journey – Page 3 – The Wandering Turtle

From Ms. to Mrs.

Not sure if I have ever shared this but I don’t write (on here) until the words come. It usually starts as sort of an idea bouncing around – whether that’s in the form of a title or a random thought – and when it becomes really persistent then I know it’s time to write. Blogging started as my therapy (thanks Bev) and continues to be that but also is just an outlet for something I’ve always loved doing – writing. I was telling someone Saturday that my creativity has changed over the years and I have learned to trust the process. I’ve quilted, scrapbooked, crafted, cooked, gardened, decorated, and written my way through my adult life. When one method dries up another reveals itself.

I digress. It’s Wedding Week. All things of the last eight weeks have been building up to this week. All of the stress, fear, anxiety, happiness, elation…and about a thousand other emotions have been snowballing into this week. On Saturday I go back to being a Mrs. again.

On some levels I feel like I have barely begun to adapt to being Ms. despite that having been the case for the last six years. I’m open enough to tell ya that I SWORE for years both before and after Fred died that I would never be crazy enough to fall in love again. (We won’t talk about how many people bet against me on that one!) I’d have rather been alone than risk the pain of losing another man who held my heart in his hands. You know what they say about making plans….God laughs and says “watch this”.

What He sent me was a man that I frequently find myself thinking of the old comics I used to read with my grandpa. The little girl and boy with the caption “Love is..”. Tim walks me to my truck every morning and then stands at the gate and waits until he is sure I’ve safely made it down the drive before he goes inside…love is that. Tim gathers me in his arms when I’ve had a horrible day and I come home mad, sad, exhausted, or some lousy combination of all three…love is that. He lets my dog sleep under my pillow even though he frequently gets kicked in the night when she dreams but he knows I can’t sleep without her…love is that. He holds me when I’m crying about how scared I am in all of this change…love is that. He busts his butt every day watching what he eats and getting on the exercise bike when I know he is tired so I won’t worry about the future….love is that. He tells me he can’t see any of the weight I know I’ve gained…love is that. You get the idea?

Tim and I have been through so much in the last 20 months – a lifetime of events (it feels like sometimes) and each time we are stronger and fall deeper in love. When I really think about what is changing for me right now my brain gives me some combination of terror and elation. Can I do this again? Be a Mrs.? Be the best Mrs. like he deserves?

HELL YES I CAN! This man walked through all of his fears and demons to get to this place and I’ll do nothing less but meet him in that place. Love is THAT. Love is also this army of friends and family who have helped, listened, cheered us on, and been there for us. Who are excited to see the transition from Ms. to Mrs. this weekend and celebrate the love that God blessed us both with.

Blessings y’all – Amy

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 – ⁴Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love is soooo all of that….

Things Change…

26 minutes into a sermon that if God could have physically pushed me to listen to He would have…that was the name of that section of the chapter. Things Change.

If you are looking into my life right now from the outside, it wouldn’t take you a hot second to figure out there is a lot changing in my world. That “Change” could be the name for the summer of 2023. (Summer is ALWAYS when my life has major changes.) When Tim and I take a second to analyze this summer we talk about the good and bad changes. Obvs is that the good change of getting married. Officially joining our two families and our Brady Bunch of dogs. Less good would be his hospital stay, the permanent arrival of diabetes in our life, and the loss of Grammie.

Deeper than that is the whirlwind my head is doing at the transition between what my life was and what it will be. They don’t give you a manual in life for navigating grief, losing your in law family (for the most part) in the process, falling in love again, and entering into a new family. You can fall head over heels madly in love with someone…and still have days you miss all that you knew before. And you KNOW you won the lottery of guys – when you can tell him that and he understands that. Not only understands it….but isn’t threatened by it. In addition, Tim’s friends and family has been amaze balls at welcoming me. It’s easy to see where he gets his generous spirit.

The last few weeks have been littered with tears, panic attacks, and anxiety. I’ve had trouble placing my finger completely on why until my sweet niece nailed it on the head (again) as she is so prone to doing. It’s grief. Again. My boss doubled down on that and said “yep that makes sense, you did this when you and Tim started dating and you realized he was important.” It’s slightly amusing how often I forget I’m surrounded by people who know me better than I know myself. With all changes comes moving forward and farther away from what I’ve known.

