love – Page 2 – Cairn by Cairn

Twenty One Years of Bliss

Hubby and I celebrate twenty-one years of wedded bliss today and although in honesty it hasn’t been 100% bliss, it’s been more bliss than not. We’ve had our share of arguments and disagreements, but overall we’ve learned to work together and become a team. We married six months after we met and I’m sure there are folks that thought our marriage would never last, but through stubbornness, love, and perseverance, we’ve managed to make it work.

First and foremost, hubby is my best friend and the person I can turn to and talk to about just about anything. He’s also been my moving buddy through more than 10 moves. We moved from St. Louis to Okinawa, back to Chicago, down to Central Illinois and then back to Chicago. We acquired two kids along the way and have shared our lives with a couple of dogs.

So what lessons have I learned through twenty-one years of marriage?

Friendship is the most important thing in a marriage. Lust comes and goes, but love helps keep you together. My husband has always been there for me and he’s been my moving buddy through more than 10 moves. Even when I had no one else to help me pack up boxes and move, hubby was there for me and we managed to get ourselves moved.
Stick together through the rough stuff. Every marriage has ups and downs and our marriage has seem some rocky financial patches, but we managed to get through them by sticking together.
Make time for each other. It’s really hard to carve time out to just be spouses and not parents, but we get along better when we make time for each other.
Learn to like some of the things your spouse likes. From wanting to spend time with hubby, I’ve learned to like Star Trek and James Bond. He’s still trying to get me to like football, but somehow I don’t think I’ll ever become a football fan.
Welcome each other home with genuine happiness. Some of the sweetest homecomings have been the simplest. I will always remember the time when I came home two hours late after battling through a horrendous rain storm and my husband had a white candle burning and had been praying for my safe return.
Have fun together. Our first date was to the zoo and I remember the exact moment I fell in love with my husband. He’d put his arms around me by the aviary and I learned against him and realized this was someone who would always be there for me.
Share the work. We don’t always do such a great job with this one, but we try. We both work and contribute to the bills and we try to share the housework, but that doesn’t always work out perfectly.
Really listen. Sometimes your significant other just wants to share his/her thoughts and doesn’t necessarily want a solution.
Marraige doesn’t make you Siamese twins. When we first got married, I thought we had to do everything together, but I’ve since learned that we each have to be our own people too in order for us to be successful.
Stay connected. We try to reach out to each other at least once during the work day. Sometimes it’s a “love tap” text message, somedays it’s a phone call, and other days it’s an email.
Have out of your world experiences together. Vacations don’t have to be month long sabbaticals, but you need to take some time out of the ordinary together. Your mini sabbaticals can be trips to the local farmer’s market, overnights in local hotels, any other way you can escape from the ordinary for a few hours.
Be yourself. There’s too much game playing in the world, too much falseness, too much hiding. Being yourself means being honest with yourself and your significant other about who you really are.
Be your best. It might sound contradictory ot be yourself and be your best, but being your best doesn’t mean hiding who you really are, it means taking time to dress up and put your best foot forward for the person you love. All to often we take time to dress up and be special for people who don’t really matter, but we show up in jeans and torn underwear for the person we love.
Bring your manners. We say things to the people we love that we would never say to strangers. Just because you love someone, doesn’t mean you get to slack on manners.
Accept your love one just the way he/she is. We’re all human and we all make mistakes and part of loving someone is being able to accept their humanity. My husband is an expert at accepting me for who I am with all my faults (losing things, leaving the lid off the toothbrush, and more).
Don’t make your who life your kids. Our kids are an important part of our life together, but they are not our entire life together and sometimes we need to make time for just the two of us. The kids don’t always like it, but if you don’t make time for just the two of you througout your marraige, you’ll end up empty nesters with nothing in common.
Learn together. Learning together keeps things interested and ensures you have new things to learn about. Learning doesn’t have to be taking classes together, it can be sharing knowledge that you’ve learned with your partner. For instance, I’ve learned a lot about blogging from “My Everyday Bliss” and I’ve shared the lessons I’ve learned with my husband.
Money isn’t everything. Sometimes I’ve gotten so caught up in working and striving to make more money, that I’ve forgotten that I’ve neglected my husband and family in pursuit of more money. I’m learning, that I need to give up success at work to have time for my family and the people who really matter.
It’s the thought that counts. I struggle with this one because I like to give and receive the perfect presents and hubby doesn’t always deliver what I consider the perfect present. Over twenty-one years, I’ve learned to put aside my disappointment at not getting exactly what I wanted and embrace the thought that went into the gifts.
Family matters. My husband has taught me so much by how he treats my family and the love and respect he shows them. He is unfailingly polite to my family and gives up his time to spend time with my family.
Love one another. Love isn’t just the spark of lust that newlyweds share, it’s the enduring love that long term partners have for each other and it is a cumulation of all the things above.

