Blog Blocked...

I don't know if it's the weather, the wind-up at work, or the million other things going on in my life... but for the first time since I started writing, I am blog-blocked!  The last two weeks, I have sat down at least half a dozen times and just stared at this blank screen... with nothing to say!  I know, me without something to say is shocking... but it's true!

There has been so much going on lately, I think my mind is just tired.  When I try to force it to be witty and intelligent, it just laughs at me, blows a little smoke, and turns itself off.  

The last 4 weeks of work, I've had my replacement with me.  I figured I would spend the first two weeks or so training him, and slowly easing off and relaxing the last two weeks.  Work had a different idea.  For some reason, work has a habit of piling itself on when it knows you are going away.  So instead of winding down and taking it easy the last few weeks, I was working full-out, and so was my replacement.  We had two people working my job full-time, and we still barely kept on top of everything.  I was not expecting that.  On Friday, my last day of work, I actually had a project handed to me at 2:00 and was asked if I could get it finished before I left.  I felt like laughing.  Instead, my lovely coworkers and I teamed up, and got it finished.  Wheeew!  Nothing like last-minute projects! :)

On top of work, there have been those lovely renovations we've been tackling.  The painting was finished a few weeks ago, but we haven't gotten around to actually setting up Gracie's new room, cleaning out her old one to make room for the new baby, or, you know, putting away the ginormous pile of crap that came out of the old office (which is now Gracie's room).  I figured I would tackle it when I get home from work in the evenings... but if you see the previous paragraph, you can probably imagine that my evenings involved only the bare essentials.  Eat, clean up, get ready for the next day, sleep. 

But you see, the problem is I'm now nearly 37 weeks along... which means full term... which means this lovely little lady could make an appearance any day now.  I'm hoping she's right on time.  3 weeks should give me time to finish up the laundry list of stuff I want to get done.  Today, for example, I was able to move Gracie's room downstairs.  I was hoping to unpack the little baby clothes and set up the nursery again, but I have a feeling that will be tomorrow's project.   Danny's also hasseling me to get my bag packed for the hospital... yeah, yeah, that should  probably be toward's the top of the list!  I also have 4 notebook pages of "spring cleaning" type stuff I absolutely must get down before I can bring home a new baby.  Obviously, if it doesn't get done, we'll all survive, and I'll forget about it in the post-baby exhaustion... but still, I MUST get it done.  It's my goal!

So with all of this stuff going on around me, I guess I can forgive my brain for being a little uncooperative in the creativity department.  I'm hoping now that I'm home during the days, I can re-energize my mind, and body, and get some stuff accomplished.  Including getting back on track with entertaining diatribes about my crazy family.  Because even though my brain has shut down, the craziness around here continues... and it's quite a shame that you are all missing out!  :)

Forever, For Always...

Sometimes life becomes so hectic and crazy, you forget for a while how you got exactly where you are today.  Often times we become so wrapped up in the day-to-day stuff (work, what's for dinner, what needs to be cleaned, who's picking up the milk on the way home) that we tend to take things for granted.  I didn't just wake up one day in the middle of this wonderful life that I live... I worked hard to get here, together with a man who means more than anything to me.  It was with all of that hard work, commitment, and sheer good luck, that we have the lives that we do. 

When I met Danny, I was the ripe old age of 19 and he was 21 (yes, he was totally a cradle-robber!).  Although we met at a bar, drinking wasn't really my thing, and I was just getting out of an on-again, off-again not-entirely-healthy relationship.  We hit it off pretty much from the beginning, with him declaring "I've always wanted a friend named Sammy, can I call you that?"  I agreed to the nickname, but didn't really think it would stick.  To this day, Danny has called me Samantha once... at our wedding, when he repeated what the priest told him to say.  Even when he's angry with me, he doesn't do that thing that mother's do... where they use your full name.  It's still always been Sammy.  I've had a few other nicknames too, like Princess (a personal favourite, obviously), although that was back "in the beginning" when mushy-gushy names like that were acceptable.

7 years ago... young and foolish! :)

Soon after I met Danny, I moved to Moncton to go to school.  Although it was hard to be apart from someone whom I was becoming quite fond of, he never once asked me to stay or pressure me to not go.  We just made it work.  There were many fights over the phone, and times when I'm sure we both thought we were never going to make it through the year, but somehow we managed.  After I moved back from Moncton, we spent 3 months in the PMQ, and then moved into this house.  Living with someone was quite different for me, and we found that we were very different in our cleaning, cooking, and relaxing styles.  The first year wasn't too bad, but the second year in the house was hellish... we fought about everything from how often the laundry should be done, to what the tone of a certain voice actually meant (despite what the person who owned the voice meant it to mean!).  It was a rough year... but somehow we worked through all of the issues, and came out even stronger on the other side.

We also had to deal with Danny's mom getting sick.  We were together for about 3 years when she was diagnosed with lung cancer.  It was another rough year, of not understanding exactly how Danny was feeling, of not knowing what I should or could be doing to help, to not really knowing what exactly was going to happen.  Unfortunately, Danny's mom did pass away... but we made it through that stress too.

We got engaged that summer, and spent the next year planning our wedding.  It was stressful at times too.  Arguing about the guest list, and where to put people, and different family customs.  And yet, we made it to the wedding day and I became *cough* Mrs. Danny Ford.  The first year of married life wasn't that different, of course, than the previous few years, although we still had some wrinkles and issues to settle.  We got pregnant with Gracie in April, nearly 9 months post-wedding.  We spent the next 42 weeks discussing all sorts of things... money, discipline, religion, schooling... you name it, we talked about it.  And it was sometime around then that I realized it had happened... during the previous 5 years, we had dealt with almost every single issue that was important to us, and had reached a consensus on how we wanted our lives, and the lives of our children, to look.  We were comfortable with the decisions we had made in the past, and for the future.  We knew how we wanted to handle the situations thrown at us over the next 18+ years.  We had made it this far... and we were totally, and completely ready for the future.  We were 100% secure in our relationship and we were ready to tackle whatever life threw at us... and most importantly, we were in it together.  

Obviously, we still fight... usually about the laundry or my hormones.  And we will continue to fight for the rest of our lives together.  The difference is... we know that none of those issues that we fight about are going to be deal breakers.  Nothing is more important than making things work for us, and we're committed to that idea.

I think the number one thing in our relationship that keeps us as strong as we are is respect.  If you don't completely respect the person you're with, or if you're not completely respected, it's going to be awfully hard to get through the tough times.  I recently taught Danny a saying that has sort of become our motto, and it's a perfect example of respect...

Saying you're sorry does not necessarily mean that you're wrong,

It means that you value your relationship more than your ego.

So on a day when I flip through Facebook and see our good friends celebrating their 10-year anniversary, and on a day when I have serious discussions with people I love about what it means to be happy in a relationship, and on a day when my husband brings me home Hickory Sticks after he's worked a 12-hour shift, just because I've been craving them for three days straight, I want to make it clear that no matter how hard things get in the future, and no matter how easy it might seem sometimes to just walk away instead of making things work, I have no doubt that 30 years from now he'll still be complaining about my hormones, and I'll still be wishing he didn't fart in his sleep.  

As the sign above our living room window says... Forever, For Always, but Never For Granted