Posts Tagged ‘marriage’

Day 103 and Counting… In Walmart and Still Smiling

Posted: December 14, 2012 in Love and Marriage
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Saturday, November 20, 2010

For some time now, I’ve been lusting after the new Bianchi road bikes at one of the bike shops in town. Today, I finally got one. My wife has a Masi, so we both have Italian bikes now, but I’ve just always had a thing for Bianchi.

We’re having a very small thanksgiving meal with some family this weekend, because we’ll be taking the Restoration Tour to Chicago on Wednesday and be spending the actual holiday there. We also are taking part in an outreach our church does where they give you a list and you go to the store with a plastic bag and you buy all the ingredients for a traditional holiday meal except the turkey.

Everyone brings their bags to the church and another local charity provides the turkeys. Needy families are identified through the public schools and they are sent an invitation to receive an entire meal for their family.

Ceecee and I don’t usually shop at Wal-Mart because we find it very aggravating. We finally decided that instead of complaining about it, we’d just quit going and shop elsewhere. Today, we shopped at Wal-Mart for our bag from church, mainly because we could get everything in one place and they want everyone to get pretty much the same stuff, so no one feels slighted.

The store was really crowded as usual and there was little or no service from employees, as usual, but it didn’t bother me. In the past, I would become upset and very negative and my wife would often get the brunt of it, even though I never meant for that to happen. Today, I have a new peace inside and I realized that it just didn’t matter. It was pretty nice to go through the whole Wal-Mart experience and be able to keep smiling.

It’s little things like that, as well as the big things that continue to show that I’ve really changed. Not just on the outside, but on the inside, where the changes are real and permanent. Anyone can temporarily change their behavior, but that’s only an outward change. Willpower can only take you so far. Only God can truly change a heart and I’m so thankful that He has and that I let Him.

Day 102 and Counting…Beginning Physical Therapy

Posted: December 13, 2012 in Love and Marriage
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Friday, November 19, 2010

Well, we survived the short night and getting up and going to work this morning. Afterward, I had my first appointment for physical therapy on my knee. The MRI apparently was inconclusive, so the doctor sent me to a rehabilitation place. They did a bunch of strength and range of motion tests on me and now it’s really confusing.

They don’t seem to be in agreement on what the cause is or how to proceed. The doctor had told me he blamed my hips. The one guy who examined me today said I have flat feet and thinks that’s what’s causing the problem when I run. Another guy says my left leg is shorter than my right and that’s the likely problem. It’s frustrating, because back when I was 19, I had a chiropractor diagnose me with a shorter left leg and had me wear a lift inside my shoe. Since I moved away from there, other doctors have said that wasn’t true and I’ve always had chronic back problems without ever being certain why.

Anyway, we’re going to start p/t and they want me to get fitted for custom orthotics. I don’t’ really care, as long as I get better and can get back to running and doing the things I was. I’m glad not to be having surgery, but these guys don’t give me lot of confidence that they are doing more than guessing and trying things out.

Day 100 and Counting… Being “Found” After 20 Years

Posted: December 11, 2012 in Love and Marriage
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Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Our marriage had so many great moments during the years before I began to fall apart. One theme that was pretty constant was my attempting, and often succeeding, in making Ceecee’s dreams come true. There have been many small ones and a few big ones.

One that happened recently had nothing to do with me. Well, not on the surface anyway. Ceecee had put a baby up for adoption long ago and had set it up to be an open adoption. She had always kept in touch with the lawyer and made sure he had her current address and contact information at all times.

The parents were supposed to have agreed that whenever the child asked about her biological parents, she would be told and that it would be her choice to initiate contact, if she wanted to. Ceecee often talked about her and wondered when that contact would occur.

When the time came that the girl would be turning sixteen, we believed that maybe it would be soon, but nothing happened. Again, around and following her 18th birthday, we anticipated that we would hear something. No contact was made again.

We knew what her adopted name was and had made small attempts to see if there were any public records or a Facebook page that would allow us to simply see how she seemed to be growing up, but there was never anything that we found that told us anything. Our oldest daughter had tried to find her more than once, but everything had proven to be false trails.

Then, one day recently, Angie called and said that she thought this time she had really found her on Facebook. Ceecee wasn’t allowed to initiate contact, but there was nothing preventing Angie from messaging her. She sent a friend request, which was accepted.

About this time, Ceecee came up to me one evening, held out her phone and said, “Look at this.” She was showing me a picture and I said, “Why are you showing me a picture of Kasey?” (Kasey is our middle daughter.) Ceecee said, “That’s not Kasey.” I looked again and just said, “Wow!” The family resemblance was uncanny. There was no doubt she was a sister.