Marraige is the hardest thing I’ve ever done becuase it’s meant I’ve had to get out of myself and spend time thinking of other people and being there for someone other than myself. After 21 years, however, it’s definately worth it.

Comfortable Bliss

Old shoes may not be glamorous, but it is sure comfortably blissful to slip your feet into a pair of shoes that have molded themselves to fit your feet perfectly. Sometimes in our search for bliss, we assume that bliss is something to be found and not something we already have. There are so many blissbringers in this world that bring bliss precisely because they are comfortable. Here’s a list of my top 10 comforting blissbringers:

Snuggling back into the covers on a cold winter morning when you realize you have 10 or 15 minutes before you absolutely have to get up. I can’t sleep in a hot room, so I generally leave the window open as late as possible into the fall so that the bedroom is a little bit chilly at night. This morning I woke and realized that it had surpassed chilly and was downright frigid. I hustled out of bed to shut the window and then climbed back beneath the covers that were still warm from my body heat. I snuggled under my microsuede comforter that I got from Goodwill and just relaxed and let my mind wander.
Friends that you can pick up the phone and continue a previous conversation with without having to regroup and bring them back up to speed.
Inside jokes. I work with people from both our plants and headquarters and the folks at one of the plants play buzzword bingo when they have meetings with us and tick off the buzzwords as we say them. They consider me one of their own so they shared the game with me and now when I’m in a meeting with both corporate and plant folks, ever so often I’ll send a text during the meeting saying “bingo” and we all understand what that means.

Old shoes that fit perfectly and feel as if they were made for your feet.

Spaghetti with tomato sauce and Parmesan. This isn’t some fancy pasta dish, it’s just pure comfort food that reminds me of being a kid at my grandmother’s dinner table and the pure heaven that her pasta brought.
Snuggling in front of the fireplace on a cold winter’s day. Watching the flames is highly hypnotic and can put me into a snuggly warm state.

Days without running errands, chores, or playing taxi driver. Every so often, I will be lucky enough to get a day that I get to spend at home without having to go anywhere. Those are perfect days that are lazy and fun and very relaxing.

Soaking in a hot bathtub with music playing and no responsibilities.

Chocolate pudding eaten while it is still sorta warm and not quite set up yet.

Snuggling with my husband. I feel so safe when I snuggle up with him as if nothing could hurt me and as if I’m safe from all the cares of the world.

My blissmakers are comfortable and satisfying and bring complete happiness.

Bliss 100

A little over five months ago, I posted my very first post on balance and bliss. At that time, I had no idea where my life was going to take me or what I was going to find on my journey, but I knew that somehow I had to make a concentrated effort to find bliss and balance in my life. I had asked the Gods in China to “help me find my bliss,” but I never made a concentrated effort to seek out bliss.

This is my 100th posting on bliss and my life has changed over the past five months and I’ve realized that the more focus I put on bliss, the more blissful my life becomes. A lot has changed over the last five months and I attribute a lot of that to my focus on becoming more blissful. There was a period of about two weeks when I wasn’t blogging on a regular basis and my life was out of balance and I was more unhappy than I’d been in a long time. So looking back over the past 99 post, I’d like to share with you some of the ones that have meant the most:

Sixty Days of Bliss–I still haven’t quite finished all of my thirty blissmakers, but what I realized as I focused on accomplishing each of them in turn was how much pleasure those simple things really brought to my life. Spending time with my family, a good massage, traveling, all of those things make my life richer and fuller and the pursuit of bliss added bliss in unexpected ways.

