Starts off bad, gets better

In my on going battle to get Chad to understand I am not useless, I failed the other night..or he did...or well we had ANOTHER moment. Its get better I promise. I dont know if lightening hit him, he read this blog or  he suddenly realized after 11 years he's kind of mean to me, but what but he said something last night to me he has never said before, and it was actually kind of nice....

BUT FIRST the juicy nasty part.

So I have signed up to be a billet family for a baseball player for the Fort McMurray Giants...long story short, I think It will be good, we get a little ball player here to keep alive for the summer, like a pet! And we get to go to all the home games this summer!

So Chad and I clearly discussed this prior and then while we were having dinner 2 nights ago I say, 

" oh I signed all the forms for the billet thing"

Chad, " oh...well are you sure? You would have to do extra things... like...cook real suppers and stuff, it might not be good...for you..."

I dont know if you all know my faces or not...or can fully understand to the extent that my eyes either shot lasers, or if he noticed that I was biting my tongue so hard it bled....but I think he might have taken notice...

I said " huh, Im sorry, what, like the food we eat every night magically comes from...??"  

As I speak my eyes get bigger, my voice pitcher, and the kids scuttle away as I clear the dishes...from the meal, that must have been delivered by elves. ( elves who cant cook, but nonetheless, I couldn't have made it, for it wasn't a " REAL" supper)

So then we clear the dishes in silence. I tidy up in silence. He leaves the room...comes back...leaves again...comes back...all the while I plot the ways I plan to leave. 

So we go about the next 24 hrs in relative silence and distance and coldness, because I am mad and dont want to talk about it for fear we fight about it, Chad and I really dont ever have out and out fights, just these frustrating Lucy and Desi type convos where he thinks I am foolish...

Then at the end of the next day we are laying in bed, and he says this,

" So I want you to tell me when I am begin negative to you. I want you to just have a code word or call me out on it or something"

Aleaha  " No, Its not my job to make you be nice, and I dont want to be a nag every time you speak your mind by saying something like 'the crows fly east'...or whatever this code will be."

Chad- " no really. I want you too. I really need you too. I am trying to be better, and I am trying to be a more positive person, at home and at work and I have been working so hard on different things but last night I realized that I say things to you that are not nice. I am really negative when I speak to you, and I know thats wrong. I'm really sorry. I dont ever mean to sound so nasty, and I dont ever want you to think that I dont value you because I do. I dont know why I always come across like that. So you need to help me...I just dont mean to be so mean, I really dont....Im going to try to say really nice and positive and good things to you.."

Aleaha - " oh please dont. I dont need praise or a cheerleader"

Chad " I know...and I mean, I guess I dont often give praise, or give credit or say good things because I feel like you just know that I think them, and that you just know...but if I dont say ANY good things, and all I ever do is point out the BAD things, thats not good...and I am sorry...I dont want to do that"

So it was a conversation, it was interesting and I want to be a little clear too...Chad is a fantastic person, he is so giving and so generous, and so smart and so caring about taking care of everyone and tries to be helpful. His helpful in the world of our kids is fantastic. They adore him. His being " helpful" in my world is to offer criticism of all the things that I dont do that he would like, or the things I dont do that dont meet his standards, so he's not MEAN per se, he's just...tough to please. 

So I have high hopes. On his days off I said Im not cooking a single supper and this weekend, he made us 3 very yummy dinners....I have hopes that he and I can work out this SUPER annoying passive aggressive conversation we have all the time and just get over it!

So thats that, I think it was good overall...and then, I might not be able to blog anymore since if Chad smartens up and he likes me, what will I write about?!  

;)

I am going to be a working woman! kind of....

Well Its been a year in the making with a lot of part time work  here and there and wherever I could squeeze it in but I was able to complete and then PASS all the necessary requirements to get my real-estate licence!!

I am giving myself a big pat on the back *PAT PAT*  and a big glass of wine * gulp gulp*

I know that there a TON ( a literal ton, do you know how many real estate agents exist, like, a LOT).....Aaaaaaaand now there are a tonne PLUS ONE.....

Ok so due to the extreme butt load of agents you would think ( and by " you" I mean my husband )  this was an easy endeavour done over the weekend on some online course, a few dollars paid out,  a criminal record check and boom, go sell some houses! AND well you would be WRONG....I should go back and clarify how tricky this was for me due to some really bad past errors as a teenager on my part...ready for that long winded story? Ill be fast I swear....

So when I was Young, like 16 I decided it was a good idea to move away from home and live on my own. WHAT? I know. I have issues relating to stubbornness, unwillingness to reason and ideas of grand jour....I still have those but at 16 I was a total idiot.

