Praise Gone Wrong?

When my children accomplish something positive, big or small, I try to offer some words of praise to them, as does my husband. Often times we use improper English in the course of these praises. I suppose we could rephrase our praises now, but we started doing this when they were small, and you know you just can't talk proper to little ones all the time, no matter what the experts say. So the habit just stuck. When they would clean things up or put away their toys we would say something like, "you are a great cleaner upper" or "you are a great toy putter awayer". The kids thrive on the praise, whether the English is proper or not, and the praises make an impact. Most notably, they have learned that our praises mean we are hoping they will continue similar behaviors. I realized that this concept was very much understood, when my youngest began praising my husband,"you are a great feeder Daddy." With a broken right arm, my youngest has been milking being spoon fed again, and so she says this to my husband to encourage him to continue feeding her. She is working the praise, so to speak. But the other day, I was a little chagrined, because she praised herself. Not that I don't want my kids to notice their own accomplishments, and to feel confident, but it was the way my child worded her self praise. We were outside, as were many bugs, and pretty much all bugs freak her out. She was not far from a spider apparently, and she began screaming. I calmly told her to just move away from it, and the spider would not bother her. After a few minutes, when she discovered the spider wasn't coming to attack her, she became brave, and essentially attacked it, by stepping on it and killing it. She was proud. She had overcome her fear, at least for that moment, and she announced enthusiastically, "I am a GREAT KILLER, aren't I mommy?" Hmmm. Not exactly words you want to hear your child utter, but it was the only way she knew how to verbalize her accomplishment, which was conquering her fear of bugs. She was looking at me for affirmation, but I simply could not respond with the phrase, "Yes honey, you are a good killer!" Finally, I said, "You did a good job honey." But I could tell it wasn't nearly as enthusiastic as she was hoping.

Maybe Today?

There is a strong possibility that our home will have power again tonight. There are currently crews working on our street, and while there is a lot of damage I am hopeful that power will be restored tonight. Meanwhile, we are keeping an eye on my parents as their car was hit from behind yesterday at a stoplight. They were checked out at the hospital to be on the safe side, and have whiplash and sore muscles. Of course the car that was damaged was their newer car with less than 7,000 miles on it, but thankfully, it is really only the car that is messed up and nothing else. Have I mentioned that I am really hoping that my days become dull and uneventful again? Life hasn't been in a normal uneventful pattern since prior to my youngest breaking her arm.

The House That Power Forgot

Or at least the power and light company forgot. That is the way it feels to the 30,000 of us that still do not have power to our homes. I drive by my house several times a day just to check the status, and I fight the surge of disappointment when there are no workers or trucks even present on my street. If I had a timetable, perhaps that would help, but it is the not knowing that gets a little discouraging. I swear if I had the money I would just pack my family up and head to Disney World for a week. Then I wouldn't think about the power situation at all. But really, I have no reason to complain. I am thankful I have a place to go where I can get food out of a refrigerator, lights to turn on, and water to run a shower. There are so many people that are on well water here, and when the power goes out, so does their water. I can't even fathom that. However, I drive through our community and see angry signs posted for the power company to read, but really, at the end of the day, the people here at least have places to lay their heads at night. So many families lost homes because of this hurricane, and while we are all inconvenienced, some more than others, I think we still have some things to be thankful for. I felt a little grumpy today, but tomorrow I am choosing joy, no matter what the power situation.

The Mall Rocks!

Today I am writing to my faithful blog readers from the scenic surroundings of a food court at our local mall. My parents still do not have cable or internet at their home. One man actually stopped by my computer as I have been sitting here, he was with his son and he said, "I don't mean to interrupt, but can I show my son something?" Feeling more friendly than usual toward strangers I said, "Sure. Why not?" He got very close to my screen and then said to his son. "See. This is what you can do when you actually have power." I laughed. 5 days and counting, and now we are looking to Monday to be the "magical day of power". I shouldn't bother getting my hopes up, but since my 90 year old grandmother and I came to near blows today I can safely say I am ready to move back into my own home. Long story short, she was in the middle of telling off a local store manager (over the phone) for not having the bottled water in stock that she likes to drink. We had an interchange, that got a little heated. She could care less that there are people in our community that don't even have water in their homes, let alone power. It is really just selfish. Not to mention she keeps asking me when we will get power so that we can leave. My husband said I should have asked her when SHE is leaving. Anyway, I will update everyone again as soon as I can.