Bliss Tea and Strawberry Bliss–Reminded me of amazing times I had discovering the foods of the world and how simple things when savored can bring tremendous amounts of bliss.

Seventeen Blissful Memories and BatBliss–Reminded me again exactly how lucky I am to have two such amazing children. They are both thoughtful, loving, and intelligent and they make me proud every single day.

Bliss Mountain–This was one of my all time favorite posts as it detailed an amazing journey I took with my daughter through the Blue Ridge mountains. It was an incredible trip as we had no real agenda and just drove where ever the road took us. I felt like I learned a lot about my daughter and about myself on that trip.

Twenty Nine Days of Bliss–This chronicled my trip through the 29 days of giving and I still haven’t assimilated the lessons learned and determined how if anything the 29 day challenge changed my life.

Overall, my blog has added a tremendous amount of joy to my life as I’ve found myself focusing on the people who matter and on bringing joy into my own life. The one thing I do know that I need to keep focusing on is building my relationships with my family and on prioritizing my life so that they take center stage.

Momma’s Bliss

Today’s my mom’s birthday and it’s the first one she’s celebrated without my dad since she was sixteen years old. As a child, I idolized my dad and didn’t really pay attention to the sacrifices my mom made to make sure we had what we needed and I never really appreciated her until I became a parent myself. As I look at who I am today, I realize that a lot of my strength, my grit, and my backbone, came from my mom and that I wouldn’t be who I am without the lessons I learned at her knee. My mom provided the stability in my life that let me take chances and learn to soar. Here are some of the lessons I learned from my mom:

Support those you love—My mom met my dad when she was 16 years old and he was 27. They got married when she was just 19 and they enjoyed a long and loving life together. I’m always thrilled when I look through the family photos to see the look of love in both of their eyes when they look at each other. My mom supported my dad through thick and thin and she was always there for him. She made trips to see his mamma at the holidays, even when she would have rather stayed home. She made sure my college tuition was paid, even if she had to sacrifice to do so and she made sure I got an extra 20 bucks once in a while to buy pizza with.

Be there for the people that matter—My mom was always there for her family and she made sure my dad showed up too, even when he would have rather stayed home. For their 25th Anniversary, my brother and I held a surprise party for them and, unfortunately, my aunt ruined the surprise by calling my mom the day before to apologize for not being able to make the party. My mom told my dad and he got all cranky and wasn’t going to go because he didn’t want to get dressed up. My mom knew the love and effort that we’d put into the party so she managed to drag him along because she didn’t want to let us down. The funny thing is that once my dad got there and saw all the people that had shown up to show their love and affection, he turned into the life of the party and you never would have known that he had to be dragged to the party.

Don’t diss those you love—I’m sure my parents had their share of ups and downs during their marriage, but I never once remember hearing them fight. It was only when I grew up that my mom shared some of her frustrations with my dad with me.

Make do with what you have—My mom grew up in a poor farm family and she carried the lessons of making do and being creative with what you had with her. We lived in a small two bedroom house when I was growing up and my brother and I had to share a bedroom. My mom rearranged the room so that my brother’s bed was in the closet and my side of the room was partioned off with a dresser. As a kid, that never bothered me and I always felt like I had my own space. Looking back, I view it as just another way that my mom was creative with what she had available to her. And in later years it inspired endless jokes about Tony coming out of the closet.

Be strong—My dad had several heart attacks when I was a child and looking back, I can imagine how terrified my mom must have been at the thought of being left a widow with two small kids. However, she never showed her fear and she always made going to visit dad in the hospital a big adventure. What I remember about those times was not being afraid that dad was going to die, but going to visit him in the cool old-fashioned waiting room at Geneva hospital and eating in the cafeteria at the hospital downtown. Another example of my mother’s strength of character was when my thirteen year-old cousin, her nephew, was killed in a farming accident on her birthday. Despite the heartbreaking anguish I’m sure she was feeling, she managed to stay strong and to explain the situation to my brother and I in terms we could understand and she made sure that we felt safe. I also admired my mother tremendously in my father’s last days on earth where she made sure he never saw her crying and where she camped out in a van at the hospital for days at a time so she was close to him.

