of homes with a mom who suffers from severe depression and anxiety and used to drink way too much off and on, but she's never been abused or neglected. She's always gotten at least 3 meals a day, sometimes with snacks in-between, so she's very strong and healthy. She's just extremely strong-willed and still, at 11 years old hasn't figured out that the world doesn't revolve around her! I'm exhausted. I have a headache, and I seriously do not know what I'm going to do with this child. Hopefully, I don't get any anti-spanking commenters on here. I've been through that all before. I don't agree and it's not illegal to spank your children in this state, so BACK OFF! Oh, and I'd LOOOOOOVE to see how anyone could raise this one without spanking!!!I promise. I've tried everything I know short of abuse or neglect!!!

My Heart Is Full...Of So Many Emotions

I know I shouldn't be writing a blogpost right now, since it's like 1:30 am! I should've been in bed hours ago (and suddenly I'm craving a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich! What?! I've been craving those a lot lately! What is up with that!), but my heart is so full right now. I read Beth Moore's blog, talking about someone very special to her ministry, going to be with the Lord this week, which reminded me of my sweet Dave, that I'm sure many of you remember me talking about on here a couple of times, who I lost to cancer a few years ago. Made me cry again, cause I miss him, and because I'm so grateful for the influence he had in my life to come to know Christ. Then, I hopped over here to see comments on my blog, which of course, were mostly from Jenny! One of the things I've done to help me not be so unhappy about not getting comments is, I've put a thing up on my blog that tells me how many visitors I've had! I love it when I hop on from time to time and see that that numbers gone up! That way at least I know you're reading, even if you're not commenting, but I do like to see comments from time to time! Otherwise, I get a little lonely on the other side of this keyboard, and you wouldn't want that :) No pressure or anything :)

I just want you all to know, I'm in love!!!! No, I'm not cheating on my husband!!! I have fallen in love with him all over again this week, too, though, but that's nothing new! That happens almost every week! I thought I loved him before, now I love him more! Or, he did something to irritate me and I was mad at him, but then he turned right around and proved he's still totally awesome, so I'm in love again! Or, I just looked at him just right and saw that unbelievably handsome man I married almost 15 years ago! That's much easier to do these days after he's lost so much weight! But no, this is not about him! This is about my True Knight In Shining Armor, who can do know wrong, even if I accuse Him of it at times, the one who swept me off my feet at the ripe young age of 20 and does it over and over and over again in ways I never would have expected! He's truly a romantic! He really is! You should read some of the stuff in the bible! Ain't nobody as much of a romantic as this Guy! He calls me His Bride, says He's "enthralled by my beauty." Oh, yes! He's my Prince of Peace, King Jesus! I am more in love with Him tonight (morning?) than I ever have been before! I couldn't explain it to you even if it wasn't 1:40 am and I should be sleeping! Don't know if I can sleep my heart is so full! Can't win on that one it seems. I'm either devastated and can't sleep or I'm exhilarated and can't sleep....or....whatever! You fill in the blank. I'm feeling like my heart is going to burst and I'm at peace at the moment, so who knows. Maybe I'll just pass out as soon as my head hits the pillow! First I have to put my head on the pillow to find out! Good night!

New T-shirts

Well, that was FUN!!! I got to choose 5 free t-shirts from neatTshirt.com !!! They make Christian t-shirts. Normally, I'm not real big on running around wearing shirts proclaiming my faith loudly and obnoxiously, but I like theirs. They're not as obnoxious as most and they're simple and cute. I particularly like the music ones which I ordered two of. I got free t-shirts because I won a sort of, contest on twitter, if you want to call it that. A cerain person they know had a birthday on Valentine's Day which was easy for me to remember since my birthday is the day before Valentine's Day. Yes, I'm 37 years old now, and I did just admit that publicly! I hear life begins in about 3 years :) Although, someone burst my bubble the other day by claiming that life begins at 50! Nooooooooooo! I was so close to life beginning and now it's leaping away from me even further :) Anyway, the birthday gal. You had to wish her a happy birthday the most to win 5 free t-shirts! I figured I had no chance since I don't live on twitter all day, but apparently I'm the only one who did it!!! So, yes, I got 5 free t-shirts! Five, as I understand it, because that is the gals favorite number! All I know is I'm getting 5 brand spanking new tshirts for FREE!!! They really do have some cute shirts. You should check them out. And no they're not paying me. This is entirely on my own! It's not the Blue Door Boutique, but hey, baby steps, right? I may be stylin yet :) I doubt it. I may never get this red stain out of my neck! Anyway, things are going well. I'm trying to keep a positive attitude going to get me through, and see the many ways God has rescued me over and over again! I'm determined to kick this depression and anxiety thing and be healed by my Healer, Jesus Christ!!! Have you met Him? He's pretty Awesome! You really should get to know Him, even if you don't need healing, like I do. There's so much more to Him than that! So much more that I don't even know, but I want to!! He's teaching me more and more all the time!

