A Little Shake Up

There comes a time in all our lives where The Lord does a little shake up. You know those times when nothing but bad news and bad things shower you with their presence? It's really difficult to go through those moments and not feel sad, mad, depress or discouraged. Most times you just feel down right beat down. Here's a way to look at these moments and be thankful they have arrived.

If you are anything like me things start to happen in life in these small spurst. I tend to brush things off at first. Someone does something disrespectful and I brush it off the first time. People make mistakes. Then it happens again. I will mention it to give the person notice. Yet it happens a few times more and then my head explodes and I explode on the person that didn't get the clue.

Things like this happen on bigger scales in our lives. You have a issue with a person or group. It is a situation big enough to take notice of but in your mind not big enough to make a major change. A year goes by and you look back and remember the initial situation and think to yourself, "I should have nipped that in the bud right then and there. Those moments are the moments God is trying to tell us subtly to take action but we are not keen enough to catch the hint. So God shakes thing up and things get so out of control and out of hand that when you tell the tale people are shocked and surprised you made it out alive. Years after you survived you take note of your life as it is and you realize that entire shake up lead you to a better place.

The Lord has shaken my life up more times than I could count. I've lost loves to drugs and to death. I learned many great lessons from the experiences. It sucked losing them but ultimately I had to lose them to make room for my current love. He is amazing and well worth the wait.

I've lost many jobs through my years. I've just lost two in the past week. Now my business seems to suddenly be picking up. I know for a fact some of the things that have happened to me happened because I would not have made the decision and moves I needed to make to get forward down the path I was meant to go had I not been pushed in the right direction through the many shake ups in my life.

So the next time you have a week where you lose two jobs, find out you have to move, have a loved one in the hospital and get sick yourself, don't look at it and feel sorry for yourself. Say, "Thank you Lord." Let him know you hear him and make the decisions you are being urged to make. Know that every shake up is designed to push you forward to a better situation. They open the doors to your destiny. They make room for your best life ever. I promise you.......the shake up you are experiencing is only because you didn't catch the hints from the beginning and God is trying to stir you in another direction where everything will be better than what it was before he shook things up.

Life Happens

Life happens each and everyday. The key to life is not what happens but how you handle life as it comes. I can admit that I in my 41 soon to be 42 years of living in this great world, I have not handled life as well as I probably should have. Thus this blog exist. Hopefully, my experiences of the Adventures in Life, Love and Parenting will teach others how to do it better.

My life as many who have known me longest has not always been smooth. Heck, truth be told if you've known me for the past two to three years you would know that my life has not been that smooth. It's been down right rocky at best. Meteor shower of mass proportion sounds more like it. Hahaha! I chuckle simply because I can. What else can I do? When I was younger I would be moving through my day with a sore puss face, losing weight quickly and looking sickly. I never really handled depression, yikes I said the D word, very well growing up. Being depressed made me very sickly all the time. I really hated being depressed but I must admit that I have spent a great deal of my life DEPRESSED.  Part of healing is owning it, right?

Now this post isn't a "Poor Kay" post where you get to sit back and hear all the sad and evil things people have done to me and then feel better about your life because you didn't have it so bad. You want to know all of the gory details you haven't already heard wait for the book. This post is simply to remind everyone and introduce those who have never heard the concept that "Life Sucks!" Just kidding! "Life Happens Everyday!" No amount of planning will change the fact that no matter how well you plan, life will pick you up and kick you square in the face, look at you and say, "What are you going to do about it?" That is the question isn't it? What are you going to do about it?

Well what should you do about it? Should you lay down and die as child who grew up in an emotionally, physically or sexually abused home? Should you stop dating for the rest of your life because the losers you dated before broke your heart? Should you remain in poverty for the rest of your life because your business partner screwed you out of large sums of money that left you bankrupt and homeless? It all sounds rather extreme doesn't it? Maybe that's because it is extreme but not something that can't be over come. I should know. I was homeless twice with my kid, not on the street but without a home of our own, and we survived. The Summer we were homeless was the best Summer we ever had. This past Summer was not nearly as fun and we had a place to call home. Perception! I've loved and lost twice. Both times they ripped me to shreds emotionally. I'm now in the best relationship I have ever been in. That story to come in another blog post. Stay tune!

