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I am so over these issues! 

I know I am not the only person on the face of the planet with issues with her in-laws.  I ask God for grace every time an issue comes up with Hubs’ father.  It’s tough.  I know I need help and I’m not afraid to ask for it.  Really!

Background:  My FIL is an alchoholic.  He drinks coffee in the morning and switches to beer by 10:00am.  He has 2 children:  Hubs and a daughter who is younger than Hubs by 26 years.  Yep, Hubs has been mistaken for his sister’s father on more than one occasion.  My FIL shares custody of his daughter every other weekend.  He bought a condo in a horrible part of town as a fix-n-flip but hasn’t fixed it, nor flipped it.  Because he drinks all day long.  And doesn’t have time or energy or strength to do anything else.  The neighborhood is a very busy street, no yard, lots of potential for gunfire up and down the block (Oh how I wish I was kidding.  This happened less than 2 miles from his condo).

Hubs and I lived in a condo in a great neighborhood.  I bought it several years before Hubs and I met and got married.  We decided we needed a house and the wonderful garage and basement and yard that comes with a house.  Hubs approached his dad and offered to let him live in the condo, with us as landlords, so that he could live and raise his daughter in a better neighborhood.  My FIL thought that was a fine idea.  We would be moving into the house in 6 months, giving my FIL enough time to pack his belongings and we’d move him into our condo.

Now, raise your hand if you like moving.  Anyone?  Bueller?  Nope, me neither.  By the time I was 26 I had moved 21 times in my life.  No kidding.  I am not a fan.  But somehow we got ourselves moved into our new house.  We still have boxes, but all our boxes are in the house (and the garage, blessed garage)!  We called my FIL, asked if he was ready to have us come and move his boxes to the condo.  He said yes.

Now, to give him credit, my FIL did have some items packed.  But that was one trip worth.  I offered to bring him more boxes home from work so he could finish packing.  He yelled at me that he didn’t need any more boxes.  I was done with that conversation.

Two weeks later, we asked him again if he would like our help moving.  Again, he said yes.  I began to pray to God to give me the grace to handle anything he brought me to that day.  I prayed for patience.  I prayed that if God couldn’t put his hand over the mouth of my FIL, he’d let me know when to bite my tongue.  I honestly don’t know that I’ve ever prayed like I did that day.  It’s easy to pray when you’re moving. 

So we lugged all the big furniture type items and other boxed stuff over to the condo.  But wait, there’s more!  Of course, nothing else was boxed.  So Hubs brought big giant load-em-up trash bags over there and we filled them.  With stuff.  And more stuff.  And food stuff.  Until we thought my FIL could comfortably live in our condo without lack.

My FIL did not accompany us on that last trip because he had conveniently scheduled the satellite television company to come and hook up his connection right smack in the middle of the time we were trying to move him.  So he had to stay at the new condo.  To bark at the cable guys.  I was hauling dresser drawers up the stairs and into the condo when I hear my FIL yelling at his daughter asking where the *%$#& remote was, why was all his #%^($ in bags and he TOLD Hubs not to pack the things on that table , et. cetera.

I came unglued.  I should have prayed that God would help him, help me, HELP ME but I didn’t.  And God’s hand was not tight enough over my mouth because I let fly “WHAT ARE YOU YELLING ABOUT NOW?  WHY CAN’T YOU SHOW A LITTLE GRATITUDE?!”  And do you know what he said?

“Why should I?  I never asked for this.”

And I was done with that conversation, too.

Amazing Coffee

 

I love coffee, but I limit myself to only one cup per day.  As such, I want that cup to be the best darn tasting coffee ever!  I have a secret to making it taste delicious.

First, always assemble the coffee in the morning before you make it.  Making coffee the night before to simply turn on in the morning does not an excellent cup produce.  I’ll tell you why.  It’s the bubbles, y’all.  The morning-prepared coffee has water that is oxygenated and that makes great coffee!

Second, buy the whole beans and grind them yourself.  The pre-ground coffee loses the oil from the beans which makes coffee aromatic and luscious.  Grinding the beans yourself does not take long and the difference in taste is totally worth it.

Finally, this is the kicker!  Sprinkle a little ground cinnamon on top of the coffee grounds before you turn the coffeemaker on.  This trick brews up the most aromatic and delicious coffee, you won’t be disappointed!

That’s what works for me, see lots of other tips at Rocks in My Dryer!

Fall Y’all Giveaway Complete!

I used this random number generator to pick the winner and . . . 

Congratulations to Paige who won the Cherish album kit and the pen set!  YAY PAIGE!

