My relationships

The last post brought up a lot of comments about my relationships and now I wanted to write about them.

Shari is more like a mom to me than a sister. She is the more serious person in the family and it is okay because she has so much responsibility. She is into the dresses because it was what she was raised with and because skin cancer runs in her family and she is very protective. She also wants the girls to dress modestly. I don't challenge her on this because it is such a small thing and it is the one thing Shari really asks from me so I respect it but when she is not here it is nice to do the shorts and tanks. We do wear the dresses when we go out to work on the ranch or the garden to prevent sunburns and I ignored this one time and Shari warned me once and then after all day in the sun I was hurting. So the rule is about me being safe and not just being old fashioned.

My relationship with church and Jesus and faith is all kind of new for me. I don't write a lot about it because I don't know what to say about it right now. I am learning and I will say that the big things I am learning is that faith and obedience to God has a lot to do with why most families in our church are a lot happier than most families I know from outside the church. I know individual families can be happy without God but I don't know of any groups of families that are happy without God.
The 'rules' the church has have more to do with making sure we have good families than with making us robots who follow rules. I used to think all Christians were like drugged all the time and walking around like zombies repeating Bible stuff that had been brainwashed into them. Now I am seeing that there can be a lot more to it. Like the rules the church has for letting people get married are not about the church but they are about making sure you have a good marriage. There is a lot of attention paid to a man having a good job and then having a home and other things before he gets married. Because most wives do not work the church wants these things done before a marriage.
Like with Stevie getting married her fiance had to buy a house, he had to pay off his truck so there were no payments to worry about, he had to save up a year's pay, and then he had to put up a year's worth of canned and dry food so if he lost his job he and Stevie would be able to eat. While he was saving up for all this the church had him stop tithing and then a lot of people in the church were helping him out to get all this done. It is not like you have to do it all alone.
When it gets done the idea is that a new couple will not have to worry about money and money is a big problem for a lot of couples. This is a rule the church has that is not about the church but about the family.
We don't have a church building and we meet at people's homes every first Sunday of the month and do home church or small group church on the other Sundays. This saves the church money on paying for a building and the money goes to an emergency fund. Pastor Jeff gets a small paycheck every month but he gives that to a missionary in Honduras. Pastor Jeff told me that he gets much more from his work than money and he does not want the money to ever corrupt his heart so he gives it away to make sure. Christie is on the committee that manages the emergency fund and she says the goal is to have enough money set aside that if every family in the church lost their house the church could build them a new one. Right now she says they are past the goal of being able to take care of every family for a year if everyone lost their jobs.

Christie is the older sister I never had. She is smart and fun and she confuses me sometimes that she seems like a rebel but then she is obedient in the things that really matter. We are very close anymore and we are able to talk about anything and I really like that. There are things about Steve I can talk to Christie about that I don't think I could say to Shari and it is nice to have someone around for that. But then there are times when Christie is as serious as a heart attack and it is like she is this different person. When she is doing her work or when she needs to be serious it is like she just becomes this totally different serious person. And then she is the same person who will skinny dip with me late at night and have girl talk like she is 13.

Steve makes me so everything! I know I say Shari is like a mom to me but Steve is definitely a husband and friend to me. I love feeling his touch on me and I don't care if that is just bumping into him in the kitchen. He is so intense when he listens to me talk and he remembers little things I say long after I forgot I said them. He knows I like chocolate covered raisins and he knew this from me talking to Lauren one day and then the next day I had a big jar of chocolate covered raisins on my dresser when I woke up in the morning. He is always doing things to make me happy like the raisins and then giving me an office trailer to use for my chicken coop. I know he said it was an old trailer but it was still good and it could have been used some more so he made a sacrifice to make me happy. We hold hands a lot and sometimes we just cuddle and that is so wondeful to have his arms around me and all he wants is just to hold me. It's very nice when he wants more than that (-: but cuddles are so wonderful! I just feel so safe when I am with him and where I use to be nervous about sex at first now it is something I look forward to because it means I will be with Steve.
All this week Steve has been on a paving job where they are pouring concrete at night because it is too hot to pour it in the day time. He is not home yet and says he won't be home until after 10am and he left the house last night just after 6pm!!! He works really, really hard and he does it because he loves us. To know he is out there all night because he loves me and everyone else makes me love him right back. I know he is a lot older than me and I may lose him someday but I would rather lose him someday than to not have him at all. I don't know how to explain it but when I first met him I fell in love with him. I knew he was the one. He was everything to me that all the boys I knew could never be and he was so special and so much like a real man. Christie says Steve is like Tom Selleck and Sam Elliot but the difference is Steve never acts, he really is this way. I could write about him all day long and never say enough good things about him.

With the girls I am like an older sister and I do not ever try to be a mom to them. Shari is their mom and it is not for me to pretend to be wise when I am not. In a lot of things the girls know a lot more than I do and I really trust them with a lot of stuff. We get a long and we are friends and we love each other but I think that is because we are just trying to be who we are and not trying to be things we are not.

