For some reason we have become fairly delinquent on our regular posting. That reason is spring. During the winter life is somewhat less exciting and blogging is a great indoor activity. But now that it is spring I just haven't found the time to sit down and write about the general happenings around our home.
- So I am sitting on the couch tonight which is out of the ordinary because I'm too sore to get up and do anything. I got off work a little bit early and decided on my drive home to run 10 miles tonight. It was a glorious run but now it is too much effort to walk 10 feet into the kitchen. I have been training for a half marathon the past few weeks. I'm going to run the Bill Snyder Highway Half Marathon the weekend of Memorial Day with a good friend and my cousin. I have ran 2 half marathons previously with this friend. We live in opposite corners of the state so we meet up for a weekend once a year to do an athletic event so we can see each other. You can do a lot of catching up in 13 miles. I have really enjoyed having something to train for again and I'm falling in love with running all over again. The past year or two I have done some running but have ventured into other endeavors like hiking, swimming, and biking with Arthur since he would prefer not to run. But I can never truly leave my first (athletic) love so I found myself running all over town. After dinner my first (romantic) love looked across the table and asked if I wanted to go on a walk-- sure, what's another 2 or 3 miles-- therefore the only thing I can easily move is my fingers for typing a blog.
We have also been fairly busy socializing around here:
- We hosted part of Arthur's family for Easter dinner. Let's just say I had some anxiety after I volunteered to cook a meal for Easter. As those faithful readers know my culinary skills are still kind of in training wheel mode. The last time I hosted anyone for dinner at our house it didn't go so well. I had the meal basically prepared and was putting a heating pad in the microwave to keep the rolls warm. Something caused the heating pad to melt and clouds of gray smoke and toxic fumes filled the kitchen. While the food was all prepared there was no way we could eat inside the house so we had to take our guests out for dinner anyway. So maybe you could understand why I'm a little gun-shy about entertaining. I have learned over the years that you can compensate for your shortcomings and get away with it most of the time. So I called on my two strengths- being prepared and presentation. I phoned my local expert with a degree in home economics- my mother- for the 411 on preparing an easy holiday dinner. We decided on the menu of ham in the crockpot, hash brown potato casserole, a spring spinach salad, and a fruit salad. Arthur's mom was pitching in by bringing rolls and an apple pie. All week my patients assured me that it was impossible to mess up a crockpot ham, especially if you put enough brown sugar on it. The next step was the presentation. I pulled out my skills from 4-H Foods where I learned how to do a table setting. All together I think the meal went fairly well. There have been no reported cases of food poisoning, the smoke alarm never went off, and we had leftovers which I was excited about.
-For Easter Sunday I also performed in the hand bell choir at church which I really enjoyed. For the bell choir I only had to know 2 notes on the music to ring my D and E bell. However even just two notes kept me busy most of the time. Bell choir is the best part of being a Methodist.
- Sometime I will write an ode to my crockpot. I'm not sure why I don't use it for 3 or 4 meals a week because it is so easy and I have had great results. After the Easter ham I made a pot of ham and bean soup in the crockpot. As far as recycling goes in the kitchen this is a great example- leftover ham bone + leftover onions from casserole and salad + dry beans + seasoning = a brand-new meal. I think Arthur was not super-impressed since it was kind of bland (after all he is a sensory seeker) but I have happily packed it for lunch all week.
- Our other social outing was to celebrate birthdays in our Bible study group. Arthur and another gal have their birthdays on back to back days. We all loaded up and drove through the scenic rural areas of our county to a restaurant in a town with a population of 79. After a home-style meal of country fried steaks and hot roast beef sandwiches we came back to our house for a game night. We played Arthur's favorite, Settlers of Catan. It involves a beautiful mix of politics, economics, bargaining, and strategy (which he loves). We then had s'more for dessert (which I love). For Christmas we got a s'more bar from my parents and this was our first opportunity to use it. Once again we were hosting people and things were fire in our kitchen-- there must be some type of trend.
