Keeping in Teutsch

Wow! I really had to stop and think a bit on this question and I'm still not sure if I'm completely ready to answer it, but here it goes:

When I first read the question for this week, "What's my vision of whatever-your-word-for-the-year-is," my mind immediately leaped to the unattainable and lofty expectations of perfectionism. And I had to stop myself right there and figure out if I had subconsciously chosen the word self-discipline because I related it to perfectionism. Do I want to perfect? Doesn't everyone? Is perfectionism attainable? Not here on earth! But, the big question is, is that what I want this year? To try to be perfect? To strive to be something I never can be? And, so, after a little head scratching, I came to the conclusion, that no, I wasn't seeking perfection, but I am seeking improvement! So, my real vision of self-discipline for this year is to:

1) Think and pray longer about decisions--practicing self-restraint/self-discipline in the decision-making process
2) Plan ahead in the everyday things in life--not just the big things for the year--in order to bring more order into my and my family's life...that includes anything from meal plans to setting apart time for prayer and Bible study.
3) Go slow and steady, striving to instill new habits and remembering that "slow and steady wins the race."
4) Keep everything in moderation--from my food intake (yes, I am trying to lose weight, but I'm trying to approach it from an emotional standpoint, instead of just merely a physical one) to my time spent focused on other things that take away from God and family.
5) Start saying "no!" To me, a person with good self-discipline knows when to say NO and it makes them a better person for it...whether it be because they said "No!" to eating too many unhealthy foods in one week or "No!" to an activity they really couldn't fit in their schedule and would have caused unnecessary stress to their life.

I think that about rounds out my vision for the year. I tend to be an all-or-nothing kind of gal, so for me, I'm really having to dig deep right now and remember the slow-and-steady thing, as I usually approach changes that I want to make to my life with so much gusto that within 2 weeks I've given up because I couldn't do it and be it all. I feel very calm and relaxed, though, about the slow-and-steady thing and trying to make self-discipline be a new, lifelong habit in every aspect of my daily life.

I read/follow quite a few different blogs and one of those is Melanie Massey's (a physical therapist with multiple offices in Monroe, West Monroe and Ruston). She is super creative and really big into scrapbooking and doing other crafts, like painting. She is doing this thing on her blog this year called "52 Questions." First of all, you have to choose a word for the year and then each week she posts a question for the week and you are supposed to answer it based on your word of the year. You are supposed to be really crafty and use all kinds of scrapbooking stuff to decorate your own tag, but I don't really want to put that kind of effort into it, so I'm just going to post mine each week on the blog. (If you want to see how incredibly cute hers are, though, check out her blog!) So, my word for the year is Self-Discipline. I just have felt like I needed to grow up in some areas and have a bit more discipline in my life. Since this is my blog, I may not answer each question each week based on my word of the year, though. And, as you can see below, my answers to this week's question all don't go together. So, I'm doing things a little differently, but it's no big deal!

I will be posting my question of the week each weekend since that is the best time for me. Also, because this is the end of week 1, I will post my week 2 question tomorrow, so I can play catch-up. I'm sure that I will learn a lot about myself through this year of questions, and I hope you enjoy the little peak inside of my head too!

We've got the potential...the potential to take a good picture. Meaning Juliette and I. If I don't watch it, she's going to be better than me soon...not that I'm good or anything. Cameras and I don't usually know how to communicate. I know what I want my picture to look like...it just doesn't DO what I want it to do. I'm sure it has nothing to do with it being the photographer's problem! :) Of course, I'm not really trying to be a pro here, but it would be nice if my photos were amateurishly good sometimes!

So, I got a new camera for Christmas. It has some cool settings that should help me fake my way into being a better photographer. This one below of Juliette is the best pic I've taken so far with it! It reminds me of one of her professional baby pictures...it's from the same angle.


And then we just have your randomly "okay" photos (not talking about the subject here, just the quality of the photo). Regardless of my lack of photography skills, isn't she a cutie? You see those boots she's wearing? She got those with some Christmas money and wants to wear them with EVERYTHING. They are really cute, though, so it's not a problem...especially since they are brown and match most of her wardrobe.