I read something in the new anxiety journal I started this week that said anxiety sufferers literally live in flight or fight mode all the time bracing for doom. It’s an involuntary psychological reflex. My summer hasn’t helped that I’m sure. One of the reasons I picked up the journal though is I am hyper aware that this is a season in my life that I should be able to finally let my guard down and have joy and I’m missing it. I am literally missing it in this state I’ve been in. Insomnia is my friend, eating is an erratic activity of either little to none or way too much, and tears are always on the surface. It’s bonkers. (Side note though – I’m also going through tremendous changes at work and that’s not helping!)

But while I am a long way from being able to deal with it as I get older I am coming to understand that the constant in this life is…change. I’ve come leaps and bounds in the last few years in how I deal with things and while I don’t enjoy the tears and panic attacks those are healthier (knowing what they are and how to deal with them) than the ways I have in the past.

Today I will be surrounded by seven women who have impacted my life in one way or another and we will celebrate this season of change. Because four weeks from today I marry a man who has changed me more than I thought was possible a few years ago.

Dang “C” word. It can be a good word too.

Blessings y’all – Amy

12 Years Later….

I’m very nostalgic these days, and I know that’s normal with all the change that is going on in my life, but today’s trip down memory lane is triggered by the calendar. 12 years ago today I started at TLC. When I texted my bosses this weekend to share my engagement news all I could think was how many life events I’ve walked through while seeking refuge inside these four walls. How the person that they see day in and day out has changed in the last twelve years. Hell, I don’t even have a picture of myself on my phone that goes back that far….

Twelve years ago Fred and I walked through these doors together. I had been interviewing to make a change from the small struggling landscape company I was working for because I was tired of chasing payroll each week. One of the interviews I had gone on was good friends with our owner here. I got a call and being the “we’re a package deal” person I was I asked if they needed a garden manager too. Turns out they did. When we started in July 2011 TLC was operating out of a house with several buildings attached and a huge yard. I fell in love with the yard dog named Tigre and discovered I was very much a dog person (sorry kitties!). Now I have six dogs!

It would be not long after that that Lee moved in with us and we were bursting at the seams in the townhouse. October 2012 TLC moved into the office where we are now – the same weekend we moved into our first house! Where I promptly came down with bronchitis from the stress and an untreated sinus infection.

We lost PawPaw in May of 2014. TLC never missed a beat in their unwavering support. It was the first really significant loss for me in my life and while I stuffed it (or thought I did) I know now it changed me. It changed how I interacted with my family so I know it changed how I dealt with everyone. Sometime in that same year we started dialysis on Fred. Not gonna lie I was in so much pain the dates get really fuzzy. TLC was completely supportive of my completely unstable schedule and I worked from the dialysis clinic, early mornings, weekends, late nights – work was my escape when I could get it from everything as I knew it changing at home.

February-ish 2015 Fred became unable to keep working. He wasn’t safe behind the wheel and his eyes were shot. Yet again TLC was the one constant. I was the provider of the house and work was my safe place. Through dialysis, Fred’s amputation and rehab, all of it – all I got was support from almost everyone.

I’ll never forget the call I got from the owner the day I had to say guys it’s almost time for Fred to go and I need to be here. “Whatever you need – we’re here”. So much is fuzzy from that time and the years after. But I remember that. Work had been my escape but I was able to turn it off and be right where I needed to be at the end. That’s something there aren’t enough words to be thankful for.

Somewhere in all those years we got three kids through high school, graduated, and two of them through college/trade school, and married off!

COVID years, the bottoming out I did in 2020 where most people don’t know just how low I got, and the recovery period of the last few years….still they were here. Even the days I said “I don’t wanna do this anymore…” my boss walked me through it when I know he really probably just wanted to strangle me. He had no experience with depression, and anxiety, and all the things that plague me but steady as a rock he’s been.