Okay. It has been really hot this week and the chickens are doing fine. I have learned to wet down this place in their yard every morning and then when it is hot you get to see all these chickens sitting there to keep cool. In the afternoons I have to shoo them into their coop and have the ac on to keep them cool but we have been lucky this year because there have only been a few really hot days. Not having hot weather has been bad for the tomatoes and squash and a lot of stuff is still small when it should be huge by now. It is not looking like we will get enough hot weather for the tomatoes and Shari says this might be the first year in a long time she has to buy tomatoe sauce instead of putting up our own. Steve is putting up firewood to season for the winter and is putting up more than the last two years because he says he expects a very cold winter this year and he says a lot of farmers and ranchers are saying it will be cold this winter.

I have to go but my happy thought is a winter time thought. I can't wait for the cold weather!

Hot chocolate, a warm blanket, and bare feet by a fireplace.

My idyllic life

I'm sorry about LOL'ng on this but it was funny about my life being idyllic!

I've said before and will say again that we do have some real problems here and I never really get into them because they don't even compare to the problems I left behind when I came here. So I don't talk about them much because they don't mean so much to me and then the good things here make the bad things insignificant.

Just so you all know my problems here are:

• The girls get into arguments sometimes over who is wearing someone else's clothes or who has someone else's stuff or something else that is really no big deal.
• I don't always get a lot of sleep if I'm taking care of the babies which is something I want to do anyway so it's my fault that I am not sleeping.
• I get up at 5am almost every day.
• I'm not pregnant yet. This is starting to bother me.
• My old friends have nothing to do with me anymore.
• My mom has a new boyfriend and has nothing to do with me anymore.
• Shari likes us girls to wear dresses all the time and I don't mind most of the time but some of the time I like to wear shorts.
• Six people knowing almost every intimate detail of my life. Sometimes this is nice, but sometimes it is embarrassing.

I tried to list the problems I used to have and it is just too sad. Sorry but I am not doing that. I need to move on from the past and let it go. But it was bad, okay? So bad that nothing in the list I have now seems that bad. My new life is not perfect but I don't care. It's like having a big ass diamond that has a few flaws. Who cares if it isn't perfect because it's one big ass diamond and you should be happy to have it! That's me. I got a flawed diamond and I don't really notice the flaws. They are there but they are not what I focus on.

About education I am starting culinary classes soon and will be learning to be a professional chef and I will intern at a restaurant for a while to complete my AA degree. I will have an education that I want but maybe not what everyone else wants. Not everyone is meant for college and I am one of those people.

Minty, I can't see your blog or email you. Is your blog and stuff private?

Chocolate ice cream, strawberries, whipped cream, fudge sauce, and all on a chocolate cake.

Johnny's comment

Johnny had some good questions and I wanted to answer them.

Is this the most significant work of writing you've ever done?

Is this significant? This is the most writing I have ever done and it is harder than essays in school because it is all about me. It should have been a chicken blog and it would be easier! Christie has me reading books a lot more and says my grammar will get better if I just read more and maybe that is working. Thank you for noticing that.

One thing I've noticed you don't go into much detail on is your relationship with the church. You've made a few references to the bylaws you're obligated to follow but I don't get any feeling of enthusiasm for the church's teachings. Are you like Christie in this regard, or are you just not allowed to talk about it?

I am studying the Bible and trying to get into the whole Christian thing but right now it is just so new to me. The Pastor asked me how was my walk one day and I had no idea what he meant. It made me wonder if I was limping or something and then he explained it to me and it felt bad having to have that explained to me. Christie and me have a lot in common about this but both of us agree that the life we live because we are trying to be Christian is much better than the life we used to have. I can see how some people are so amazing and wonderful because of their faith and it would be nice to be that way and maybe someday I will be.

Skinny dipping on a hot night.

Just plain old flu.

I just had a really bad case of plain old flu. Yay! The county Health & Human Services told my doctor I was negative for Swine flu and that I had just a bad strain of the regular flu. I was prety happy about that and it didn't really matter so much because I feel fine now. I think I feel better just because I had some really good sleep too.

Stevie (Stephanie) has her wedding set for Saturday September 5. Her fiance got the things done that the church wanted him to do before he could marry so now the two of them are getting married! She is really excited about it and will be getting the dress probably this week. She is not nearly as nervous as I was and says she will be just fine with everything. One of the things that took getting used to was how she and her sisters knew an awful lot about sex and that is just the farm thing. It pays off when it comes time to marry because the girls know exactly what it means to be with someone.

Steve has been working late a lot lately on a big paving project and this week it will be hot so they have to work at night pouring concrete because it will be too hot in the day to pour the concrete. He was home all day today and left for work around 7pm and he won't be back until maybe 8am tomorrow. It was nice having him home during the day. Nothing got done in the house but we did have a lot of fun and it was nice to be able to talk to him a lot.