Now let's look at some of Juliette's pictures that she took. She frequently asks for the camera and walks around the house taking pictures. It's kind of interesting to see what she has taken pictures of, yet not fun to see yourself in some unflattering ways too. (I delete those as quickly as possible.) About 50% of the time, she takes pictures like the one below...of her feet on random rugs and floors around the house. Other times, she follows the dog around and takes gazillions of pictures of her just standing there looking at the camera, or licking herself, or laying down.


These pictures were taken yesterday. Tonight she took some more, but it was back to the feet and dog ones. I guess you can't expect a 3-year-old to be consistent in her photography skills just yet!

Time for a mood change around here, huh? Sorry to bum you guys out with the last post!

I was thinking the other day about some of the funny things Juliette has said lately. Usually when she says something funny, I will post it on Facebook. (If you don't know what Facebook is, MeMe, it's a web site where you can get track of all your friends and post updates about yourself and pictures.) What typically happens, though, is that before I think to write it down elsewhere or tell someone that isn't my friend on Facebook, I forget exactly what she said. Facebook has everything I've ever written on my profile, though, so I'm going to share some of the fun ones with you tonight! Enjoy! And sorry, no pictures of Juliette, but her "sayings" or "doings" are just as cute!

April 26: Thought it was funny when Juliette clearly said "AMEN" from the backseat on the way home yesterday after Matt said "Just think, starting next week, you'll have 3 whole weeks to yourself and you can do all your monogramming and anything else you want to do."

June 21: So, today at church, Juliette decorated a construction-paper tie for Matt and on the back the teacher wrote down Juliette's response to "What do you like to do with your Daddy?" Juliette's reply: "Play in Daddy's bed!" UMMM...doesn't that just sound HORRIBLE?

August 25: "I don't wanna go to sleep. I sleep everyday!" Juliette's response when I told her it was time to take a nap.

September 2: Just got back from Chick-fil-a (the ones down here are eat-in and have play areas) and Juliette and I had to make the "walk of shame" to the car after she peed the biggest pee EVER while in the play area. Yep...that was pretty embarrassing and YES, I cleaned it up (with antibacterial wipes). Oh, the joys of the parenting!

September 8: Wondering if I burned extra calories by riding the bike to the dog park and back with Juliette on my hip! I guess we need to get her a bike seat now.

September 9: Juliette just informed me that she swallowed some money. "I drank my milk and it went away." I keep asking her where it is just in case she is kidding me, but she just keeps opening her month and pointing.

September 18: "Juliette quit hitting the wall with that toilet wand or I won't let you clean the potty," I said while cleaning the bathtub. Just one thing that I never imagined I'd be saying!

September 20: Juliette just told me that she needed to check her email and I said, "Hold on a minute." And then I realized she's 3 and doesn't have an email account!!! This kid!

September 21: Juliette informed me that she had a lot of work to do today. I asked her if that included doing the laundry and she said no. Guess that means I'll have to do it myself while she is busy "working"! She cracks me up!

October 22: Successfully cried and talked myself out of a speeding ticket yesterday (the only time my unemployment status has come in handy so far) and now Juliette keeps asking, "You sad, Mommy, cause you can't drive fast?"

October 27: Taught Juliette a knock-knock joke and now she won't stop! She still thinks it funny after the 20th time!

November 24: Just got back from a little family trip to Chick-fil-A for dinner and kids' night...Juliette made a pinecone turkey and is now raiding the fridge and thinks she needs to make something with the butter!

November 29: ME: "Are you on Santa's Naughty List, Juliette?" JULIETTE: "No!" ME: "You're on Santa's Nice List, right?" JULIETTE: "I'm on Santa's Cute List!!"

December 4: It's finally snowing in Lafayette! Juliette now thinks Santa is coming tonight...I guess she's been watching too much TV and doesn't understand that we don't get snow on Christmas! She said, "It's raining snow!"