Sometimes we have to look back to be able to know how far we’ve come and see all the lows and highs to appreciate it. To know that it’s normal to have days you want to run away from home because home will always be there. It’s a constant. It’s where your heart is – when it’s hurting, when it’s broken, and when it’s so filled with joy you are going to burst.

12 years later I’m thankful that no matter how far my wanderlust takes me I’ll always have a home to return to.

Blessings y’all – Amy

Coping Mechanism

I started this blog in the peak of my angst and beginning of my grief recovery about two years ago. Since I’ve used it as a both a sharing mechanism, to purge, and as a coping mechanism. Doesn’t surprise me as I’m trying to process this week that I’m back here. Probably gonna be a little rambling cause my thoughts are swirling at warp speed but it is what it is.

No joke y’all – this week has been a LOT. About 4 pm yesterday the emotions and the tears finally forced their way out and got the better of me. One of the millions of things I love about Tim though is he already knew they were there. He also knew I’d let them go in my own time and didn’t poke. But when he scooted over in the hospital bed and opened his arms for me to sit next to him there was no stopping them. My greatest fear is losing him.

I have no idea where in childhood I learned to hide feelings in time of crisis to “protect” whomever was in harm’s way but it’s a muscle memory reflex as sure as breathing. Both with PawPaw and with Fred my role was to “be the rock”. With PawPaw my grandma counted on me to listen to the doctors and be able to explain it clearly to both her and him. I was young enough then I didn’t really understand emotions like anxiety and pretty much ALL of my emotions got packaged up and set on the shelf. It’s been interesting to discover this last couple of years that I’ve still been unpacking that dusty box. With Fred, I was caretaker, parent for the kids, sole provider, chief bottle washer – you get the idea. Who had time for processing emotions? And I damn sure tried hard not to let him know how scared I was.

This week I stepped into those shoes as if I never left them. The difference this time was after the initial shock of where we were and the situation we are in – I knew that wasn’t ok. That’s NOT what two and a half years of counseling has taught me. I’ve done too much work on understanding that what I need is actually a BETTER way to help in crisis than the unbending “I can do anything in any situation all by myself” person I’ve always worked to be. This time I’ve leaned hard into my tribe and worked at asking for help. It doesn’t come easy – feels like admitting weakness – but it has helped more than I ever dreamed it could.

In a rare turn of events I’ve checked out mentally on work and you know what? It hasn’t burnt down (or at least not that anyone has said). I spent so much time with Fred working bedside in a hospital, pulling late nights, trying to work a full week and be a full time caretaker. Allowing myself to center on what Tim needs this week I know is the right thing for us. Doesn’t make it any easier for a workaholic like me but I did learn a few things the last time around this particular sun.

Tim is worried because as is usual when I’m in stress food isn’t my friend. My stomach isn’t playing ball with anything I put in it. Sleeping in a hospital chair isn’t helping either. But letting the tears flow, reaching out to safe places to say any of the million things I’m thinking, working hard NOT to draw comparisons to the past as much as I can in this eerily similar situation – all of those things are helping a little at a time. But there is no getting around it. Being back here, dealing with this disease in someone I love, is HARD. I just have to remember what the counselor says to me all the time – I am a different woman now than I was a few years ago and I have different tools in my tool box and a deeper understanding of who I am and how to process hard situations. There was a moment yesterday I would have said she was dead wrong….but I know she’s right.

Thanks for listening to my rambling…it’s just one of my tools in my dealing with life toolbox. Blessings y’all! – A

Rooted in Blessings

Most of my world right now revolves around “green stuff” as Tim calls it. (For those of you who follow me on Insta or FB sorry about the garden overload!) But when I was watching a show I follow on Discovery + called ‘Growing Floret’ the other night it finally clicked as to why, after 23 years in the landscape business, this is the year I’m so passionate about it.

After Fred passed the flight reflex I’ve always had got worse. Way worse. I wanted to be anywhere but home. My mind was filled of thoughts of getting out of Texas, anywhere but here, I didn’t care. Never really realizing that I was running from what was inside. And that no matter how many miles I put between home and those that loved me I wouldn’t be able to ever escape until I stopped and healed.

