I am a marriage and family therapist who apparently shares to many long posts on Facebook, so I will try to share my thoughts here so that I can spare my Facebook friends. LOL. I think that writing is therapeutic, and freeing, and something is should have done a long time ago.
I have to say that I am the most confident person I know, although I surrounded by confident women for sure. I was fortunate enough to grow up surrounded by strong women who taught me to believe in myself, and that the best thing to do is to just get out there and try new things.
I grew up riding horses and you have to be confident and be a leader around horses or they will definitely take advantage of you. Most horse people are confident, and they say it like it is. Filters don’t have a place in the horse industry……but that can be said of the majority of sports related industries….coaches, trainers, etc definitely do not tell you what you want to hear, and they do not tell you that you’re great at something unless you are. I think that having someone tell you how to improve yourself is one of the best ways to become confident.
When someone is confident, they are not bothered by insecure people around them, and in fact, confident people are very likely to help less confident people become more confident.
To answer the question, what activities do I lose myself in…..I definitely lose myself while riding either one of my horses. I am usually getting ready for some kind of horse show, and I need to concentrate on what I am doing, so no one else exists but me and my horse. I also tune everyone out while actually competing in a horse shows as well. It’s so relaxing to tune everything out and concentrate on my horse.
When I am reading a good novel I also tend to get lost in the book. I get transported into the story and forget the outside world which is why I love to read.
Sometimes I can get lost in a good movie, but it depends on what it’s about. And I have a couple of tv shows that I tend to got lost in as well. And every now and then I get lost in my own thoughts.
To answer the question: What is the last thing I learned, I would need to rephrase it to: What am I currently learning because I am currently in the middle of a course to get a certificate in nutrition.
The last thing I actually learned was about how not getting enough protein of some kind affects your mental health, and that most people do not eat enough protein or fat because we have been conditioned to think that fat is bad and protein is bad and both make you fat. Of course if you eat a lot of fat and protein you might gain weight, but if you eat the right amount of each you are actually feeding your brain and giving it nourishment so that you can function properly, and not feel anxious or over emotional.
I’m a marriage and family therapist and I attempt to wean my patients off of their medication if possible, and if they want to, because of course I never tell anyone what they should do, and only make suggestions that people can follow or not follow. I am ok with whatever someone wants to do because people need to make choices for themselves.
My house is 71 years old. Only, can I still say that about the entire house since we had to literally replace half the house because it had issues. It started out innocently enough; we were going to remodel the kitchen because it had never been done by any of the previous owners, and everything in the kitchen was starting to wear out, crack, fall apart, and there was a weird smell which we later discovered was mold.
We bought the house just about 5 years ago. The house clearly needed work but it’s in a great neighborhood and close to the high school which my son would be attending in the fall of that year. The house had a cute charm that older homes do, and it had great space. But there were things about the house that we knew needed to be done, but we had time. And then Covid hit and everything shut down, and we were all stuck in the house. Our plans for fixing up the house were put on hold until now.
Fast forward to 2023. We could finally get the work done to the house that we wanted to do. We had been walking across the old kitchen floor and feeling it give in places, and my husband and I would give each other looks……..maaaybe we should avoid that part of the kitchen floor. There was a weird smell, and we kept saying: It’s ok, we’re ripping out the kitchen. Both bathrooms had started to fall apart, cracks in the tubs which were the original tubs. Cracks in tile in the bathrooms and kitchen. Ok, we realized we had to fix up the bathrooms too. The steps out back that led into the house started to crumble. Ok, the steps need help too. I swear the house heard us talking about what we were going to do to it and it started to ask for help. LOL! And then our next door neighbor on the one side asked if we could remove this wall that we called the wall of death because it was so obnoxious and high…..and had been built when the neighbors before us and the neighbor had lived in the houses because the former home owners hated each other. Ok, so the wall coming down started off the remodel, and I admit that wall falling was satisfying to watch.
And then…….my mom announced (not asked) that she wanted to move in with us because she was tired of living alone in her big, older home that had started to also do questionable things. My mom came to our house every weekend to visit, but this particular weekend she walked our house to assess it because she was moving in and she announced: “We need to do to work on this house! I can’t live here like this!” And so it began. What started out as fixing up some things in the house, things that we could afford to do, turned into a big project because my mother wanted things done to the house, only…….she was paying. She sold her house and had some extra money, and she wanted things her way. Well, Ok then! I guess that’s good?? In some respect…….
