This will be a relatively short post because our internet is due to be cut off today. And, since I don’t know when that is going to happen, I should just act like it will be any moment now. Thus, short post.
Anyway, I woke up this morning feeling quite refreshed. Yesterday, I decided not to take a desperately needed nap. So, needless to say, I was well and ready by the time I actually did settle down.
This morning starts the busy two days of preparing to move. PJ and I are planning to clean the bathroom, kitchen and laundry room so that tomorrow we don’t have to stress ourselves out by having to do those dirty jobs. I’m gonna try and see if I can get him to do the bathroom ;) I don’t and never have like bathrooms.
We were able to do a load of laundry last night, as opposed to this morning, so I was able to fold all that stuff when I woke up and disassemble the dryer.
Things are progressing and with the help of my lovely lists, it will be a lot easier to get my mind on track. (Even though my list making makes PJ insane, I’m sure he appreciates it too. It keeps me organized and there’s a lot less “uh, I gotta try to figure out what was next.” It’s like “boom, boom, boom, this is what we have next.”) It also helps for when we go across town because we can accurately determine the route we need to take to get things done quicker. I highly recommend lists if you don’t already believe in their magical powers. (JK about the powers but for real though, they are awesome.)
^^BTW, I prefer to have my boxes AFTER my task, but whatev. This is a good example except for the fact that they are spaced out way too much, gotta save room so you can put more things on that list!! (I like lists < I need a T-shirt with that on it.)
Ok, I said I was going to keep this short. Have a blessed day and make those lists!! :D
Momma Sherri
P.S Do something good for yourself today, fitness wise. Let your body know that you love and care about it. :D
I can’t remember when I last updated, but lots has progressed since that moment. After all, it’s almost “Go Time” and I need to get my rear in gear if we want this moving thing to be successful.
The whole packing process started out pretty well. In fact, it actually started the night we decided we were moving. PJ was all gung ho and decided that we should pack the kitchen. Lately, he has mentioned several times that perhaps it wasn’t the best idea. I agree, but personally, I like not having a sink full of dishes to clean. All of our dishes fit into our literally mini dish washer and I can do a load a day and have clean dishes for the next day. Regardless, he has needed a few things that are just too inconvenient to get to. So, we improvise a lot of the time. And, it works.
The next day, I packed up the majority of everything that we don’t use or that we just forgot we had. I can’t honestly say that I missed much of it. I do get a thrill of going through it though to see what treasures I don’t use and probably still won’t. It will have a use someday. By the way, I have no problem with throwing stuff away. I am not a hoarder, honest. I’ve thrown a TON of stuff away in this packing process, taken many trips to the dumpster and expect to take at least a few more within the next 4 days.
Yes, we only have 4 days, not counting today until we move. Truthfully, it seems like forever away. Thankfully though, I am more prepared for it than I was 2 days ago. I put a fire under my own tushy and made an extensive list of what needed to be done each day that we still had time to prepare. Mostly, I wanted some personal reassurance that by it getting done, it would release the “oh my word! The house is a filthy wreck! We have stuff everywhere!” And, it did!
When I got up yesterday, I ate breakfast and then almost immediately started my To-Do list. First on it was the car. I was pretty crummy and I wanted to get it all spiffed up before we moved. I spent about an hour plus some vacuuming it out with my mom’s vacuum cleaner that she lent me. It has a hose, unlike ours. I personally think I did a better job that if I was to go to the carwash place. You pay $1.00 to use the hose for 4 minutes. I’d typically use $5.00 worth and then have to settle for the little crumbs that I just couldn’t get and didn’t need to spend another $1.00 for. This time, I was able to spend as much time as I needed to get it clean. I wanted to save the seats and plastic stuff for the next day.
Later that evening, after my nap, I spent about 5 hours cleaning which mostly consisting of cleaning the smudges off the walls that I could reach, cleaning the baseboards (with a dryer sheet, which I got from Pinterest), cleaning the edges of every place I could reach (there were A LOT of dead buggies shoved in those crevices…even some with PAINT on them, which means that the previous owners forgot them and the maintenance people just painted over them…yuck.) I also packed some loose stuff that had been bugging me, vacuumed the carpet that I could get to, reorganized everything so that it looked better and less like “the house is a disaster, we are in the process of moving,” and cleaned all the shelves and drawers in the house, which included the kitchen, bathroom and closet.
