maritalbliss86 Posted January 21, 2021 Author Share Posted January 21, 2021 Your Acadian heritage sound so interesting, Seraphim! We have some family members who settled into an area in our state that was founded by Alsatian people (French people near the France/German border). So a lot of their cooking and lifestyle was heavily French, but specifically Alsatian/French. ❤️ When you bring up your Acadian background, it makes me wonder about the connectedness of things like that! Link to comment
Jibralta Posted January 21, 2021 Share Posted January 21, 2021 8 minutes ago, maritalbliss86 said: "two fingers of water," LOL when that literally means getting about two fingers wet and splashing the dough or something (?) Exactly! Link to comment
maritalbliss86 Posted January 21, 2021 Author Share Posted January 21, 2021 Alsace is the region where they believe Beauty and the Beast was envisioned to take place (especially in the movies... the fountain where Bell sits down to read and sings, and the town square all in Colmar, in the region of Alsace, are the same). Link to comment
Jibralta Posted January 21, 2021 Share Posted January 21, 2021 It's very pretty! You can definitely see the influence. Link to comment
dias Posted January 21, 2021 Share Posted January 21, 2021 2 hours ago, Jibralta said: pastitsio, spanakopita, kalitsounia, tiropitas, baklava, kourabiedes, koulourakia. You've been studying I see 🙂 Greek nurture, American nature, you are a special hybrid 🙂 They are all good but pastitsio and spanakopita are the mouth-watering ones. Usually I eat the whole baking tray (and run three marathons to burn the calories afterwards lol). Greek food has countless calories and it's so freakin time consuming to make. Not for me. I like eating, not cooking (or cleaning afterwards lol). Tiropita is mouth-watering too if you make it with home made phyllo otherwise it is "only" good. MB, what do you mean by making food from scratch? All the home made dishes are from scratch, aren't they? lol. Link to comment
maritalbliss86 Posted January 22, 2021 Author Share Posted January 22, 2021 4 hours ago, dias said: MB, what do you mean by making food from scratch? All the home made dishes are from scratch, aren't they? lol. I guess I meant that there are ways to, "cheat," that you can do to make it faster. Like for the gumbo, there are mixes you can buy that have an already pre-made "roux," so you don't have to spend 30-45 minutes developing one homemade. You just dump all the meat in and cook it at home that way. Sure you cook it at home and sure it still may taste great, but it's not exactly made from scratch in your kitchen. Not that it matters LOL except I do love to do things sometimes from scratch (and sometimes it's just not practical so I don't). For me, I like making my own roux, adding my own spices and veggies and having a lot more to do with the dish personally. It's like creating a work of art to me... cooking ❤️ Like you can totally make homemade pasta! I've done that before! I've even made my own pasta with spinach in it!!!! OH it was, "SUBLIME," it was so delish. So much better than store bought dry pasta. But I don't usually ever do that LOL, it just takes way too much time to make my own pasta from scratch. So I buy dry pasta and enjoy it that way. For the cornbread... I used to always buy a box mix that I loved. But then I started wondering if I could make my own from scratch and make it taste better? So I've started making my cornbread usually from scratch (without a pre-made mix to use). It's only a couple of minutes longer, and yet it's a lot more fulfilling somehow and does actually taste better. Hope that helps! Link to comment
maritalbliss86 Posted January 23, 2021 Author Share Posted January 23, 2021 This baby is really earning his title of our Hardest Baby Yet!! 😂 He woke up on the wrong side of the crib this morning, and was angry from the get-go, for nothing I could tell except hopefully his second front tooth is cutting through. Poor baby ❤️ !! He was so cute! Even angry, he is just SO cute! So he was throwing a fit, and I had to change his dirty diaper... maybe he was angry he woke up with it needing to be changed? I know I would be if I had soiled myself at night LOL! Then as I made my way to get coffee and got him part of a gingerbread cookie, he calmed down to eat it in a forceful, angry way 😂❤️. I tried to cuddle him, but he was having none of that! Wanted down and eventually found his way to the kitchenette and started banging around, like some angry, 2-foot tall chef. Food was flying everywhere!!! It looked as though our little Chef was extremely displeased with the type of plastic food he was finding in the kitchenette fridge, as everything he came across, he threw to the ground. Only a slice of (plastic) pie caught his attention for a minute, then he promptly decide that, too, was no good, and on the floor it went. Babies are just so cute. Link to comment