It looks like this post should be about long enough to catch everyone up on our latest adventures. Omnia Vincit Amor.
Monday, April 27, 2015
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Music to our ears
A few weeks (or maybe months-- sometime in the somewhat recent past) we wrote a post on our different personalities according to the Myers-Brigg classifications and how that plays a part in our marriage. Recently we are becoming more aware of other "personality traits" or preferences affect our interactions. This time it is the difference of how Arthur and I use our 5 senses. While I was at KU Med, a guest lecturer who has done research and written several books about sensation spoke in our classes. We had to take a quiz to determine what kind of "sensor" we were. There are those who avoid sensation, embrace, ignore, or try to control it. Arthur either ignores it or embraces it-- he doesn't see clutter and this is why he would prefer we just take the cabinet doors off the kitchen cabinets and piles of laundry in the floor aren't a big deal. He embraces it since he loves to have a variety of music on all the time and likes to be adventurous with trying new foods. I, on the other hand, am a sensory avoider. I could eat the same thing every day (and I tend to), clutter or things out of place always catch my attention, and I am perfectly happy with silence-- people ask me what kind of music I listen to and respond that I don't.
Just this week this has played out in our marriage. Arthur likes to leave his bathroom supplies all over the counter but I recently asked him to put them away in the drawer just so they are out of sight. We have also began our yearly battle about running the ceiling fan at night in our bedroom. As an sensory avoider I don't like air blowing on me and the constant hum makes it tougher to get to sleep. I'm also not a big fan on people touching me and especially touch which feels constraining to me like big hugs. We have also been through "counseling" from our friends in Bible study about my compulsiveness to always have the door to the room as well as the closet doors shut before going to be. Arthur would say this is one of the things that frustrates him most in our marriage. As you can see Arthur has it pretty rough being married to a sensory avoider.
Just this evening we were listening to some classical music on the radio while we were driving. Arthur mentioned that he really enjoyed one piece which was a piano duet and didn't care for the trumpet solo--my preferences were the exact opposite. We realized that Arthur likes music with a considerable amount of complexity to keep his interest. I like the trumpet solo because I could follow what was happening one note at a time. If Arthur is listening to classical music in one room I will often wander into another room just because the music is so distracting and my head gets tired trying to listen and I just have to escape. Certain instruments such as organ or harpsichord make it even worse. This evening he sat down and started playing Toccata and Fugue in D Minor and to me all the organ chords in that piece that created dissonance was like fingers on a chalk board or a high pitched whistle that causes a dog to howl in agony.
He then found a video that had a visual representation of the music which was slightly more tolerable-- or at least interesting since there was something to watch instead of just listening. With the visual representation I could actually appreciate the complexity Arthur was raving about since I could see it.
Next we listened to Clair de Lune which is slower with quite a bit less complexity. This is one my list of favorite classical pieces and Arthur has always been less then impressed. Next he decided to see what my thoughts about the Hungarian Rhapsody. I did once again enjoy watching the video since I could appreciate the movement and skill of the pianist. Just listening this would have been lost on me.
I then had Arthur watch my favorite presentation of Hungarian Rhapsody. (You can skip the first 1:30 or so to get to when they are playing.)
Now that we have a little bit of a better idea about how we "sense" or perceive the world it makes it slightly easier to understand that Arthur ignores a mess because he has never actually sensed that it was there and that what seems to be overly picky behaviors in his wife is just really my attempts to limit unnecessary sensation in my environment. However these are also strengths- I can remember where Arthur has put his keys, phone, wallet, etc because anything out of place catches my attention and if for some reason I slack off on my cleaning duties my husband doesn't seem to mind and is still happy. It's interesting how God created us to experience His creation in such vastly different ways. Omnia Vincit Amor.