How God Uses Writing To Help Me On My Journey

You know what I love?! Well, anyone who reads this blog, because I adore "talking" which is only fun if someone is "listening" and it just pleases me so much that anyone would want to "listen" to all of my rambling!:) BUT, what I really love is how God uses something I thought was meant to minister to someone else to minister to ME!!! I was told almost a year ago that I should write a book after telling a funny story about something one of my kids had done or I had done or whatever! I don't remember what the story was about, just that it was funny. (I love funny!) I told this friend that I already had written a book that I was then doing more research on and rewriting. I told her "It's a devotional book written from my study of 1 Corinthians."

She said, "No, that's not the book you should be writing. You should write a book about your life."

I replied, incredulously, "My life! Why write a book about my life? Nobody would want to read that! My life is boring!"

She said, "Uhhhhhhh, nooooo, it's not. You're life is fascinating, the things you've experienced, the things your kids say and do. You are always telling funny stories that actually have happened in your life, just like that one. You should write a book telling all those funny stories and other stories from your life of things you've experienced that may not be funny but they're interesting."

I had always been afraid to write my life story, though I'd thought about it, and been told that I should before. Not because of anything positive in my life, but because of my pain. People thought, as much as I love to write, that maybe writing it would be healing for me and possibly someday be able to help someone else. I was waiting for the healing I'd been desperately seeking to occur before I did that, but I decided then that I would put my 1 Corinthians project aside and began writing about my life. Yes, I was still in a lot of pain, but just cause I wrote it didn't mean I had to let anyone else read it! I could just hang onto, possibly editting it later to shine a more positive light on all that had happened to me. So, I began at the beginning talking about my birth, and all of the drama surrounding that. (Yes, it's dramatic when you enter the world with a cataract over your left eye and blind in that eye, and having glaucoma!) I asked God to show me what He wanted me to write. What stories I needed to tell. I've found out that even in those early years of hospital stays and abuse, that my life wasn't just painful. I remembered some really fun and interesting things, like my first horse show when I was five years old where I won a blue ribbon :) It HAS been incredibly healing for me, but not just because I'm "getting out" all the old baggage that has hurt me for years, though, consciously, I try not to even think about it and am usually successful, but this never-ending ache continues on. I'm not saying I don't still hurt; that I don't still need help from God and others to deal with the painful things. It's just neat to see all of the wonderful experiences i had mixed in with that. It's a relief to know that God had good things in my life, even then, when I didn't know Him and didn't want to. He was there even when I rejected Him. He was there in the time I spent with the horses and other animals on the farm. He was there in the times I did participate in sports and not do a sickeningly horrible job. He was there, keeping me sane through it all. He gave me people every now and again who were nice to me and he gave me people who were fun and wanted to have fun with me. No, I didn't have anyone I could call a close friend. I never learned how to talk things through, something I'm still learning; how to share my pain. I'm still not good at it and it feels awkward and weird and the words never come out right. I wish people understood more. I wish I understood more. But God let me have some fun, even while most of the authority figures in my life were only hurting me. I'm still scared to talk about that things that hurt, cause so many have used those very things against me. People I should have been able to trust. I already had trust issues and then they added more. I'm struggling right now and have hardly slept in days. I can feel the bags under my eyes, and they're burning as I toss and turn at night with all the memories that I can't quite come to terms with. I'm so tired and my head hurts. I threw out my neck and apparently hips and back at some point last week, so at times I can't even move my head without excruciating pain. I went to the chiropractor yesterday for an adjustment since I could hardly turn my head at all. It still hurt after he adjusted me and I still didn't have full range of motion. I'm almost back to full range today, but will need to go back in again tomorrow to get adjusted again. So, yes, I'm struggling, but God is so good to me and has helped me remember the good times, too! He's used an old "friend" from my growing up years to help with that. I love her so much and wish we could spend time together in person, but she lives in another town and we both have very busy lives, each with three kids and a husband, and she is a working mom, which I can't even imagine the pressure of! Yet, she stays so positive even when she sometimes gets overwhelmed. Don't we all! Love you, Jenny! And I'm just so glad for all the good that I see in my life!!! God is good and He will and most likely, IS healing me, even if I can't see it right now.

What An Amazing God!

I must admit sometimes it's a comment from one of you that prompts me a little. It's so hard sometimes, because I have so many things on my heart all at the same time. It's moments like these that I realize that despite everything, my past, the years I spent shoving every substance down my throat or into my lungs that I could get my hands on to numb the pain, all of it. Despite all of it and how hard I tried to self-destruct, my life is truly amazing and a miracle from God!!! Call it what you want, but I KNOW who dug me out of addiction! No one but God could have done that! By the time I came to Christ in college when I was stoned all I could think about was where my next joint was coming from. It kills me to think where I might have gone next if God hadn't grabbed my heart that fall of 1995! I do remember asking people about Crack-Cocaine at that time and inquiring as to what that was like *cringe* Clearly I was getting to a point where the lighter drugs were not doing it for me anymore. Thank You, JESUS for sending exactly the people I needed at that time to show me (not just tell me) that there's a very real God who LOVES me!!!! I'm a very tangible, hands on kind of person! Words alone don't do it for me (although obviously I love words!). I need you to prove it to me. I think most of us do. Especially after all I had been through. I had heard the words "I love you" more than I like to think about, but really they only loved my body and what I could do for them! Prove it! Prove to me that you mean what you say! It's amazing to me how many tangible ways God has shown me that He loves me. He first loved me through the father-figure, Dave, taking an interest in me, even when he knew about the drugs and the promiscuous behavior!