Cue up today. I’ve always had a green thumb. I will proudly say I got that from my grandfather. But in years past my gardening was to pay homage to him. To be close to Fred. It wasn’t about me. It was about pleasing them, honoring them, missing them. What I have finally realized is different about this year is that the fear is gone. Fear of “doing it wrong”. Fear of disappointing them. Fear of anyone’s judgement if it doesn’t yield, look right, blah blah blah. Something about the changes in me in the last two years have allowed me to do this for ME this year. And to be ok with it being for me. I still look at all my magazines. Watch the green shows until Tim, I’m sure, wants to throw the remote and I soak up TikToks and YouTubes like a sponge. But if it dies? Doesn’t yield like I want? Pull it up and start again. (There is a life metaphor in there somewhere I’m sure.)

This spring in my business hasn’t been any different. In fact it’s been 100x worse. My anxiety, when I focus on it, is off the charts. Panic attacks are a new thing I’m not really fond of. I’m going through huge changes at work. The pressure is intense. But a not so little difference this year? I pull up to the stop sign at the corner each day and my body lets out a breath. I sit at that stop sign for a fraction longer than I have to and I take in my yard. It’s not pride I feel. It’s peace. I’m home. More importantly? I WANT to be home.

As I walk towards my “shades of Caribbean” painted gate along the brick path that I saw in my magazines and Tim made a reality the fear, stress, and worry of the day seeps out of me. The gladiolus are starting to reward me with gorgeous blooms that make me smile. Once I get inside the gate I have to force myself to go inside and say hello to Tim and the dogs before I race back outside to see what changed in the last 24 hours in the garden. (And yah somedays I forget to say hello to them!).

I grab my “f*&% it bucket” as I call it – which houses a skirt with all my tools on it and a wide open space for all the weeds I’ll pull and cuttings I’ll take off if need be – and I head outside. I usually have about 45 minutes after I get home while Tim is still working that I get to be outside in the garden and unwind. Tim worries constantly that I’ve bitten off too much, that it’s too much work, and what I can’t quite make him understand is that it’s a form of medicine that if they ever figured out how to bottle would put the pharmaceutical companies out of business.

Despite having harvested about 10 lbs of squash at this point I squeal like a teenager at each new little “baby” that emerges. I check the cukes and wait impatiently for enough to be ready to start canning. I hover over my tomatoes like a mother bird – so afraid the squirrel is gonna take them again this year. I pore over seed catalogs and sites looking for something new and different I can try my hand at growing.

And I now I realize. Despite my teasing Tim about his travels this summer – I am content to know I’m gonna be home in my garden. I’ve waited a long time to feel some sense of home and hearth again. To be able to open my heart to love and to be loved again. All of those things are the reasons my home and my heart are thriving. Like my beautiful plants God nurtured me through the tough times, watered and fertilized me when I was withering, and now my roots are strong again. I trusted him when I was broken and dying and unable to see the sun and he nurtured me the same way I do any of my plants.

Colossians 2:7 – Let your roots grow down into him, and let your lives be built on him. Then your faith will grow strong in the truth you were taught, and you will overflow with thankfulness.

I’m thankful. So very thankful. Blessings y’all – Amy

Where’s The Instruction Manual?

When our kids were babies probably more than one of you thought more than once “I have no idea what I am doing – why don’t they come with instructions”? Maybe not. Some people are born with inherent parenting skills or are blessed with a strong familial support system so that they never felt overwhelmed or out of their league. I fell somewhere in the middle of all three (and I really want to meet the person who felt like they had it all together all the time with a new baby)!

I grew up taking care of my siblings so I had some parental instinct. Even still I remember many a time calling my grandma in tears when Em was an infant saying “I need a break please come get this child.” By the time Fred came along Em and I were working our way through the toddler years – and more of those phone calls to my support system. But with the arrival of Fred in my life I suddenly had a teenager and a pre-teen too. Guess what? Their instruction manual was missing too!