I’m loving the idea of giveaways so I think I’ll do another one soon!

Four Ingredient Dinner

Take a roast or other hunk of meat (not ground, though) and throw it in the crock pot.

Add one can of cream of mushroom soup.
Add one can of tomato soup.
Add one envelope of dry onion soup.

Mush the soups over the hunk of meat and let that baby cook all day long.  The gravy makes itself and it is dee-licious!  That’s what works for me, to see other tips, check out Rocks in my Dryer!

It’s Fall, Y’all and that means . . .

Well, it means lots of things to me, but this particular post is to invite you to enter a giveaway for some GREAT scrapbooking products, absolutely FREE!  Enter to win a Creative Memories Cherish Power Palette scrapbooking kit, which features Perfect Fit Paper for 24 page layouts, stickers and vellum shapes, and a full-color booklet that helps you complete an entire 7×7 album!  The winner will also receive a pen set with the kit!

Check out how darling this kit is:

To enter to win this fabulous kit, please leave a comment on this blog before midnight on Sunday, November 4 and I will use a random number generator to pick the winner!  Please make sure I can reach you either by a link to your site or an email address. If I can’t get a hold of you, I can’t let you know you’ve won, right? One comment per person please.

For more exciting giveaways, please click on the Fall Y’all button or click here!  Thanks for stopping by!

Dialogue about Dollars and Deity

This month was the first month that I have experienced since I was about, oh, sixteen, where I had zero dollars in my checking account.  Zip.  Zilch.  Nada.  You should’ve heard the big sucking sound when I logged on to check my balance on the internet banking site.  It was like the air left the room.  How could this have happened?

Well, the two mortgages we are currently paying, with no rental income, is a big part of it.  Hubs and I work a lot but apparently, it doesn’t always cover the bills.  We are in the process of moving my father-in-law out of his home and into our condo, so he will be our renter.  But before he will pay us rent, his condo must sell.  It is a constant test of patience for Hubs and I because there is never enough time to get everyone living where they are supposed to live and work to earn enough money to pay the mortgages.

But this month, when I saw the Available Balance:  $0.00, I was stunned.  Almost panicky.  Most of my bills get drafted automatically from my account and at the first of the month.  I get paid on the last day of the month, so there is always money for the bills.  This month was just going to be tight on anything extra.  If we ran out of milk, we would be out of milk until payday!  Yogurt is a luxury until payday!

Normally, I would have freaked out and stressed about what to do to fill the void left in my bank account.  Hubs is the opposite: he thinks freak outs are unproductive and has the completely opposite relationship with money than I do.  There was a sense of calm that settled over me after I realized he was right: freaking out about the zeroes in the bank account accomplished diddly squat.

At my morning coffee quiet time the next day, I was reading Sarah Ban Breathnach’s Simple Abundance and it coincided with what my universe was dealing with: money.  She iterated something that stuck and I’d like to share it with you.  If you have a dollar on you, take it out and look at it.  (I always smell it but that’s an old habit to break!)  If you look at the dollar, you’ll notice something that will give you great peace, especially if that’s the only dollar you’ve got!  Four words: In God We Trust.

There it was.  My saving grace.  I didn’t need to worry, God had it all taken care of.  Matthew 6:24 tells us we cannot serve both God and money.  I choose God.  It made me realize why Jesus always said that the poor and the meek and the low of society were the ones who would get into heaven, where the rich and pompous would have issues.  When you got nothin’, you realize you got God and baby, that is a LOT!

In the meantime, I borrowed a few bucks from Hubs to cover any unexpected withdrawals and I am content again, until payday.

Life on the other side of the elevator doors

I work in a large office building and must ride the elevator each day to get to my floor.  Well, I suppose I could take the 19 flights of stairs, but I probably wouldn’t smell too great when I got there.

Why is it that I can be standing in the lobby, waiting for the elevator, and inevitably somebody will come up and press the button again?  Does that make the elevator come quicker than if it would have just with my pressing it? 

Hello world!

I guess this is where I say hello and you all say hey, welcome to the 21st century!  Yay, you got a blog!  I really am nervous excited about this, only because I have read so many amazing women’s blogs over the last few months and it simply astounds me how many creative, funny, beautiful, God-lovin’ girls are living out loud! 

My mother owned the first blog I ever read, so I give her kudos on showing me that it’s okay to put yourself out there into the universe.  I created my first website because of her and that was waaaay before anybody knew what a “blog” was.  But, here I am, venturing out, eyes blinking, stretching in the sun. 

 Let the journey begin.