Just this week this has played out in our marriage. Arthur likes to leave his bathroom supplies all over the counter but I recently asked him to put them away in the drawer just so they are out of sight. We have also began our yearly battle about running the ceiling fan at night in our bedroom. As an sensory avoider I don't like air blowing on me and the constant hum makes it tougher to get to sleep. I'm also not a big fan on people touching me and especially touch which feels constraining to me like big hugs. We have also been through "counseling" from our friends in Bible study about my compulsiveness to always have the door to the room as well as the closet doors shut before going to be. Arthur would say this is one of the things that frustrates him most in our marriage. As you can see Arthur has it pretty rough being married to a sensory avoider.
Just this evening we were listening to some classical music on the radio while we were driving. Arthur mentioned that he really enjoyed one piece which was a piano duet and didn't care for the trumpet solo--my preferences were the exact opposite. We realized that Arthur likes music with a considerable amount of complexity to keep his interest. I like the trumpet solo because I could follow what was happening one note at a time. If Arthur is listening to classical music in one room I will often wander into another room just because the music is so distracting and my head gets tired trying to listen and I just have to escape. Certain instruments such as organ or harpsichord make it even worse. This evening he sat down and started playing Toccata and Fugue in D Minor and to me all the organ chords in that piece that created dissonance was like fingers on a chalk board or a high pitched whistle that causes a dog to howl in agony.
Next we listened to Clair de Lune which is slower with quite a bit less complexity. This is one my list of favorite classical pieces and Arthur has always been less then impressed. Next he decided to see what my thoughts about the Hungarian Rhapsody. I did once again enjoy watching the video since I could appreciate the movement and skill of the pianist. Just listening this would have been lost on me.
Now that we have a little bit of a better idea about how we "sense" or perceive the world it makes it slightly easier to understand that Arthur ignores a mess because he has never actually sensed that it was there and that what seems to be overly picky behaviors in his wife is just really my attempts to limit unnecessary sensation in my environment. However these are also strengths- I can remember where Arthur has put his keys, phone, wallet, etc because anything out of place catches my attention and if for some reason I slack off on my cleaning duties my husband doesn't seem to mind and is still happy. It's interesting how God created us to experience His creation in such vastly different ways. Omnia Vincit Amor.
Thursday, April 2, 2015
Surprise!
After work Friday evening we drove off into the sunset and northwest Kansas to spend the weekend with Arthur's family. It was a perfect time to travel since we left at 5pm and therefore had two hours of NPR's news show to listen to. Our other favorite time to travel is Saturday mornings so we can tune into NPR's news quiz show Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me and word riddle show Tell Me Another which keeps us entertained. When I was dating Arthur Saturday was a good time to drive to visit so I could enjoy Car Talk. Anyway, after listening to the news show we had a lively discussion about the news stories. For the rest of the trip Friday evening and then for a good portion of the trip on Sunday we pulled out our hymnal and had a hymn sing. We sang all our favorites and got practiced up on all the Easter songs as well.
On Saturday afternoon we went out to Arthur's sister and brother-in-law's home for a surprise party to celebrate Arthur's mom's birthday. They have recently put in 4-wheeler trails around their house so we toured the trails going back and forth across the creek. Arthur's favorite part was getting to pet their basset hound. We did a little 4-wheeling and then took off on a quick hike down the country roads around their home. These roads would be great for what I grew up calling boonie-hopping-- fairly rugged, not much traffic, and out in the "middle of nowhere". There were some good hills and beautiful rolling hills and pastures.
Dinner was delicious-- BBQ chicken, potatoes, fruit salad, bread, and cake. All the women in Arthur's family- his sister, mother, grandmothers, etc. are great cooks. They shower people with love by filling their stomachs. There have been a few times when I have about popped because of so much "love". Just observing in the kitchen over the weekend I was amazed by the detail and work these ladies put into meal preparation. I guess it is a good thing Arthur married me for my love of hiking and not for my cooking skills.
After dinner we played a rousing game of The Farming Game. It is very similar to Monopoly where you try to acquire acres of grain, hay, and herds of cattle. It involves taking out loans from the bank, selling at market value which changes with a roll of the dice, and paying operating expenses. Arthur was our banker which was great. I know very few other people who can do mental math for two hours-- let alone enjoy it. Omnia Vincit Amor.
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