Today, I woke up, ate breakfast, and got ready to go to Dollar Tree. I needed a lint brush. If you know anything about our car, then you’d know that our seats are much like a pair of black pants that attract EVERY LITTLE hair and fuzz it comes in contact with. (I really dislike that aspect of our vehicle especially since I shed like a cat and because the red hat I donned this past winter sheds even more! My seat, the passenger seat, was littered with little red fuzzies! What a mess!!)
Anyway, I got the lint brush, came home and braced myself for the rainy situation I was about to subject myself to. It wasn’t pouring, only a little more than a sprinkle, so I figured I just needed to get it done. For the plastic parts of the car, I found a Pinterest recipe about how using 1:1 water to vinegar was a good way to get the job done. I knew we had vinegar (from all those red velvet cakes I’d make) so I found PJ’s empty body wash container, cleaned it and filled it with the stuff.
Upon using it in the car, I realized pretty fast that I’d need to open the windows and doors if I wanted to come out smelling relatively decent. This was a challenge considering it was raining. I opened the windows though and just accepted that I’d have to clean up the water. The plastic got cleaned and smelled like salad. I took that stuff inside to get myself ready for part 2. Onto the seats!
I got my lint brush, a bag for the used pieces and headed back outside. I couldn’t really sit on the seats and do the job like I could with the plastic so I decided to just get wet. The lint brush was of shabby construction and the roll wouldn’t stay still on the handle so I ended up cutting up my right hand pointer finger knuckle pretty extensively, not to the point of blood, but it’s sore and I have a skin flap. Still, I continued because those seats really get under my skin. I spent a good while on my seat because it was CAKED with red fuzzies, hair and other fuzzies which I wasn’t able to identify. The rest wasn’t so bad but I did make a discovery that I thought was weird.
The back seat was covered in a small layer of white cat fur. Hmm, that’s odd. We don’t have a cat and I don’t EVER remember letting a white feline frolic about in our car. As I was getting all of that up, I realized it was from JJ, PJ’s cousin in Ohio. We had him as out guest in June and he has several cats, some of which have white fur. I never sit in the back seat so I never thought about it until yesterday. I got all of that up and secretly swore to myself that we are NEVER having cat owners in the back seat unless they go through an extensive de-fur process. That mess gets STUCK in the fabric and I had to pull it out before it would stick to the lint roller. (Just kidding about the cat owners, but I will definitely more observant if we do have other people in our car. I’m thinking a weekly check with the lint brush will help keep the fur and fuzzies down.) <<this is something I’ll need to be thinking about anyway since we will have a baby back there.
The seats got cleaned and then I febrezed the fabric stuff to try to get that awful vinegar smell at least diminished. I think it worked to an extent. (I don’t have to get into the car until Sunday for church so maybe it will have aired out by then. I told PJ he gets to drive a salad for the next few days. Hehe).
By the way, if you are wondering, during this entire process of cleaning the car, my skin didn’t get wet. I was wearing a hoodie and the rain wasn’t strong enough to soak that. The hoodie took all of the water!
Not too much else has happened today. PJ made some funky flourless oatmeal, peanut butter chocolate chip cookies that he ended up liking. I didn’t. I ate something, took and nap and woke up to another To Do list. I only did about half since my back has been hurting after yesterday’s busy-ness.
This included cleaning out the laundry room, cleaning the fan…it had sticky dust on it, not that stuff that easily comes off, vacuuming the floor again, and taking out the trash. At that point, I was ready to stop and eat and relax my back muscles.
Here I am now, listening to some music and apparently talking a lot about cleaning and moving.
Apart from all of that, I’ve recently come to realize something really important and helpful.
Last Sunday, we had a Covenant Keepers meeting at our church. (CK is a group of married people; we learn to strengthen our relationship with our spouses while focusing on God’s principles for married life.) We were talking about fear.
I realized that I was in so much fear about moving to Ohio that I was letting it rule my emotions toward EVERYTHING, even PJ. I may have said this a while ago, but when it comes to change, fear comes to me and makes me a stressed out, unsure mental wreck. I used to experience this a lot when we would go into different quarters in college; I was so used to the last one that changing everything made me fearful.
In regards to moving, I let the Devil attack my mind with fear of the unknown, fear of not being able to figure things out when we moved, fear of being where I needed to be. All this fear came to me EVEN THOUGH I felt COMPLETE peace about this when we made the decision. I was SO in fear that I was freaking out about whether or not this was the right thing or not.
The lesson taught me that almost every fear that we have is linked to death in some way. People who are afraid of heights aren’t afraid of being high up, they are afraid of falling. People afraid of spiders are afraid of getting bitten and having something bad happen to them (which I totally understand; I’ve been bitten before.) I was afraid of driving 7-9 hours, I was afraid that PJ wouldn’t find a job, I was afraid almost every aspect, which does have it’s connections to death.