Respect your elders—From an early age, my mom instilled in my brother and I a respect for our elders. We were taught to call people Sir and Ma’am, to open the door for older people, and to help them however we could. We were also encouraged to learn from our elders and to listen to their experiences to help us shape our own lives.

Experience Life—My mom has always encouraged me to experience life and to take all the opportunities that have come my way. We moved to Okinawa when Sean, her only grandchild at the time, was six months old and I know it had to be difficult for her, but she encouraged me to take the opportunity to enjoy it. She’s always thrilled when I get the opportunity to travel overseas and relishes the photos and trinkets I bring back.

Encourage dreams—Writing is in my blood and my mother has always encouraged me to pursue my dreams of writing. She has autographed copies of both my books, she reads my blog religiously, and she always encourages me to go for it. My mom has also demonstrated her willingness to follow her dreams by taking an art class and getting involved in organizations that are important to her.

Family matters –My mother’s family was dysfunctional to put it kindly. Her grandfather was a nasty old coot who was just plain mean. Her mother could be charming or mean depending upon her mood. However, my mother made sure that we knew who her family was and that we showed them respect. My mother always made sure that we attended family gatherings and that we spent time with our cousins and extended relations on both sides.

Do the Right Thing—My mother always taught me and my brother to do the right thing no matter what. That included being honest if someone had given us too much change and living up to our obligations no matter how difficult. My grandmother lived in a nursing home close to my mom for the last few years of her life and my mom always made sure she was taken care of. Although, there were a lot of times when I questioned my mother’s sanity for taking care of her after how horrible my grandmother had been to her, I admired her devotion. It was only later that my mom told me that she wasn’t taking care of her mother because she felt her mom deserved her devotion, it was because she had promised her father that she’d take care of her mother. As her dad had pointed out, my grandmother was the only mom my mom would ever have.

To your own self be true—This is the most important lesson my mamma ever taught me. She wrote in my autograph book when I was a kid to always remember to be true to myself. I struggle with that sometimes because sometimes my inner red neck comes out to play and I’m coarse and earthy and not the perfectly polished person I’d like to be. However, in my years on the planet, I’ve learned that everyone has a coarse and earthy side, most people are just too afraid of what people will think to let their inner red neck out. I’m not perfect, but you know what? That’s okay. I’m exactly the person I’m supposed to be.

I hope you have a wonderful birthday Mom. Thanks for always being there for us.

“Luving” Bliss

My father was a better writer than I will ever be because he always wrote from the heart and every so often, I’ll find a piece of prose he wrote and my eyes will tear up knowing the world will never get to read these wonderful pieces my father wrote.

My dad wrote the following and it is the least I can do to share it with the world on my blog.

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While traveling through my native hills, I stopped beside the busy highway at a small cemetary and since the day was hot I decided to walk in the shade among the stones. Some had verses proclaimin gtheir everlasting love. In the rear of the cemetary, was a small potter’s field where those with no money were buried. It seemed they were forgotten in death as in life. In the corner was a large fieldstone that caught my eye, on it was the name, date of birth and death, at the bottom was a verse, crudelly spelled: “I luv yu much. John.” As I stood there, I thought of this man of the hills, I am sure his hands trembled and he had tears in his eyes as he carved that stone proclaiming his love.

So if like the man of the hills, poverty is my way of life and rings of gold and silver I cannot buy to show my affection or in death stones of granite or marble to proclaim my love, I hope my friends and loved ones will understand: there is no shortage of love; just of cash, because “I luv yu much.”

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Daddy, I will always “luv you much.”

"Luving" Bliss

My dad wrote the following and it is the least I can do to share it with the world on my blog.

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Daddy, I will always “luv you much.”

