A language of love..

As our family became acquainted with the concepts in Gary Samlley's book about the five love languages, each member readily identified Nanny (June Lee) as being one whose language of love was gift giving.

Nanny would spend days shopping for just the right gift for each person. I had a jewelry box with an iris on it. She knew I liked iris. She bought me a beautiful blouse and sweater that were perfect fits and wonderful colors on me. She always bought clothes that fit the kids right then at Christmas and had the toy selection age appropriate. The Christmas ornaments she bought them still adorn our trees. Matt has his precious black goose she bought for the two year old boy who picked it out from all the choices at the store.

Then she would literally stay up all day and night for several days wrapping each gift to perfection. It also took quite some time to put on all the tape she applied to each box! Her beautifully wrapped gifts were always easy to spot under the tree. There was always much amusement as the gifts were unwrapped, and all the tape discovered, and then the oohs and aahs over how right the gift was.

Even when the health of PopPop and then later her own health prevented her from spending time shopping and wrapping, she was extremely generous with monetary gifts.

Smalley says that the way people show love is usually how they want to be loved. I don't think I ever fully returned to Nanny, the love she showed in process of choosing and giving gifts. Hopefully now that I am aware of these concepts, I can learn to love others in the way they value.

Lesson from receiving...

Soup's on!

Soup's on and smells good. This time it's my put together recipe for mixed vegetable soup. I ate earlier but am making this for lunch and supper tomorrow. Soup and chilli with cornbread are the greatest in this cold damp weather.

I tried a new recipe that Janet gave me last week. It was great--but had stuff in it that Kerbe wouldn't eat. I had to eat all of it. Sometimes life is rough! I want to make some french onion soup and some broccoli and cheese soup this winter. I've always saved those for eating out times. Krista introduced me to Panera Bread's soup and sandwich or salad menu. That has become one of my favorite eating out spots.

Grandma and I used to go to Coco's in Phoenix and get the broccoli and cheese soup and corn bread.

If you have a good soup recipe you would like to share--send it my way!

What's my latest tag?

Through the years I've had lots of "tags" Family tags were daughter, sister, wife, mother, and grandmother. I've been teacher and counselor. At JCS the younger elementary students referred to me as "the dolphin lady" because I often brought DUSO the dolphin to class. Recently at CA one the 2nd grade boys looked at me and said, "I know you, you're that emotions lady!"

Years ago Grandma was in a hospital bed in San Angelo, Texas. I sat by her bedside reading a book. It was titled Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns. Later in my graduate study, I learned it was based on rational emotive therapy. I have found it most helpful in my personal life and in working at school with students.

Burns presents ten cognitive distortions and shows how to identify them and how to “untwist” your thinking. The first is the “all-or-nothing” thinking.

I’m trying to stay off wheat products, but I eat a roll. I’ve blown my diet for a day so I might as well eat another roll, the pasta, and the cake for dessert. That is a perfect example of “all-or-nothing” thinking in my life. In all-or-nothing thinking if I fall short of perfection, then I have failed.

It never ceases to amaze me that .300 is considered an excellent batting average by those who play ball. Yet in most aspects of my life I think success 3 out of 10 times would be horrendous. But this “excellent” batting average comes from putting things in perspective. Burns suggests thinking in shades of gray. Think of experiences as partial success. Evaluate things on a scale of 0-100 and see what success there has been and what has been learned from the situation.

If my self-esteem is based on my being perfect, I’m in trouble. Burns says “Genuine self-esteem is based on humility and an acceptance of your shortcomings. This makes is possible to assume responsibility for your actions, to feel remorse, to apologize and make amends, and to get on with productive and joyous living.”

Sounds like a biblical principle to me!

My celery is stuck!

When I bring a stalk of celery home it takes a while for one person to eat it. So—to keep it crisp I put it in a plastic container and put water over it. It stays cool and crisp! The last stalk I didn’t put in water for several days. It got limp. I finally cut it up and put it in one the tall plastic containers I have. I really filled the container full. The problem is the celery was limp when I put it in. Osmosis did its thing and the celery swelled. Kerbe and I have both tried to pull those celery pieces out of that container! They are really wedged in there now. I have finally resorted to cutting them out. How smart do you feel at 57 playing tug-of-war with a stalk of celery!

Here I Am

I'm going to join the crowd. At least now my arm is somewhat well enough to do this. I have to get some back/shoulder stuff figured out. I'm hoping Linda Garrett and her body zone therapy massage stuff will help me through this.

This is a test run. Hope I have things working well. I've enjoyed the blogs from various members of the family.


Delores