Oh what a year can do...

This morning I woke up thinking about where I have come in the past year. It's a thought that stumbled into my head just as randomly as anything else. There was nothing to provoke it and nothing to remind me of it. It just decided to weasel it's way in until I finally sat down and paid it some attention. This time last year was exactly a month before I got fired from a very nice job I had as a client service representative. This time last year was when my drinking and partying got to an absolutely ridiculous new low...high? Well, when it got to be way too much. This time last year around November was when I let a boy that had already taken advantage of my mind, heart and body once before, back into my life without considering the outcome of that decision. This time last year is when I had no self respect, no self worth, no self confidence left in me to fight the fight I needed to fight. About this time last year is when I met an inspirational young man into my life to help me start putting the pieces together. Since that time I have accomplished so much that I am so proud of. Since this time last year I have changed my number and my address in order to get the people out of my life that didn't deserve to be in it. Since this time last year I have moved out of that apartment and into a house with a new puppy and a new man. Since this time last year I have almost gotten a good grip on my finances, not including this month! Since this time last year I have a new job that I love working as a barista at a Harley shop in Bellevue. Since this time last year I am now able to take on any challenge that comes my way with more confidence than ever before. I know what I am worth now and I am worth so much more than I ever gave myself credit for in the past. Since this time last year I have been with BF for almost a year now and faithfully so. Since this time last year I have found my faith in God again and can now see him in everything around me. Since this time last year I have enrolled in college at the Art Institute of Seattle for my diploma in The Art of Cooking. Since this time last year I have found incredible peace in my life. Everything is not perfect and I have many struggles to deal with almost daily. Right now I'm working full time, going to school 3 days a week after work until 11pm and looking for a second part-time job because I can't afford my rent and tuition. That is a huge stress but I am not to be deterred. I will be able to make it work if I keep at it hard and long enough. BF and I have issues like any other couple. We argue about what to eat most the time, but now that we have been together and living together for about a year, other things are starting to make their way to the surface slowly but surely.With that we are making sure we are prepared for those conversations by understanding how we communicate together. I realize that because we have had such a blessed and easy going relationship, it may bite us in the butt since we are ill-prepared for how to communicate together about serious issues. There are things I need to focus on more in order to keep my life in balance. I am trying to make sure I spend at least 10 mins in the morning stretching my body. I try to make a point of making it to church almost every Sunday. I haven't been in 4 weeks and I can feel the emptiness taking place in my heart. I can't wait for Friday night so I can catch up with the podcast from my pastor. I am trying to pay more attention to my finances and keep myself on budget. I am also trying to make sure I go to bed in a clean and organized room every night so I wake up with thing in their proper place. All in all, this past year has been very sweet to me and I don't take one bit of it for granted. I appreciate the hard years prior because they gave my the wisdom I needed to realize how great life can be. With out those experiences I don't know if I would be making the decision that are so right for me right now. So, in closing, a year can be rough on you and make you want to give up. A year can tear you down and make it seem like you're spiraling down a big well and will surely hit the bottom with no escape. Just always remember, a year can be sweet to you as well. A year can give you many foot holes to use and climb your way up and out. It just all depends on the path you decide to take. Be defeated, defiant, and stuck at the bottom of that well. Or make your own way out with determination, faith and hard work.

Update!

So.... It's been awhile.

In that while I have had one of my favorite Chrstmas' to date.

 I have had a perfect start to the new year with Cory and I ordering pizza and relaxing.

I had my dad, mom, and little bro in town for all of last weekend and it was amazing.

I started college. I started college. Still kinda crazy to say.

I have started classes at the Art Institute of Seattle for Culinary Arts. Unfortunately I am not able to financially afford to go for a degree program as of this moment so I am doing the Diploma program which is just as great. I Started on Tuesday with my lecture class and Wednesday/Thursdays are my cooking classes. I love my instructors, well, so far at least! My cooking group is made up of 2 other guys and another girl. They all seem like hard workers and passionate about this. So far we are making a great team and I'm excited to see how far we can go together in this whole little adventure we are on.

In our first little quiz we already took home 1st place and we nagged the perfect table, table one! Our table is where all the demos are done and we are used for examples and things like that. I love it and don't feel nearly as intimidated as before I stepped into the kitchen. They waste no time and have you get in there right away. I'm expecting to burn myself here very shortly and hopefully I can withhold from cutting myself with my insanely sharp knives!! I would much prefer a burn to a cut. No product waste that way!