I also learned that we really shouldn’t fear death. If we have Christ in us and believe that he died for us, we
are going to wake up in heaven. Death really shouldn’t be feared if we know where were are going. I may die on earth, but I’ll wake up in a much much much better place!
We know the presence of God by peace. Much the same, we know the Devil’s presence by fear. Fear is used to keep us from living, from going to places that God has ordained for us. If I keep myself in fear about moving to Ohio, I could keep myself and my family from something God has for us.
Moreover, fear seems HUGE when we keep it all bottled up within us. We think about the details, we imagine the things that could happen, we build this entire scenario in our minds that makes the fear even worse. In reality, facing the fear makes us realize that what we were afraid of was so small. For instance, with the college situation. I was so afraid to start another quarter (perhaps it was because I didn’t think I would do as well as I did with the previous one) but once I actually got into it, it wasn’t any big thing. It’s important to resist the Devil and face your fears.
I said all that to say that my mind is no longer troubled with fear about moving.
Jimmy Evans taught the message (How to Overcome Fear) and gave 4 points on how to do so:
1.) Admit your fear without shame - anything in the dark will only get worse and a lot of times, married people are fighting over what they fear. (Fear that they won’t have enough money, fear that one of them won’t be able to provide, etc.)
2.) Submit your fear to God - God already knows what’s going on but once we realized that our feelings are not our master, we get one step closer to being freed. We have emotions, yes, but it doesn’t mean that they are right emotions.
3.) Focus on God’s presence and love - Peace comes from God, as stated above, focusing on God will help us get out of fear.
4.) Face your fears by faith and you will not crumble - once we decide to face our fears, we are set free. It no longer keeps up bound and immobile. We also realize that it’s not as bad as we thought it would be.
As you might have observed, this past Sunday helped me TREMENDOUSLY!! I’m so glad I went to the CK meeting, even though PJ couldn’t go with me. I can definitely say that my mind has been eased and I am ready to take on this new adventure.
***
In baby news, I am 16 weeks tomorrow. I haven’t heard his little heartbeat in over 5 weeks and haven’t seen him in 7. It’s been kind of sad. He didn’t have fingers or toes 7 weeks ago. I’m thinking that our next appointment will be the gender reveal appointment. I am SO EXCITED for that!!! I’ll be posting a belly pic tomorrow…even though it doesn’t seem like my belly is going anywhere or getting bigger for that matter.
Until next time, be blessed and enjoy your night!!
Momma Sherri
^^PJ’s roommates used to call me that since I would clean their apartment (they were nasty slobs and I didn’t like to visit unless it was clean…and I liked to visit ;)
These last few days have been pretty uneventful. I’ve had a throbbing headache since Wednesday morning and it’s still lingering today. It really sucks and I’ve been trying to limit my activity.
Basically, I’ve been lazy when it comes to packing (even though I’ve had ideas of what else to pack.) A bunch of nothing has been accomplished except for the fact that I was able to do the dishes. (We’ve packed up 95% of our dishes and if I want to eat off of plates or with spoons or forks, I have to wash the dishes.) So, there you have the recap of the last few days.
Oh yeah, I’ve watched a few episodes of the first season of Full House and some other movies, but other than that, not much. It stinks; I’m used to moving. I’m hoping this headache goes away soon especially since tomorrow OFFICIALLY starts my 2nd trimester and I’m supposed to be feeling better and more energetic. I’d love to feel normal.
Other than the fact that nothing has happened lately, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. (When you’re alone 75% of the time, it just tends to happen.) Mostly about the future and how none of it seems REAL. That’s my thing. I always ask myself “Is this real?” And, yes, it turns out to be real, but for me, life tends to throw things in my direction (and probably yours too) that make you ask that same question.
For instance, Is it really real that PJ and I am having a baby? Well, yes, obviously, I’ve seen our little Poppy, I’ve heard his heartbeat several times, and I feel a lot different, have a crazy sense of smell, and have been avoiding foods and such because they look, smell or sound unappealing. Yeah, we are having a baby. I can deal with that reality, but it still doesn’t seem real.