Bowl of Bliss

Families are made and not born.

The smell of oil and vinegar always reminds me of Grandma Elda because no matter what was for dinner we always had salad with oil and vinegar served in a wooden salad bowl. Some days the salad was leaf lettuce with tomatoes and other day’s dandelion greens but the dressing was always oil and vinegar with garlic and oregano thrown in for good measure. I loved helping fix the salad. I’d pull the bowl down from the shelf and inhale deeply to catch the faint smell of salads past.

Elda was my grandmother by love and not by blood. My mother and her daughter in-law were friends and she became my babysitter when I was six months old. She diapered my bottom, dried my tears, and taught me to love homemade spaghetti sauce and tomatoes. Grandma lived about six blocks from our house and some days when I was supposed to go home, I managed to “forget” and wangled an invitation to Grandma’s house for dinner. There was always room for one more around her dinner table and I ate countless meals with Grandma Elda, Grandpa Tony, their son George, his wife Joan, and their two daughters Vicki and Joyce who considered themselves my big sisters.

Summer was the best times to be at Grandma’s because during the summer her beautiful gardens were in full bloom and all manners of goodies came from her garden. At Grandma’s I learned to love fresh lettuce, tomatoes straight from the vine, and green beans. During the fall, marathon-canning sessions would take place when Grandma made homemade spaghetti sauce and all manners of jams and jellies.

From the time I could eat cake until my sophomore year of college when Grandma got too sick to bake, I’d always have an angel food cake for my birthday. Nothing ever tasted as good as that cake I watched her painstakingly bake and turn upside down on a soda bottle to cool. When it was ready to be frosted, she’d cut off the crusty parts of the bottom and let me have a taste and then she’d frost it with buttercream icing.

I’ll never forget Grandpa Tony’s funeral. I was ten and I didn’t exactly understand what it was like for Grandma to lose the love of her life but I do remember that after coming home from Grandpa’s burial, Grandma cooked a huge turkey dinner and made sure that everyone was served and satisfied.

Grandma died ten years ago and not a day goes by that I don’t think about her. I inherited the yellow tupperware juice glasses that I drank orange juice out of as a child and serving my two children orange juice out of them makes me think of Grandma. I think of her every time I start to complain about how menial housework is because she always did the most menial of tasks cheerfully. From her example, I know that being loved and loving others is more important than how much money you make or what you do for a living.

Blissful Acceptance

Luke, my beautiful Aussie / Collie Mix, came to us from a shelter when he was three and he had a lot of ingrained bad habits: barking insanely at anyone who comes to the door, not being able to walk on a leash, having accidents when we take him to PetSmart, and biting other dogs. Not a list of all the things you’d look for when you went to adopt a dog. However, he’s also one of the smartest and most loving dogs that I know and cuddling with him is pure bliss.

We’ve taken him to doggy obedience school, but he got so nervous every time he went that he would have an accident and then look ashamed of himself. We take him for walks and he pulls at the leash because he’s so excited. For the longest time, I thought that with enough exercise and practice, he’d get better and sometimes he does a really good job on the leash and other times he’s right back to ripping my arm out of the socket. Unfortunately for Luke and us, we spent a lot of time comparing him to dogs that walked beautifully on leashes because their parents had started working with them when they were puppies.

I finally realized that it wasn’t fair to compare Luke’s behavior that that of a dog that started walking on a leash when he was a baby. Could we make up for the lost time? Maybe, but the price would be a whole lot of frustration on our part and Luke’s. That’s when I realized that I had to accept Luke for who he was: a beautiful, furry companion who loves us with all his heart. That’s who Luke is and at the end of the day, it really doesn’t matter to me if he can walk on a leash or not. We have a big back yard and we take him out to play and do psycho puppy several times a day so he’s not suffering by not being able to take walks.

The next realization was that my whole family was worthy of the same compassion and acceptance that I show Luke. I need to accept that cleaning the house is not a priority for a daughter, but that she brings a lot of joy to my life through her singing, her stories, and just being Caitlin. Sean can be grumpy and messy, but he’s always willing to help me move the heavy stuff and he’s great to talk politics with. John will never be as driven as I am, but that’s okay, he’s always been there for me and he’s been my moving buddy through more moves than we can count.