Finally, it got to where everything was out in the open and Ceecee and her long ago adopted daughter got to speak on the phone briefly the other night. It’s just been one more amazing highlight in this magical time of our lives. While I had no direct impact on this taking place, we’ve talked about how much different this might be if we hadn’t worked our marriage out.

They would still be biological mother and daughter, regardless. The fact that Ceecee is now stable, happy, and in a good place is so much better than the alternative, though. This isn’t going to change anyone’s life, but we anticipate visits and the building of some amount of relationship as time goes by. I can’t be happier to be a part of it

Day 99 and Counting…A Marathon Souvenir

Posted: December 10, 2012 in Love and Marriage
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Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Yesterday was the day Veteran’s Day was observed, so it was a day off for Ceecee and me. We did something crazy that we may regret later, but for now it makes a fun story.
For the bass pro marathon, they put these huge stickers on the roads and sidewalks at various points along the route that had encouraging sayings on them. They are rectangular and approximately 2 x 3 feet in dimensions. A week after the race, they were all still there.

You may have guessed what happens next. We took our bikes out and came across more than one of them. Ceecee commented about wanting one for the loft, so when we found one along the trail, away from traffic, we dismounted to have a closer look.

It was very thick and peeled right off, so I rolled it up inside out and carried it home. The loft has a concrete floor and we stuck it down right at the end of the hall where it opens up into the living area. I suppose it may have been stealing, but nobody seemed intent on gathering them back up, and even if they did, it’s not like they could be re-used. I’m sure they would simply be thrown away.

Anyway, now it’s our souvenir. Ceecee says she’ll probably never run another full marathon, but she is now one of very few who have not only completed one, but brought a little part of the course home and made it part of the décor.

Discovering Kundalini Yoga

Posted: December 7, 2012 in Love and Marriage
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I’m pretty excited about this “new” kind of yoga that I’ve recently discovered. Actually, it’s thousands of years old – probably the oldest form of yoga in existence. I’ve never been a fan of yoga before now. It’s always seemed like too much pain and discomfort for too little benefit the few times I’ve tried it.

I subscribe to a number of online newsletters from marriage and relationship gurus and I recently read an article about the 8 chakras in the body and it had a link to an article about kundalini yoga. I liked the fact that the article took a scientific, not a spiritual approach to the chakras and presented the physiology of the exercises.

I decided to browse my local library and checked out a couple of DVD’s. They were very challenging, but I felt so much better afterward. They focus very specifically on the spine and on posture and breathing. As a person who has had a lifetime of chronic back pain and chiropractic, this certainly appealed to me.

My hope is that continuing to do this regularly will make Ceecee’s and my visits to the chiropractor obsolete. So far, so good.

Day 97 and Counting…All I need; Already Have It

Posted: December 6, 2012 in Love and Marriage
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Sunday, November 14, 2010

I’m still at Macy’s and Ceecee wants me to put in my two weeks notice. I would like to, and will probably have to because of Thanksgiving, but I have to admit – the extra money is nice. We are going to Chicago over Thanksgiving break from school and this will be one of the most important stops on the restoration tour. If Macy’s won’t let me have the time off, I’ll have to quit. If they do let me, I may stay until Christmas.

My working two jobs means we have less time together, but we seem to make more of the time we have than we ever did before. Maybe it’s because we appreciate what we have so much more now. It’s somewhat true that you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. We are both really motivated now not to take each other for granted.
I sell furniture and it’s really dead in our department a lot of the time. That means I have a lot of time just to think. That’s good and bad. It’s good in that it’s not a stressful job and I can use some of the time I’m on the clock to meditate and work on healing and continuing to grow and change. My therapist gave me some breathing and meditation exercises to do and they really help.

It’s also bad because I do have so much time to think, so I find my mind going back to the pain of our past and I’m sometimes borderline obsessing over what happened and the regrets I have. I find myself dreading certain songs being played and I have to constantly re-direct my thoughts to the present and the joy we’re living now.

Today, I was thinking about it all and I realized that when I was all messed up in the past, the love of my life was already there with me. I thought I needed to go looking for something, but I already had it all right from the start. I questioned Ceecee’s love for me for so long and I convinced myself that it couldn’t last forever. Now I see that her love was always true and I had everything I wanted and needed all along.

Day 94 and Counting… Cardio Kick-boxing

Posted: December 4, 2012 in Love and Marriage
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Thursday, November 11, 2010

We signed up for a cardio-kickboxing class at our gym. Last night was the first class. We feel like we’re in a rut and have kind of plateaued in our training, so we thought this would be a way to break out of that and be pushed to do some new things.