Another thing that I’ve been categorizing as “unreal” is the fact that we are moving to Ohio. I’ve never really thought of leaving Kentucky and up until a little while ago, had no desire to do so either. I’m also the type of person who likes to know details before I do something and with moving to a new place, those details are undefined (with the exception of knowing the most important details like where we will live and what churches are in the area to go to) but all the little things are so uncertain and I don’t like that aspect. It’s unsettling to my flesh (we are not supposed to be led by our flesh though.) Still, a lot of our boxes are packed, I’ve received the confirmation for the moving truck, we HAVE to be out of this apartment May 1st, yeah, it’s real…but it still doesn’t FEEL like it.
Call me crazy, but the moments in life that are the most important or MAJOR are the hardest ones for me grasp as reality. Some past experiences where I felt like this include when my sister moved away to Georgia, when I went to college, when I said yes to Pj’s proposal, when we got married, when PJ went to Ohio for 2.5 months, when I realized that I wasn’t going to give up on myself (when I started my journey to lose weight.) Yes, all of these things were hard to accept as reality but I made it through that uncertainty and I know I will make it through these ones too.
Hopefully I’m not the only one to feel these kinds of feelings. I know they pass.
With Thought,
Is It Real…
Today is one of those days. At least, it has started off that way. I woke up from a weird dream to reading comments and opinions about Pj’s and my move to Ohio. I don’t think people understand that I feel peace about this. It’s weird, yes. Very weird, in fact, because I used to get furiously angry at people when they’d suggest we move to Ohio. The simple thought of it made me so irritated I’d have to leave the room.
Now, for some reason beyond my understanding, I don’t get mad and I don’t get frustrated. Perhaps, I just needed time for the desire to be brought up in me. I do actually want to move to Ohio. I have for a little while now but didn’t want to tell my husband because it might have been a false sense of hope. He loves Ohio and rightly so, his family live there. I understand that completely. But, we are not moving to Ohio for that reason. Mind you, we wouldn’t move to that part of Ohio if his family didn’t live there, but we will have our own individual lives to assume once we settle in. After all, we have a baby on the way and I’m not going to entertain guests 24/7 just because they live nearby. I have my own identity, I enjoy my own personal space at times, most times, in fact, and I want to create a life there that is specific to me. I’ll be the same Sherri in Ohio as in Kentucky, still wanting my time alone, still wanting to keep my house clean, still wanting to do the same things I do here, just in Ohio. A different surrounding, new opportunities, but still the same me.
Two of my first priorities are church and baby doctor. I’m not sure if I mentioned this yesterday but church is my main goal. I want to find a church that we both know we should be planted in and one that will feed our spirits. I’m not about to rid myself of my church life just because we change location. I’ve been looking online for churches - full gospel churches - and I plan to visit them as soon as we move down there. I don’t want to leave Paducah and forget all that I’ve known and stood for. I want my baby to grow up knowing who God is, what Jesus did for him and accept it with open arms. I promise, we are not moving to Ohio so that we can engage in sins of the flesh (which, honestly at one point, I thought that’s all that Ohio symbolized.) I know better now, especially since my husband has proved to me that it isn’t.
My second priority is a baby doctor. I’ve called the only lady Ob/Gyn there is in Marion and is she doesn’t work out, I will look toward the others (there are 3 other male doctors). I want my baby to have a good start in life and this is one of those decisions I kind of have to make on my own because my husband won’t be the one delivering, obviously. I’m not going unprepared, I’m looking at every possible thing I can think of that will need to transferred, changed, shifted, released, what have you. I’m not just moving willy nilly. If anyone knows me, then they know I just don’t do that. I am a planner; I don’t like things to be done in a sporadic fashion and I won’t start now, just because we are moving to Ohio.
I know some people don’t understand. I, too, don’t really understand why a year ago, I was so against this and now, I have the desire to make this move, while pregnant, especially. I realize this is a giant decision, but we have made it and we feel peace about it.
Apparently, pregnancy makes you super sleepy throughout the day and wide awake in the morning. I took a 2 hour nap around 4:45 yesterday, woke up, ate because I felt like I was starving (another pregnancy symptom) and resumed packing. I said all that to say that I woke up around 8am today and am now bored after catching up on The Celebrity Apprentice and browsing through all the pictures on my computer. So, I decided to write a blog post after about 8.5 weeks. This was on purpose, yes, but I wasn’t doing it maliciously.
I’ve known I was pregnant since February 9th. (Test to the right)
And, trying to blog about fitness when you feel like someone ran over you with a bulldozer (ok, maybe that’s not EXACTLY how I’ve felt these last few weeks, but you understand) is pretty impossible. I noticed a change in my body on February 6th when I was so out of breath trying to do the Brazil Butt Lift routine for that day. I think I actually documented that on my blog because, at that time, I didn’t know I was expecting. That was the day I was expecting something else. Needless to say, it didn’t arrive and I’m 12 weeks and 4 days pregnant as of today.
