Back to the Ex?

Welcome 2024! I’m sitting at home on the first snow/ice day of the year. It isn’t very common for us to get weather that keeps us home in the pacific northwest but today is one of those days for me. We have a couple of inches of ice out on the roads which is enough to keep me in. I was going to go for a walk but after a trip to the frozen compost bin, I decided I didn’t want to break my hip today.

I should be working on taxes….I can do that tomorrow. I decided to be a bit creative and reason out some thoughts swirling in my mind.

Thought/question for the day: what would my ex and I have to do to consider getting back together?

Backstory; we have been done romantically for 2.5 years. We bought property together in 2021. The house was a fixer and the whole property needed work. I work remotely and have a project management mindset so I was the one tasked with living in a trailer on the property and making the magic happen. The house remodel was wrapped up in early 2022 (about 8 months time). It was a big accomplishment but all I felt was sadness. I lost my relationship early in the project. Maybe I will write another post about that journey.

Last year he tried to get a loan to buy me out and I tried to do the same. Neither of us could accomplish it since it is commercial property. So we are stuck in this business together. We had some very rocky times even before going into this business/property together. Was getting hooked together in this way the best idea? Probably not….hindsight is 20/20. So many hurtful things were said and when I mention times he came unglued, he goes back into the rage he felt at the time. Needless to say, it makes it almost impossible to sort anything out.

Forward to present. I am back to dating, as is he. We have shared some really good times together the last couple months. I have let myself play the “what if” game. What if we were able to get past those nasty things he said? What would need to change to make me even consider?

Here is my list:

He would need to get personal counseling.
We would need to get couples counseling.
He would need to make fitness/healthy habits more important.
He would need to go to the dentist.
Less drinking when we are together. No drinking when we need to talk about anything important.
He needs to wash his hands more often.

He hasn’t actually said he wants to get back together. He just says he feels all the roads point back to me and him being together. This is bittersweet since we could have stayed together if his insecurities hadn’t gotten the best of him. He opened his mouth and horrible things came out, not just once but several times.

Am I being unreasonable with my list?

January 13, 2024

January 2019 gone already

Warning: this is a dry post! lol

Where has the month gone? Swept away by the tide of time! So what have I accomplished in January?

*Slept almost 7 hours or more every night
*Didn’t drink 3 nights every week
*Finished my staircase project (woohoo!)
*Went to Spokane and found an antique chandelier for my dining room and rewired it
*Got a new housemate
*Saved $500 to go into savings (I have to get an account set up)
*I have access to all my retirement and savings account, everything now feeds into Personal Capital
*Drank my ActivatedYou Morning Complete every morning
*Made a plan to reduce cow’s milk consumption (I am highly reactive to cow, buffalo, and coconut milks)
*Walked 3x per week outside my walk to the train
*Stayed low carb for 90% of the month (I had a few downfall days)
*Kept up with #MindSetReset
*Tracked my spending
*Enjoyed being in a healthy, loving relationship with my guy

In all, January was a good month to get things rolling. I need to print out my goal sheet for February. How quickly I forget what I have on it!

A couple of projects I want to get finished in February:

*Complete sanding and painting on window and door trim downstairs
*Remove and install new baseboard trim in main bathroom
*Finish baseboards on main level
*Get bids for fixing my driveway retaining wall (or bite the bullet and prepare to do it myself)
*Hang chandelier and outdoor motion light
++If I get those things done, maybe recover a club chair I tried to paint (epic fail)

A big project that will keep me busy for a couple weeks will be to organize and scan in all of my pictures. I have 3 tote bins full of albums and loose pictures. I want to get them all organized by year to start. So many pictures of the kids and their art work. A lot of things will be discarded (I have lots of duplicate pictures) and I may look differently at all of the art that has been accumulated through their school years. Anyway, I don’t want to think about it now! When the list above is completed, then I will move on.

January gone! Hello February!

February 1, 2019

2019 bright and new

Happy New Year! I am already 16 days into 2019 and I am making changes and getting things done. I worked on my list of to-dos for the whole month of December. I set my intentions for the year and have been working to make some a habit already.

Reality check-in; I feel myself resisting some of the things I want to get rolling this year. First, I want to do a blog post once a week. I’m a week behind, brush off and start fresh. Second, it is my intention to make stretching and cardio a priority 3-4X per week, behind but brush it off! I am almost finished with my stairway project that has been on my list for months (OK, 6 months). VERY good, big thing that has been hanging over my head.

