Friday, June 29, 2012
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Her Gut Feeling Lead Her to an Empowerment She Never Had
Greetings Everyone. I wanted to share this story with you. This happened to me as I was in a Target store, believe it or not, picking up office organizational items to finish this office/spare room once and for all. I am gaining ground on the clean and I am getting excited to show you my results. Until that time, I have shared a link with you about what happened while shopping with my son.
http://bu3-ret-staceybolin.blogspot.com/2012/06/her-gut-feeling-lead-to-her-empowerment.html
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Friday, June 15, 2012
"Three Men and a Lady - What's the Odds of That?"
H
|
ey everyone – It’s Friday. With the exception
of a slight headache that I get periodically, I have still managed to
accomplish the usual Friday morning tasks. Laundry is all done and I am proud
to know that I had even took it upon myself, a month ago, to stop the never
ending saga of "WHERE'S ALL THE JEANS?" What? You mean you have never
heard of this saga? Well, well, my dear readers pull up a chair and sit down as
I tell you this glorious tale of how 3 Men and a Lady - fit into one pair
Jeans.
Now I will say, that yes, I was getting rather tired of constantly
washing , in a king size washer, two loads of laundry that consisted of 15
pairs of jeans, each, that would suddenly disappear before I even get them out
of the dryer. Even if I had washed them
during the day, and had them folded and in three equal piles, I found that when
one of my three men in this house went to get his pile, he would skim off the
other two that always left the others in the house scrounging for their pair.
Now this has been going on for the last two years. It is a blessing and a
curse. What do I mean by that you ask? You see, my husband, my two boys, and
now myself, all wear the same size jeans...what's the odds of that? However
being a good thing on the wallet, it's a bad thing when they are all fighting
for their favorite pair. My husband prefers dark boot cut jeans; my oldest son
prefers any jeans and will acquire them from the others, when his are dirty and
have not made it to the laundry basket. I have caught him in the act, with his
extreme quickness, going into their closets or dressers to retrieve them from
my husband or younger son, lurking in the shadows, walking swiftly and quietly,
and peering around so not to get caught. My youngest son, he likes medium blue
in color, but prefers a more standard cut vs. the boot cut dark blue jeans that
I buy for my husband and oldest son.
But after a few washing and wearing,
something bad happens in this house, all the jeans begin to look alike and soon
a bigger issue develops - whose jeans are whose? Another problem we face and I
know you will relate to this – We all have that favorite pair that we wear over
and over, you know the ones, nicely faded, soft but not to broken in, and the
zipper still works. But what happens when those favorite jeans are found on
someone else? MADNESS! CHAOS! DRAMA! It starts a war, a big war, and believe
you me; there is nothing worse than three men bitching about who has who’s
jeans, first thing in the morning. Now I don’t have a clue why my brain had not
thought of a solution earlier, maybe I thought it would somehow work itself
out, maybe one of them would gain more weight and another would lose weight,
but unfortunately that hasn’t happened yet and suddenly I was thinking. If my
clue had to be broadcasted on the news this is probably what you'd hear - In
the news today, local house wife finally gets a flippin’ clue and stops the
jean drama, but the question still remains - Does her blonde hair color really
come from a box? More news at 11. My
superbulous idea - Why not put an end to this saga once and for all and put
names on the tags inside…BINGO! This Mama got a clue!
I
began with a strategic maneuver that I would like to call the "sniffing
them out" approach which involved going into the rooms of my two teen age
boys. My younger son, his room is very tidy and he is very good about getting
his dirty items into the basket just outside of the bathroom. So I will say I
was rather disappointed when I discovered that there were no jeans, clean or
dirty, in his room. It was obvious to me that someone else was harboring an
excessive amount and I was going to find every pair if it took me an hour. Once
I rounded up any pair that didn’t have a man’s body in them, Yes, I know this
may sound more on the extra extreme side of things, but a mama has to do, what
a mama has to do. I even went as far as not only labeling all jeans in the
house, including mine, I did socks and underwear too – That my friends was a
feat far too graphic to write about and trust me, a man’s underwear should stay
a mystery and be colored not tighty whites. Something about the white cotton briefs,
all I can think of is the quote from Forest Gump when we used to have men’s
white underwear in the house - "Life is like a box of chocolates, you
never know what you’re going to get" - unless it is boxers with humorous
prints on them. Hey I kept it clean - Wink.
All I can say is that if you happen to stumble onto a pair of underwear
or socks on your seventeen year old floor, assume they are dirty and leave it
at that. I learned the hard way on a pair of sock. OMG! I should have been
wearing an instant alert medical device to save me from the toxic exposure. I
can still hear it in my head, robot from the old television show “Lost in Space”
- “DANGER WILL ROBINSON! DANGER! DANGER!”
I think it was about two weeks before I was
able to smell again. Ok, I may have over exaggerated – Smile. It has now been
about a month and laundry detail is exceptionally easy. You don’t even have to
think, but still it is either my husband or I, that folds the laundry. Even
through everything is labeled, once in a great while, someone forgets to get
their jeans into the laundry bin. When this happens you know that the jean
bandit will strike again and this house is thrown back into the jean drama
plague.
So my words of wisdom today – Don’t be a jean
thief, always keep your laundry done, and be sure to label all your clothes.