Powerless

Just a quick update, as I sit in a Panera to pay my bills. Our home has been without power since Sunday at 1:33 p.m due to a MAJOR windstorm. We are uncertain as to when it will be restored. We have currently moved in with my parents, they at least have power, but no access to cable or internet. Our friends find themselves in very similar situations, and we all keep hoping that one of us will regain power soon. I will check back in when we receive power. I don't know if I will get to Panera again prior to our power restoration or not.

Re-Cast

It was back to the doctor today for my youngest. She had another x-ray, and a new cast put on in place of the old one. We discarded the purple plaster cast for a fashionable hot pink fiberglass cast. I am very thankful that my husband managed to go to this appointment with me. Once the old cast was removed we were concerned because the arm still seems to be bent funny, as in, bulging oddly in the area that it was broken. Supposedly, that is the new bone growing in, and it is "normal". Normal or not, it looked disconcerting, and I am glad he was able to see it and ask questions about it as well. In addition, her arm is already starting to look scrawny in comparison to the other, and I will be extremely surprised if we manage to get out of this without some physical therapy in the end. For the amount of time that the cast was off today, my youngest wouldn't move her arm at all, and held it quite protectively against her. In fact, she seemed relieved once the new cast was in place. I had an opportunity to wash her arm, and another weird thing was that her skin under the cast was dark brown, as I washed it, it began to flake off. It was a bizarre contrast to her white fingers. It unnerved me a little to wash her arm, because I was afraid of hurting her, but the doctor assured me that it would be fine. Anyway, the new cast is in place for at least four more weeks. She will have had her arm immobile for two full months by the time this one comes off, assuming that the doctor is comfortable leaving it off after our next appointment.

My Pity Party

I am feeling exasperated. Bamboozled. Completely irritated. Our never-ending saga with our rental house limps on and on and on. What has been happening? Well, we spent A LOT of money to fix it up, and now there it sits. No renters. Nothing. My favorite comment today from our current rental management company is, "Well if it were May or August we would have a lot of people interested in renting, but since it is September, we don't expect much." Great. I prompted, I prodded, I begged and pleaded, and my husband and other family members worked their tails off trying to get the house completed in August, but to no avail. The contractors didn't come through with the rest of the work. The house wasn't done until two weeks ago. So now it sits. If I could turn back the hands of time we certainly would not have ever purchased this house 5 years ago. Some days I feel positively ill over the financial drain that it has become, and the most frustrating thing is I don't seem to have any control over plugging up the drain. The market is against us, timing is against us, and incompetent workers are against us. It is like trying to run in a pile of quicksand. The more we try to move or fix the problems, the further we sink. Our only choice seems to be to plod on through the mess, but the plodding on doesn't come without hesitation, trepidation, and sometimes outright fear. Honestly, some days I push it far enough out of my mind that I don't even think about it at all. Those are the good days. Unfortunately, something eventually pushes it back into my face, and I find myself worrying about it again. Today has been one of those days. So I am allowing myself to wallow now, and tomorrow, I will try to return to the power of positive thinking and unrelenting prayer.

Marital Bliss

Today my husband and I celebrated ten years of marital bliss, or at least marital "mostly" bliss. It is hard to believe that a decade has past since our wedding day. Of course we did a little reminiscing today, and both of us came to the conclusion that while there would have been some external things that we would have changed in our married life, mostly we would have kept things the same, and that is a good thing.

A Little Flat

Today was not one of those stellar days. It was just one of those days where everything seemed a bit off for me. It really started last night, as I was driving to the post office to drop off a letter. I had a woman follow me into the parking lot, and motion for me to roll down my window. When I looked, it was actually a lady from my church. She said that my tire looked flat. There was air, but not much. My husband and I filled it up last night, with the intent of having all of the tires checked today, because we had filled two tires not more than a month ago, and the others were looking low as well. No visible nails were seen in any tires, but I obviously had a leak. This morning I had a meeting at church, and I was dropping my kids off at my parents' house, and I remembered I needed to look at the offending tire again, just to double-check the air status, and of course it looked low. My dad checked it for certain, and it had lost half the air between last night and this morning. In fact, he began inspecting all of my tires, and none looked great from a tread standpoint. Long story short I now have four new tires on my car. Wasn't really what I wanted, but there was also a lot of cracking in the tires as well, and with the onset of winter not being too far away I didn't want to mess with tire issues. In addition to my tire troubles, I had a "dressing down" by a young woman from my church that did not see eye to eye with me on a certain issue. It wasn't the time or the place to get into an argument, so I defended my side briefly then held my tongue. Not my strong suit, but I managed. The whole incident bothered me enough, that it kind of set the tone for my day. All in all, life in general today has felt a little flat, not just my tires.