Mixed Bag

It's been kind of a good/bad thing here at the Cyber Hermit household lately.

The semester started which is not all bad.  Now that Academic Advising has changed buildings, we don't get nearly as many students coming into our office and asking where the fourth floor is :).  My night class seems to be okay so far.  It's a professor I've had before so I know what to expect in terms of certain things.  I'm only worried about who is going to be in my group for the group project.  At this point in the program, I know the majority of the people and there are some who are definitely in the DO NOT WANT category.  Not yet sure how the independent study is going to go.  I meet with the instructor for the first time tomorrow.

The Spousal Unit continues to be up and down.  He saw our counselor by himself last week and it appears to have been a good appointment - I try not to ask too much about individual appointments or his other meetings since he says he feels "interrogated" - but he has yet to sit down and talk with me re: his homework.  That, however, is on him and I am most assuredly not his mommy.

On the better side, he has asked me to pray with him both morning and night which is something that had gone by the wayside a while back.  It's not necessarily long or involved but we both get on our knees and spend some time praying to God, employing that ol' thanksgiving, prayer and supplication thing.

And God totally got us a new apartment which we will move into in April (the week my final paper is due for my night class!).  Our current place said that since our lease expires March 31st and we will be here 2.5 weeks past that, they wanted to charge us $1900 for the privilege!  We currently have them talked down to somewhere in the $1500 range but...wow.  Their reasoning is this 97% occupany figure they like to tout as to how their 30-year-old apartments are in such high demand (remember, these are the apartments where I came home to find the entire back of the apartment torn off because it was *rotten* underneath).  Our response was the 97% may be true, but how long do these people stay?  In our little four-plex, where we have been for three years, we are the residents with the most longevity.  We are on our third set of neighbors in *each* of the three apartments around us during that time.  Still, God has a new place for us and I've been praying that He will have his hand on everything - including all the money needed to move in and out of both places (and hiring movers!).

In *really* good news, I am finally at my goal weight:

This means I move out of Phase 1 and into Phase 2.  Protein at lunch!  The grilled turkey patty nearly made me incandescent with joy :).  I will spend two weeks in this phase and then move into Phase 3, P3 being the Return of Breakfast.

The only thing I have to watch out for is my mindset.  I know I can get wrapped around the axle over weight and a number like *that*.  Just because I'm changing up what I eat and we're getting my pancreas back into the act does not mean that I am going to balloon up like Violet Beauregard. Away with you, unrealistic expectations!

So there is good, bad and in-between.  I am working on continuing to pray on my own and keep in mind that quote about prayer changing me.  I am still trying to find something that I can study, and let go of what I cannot control. 

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Project 365: Week 2

It has been a good week which as all last weeks before the start of a new semester should be :).  All the work of the weekend (grocery shopping, etc) has been done and I can now dedicate the rest of the weekend to sloth!  Yay, sloth!  And now?  Pictures:


My favorite munchkins next to my granddaughters sent me a new picture of themselves:

Not pictured is their big brother but I have known all three of these guys since they were hanging out in a nine months, rental free state :).  I miss them.


Obligatory Cat Photo.  We had a printer box in the corner of the office for a few weeks and the cats loved it.  They slept in it, slept on top of it, rolled around on the plastic bag the printer was in...and then we were horribly mean people and threw it out.  Now they comfort themselves with the memory of better times:

Food note:  I like edamame!  Who knew?  Going to try roasting them later this week:

Best machine ever!  I love not having to tromp to the campus Sbux in the morning for a cup of burned tasting coffee.  And I get to choose different flavors too:

The new semester starts on Monday.  On the good side?  I'm on the downhill slope to finishing my Master's with an expected graduation this fall.  On the downside:  this is the size of print for one of my texts this semester...and there's no pictures:

Post New Year's Goals Post/P365 - Week 1 (sort of)

Progress!  In keeping with my previous New Year's Goals post, I have cleaned out my closet of clothes that just don't fit/I haven't worn in forever and I've also cleaned every room of this apartment minus the master bathroom (which will hopefully happen this weekend).

I also took four pairs of pants (I have more but I'm going to have to do this piecemeal) down to the tailor to be taken in.  That was an experience.  I put them on and literally had to hold them up so they wouldn't just drop down to my ankles while I was playing mannequin on the tailor's stand.  There were pins everywhere!  On my hips, down the legs, in the posterior...which made it really fun to try to take each pair off when the time came :).  Hopefully, I can get one or two pairs down each payday and get them taken care of.  All the pants are Lane Bryant and they are of very good quality.  Since there is a decent delta between getting them altered versus buying new ones, I'd much rather get them altered and continue to be able to use them!

I've also been trying to keep a small visual "diary" re: the weight loss thing.  Since I am close to reaching my goal, I'm now going to bore you all with pictures.  Actually, they are behind the cut so you can choose to be bored or not :).