Nothing worse than fearing you’re going to have to go to work in shorts, sweats
or naked if you’re that behind in your laundry or the jean thief has made his
way into your home. Have a FANTASTIC FRIDAY! Blog ya’ll later.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
The Four Letter Label
"The Four Letter label"
Written by: Stacey L. Bolin
W
|
ell Hello Everybody! Can you believe it; another school year
here in Maryland has just recently ended to give birth to summer and the
dreaded overly humid days? As many of you may know by now, I have gotten a new
job part-time working as a news anchor for a local radio station. I am both
excited and scared. I know what happens to me when I work - my motherly duties
as a house wife always seem to falter. So, here it is, I have put together a
blog to get myself organized and suddenly I am overcome with a new fear - I
have six months left to get myself 100% organized. I tell myself I can do it,
then at the same time I feel crippled by the idea if I can do it or not. Now
don't get me wrong, I am not a slob by any means and getting my weight under
control was honestly half my battle. I feel better, I move around without any
issues, with the exception of a mild asthma attack now and then and unfortunately this problem will never go away due
to the effect of my radiation therapy some years back. So have I gotten my spare room/office done?
No and what is old saying – The truth shall set you free? Well, it’s time that
I am truthful with myself and who knows, maybe someone else out there is
dealing with the same thing.
 |
| Photo By S.L.Bolin 4/2012 |
Now for many years, I have struggled with all kinds of
things, clutter, people, life, finances, etc. etc. I could never truly explain
any of it. I was soon consumed with a fear that I never had when I was younger,
or even my first year in the military. So why did I go from being fearless to
fearful? Many say it is an age thing, but for me I know deep down that is not
the case. I was told when I was first diagnoses with a blood disorder, that
they recommended that I seek counseling, but I never had the ability to hear
the reasons why. Doctors were concerned that my blood disorder would lead to
far worse conditions – They were right. Then I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s in
May 1994, again I was told that I should be in therapy. I experienced a near death situation and I
walked through deaths door and lived to tell about it. In my mind when doctor
talked about therapy, I immediately assumed they meant marriage therapy, I
never understood that it was not for marriage therapy, but therapy for
post-traumatic stress disorder, P.T.S.D. for short, that they all saw and I
didn't. At that point I feared being labeled. For the last 18 years I'd been
running away from a label that is created by four letters of the alphabet, but
with all that running and trying to keep a game face that all was perfect in my
world or worlds, that game began to take its toll and fatigue and depression
set in. What does P.T.S.D. mean? Please clink the link below to learn more
about this disorder.
So if you have read the information from the link above, just
reading that is scary on its own – but completely explains my thinking for the
past 17 years and I never told anyone what doctors suspected was wrong. If you
were to ask me to explain what this is for me, I have GREAT DAYS and then I
have the days that are best described in this manner - I feel like a person
running an obstacles course that just when you think you have completed it,
another extra-large hurdle is thrown in front of you. I see the mountain that I want to conquer -
and I know I can. I see the field at the base of the mountain, which has no
trail to follow. I must make my own path. As I walk the field and create a
path, I am met with obstacles that I fear and rather than face them, I pick
them up and put them in my backpack and continue to carry them. It can make a
person so very tired and that person, I am.
 |
| Photo by: S.L.Bolin 5/2012 |
Over and over they tried to get me into therapy, over and
over I would say I didn’t need any help, so I thought, until a couple years
ago. I have come a long way, but I am at a point where I need the specialist to
try to mend the rest of me. So what does clutter have to do with P.T.S.D.?
Sounds like an excuse you say? I guess it would look like that. For me, I would
come across things that would remind me of a past of good and bad moments, for
example: I kept quite a bit of baby stuff that my boys had when they were
infants. I found that some outfits felt great to look at and others scared me
and reminded me of chemo treatments and bone marrows tests. My only thinking,
somehow I remember what they wore. I know – totally crazy, that is until I’d
stumble across photos taken on days when I would get to see many nurse and doctor friends on treatment days I
had made in the hospitals, and they would be holding our kids, and guess what,
they’d be wear an outfit. Thus resulting in an instant trigger and that I could
see my treatments days. Strange I know, but so very true. It was very hard, but
I eventually was able to separate the clothes and learned to keep a couple of
outfits, telling myself that everything goes out of style, but I wanted to give
my boys a memento chest, of some sort ,and so I kept a few of the things that
felt good, and let go of the bad. It was a very rewarding feeling when I was
done…however it took me 18 years to accomplish it.
I decided that in my new position, I must share with my new
manager what I have been through. I was relieved when I soon realized that
after sharing some of my hidden complexities, she offered a bit of advice that
really struck a cord with me. "Stacey, how can people learn from what you
have gone through and how can you learn from your inner struggles if you don't
share what you are going through. Don't let fear control you, take a stand and
face it head on." She is so right, so here is my moment to face a fear
that I've hidden from, run away from, and even covered up. On June 11, 2012 the
four letters that I have feared the most, met me face to face and I have chosen
to embrace them, deal with the pain I have locked away in my mind, and chose
not to carry so much mental baggage in my backpack. To accept is to talk about, and so, here it is,
for all who always questioned the me that I am, and for those who endured why I had that overly sickening happy personality
when I worked for the police department, it was, and still is, because I suffer from Post-Traumatic
Stress Disorder and feared I would be looked at differently. Oddly enough,
there are millions of people in the world who suffer from the very same thing
and they go on and live in the world and nobody ever knows unless they tell
them. I feel better already to finally be able to just say it. I just have to remember that Rome was not build in one night and progress will take as much time as it needs to change the thinking in my mind. Now, for my next big step folks, I’ve got an office/spare bedroom to finish. So Stay tuned and be the first to see this room and its grand transformation through pictures. Have a great day – Blog ya later.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Saturday, June 2, 2012
CAN THIS MOM GET THROUGH THIS?
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