What an amazing God!

Then, he introduced me to Josh Paparazzo! He's used that man more in my life than you could ever know or understand! From the moment I almost called off our wedding, because I feared being in a sexual relationship again. He told me the wedding night wasn't that important. That if I couldn't do it, I couldn't do it. He wouldn't push me. We'd take as long as I needed and he'd be gentle. He just wanted to spend the rest of his life with me, even if we never consummated our marriage!

What an amazing God!

(Obviously we consummated our marriage :))

Then, through my children! I can't tell you how many mornings I woke up feeling so down on myself, and my sweet toddler at the time and morning girl (Ugh! Those people oughtta be shot! jk) would climb into bed next to me, run her fingers through my hair and say, "Mommy, you're the most beautiful Mommy in the whole world!" And she meant it! She even challenged our neighbors to disagree with her! She'd go up to them with her hands on her hips and say matter-of-factly, "My mommy's the most beautiful mommy in the whole world!" And I mean, she was dramatic about it, like she was just daring them to try and disagree with her! I was the most beautiful (the fairest in the land) and no way was she wrong! I'm pretty sure she believes it to this day! That was my middle child, Angela.

What an amazing God!

My children grew and eventually, one by one each came to know Christ and was baptized! My son, who loves God's Word, almost as much as I do (Reading and hearing God's Word was the first time I can recall being told that I was anything other than a total loser. Oh, some never said anything really bad about me, but not super good, either!) was doing a bible study on his own that he had won at a VBS and he came up to me one day and said, "Mom, I have an assignment for my bible study. I'm supposed to thank one person who influenced my life for Christ, so mom, thank you for teaching me to love Jesus." It may have been an assignment, but I knew he meant it and I nearly bawled. That was around the same time that my daughter Angela had decided she wanted to be baptized and on the day she was baptized our pastor came up to me and said, "I just wanted you to know that when Angela and I met she told me some really wonderful things she learned from her mother." This was truly too much for me. How could this messed up, alcoholic mama ever have taught her children anything of the Lord? He was amazed at her understanding and knowledge of scripture.

What an amazing God!

And then, Chloe came into my life at a time when I'd completely given up hope on ever being a good mother. I was just going through the motions, trying to get through. Had given up trying to kill myself or get healed. I was just doing what I had to do. When I found out I was pregnant I was so mad at God. We weren't planning on having a third at that time. I asked God why he was giving me this child. Wasn't it bad enough I was already screwing up two? Why did He want to give me a third to mess up? Chloe was such an easy baby and she even made caring for the other two easier. I can't really explain how she did, but she did. I remember one day about a week after she'd come home from the hospital, right after doing the assembly line, changing all 3 of them, cause they had poopy diapers at the same time (wasn't that convenient), that I was doing this mom thing and I was doing a good job. A wonderful feeling came over me that I had not felt in a long time. I had no idea, but Chloe was a gift to me. I always thought that God gave children to parents, because those children needed that parent, but this parent needed that child!

What an amazing God!

As if that weren't enough she grew to be the biggest sanguine you've ever met in your life! If you look up the word sanguine you'll see a picture of Chloe's face right next to it! She IS the definition of sanguine! She and Angela are still the biggest cheerleaders I have! (Big for short people anyway :)) She bounces around and laughs and smiles all day long. She's really hard to be depressed around! Sometimes when it gets really bad, even she can't make me smile. In fact, she irritates me, but generally, she makes me smile, and sometimes even laugh almost every day!

What an amazing God!

My son is brilliant and he loves his mama with all his heart! Even at 13 years of age he still hugs me in public! He tells his friend's he's mama's boy and he's proud of it!

What an amazing God!

My husband has stood by me for almost 15 years of some of the worst times I've ever seen and he still has eyes for not another woman. I'm telling you he doesn't even notice other women. No, I'm not kidding. We were at a restaurant once and a woman walked by that I swear looked like she'd just stepped off the cover of a magazine, and I said, "Wow! Did you see that lady? She was stunning!" I seriously wouldn't have blamed him for noticing. He's married, he's not blind! I notice good-looking guys when I see them sometimes. But he said, "What lady?" He was serious. He had no clue what I was talking about. I then knew that the man with the visions who told me that he had a vision about my husband and did I know that Josh is so incredibly faithful to me that he doesn't even notice other women. He only sees me. I seriously have the man who only has eyes for one, and that's me.

What an amazing God!

As if His dying on the cross weren't enough, He did all this for me! And I'm sure if I really thought about it I could go on and on and on! This move, our house selling right away, my car selling, us finding a great house, so quickly. I'm shaking my head right now.

What an amazing God!