Not New Year's Resolutions

I tend not to do resolutions - too much pressure :).  Instead, I try to make some goals that can be...flexible.  So, in no particular order, this year's goals are:

1. Finish my Master's without killing myself: I have six classes left so I should graduate at the end of Fall 2013. While I still want to do well (ahem...very well, I know me), I am going to try to relax a little and not spend three-four hours studying and paper-writing every Saturday at Guillermo's. I will take a little time for myself on the weekends and a little extra time for the Spousal Unit versus the weekends only being for school, chores and grocery shopping.

2. Sensibly keep my weight off and not give in to the voice in my head: I have six more pounds to go and then I will be at my goal of 180 (60 pounds gone). Then I start the rest of the phases that will tell if my pancreas has reset itself to function as it should and I learn what I can/cannot eat. While the Pennsylvania Dutch/Amish stoicism gifted to me by my ancestors can certainly be helpful at times (i.e., having a goal and working towards it), it is a double-edged sword in that I have an excellent ability to berate myself should I not do EXACTLY what I think should be done to the exact specifications in my head. I have already told my mother that I do NOT want a scale (because I will fixate on the number on the scale) and I think she...well, not "understood" but knows I'm serious. I will continue to eat the way I need to and get back to exercising (YAY!) when I am released to do so.

3. Get back to posting to P365 more. This last year has been...well, it's been. Posting to P365 is part of a larger goal to remember there are other things out there and stop being so internally focused on the narrow world of school and the SU. I'd like to post at least twice a month and comment on other folks' pictures as well.

4. Find some good Bible-study type books and get back in the habit. My quiet time has taken a bit of a hit over the past year. Mostly I just pray in the mornings. Sometimes it's a good conversation and sometimes it's "Dude, I got nothin' here.". Like any other genre, however, there are good books and there is some absolute crap out there and it can get exhausting to sift through it. But I will find something and use it.

5. Continue knitting (yeah, I know...so hard :P). I have four specific projects that I want to complete: a shawl for my mom, a dress for my other granddaughter, Em, the hitchhiker scarf, and a wrap.

6. Continue working with our couples counselor and also try to not let the SU's alcohol abuse permeate my life to such an extent. While I can be cautious and I have the right to ask questions, I have to learn to separate the events from the person and make some kind of mental/emotional dividing line for myself.  Otherwise, I am going to make myself crazy with paranoia and constantly trying to guess whether or not I am being told the truth.  Under this heading also falls "working to continue to love him (love being an active verb)" and "be the wife I am called to be".

7.  Clean my bedroom and get rid of clothes that I don't need/use anymore.

8.  Move!  Dependent on our tax return, we should have enough money to be able to pay for a move to a new apartment complex sometime between January-April.  Praying that God will take care of that as well as open up a ground-floor apartment that has what we need in the complex we think we should move to.

Non-Denominational Winter Holiday Type Post

As I sit here typing this, I can hear tree branches cracking and snapping off under the weight of ice and snow and it sounds like gunshots.  Ah, memories of growing up in SoCal :).

Not much to say about Christmas directly.  The SU and I really don't do anything.  We stopped decorating years ago since it's just us two now.  We don't make any big fancy meal (again, only us two = leftovers for *weeks*) and we don't buy each other any gifts.  (I just re-read that and, wow, we sound like Grinches!  But, really, we just don't see the point...).  Mostly we just hang out and be slovenly.  I spent today doing laundry and deep cleaning my kitchen.  Tomorrow is putting laundry away and cleaning out my pantry.  There is a sale on yarn at my yarn store but...with potentially four-five inches of snow by morning with almost a half-inch of ice underneath, I don't know that I'm all that up for death-defying driving in order to get 20 percent off the yarn I need for my next project!

The SU got drunk again on Friday night. He started off the evening telling me he was sober but didn't want to be.  As the night progressed, the usual signs started showing up.  I confronted him, he admitted he was drunk and I ended up leaving again.  Happy Holidays! :P  This time I stayed away until Sunday morning.  I just didn't want to see him on Saturday and didn't at all feel ready to come home and confront the starting over portion of the cycle again.  To be fair, he did only text me a couple of times during the day and then asked if I would rather be left alone.  My answer to that was yes, and he did leave me be.  I felt better about handling it on Sunday and came home then.

Sometimes it is really hard to have hope.  I told someone that he's like Gollum - holding on to the One True Ring of his anger and there are times I want to scream at him to just climb a ladder and get over himself.  While I know that some of his hurts are genuine, there are also some that I think he hangs on to because he's had them for so long that he wouldn't know what to do without them or what to replace them with.

But I keep digging for that hope because I had numerous years with him sober before he went back to the alcohol and I know who he is and who he can be when he is sober and also when he lets God have free rein.  Sometimes I'm not sure if the guy I married is in there anymore but then he will do or say something that makes me believe he is and I grab on to my hope again.  I definitely couldn't do it on my own, though, and am extremely grateful for the people God has gifted me with to provide support and friendship while the SU and I deal with this. 

So, no exciting posts about what I got this year or what the Christmas holiday means to me on a deep, internal level.  Just another day of putting one foot in front of the other.

