I almost forgot - GO BLACKHAWKS!! Stanley Cup Finals once again. I'm so excited, I actually got to watch a full game last night and I kept my gibberish to a minimum and the 'Hawks ran away with it. They took control and never let up. It was a great game, so much fun (I'm the weirdo that always prefers blowouts when it's my team playing, it's a lot less stressful that way). 4 more wins and it'll be #3 - LET'S GO 'HAWKS!!! :-)
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Finally, a fully nice weekend. Both days, beautiful and we had nothing going on! Finally took the time to take care of some yard work and some house work. I won’t lie, we’ve been slacking. Our schedule has been so busy that by the time we have a minute to do it, we’re not moving!
It gets hard. I get flustered more easily when we’re behind on home upkeep but I get flustered when I’ve been going all day and don’t get a chance to sit down and be as well. It felt good finally getting some done. It feels good to take a minute to sit down and write again as well. I’ve been slacking on that this past week, too. Between three full nights of volleyball, two nights of karate and just standard running around plus being swamped at work (it is always everything at once!), it’s been hard to keep up with where I’m supposed to be and when. And, the volleyball team I was most worried about showed me why I was so worried about them. They have the potential and they hung in there for the most part, but they would compete and they let some easy plays go, get back in it and then let some easy plays go. Again and again. Practice went a little bit better on Friday after that and I hope, I really do, they realize what they’re up against. It was a rough week but I’ll get into the swing of things. In between catching up with the house and yard work, I got to enjoy just sitting outside and relaxing. The weather was perfect and it was refreshing. Now we’re preparing for school to end this week as well. The kids will feel better with their busy schedules having the days off but I have a feeling it will just be more exhausting for me. Summer days aren’t the most exciting thing when both parents work. But, now back to dinner. Chicken salads tonight. A nice refreshing dinner to end a nice productive, refreshing weekend. Until next time… When the wind blows and everything goes quiet, what do you hear? When you are all alone with your thoughts, what do you feel?
She told the story. She told the whole story. It took her years of hurt and heartbreak and confusion and pain and loss to get it out of her, but she finally told it. All those years trying not to hurt anyone while the hurt piled up for her and she said enough. It took a loss. It took lost opportunities. It took a tragedy. It took going back and remembering everything that got her to where she was, made her the person she was to finally realize it was okay for her to stop hurting. The questions kept piling up for her. Who will it hurt? Who will be offended? Who will even care that her story was told? Will telling her story free her or will it bring more lost confusion? Does she even need to worry about that anymore? “Those who mind, don’t care - those who care, don’t mind”, right? She will stay strong. She always has been the strong one. Just nobody knew that the strong outer appearance was just for show, that deep down, she was dying. She was saved years ago. It did not make all the hurt go away, but it made her stronger, more able to handle the hurt. If she had not been saved when she had, who knows if she would have made it through. Her story goes on. The pain will one day subside. She is sure of it. One step at a time, she tells herself. One day at a time, she reminds herself. One relationship at a time. She asks herself now, when can she go back and make peace one last time? When will she be able to take it all in the way she needs to? Time can heal. She will be back. It will never be the way it should be, the way she wants it to be, the way she always hoped. There will always be someone missing, someone who will not take the time and someone who cannot be there any longer. It is the story of the world. The world goes on. Life is lived one day, one moment at a time. All that time, all those moments, what will you do with it? Crazy Volleyball Schedules – My weekends are finally mostly free, but my weekday schedules have gotten pretty brutal, at least 3 days a week.
Tuesdays, Wednesday and Fridays, I wake up at 5:00 in the morning. I get a 30-45 minute workout then get ready for work, which starts at 7:00. I am there until 3:00. I get home between 3:30-3:45 to change and grab a quick bite and leave again by 4:10. Then, I am in the gym coaching from 4:30-9:00 and finally get home for the day at about 9:30. Just to wake up at 5:00 again the next morning (except on Saturdays, I like to sleep in now!). Mondays are my free afternoon and Thursdays I get home to leave at 4:10 for karate. Thankfully, that is only an hour so I am back home by 5:30. I am trying to get into a habit of making dinners for a few days at a time on the days I have off. I haven’t been able to do that yet. It’s very difficult to eat at all healthy when you are running around like that and I’ll figure out a way to do it for a couple of days and then it all goes to hell again! But, two of my teams did have their first games last night. My little ones and my middle ones. Both teams did win both of their games. The little ones, I have some girls that have been playing with me and they are right on that edge of being able to take the next step and I felt it hurt them a little bit to have a younger team around them. The newer ones played well but we have A LOT to work on to get where they should be. I had to take some of my more experienced players aside and tell them to use this a learning experience as a leader. Take hold of the team, let everyone know what is expected and show the how it is done so you can get ready for the next level. I hope it sinks in and she decided to be the hardest worker on the team. My mid-level team started off so well. Their first set, they played as good as I have ever seen them play and this was them moving up, their first game at the next level. I was excited and then they went a bit downhill. They started missing and making not so good decisions and losing some focus. They did end up winning both of their games, but they have a long way to go to be at the level they were at before they moved. I think after that first set was so easy, they expected it to be just as easy as it always was so weren’t bringing the intensity they started with. It was good to be able to start with wins while still seeing what we really need to work on. Overall, I was happy. Tonight, it’s the big kids. This is going to be my hardest test yet, I think. I hope it goes well! P.S. My book is out now on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/loss-MOTHERs-Jennifer-Shriver-ebook/dp/B00Y7I7L4O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1432755583&sr=8-1&keywords=jennifer+shriver READ IT! J Well, I did it. I published my book. I went the self-publishing route and it is now available as an e-book through Amazon. I know people have wanted to know the story of my mom and me for a very long time. I finally decided, with everything that has happened in the past few months that it was time to get it all out in the open.