I love the feeling of sitting in a classroom for 3 hours and taking notes. I love the organization of putting things in the right place in my binder. I have a box of freshly sharpened #2's in my bag with the cute eraser caps and spongy grip things. I love school supplies! I think I mentioned this in one of my September blogs. It's a weakness of mine. Going to Office Depot and collecting notebooks, a 3 hole punch, pens, pencils, paper, notebooks, a lock. I loved it! Being able to sit on the floor and spread out with my 5 pages of notes from the first hour of class and my text book cracked open is like a slice of heaven for me. I love school. I always have and now I just need to find away to support this new little addiction of mine! We are encouraged to bring our camera into the kitchen to take photos of what we cook and so I can imagine I will start posting the recipes and photos on here to relate what we are doing. For now, I'm off to do some homework!!

A baby rant....

I think I realized why I don't blog so much. I have this weird thing about talking about my life. I love to talk. I will tell you my life story if you ask. The only thing is, when I'm face to face with you I can understand your reaction to the story. I can sense if you are starting to feel like I'm bragging too much, or trying to draw sympathy. With that, I am able to alter the way I tell my story. I can leave out a few things or opt to make it seem like I'm not too overly sad or excited about something if it is hitting a nerve on you. I realize this because there are a few blogs I follow that tend to let you into the absolute depths of their heart and soul. Those blogs touch you deep down and don't ever make you feel like they are talking themselves up or down. They just feel like a great friend telling you all of their secrets. Some of the other blogs make you just squirmy. You feel like all they are doing is trying to perceive themselves as maybe the person they strive to be secretly but it doesn't seem to click right. It feels like you are talking to a guy at the bar who thinks it's a great idea to let you know how AMAZING you are at your job. Not that you HAVE an amazing job, but that YOU are Amazing at it. Or they put other people down for not being as nice of a person as they are. Well, aren't you just as bad for saying that about them? I just have this feeling that not everyone wants to know about how perfect you are compared to your friends because you are more 'mature' than them. Are you trying to sell yourself on this? Are you trying to impress a boss or a man/woman of interest, or co-worker? What makes you feel like you must put your self up on a pedestal? I ask in this in a curious manner, not an evil spirited way. I truly want to know what makes people tend to do this? We are all guilty of it at some points in our lives. I want to hear about your life and all your experiences! I really want to know how your job is and school or family. I just don't want to read about it in a way that seems negative. I have many other blogs I follow that keep it on a more personal level, something we can all relate to. All in all, I don't have to read those blogs or be a part of those conversations. But I still do because I love being able to know they are all doing well for themselves. It does affect me though. I find myself downplaying my achievements and not wanting to throw them around as much. I find myself limiting what I write about because it might just come off a tad wrong. Like this post. It may sound completely hypocritical because I very well may be making you feel like I am putting down others. I'm not. I still love reading those blogs. The people I follow are not all friends but are all wonderful writers no matter the content. I will always follow them and be interested in their lives because they have opened that door for me and I like the people I see on the other side. The journey thru that threshold may be strained and difficult but once inside, I know it will feel cozy and warm. That is it for now... After tonight though I will let you all in on some very exciting news of mine!!

My Mother.

