Enough of this Downer Crap....It's Christmas!

On Saturday I took a break from my Christmas gift making and headed up into the mountains with Brett and our friends Matt, Gillian and their 4 mo old son Talus to pick out and cut down Christmas trees. We did this last year and last year we had beautiful powdery snow coming down on us the whole time. This year it was a balmy 42 degrees out and not very Christmas like, but still fun. we brought a grill up to cook lunch on and we brought up some hot cocoa and peppermint schnapps to sooth our sore muscles from the hike up. This was our view, and this was Talus before we started....already tired, you can see in the end he was perfectly content to hang out and nap while we did the hard work :)

I love forest trees because they aren't uniform and because the experience of searching for just the right one in such a beautiful place is so worth it. We really had a nice time, and in the end the boys cut down some mighty large and mighty fine trees.

Brett and I may not live in the log cabin of our dreams but I sure try to make our meager abode look like one and this year was no exception. After all the crummy stuff that has happened to us lately I am happy to say that just decorating the house a little and curling up in front of this impressive and wonderfully smelling tree with my dogs and my big burly lumberjack has seriously improved my holiday spirit.

Hope all of you are enjoying the season as well

Cheers!

Sandianajones

Physics 101

Ahhhhh, there are very few things that I actually remember from Physics. One of those is that if you put water in a bucket and swing it around by it’s handle, the water will not fall out (I always thought that one was cool). The other being that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction…..which is sometimes not the reaction that you want. This applies to everything in life I think. For every push there is a pull, for every down there is an up, for every good there is a bad. I like to call it the grand teeter totter of life, which is to say my grand teeter totter.
I always feel like I’m on one end of the teeter totter and some big fat kid is on the other end, slamming to the ground trying to fling me off and then slamming me into the ground upon lift off. Sometimes I feel like the big fat kid has both feet on the ground keeping me guessing in the middle with the teeter totter balanced, but could go either way, and I am hovering, sweating, and trying to brace for impact.
That has been my place lately until last week when the teeter totter slammed into the ground and I fell off.
We knew Brett would probably lose his job in the spring. They just can’t afford to keep him on, we didn’t however know that spring would turn into last week. We thought we had time to figure this out (isn’t that what people always say….I thought I had more time). It blind sided us last Wednesday and left me a total mess while at work trying to pull myself together to get through the rest of the day. I have a good stable job so at least there’s that, and thank goodness we are both healthy and have no kids to worry about, but surviving on one income with 2 people’s worth of expenses does not bode well for us. We were making real progress with saving for a house and our future. It was all going so well, and now what. Normally I wouldn’t worry and I would say that he’ll go on unemployment for a bit and find something else soon, but in this economy, everyone is losing their jobs. Who can hire anyone???? And I’m guessing a wildlife biologist is not high on the economic priority list right now, (not that he can’t get something else…but….).
So I am worried, but it makes him upset when I worry, so I’m telling you all that I’m worried. He gets his last paycheck on December 31, and then we have to have a plan. Oh this always goes this way with us. Teeter totter, teeter totter…..and so on. One of us is happy the other is down, one of us has a job the other does not…..teeter totter, teeter totter, and so it goes.
I have however determined that I will not let this ruin my holiday season. I’m tired of things ruining my holidays. Most of the presents have been bought already and the rest I am making, so that shouldn’t affect us too much, and I have a couple of art orders that I need to get out that will pay some, so in the mean time I will bake, and craft and try not to think about months and months of him trying to find a job and being frustrated with the lack of prospects. It’s got to get better right? Seems like I have to have this conversation with myself often. Right now its bad….pretty bad, but there should be a good out there somewhere waiting for me right? For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction…..right???????