It was not always easy to relive some of the events that took place and it was even harder, in some parts, to dig as deep as I did into everything I was feeling about certain situations. A lot of heart and tears went into this book and that will be my last memory of my mom, that she gave me that one last push to finally finish writing it. No matter what happened between her and me, I do miss her. No matter the time nor distance between us, I always loved her. I am hoping getting all of this out in the open will finally release me. It is available as an e-book from Amazon: the loss of A MOTHER’s loss. It can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/loss-MOTHERs-Jennifer-Shriver-ebook/dp/B00Y7I7L4O/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1432646175&sr=1-1&keywords=jennifer+shriver The print version will be coming soon. I hope you enjoy it. Thank you! On This Day…
5/26/1897 – the first copies of Dracula go on sale in London – Happy 118th Birthday to Dracula – how crazy is that? 5/26/1927 – the last day of Model T production at the Ford plants – 19 years strong and over 15 million vehicles, the Model T came to an end. 5/26/1865 – one of the last Confederate Generals surrenders – General Edmund Kirby Smith filed his surrender of the Trans-Mississippi Department – the last significant Confederate field Army left. 5/26/1959 – Pittsburgh Pirates’ Harvey Haddix pitched 12 perfect innings and lost in the 13th inning 5/26/1977 – George Willig attached himself the a window washer mechanism and scaled the World Trade Center in three and a half hours. Happy Birthday to John Wayne, Miles Davis, Stevie Nicks, Lenny Karvitz, Sally Ride I Am…
I am a Chicago Blackhawks fan. Sports are a great distraction from everyday life (most of the time, sometimes there is too much real world incorporated into something that should be fun). And the ‘Hawks have been pretty damn good for the past half-decade or so. I was never a huge hockey fan. It is not my go to sport by a long shot but I give all sports their fare shake! It has always been hard for me to watch it – I ALWAYS lose the puck, my eyes just cannot follow that little thing around the damn ice. I’ve been a score checker for a great number of years, though. Gotta love technology! Before the advancements of technology to follow everything humanly possible, I did not follow many sports. It was hard to do as a Chicago fan a thousand miles away so it just became what it was. When I started being able to have scores in my hand at all times with the touch of a button, I knew every Chicago teams score at all times; including the Blackhawks. I started watching the games more often in 2010. Playoff hockey is a lot of fun. I remember Sam was out training during the Finals (he’s never been a huge hockey fan either) so while he was gone, I saw the Blackhawks were up 3-2 in the series with game 6 on. I turned it on. I learned then that I speak a lot of gibberish when watching hockey (I will never watch a game I care about with anyone other than my husband!). I don’t know how to watch, I don’t know what to say and I’m a very vocal sports spectator. Every other sport, I can annunciate what I mean but not with hockey. Ever since that game, Patrick Kane scoring the winning goal in OT to take home the Stanley Cup, I’ve followed along pretty closely. Patty Kane quickly became my favorite player (and remains to be!) I still don’t watch too many games because they are not televised in Colorado very often and I’m not home enough to sit down and watch games most of the time anyways. But, during the playoffs, I make it a point to catch as many of the games as I can now. Now the Blackhawks are down 3-2 to the Ducks. They love the playoff overtime games but they could not take last night’s game. They went down quick and worked their way back into to send it into OT and then just couldn’t finish it out. I was having a sports melt down last night, really. The Blackhawks dug themselves in a big hole and then Steph Curry (who now that the Bulls are out, I would like to see win it all), went down HARD. I didn’t know what to do with so much bad sports news happening at once! Steph came back in but the Warriors couldn’t get back in the game just as the ‘Hawks could not close. But, the ‘Hawks like the pressure, they like making it close, they like overtimes and game 7s and stringing things out as long as possible. They like that all their fans need to own a defibrillator just to watch their damn games! I am hoping next season the Blackhawks are out here on a day I can go to the game so I can watch them here. I’ll be the one in my Patty Kane jersey, screaming gibberish nothingness as all the Avs fan wonder who the crazy chick is. I am a Blackhawks fan, what can I say? J P.S. My book is available as an e-book on Amazon – you should check it out! http://www.amazon.com/loss-MOTHERs-Jennifer-Shriver-ebook/dp/B00Y7I7L4O/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1432669458&sr=8-2&keywords=jennifer+shriver Today I would just like to take a minute to thank all the people who have given their life for this great country that I am proud to call my home. The Soldiers that sacrificed their lives for me and the families that sacrificed their Soldier for this country are amazing people. Thank you! You will forever be in my heart.