Processing My History

I feel the need to write. I'm just not sure about what. I'm slowly talking outloud to God (in the bathtub since that's the only place I can get any privacy) about my history. This must be my attempt at processing my past abuse and other things that have happened. I must admit, though I know it is really God I am talking to, since obviously no one else is in the bath with me :) I must admit that I am picturing a woman. She's not a woman I've ever met. Just a random woman I've conjured in my mind, because I still feel a deep need to involve another human in these discussions. I don't know if that's healthy or totally messed up. Of course, she rarely talks, mostly I talk. She just says comforting words every now and again, and reminds me of God's Truth about me. (I hope this post doesn't just reveal that I'm crazy and need to be locked up!:(

One of the things I have noticed is that even though I am stating some very painful things from my past, some that I've never really talked much about with anyone before, really only coming to grips with these memories here in the last few weeks and acknowledging that yes, they are real, as much as I wish they weren't. But what I've noticed is that I don't seem to feel much. Regret, yes. Shame, very much so, which is why I'm not sure I could say them outloud in front of a real, live person anyway. I'm way too ashamed of who I am. But the pain seems to have disappeared. I fear my heart has become calloused and hard in the absence of the help and support that I've needed. I know that I have many online friends I could probably email or call about these things, but for whatever reason I don't. I guess I feel that I need to have a real reason to be doing this. To be rehashing these things from my past. Some things I just enjoy talking about, like my children's birth stories, but no one's really listened to me. They've been mostly embarrassed to hear about such things. I love telling about my pregnancies and the differences between them and how with each one I somehow knew I was pregnant, sometimes even before showing any symptoms. It was weird. I just knew. I know how I knew with Angela. I woke up the next morning and ran for the bathroom, which I would continue to do for the next nine months! I think I made up for not having morning sickness with my first one, ya think! Seriously, the day before she was born, I was sick. Every single day of that pregnancy I was sick. It was awful. I never wanted to be pregnant again after that! Yuck!

Anyway, I guess maybe just sharing my life with someone, since I've not had a counselor to talk to would be good enough reason to email or call my friends and tell them these things I've been processing with God, ya think?

Packing And The Drama Of Driving

I seriously never before have wished more than I do right now that we hadn't lost the chord to the camera, so I could charge it and take pictures! I just read about Keith and Beth Moore moving out of their home of 27 years on the LPM blog and she had all sorts of pictures of things that had memories attached to them! I've found so many things here that I wish I could do that with! Unlike her, I don't have my husband experiencing this with me! He's busy getting work stuff taken care of to leave for the next DE here. And, of course, he will be cleaning out his office. He'll actually be going from an actual office to a cubicle! That almost seems like a step down! I mean, it's about the same size as the tiny office he has here, but without the privacy of an actual door, you know what I mean!?! I would find working in a cubicle very distracting and difficult to get any work done, with all the other people around you, but that's me for you. Like I've mentioned before, ADD. It's also in a very busy part of town. We kept hearing sirens and other things outside. It's right across the street from the Spokane Arena for those of you who are familiar with the area. Yeah, the emergency vehicles go right by his window to go just about anywhere it seems. I'm imagining those type of vehicles going by that area is probably a pretty regular thing. It could just be we were there at a bad time and something major had just happened! Anyway, obviously, also, I have not lived here 27 years! That would mean I moved in when I was 10 since I'll be 37 in just two days! Yes, you may send me gifts :) I'm not shy! I'm actually hoping, along with a new set of earphones for my iPod, since mine have a short, good ones with good quality sound, not the cheap ones I usually buy, that my man will buy me a new power chord for my camera :) Yes, he does read this blog, so I am hinting. I know because of the move we don't have a lot of money to spare. We're going to be spending a lot of it on like a new washing machine, and some furniture, things like that (that's going to make up for the jacuzzi bath he never hooked up that was supposed to be for my 31st birthday :)) This would be why I'm asking for practical things like power chords. Besides it only seems appropriate since he did buy me the camera last year for my birthday :) I really over use that smile, don't I?

Anyway, back to the packing thing. I had to clean out my car the other day, because we had to sell that *sniff sniff* I found a t-shirt I bought Angela a long time ago, that probably would have fit Chloe now, but it was filthy from being in the back of my car for so long. It wasn't stinky or moldy or anything so I probably could have saved it, but against my better judgment I threw it away! I just didn't want something that dirty in my washing machine when I have so many other things to wash right now! I felt like I ought to have a ceremony for it, though! It was heart wrenching throwing it in that barrel. It had a picture of a coffee mug and a little bubble that said, "sugar?" It had another bubble in another corner that said, "No thanks!" and in the center in big letters it said, "I'm Sweet Enough Already" *sniff sniff*