As a parent our beacon is to want for our kids either better than we had if we had a traumatic/terrible/less than ideal childhood or to recreate the storybook childhood we had in our minds. Even with those as our very loose guidelines parenting is like feeling your way in the dark blindfolded with your hands tied behind your back. You navigate through the toddler years hoping you don’t lose your mind from saying “no” a thousand times a day, you enjoy the age five to twelve phases when they are curious about everything and you are too cool for words, and you are dumbfounded when thirteen hits and you know nothing and can say nothing right until about twenty-five. A manual would have been helpful especially in that tough last phase…

With God’s grace, a strong support system, and a little bit of luck you get them all to adulthood. You turn out amazing human beings into the world that you are proud to call your own. But get ready. This phase is the most crucial of all. This phase is the one that if you screw it up it is worse than all the other phases combined. And you still don’t know the rules. You are baffled when they don’t call – you once were the most important thing in their lives. When they do call you don’t know how to turn off parenting and not give advice and have no understanding as to why they didn’t heed it. And the quiet in the house will make you miss the days of bickering, blaring TV’s, and overwhelming noise lemme tell ya.

Why didn’t anyone tell you about this phase? How to let go? (Here to tell ya I bombed the test on letting go.) Probably because that damn instruction manual is still missing. You don’t know when to call and when not to. You didn’t know that when your phone lights up and it’s one of them that your heart is gonna do the simultaneous leap for joy and stick in your heart thinking something must be wrong. If they are adults, you are old enough you don’t remember the freedom you craved at their age and how your parents were the last thing you thought about as you made your own decisions and choices. A cruel twist of getting old is you really do forget what it is like to be young. And what it was like to have that confidence that the people who love you most will always be there.

Sitting where I’m sitting now, missing my stand in parents (my grandparents), I think of all the times I wish I’d called more or gone by more. Heeded their advice when it was offered. But also with the wisdom to understand that this circle of life IS the instruction manual. We all do it to the best of our abilities and hope when we’re gone that we are remembered as strongly and as fondly as I miss them. If we are? We didn’t need the manual. We did just fine on our own.

Blessings y’all – Amy

Calendar of Tears

For Christmas I gave Tim a calendar that contained all of the special people in our lives birthdays, anniversaries, important events. I also noted a small heart on days that are anniversaries/days that can be trigger days for me or have special significance.

Talking to Em last week after Mom’s birthday about us being able to take a breath after February I sort of put together in my head why those small hearts on Tim’s calendar mattered. The calendar of my life is marked with days to look out for, anticipate, pray over, and sometimes shed tears. A calendar littered with tears…I’ll explain.

In the aftermath of early grief those days – anniversaries, birthdays, holidays, special memories – they are like a tidal wave slamming into you and taking the breath out of you. What I have found is that as time moves on you don’t quite know on those days if you are going to get a tidal wave or just a lapping at your ankles. Call me crazy but the uncertainty is almost worse.

As I have grown older the calendar has become littered with “seasons” that have nothing to do with the weather. Periods of weeks or months where the bracing for the wave or the splash is just endless. December is a bad one. February is another. And by some odd quirk of dates there is a six week period from April 24th to June 5th that marks off when Mom died (4/24), PawPaw (5/14), and Fred (6/5). The three most important people in Em and I’s lives died within three weeks of each other on the calendar – just different years.

Some would say “why not just ignore those dates if they hurt” (yes I’ve had that said to me). For me that is also the same as saying to me “why don’t you just forget them?” Sounds pretty dumb huh? But it doesn’t work like that. Ignoring pain doesn’t make it go away. It gives it power and strength. Acknowledging them, celebrating them, speaking of them – that’s where the healing begins. It’s allowing yourself to remember they loved you and you loved them.

This last anniversary of Fred and I’s wasn’t special in terms of a big number or any particular significance . He’s been gone almost six years and we would have been married for sixteen. But this year was the tidal wave. Not a bad one mind you – God brought some pretty awesome memories to the day – but a tidal wave nonetheless. It’s hard to miss someone. It’s harder still when life is moving on and you are really happy.

I heard a sermon today that the message was “I’m not done with you yet, there is more to the story”. Move forward, you aren’t finished yet. Those words lifted my heart in ways I can’t yet explain to you. But what an awesome message.