Point is, life is all about how you perceive it. More and more each day I am learning to dislike people. Now understand I deal with a lot of people and I see a lot of things. I am in the process of cutting out the bad in my life and welcoming the good. I am realizing that there was a lot of bad. Oh well, spilled milk. There are some amazing people out there. You have to find them. You have to be one of them. You have to be willing to walk away from what does not serve you and only allow what does. Once you do that the right people will enter your life in droves. You have to ask for it. You have to see it and believe that it will be yours. It's the key to using the universe to your advantage. People inherently suck. OK! Maybe that's a bit harsh. There are some really selfish, self absorbed and heartless people out there. These people will make decisions to put them in a better position ignoring the fact that they will be screwing you into a worse position and they won't care that they are. Now some would say that these people aren't your keeper and I would agree. We must always be responsible for ourselves but we can't ignore the fact that life happens sometimes because of things others have done. If we want good people to enter our lives we need to be a good person and surround ourselves with good people who think of others and are not opportunist. Don't ever step on someone else's head and stand there looking for your next break. If you are going to put someone in a worse position simply by your choices then maybe the choice isn't the right choice to make. Hurting other's is never a good idea. Selfish choices are always bad choices. That's not showing up for your life. That is chickening out of it. Part of living is doing the hard things. Sometimes putting someone else's needs before your desires is the right thing to do. Always go out for your desires but don't take people down to get them.

Life happens to all of us. Money comes and goes. Have you ever looked back and noticed that when you were at your poorest you still somehow survived and prospered? It wasn't easy but you did. Look back to all the lost loves. Once one left another inevitably appeared. Lessons were learned and though it hurt, you eventually got up and kept it moving. Life is a cycle that goes round and round. Live it! Enjoy it! Accept it! No amount of overly stressful behavior will change it. No amount of planning will keep someone else's bad decisions from effecting your life in some negative way. Just remember karma exist and you are more than capable of overcoming anything you set your mind too.

Life happens and things hurt. Your job is to overcome it. Don't let life's crap make you live like crap. That's not what we are suppose to do. We are suppose to get up everyday and show up. Face life as it comes. When it sucks give yourself a reasonable amount of time to be human and feel what that feels like. We all have to allow ourselves to be human. Once you are done feeling your feelings and getting in touch with them, brush yourself off and put one foot in front of the other. Persevere! My absolute favorite saying is........This to shall pass! It really does pass. Take a moment to look back on all your hardships and take note of how you persevered. You got through it. You survived!

So, no more sleeping your life away. Living on the couch for months in your pj's. No more pouty face for a year. Smile! Get dress! Get out of that bed and go outside. One small act of living will lead to big acts of living in joy. Continue to plan if you are like me a fierce planner. Just keep in mind that life may smack you a couple of times before you can set your plan in place. Maybe the plan will need to be adjusted a bit. Adjustment is good. Stay the course! Show up for your life. You only get one. Clean out your life closet of all the things that get you down and don't serve you. Invite goodness in and learn to enjoy the ride of life. It really is a fun roller coaster. Throw your hands up in the air and scream, "Weeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!"

Adventures in Home Schooling

Due to some extremely inappropriate behavior on behalf of the horrible people that run the Catholic school my daughter attended from Kindergarten to 2nd Grade we decided to home school. The thought of home schooling terrified me in the beginning. The thought of having to sit with my busy body all day just seemed like more than I could handle. We spend every waking moment together as it is. The only time apart we have is school time. We don't have babysitters. I am the babysitter. This made the idea of home schooling even more unimaginable at this particular time. Don't get me wrong I am a college educated woman. I knew the course work would be a breeze. I just didn't think I had the patience to spend every single moment of my life with my child with no break away at all. No time apart to breathe.

Since my daughter is a working child actress and model I knew sooner or later home school would be a necessity. I just didn't think it would be so soon. Since the decision was looming over me I dug my heels in and began to do my research. I contacted a friend who has done it for both her kids for over ten years now. I spoke to my daughter's child therapist. I sat with my daughter's original principal from her former school. All three woman are the most knowledgable women I know about the subject. I researched schools and found that there were Catholic Home Schools out there for Catholic children. That was a huge plus. Hours of reading and talking sent me off and running into this little adventure called Home Schooling.

The first week was easy breezy. Week two not as easy as one but still ok. Week three all the way onto week six which is the week we have just completed has been a learning process to say the least. First lesson I learned was pay close attention who you leave your children with. We in trust our children with their teachers, principals and in a Catholic school setting the head priest in charge. When choosing a school I think it is real important to learn the true character of the people in charge. What are their core values. I think we parents tend to take a look at the academic aspects of a school and the extra curricular activities provided and we don't stop to look closer into who the people in charge are inside. I learned the hard way that if you leave your kids in the hands of people with low morality you are surely to find that your child will be effected in negative ways. In business and the spiritual world of self help we teach adults to pay attention to the type of people they allow in their circle and we forget to do the same for our kids.