I also felt we should have a service for my car! I know it's just a 1995 Subaru Legacy, but you have no idea what this car has taken me through! To put it in perspective for you, do you remember your first car? The first car you ever owned? All yours, no else's or at least you were the primary driver? That's what this car was for me! My first car. And it might have had extra special meaning to me, because as some of you have probably figured out, I have many, many fears!!! I'm basically scared of everything and one of those things was driving. Really, even of learning how to drive, or more like, being afraid to prove I can't learn how to drive, or do anything else for that matter. Of proving that my parents were right about me. I really am a no-good for nothing loser, who can't do anything right. I am stupid. All those things they said about me. I didn't want to prove them right...again! So, I was afraid to try. I'm still afraid to try new things. I'm afraid of not being perfect, which is what was expected of me, so I finally got my driver's license in October of 2008. This was monumental for me! This was after I don't know how many driver's permits, including the one's I had in high school, that never translated into me taking the test, which scared me most of all. Some guy, staring at my every move and marking things down on paper while I attempted to drive and remember all the things I needed to remember. I'm still not a good driver, but I got my license, and as long as I don't get caught in a tight place where I have to back up or turn around, I usually do okay. I've gotten in a few fender benders with that car in a short time and God has been gracious most of the time, in having it be with people who didn't want to report it. Phew! It was my fault always, so it mostly would have hurt me! I did get a misdemeanor charge once for hitting someone. No fun! God provided miraculously for that one by an anonymous person at church leaving some money for us! Thank you, Jesus! I learned how to drive through many tears, panic attacks, and sometimes deep depressions after a particularly hard driving lesson that I felt I failed miserably at! I often gave up only to eventually (sometimes months later) start again. I got devastatingly discouraged and down on myself. I still do in regards to driving. I'm still not comfortable driving, especially if there's a lot of heavy traffic, which is one reason we decided to sell the car. If I won't drive unless I absolutely have to in Moscow, I'm not driving at all in Spokane for a while. I might try occasionally, with Josh in his Santa Fe. I'll definitely keep up my license, which means I'll be getting a Washington license in a few months. After I just renewed my Idaho license at that! Sheesh! I hope a Washington license isn't too expensive! And I hope I only have to take a written test to get my Washington license. Can you imagine me taking a driver's test in Spokane!!! Yikes!! We'll find out all that soon enough. For awhile I'll be walking and riding the bus, though. But yes, I want to keep my license just in case.

Our New House In Spokane!

Okay, I sort of promised I'd tell you about the house, so even though I'm exhausted and would really rather go back to bed, here goes! First of all, it has a basement! And a backyard!!! With a fence around it! Love it, love it, love it! It's pretty small. Much smaller than it looked in the pictures, although the bathroom is actually bigger than it looks in the pictures. Still small, though. It actually has four bedrooms, even though it's no advertised as having four bedrooms, cause they can't officially classify the fourth one as a bedroom, because it has no windows. It's in the basement. There's a small, kind of recreation room downstairs and the washroom on the other side for the washer and dryer. There's even those big utility sinks like my mom has in her washroom! So handy! And next two the washroom is like a pantry area, cellar type thing! There's all sorts of shelving and things built in for storage. It's got some neat, storage features that are really impossible to explain. You'd have to see it, and some of you probably will, eventually :) We're planning to put all our entertainment stuff in the recreation room. The tv and all of the video equipment and what not. We'll probably put a lot of the kids toys down there as well. Honestly, the bedrooms aren't much bigger than our bedrooms in the trailer, but with the downstairs, it'll make all the difference, cause all their playthings won't have to be in the bedroom with them. There's also a small, 3/4 bath downstairs. It's a sink and a toilet with one of those single standing shower stalls. It's not fancy, but it'll work. Jeremiah doesn't require much, so I would imagine he'll use that one a lot, since he's already downstairs anyway. Upstairs in the main part of the house, are, of course, the other three bedrooms. The girls will still share a room and we'll most likely use the extra room as a guest room/office type thing. We'll decide more once we get everything up there and start situating ourselves. The kitchens not real big and there's hardly any counter space, but we're thinking of putting a folding table in the dining room with the toaster, and microwave and all that to free up some space. Also Josh is thinking of either buying or building one of those rollaway bar type things, for some more counter space, cause there's literally like only a small square of counter space on either side of the sink. It does have a dishwasher. A fairly nice one from the looks of it, so that's great! Of course, a small dining room that has a blackboard! I may have to explain to the kids what that is :) Yes, personally, I would prefer a white board and will probably replace it with one eventually. We have a whiteboard at home, which I'll probably put somewhere else and save that space for another one maybe. I don't know. We'll just have to see. I know we'll probably change our minds a zillion times before we decide for sure how we want to use each space. We have some patio space outside, which is very nice. The living room has a gas fireplace which is really nice and has a lovely inlaid (I think that's how you say it) picture of three horses running, which my youngest daughter is especially going to love!!! She absolutely loves horses! I must admit, I kind of liked it, too. I am totally in love with that gas fireplace as well! Awesome! I've always loved the way a fireplace makes a home feel cozy, but never liked the mess it can make, or the whole idea of an actual fire in the house or even one I have to light. I have this very unreasonable fear of fire. Apparently from my childhood. From what my sister has told me, I guess she and her friend threatened to burn me (literally) if I told on them for playing with matches and candles and such in my dad's pull trailer thing out in the field with the cows, when I caught them doing that. So anyway, I'm terrified of fire to this day. I'm a little better than I used to be, but I'm still uncomfortable with even well controlled flames nearby. Anyway, all that to say that the gas fireplace is the perfect solution to all that. That has to be my favorite feature of the whole house! And then, of course, the small bathroom upstairs. It really isn't big enough for doing make up and what-not, so I'm going to have to put some kind of make-up station in my room and eventually in the girl's room, too. Just thought of that. Wow! Of course they have all kinds of built in storage space right outside the bathroom and bedrooms. The closets are tiny, so we're going to have to do some extra things to make more room for clothes, but we've got some ideas on that anyway. Working on it. It'll be fun. An actual house!!! With a basement and everything! Oh, yeah, and there's a nice big shed outside as well! Oh, and one more thing! The ad said no pets, but we inquired about that and they're letting us keep our cat, Jewel! We were thrilled about that. We weren't looking forward to having to say goodbye to one who has become a member of the family in her own right! So, the family will not be split apart :)

What An Amazing Provision: A Home!!!!