I couldn’t have said this a few years ago but what if all those tears on the calendar are just part of God’s story for me? For my kids? I’ve seen those tears shape all of us in ways I know we wouldn’t have changed on our own. If we think about our pain having a purpose does it make it easier to bear?

I’ll never stop acknowledging those special days. I know there will be additions to the calendar as I age and those that are older still leave me too. But maybe I’ve reached a point I can understand that sometimes we need the tears each year to continue to wash what hurts and clear the path of where we’re meant to go.

Blessings y’all – Amy

Celebrating Love & Friendship

Someone said once that time heals all wounds. I’d be willing to bet that person hadn’t REALLY had loss in their life. Don’t get me wrong. Life is moving on. In so many fabulous ways. But as I stare down the barrel of several memory anniversaries this week I’m a little melancholy.

Turns out…time never heals grief. It eases the sharpness as you struggle to breathe. It dulls the edges in a way that makes living come back in ways you can’t imagine possible in the immediate aftermath. But time does not ever heal grief. Because grief can’t be healed. Each year the calendar rolls dates around that tug the fine hairs under the band-aid you’ve put on the pain. You find ways to brace for it. To get through it. To ask for help. But on those days the pain is very much there.

TimeHop has begun reminding me of the season of life that the kids and I were in this time six years ago. This week on Friday would have been my sixteenth wedding anniversary. As I mull that over…how many years Fred has been gone versus here a knot forms in my stomach. February 4th would have been my grandpa’s birthday.

I can honestly look back and know that these impending dates don’t send me spiraling into the hole they once did. I can proudly say that is because I’ve done the work. I’ve invested the energy in myself to know that I am a survivor. But that doesn’t mean I’m not tremendously glad that when the idea came up to run away this week that I wasn’t completely and totally on board. Spend a week away with a man who loves me and makes room for the days that I’m not quite ok? Yep. Spend a week doing one of the things I love most with friends who are like family to me? Yep. Sign me up.

Add surprising all those friends to the list (my favorite thing to do to people I love) and I’m all in.

We boarded the Carnival Celebration today. To celebrate being loved. Not once not twice but by three amazing men. My PawPaw who contradicted all the crappy awful abusive men my mother chose. Fred who took a broken girl, gave her an instant family, and was patient while she loved too hard and held on a little too tight. And this wonderful man who walks beside me now. Who quietly and patiently lets me know every day that I am worth being loved. That bruised and slightly damaged as I may be I deserve to be loved as hard as I love.

We are celebrating friendship. These that I have made in all the years I’ve traveled. The special relationships I have that I constantly confuse the mess out of Tim because he can’t remember all the names but he loves them all because they make me happy.

Love hard friends. Life is short and precious and can change on a dime.

Blessings – Amy

The Blessing and Curse of Being An Over Thinker

These days most of us know an over thinker. Or are one ourselves (raising my hand over here). By Merriam Webster’s definition to over think is to think too much about (something) or to put too much time into thinking about or analyzing (something) in a way that is more harmful than helpful. However, some very famous people were over thinkers – Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Orville Wright. To my way of thinking, and in my experience, it’s a blessing and a curse.

Starting with the positive – most over thinkers are great problem solvers. This comes from being able to look at most people, situations, and things from all angles (admittedly sometimes too much or too long) and find solutions that others can’t see. The 30,000 foot view if you will. They can rearrange the pieces in a problem like no one else. Some can think on their feet quickly and thrive on the challenge of being able to “fix it”.

The curse of this particular skill? The anxiety and stress when normal people need to do things their way even when the over thinker thinks they can see the disaster (ok maybe “disaster” is a strong word – how about less than ideal outcome) coming at them. When you have an empathic over thinker who wants to avoid anyone else feeling anything other than happy you have a mess. Their deep level of thinking gets them inappropriately called things like “control freak”, “nag”, or “bossy”. In reality – they aren’t any of these things. Their brain just never shuts down so they see all the worst case scenarios and try to prevent them to help the people they love.

Their thoughts are never quiet and they don’t understand the response “nothing” to the question “what are you thinking”. How can someone be thinking literally nothing?!?! What does all that quiet in your head feel like? To them things mean something, or happen for a reason, and everything is a “why”.