December 18: Matt took Juliette with him to shop for my Christmas gifts. Now she is asking where my "prizes" are...I'm wondering how long it will be until she tells me what those prizes are! :)

December 22: I told my in-laws that I wanted a new camera for Christmas. Juliette has been spending a few days with them this week and when I talked to her on the phone tonight, she told me that her and Poppie went and got my new camera today! It's like having my own little spy! :)


Hope you enjoyed! Juliette has dug some cookie dough out of the fridge now and wants to make cookies, so I gotta go!

Melissa

July was promising...new town, new house, new school, new church, new people. Like I said before, we were still living as if nothing had really changed. The money was still there...my security! Oh, I should have seen that lesson coming, huh? It's definitely a tough one to learn.

I'm a control freak...or more like I'm a shadow of the control freak I use to be. In 2005, I learned what happened when you give up control of your body and give all control over to God...you get a long-awaited-for pregnancy at the end of the infertility journey. So, I'd definitely encountered some prior lessons I should have put to use here. Apparently, I'm a little hard headed and have be reminded! Hopefully, I got it this time!

I guess the real mood shift came when the money wasn't there anymore and that was around October. In October we finally closed on our home in West Monroe and crossed off another number on our prayer list and at the same time emptied our savings to get rid of the house. Three down, two to go. Sadly, there was no longer a savings account to be our safety net. Thankfully, we have parents that could be our safety nets, but I tend to be quite prideful (another bad thing) and don't like to ask for help much. I have a sign in my kitchen that says: Faith is not believing that God can--it is knowing that He will. How appropriate it became. I never lost faith...but faith and hope aren't the same and I have to say that there were many times when I felt hopeless.

Some of you reading my blog have never experienced a job loss that lasted very long or had a bad effect on your family...that wiped out your savings, your 401(k), your hope, and what you found to be your security. Tears were frequent around here this past fall from someone who NEVER cries! It was extremely high stress for quite some time. I had been monogramming as much as I could to bring in extra money. We had just enough money between Matt's little income and my unemployment to pay the bills. I had to pray for monogramming work (or parental "gifts") in order to buy food and gas each week. Just like God, though, He never failed to see us through each week. No bill went unpaid, no body too hot or too cold, no mouth unfed. We had to cut back--way back--but we always made it through each week. The lack of money contributed to an amount of stress that I never want to experience again, but it wasn't just about the money. I couldn't get interviews. I couldn't get hired when I got interviews. And after only so much of that, I started feeling worthless and questioning what I was supposed to be doing with my life. Oftentimes, the negative thoughts and feelings running through my mind were worse than the reality of how we were going to eat that week. Those negative thoughts and emotions, fueled with high stress, led to an explosive and depressive Melissa...agitated all the time, quick to anger, easy to upset. It's amazing my family still loves me!

God IS awesome, though, and as you've already read in prior posts, he turned this bad thing in our lives to good. He showed up time and time again on a daily basis and provided for our needs. And he put a smile on my face when I saw just how awesome He is. You see, one particular crying fit came at the beginning of November. I had decided to have a booth in a private school's Christmas craft show in Ruston. I had done a booth there the year before and made $1400...the most I've ever made at a craft show. Since I had been out of work, I had worked on expanding what I could do and had built up quite a bit more samples for Christmas shirts and whatnot. Halloween weekend, though, my machine broke. I wasn't finished with samples (in fact, didn't have nearly enough to even do a show) and ended up not getting my machine back in time to complete the examples--much less in time to actually make it to the show. I was devastated and crying on Matt's shoulder, I said "I don't understand why God would allow this to happen. He knows that I'm just trying to do the one job I have right now and make money that we desperately need." My mom echoed, but like moms do, she said, "There's a reason." As you all know, a week or so later, I got the university job interview and a few weeks after that I got the job offer and had to start the week after Thanksgiving. In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't do the show in Ruston and God knew EXACTLY what he was doing! Had I done the show, I'm sure I would have gotten a lot of orders and would not have been able to complete them in a timely manner (which would have replaced one stress with another).

