Working Out the Kinks

So I said I was using this diary as motivation. As motivation goes, I kind of failed once already. I had a REALLY long week last week. For one thing, I was in my last week of an online class I’m taking for my masters degree in Counseling. In this program, every class is five weeks with one week off in between. So this is my off week. But anyway, in this class I just finished, every week we were required to read 2-3 chapters in a textbook about counseling skills and then film a 10 minute video pretending to be a counselor and using these skills on a friend that we had to wrangle into doing these videos with us by pretending to be a client. I had a major problem in that I didn’t realize we weren’t supposed to script out these videos. None of class information said that anywhere. I found out after it was obvious in one video that I had scripted it out, that we were expected to get our “client” to make up a fake reason for being in therapy and then we both ad-lib every video. I do not agree that by only having learned about these skills that we were supposed to portray in a TEXTBOOK, we were supposed to suddenly expertly be able to insert these skills at a good moment that was supposed to arrive unplanned and execute them flawlessly for a grade. I honestly feel like this is a class that would be better suited to being taken AFTER we’ve had one internship. Because oh btw, the last two classes are actually internships for course credit. This class that I just finished is only my third class overall. Or at least what should have done in this class before ever getting to see it done in real life, is maybe have us read the textbook and then watch videos where we have to pick out the skills being used and write down our answers as to where they occurred for grades. Just my opinion. Then at least we will already know about these skills to look out for being used when we do go on an internship.

Then there’s the drama with my husbands family. So a year ago in April, my husband’s father died quite suddenly. It tore my husband up because although we live 3 hours from where his father was and where he grew up, he was still very close to his father and actually talked to him on the phone everyday. My husband has two older half-brothers who are both in their 50s while my husband is currently 25. One of his brothers he’d never even met before his fathers death because that brother stopped talking to his father when he married a woman 25 years younger than him, my husbands mother. Anyway, so my husbands older brothers together planned the whole funeral and made arrangements with a lawyer for an agreement to be made concerning my husband’s fathers assets. My husbands mother, who has not been married to his father since he was 18, got $60,000 in insurance money which was what was left after funeral expenses and unpaid debt. The rest is to be divided equally between the 3 sons. My husband had a jeep that was falling apart and was not paid off that his father had bought for him but was in my husbands name. About 6 months prior to his fathers death, his father took the Jeep and gave my husband his single cab pickup truck instead which was paid off but is in his fathers name. So per the agreement between the brothers, the Jeep was sold for what was left on it to pay it off. No gains were had on the Jeep. In return, my husband got to keep the pickup truck which was at the time 10 years old because it was considered communal property anyway since his mother and father had bought it together. So here we are more than a year later and FINALLY the paperwork has been finalized. My husband signs every paper they mailed him in front of a notary and sends it back. On this paperwork it lists the truck as communal property and everything else besides the insurance money which his mother got as moveable property. Then my husband receives an email from the lawyer stating that every paper had not been signed and notarized and they were sending back the specific ones that were missed. The ones that were missed were missing a line to sign on was the reason apparently so not really my husbands fault. Anyway, he takes care of it and sends it back to them. I never got to see this second pair of papers and my husband didn’t really look at it.

Fast forward about a month and it’s now Saturday night. We are relaxing inside watching a movie when my husbands brother, the one he did know his whole life starts texting him. His brother says what are you going to do about the truck? My husband says, well my mom is just going to sign it over to me. His brother says, well what about our part? Everything is supposed to be split 3 ways. He starts demanding that my husband bring the truck to their fathers house and leave it there to be sold with the rest of the property. For some reason, his brother has it in his head that this truck is worth $12,000 when in actuality, after we looked it up ourselves, it is barely worth $3,000. This is my husbands only vehicle. He literally drives it to and from work everyday and has been keeping up with maintenance on it. Not only that, but even if he were to put it with the rest of the property, half of the money made on it still goes to his mother and the other half, roughly $1500 would then be split among the 3 sons. So essentially, my husbands brother was trying to hurt my husband with his greed for maybe $500. My husband was so upset he was shaking. I took his phone and texted his brother telling him that what he was doing was bull—-. His mother called his brother and yelled at him too. We have not heard anything from his brother since that night and we are hoping that he dropped it at the moment. Either way, my husband got so upset that he took the pictures that he had of his brother and threw them in the trash. I don’t blame him.

So with that and the stress of having to make a final video for that class last week that lasted a minimum of 25 minutes and demonstrated a total of 22 skills that we read about over the previous 4 weeks, all without being allowed to write out a script, I was stressed out. The teacher sent me a private email basically telling me that if she thought that I was reading from a script in the final video, she would make me do it again. Even though the class is now technically over, I am still waiting to either hear from her or just receive a grade.

I had to work out the kinks on how to best execute this diet and exercise without losing my motivation. I drank alcohol on Saturday, the night with my husbands brothers drama, and it ruined my progress up to this point. The whole previous week, I had been exercising very first thing before any food or coffee because I read this is the best time to exercise. But today, I decided to enjoy my coffee first with my current book that I am reading, which previously to the past week had always been my schedule because it starts my day off right for me. It motivates me to have a good day regardless of what I have to do after that. Then I ate breakfast and then I went and did my 30 minutes in our little gym room which I talked about in the last entry. I had so much more motivation to go exercise this way! And now I’m at work using my laptop to write this because all the major websites are blocked on our work computers.

So now I am currently reading a favorite teen book of mine. I know I’m 34 but I’ve been reading this author since I was a teen and I’ve continued to read every book she comes out with. So I’m re-reading my favorite of hers. It is Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen. It is about a girl who has just completed high school and has a whole summer to go before college. She is the type who has always aspired to great grades and being “a little adult” when she was a kid just for her mothers affection. As a result, she has never had any friends nor has she ever done any of the normal things that kids grow up with like riding a bike. She goes to visit her father in a beach town where he lives with his new wife and baby. Here she meets some girls her own age who teach her everything and become friends at the same time.

Pretty picture of the day: Dream guest room for when we have a house one day.

Scripture of the Day: Then God said, “I am giving you a sign of my covenant with you and with all living creatures, for all generations to come. I have placed my rainbow in the clouds. It is the sign of my covenant with you and with all the earth.” Genesis 9:12-13