Wow. It's been some time. I open this up every day with an intention of writing in it and then just stop. Alot has happened this month and I would like to talk about one of the major things. This month my mother went in the hospital. She went in to the ER on a Wednesday to get a shot for her neck since she has been having some problems with it. After she received the shot she went home and then that Friday, early in the am, she woke up and couldn't move her entire right side. Her partner brought her to the ER in Everett to be looked at. Turns out her neck was worse than expected and she had ruptured two of her discs. She was lookin at either a very long year or so of rehab and drugs or surgery to fix it. My mother has had a tough past when it comes to painkillers and she told the doctors she would not let those rule her life again and opted for surgery. She was told she would have the surgery Monday morning and be out hopefully that Wednesday in time for Thanksgiving. I went and visited with her on Sunday after church to talk and keep her company. She started to get scared as my brother and I started to leave. She began to tell us about her living will and what she was planning on giving us. Mind you this surgery is major and painful but not necessarily life threatening. She was scared and it was starting to show. She had a talk with us about what to do and what she wants in the case of life support or pulling the plug. That conversation was something we tried to make light of but it hits down in your heart somewhere. Somewhere dark and deep. I've had a rough relationship with my mother and expect us to still have our spats ahead of us, but this was hard. This was the first time I remember my mom being in the hospital for something major that could possibly paralyze her or make her brain dead- Your neck has everything running thru it that controls your heart and brain. It's a lot to navigate thru as a doctor I would imagine. Anyways, as she is telling me her wishes all I could do was sit there and think about how many times when I was younger I would wish for her to just go away? How many times was I so upset with her that I would beg and beg for her to not be my mother anymore? What if they came true during this surgery? What kind of guilt would I carry with me for the rest of my life? How could I have ever thought such things about my mother? Austin and I tried to make her laugh and did our best to tell her she was being silly and it would all turn out just fine. And it did. The surgery went well. They had to go thru the front of her neck and take out one of the discs and then place cadaver bones in her neck to help with mobility. My mom was so thoughtful of her guests that she put make up on before surgery that way we would have a pretty face to talk to when she got out. That's my mom for ya. And the doctor was kind enough to put her scar on a natural crease in her neck so it wouldn't be too visible. Cory and I went and saw her Monday after she was out of surgery. It was tough. She could barely talk because, well because she just had her throat sliced open! But she could kind of communicate and was trying to tell us stories about the girls (her grand babies/my nieces) but she just kept repeating herself. She couldn't drink water and we had to let her suck on this little piece of water soaked sponge. It was heartbreaking. She kept wanting me to put chap stick on her. And I did. She showed me her "sexy thigh highs" and was so proud of them. (Sexy thigh highs are really just the nylons the doc makes you wear to help with circulation I think. I know they were issued by the hospital but cute none the less!) She just seemed so helpless. It all reminded me so much of when my Great Grandma Cunningham was in the hospital. She was dieing. She couldn't speak anymore. We had to peel the chapped layers off of her lips. I remember her reaching up and grunting and we all thought she was reaching to the heavens and it was really because she was in pain. Her socks were too tight and cutting off circulation to her feet. It was heart wrenching and way too much for a child my age to take in. It stays with me to this day. And that was all I could think of as I was watching my mom lay there. She looks so much like her grandma. With neck surgery you can't really move your body too much and you have to lay at certain angles so there isn't too much pressure on your neck. Plus, with that much pain medication in your body, you start to get restless leg syndrome. It's very hard to stay still. At one point the nurse came in to give her some medicine. She had to take them orally. We are talking 4 pills that I would have a hard time taking without my throat freshly sliced! First they had to make sure she could swallow water and she was able to...kinda. So then they put this pill in my moms mouth, as it's dry from no drinking! and then give her a bit of water to try to swallow this thing. It was so painful looking and she started to cough. Now just imagine how your throat feels when you have the worst sore throat ever and you cough..... yea.... now times that by like a thousand! But she got through it. I knew she would. Unfortunately she wasn't able to get out until this last Sunday! She missed her niece's 1st birthday and Thanksgiving. I brought her some cinnamon rolls on Thanksgiving but she couldn't really eat still. She was living off of hospital pudding! YUCK!!! She is home now. Home and a good 35 minutes farther away from me. Doesn't seem like much but it is. I can't just grab the truck as easily and head over to visit her. I know she would love to see us all more but that distance is just a lot when you have no car. I'm having these guilty thoughts about how horrible of a daughter I have been. I treat my customers with more respect than I do to my mom on some occasions. I don't even know how many times I have opened my mouth and let negative things ooze out of it about her. I don't know how many times I have explained to people that tell me I seem so much older that it's all because I didn't have the best childhood. It's just all not true. I had a great childhood with what I had. I had a pool, a fruit orchard, a whole hotel to play in, a house full of cousins, a balancing beam, my Lucy dog, a meadow, a tree house, a neighborhood full of kids. My life was as sweet as my mom was able to make it at that time in our lives. I was never hungry. I was never without a roof. I was never without clothes. I had as many stuffed animals as a girl could ask for. My mom did her best and made some mistakes but that's what happens. Now it's time for me to start doing my best as a Daughter.

Oh, cooking! How I love you so!

