Don't Quit....EVER

One thing I love about Wade is that he is not a quitter. I, on the other hand, tend to be a quitter so he is a good compliment for me. Several weeks ago in the middle of the night he woke me up when he was talking in his sleep. He very audibly and quite emphatically said right to my face, "Don't quit....EVER!" It was so funny. Maybe he was having a coaching dream or maybe dreaming about telling me not to drop out of grad school. In any case I thought it was good advice and any time we want to give up on something we say that to each other. So cute.

Take today for example. We went to Sam's Club to buy a new tv because ours stopped working. As we made our final decision and put it on the cart, I realized that there was no way this was going to fit in my car. He was confident, however, that it would and we went ahead and bought it. As we got to my car and opened the doors we quickly realized that the tv would probably not very easily fit. Here are some pictures of our efforts.

First, we tried the trunk.

Then we tried the side.

It didn't fit.

Then we tried rotating it. We almost called my dad to come pick it up with his truck. How embarrassing would that have been? "Uh, Dad, we bought a tv that's so big it won't fit in my car." Ha, right. 

Alas, we had a revelation. We took it out of the box. But first had to get it back out of he car --"HOW DID WE FIT THIS THING IN HERE???"

Well, we got it out and it fit much better without the box.
We conquered that tv.

Ta da!

The best part was when we were obviously struggling and the whole parking lot was laughing at us, a little old lady came over and asked us (ie. Wade, the one with the muscles---he made me add that) to help her put a bag of dog food in her car. Um, that's ok, we don't need any help.

I guess what's most important is that we got it in and and we didn't quit. Now it's in our living room, and although it is ridiculously big, I kind of like it.

Busy-ness

My clean clothes are folded in a basket in my bedroom. They have been there for 2 weeks. My darks are actually still in the dryer. Yeah, I know--2 weeks is a long time.

I ask myself why I cannot for the life of me get that done, and then I start counting the hours in a day compared to the hours I spend doing other things that need to be done. There simply isn't enough time in the day to get it all done.

On the outside it looks like I'm living the dream: I'm married. I have a great job. I have a lot of great friends and an awesome family. I'm in grad school. I do stuff for church. I exercise. I have two cute little cats.

But really, I'm so stinking busy with all of this it takes the fun out of everything. I truly love all of these things about my life and I am grateful for all of it, but I have determined that it's too much. But at the same time, I feel like there's this pressure out there to do everything. Does anyone else feel that way? It's like the busy-ness is a status symbol.

The other day I found myself on a particularly busy day. After work I went to the gym to squeeze in a short run. When I got home I had approximately 80 minutes to make dinner for Wade and shower before going out to do some stuff for church. Dinner ended up taking longer than expected and resulted in full chicken breasts being thrown into a pot of veggies and broth slightly resembling chicken tortilla soup.  I almost cried. I don't know if emotionally stable people cry about things like that, but I do. I just wanted to make a nice meal for my husband but the result was a messy kitchen with half-made soup and me tired with wet hair. I bitterly texted Wade, "Dinner is on the stove, it's not quite done, but you can figure it out." I wasn't bitter towards him, I'm really happy to make him dinner, I was bitter about my busy day. Then off I went. When I got home at 10:00, he was happily eating soup. He said he wasn't sure what I meant by my text and determined that I must have meant that he needed to add cheese and sour cream. Haha. Gotta love that guy. So easy to please.  He helped me find the humor in the situation.

Anyway, my point is that life is to be enjoyed and not rushed through.  So, I haven't made any major decisions yet about what I'm cutting out other than making simpler meals ie grilled cheese and sloppy joes (sorry RD friends, that's the best I can do for now). Until I can cut out other things, like grad school for example, I will just have to deal and make the best of my busy life and be grateful that I have stuff to do. Yay.

Eventually, my goal is to make time for other things, like people--friends, family, husband--and just sitting still or maybe even a little fun.  And I really want to start a garden and train for another triathlon.  Doesn't that sound nice?