Christie is really back to normal and is wanting to try for another baby sometime soon but says she will wait until the end of September because that was the earliest the doctor said she could go. One big thing was Eric in the last week started making sentences that actually make sense. He used to say "Water" or "Cup" and then last week he said "Cup of water?" and now today it was "I want juice, please!" Christie and the girls have really been working with him and they have got him saying so much in a really short time. It is like someone turned on his talking all of a sudden and he went from regular baby talk to talking like a little boy. It is so cool to see him grow up.

The chickens are doing well with the heat. We set them loose in the garden today to eat bugs and they did a good job. They ate a lot of tomatoes too but they also cleaned up all the snails and slugs. Before noon we had to get them all put in their coop with the ac on but they had a good time before that. Only a couple of them have a little bit of down anymore and they look mostly like half size chickens. They are called pullets I know but to me they just are half size chickens!

About my writing this takes me so long to write and then spell check that I don't know how I would ever write anything like a book but it is nice that some people think I could! (-:

It is just before 9pm and it is still really hot so it is swim time! Yay!

The smell of pancakes and coffee in the kitchen right as the sun rises in the kitchen window.

It has a name!

All my life I have had this problem where sometimes I have thoughts that I can't put words to. It has been a serious problem sometimes because I will say or write something that is close to what I am thinking but it is not what I am thinking and then people react to that as if that was what I meant. It makes things really complicated especially when the words I need are for something simple.
Macy was over with her family today and told me this is called 'aphasia' and after reading about it I think so too. I'm not the worst case of this ever but it is still there. There is really nothing for me to do about it but just keep on doing what I do.
But it is nice to know it is for real and not just me.

My other news is I thought I might have been pregnant because of being sick at certain times and Friday I did an EPT and it came up negative so Shari said it was time to see the doctor. The doctor thinks I might have had Swine flu! I'm feeling a lot better now so it just felt like a regular flu to me and we will find out on Monday if it was really Swine flu. For now I am staying away from the babies and Christie and I hate to say this but it has been really nice to get some serious sleep at night.

I can't sleep.

Emmy woke me up at 11 and now I can't get back to sleep so here I am. I've been busy lately so I have not been on the computer at all most of this week so it's not like I am ignoring things I just have other things to do.

The answer to the one question is I did not get my patio and I am not complaining about it. I still got way more than I ever expected.

Macy has been over most days since the man in her house goes off to work and the Mrs. works at a library. We've had some nice talks and she likes to come over and talk to Shari and Christie too. The library is getting their money cut so the Mrs. will be home more real soon and then I will be on here more again.

I wrote a bunch of personal stuff just now and deleted it. I will try writing personal things again sometime soon but right now it feels like inviting people in to see me take a shower.

It has been nice and cool and the chickens are doing good with it. The downside of the cool weather is it is cold out when I go for a swim at night. At least the water is warm.

Christie seems back to normal and Shari's sister is doing fine. Things have been really quiet and not a lot has happened and I think this is good.

Time to stop writing and try to get some sleep. (-}

4th of July

I expected 4th of July to be different and it was. Because it was on a Saturday the church decided to do a gathering at a camp and it was FUN!! It was close to Lake Tahoe and it was so beautiful. We had a bunch of cabins and we all got there on Friday and it was just so much fun all weekend! We had the church service today and Pastor Jeff gave the best sermon. He talked about how Christians have the worst arguments for why people should be Christian but that we live the best lives. And then he said the non-Christians have the best arguments for why they live like they do but then they all wish they could live our lives. It is a lot to think about and I will be thinking about it all week I am sure.

Macy really moved out here! I had my doubts for a few reasons but then she arrived on Thursday night and came to the camp out and now she has gone home with the couple she says she wants to marry. They don't have kids so Macy would be bringing children into the family for them and she's just fine with that. She seemed to just fit right in with everything like she was born in this. She says it is because she was in a pretty serious religion before this so this is actually really easy for her. I am going to go see her on Tuesday for lunch and we will get to talk a lot more than we did this weekend.

I didn't know about us going to the the camp out thing until Thursday night and then everyone was wondering why I didn't know about it. I guess I did not pay any attention to the talk. I heard somethings about camping and the weekend but I did not think it meant we were going. I just thought we would be there on Sunday for church is all.

I got to spend more time with some of the other wives and that was pretty cool. Melanie was my new friend from the weekend and she is all excited about me going to cooking school next month. She is a first wife and has been married for a year and is expecting her first baby. She is just three months along but is starting to show.

The weekend did a lot to cheer up Christie and Shari had a good time too. Shari's sister is at home and recovering from her surgery just fine. Thank you to anyone who prayed for her.

That is about enough for right now. It is late and I just wanted to write and say what was up.

I had an email asking me to take questions again and I will. So ask anything you want and I will try to answer it but please keep the questions nice okay? Thanks! (-:

I hope you all had a great 4th of July!