What I’ve Learned From the 13th Doctor

I am so excited about the new Doctor. I’ve been going on and on to Emma about how there should be a woman Doctor.  But from day one of my Whovian experience, I have always wanted it to be so. When I first learned of my wish finally coming true, I just couldn’t contain myself.  FINALLY!  OH, MY GOODNESS!! IT’S HAPPENING!!

At this point, I’ve never heard of Jodie Whittaker. Emma loves her.  She has seen her in Adult Life Skills. A movie I wish to see and yet I am unable to find it.  As the new Doctor Who series approaches, there are a lot of articles about her and her role as the first ever lady Doctor. One article sparked my need to write this blog post.

In the article titled “Jodie Whittaker on the Importance of Becoming Doctor Who‘s Star,” she explains how awesome it would if it weren’t such a big deal.

It’s amazing to be a milestone, but how wonderful if it wasn’t, if it was just accepted, embraced. I’m not dissing the moment—it’s f**king brilliant—but hopefully when other people grow up, it’s not so much of a surprise.

How great is that??  I love that. It would be so awesome if this weren’t such a big deal. If we could just watch the show and not worry about the gender of who is cast as the lead. After I read this article, I realized something.

I’ve always believed that I was a feminist. I am all for the empowerment of women. We should be equals in everything. At one point, I started feeling that men were beneath us. I can tell you that this is a toxic thought.

We need to come together and celebrate our strengths. Every human needs to come together. Which led me to this realization…

I’m a humanist.

Let’s all raise each other up. Honor our differences and praise our strengths!

What I’m Thankful For

I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving! Of course, this is the one time of year where I force myself to stop and look around. I reflect on all the blessings around me and those blessings that tend to get buried when piles of homework show up on the desk or when surgery of a daughter consumes all of the minutes of the day I usually have for myself.

As you all may or may not know, I’m an introvert. Big family gatherings are DEFINITELY not my thing. For the past few years, I blissfully just had pizza with my mom on the day of thanks and Thank God every year for not having to be at a big family gathering. This year was different. Every year for the past few years, the girls’ dad would take them to their grandmother’s in Michigan. This was the first year after his divorce, and he would only have his little boy for 24 hours. Not enough time to travel to Michigan for the holiday. So, I invited him over. Which then snowballed into his mother coming over and then my sister and little niece and then my grandparents.  It turned into what I hated the most…. a gathering! *queue shrieks of terror*

I didn’t really fear at as much as I usually would because this will be mine and the girls’ last Thanksgiving for a minute. I thought I should try to do some semblance of a get-together. One last hurrah if you will. I even made the pies! I was so very proud of myself. I made a pumpkin pie, and a pecan pie as these pies would be made at our very first Kiwi Thanksgiving.

Let me tell you. This gathering was an utterly overwhelming nightmare. His mom drains the very life out of things. The constant chatter grated on my brain cells. Each and every single little brain cell. I prayed for the evening to end so that I could relax and wind down. When everyone was gone, and all the mess was cleaned up, I passed out hardcore!

Even though the day was an introvert’s nightmare, I was thankful for it. I was thankful for all of the friends and family that love my girls and me. I am thankful that we are able to afford a feast when others sadly can not. I was thankful for the health of all who were with us.

I am thankful for my daughter’s recovery after her surgery. I was so worried that she wasn’t going to be able to handle it. But she has beautifully, and the wound is healing great!

I am thankful for my gorgeous fiancee. I have been distant lately – not on purpose but because of the sheer volume of craziness that has been in my household as of late. My job, my schoolwork, the surgery, and the holidays – all of these things have taken time away from her, and I’m so thankful and grateful that she has stuck around. I would be so mad if the tables were turned but I am high maintenance, so there is that. I love her so much!

I hope everyone reading this has reflected on all of their blessings this holiday season. Hopefully, we can all reflect on these blessings more than once a year.

God bless you all!

The Guest List

Wedding planning has been put on the back burner with my life being so crazy at the moment. And when I say put on the back burner I mean taken off the stove entirely. The other day my wedding planning app – LadyMarry – alerted me that I haven’t been on it in a while and maybe I should see if there’s anything on my checklist that I may need to look at.

I opened the app and looked at the guest list. I don’t want to invite anyone on that list. I told Emma that we should have stuck to the plan and just got married at the courthouse and that would be it. She said we could still just get married at the courthouse and then have a family bonfire afterward. I told her I don’t want to have a party. I don’t want people.