We searched for a contractor and found a great company that my friend had used. Competitive pricing, trust worthy, lots of references and a good rating with the Better Business Bureau. Got an architect to draw up plans, who at some point had apparently talked to my mother when I wasn’t looking because all of a sudden there was a cat enclosure at the end of my house……I was looking at the plans and noticed this enclosure with a little cat drawn in, and I exclaimed while laughing: “What the fuck is this cat thing in the middle of my house?” I laughed so hard I snorted. The architect explained that my mom had requested a cat enclosure so her cat could roam around as if she were outside. I texted my mom: There will not be a cat enclosure in the middle of my house, and she grudgingly agreed that there will be an enclosed dog run that her cat could use when my dogs were in the house.
The plans were finally approved by us to go to the city after much back and forth and removal of things that made the work on our house super ridiculous…..as in turning things into a house that we did not want. After all, whose name is on the title of the house! And the city approved the plans and the work began on our house. If it wasn’t one thing it was another. There was definitely mold in the kitchen so the kitchen was torn down to studs, and asbestos was found so we had a few days of asbestos removal from the house. And then there was the kitchen floor…….the entire floor had to be replaced because of termite damage that apparently the inspector didn’t notice when we bought the house…….and but we had to replace the old windows in the house so they are now energy efficient. Oh and by the way, your roof is bad so that needs to be replaced too. And there are so many things that you do not think about when you renovate a house because when you buy a house everything is already included……so picking out interior doors and knobs…..lighting, knobs for kitchen cabinets and bathroom drawers, what did we want the tile in the kitchen and bathrooms to look like and then picking out all the tile. And fun things happening like a sudden rain storm that happened before the house was enclosed so water came pouring down through the fan in the older bathroom we were going to tear out anyway. The construction crew came right out and covered the house so crisis averted. The power and water being shut off for hours on end as the plumbing and electrical was redone. Oh, and although we GREATLY appreciated that this construction is super reliable, sometimes having to unlock everything to let them in at 6:30 am, 6 days a week got overwhelming. Lots of 10-12 days which again, we thought was fabulous because it meant things were getting done faster.
And then there has been my mother complaining left and right about the rental house she is in because that had its challenges as well. “Ok mom,” I told her, “You wanted all this extra stuff in my house so it’s taking longer to get the job done.” And she was insisting on moving in with her cat before the work was done. Um NO! You cannot move in now because one of the guys will accidentally let the cat out and then what? And I can see her yelling at the crew who are all very nice and have already told me horror stories about impossible former clients who treated them like crap……so no, that is not happening!
After 5 months of renovation we were told that we can move upstairs because it’s done, and it’s advisable to do so because the crew will be finishing the other side of the house and ripping out the old bathroom. Finally, an end in sight. We’re just weeks away from the house being done……..and then my mom moves in…….and now I can see that her having her own side of the house is a great idea. My mom can be downstairs in our former bedroom, where she has a private bathroom and office she can work out of, and we can be upstairs and out of the way……I admit I was at first against actually adding onto the house, but my mom was right in that we all need to be spaced out in the house, so I am glad that we did listen to her about that. Although I do feel manipulated, and some of the things that we did to the house I didn’t really want to do, but it is what it is.
This is a tough question to answer…..But I see that the question asks for objects and does not ask about people or pets, so I will answer the question about objects.
I think something that I could not live without is my Kindle because then I could download books, and continue to download books so I could read. I do like reading regular books too, but it’s so much easier to just download a book…..instant gratification. Lol.
Something else that I could not live without is either my phone or IPad only because I would want to keep in touch with friends and family and I need it to continue working……unless I would not be working, then maybe just keep my phone to keep in touch with people.
And the third thing I could not live without would be my planner because I write everything down in it, including notes to myself and thoughts. I have interesting ideas written in my planner that I often refer back to and turn into either blog posts or reflections in my journal.
I actually do believe in fate or destiny because of the things that have happened to me in my life. When I was in my 20’s I attempted to lead my life the way that other people wanted me to, do what my dad and my husband at the time wanted me to do……but I was not happy. And nothing was going right for me. One day I changed everything, and after that my life made sense.