First off, I woke up this morning wanting a drink. And.....the battle rages on....but Satan lost another battle. I didn't drink. In fact, I soon remembered today was THE day....okay, okay, not THE day, exactly, but a BIG step toward THE day! It was the day we would see our soon to be new home. We were already confident that if the house we had an appointment to look at today was anything like the pictures, we were taking it! We'd already been approved to rent by the managers and so it was just a matter of looking at it in person, to really be sure it's what we wanted before we signed anything or gave anybody any money for it. The location itself was worth the rent if it was even decent as far as we were concerned! Two blocks from the public library. I mean, literally a straight shot from our house. No turns and just one street to cross! Awesome! Also a water park right by the library and Grover Middle School where our two oldest will go to school just a short stroll away! We're not sure exactly for sure what elementary school Chloe will be going to, but we'll figure that out soon enough. We drove by one that most likely appeared like one she'd go to. It's a little bit more of a healthy walk away, but that's okay. I'll just have to walk her there everyday. It'll be good exercise anyway. Plus, if we ever get a little extra cash in the coffers, there's a coffee shop on the way :) Well, that would be on the way back, of course, unless we went ridiculously early in the morning!!! Otherwise, I'll just have to get her straight to school! I'd want to walk her anyway, since she's still kind of young, and in a town she's not yet familiar with and will no longer have her sister to walk with, since it looks like they'll be going different directions to go to school. Angela I'm not worried about, since her school is so close to home and she'll have her 13 year old brother to walk with, who WILL be nice to her or he'll have me to deal with later!!!! And she'll be nice back or suffer the same fate!!! Tons of shopping and what-not nearby! At least the only kind I'll be doing for a while! A Wal-Mart, Safeway, not one but TWO Starbucks, I kid you not! And no, I won't be enjoying any of that for a while either :( Poor me. Oh, well. I'll survive! I may have to find a way to bring in a little income, but somehow we'll make it work. Lots more expenses up there, so we'll have to figure that out in time, and I'm sure we will. God has a plan and it's for my good. I know it! I just have to choose to believe it, which I'm constantly reminding myself of. I was hoping to get back into going to some recovery meetings and maybe counseling and a ladies bible study, but if I have to forego those things a while longer for the good of my family, I'll do what I have to do, and who knows, schedules may work out to where I can do some of those other things as well. I sure hope so. Or maybe God will provide in some way beyond our wildest imaginations! You just never know what He might do! I've definitely learned that with this promotion! Whoa! That was totally unexpected! Anyway, to make a long story short, we put down some money for the deposit and they're holding it for us, until we sign the lease on March 1st, so we have a home, just got to go through the rest of the process! I'll tell you more about it tomorrow, since I'm hoping to get to better at a much more reasonable hour tonight! (Though by many people's standards I've already passed "reasonable")