So I left home, moved to Calgary, lived with my friend and her family for a summer while off from school... Her somewhat emotional and on occasion "unstable" mother kicked out my friend after a mother daughter argument...( my friend was 19 and got caught doing pot, we were religious and this was a no-no) So OUT my friend...and I trailed along like a lost foolish devoted 16 year old puppy....I was do dumb....HA! Id have been better to live with just her mom, which I am sure she would have allowed but that another story brought on by many years of counselling and reflecting...HA

So out on my own, in Calgary, at 16, with a pot smoking roomie, some poor decisions, a full time job, my own apartment, a pretty jerky boyfriend and 3 years later at 19 I had NOT graduated high school, but did manage to get my driver license, buy a car and get the heck away from said bad boyfriend.

MANY YEARS later....

After working in the insurance industry in a sweet little office job I thought about getting into real estate...but then I did the stable thing and after we got married, I had some babies, quit working (due to too many babies in too short of a time)  and choose to be a stay at home mom with my pretty supportive husband. He's  a pain but he's smart and successful and even if he rolls his eyes at me SO HARD sometimes, he tries to be supportive in his ways...9 years later I NEED OUT. hahaha.

I decided to pursue an old love of real estate but low and behold, surprise surprise one would actually need a high school diploma and PROOF of it to even be considered to allowed to enrol. WELL, I dont have that. Crap, now I have to get it. SO after another few months of Study I zip to Edmonton to take my GED. I did great, all A's on everything but math. Frick that frickity fricken math full of geometry and angles and crap. CRAP. So I actually failed math, by 1.5 percent.

cue tears. cue downward spiral into failure. cue wine. Why does math make me feel like such a failure at life?!?!

OK wahtever, I am grown women, pull yourself together Aleaha!! So I studied, paid more money, wrote that part of the exam AGAIN and passed. With a acceptable 70percent, LOL....I feel like the exam has less angles and degrees and more decimals and fractions which I am actually ok at. That said I still hate math.

I have my GED! SWEET!  Enoll in Real Estate course...be super pumped.....get MASSIVE MANUALS with a LOT of reading...and terms...and rules...and bla bla bla.....so they give you I think 18 months to finish, and I did this really part time so I know people have finished in like 3 months, but I took my time and have been doing it over the course of about 10 months....and I have been LOVING IT! Its so interesting thru all the terms and facts and horror stories called  " case studies" of when people dont pay attention and then get in BIG trouble.

So yesterday I wrote my very last exam to be able to have a licence in residential real estate. It was nerve racking since I am not great at test writing...I have anxiety and second guess myself and then am pretty sure I fail every time....well I never failed a single exam in this course, managed to get over 95 in more than one area and then passed my exam yesterday with a final mark of 85!!

A moment of celebration!  ( cue 90's dance music)

So there is still like 15% I guess I dont know ( and for the record why dont they show you or tell you the ones you get wrong so you can go back and really learn them, see because I thought I put the right answer now there is this 15% mystery that I guess I will find out about down the road, I hope!)

NOW monday morning I am walking into REMAX, signing some forms, forking over more money and then getting set up to start what I hope to be a very enriching career....in the worst real estate market in over a decade. HA.

I feel satisfied, and happy and itching to get started. I wish I would have done all these things years ago, but life happens, and I do think it happens for a reason and maybe 15 years ago I wouldnt of had the work ethic, the patience or understanding to be able to do this? NOW many years later, a husband and 5 kids later I feel like I have been tossed around enough in the world of thankless work that I should be able to be fully attacked by the real esate world and take it like a pro ;)

PEACE and some bad language...

I have a moment of peace today, WA HOO!! Kids are in school, I had zero appointments or errands to run and most of the busy-ness will come towards the end of the day so what the heck am I doing?!  Uh, NOTHING. well kind of.

I cleaned the kitchen, put laundry in, vacuumed, ran upstairs returned some emails, decided to go for a quick jog and then I needed to come write because I have been thinking of something for a while and I just wanted to jot it down quick....its about self talk...

Oh but totally off topic first, kind of off topic but kind of not,  the other night, (because its fun for me to vent about Chad, and truly you can only complain about the ones you love the most because you love them the most, and they drive you the most crazy so its totally ok) the other night we had annoying discussions again....

Chad and I were discussing the end of spring break and I was breathlessly lamenting how I loved not having to be somewhere out the door with al the kids at 7:30 every morning...no lunches to be made at 6:30 am, if the kids wanted to wear the same dirty shirt 2 days in a row, who will judge, not I ! Means less laundry for me....so back to school means a wee bit of freedom for mom ( for exactly 1 hr and 45 mites every morning while Yvette is gone ) but it also means a lot more structured work which is honestly such a pain...waaah

Chad says " oh I feel so bad for you, I get up at 4:00 am every day and am gone for 14 hrs.."

To clarify its 4 days a week....you actually get 3 days off every week where you have no where to be and no one to take care of, just for clarity.

So next I say, well yes that sucks I could never do it and if I was the bread winner I would NOT be choosing that job let me tell you, Id rather stroll the streets at 1 am looking for....ok wait never mind, ....but thats another convo....