Don’t even think about lying to an over thinker. Due to being great critical thinkers, they have the uncanny ability to sniff out lies. Because when something doesn’t sound right to them their mind won’t let it go and they turn it over and over in their head until they pick apart the holes in the story. They are a narcissists worst nightmare because an over thinker can spot false, fake, or ill intention-ed people from one conversation with them. Over thinkers have a deep desire to figure people out and often can’t let go of that uneasy feeling someone gives them. They are great judges of character – their level of sniffing people out is on par with that of kids and dogs.

When an over thinker thinks they have hurt someone they will spend hours and hours going over every minute, every detail, of the situation trying to Monday morning quarterback what they could have done differently. Why they said what they said. One of the most positive traits of an over thinker though? When they apologize it comes from the bottom of their heart – they cannot fake apologies.

Over thinkers are perfectionists. They pride themselves on being great at what they do and strive to do their best. But when they don’t get everything right and come up short, they are their own harshest critic. They have to make lists of what needs done, so they can cross things off said list, and feel accomplished. Sound sleep is a rare thing for over thinkers. They cannot shut the machine that is their brain off – it is constantly swirling and contemplating. And there is always that list running through their heads. 😉

Why write about this now you ask? Over thinking lol. It’s busy time at work and it’s the time of year my brain works extra hard putting out fires and solving puzzles to get everything that needs done done. We’re also doing some deeper stuff in counseling that has me puzzling over why I do some of the things I do – good and bad. So yah – over thinking.

Hug an over thinker in your life and thank them for the amount of time they spend over thinking about you!

Blessings y’all – Amy

A Whale Named Barnacles

My timing is always crazy but as I sit in my steamy beach town my thoughts are on the whale I met in September in Alaska. Hahaha. Maybe because this 2000+ lb whale made enough of an impression on me that we named Tim’s car after her. Let me tell you about our whale excursion and a whale named Barnacles.

The tour we took in Juneau in September was a whale watching tour and my greatest wish was to see an orca. When we boarded the bus our guide said that while it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility he had only seen orcas six times since April (and it was September). But the whale gods were with me. We weren’t on board the boat 15 minutes and the captain got a call that an Orca named Captain Hook had been spotted. Named such because his dorsal fin had gotten caught in something at one point and was curved over in an unnatural way. He was a scout orca for a transient pod – scouting food for his pod while they were safely some distance away. There aren’t enough words to describe the feelings that went through me when my eyes landed on that whale. There were tears and there was a video sent to my baby girl. Like most ocean things whales are OUR thing.

Back to Barnacles. After Captain Hook moved on they took us into a cove a few minutes away and there were numerous humpback whales breaching the surface. Even with many whale watching boats in the area the silence and the majestic-ness (yes that’s a word lol) of being still and listening to these huge creatures blow out of their blowholes was amazing. The air was still, the scenery behind them just stunning, the eagles soaring above them, and these huge creatures closer than you can even imagine was a once in a lifetime experience. The guide had told us to take as many pictures as possible. We were on a scientific type tour where they tried hard to match the whale tails to their records to see which of the whales they had identified were in the area so they can track their patterns, babies, etc.

Never did I ever anticipate that I would get a good enough picture of a whale’s fluke to be able to match one in the book. Mind you, I was using my iPhone. But after an hour of watching these amazing creatures breach and swim around us we headed back to shore. While we did they passed around a book for us to compare our pictures with the known whales in the area. I was stunned to realize I had a picture of a mama whale named Barnacles. (For that matter so was the guide!). She is a 57’ whale, one of the largest in the world, identified in 2007. They didn’t say if she was identified as a baby whale or not but geez that makes her at minimum 15 years old.

I went into the Alaska trip skeptical I would like the cold. Knowing the whale excursion would likely be my favorite. I was wrong on one and right on the other. I can’t wait to go back to Alaska. Made a promise to the baby girl that we wouldn’t go back without her. One I am already chomping at the bit to fulfill.

If you have nothing else on your bucket list – put Alaska on it. It’s worth it.

Blessings y’all – Amy