Ok so I have a very healthy love for http://www.thepioneerwoman.com/ and Miss Ree Drummond herself. I check her blog daily and constantly scroll thru her gorgeous pictures for hours on end. I want to be like her. I want to have the amazing lodge she has and all of her wonderfully gorgeous china. I want her enameled cast iron dutch ovens in every color. I want a food processor and a KitchenAid mixer to make wonderful food. I want cows pooping on my front porch.... Well, that I could do without! You get the idea though. This woman is a wonderful inspiration with how graceful I think a woman should be. She is a wonderful mother and wife from what she lets on and she still has a great sense of humor. Anyways, she came out with a cookbook and yesterday was the day that it was officially 'In Stock' but I had already preordered it of course! I have Mondays off and was able to catch her segmant on The Bonnie Hunt show and almost cried from how giddy I was with her. You could feel her nervouseness as she began speaking about the fact she wears Spanx because after 4 kids things happen to fall. You can tell she is kicking herself as she is blurting these things out from nervousness. But that is her. Open and quirky and without too much of a care.... BACK ON TRACK..... So Monday I just kept wishing I had her cookbook already! I had pre-ordered it at the begining of September and was planning on cooking all day anyway and just wished I had it. I didn't and so I forged ahead with the recipes I already had and continued to dream about her book. Yesterday I opened my email for the first time in about 2 weeks to see if I had the tracking info for the book. I did! and to my surprise, it was delivered on MONDAY!!! I just hadn't checked the mail! So all day yesterday I waited and waited to get off work.... When the moment happened it was ecstasy! I ripped open that package with abandon! I couldn't stop giggling.... literally giddy and giggling! Poor BF had to sit there as I made him look at all the cows and Marlboro Man and the punks and... oh I know he just wanted to grab it and bonk me upside the head! I then had to feed BF and so I did. I made pan-seared rosemary pork chops and then made Pioneer Woman's twice baked potatoes to go along with it. It was delicious! oh Yummy! I then sat my fat, full, content butt on the couch and sat for hours. I sat and took in every word and every picture of that book. I felt the pages and listened to the cracking of the fresh spine. I smelled the pages hoping to get a whiff of fresh country air. I was drunk with love over that cookbook. I can't wait to dig in to these recipes. A few I have already printed out and made from her site and a few will never touch BF's lips but I'm still excited to spread the love to all my coworkers! Bring on the POUNDS!!!

OH me, OH MY!

Well it seems it has been almost two weeks since I last posted.... I think it must be because I have nothing to post about, but then I think about my wild saturday night in when I made my first batch of pot butter for my roommate and drank a very large bottle of wine to myself and then woke up to the bf on the couch and no sheets on the bed with my hair smells like throw up, oh and found a stray mushroom connected to the side of the bed by something sticky and stringy. I think about the awesome Seahawks game on Sunday where we won 41-0 against the Jags and the even more amazing dinner I cooked that night. Steamed clams with my own recipe for the broth, ceaser salad, roasted new potatoes and garlic w/ evoo and white wine, corn on the cobb, and crusty french bread. Then I think about the Reverend Horton Heat/Motorhead show I went to that I could post about. Oh I can't even sum this one up for you! It was STELLAR!! All in all, I don't know what I would like to dive in about and so here is a list of a few of my favorite blogs http://www.thepioneerwoman.com/ http://www.marinknits.blogspot.com/ http://www.bakerella.com/ http://www.itotallyforgotyougohere.blogspot.com/ http://www.marinbakes.blogspot.com/ http://www.motherhoodtellall.blogspot.com/ http://www.cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

http://threemanycooks.com/

not a blog but a huge inspiration:

http://www.tastykitchen.com/

I have so many more but these were a few to get you thru!

love to you all!!

A dream.... THANK GOD!

So the other night I had a wicked dream. I think it was my first nightmare in a very very very long time. So let me set you up for it. The other day, Monday I think, BF and I were running errands all day long. We went to Monroe to say hello to his mom and pick up his bday present (a outside fire pit!), we stopped at this crazy gun/fishing shop and got a hip holster-case thingy for his new gun, had lunch, went to the pet store for Wheeler's new collar, Just did a ton of running around in general. We got home late and I went upstairs to fold laundry. I found his "hiding" place for his guns and immediately thought it was a silly stupid spot and too out in the open. So I decided to move them and hide them better. I climbed into bed and never told BF that I moved them, therefore if he needed them he wouldn't be able to find them. Silly me. So I fall asleep and expect to have pleasant dreams of My Little Pony flying around on green hills.... WRONG!! Here is how the dream goes as best as I can remember it

• BF and I are sleeping in our bed when I wake up to a strange, quite noise. I sit still and listen to see if I can hear anything. Nothing. I try to fall back asleep only to hear it again. So I lay there completely still and trying not to breathe.

