Thanks LaMa, my thoughts exactly! I feel so bad for the kids. The youngest is the most adorable 6 yo boy who could be a gymnast and anything else he wants to be - very charming and smart. The other kids all have great qualities, but you can see that as they get older, they shut down emotionally and socially, get less creative, and more of a mess. If they just hadn't stolen, we would have put up with the dad to help out with giving them a nice vacation place so they had something positive to counterbalance the horrid parents a bit.Say what now??? Those poor kids, having to grow up like that And what a useless asshole of a parent.
Your plans look great. So many positive things!
I'm happy about my plans.
Your goals sound great and it's really great to have you back after your little break!
Thanks Liza! It's good to be back with my head in a better place again. When I used to do art, I'd leave the house messy except for dishes and cleaning the bathroom, and that way my flow didn't get interrupted. J and K are saying that they'd like to help with housework so I can do more art, so I think I'll make a list of little chores that need doing and put it where everyone can see it. K does help with sweeping and vacuuming, and J helps with dishes now, which is really great. So I think if we all concentrate, we can get a workable solution.Can really relate to that one--I want to find a good balance of keeping my place in order and organized and doing other things. For me I keep leaving a bunch of the chores unfinished and then getting overwhelmed...(and this is me in a tiny apartment!) so I want to try and just commit maybe about an hour a day to doing house stuff and then hopefully have it never get to the point of overwhelm.
Thanks Em! I think my goals are good, but maybe I won't do all of them at a time so I don't get overwhelmed. We did an almost 3 mile (4.6km) walk yesterday downtown and took pics with our new cameras. I got K a starter camera (with basic manual controls) for her birthday, and got me one so we could go on shoots together. It was really fun, and it took K's mind off the theft. We made sure our family heirloom stuffed toys were all there, and we lucked out that they were. They are really nice realistic looking animals we love that were passed down from me to K.Wow, that was a really bad visitor experience!! Eek!!
Best of luck with your goals. Glad you’re back.
Thanks Cate! I had J explain what he was going to do about the theft, and he took pics of the messed up closet, the boxes that had been rummaged though, and he wrote and explained in detail how much this upset K, as she had just gotten rid of all her possessions except her most treasured ones. The dad got the idea and had even caught the two girls in a restaurant getting free refills of soda from cups which were given to them to get free tap water. He had to explain that this hurts the business, and that it's wrong. They explained that the mom brings cups back to businesses from home to get free refills, and that's how they learned it. Anyway, I kept asking J to tell me what he thought of all this, and he acknowledged that this was a big mistake and that we should screen people in the future. He did feel genuinely bad, especially for K, but he also acknowledged that I didn't deserve having my kitchen rummaged through either, which was nice. He usually blames me for not getting along with people when he brings an obnoxious guest over and I don't like it. So this is a big step for him admitting that some of his friends are super hard to get along with. I do feel good about staying calm. I think the last few years worth of struggle have helped me take hard things in stride to a larger extent.Oh, M. That sounds like a nightmare! I hope you got your message through to J & he has learned a lesson from all of this. It really sounds horrendous. You did well staying so calm. Kudos to you my friend
Your weight-loss plan sounds good. I must drink more water!
So today for English we're going to look though our photos from our photo shoot and study the ones we like best. Then we're going to free write and then take ideas from the photos and the free writing and write poems. I was watching an artist-philosopher online (a nice Zen Buddhist student who is a photographer) and it gave me the idea of photographing things that attract us and writing about them. K's education was fairly rigorous academically, but didn't include an exploration of what interests her and sparks her creativity, so I am going to start making up for that this year.
I'm sitting on the porch having breakfast and watching it rain. Nice to be relaxed again! My cat is so happy to have the house back, it's cute to watch her rolling and being gleeful.