From the looks of this post, it would appear as if my unemployment consumed the latter half of 2009. In many ways it did. 2009 may always be known as "that" year, but it was also the year that I got to be a stay-at-home mom for 7 months...something I never thought I'd be able to do and something I may never be able to do again. Juliette will only be little once...it was such a joy to get that time with her. She helped daily give me something to smile about and laugh about and to be proud of!

2009 taught me a lot of lessons that I hope to never forget: God is still in control (just like he was in 2005); my security (including financial security) should lie in Him and only Him; He will NEVER leave me nor forsake me and He will provide for all my needs; that the bad things that happen in life can be turned to good; and that when I am weak, He is incredibly strong and many, many steps ahead of me!

I hope no one reading this ever has to go through a situation like we did. If you know someone in a similar situation, please pray for them to have peace, have faith, and have hope, because there will be better days!

We are looking forward to "better days" in 2010 and hope you have a good year too!

Melissa

I've gone back and forth on whether it was really necessary to write a review of 2009, since I'd like to forget quite a bit of this year. In the end, though, I decided that it would be good for me to reflect on it, find the positive in it, and then file it away and move on to a bright and hopeful 2010.

Our 2009 started out with promise. We popped fireworks with Juliette, although she preferred to watch from the window, while Matt popped them for her, since she was scared of the loud noise...just like the dog! We had a spring in our step, hopeful that 2009 would be the year that Matt got accepted to a Ph.D. program and we were making the most money we had ever made thus far. Life was good! In the first few months of 2009, Mom & I took Juliette to Sesame Street Live in Shreveport, Mom and Juliette went with me to Dallas for work for a week in March, Russell and Karen (the in-laws) went with Juliette and me to ride Thomas the Train in Dallas, and we got the long-awaited-for news that Matt was accepted to not one, not even two, but FOUR Ph.D. programs. We knew we were moving somewhere that summer and change was on the horizon.

At work, I felt certain that a big change was coming, but I thought I would be the one heading it up by leaving...not the other way around. Simon & Schuster had bought Howard Books three years before in February 2006. It was no secret that the publisher (the head honcho for you non-publishing people) had a three-year contract and when you couple that with the fact that the economy was tanking and we were an "entertainment" industry that was suffering from the lack of discretionary income among normal book buyers, the outcome just didn't seem good for Howard Books. Due to some other changes that had been taking place over the 3 years since S&S had bought Howard, I thought the outcome would be for Howard to be downsized and moved to NY. I was semi-right. In early February, right about the time of our 3-year anniversary with S&S, corporate announced that a new publisher had been hired for Howard and he would work out of Nashville. They said "nothing was going to change" (famous last words...we'd already seen changes take place from the first time they said that) and that the current publisher would still be publisher...we would just have two publishers. I might not know much about running a multi-million (might even be multi-billion) dollar company, but it doesn't take an economist to tell you that when job layoffs are frequent and the economy is horrible, you don't add another high-ranking boss with a six-figure salary to the equation. The current publishers' days were numbered and I knew it would be just a small amount of time before the news came down from NY.

Almost exactly 4 weeks later, the announcement came the Monday after Easter and it wasn't just the announcement that the original publisher was losing his job, it was the announcement that most of us were losing our jobs...in just 2 1/2 weeks time, at the end of April. I was supposed to be off the week after Easter, since it was Juliette and Matt's Spring Break and I had planned to spend it with them. That Monday morning, I got a call from my boss (who knew he was safe, but wouldn't say, and who was also in the process of boarding a cruise ship for his 20th anniversary celebration) that I needed to be at the office by early afternoon...two HR reps were headed our way and no one was safe. So much for a week bumming around the house, but I figured a few months of bumming around the house was headed my way. I KNEW without a doubt, I wouldn't be one of the positions they were keeping. I also knew that I worked for a MAJOR publisher who was owned by CBS (who is #1 among the networks) and I was hopeful that a nice severance package would be given to us. I also was probably the only one that was actually happy to lose my job. I know, I know, that sounds crazy, but I had hit a wall there. There was no room for advancement and I knew we were going to be moving that summer, so I was excited about the chance to kick back and have some extended time off to be with my family. Getting laid off was actually a God-send because it gave me the opportunity to file for unemployment and have some income while looking for a job. If I would have had to quit Howard, I wouldn't have had a severance (by the way, it stunk) nor unemployment and would have had NO income at all.