#BolderBoulder
Every Memorial Day for the past some odd years my husband and I have done the BolderBoulder 10K run and we let the kids decide if they want to come with. Running is not their favorite thing in the world so we let it be their decision. This year, they did not want to come with us. But, it has become a Memorial Day tradition for us, either way. It is “the greatest 10k”. And we don’t disagree. 50,000 plus people do it every year. There are waves starting at 7:00 in the morning going until almost 11:00 in the morning. Usually, we do the Military wave. We are a Military family and since the kids started doing it with us, that way we knew we weren’t hindering anybody else from running because it was such a late wave. This year, the kids did not want to do it (we’ll have them do a 5k or two later in the year), so we decided we would go with an earlier wave where we could actually run as well as have fun. It’s funny because when we go in the later waves, almost everyone is dressed up to an extent in some kind of American gear or just to be funny or whatever. This year, in the earlier waves, I felt like the only one! I suppose it made me stand out more; I was actually able to run through all the people who signed up for an earlier wave just because they could (not because they should) and show off my American pride on this Memorial Day. I’m proud to be an American. I am a vet as well, though I do not often talk about my time in service because of how it went for me but I am also the wife of a Soldier now and am proud that my husband has done everything he has. I was as American as they come for this run, head to toe and this year, I was one of the few because of how early our wave was. But, that did make it a more enjoyable run. I actually got to run a little bit. I won’t say my time exactly, because I am not fully proud of that ( I was a smidge slow, I enjoyed the day and haven’t taken the time to do 6 miles in a while), but I ran it and I enjoyed it and I love our traditions. We are a family that makes our own traditions, some stick and some don’t but we always try to do something as a family that we can do over and over again. Neither of us had many iron clad traditions growing up so we try to make our own up as we go. The #BolderBoulder has become one of them. The kids may not always do it with us, but they always support it and always get something out of it that they are proud of. Long live the #BolderBoulder. Raising a 13 Year Old – Raising a 13 year old girl can be quite a challenge! The mood swings are insane, the new friends, the changing mindset, the new attitudes, the new thoughts about boys. It is scary. I don’t know how to handle all of it sometimes. She tries to get jabs in by “standing up for her sister”, she pretends she doesn’t care when she gets grounded from things – tells me she doesn’t need it or want it anyways. And, with her loving to read so much, she really doesn’t need it any of it. She’ll lock herself in her room and read all day and all night sometimes. I’ve gotten close to the point a couple times to ground her from reading but, I just can’t bring myself to do that. It’s such a catch 22 as well because she really is such a good kid. She knows right and wrong and she lets people she is with know that she doesn’t want to be a part of doing anything wrong. I’ve witnessed it firsthand with her before. She tries so hard to be a good friend and when she feels someone is not being a good friend, she tries to kindly let them know. She is quiet but always respectful to other adults. Always trying to do the right thing. But man, at home she can be a completely different kid! I guess parenting is a lot like growing up though, we are all in this together, learning and changing and growing and teaching together. All I know is what it was like for me when I was 13, not only was that many, many years ago, things were different, times were different and all people are different. She is a lot like me and I try to remember how I felt in different instances and circumstances but it doesn’t seem to ever really work. She’s also started walking home with a nice boy. He’s a grade higher than her. She has not really decided to talk about him with me yet, but she talks to her sister about him. At least she’s telling someone – now I just have to get them mad enough at each other so her sister spills the beans! Just kidding – I want them to be able to confide in each other. I always wished I had that when I was a kid. Hell, I wish I had that now! The attitude about everything is what really gets me the most. One minute we can be laughing and joking about something and then all of a sudden, she is irritated with me talking to her about it. We’re learning though – I’m learning to back off more and she’s trying to learn not to get so irritated with me! I’ll never stop trying to grow up J |
"the loss of A MOTHER's loss" by Jennifer Shriver now on Amazon
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