I married a guy who treated me badly. He used me, didn’t actually care about me or how I felt everything was about him 24/7. He actually told me that I had to drop out of college because if I got a college degree HE would look stupid. He badgered me until I dropped out of college with only a semester left to go. And then there was my dad……..he was just old fashioned and didn’t think that I should be a therapist. My dad said that therapists go crazy like their patients, but I did not think that was true at all. However, I did what my dad said and what my husband said just to keep them off my back. My husband wasn’t happy thought. He was very (and is I’m sure) very narcissistic. He didn’t think that I should be happy and get to have my dream job. He told me that I ruined his race car driving career….the career he actually never had but thought he should have. My ex husband spent all of our money, cheated on me but said I was the one cheating, stole money from me, and once even brought a woman to the house saying that we were getting a divorce. News to me! And in that moment I made that statement true, and I told my ex husband that I was divorcing him. He did not like that at all, and tried to make life hard for me. He tried to say that he was joking about the divorce and that he only brought the woman to the house because she was a co-worker and wanted to see how our house was painted because she wanted to do the same thing to her house. Of course this was a lie, and actually he later on married this woman.
I filed for divorce and got a temporary job at a company just to have additional income so I could get my life back on track. I was so busy trying to survive and repair the damage my now ex husband had caused, and finishing my Bachelor’s degree that I didn’t have time for anything else. Fast forward, I had a co-worker who I had never seen (but he had seen me) but we used to speak on the phone every day about work related issues. My co-worker would ask me little things about my life here and there. Finally after about a year of talking on the phone, my co-worker point blank asked me if I was dating anyone to which I replied: “Aw come on. You know I’m not. I keep telling you about my exciting Saturdays watching movies at home by myself.” My co-worker then tells me that he wants to make a bet with me, and if he wins, he gets to take me out on a date, and if I win I get to go on a date with him. LOL. Ok, so clearly we’re going out. He “won” and we met for dinner that Friday….I thought he was cute when I saw him. We had a great time.
Eventually we got married…..after I checked him out to make sure he was not a narcissist. When we moved in together my now husband found my my diploma for my Bachelor’s degree in psychology. He held it up and as me: “So what’s this? You’re working at this crappy job when you have this degree? What are you planning to do?” Ironically my husband was a civil engineer who had lost his job due to cut backs and had only temporarily taken the job at the company where we met just to make ends meet, and as soon as he was able to he got another job as a civil engineer he did and left the company where we met. We always say we both ended up at those jobs just to meet each other…..fate.
So my husband being the way that he is asked me what I actually want to do with my life, and when I told him, he found universities with Master’s programs for therapists and brought me the information. I applied to 3 of the universities and got into all 3, so I chose my favorite one. I started a Master’s program in marriage and family therapy months later. Once I continued my original path my life became really easy. I got through three years of a Master’s program, and got hired as an intern at a private practice a month after I graduated. I got licensed and started my own private practice which turned out to be very easy, although some would say starting a private practice is not easy…however, I believe it was easy for me because it was what I was supposed to do. And now I have started a blog, and I’m about to start a podcast. Ironically, I randomly met this woman who helps people create podcasts and she wanted to mentor someone for free……and yes, that someone is me.
So, I believe in fate or destiny because every time I tried to do something that didn’t make sense for me, whatever I was doing didn’t work, and life was messy and I struggled. Once I decided to make the changes that I needed to make, and take steps to get my life back on the right track, I met a great guy, became a therapist, started my own business, and now I get to take another step that I have been wanting to take. I believe that if you listen to yourself, and believe in what you want to do, things will be easier, but if you fight destiny and try to force a path that doesn’t work, you are more likely to struggle in life.
I’m not sure much bores me…..but I suppose boring people bore me. Lol. I guess something else that bores me is when someone won’t let something go and they try to force you to change your opinion to their opinion. Yawn. Go away.
Something else that bores me is anyone trying to hype people up about something that shouldn’t be hyped up. I am also bored by people posting tons of selfies and posting minute by minute accounts of their life on social media. Hey look! I painted my toenails. Haha! Show me something interesting.
Bullies on social media bore me. I love it when they come after me, and I respond with: “Is that all you got?” And then they tell me I’m a stupid bitch, to which I respond with a laughing emoji, and they tell me to fuck off. LOL!! Most bullies don’t expect people to be unaffected by what they say. I make them super angry by being unaffected…..and then the bully blocks me. Or am I bullying the bully? Hmmmm.
I am definitely bored by the media and all the BS they try to spew at us. However, I crack up when someone puts a video together of every single news outlet no matter who they are saying the exact same thing. They weren’t prompted or anything were they……..
And I guess more bores me than I realized because I started this post saying I’m not sure much bores me…….depends on your definition of boring I guess.
Tell us about your favorite pair of shoes, and where they’ve taken you.