I have a part of many weddings and this is no shocker — WEDDINGS ARE NEVER ABOUT THE TWO PEOPLE GETTING MARRIED. This makes me more and more upset as time goes by. Weddings are always about the guests. We gotta make sure the guests are fed. We gotta make sure the guests are having fun. Where are the guests going to stay if they live out of town. And at this point….

The more I think about it… the more I’m liking the idea that Emma suggested. Courthouse and then bonfire afterward. I told her that I may and probably change my mind later when I’m not dealing with a post-surgery daughter and homework that’s up to my eyeballs.

I just want to get married. That’s it. I want to be the best wife and stepmom I can be and start having awesome adventures – and some misadventures – with my giant blended family.

Stress

Or the day my brain split in twain…

Let us look at my laundry list issues that I had been dealing with this past couple of weeks, shall we?

1. An overabundance of work
2. An overabundance of school work
3. My daughter’s first ever surgical procedure
4. The feeling that my happy pills aren’t working.
5. A bombshell (in my mind) announcement from a dear and close friend.

I do NOT at all in any capacity handle stress very well… like at all! It’s just not hardwired into my mainframe. So when stresses in my life compound like they did recently a meltdown ensues.

What’s unfortunate about me is that I have a set schedule on how my days should be going and if the said schedule is interrupted in any way, I lose my shit. My main job responsibility at work is to send out documentation to our patients’ primary care doctors and specialists. This is such an easy and thoughtless job but the issue is that I have to wait for our doctors to sign off on the documentation before I can send it out. So, what happens when a doctor sits on these documents for weeks at a time and sign all of their 100 documents at one time? Oh, wait! Here’s a better question for you: what happens when three or four of our doctors sign off on their documents at once?

Yeah, that!

This stress filters down into my school work. This situation is all of my own doing. I get home from a stressful day and I just want to spend time with my girls. I do not want to do any of my thousands of pages of homework. So, that falls behind.

One of my daughters was found to have a pilonidal cyst last month which requires surgery. She is totally anxious about this which in turn makes me stressed. She has zero pain tolerance. No, I take that back… she has negative 5,000-percent pain tolerance. She doesn’t even have pain tolerance when she thinks of pain. She goes into surgery this week and I must say I am so very anxious about how she is going to deal with this all.

With all of this, I feel that my happy pills are not exactly doing their job. Luckily, I have an appointment with my doctor in a couple weeks for this.

What just put a cherry on top of this crapfest cake, was an announcement one of my dearest and closest friends made. I was distraught at this development so I went to my only source of calmness and solidity I have on this planet – my gorgeous and loving fiancee whose uterus was currently being visited by the red devil. Her response was not one that I wanted to hear and that’s when my brain just cracked.

Queue meltdown city in three… two… ONE!

Within this meltdown, I imagined God up there saying “Dude, you’re acting like you’ve lost. You’ve got Me. I don’t lose.” That’s when I threw my hands my hands in the air and claimed victory in the name of Jesus Christ. I can’t do this alone and I was never created to go about this alone.

None of us were created to do this alone.

Hey, do you know what happened the next day? Miracles upon blessings. In the morning, I did my daily check of my daughter’s cyst to make sure it wasn’t getting infected or increasing in size. It had shriveled up like a little raisin. Which gave me hope that the surgery wasn’t going to be all that bad. I was able to catch up on my work by Friday. I got all my schoolwork done Friday night. I felt better about my friend’s announcement. On top of that, my girl and I had a talk and I feel like our love and relationship is stronger than ever.

All of my life, I have been taught the tools of living a stress-free and blessed life through the teachings I received at church. Why am I calling myself a Christian if I can’t even apply these lessons to my life?

Here’s the moral of the story: In all of the chaos and blinding uncertainty, God will be glorified. Sometimes, hitting rock bottom in your own life, makes you take stock. It makes you see all the wonderful things in your life that you are blessed with.

I have a lot of learning to do when it comes to handling stress. I may not have been hardwired to handle it but I do believe I can be upgraded – and not in the creepy Cyberman type way – to handle these situations a lot better.

Pray for me. Pray for my daughter. Pray for strength. Pray for wisdom.

Enough

These past couple weeks have been stupid and I’m done. I’m claiming victory in Jesus Christ.

The Empire’s New Clothes: How Racial Prejudice Has Evolved in the US.

A very important post to read!

