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Why? Because I'm anal like that. It's one of my little pet peeves. When I wake up in the morning, I can't even make coffee yet if there are any dirty dishes in my kitchen sink from the night before. If my kitchen sink doesn't look like this, then my brain hurts.
Well, this morning there were dirty dishes. My oh my. And they were left by my husband from the night before.
I just have to brag about myself here to cyberspace that I remained calm through finding several things early this morning that are on Kristen's little list of pet peeves. Okay...maybe it's not such a "little" list :)
But I refrained from the impulse to call, text or email my wonderful husband and rant to him about all these things I'm finding in the morning that are raising my blood pressure. Yes...being me is hard sometimes. I hope you're able to read this knowing my sense of humor can be sarcastic at times to make my points not so umm...pointy.
Anyways, back to my bragging...
I did some self-talk to not act out angrily towards my husband regarding the pet-peeves. And this is what I said: "it's okay Kristen, this will be dealt with, just not right now. I will address these all important things with him, just not at the moment" (This bought me time. Much needed time to calm myself down and focus on going about my other morning routines.)
I also said, "I got to go out last night. I got to hang out with a friend and enjoy time away from being home. I get to do this every week in fact. I'm pretty lucky. Lots of my friends with young children don't have this wonderful arrangement with their husbands or partners. He gave the kids a bath and got them down. Who cares if the house was a bit messier than I'd prefer and etc. He is the type of person who probably HUNG OUT with the kids and PLAYED with them last night before putting them to bed, and THAT'S why the house is not as clean and orderly as I'd prefer. Hmmmm....there's something admirable about that in fact. I can totally clean up and make the house more to my standards being GRATEFUL that the REASON I'm having to do this is because my children were being PLAYED with last night by their dad, while their mom was out enjoying her time with friends."
Wow. And I could have so so easily ruined this all by following along with my impluse to call, text or email my husband to rant and vent about my pet-peeves with the house and I would have totally missed out on all this. All this? What's "all this"?
1. satisfaction of gaining more experience of self-soothing without any harsh confrontations
2. self realization that I can turn my own feelings of anger and frustration into gratitude
3. choosing love over judgment without having said or done anything I later regretted
4. biting my tongue and walking myself through this brought focus to what I was doing...made me more present instead of being checked out by my anger
These things are HUGE for this little mama who has a hot, HOT tempter :) I practiced good relational fire prevention skills. Yay me!
These occurences are rather rare, but by God's grace...they will be piling up more and more.
And I'm not even going to go back and edit this one before publishing it because I'm can be carefree.
Babysteps, right?
Be BLESSED. Press on. Fight the good fight.
Laterz,
kristen
2. self realization that I can turn my own feelings of anger and frustration into gratitude
3. choosing love over judgment without having said or done anything I later regretted
4. biting my tongue and walking myself through this brought focus to what I was doing...made me more present instead of being checked out by my anger
These things are HUGE for this little mama who has a hot, HOT tempter :) I practiced good relational fire prevention skills. Yay me!
These occurences are rather rare, but by God's grace...they will be piling up more and more.
Babysteps, right?
Be BLESSED. Press on. Fight the good fight.
Laterz,
kristen