The instructor is this young girl who used to be one of the “sugar bears,” our local university’s version of the “Laker girls.” She has a fun personality, but she can do things that I can’t ever imagine being able to do, so the class was definitely a challenge. I’m pretty sore today, but this will be good for us.

Day 92 and Counting…Food, Wine, and an MRI

Posted: December 3, 2012 in Love and Marriage
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Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Had my MRI yesterday. Now we wait for the results. Depending on what it shows, it could either mean surgery or rehab. I just want to get it fixed, so I can do the things I want to be able to do. I don’t want surgery, but I do want to get better.

After the marathon, I thought Ceecee would be really wiped. I also thought she’d be ravenously hungry. Turned out neither was true, which was both good and bad. I’ll explain.

I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned it in this blog, but I’ve been a wine columnist and freelance food and wine writer since 2004. The wire service that used to run my weekly wine column succumbed to the poor economy and the general demise of print media two years ago, so I’ve just been doing some local stuff and freelancing ever since.

There are a couple of local publications that have me doing fairly regular stories, and this past weekend was one of them. Ozarks Public Television has a big yearly event here that I cover as a wine writer, and this year, I got my editor to agree to let Ceecee go also as a food writer, since she’s been to culinary school and used to cook in a big resort near Branson.

On Friday night, they had a dinner at one of the better restaurants in town. Then, on Sunday afternoon, they had their big food and wine celebration at a convention center downtown. This was the same day as the marathon, so we left there around noon and the food and wine event was to run from 2-5 pm. I figured that Ceecee would either be dead on her feet and wouldn’t enjoy it, or she would be starving and would eat and drink everything.

In the end, she was neither, but we enjoyed the event. I was glad for Ceecee to get to be there and share in the food and drink. Now she’s cooking at the loft and playing Jack Johnson on the stereo. Tonight we’re watching “Julie and Julia,” one of our favorite food movies.

Day 90 and Counting…The Bass Pro Marathon

Posted: December 3, 2012 in Love and Marriage
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Sunday, November 7. 2010

I wanted to be part of the marathon somehow. I didn’t want to just be sitting in a chair somewhere along the route and hoping to make eye contact when she went by. This started out as such a big deal and she trained so intensely for several months.

Ironically, after we got back together, she has trained a lot less and she even said recently that actually running the marathon isn’t so important now. She’s still going to do it, and I wanted to be there in some capacity, so I volunteered to be a traffic director at one of the intersections.

They put me at about the 11 mile mark, so I saw her not quite halfway through. I got a chance to jog over alongside her and encourage her for a hundred yards of so before going back to my spot. She said she was doing well and she had gotten in a little group of people from her Galloway training group and they were helping each other.

I brought my bike with me, so when the last runner had gone by and my responsibility was over, I headed out on two wheels to look for her on the course. I had no idea where she might be, so I rode to the finish and worked my way backward. I found her at around mile 21 and she was struggling. I could tell she was in pain, so I stayed with her, talking to her and trying to keep her mind off it.

I knew from working at a fitness center during college that if you talked with someone who was having a hard time working out, it would pass the time quicker and help them forget about how they were feeling. I figured it couldn’t hurt to use that strategy now and it worked. She still had to get through those last five miles and I just kept talking to her and riding along beside her.

We finally reached a sign that said “26 miles down, .2 to go.” We couldn’t see the finish line yet, but knew it was just ahead. About that time, Angie was waiting along the side of the street and she started running in her high heels and cheering Ceecee on. As we came around the corner, I let her go and cross the finish line by herself. It didn’t seem right for me to cross it, since I wasn’t a runner in the race. This was her victory, her moment, and it was for her alone.

Day 89 and Counting… No News is…No News

Posted: November 30, 2012 in Love and Marriage
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Saturday, November 6, 2010

Yesterday’s doctor’s appointment was frustrating. I was really hoping he would say that my experience was common and would know what to do about it. Instead, he acted like he’d never heard of anything like it. He had me do a bunch of things and asked if it hurt or had me resist against pressure from him.

Finally he said that he thinks it’s because my hips are weak and it makes me unstable when I run long distances. I don’t know about that, but that’s what he came up with. He scheduled me for an MRI Monday and we’ll go from there.

Tomorrow is Ceecee’s marathon. It still overwhelms me and confuses me to no end when I think about all of this from when she first decided to run this marathon and everything we’ve been through since. I wouldn’t trade what we have now for anything in the world, and I’m not sure if there was another way we could have gotten here. Even so, I can’t help but wonder what really caused our separation and if we could have avoided it.

Can’t live in the past though, so it’s onward to better things. Ceecee has really lavished love on me lately and I’m basking in that. I finally feel the way I’ve always wanted to, but never thought I could. She makes me feel like I’m the most valuable and special person in the world.

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