Seraphim Posted January 23, 2021 Share Posted January 23, 2021 On 1/21/2021 at 3:04 PM, maritalbliss86 said: Your Acadian heritage sound so interesting, Seraphim! We have some family members who settled into an area in our state that was founded by Alsatian people (French people near the France/German border). So a lot of their cooking and lifestyle was heavily French, but specifically Alsatian/French. ❤️ When you bring up your Acadian background, it makes me wonder about the connectedness of things like that! The Acadians are originally from France but have been in Canada several hundreds of years now. They speak a different dialect from the many different dialects in France and even from the province of Québec. It is more a mixture of French ,English and native words. Many of the Acadians are Métis ( a mix of French and Indigenous) The Québecois and the Acadians in Canada don’t get along too often as the Québecois tend to call us “hicks”. We are a very musically inclined people and have our own food culture and our own culture of family. Family is of utmost importance to Acadians and this my mother taught me even though she was not raised back home. But my grandmother taught me a love of music, my love of God and the Church and the gathering of family. I find English Canada is not so much this way. Even though I was raised in English Canada and my father was an English Canadian I prefer my French Acadian heritage. For Christmas one of the things my husband bought me was an Acadian flag. I can’t wait to put it up with a Canadian one in the spring. Sometimes my husband will fly the Union Jack with the Canadian flag ( my husband‘s parents are from the UK). Link to comment
maritalbliss86 Posted January 24, 2021 Author Share Posted January 24, 2021 On 1/23/2021 at 8:53 AM, Seraphim said: Many of the Acadians are Métis ( a mix of French and Indigenous) Yes, I read that... how interesting, Seraphim! And the language sounds very interesting also! On 1/23/2021 at 8:53 AM, Seraphim said: We are a very musically inclined people and have our own food culture and our own culture of family. Family is of utmost importance to Acadians and this my mother taught me even though she was not raised back home. But my grandmother taught me a love of music, my love of God and the Church and the gathering of family. I find English Canada is not so much this way. All of that sounds so wonderful. I think the English Canadian values mirror the UK (overall) in that sense. Very interesting though. ❤️ Link to comment
maritalbliss86 Posted January 24, 2021 Author Share Posted January 24, 2021 On 1/23/2021 at 8:53 AM, Seraphim said: For Christmas one of the things my husband bought me was an Acadian flag. I can’t wait to put it up with a Canadian one in the spring. Sometimes my husband will fly the Union Jack with the Canadian flag ( my husband‘s parents are from the UK). What a sweet gift! ❤️ Link to comment
maritalbliss86 Posted January 24, 2021 Author Share Posted January 24, 2021 I figured out that the baby is a little bit under the weather... got him smiling and cuddling with me yesterday through lots of teasing and play ❤️ But he did have diarrhea and then vomited a couple of times, overall I think the poor thing felt miserable. He's so much better today, woke up his usual happy self and ready to play etc. I think he's still teething, which could have caused the diarrhea... he has one upper tooth literally about to cut through. It's bittersweet that he's our last! Makes me enjoy all the crazy little things even more though. Link to comment
maritalbliss86 Posted January 31, 2021 Author Share Posted January 31, 2021 Over the past 2 weeks, I've been able to spend one-on-one time with each of our older three (the baby gets me enough to himself as it is 😂 LOL). Man it is so much fun hanging out with each child one-on-one!!!! Nothing really compares to taking away all the distractions and focusing on that one child and doing fun things they want to do. My oldest is just becoming such an interesting, fun young man ***😭*** I can't believe we only have 7 1/2 more years to raise him! It's all gone so fast and feels like a blur when looking back to his baby days. He's always so much fun to take out one-on-one... our conversations are always so deep and remind me how he's not that little anymore! Ugh!!! He's also really really good at helping me run errands and look for things I need when out. Somehow he has lots of fun, too, even though I'm sure it's not really cool to be out with your mom LOL. And then I took our daughter because we really needed to buy her first tap shoes for her dance class. It was a fairly big deal to us... I loved dance and it was a major part of my life, and she lights up the classroom when she dances - her joy is so tangible, you can feel it when you watch her dance! So we had a fun day figuring out where to find them when so many dance shops have closed due to the pandemic, and then went to the mall to get some mosaic lamps I've been wanting to get for months for our piano, and then we found a nice spot to eat Asian food together watching the people in the mall. It felt so sweet being out with her, just the two girls and she had lots of fun. It was a lot of walking for her, being only 3, so I bought her a Starbucks frappucino without the caffeine and her eyes lit up when they handed it to her . She's never seen a drink with that much whipped cream LOL! She drank about half and fell asleep in the car ride home ❤️ And then our Viking child, oh we had so much fun when I took him out to run errands this week, too. He actually told me at one store though not to hold his hand anymore (LOL!!!!) I asked him if I was embarrassing him and he said yes 😂❤️😂 So I teased him that Moms are supposed to be a little embarrassing hahaha !!!! He had lots of fun with me, despite his embarrassment, we had to make several stops, but he also got to pick where we would spend time having fun. Unfortunately the Humane Society was closed to visitors due to the uptick in cases here, so we had to go to another place. Before the pandemic, sometimes I'd take just the boys out to play with the kittens and cats and walk the dogs, etc. They love animals and are so gentle with them, and it helps the Humane Society out also to have people coming in to socialize the animals ❤️ we can't wait to get back to that eventually. Eventually after our pets get established, I'll probably sign up our family to be a foster home for the animals... we'll have to see. Link to comment