Before I bum you out with the knowledge that I haven’t done squat since Feb 6th, I do plan on getting back into the whole fitness thing. This time, though, it will be centered around pregnancy. I’m not supposed to do anything that I can’t carry on a conversation throughout. So, Insanity and P90x are saying goodbye for a while and it’s on to pregnancy yoga, walking and toning. I haven’t decided when I am going to begin because my husband and I are in the middle of a MAJOR move and I’m pretty much getting the exercise I don’t want by having to pack and move these boxes around. I’ve already packed up my 8 pound weights, but the other fitness stuff is still around. I might wait until the last few days to pack those so I can use them.
Oh yes, I did say moving. PJ and I have decided (and we feel peace about, which is most important) that we are moving to Ohio, where his family is from. It was a hard decision in the fact that I am pregnant and I know that my family here will be bummed. I also understand that if we stay here, the family there will be bummed. I guess it comes with the territory when you fall in love with and marry someone who lives seven hours away from your hometown. That part was hard, and pregnancy doesn’t help the emotions one bit. I’ve cried and cried…and cried about this because I don’t want anyone to miss out, but someone will have to, at least in some degree. It’s also not my place, as wife, to be selfish when it comes to my husband’s family. His family has as much a desire to see him as mine has to see me and marriage is about commitment, compromise and ultimately, making decisions based on what is best for him or her (plus the kiddos, if you have any…which we do…in the making) and not necessarily what’s best for the in-laws. I cringe while typing because this is really a lot harder than it sounds. I know there will be many more tears but I’ve thought through this several times and I feel peace, which I believe is the most important.
Now that you know all of this, I can get back to the most exciting part. I’m pregnant! It’s been tough having to keep this from everyone, but we did it and now that it’s out, it adds to the excitement! We weren’t even trying (or even planning for at least 2-5 years) but were pleasantly surprised after the initial shock and OMG wore off (which only lasted for about a day.) I figured something was up when I could smell a guests breath the morning of February 6th as I was getting ready to leave work. Later that night, I could also smell another person's breath a fair distance away. Not to be mean, but both smelled like rank garlic and while my uniform in the morning wasn’t slack enough to cover my nose, my hoodie I wore that night was and I DID!! Unfortunately, since being pregnant, I can smell rank garlic breath increasingly well and it is HORRIBLE!! It literally turns my stomach!
I’ve had a few issues since becoming pregnant, but nothing that has affected the baby. Poppy, his nickname because he was the size of a poppy seed when we found out, is doing well and growing fast. He is now about the size of a lime this week and will be even bigger in just a few days. It’s absolutely how miraculous this process is to witness!! I can’t feel him yet, but I’ve been told that if I press on my abdomen, he will move in response. So cute!
Some of the issues have included fainting (PJ caught me with no ill affect to me or baby, as stated above), I’ve visited and stayed a night in the hospital because of not being able to keep liquids down. (Only happened one day and hasn’t happened since) and inability to sleep. Thankfully though, the fainting and dehydration only happened once and my sleep pattern has resumed. I am most excited about the sleep, because it affects everything else! I’m healthy and though I do have occasional nausea, headaches, and the pain of my uterus growing, it’s really not all that bad when you think about what the end result is. I’m so excited!
Oh, before I leave you, I want to make mention that the move will be occurring May 1st. This works out almost perfectly because our lease is up April 12th. I no longer work for the Fairfield Inn due to unreliability (pregnancy) and some other things that my husband and I have discussed and he has a possibility of transferring his employment to Columbus, Ohio. So, like I said, we have peace that everything will work out. I’ve already called Ob/Gyn’s in the area, signed my release form for the doctor I am currently at, looked up churches to visit when we get there, called insurance companies about transferring, etc, etc. We must move fast, literally. We have a great start and enough momentum to continue going strong. Thankfully, I am almost out of the first trimester, going into the one with the increased energy and don’t have a significant enough bump yet for it to get in the way. The one bonus of moving while pregnant is that I don’t have to lift any of the heavy stuff. (*Fist Pump*) My job is to lift the light items and delegate where everything goes. I get to take breaks often and no one can tell me to stop being lazy…afterall, I’m making the baby and that’s hard work as it is. :D (For real though, I will help with as much as I physically can.)
Our first appointment in Marion, may even be the gender reveal appointment. So, that is definitely something to be excited for!!!
Until next time,
Mama Sherri