My Failed Trip To Houston

I never did get around to telling you all that I never made my flight to Houston. There was some confusion about how early we actually had to check in and I got there late and of course, that doesn't really excuse Delta Airlines for being extremely rude to me when I walked in. Some jerky guy came around the corner (I swear he was just waiting there to have the pleasure of ruining someone's day, which turned out to be mine!) when I came up to the desk and said, "Sorry, I can't check you in. You're late." And then just walked out. End of discussion and I swear he had a little smile on his face! My husband shouted after him "Wait! What? So we're just screwed!" I'm not sure if he said that exactly the first time, but he did eventually. When we refused to leave he came out several more times all just as rude and inconsiderate as the first time. By the way, it did not say on the printout how early we needed to be there or that they stop checking people in half an hour before the flight leaves. Tiny airport, only one gate, and I know lots of people who fly out of there that show up only 20 minutes before departure and that's plenty of time to get through security and all that and they have no problems! Even with all the new restrictions since 9/11. I know it's weird that I still think of them as new, because this is the first flight I've taken with a major airline since that event. Do you see how starving I was for some travel time! I seriously love to travel! Did it all the time in high school! I'm in withdrawals! As many of you being from this area recall, on January 20th the weather wasn't ideal and I may have this wrong, but they started pulling passengers off that flight, and as I understand it, it was because of extra weight restrictions due to the weather. One guy who had that reflective clothing on that you see the guys on the runway wearing came in and told us that technically it's not even legal to take off with passengers with any snow on the runway and that after this flight took off the airport was closing. Personally, (yes, this is sort of gossip) I think they didn't look at the condition of the runway early enough to cancel the flight, so they were covering their rearends! (I hope that doesn't offend anyone.) I would be willing to bet that just like the runway man suggested, they took off with only the crew aboard, cause the crew HAD to make connecting flights according to him. The next flight I could get a ticket for didn't go out until the next morning. The event I was going to ended at noon, so I wouldn't get there in time for any of it. I mean, that wasn't the only point of the trip, but it was the main part, so no way was I going without going to that! It just wouldn't be worth it! There was (supposedly) a flight going out at noon. I'd be late, but at least I'd get there. I'd miss the first session on Friday night, but I'd be there for Saturday, which that would've been sad, too, cause I still would have missed the photo sessions on Friday night! That was important to me, too! But that flight was full, so I would have just had to wait around to see if anyone cancelled at the last minute, but again the runway man (you like my name for him?:)) told us the truth was they were closing the airport. Nobody was going anywhere from that airport on January 20th, period! I wish they'd have just told us that instead of leading us around like a puppy on a leash!!! I really think that guy was hearing the talk from the others who were talking to us inside the airport and was irritated that they were lying to us! Just a hunch. When I left the airport, they were still taking passengers off the plane in short increments and the plane was still (obviously) sitting out there not going anywhere, and I glanced over my shoulder to see that the entire runway was COVERED with snow! Nobody was going anywhere! I also heard someone on the phone on the way out telling someone that they were telling him he might be able to get a flight out at noon! I wanted to turn around and tell him, "Hey, bud, they're lying to you! They're closing the airport. You're not flying out of this airport today!!!" I resisted the urge, besides my heart was aching to badly :*( I was so close, yet sooooo far away from my dream trip! Yes, there were lots of tears throughout the entire weekend. And lots of thoughts of just heading to the liquor store and getting me a big bottle of tequila, which I resisted. Not throwing away 17 months of sobriety that easily!!! Which I achieved that very day, by the way!!! I think this was my first full on realization that I am, whether I like it or not, a full-0n ALCOHOLIC! That and sharing a little of my story on Beth Moore's blog in a comment. Whew! Seeing those early drinking days staring me in the face was a RE-ALITY. CHECK! Man, was I messed up!!! That was this morning. After that I went to sleep (was up late last night) and dreamed of....drinking....oh, yeah, I was drunk, and I woke up happy about it and sad to realize I was sober. Wait!!! What?! Oh, man, I think I need to go to a meeting!!! But the meetings around here are so depressing! Ugh! What to do!!! If Gay or Beth read this, please don't feel like you shouldn't have shared. It's just me and it would happen eventually regardless!

Trying to figure out how to end this? Have you noticed that I have trouble with conclusions? I thought my last one was brilliant by the way! There. I think I'll end with that.

This Is Probably What Happens To Your Brain When You're Moving?

I was going to go ahead and write another blog post (making up for lost time :)), but with all of the kids having dinner and doing homework and all that jazz, my brain sort of went poof! I can't even remember what I was going to write about! I have had so many things on my mind the last few weeks that I've thought, "That would make a great blog post!" You know, if I could stop in the middle of life and write down what I was thinking in that moment and actually be able to find my notes later (cause actually have from time to time) I could write some brilliant blog posts and you all would be impressed and tell your editors (if you have those) and I'd be talking to them about now about possible topics for my next book! (You know....after the one I haven't finished yet :)) ................


Oh.....sorry, you're still there! Coming back to earth! I was just at a book signing in New York City....I'm back now! See, here's the problem with that scenario! As much as I love writing, I'm not very disciplined, live in a small house (probably still will live in a small house in Spokane) and have 3 kids, a cat, and a husband, not in that order. I got the husband first actually. I know, shocking, right?! Does that still happen? I probably should have been the poster child for ADD, so, easily distracted? Forgetful? Yes, all that stuff. And three kids with three very loud and individual personalities makes for a crazy, busy life! And like I said, if I had time to take notes in the middle of the craziness that happens in our house......

I've been told by many who've stopped by to visit in the last year that I should just set up a video camera in a corner somewhere where it won't really be noticed and just video tape our family doing our normal everday activities and start sending them to America's Funniest Home Videos. We'd be millionaires in no time! One of Jeremiah's friend that I used to give rides from basketball and wrestling practice for all the time (before my car died and then we sold it) said he never could wait for the car ride home, cause something funny always happens when I give him a ride. We made him laugh all the way home. It's good to know we have talents!:) Hey, maybe we should video tape us and send it to NBC! It's got to be at least as good as anything they have on now!!!

Anyway, actually, I was going to tell you some of my thoughts while packing and cleaning (not all of them! Some of them were disturbing :)) For one thing, I had no idea you could fit this much stuff in a 66 foot trailer before! You probably can't, but I have a knack for stacking things from the floor to the ceiling! (Not really, but you get the idea.) Also, cleanliness and organization are not in my vocabulary! Could someone explain to me what those mean?! I have found things I didn't even know I owned, and now I don't remember what they were! I do remember thinking, "If I didn't know I owned this I probably don't need it, so I should put it with the stuff going to the Hope Center." But then I thought, "Yeah, but I sure could've used this if I'd known I had it and I can't definitely see where it could be useful again." I also have found things I've been looking for for years!!! I haven't found Chloe's glasses that she lost last fall, though, which I was really hoping would happen! It could still. I've actually barely done anything! It's kind of sad really! I need to get down to business, but it just is so boring! You know, until you found that thing you didn't know you had and wonder where it actually came from.......Hmmmm, never mind. I raised three kids in this house! One from 3 to 13! I probably don't want to know!!!! Some questions are just best left unasked. See, not very disciplined. It's way more fun playing with the kids. Oh, well, that's all I have for now, since having to help Chloe with multiplication has officially fried my brain!