Why I Might Go To Hell

The reason why I could go to Hell isn’t what most conservatives would think. I’m not going to Hell because next year I plan to lie with a woman as a man. Although, if she were a man, I wouldn’t be lying with her. ‘Cuz… gross. It’s not because I don’t attend church every Sunday or because I don’t read the Bible every day. No, none of these. My ticket to Hell is my struggle with is the two greatest commandments.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.”    ~Mark 12:30-31 NIV

I struggle with both of these. I do love God with all my heart and soul. Or so I would like to believe. But how can I love God if I can’t keep His second commandment?

For the past four years, that command has been tested to its absolute limits and beyond. How can I love a man who had manipulated the sweetest and most loving soul to a point where she believed she wasn’t worthy of anything. Or a man who allows his mother to call his 11-year-old daughter a bitch. The same man who criticizes his 12-year-old son of his weight. How am I suppose to love this narcissistic sociopath?

You see, the problem is that signed up for this as soon as I accepted Jesus into my heart. I must love God and love other as I love myself. Damn. Why didn’t I meet this man when I hated myself back in my teenage years and early twenties. I’d be off the hook, right?

I seethe hatred every time I hear of his escapades and tyrants. It’s not healthy. I’ve never hated anyone in my life until this man. What’s sad is that this hatred is like a gateway drug. Now that I’ve allowed hate into my life, it’s so much easier to hate others as well. I don’t want to be this way. I don’t want this hate allowed into my heart no matter how justified I feel it is.

So, how do I do it? I did a little research on what it means to love your neighbor when they are completely unlovable. I checked out some Christian websites and blogs. A lot of these featured stories of people who are “unlovable” like the neighbor who gossips or the neighbor that doesn’t mow their lawn. Really? I need real answers about real unlovables!

Even though I felt the unlovable neighbors not all that unlovable, the themes were all the same. We are to serve them. I am at a loss. I don’t even know where to begin with that. Then I read one blog post that added that we should pray for them. Prayer. That’s where I should start.

I have almost ten months to get this in check. I have ten months of preparation, of prayer, and of reading scripture. ‘Cuz the only the Lord knows how I can accomplish this.

——————————————————————————————————

How would you love your neighbor if you felt they were unlovable?

Book Review: Mergers & Acquisitions

Title: Mergers and Acquisitions
Written by: A.E. Radley
Pages: 270
Publisher: Heartsome Publishing

About This Book (as seen on Amazon.com):
Kate Kennedy prides herself on running the very best advertising agency in Europe.

One day her top client asks her to work on a lucrative project with the notoriously fastidious Georgina Masters, of the American agency Mastery.

The temporary merger causes a fiery clash of cultures and personalities. Especially when Georgina sets her romantic sights on Kate’s young intern, Sophie.

Review:
She’s done it again!  A.E. Radley is by far my FAVORITE lesfic author.  Every book she writes that I can get my greedy little hands on I can’t put down, and this is no different.  I injured myself while on a walk during my lunch break at work.

She does a fantastic job of writing characters.  They are well developed, and I can’t help even to love her dragon ladies as well.  After I’m done with reading the books, I can’t help to think about the characters and what they’re doing now like they are my old friends.  I have repeated this time and time, but I love how she does not use sex in her books.  I love that the focus is on the relationship.

The one thing I didn’t like was how Sophie’s relationship with her long-term boyfriend panned out.  It left too many open-ended questions for me.  It felt weird that she dumped him on the assumption that he was cheating on her and then fell into the arms of an older woman. It didn’t sit well that I just had to accept she was in a relationship for so long and that was that.  I was also worried about a love triangle, but it all shakes out in the end.

I do love Radley’s use of a bisexual character.  I don’t see much of those in books.

All in all, I simply loved this book!  It’s an easy and fun read.  And I can NOT wait to read her next book!

 

How to get your copy:
Amazon.com
Heartsome Publishing

The Options These Days

Check out the guest post I wrote titled The Options These Days  for Lynn Thorne’s blog! After that, follow her blog! She’s really opened my eyes on the topic of trans awareness and acceptance. She’s a great ally!

Thoughts from the Shower #1

As I was standing in the shower shaving my armpits, my eyes fell upon my shower gel. The French word for wash is douche. So, have people been insulting others by calling them a cleanser? Is it really that insulting to a guy to be called a cleanser inserted into a vagina? I thought straight guys like vaginas. 

That’s just a peek into my brain pan. Y’all should be scared.