So I say that I dont know how he does it, I really couldn't...but at least he gets up at 4am and just has himself to deal with, kind of like the injured arm thing, sucks to get dressed me he's just dressing himself... To get up at 6am and then have to wake up and ready and "excite" 5 little -ish ones for the day to begin is a huge pain in the ass and not nearly as much fun as it sounds ;)  This little joy he has never really had to do....

He and I have talked a LOT in many convos about how I am a horrible stay at home mom ( in some regards I really am, I hate to cook I do it but I suck, in some regards I KICK ASS)  and I REALLY wish that I had any kind of skill set or income or heck even a sugar daddy to fall back on so that Chad could be the " mom" and I could be the money gal. Well I think  this is all fine and good and for me to say I kind of suck is ok because I feel like I am still ok at this mom thing, 90 percent of the time I am a pretty big fail but the kids are turning out well despite my issues and so that makes me feel happy and like I am doing a few things alright.

Then Chad says this little gem on a sunday night while he eats nachos and I wash dishes and sort our the recycle bins...

Chad-  " well, not to belittle what you do, but I am pretty sure I could do it better, no offence I just think we are built different I could handle your stresses a lot better than you do."

WHAT IS WRONG WITH MEN AND HUSBANDS! WHY DO THEY SAY SHIT LIKE THIS.

I swear to god like twice a week I want to either kill Chad or totally leave him for 6 months so he can be better at all the crap I suck at.

The other day we had friends over and her Husband says about her, my friend, his wife( they have one small child as well so he gets the kids stuff kind of)  He says,

" She's amazing, I couldn't do what she does and she makes our life so much easier"

Then my husband says he could do what I do only better.

FUCK THAT FUCKER.

Then I cry on the drive in to school monday morning. Bet people dont know that. Jokes about being a crappy mom from your husband make you feel like a crappy mom and then you cry on the way into school while blasting your free Carly Rae jepsen CD from Ellen, song number 4 " gimmie love" somebody love me....le sigh :(


Ok, I love him so much but why would say that? I know he loves me but what in his make up makes him say that!? He says stupid shit like that ALL THE TIME.

He also said that maybe I could do his job better, so I will give him that, he does think that I can be good at some things and  YEAH I COULD....if I knew the slightest bit about oil, and electricity, and how to BS with men, and viscosity levels and whatever else he does I have no idea...

So THIS story leads me back to my thing about self talk. WOW, that was a big loop around to get back here....

So in the last year I put on some weight about 10 lbs that haven't budged and I have been running again since about 3 months after my surgery and it was a bit hard. It was a LOT hard. So for literally 12 months I have been having a hard time getting back into it, and I would run and yell at myself in my head, I would work out or go to a class or watch myself in the mirror and literally just all the worst things you could say to yourself I said over and over again, thinking that maybe I would just shock myself in to doing it better...or I was just so mad at myself for not " trying harder" but then about 8 weeks ago I had another revelation, that I have known all along but its really hard to remember when you tell yourself for so long that you suck...

WHAT YOU SAY ACTUALLY COMES TRUE.

If you say for so long,  " I cant" or  " I suck"  or  " maybe I will just never get there"  guess what,  that will actually happen.

8 weeks ago I pulled our some old journals from when I was working out and feeling good and like the best version of myself. I loved myself. When I would run on the treadmill I would stare at myself in the mirror and list all the things I loved, its SO cheesy and SO vain but it made me a GRET runner...I would say nonsense like,

" your SO fast...look at you!"
" look how you dont even look like a hot sweaty mess, your a hot piece of you know what on a treadmill"
" you keep getting better and better at this, running is the BEST"

I would post my runs, I would gloat a little and even on my bad days my inner voice will still mostly so positive and I came out great for it! I had such little negative self talk and my confidence was at a high....

then I got stuck after my surgery and I started that easy spiral to  negativeity and then I would verbalize it to Chad and to whomever... and then I feel like you really do become what you say you are. So I became chubbier and felt like I could never get to where I was.

So maybe Chad says these REALLY ANNOYING things about me because I say them about myself? Maybe he doesn't really think that I suck but maybe I have said it so long that he just agrees with me and he thinks I suck because I say I do? Now he's not off the hook he can be totally emotionless and mean and not even realize it so he needs to learn to be nice to me, but I should be nice to me too..

Ok so there is so much more and I am feeling a lot better these days, the last 8 weeks my running has improved, my eating has improved, I feel like I am starting to look and feel like my old self again because I have made a VERY big effort to talk myself up in front of that awful mirror on the treadmill downstairs...haha...only good words, no bad ones, and 8 weeks later I am feeling better...Its working....

So talk nice to the ones you love, that means yourself too...it makes such a big difference. It means monday moorings on the drive to school you should be blasting Carley Raes " call me maybe" and not " gimmie love"

ha!