Albert Camus and Winston Churchill are my homeboys*

The semester is nearly over - have two more analytical essays to put to bed and then I can call it done.  At this point, I am just ready for the whole thing to be over.  I don't really even care about my grades (witnessed by my incredibly poor synopsis of health care currently staring at me from the other computer screen).

This semester has really sucked on the personal level.  Besides the SU's medical conditions and subsequent additional frequent flyer miles at the hospital, the alcohol abuse has continued and gotten worse.  Periods of sobriety are short.  There have been some really nasty comments flung my way, continued lying , increased drinking and always the cycle of "I'm sorry" and starting over.

After 15 years of sobriety, the downhill slide is painful and frightening to watch.  The ultimate event came two weeks ago when he lied about his sobriety and I ended up in the car with him.  That pretty much tore it as far as I was concerned - now we're talking about my physical safety in addition to emotional safety/health, et cetera.  I went and saw our counselor on my own to talk about that and other boundaries.  I don't know if I've stated it before but divorce is not an option for me.  I jokingly call myself a member of the "one and done" club but I firmly believe in the vows I took and that God put both me and the SU together and we are meant to be together. I know God has his hand in this and I am just hoping that something will happen to get the SU on the road to long-term sobriety before it's too late.

The solution the counselor and I came up with is that if I have concrete proof he is drinking/is drunk, then all I do is just pack some stuff and leave for the night.  I can go to a hotel or a friend's house (if they'll have me) and I stay until I feel like I can return - which doesn't necessarily mean when he sobers up.  It isn't meant to be punitive (hence the not leaving unless I have evidence) but...if he is going to leave me alone by being drunk, then he gets to be left alone when he is drunk.  I cannot watch over him, put him to bed, try to deal with his various medical issues because me being there as his mommy/nanny really doesn't give him any impetus to not drink; someone is always there to clean up after him.  The SU is aware of this new deal.

Last night I got my chance to put this into action.  Oh, this was a hard, hard thing to do.  I came home from my last night of class to find him passed out/asleep in the chair, the oven on and the food inside totally black - pretty much charcoal.  We had a conversation, he lied several times, and then admitted he was drunk.  I had to clamp my mouth shut on what I wanted to say and finally just managed to get out "Okay."  He said, "So you're leaving now."  I told him yes and his response was wow, that was a great reward for being honest.  I paused for a minute and managed to get out that this wasn't the time to talk about it but that we could talk about it later.

I called, got a place to stay and packed a few things.  I came back out and kissed him goodbye and told him I loved him and would see him later.  Then I cried all the way to my friend's house.  And cried when I got there.  And cried some more later on.

I also called my oldest (step)daughter to finally tell her what was going on (the counselor and I had talked about it and I finally decided he was right).  God gave me an excellent daughter in her.  I told her what had been going on and finally finished with why I was where I was last night.  Her response was basically, "All of us kids love you.  We know Dad will have made his own choices.  If something happens to him, no one will blame you at all.  You have to be safe and take care of yourself."  She has some really good insights into her dad and his emotional armor/being vulnerable (or not so much).  She agreed to tell her brother and sister for me since I didn't think I could go through this conversation two more times and then she prayed for me.

This is probably one of, if not the, hardest thing I have ever gone through.  I *know* I am not supposed to divorce him - and not just from a legalistic Biblical view.  I also know that separation is not an option.  It just lets us not deal with each other rather than working on the issue.  My hope and prayer is that with continued counseling and help from AA/his sponsor and the people who love us, the SU will seek after sobriety - and seek after it before this escalates into something more destructive.  My heart hurts for him and that has to be God keeping my heart soft because, wow, I could do bitter and angry like a diva at this point!  But it serves no purpose.  I know the good our marriage and relationship has been and I miss that.  I miss him.

So I keep hanging on like a pitbull and don't let go.  Hopefully all that stuff in James about perseverance is true :).  I'm trying to hold on to God but there are days where I just really can't do anything except say, "Hey, dude.  I got nothin' today.  You know what's going on.  I'm just exhausted."  I've been trying to find some stuff to read that might help me but nothing has really grabbed me yet.  Some days I manage to pray and talk and some days I just sit like a lump during my quiet time.  Writing this has made me feel really exposed but it also feels better to put all this down in some form or fashion, to feel like there is an order to my thoughts and elaborate on the reasons *why* I am hanging on even when people have told me no one would blame me if I did choose to divorce him.

I keep hanging on...and hope.

*  "In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer" - Albert Camus

*  "Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.  Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." - Winston Churchill

One-Strand Knotted Openwork Stitch Prayer Shawl

This was from a Ravelry pattern (free download) that I made for Sara as a Christmas present out of Marble yarn.  (I'm not sure of the whole name but each ball was 341 yards and the color is a nicely variegated blue).  It was done on size 13 circular needles and is about six feet long in total and I *still* have some yarn left over.  (I'm going to have to find a project to do with all my remnant stash!).  It alternated rows of purled stitches with rows of knitted stitches, yarnovers, and slipping other stitches.

Anyway, here is Sara with the shawl:

And here is a close-up of the shawl itself:

I feel accomplished :).  Now back to my granddaughter's dress...