Tag: family

I’ve been thinking Thursday: Supportive

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 7 Comments

I try to only be positive about my hubs in public. It’s one of those things I think is important to the health of your marriage. Praise in public, critique in private.

I’ve occasionally deviated from this. Once, fed up with his leaving his oatmeal bowl on the counter with oatmeal in it until it dried into a crusty nastiness of epic proportions, I wrote a post about secondary characters. Giving them a life of their own, rather than leaving them to serve the main character.  One of my examples was about a time traveling journalist who kept leaving his oatmeal bowl for his wife to clean. LOL

But today I want to talk about one of those ways, he is amazing.

I can not spell. And despite teaching writing, compositional and creative, at the coop, my use of grammar is fractured to say the least. But the hubs…oh man….the hubs…

When I was working on my bachelors and the hubs was getting his masters, we both had to take this lame ass writing exam. Two parts, 75 multiple choice and then an essay. Timed.  Essay was scored on a scale of 1-12.

The scoring was weird though. The better you did on the multiple choice the less well you had to do on the essay to pass, which got you into 100W, required by all majors on campus. Then there was a pass plus which got you out of 100W. And of course fail.

The hubs got a perfect score on the multiple choice, which was all grammar and sentence structure, but scored so low on the essay he had to take 100W.

I got the lowest passing score possible on the multiple choice, but scored so high on the essay I qualified to waive 100W.

Why do I tell this story? Because my husband painstakingly edits my novels, multiple times. Sure I could pay someone to do this for me, but they wouldn’t know when they came across an error, what I really meant. And he always does. He knows when I write a long string of gobble-gook that I meant to say something profound and will ask, then tell me where to put the commas or suggest alternate arrangements that make the significance clear.  You can’t pay for that.

And why does he do this? Certainly not because he has too much time on his hands and nothing to do.  bwahahaha

He does it cause he supports my writing and he shows it by giving me the help I need to make it happen.

Sorry ladies, no brothers. LOL.

 

 

I’ve been thinking Thursday: Marriage Advice

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 3 Comments

Lately I’ve been listening to Gone Girl on audio while driving about. I haven’t decided whether I like the book or not yet but Amy is constantly ranting about the advice they got when they got married and I remember getting similar advice. Which led to me thinking about whether that was actually good advice or just the crap people say to sound like they know how to make a marriage work. With divorce around 50% nationally (3.2 out of 6.9) you have to think people are full of crap right?

Compromise

How many of you heard marriage is about compromise? I certainly did.

What I’ve learned however is constant compromise leads to repressed anger, which leads to resenting your spouse. Hello divorce.

Go for the win-win solution. There is always one to be found when you love the person you’re negotiating with.

Never go to bed angry

F that. Go to bed angry. Some situations can not be resolved quickly. And staying up to argue it out so you can go to bed at peace is a bad idea. Why? Because how good are your decision making skills when you’re angry? Now add exhausted to the mix. Yeah. How long before you say something you will regret after a night’s sleep?

Go to bed angry, in separate beds if you need to. Let a little time chill out the negative passions.

Discuss it rationally after a cup of coffee, or three.

Communicate

This one is actually true. Only how many of us have been taught to effectively communicate? I certainly wasn’t. Which leads me to this one….

Don’t air your dirty laundry

Keep the issues in your marriage within your marriage. You wouldn’t actually wash your clothes at a public drinking fountain, right?

No, but you might go to a laundry mat, cause that’s the appropriate location to wash laundry. If you have issues in your marriage, air that shit in public, at the appropriate location. See a therapist. Talk about what’s going on. Get instruction in communication.

It’s ok to admit you need help. It’s ok to admit you were wrong.

Never let your husband get the upper hand

Yup, somebody actually told me this. More than one somebody actually.

The thing is the hubs and I are a team. So I want him to get the upper hand, as often as possible, because it’s good for me too. Cause we’re on the same team.

Maybe I’m naive but if I can’t be vulnerable, needy, or at my worst with my husband, why the hell did I marry him?

What advice did you get when you got married that you look back and think – huh?

 

 

Fiendish Friday: The Last Time

~ tahenryauthoress ~ Leave a comment

I swear this is the last time I will complain about the coop. But….

We’re in the home stretch. I am off the board. The new members are doing their jobs (hence me having time to write EVERY DAY). But I’m still chairing the scheduling committee. We got a schedule put together. Got it through feedback from the members. Fixed it all up.

And then it started.

“You moved my class to x time and that doesn’t work for me.”

“It meets all seven guidelines you gave me in your proposal.”

“You must have misunderstood. Please change it.”

I have played so much Tetris with little boxes of information this week, my eyes are permanently crossed.

Of course we still have to release to the members for registration. And every change that was suggested in feedback that we were unable to make….yup a parent will complain (and no angel will get her wings).

I am so close to done, I can taste it. If the kiddo doesn’t go there next year, I don’t have to do anything but teach. Can you imagine? I can’t. LOL

Kindness Challenge Day 23

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 1 Comment

Day 23: Call a relative that is far away and have a chat

This is actually kind of hard for me. I talk to my in laws all the time. So calling them feels like a total cheat. I don’t speak to my mother and several other family members, all surrounding the issue with my mother. My dad expects me to call on Christmas and would be annoyed if I called today as that would mean he would have to talk to me twice this week.

Yeah, I got family issues. LOL. Did you never suss that out?

Friends I consider family it will have to be.

 

If you don’t know what I am talking about with the whole Kindness Challenge, you can find the calendar here. All normal posts will resume in January. Enjoy the time off. Enjoy the kindness. Practice a little yourself.