How come no one told me I'd have to do third grade all over again....3 more times.....and all three times I'd fail? I passed the first time!!! What's the deal?! Oh, yeah, my teachers just wanted rid of me. I actually sucked at math then, too!!! I remember now!

Random Babbling From Shellie

Wow! Three weeks!!!! Seriously! No wonder I've been posting ridiculously long comments on other people's blogs!!!! I've been basically writing blog posts of my own on...well....okay, Beth Moore's blog, since her's is the only one I go directly, too, without going to my blogger account first! Ha! Anyway, I had to laugh as I read some of my previous posts to catch myself up on what I had written (now that is when you KNOW it's been too long!) Anyway, yes, clearly the writer in me is STARVING!!! I might as well, except it, I'm a writer to the core of my being whether I ever choose to publish anything or not!! I just love to write, and I love the much more safe interaction of all of you not being in front of me. And my nerves just don't get in the way as much when I'm writing as when I'm with people in person. I seriously have full on anxiety attacks when I'm with others and they want to know about my personal life and my relationship with God (which is VERY personal!). You just usually can't tell because I'm very good at hiding it. Probably a skill I learned through years of public speaking growing up, which scares me to death by the way, even though people always told me I always looked so confident, especially with a microphone in my hand! Ha! If they could only look closer and see the racing heart and sweaty hands and feeling like I can't breathe. Okay, that one is new. It feels a little like an elephant is sitting on my chest and it happens regularly now!!! Yes, my chest gets very tight! I break out in a cold sweat! It's awful!

Okay, back to what I was saying about laughing (told you, highly unorganized). I'm laughing because of how much it shows how upset I get when I can't see what God is doing! I was talking about living here until my kids graduate!!! Ha! We're out of here next month! I kid you not! My husband got offered a promotion and he accepted! I never thought he'd accept a promotion until the kids were all out of school! But he did! Mostly because he started realizing, more and more, that I need HELP! And it's not going to happen as long as I live here! We're moving to Spokane, Washington, which was where the closest counselors I could find are! I was a little disappointed, because I'd finally convinced my husband to go to Real Life and now we're leaving, but they have to church plants in Spokane! And, honestly, if they didn't, I think we'd be willing to drive to Post Falls to be around loving, forgiving, gracious people who truly care! The original Real Life Ministries is in Post Falls. I'm pretty sure that's the original. I know it's the one I first knew about! I've wanted to be a part of Real Life ever since I first heard about them! They seemed like everything a church should be according to the Word of God! (Whoa! What a concept!) and when I first heard that they were coming to Moscow I was ecstatic! Just took me this long to convince my husband that's the place to be! As I understand it, they're all basically the same as far as the attitudes and hearts of the people. I'm sure they do different things depending on the needs of the people where they're at. Anyway, Jeremiah and the pastor's s0n, Caleb, between church, youth group, and school, even being on the same sports teams, have become the best of friends....and now we're moving! Thank God for facebook! That's all I have to say. And Caleb pointed out on Sunday, that Spokane's not THAT far away! It's not like they won't be up there and we won't be back here every now and again. They'll most likely still be able to see each other once in awhile other than on facebook. We do still have family in the area after all, and I'm sure we can squeeze in some friend time in all the family craziness during holidays and vacations. It will help us keep our sanity anyway, cause as much as we love family, too much time spent with ANYONE can drive you a little crazy after a while, right?! Much needed escapes are good for all involved, so we don't end up hating each other and never speaking again! Josh and I came up with a good rule of thumb. No more than 3 days spent at any relatives house. After the third day, we've observed, everybody (not just us) gets a little cranky with each other! It's a little different with friends I would imagine. You don't know each other in the same way, so you can't get in each other's business quite as painfully, plus you pick your friends based on what you like, you don't pick your family, so you get all kinds of personality conflicts mixed up in there! If you have a personality conflict with a friend, generally speaking, you just don't end up being good friends who hang out much. You don't have that option with family. So, anyway, this is a totally random post, and I think I've made the decision that I'm going to do a little more editting on here from now on, although that will mean fewer posts. Obviously, this post is the exception, being the one I'm telling you this on. It still won't be a lot of editting and it will be mostly based on my mood. If I'm in a fairly positive mood, I'll probably just go ahead and post what I wrote without editting, because there's probably not anything in there that I will regret posting later. Or at least, a little bit. Rarely do I regret it enough to delete it. Anyway, mostly when I'm feeling negative, and that doesn't mean there won't ever be anything negative on here, since depression and anxiety are huge issues in my life, but probably a little toned down and saved to be editted later, so by the time it gets to your eyes it will be more of an explanation of the frame of mind I was in than a barrage of my emotional baggage (I think that's the word I'm looking for.) Anyway, it's like only an hour until lunch time and I haven't even had breakfast yet! So.....I'm out!!!!