Accepting myself is a little harder to do as I regularlly flagallate myself for not being pretty enough, for being too fat, for being a slob, for anything and everything. However, beating myself hasn’t helped me really change my life. All it’s done is make me feel unhappy and guilty. I still want to make changes, but I need to accept with all my heart who I am right now. I need to take the good with the bad and be happy with who I am.

It is amazing how many blissful lessons I learn from someone who can’t talk at all, but who manages to be very articulate with his eyes, his ears, and his love.

Home Cooked Bliss

There’s something about standing over a stove stirring sauce or listening to the sizzle of garlic and onions in a hot skillet that is very soul satisfying. Last week I made meatloaf for my family and used the leftover meat mix to make some meatballs that I turned into spaghetti and meatballs last night.

There isn’t anything tremendously difficult about opening a bottle of spaghetti sauce, putting them on the stove to heat and dumping some spaghetti in a kettle of water so I thought my culinary duties would be light last night. However, my daughter who usually cooks her own food because she’s a vegetarian asked me what I was making for her. We didn’t have another jar of spaghetti sauce in the house and there was no way I was making another run to the store so I got inspired and started ransacking the cupboards to see what we had I could make a passable sauce from.

My base was a can of tomato sauce, to that I added some minced garlic and onions. Unfortunately it still looked like a can of tomato sauce with spices so I headed back to the cupboard. A little searching turned up a can of diced tomatoes and some mushrooms which made the jar of tomato sauce look a lot more like spaghetti sauce. The simmering sauce smelled divine, but had an acidic taste. Remember some long ago guidance I’d read in a cook book, I added a few pinches of sugar and tasted it again. It tasted a lot better than a can of Ragu and made me remember the satisfying feeling of creativity that cooking can bring when you don’t slavishly follow someone else’s directions.

Cooking is about more than the raw ingredients you put in the pan, it’s about nurturing and love and about creating sustenance for those you love. There’s something immensely satisfying about the smell of garlic and onion sizzling on the griddle or the warm chocolaty perfume of cookies baking in the oven. Those aromas fill the home with love, security, and bliss.

In Sickness and Bliss

Being sick isn’t very blissful or is it? I’m currently battling a nasty case of the flu and I’ve been off work for a couple of days while trying to get better. The scratchy throat, constantly dripping nose, and overwhelming exhaustion are the furthest thing from bliss I could imagine. However, there are parts of being home sick that do verge on the blissful.

I rarely have the house and the tv to myself, especially during the summer when the kids are off school. However, as fate would have it I ended up home sick all alone for one glorious day when there was no one to intrude on my “misery.” No one at home meant that I got to spend the day snuggled in front of the TV watching reruns of crime dramas, my mind candy of choice, with no one turning the channel to check on the scores of the latest sporting event.

When fatigue set in and I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, I was able to snuggle down in my nice warm bed in the middle of the day and take a nap. Sleep is one of the best medicines in the world as it gives your body time to repair itself and fight off infection, it also feels really good to take a nap in the middle of the day. When I woke up I found that “Nurse Luke,” my Aussie Shepard/Collie Mix had snuggled in next to me. When he realized I was awake, he licked my face and we snuggled for a while before I got up to wander downstairs and find something to eat. It seemed like way too much effort to actually cook something, so I settled on chocolate and fruit.

I drug myself off the couch long enough to get my daughter from work and she was very solicitous when she got home. She offered to fix me tea and although I didn’t take her up on it, the offer was very sweet. I was about to collapse again when hubby came home from work and he took one look at me and sent me back to bed.

It’s Saturday now and I have the house to myself for a few more hours and I’m trying to decide whether to keep blogging, to watch more mind candy, or to just go back upstairs and take another nap. Right now, it’s feeling as if the sore throat and stuffy nose are a small price to pay for the self indulgent bliss of mindless TV and naps during the middle of the day.