Here is a list of some of the other things I set intentions/goals for in 2019:

Save $500/month and track
Make $100/month on my blog
Get at least 7 hours of sleep each night
Track my spending
Digitize my old photos/kids’ papers (many steps to this)
3 alcohol free days/week
Complete blog courses by February
Get all my DIY projects on my blog
Play with affiliate marketing
Review (and write about) more items I use in my home, on my body, and take into my body
Read at least 12 books this year (I am going to keep a list this year)
Reduce my clutter until I don’t have any left

I don’t like procrastination and I do like accountability. I’m thinking for 2019 I should track my progress here on the blog. I could write a ton more stuff on all things I want to do, but in reality, I just need to start. Here goes for my first 2019 check-in!

Week 1 and 2: Four dry days, started stairway project, slept 7 hours 6 nights, cleared out some leggings, turtlenecks, jewelry, organized bedding, painted 3rd bedroom, got my investment accounts set-up, paid for some blogging courses, got electrical work done, paid off credit card, reorganized bathroom supplies, cleaned out the fridge, and created a last will/testament. I went to work everyday!

January 16, 2019

Less is more?

Is less the new more? When I got divorced I moved what I could into my little apartment and rented a storage unit. I think the unit was 4x8x8 and I had it stuffed to the top. Part of my feelings of security was in the stuff shoved into that room. When I moved into the next apartment, I had a little more room, so part of the stuff came out of storage. And so it went until I was able to afford a place big enough to keep most of it inside with a very small storage area on the deck. Throughout the years there were some things I left behind; 7′ lit Christmas tree, half my patio furniture, and a few other items here and there.

When I moved into my last apartment with the little storage room, I realized I probably didn’t need to keep ALL the Christmas decorations I had been toting around. I had never had all the things out for the last 5 years. I also whittled down my books to a mere 6 boxes.

I bought my house in August of 2015. It was a LONG way from move in so I had 2 months to get my things ready to move. BUT, I also had a lot of work to do at the new place. My new house was twice as big as my apartment….wow, I could stack all my sh*t inside! My mom came to help me get moved and she was shocked how much stuff I had stashed in my apartment. In the new place, it looked like it had doubled. It was spread out all over the place. When I moved into that apartment, I moved on Friday and had company over on Sunday. Everything had been put away quickly.

This move was different. I still had a lot of work to do before everything could find a real home. I had stuff stacked in the basement, in the living room, in the bedrooms. The only places that were ready to roll were the kitchen and bathroom. I was planning on renting out the largest bedroom so that one was perfect and clutter free. The rest….disaster! A month in my house it looked like Goodwill and Home Depot both exploded inside. It was a crazy time but I found places for everything (all those boxes of stuff). I was going to rent the garage out, so I didn’t stack anything in there. I rented my basement out also. I had a 2076 sq.ft. house but I used 1,236 sq.ft. I shared living space with another person also. I had the equivalent of one bedroom to myself and a bunch of stuff stored in the other sloping ceiling room and storage room.

The first year in the house I updated the basement; it’s rented. Second year, I anticipated a remodel upstairs. I had all this space with a sharply pitched roof so the space you could stand in it was very little. I had a bunch of stuff stored in the area that you had to crawl to. The remodel created the need to downsize the stuff. My garage was rented and I knew I had too much stuff. I had to mentally let go of whatever had kept me moving the stuff for 7 years. Was it a sense of security, of not wanting to let go of the person I used to be, or not giving up the happy or painful memories that those things carried?

Five large tote bins of fabric….first to go. Hard, yes! Gradifing, yes! Then I went through my shoes; 10 pairs gone. Half my clothes, gone. Tons of other things. Last Christmas my daughter hosted Christmas in her house for the first time. I took 90% of the decorations and left them there. Will a couple of the things ever make it back into my house? There’s a 50/50 chance.

The remodel is almost complete. I haven’t looked at most of the stuff that has been in the garage for over 6 months. It is easy to say that I probably don’t need most of it. It will be harder to let go of it. Several boxes are filled with pictures of my kids and keepsakes. The pictures will be getting digitized when the rain starts again and each of the kids will get a disk and their share of the hard copies. The keepsakes I’ll go through and see if any of them can make their way into the light so I can look at them. If the kids want some of the items, they can store them. I will take pictures of some items then donate them.

The thought of less stuff and more space does make me feel good. Less stuff is more mental clarity, more physical space, more emotional relaxation, and more spiritual trust. Less is more!

May 4, 2018