Am I strong enough?

One thing that I have learned from Navy Sub life.... You have to be strong.

As a wife of a U.S Sailor and a mother of three, boys mind you. I often find myself being a single-non single parent for months at a clip. Those months apart are most challenging, the car will decide it no longer wants to work right, some household appliance will break down, your house gets torn apart from kids because there is no way you can be in four rooms at the same time to prevent disasters, emails are few and far between and almost always monitored by someone and if you're an unlucky one like some from our boat, the emails will be read and talked about with people who have no reason to know what was in it at all, you're deprived of sex and think about taking up stock in batteries, you learn what deployment insomnia is and you'll mumble and grumble "why does this only happen when he's gone?"

I'm also a person that NEEDS to stay busy, which I think might add to some of my stress. As a 7 1/2 month pregger I decided to re-paint the entire inside of our house....while he was at sea. I picked up armature photography, quilting, scrapbooking, couponing, gardening, baking, pretty much I strive to be a Martha Stewart clone minus the prison time.  I often have about 3 things I'm working on, right now it's a cathedral quilt, canning/baking, prepping to take senior pictures and the most time consuming...starting a business. Although I have my husbands full support and willingness to listen to my never ending talk about vendors, marketing and the future, he still isn't there to be 100% supportive.

Sometimes I get the "uh huh" or "oh cool" monotone response, I get upset but then have to remember that this man is putting in a 12hr shift of craziness known as Navy life. He is the only unfortunate person on his boat to be in 3 divisions and is tasked numerous things beyond the norm. I try to stay positive and supportive all while masking my own frustrations of the days business.

The pressure will build up over weeks and explode into a 'I'm not gonna cook you lil jerks anything to eat, go eat a bowl of cereal and mom is gonna go sit in the shower for 2 hrs, you better not bug me or mommy dearest will come out' mess(you like my run on sentence? good because I did). The kids sit there looking at each other trying to figure out why mommy has gonna coo coo.

I wonder sometimes how strong am I really? Can I really do this? Then I look at all the pictures in my house, I look at my husband, my children and know I not only have to be strong for me I have to do it for all of them......So I suck back all my emotions and frustrations and go through another day of a Navy Sub life.

These are all my knuckle heads :-)

What Navy tales do you have that makes you wonder "am I really strong enough for this?"

The Burnout.

The burnout happened, you know the burnout. When you add one thing after another on your list of To-Do's, you become so over whelmed that you HALT...STOP...QUIT... doing everything on your list. Well I got to that point already in the year.

My back went out just around the first of the year, I used that as an excuse not to do anything. When I say anything I mean anything, it's been a struggle to even get up the muster to really OCD ( as friends call it) clean my house the way I like besides the daily need-to clean.

Slowly I'm making my way back into the 'super woman' role, that woman who loves hearing " I don't know how you find the time to do all this,amazing". I'll admit, I LOVE to hear that, it drives me to do MORE actually. I've learned recently that my love language is 'words of affirmation' tied with 'acts of service'....I suggest anyone looking to learn better communication, go to www.5lovelanguages.com . back on track Kim,back on track....

So anyone who knows me, knows I like a challenge. I've recently become a fan of quilting. I've been working on a fantastic one recently and in true Kim fashion, I've found the next quilt inspiration. It's called the Cathedral Window quilt.

Picture - Hyena in Petticoats.

isn't it BEAUTIFUL?! I think I've fallen in love with this style quilt. This will be my Feb project :)

Getting back on track is the hardest part, you get into a habit of slacking and finding that motivation is hard. Instead of making excuses I need to just DO IT. Today was a good start, just keep it up Kim, keep it up.

What do you do to get motivated? or Who motivates you?

Mr.Perfect

A man who can fulfill you spiritually and sexually. A man who can make you happy, become your true and the only soul mate and someone who will be honest and true to you. These are the qualities that would define Mr. Right. Now the question is in everybody's mind, where do we look for him and how long do we have to wait to f ind this soul mate? This is a very big planet and he could be anywhere. Maybe one day you will bump into him and from that point on, you know that this is the one. This is Mr. Right. Now thinking realistically, what are the chances of that happening? Pretty slim. Now you get discouraged and your mind set lowered your personal expectations of your soul mate, thinking that you will never find him or give up and live alone.

A lot of people turn to destiny for answer. What is destiny in our minds? Is it something that you know will happen without your attempt to do anything about it. Thinking that you will meet your Mr. Right simply because this is destiny or is it something that you need to work for very hard to achieve this kind of result.

The answer to this is this: effort determines destiny not destiny on its own.

Whatever you do in your life, where ever you go or whatever decisions you make will determine what your destiny will be. Simply sitting in your house will not make destiny find your Mr. Right. You need to contribute to this, put your own effort. Whatever happens after that, destiny will lead you into your path.

Once you meet your man and you fall in love with him, he will become the only one for you. You become attached to this person. This kind of attachment means that it is in your heart not destiny that makes a man into unique and irreplaceable partner for long time to come.