May and June were pretty busy months and I actually thought to myself how it was even possible that I had time for a job before! I enrolled Juliette in a 5-week summer session of Kindermusik (music classes for small children), Juliette got to attend VBS while I helped with a 1st grade class, we spent time at my parents just messing around, played in the kiddie pool outside, visited friends, had an early 3rd birthday party for Juliette and of course, packed for moving day. You can see from prior posts (some of the very first ones) that we were able to get an awesome, large rental home for our first year here. (The years after that will be spent in a 2-bedroom apartment on campus.) We moved the first day of July and up until that point, I had spent little time trying to find a job. I figured that once we got moved and unpacked, then I would hit it hard and heavy. In my little mind, I figured I'd have a job within a month or two. I didn't seem to factor in the whole "national job crisis" thing. Also up until this point, we still had savings, Matt was still receiving paychecks from his teaching job from the spring and life was still pretty good.

Early on in 2009, after we established that Matt would be attending ULL and we would be moving to Lafayette, there became a 5-point prayer list for us: 1) Sell our home in West Monroe; 2) Find a rental home that would allow us to keep our dog; 3) Get Juliette in UL's morning preschool; 4) Find Melissa a job; 5) Find good afternoon daycare for Juliette. That's a lot to ask God to do in a summer, huh? The rental home and the preschool fell into place pretty quickly...the others, not so much.

I'm going to break this post into two parts, so come back tomorrow for Part 2 and I'll be sharing a recap of the last 6 months of 2009. I'll be sharing a good bit about the emotional toll that being unemployed took on me, the spiritual lessons that were learned and the new found hope and joy we now have...a lot of stuff I haven't blogged about or even talked about it.

Yeah, yeah, I know...it's been FOREVER since I've blogged. Sorry about that! But don't worry, I'm here to play catch-up and maybe one of my New Year's Resolutions will be to blog more often in 2010!

Let's rewind back to October, shall we? As I recall, we had beautiful weather down here in October, got to visit quite a bit with my parents in North Louisiana, and FINALLY sold our home in West Monroe, which we were SO happy to get rid of! :) We ended the month with the in-laws joining us for Halloween and realized that we live in an awesome trick-or-treat neighborhood! Everyone was out on their porches and there were tons of people all up and down the streets. We've never lived in a neighborhood like this, so it was fun to be out with the neighbors and of course, Juliette loaded up on the candy!

Here is Juliette at my parents' house. Lafayette didn't start looking like fall until just now (after winter has officially begun), but my parents had this gorgeous red tree in their front yard that was perfect for picture taking. Juliette "posed" all by herself!

December has been a whirlwind. I started my new job on November 30th and had to get Mom to come help us with Juliette that week since it was her last week of preschool until January and we didn't have anyone else to keep her. Mom got to take her to preschool and pick her up each day and I think enjoyed getting a little glimpse into her everyday routine. I know Juliette enjoyed having her here all week. After just three short weeks of work, though, I got a two week vacation! How about that? :) One of the perks of working for the university is that they close for 2 weeks at Christmas and they also close at 12:30 every Friday. I've already enjoyed the few half Fridays that I've experienced so far, and I know I will enjoy the early start to my weekends. So far, work has mostly been training and playing catch-up on some of the paperwork and whatnot that was left undone during the time that position was empty. The real work starts when I return next week!
Juliette and Zoe in front of the tree. It was impossible to get both of them to look at me at the same time...this was the best I could do!