My favorite pair of shoes is actually riding boots. I have horses and have ridden my entire life. I ride about 4-5 times a week, and I compete with my horses so my riding boots have taken me to quite a few interesting places.
My current riding boots are kind of cool because they have a leopard print. I like to have fun with the boots I wear so I pick boots that are as snazzy or as interesting as I am allowed to get away with in a show ring.
The riding boots pictured are newish so these particular boots have not taken me many places yet, but the boots they replaced took me all over. My old pair of boots took me to Scottsdale, Arizona a number of times where I competed in something called ranch rinding. I also went to various parts of San Diego and Temecula, as well as Las Vegas a few times for a few competitions. One of the horses I have I bought at the end of July. I bought Max from someone in Iowa, so my riding boots took me to Iowa so I could try Max out and decide if we were a good match, and we were. I didn’t wear my riding boots on the plane though because after they have been ridden in a lot they tend to smell like horses and most people don’t like the smell, so my boots travel with me in a sealed bag. LOL.
Often times after I have ridden my horses I stop at the grocery store to grab something to eat on my way home. I often wonder if my boots stink……no one has ever said anything, but they have actually admired my boots and asked me if I actually ride. And by the way…….I do not step in horse crap with my boots just in case anyone was going to comment about that. The only thing they would potentially smell like is horse, but perhaps not because I do wear chaps when I ride. So I suppose my chaps are what smell like horse because my boots are protected by the chaps, and yes, my chaps stay at the stable.
But yes, my boots take me all over the place. This year I have big horse shows to go to so my boots will be taking me to Arizona, Oklahoma, Northern California, Las Vegas and down south to San Diego and Temecula. They will take me to restaurants to eat at the end of the day, to get coffee and tea. And by the way, I do clean my boots every time I ride, so they are not left full of sweat and dirt. I actually clean them before I leave the stable.
I love my riding boots the best because of what I get to do in them, but I can’t wear them everywhere, and I can’t wear them to my office, so when I wear regular shoes, I like a cute, strappy shoe or a sparkly slip on, and my boots have to stay at home.
Are you patriotic? What does being patriotic mean to you?
The actual meaning of patriotic is to show support for your country and a sense of attachment. So am I patriotic? Yes I am based on the definition I just provided. However, I feel that the word patriotic is often misunderstood these days, and many people think that being patriotic is something bad, something that only an extremist would be. I am not sure that people take the time to think about words and their actual meanings, and they get caught up in the drama that the media presents to them. Anything to the extreme is bad…….I believe in balance and thinking outside the box, and using critical thinking.
So…..it is not a bad thing to be patriotic. I do love my country, although I admit to being disappointed about a fair number of things happening in this country these days. I am praying that some day peace and harmony is more common, and this division that is present improves dramatically. Wishful thinking I suppose.
I think that most people have unintentionally broken some law and probably didn’t even know they did it. But if I’m talking about myself, a few years ago I was getting off the freeway to go across this intersection and get back on the freeway so I could avoid the traffic jam that is always there. So I got off the freeway, sat at the light at the intersection, and when the light turned green, drove across the intersection and onto the freeway on-ramp. Only, as I was driving down the on-ramp I noticed a bunch of cars pulled off to the side, and police officers waving people over. At first I thought something bad had happened and they were trying to keep people off the freeway, and I got waved over…….then I realized I had gotten waved over for some other reason because I saw police officers writing tickets. I was thinking WTF did I do??!! So the police officer asks me if I know what I did, and I smiled really big and I told him I honestly did not know. He laughed and told me it was because I drove across the intersection and back onto the freeway when there are clearly signs saying you can only turn left or right. I did argue with him nicely, and I told him that if those signs are there, they are not clear. And then I said: So I suppose you are going to actually write me a ticket? And the cop said that he had to write the ticket because his boss was right over there watching him, but that if I go to court or fight it online, he will ignore the ticket and it will be dismissed. Ok great.
The police officer wrote the ticket and I went on my merry way, but I did turned around and go back to that off ramp and take pictures…..and the signs were definitely not clear at all. In fact, I had never even seen them until that day, and I had to look for them, in addition, one of the signs had a straight arrow. And of course I turned right this time and di not go across the intersection. LOL.
I called my friend who is a police officer and I told him what happened, and asked him what I should say to fight it online. He told me that first of all that is the lamest ticket he has ever heard of, and this is what to say. So I submitted my photos and my description of what happened, and my ticket got dismissed. And……..the city did put up appropriate signage about a month later. But I do wonder how many people just paid that ticket?
Life and What Not 
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