• I hear it again and this time I can hear two guys talking, barely above a whisper. I hear them get into the house very sneakily. I tried to wake BF up but he isn't cooperating so I just lay there stone still debating what to do.

• I slide out of bed and grab the two guns I hid earlier in the night.

• I knew if I didn't grab them right then we might not have a chance later and BF didn't know where I moved them.

• I debate if I have time to get clothes on. I decide I don't.

• I crawl back into bed and continue trying to wake up BF. For whatever reason the guys downstairs are taking their sweet time and I can hear they aren't actually taking anything... it's more like they are searching for something. BF finally wakes up and I hand him the guns and tell him what's going on.

• He tells me to stay in the bed and try to hide under the covers. So I do. I mound the comforter over me and try not to move a muscle.

• I hear him go downstairs and confront the two guys and then there is a huge commotion.

• Suddenly a third guy ran behind BF and hit him over the head.

• I can hear them coming for me. I slide off the bed and hide on the floor until I feel the blankets being ripped off me. It's a huge blur as the men are beating me and pulling me in every direction. I can feel my teeth being knocked out. I can smell the rusty smell of my own bloody being forced out of my body. I can taste the acrid taste.

• I end up laying next to BF as the men are tying us up. They leave us there bloody and tied while they go to search for whatever they were looking for.

• I can hear them tearing into the floor and bashing into the walls. I have no idea what they want.

• I get myself untied and start working on BF. He is almost unconscience. One of the guys comes back into the room and sees me. He starts yelling at me and pulls me down and beats me more. I'm just praying they don't rape me or kill us.

• I get a chance to fight him off of me and get a good kick to the gut and get to BF again.

• The man stands up and shoots.

• I'm sitting there crouched over in my own blood in just my panties trying to figure out if I was shot.

• I wasn't.

• BF was. The asshole shot him.

• I just lay there shaking, not knowing what else to do as the third guy goes back to check on the other guys. They find whatever they wanted in the wall and half way in the floor. They destroy my house, our house.

• Before they leave they beat me even more and leave me there to die next to BF.

• I accept that fate and curl up next to him. I grasp his hand and lay there, too stunned to pray, too stunned to think.

• Next thing I know I'm walking the streets of an urban city, somewhat like London and Seattle combined. I have glasses on and a scarf to cover myself and try to hide into the background of a busy world.

• I go shopping because I ddn't know what else there was to do. I go into the most quaint book shops and coffee houses until I finally meet up with a friend who takes me home.

• I walk into my house and it's perfect. There are no signs of a battle. No signs of a death taken without warrant. No signs of destroyed walls or bloody carpets.
• It's the cleanest I have ever witnessed it.

• I notice someone changed all the locks and placed wooden dowels in the windows to give me some feeling of security. I tell my friend to go home and just let me be and she does.
• It gets dark and I go to check one of the windows with the dowels in it only to notice it's been shoved open with the dowel stuck in between the two panes of glass and the screen missing. The opening is wide enough for a full grown man to climb thru. And then my mind goes to pitch black.

I woke up form this dream in a full on panic. I had no idea what was real and what wasn't until I felt the sweetest little puppy nuzzle up against my neck and give me sweet puppy breathe kisses and felt the heat of BF's body radiating next to mine and his hand resting on my back. I felt his chest go up and down with the rythmic beat of his breathing. I knew I was safe. I cuddled closer to BF and pulled Wheeler harder against me and tried to fall asleep for the remaining hour before I had to wake up. I told BF where I moved his guns the moment we both woke up. This dream has been stuck in my head ever since. I keep popping back to it. Last night I went upstairs to put the clothes away and lay down and read. I turned on all the lights in the room, locked the window and turned the tv up louder. I just had to get it out of me so there you go. This was the most frightening dream I have had in my adult years. I hope nothing about that dream comes true except for maybe coming home to a spotless house. That would be kinda bad ass.