Second and third week I learned three things, learn your child's true work ethic, learn what your child is learning in school everyday and you will learn your patience level working with your kid on a daily basis. My daughter is a perfectionist. Who knew that could happen. Who knew that the spunky little girl who can't seem to keep her room clean gets pissed off when she gets wrong answers. The kid that fights tooth and nail to not do anything she has no true confidence in, really and truly cares about the work she produces. It had been hard to tell because up until this point she didn't show any signs of caring about how her penmanship was or whether she did great work or not because she would run away from doing anything she viewed to be hard. To my surprise she hates getting answers wrong and revealed that she would get scolded when she got answers wrong while in the second grade. She wants to get every answer right and do her best. The problem children at her age have is simple, when you are in an environment that doesn't nurture these desires, as a young child you don't have the tools to motivate yourself to do it on your own. Once I explained to her that getting things wrong is apart of learning and I would never get angry with her if she was trying her best she began to make more of an effort to do her work and do her best. Her penmanship alone has improved 150%.

As we began to work I realized I didn't know what my kid knew. If it wasn't something that came home for homework I was clueless. How many of you really and truly know what your kid has learned throughout their day. You should check. You may be surprised to find that they know more or less than what you think. I found that my baby girl was taught some things backwards which made figuring out some of the basics hard. More correcting to be done on my part. That's where I learned that I have no patience for my child's antics. Society tends to make allowances for children's inappropriate behavior by telling them they are cute. My child is cute. Very cute to be exact but not nearly as cute as the world has lead her to believe. We do children such a disservice when we don't assist parents in correctly what is typical inappropriate child like behavior. The only way kids learn what's appropriate and inappropriate is we have to tell them so. Teach them the rules of society. It is perfectly ok to let your child know that it is inappropriate to interrupt to ask a question that is not relevant to the task at hand. It's not cute or funny to stall and procrastinate. I have had to learn to keep my emotions at bay in order to help my daughter keep her own anxiety of attempting to please her mother at bay. After all in the end, all our children want to do is please their parents.

The 4th Commandment! If you are religious and are teaching your children the ways of religion, in my case Catholicism, here's a helpful little trick. Teach your children the ten commandments as soon as you possibly can. What a wonderful tool. Now I know we Catholics have a way of instilling Catholic guilt into our children but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about teaching your kids to be conscious of their behavior by using The Lords words to guide them in the right direction. When you teach a child to love God you give yourself a tool to keep your kid in line. It's like using Santa at Christmas time and the Easter Bunny during Easter. The only difference is God is year round. Why not use him to your advantage. Every God loving child wants to strive to follow God's laws. Well thankfully for all of us parents God created this beautiful law by the name of the 4th Commandment.........Honor thy father and mother. Well hey that's me. All I have to do is mention the 4th Commandment and I immediately get a, "Sorry Mommy!" It's brilliant! Children don't listen to what we tell them. Notice how you tell a kid something a million times and they don't listen but let someone else tell them the same thing and now it's like they never heard it before. Well use the Bible as the someone else. Once they read in the Bible that they have to obey you and respect you, changes happen. Their view of how things should be changes. It's a win win for everyone.

Last lesson so far. When choosing a home school make sure you have plenty of support from the school you choose. I chose a home school that is so supportive that when I wrote them an email asking them to explain the procedure on something, I received a long detailed email explaining everything step by step. Not only did I receive detailed instructions, I was given full encouragement on my progress and was told to cut myself some slack and cut back on how much I was attempting to do because ultimately I'm not on a normal time table and I don't and shouldn't feel like I need to rush anything. Take my time and enjoy the process. I couldn't get that kind of concern and encouragement at our former school and I volunteered tons of time to help out the school on a regular basis. I don't have to do volunteering for home school and I get tons of free advice and support. They get nothing from me in return. Now that is true Catholic behavior. That is how we are all taught to behave but very few of us follow that rule.

Home schooling is not for the weak. You are going to take some licks. You are going to have days where you want to pull your hair out. You will have moments of praise for yourself and praise for your child and days of feeling like you are doing things wrong. Well hell, isn't that every day of parenting? So what else is new? Here's my greatest benefit to home schooling......no matter how many bad days you may have in the beginning, there will come a day when you look up at your child after you have written 100% on a paper and feel that beautiful feeling of pride and joy that you helped your child accomplish that. You will see your child in a different light. You will appreciate that you are truly raising the type of person you want to let out into the world. There is nothing like knowing that you have full control over what your child is exposed to in this world of negativity.

I lead my child through this new adventure we are living together. We are learning and growing with every passing day. Good or bad we are trucking through our day placing 100% and A+ on a lot of papers proudly. Our adventure has only just begun. There is so much more to come. I will take you on this ride with us every step of the way.