I’m one of those people who hate change. I don’t just dislike change, I loathe, with a large bold capital ‘L’, change. Unfortunately, change can sometimes just pop up out of nowhere which results in a potentially nasty little surprise. When this sudden change happens, it tends to completely fry all the circuits in my brain resulting in my immediately digging my heels in as hard and as fast as I can. Maybe it’s a safety mechanism–you know, by digging said heels in it would theoretically slow things down and give me an opportunity to evaluate said nasty surprise and form a logical and rational plan to deal with it? Notice how I said ‘theoretically’ in that last sentence? That’s because most of the time, while digging in my heels with all my might, I don’t take the moment to just take a deep breath and rationally formulate a response. I dig my heels in and take a quick trip on the irrationality express.

Take this afternoon for example–my husband and I were hurrying to get him ready to leave town, again, for his job when my husband brought up some things that he had been thinking about regarding switching some things around work-wise. I will admit that his timing wasn’t the greatest, but it wasn’t like he flat out told me, “This is what’s going to happen”. He was the rational one, simply wanting to put some thoughts that he’d been having out there to see what I as the other half of our partnership thought about his thoughts. However, because these thoughts would mean changes, some pretty massive and seemingly impossible and not-workable at first glance kind of changes, I reacted badly. I didn’t yell or get angry but I immediately blurted out sentences involving the words ‘can’t’ ‘won’t’ ‘not’ and ‘unable’. It wasn’t a fight, but when he left, things were sad between us. It’s bad enough that he’ll be away for a week, but his having to leave on an unhappy note makes it worse.

Now that I’ve had a few hours to calm down and process what he was trying to communicate, I see that my immediate responses should have involved the words ‘maybe’, ‘investigate’, ‘possibility’, ‘more’ and ‘faith’. Unfortunately I won’t be able to talk to him until tomorrow night, so I’m hoping that will give me even more time to continue rationally and logically analyzing the situation which will result in my being able to communicate my thoughts in a more grown-up way.

You would think that in almost 31 years of living, I would have figured out that taking a breath and stepping back for a moment when things catch me off guard is the better way to react.

For most of the year, I often complain to my husband about how much I hate living in Virginia. This usually starts at around the same time every year-usually about the second week in May, which conveniently, is about the same time that the humidity that sucks all my will to live arrives. Having lived in the West for a fair amount of my years, I prefer my weather as dry as you can get with a touch of heat.

Sure, you could technically still expect the odd snowfall or two in June in Idaho, but the reward of being able to garden for several hours mid-July without needing the sprinkler aimed directly on you the entire time more than made up for any extra cool June nights. Once late June hits here in Virginia, I don’t leave the house unless there will be air conditioning and lots of it. Okay, I do leave the house sometimes to go somewhere, like the backyard, that is sans air conditioning, but it isn’t pretty–I’m usually sweating like a pig and turning a most unattractive flushed red color. Yeah, I’m one hot mama alright–hot like a cheap greasy hot dog on a barbeque grill that is.

We’re currently enjoying the calm before the storm, or rather the weather before the humidity. Humidity free days that are in the 80’s and nights that only dip down into the 50’s. Owen and I are trying to spend as much time outside enjoying the weather for the next month before the ugliness of May hits.

Four words- Hersheys Microwaveable Hot Fudge.

I’m not usually a dessert or chocolate fan, but we bought some microwaveable hot fudge sauce last week and it has been so so good heated up and poured over plain vanilla ice cream. Luckily the jar is not large or I would also be enjoying a larger pant size in addition to all the chocolatey goodness.

Lately a top-secret side project has been taking up any and alot of my extra time. Playing single parent since my husband has had to travel pretty frequently for work since the beginning of the year doesn’t leave much free time as it is, so it’s been even more hectic around here lately. You know you’re busy when you have to multi-task by using your ‘thinking’ time on the potty for serious technical reading, just to be able to have the time to squeeze it all in. Hopefully in the next two or three weeks, I’ll have more exciting (at least to me…and maybe you, depending on what you’re looking for) updates on what exactly this top-secret side project is. I’ll give you a hint–there will be a link involved. I’d tell you more, but then I’d have to kill you and quite frankly I don’t currently have the time or inclination to hide all the bodies.

In other exciting news, my garden plot-to-be did not get tilled last weekend. After we had such beautiful weather–80’s and we were wearing shorts and sandals– it suddenly got very cold and nasty and wet. So no tillage. I didn’t manage to get my seeds all started indoors either. I have high expectations that this weekend will go better and at least be a bit more productive. Much to the chagrin of the wild backyard rabbits.