maritalbliss86 Posted February 5, 2021 Author Share Posted February 5, 2021 Saw in another thread, crushes were brought up and made me think. Crushes do scare me... both my husband and I try to avoid developing any kind of feelings for someone else, even if it seems unrealistic, just because it feels way too odd. And I know I know... you think you'll never actually meet a celebrity-like crush, but you just never know. Back in late July, I needed to buy a bunch of plants for a gardening project I was doing, so I went out, alone without the kids or my husband, and was on a mission to get what I needed. I looked horrible (in my mind at least), was wearing project clothes... an old tank top with bleach stains on it, and shorts since it was so hot, and zero makeup or anything done with my hair, but somehow I must have caught the eye of a man who I realized was a semi-plant celebrity ... called the Indiana Jones of the plant world (at least in our area) who goes around finding amazing plants that we wouldn't normally ever have access to. He offered to help me find what I needed and I accepted. But then he actually would not leave me... for two hours he stayed by my side, helping me or trying to, even though I constantly told him I was ok and had it and did not need any more help! In some ways I was flattered, but I also felt annoyance that he was interrupting my alone time. He really would not leave me, it was so so weird. He even held my stuff while I was in line to pay, he wouldn't go away, and then he insisted on walking all my stuff with me to my car! Eventually I could tell there was chemistry on his part, and it actually did scare me! Of course he was handsome in his own way, and an amazing man in his own right, and I loved getting all my secret plant questions answered by a true expert, it was surreal in many ways, the main one being he was paying me this much attention at all... very flattering... but once I could tell he was possibly attracted to me, it just did not feel comfortable anymore. I realized I would be at risk of developing feelings for him (a crush?!). Developing crushes, in my mind, are, or can, be extremely dangerous. I think the way I had no makeup on, and was in a tank top and shorts and somewhat grungy looking with sleep deprivation must have actually made him more attracted to me than if I'd been dressed better and higher maintenance looking. Otherwise I don't understand it. I kept talking about my husband, thinking that would help, but he was completely undeterred. This isn't normal for this plant nursery either... usually people cannot get help there, including my mom who goes there far more frequently than I do. No one ever stops and personally helps you out for 2 hours! It just does not ever happen there. I do think it was purely because he was (probably?) attracted to me and wanted to help me even though he doesn't normally do that or work as a sales person (he's their plant celebrity usually on air, or off on his adventures around the world, and they have workers who are supposed to help but never actually seem to). So... to bring it all back to developing crushes when you're married... I think it's risky business. I think if I had allowed myself to develop a crush on this man it wouldn't have turned out well in the long-run. I think crushes are the beginning of how an affair can start, even if you don't think it may be possible, why put yourself in that kind of risky situation? I try to avoid situations like that normally, and the only reason I stayed so long was because I knew I wouldn't be able to get out again easily and really needed my plants for my project. But I avoided their nursery for months afterward... and then when I went back, I brought ALLLL my kids... and even strapped the baby to my chest in a baby carrier LOL 😂 Take that Indiana Jones Plant Man! LOL And it worked!... apparently having 4 kids actually with you, turns out to be crush-repellant if a man likes you! Link to comment
maritalbliss86 Posted February 7, 2021 Author Share Posted February 7, 2021 Been up since 4am this morning, but it is sooo nice being the house before all the kids are awake. I just love it! I wish the baby would sleep better so that I could do this more regularly. I hate waking up late. And by late I mean anytime after 6am. I mean I still enjoy the sleeping in ... the ability to even DO that due to getting to stay home with our kids ❤️ but it also makes me feel unproductive to sleep in. It's just something I've learned to accept is needed, even if I don't particularly like it 🙂. Oh but I love waking up early... even if it's like 4am early LOL. Seeing my husband off... is annoying due to how sexy he is (he makes me want him so bad it is just not fair), but also so wonderful getting to see him before he leaves. I had left my charger for my phone out in the car last night and there was no way in hell I was going to go out and get it then or this morning that early... but he went out and got it for me ❤️ I know that's just such a little thing, but he does thousands of little things like this, and I do for him and to me it's those little things that are romantic. We take care of each other. And then there's something about the house when it's soooo quiet. All the kids are miraculously asleep all at the same time (!!!!) ... Walking around, our house feels so beautiful, clean (mostly LOL) and calm... feels so right in a very strange way that's hard to describe. And I love watching the sunrise. It's still slowly rising higher here, and still has that gorgeous golden glow I can see from our window, shining onto my hot pink bougainvilleas ❤️ Dang those plants are getting so wildly big! Yesterday I clipped them again in a specific, "tipping," technique that produces more blooms and gets the plant to shape the way you want it. It reminded me again of bonsai plants (which is laughable considering my bougainvilleas are monsters LOL!). My oldest came up from playing basketball with the neighborhood kids and I explained to him what I was doing, and he immediately said, "OH it's like what God does to us right?" Yea... all the pruning and shaping, helping you to become the person you're supposed to be. Clipping off dead things, clipping off alive parts that can't go on (due to destructive paths.. .literally we had one sticking out way too far that cuold take someone's eye out! It was so sad to clip it, because it would have been so beautiful and had mutliple tiny new growths on it that were going to turn into gorgeous blooms... but I couldn't allow it to develop on it's destructive path where it would harm someone). Anyway... I get a lot out of taking care of my plants. So glad to see our oldest is getting it and I'm sure he'll expand in his own way and wisdom as he grows older. Link to comment
maritalbliss86 Posted February 7, 2021 Author Share Posted February 7, 2021 And I'm embarrassed to say I still get really inappropriately happy whenever he brings home pizza and beer LOL I feel like I should have more evolved taste lol.... oh well! I still just really love the simplicity of pizza and beer. ❤️ Link to comment
Jibralta Posted February 7, 2021 Share Posted February 7, 2021 1 hour ago, maritalbliss86 said: Clipping off dead things, clipping off alive parts that can't go on (due to destructive paths.. .literally we had one sticking out way too far that cuold take someone's eye out! It was so sad to clip it, because it would have been so beautiful and had mutliple tiny new growths on it that were going to turn into gorgeous blooms... but I couldn't allow it to develop on it's destructive path where it would harm someone). It's a good way to look at things. 1 hour ago, maritalbliss86 said: And I'm embarrassed to say I still get really inappropriately happy whenever he brings home pizza and beer LOL I feel like I should have more evolved taste lol.... I would argue that that is an evolved taste: the body naturally craves energy powerhouses like fat and sugar. Link to comment
maritalbliss86 Posted February 10, 2021 Author Share Posted February 10, 2021 So on another thread, Lootie brought up her MIL's "FOMO" midlife crisis phase. And I responded with -- Quote Yes, I've seen things like this. It sounds insane, but I'm afraid it's a real thing. And I think Lootie could be right that it's possibly connected to having babies early, but I've seen this (more) with women who decided to get married at or after 35 (and then go this way in their 40's or 50's). I'm not sure it's a cookie cutter outline... statistically it seems to affect women differently. I think she's right to call it a, "midlife crisis," because it is in a way, from what I can tell. Either way, for the OP, talking to a lawyer and figuring out your best options would be good. I didn't want to write a novel (which annoyinglyl I know I can unfortunatley do LOL), but I wanted to talk about this here, just to get my thoughts out about it. First... we have seen SO. MANY. DIVORCES. My husband brought up this past week that another one of his friends is divorcing... and they have SIX KIDS. It just sucks! I know I've said before that most of the happy marriages we've seen are second marriages, but I never went into what I know personally about some of them. Even though they're happy, there is a, "numbing," or, "frying," of the emotions (for the men!) that their second wives pick up on, and they know (or guess?) it came from their first marriage's horrible divorce... that their husband can only go so deep now, and it's like a part of him has died or something. UGH! It just isn't good. They can still be happy, they usually go on to have more children and I do think a second love can be, "healing," for the man in many ways, but I'm not sure if they ever get to the point where the second wife doesn't feel part of him is eternally cut off. BUT maybe we just haven't known couples for long enough for that to happen. That really could be it... we really may just not know, what we don't know. Anyway... I supposed to be writing about the FOMO mid-life crisis phase! I told my husband last year that I think women who get married young start going through it when they're in their 30's. But it's not all the same... I think some experience it much worse than others, and the ones who can't get past it, they divorce and decide their husband wasn't, "The ONE." Really traumatic for all involved, especially their kids! So what is going on inside the mind of a female in this phase? My guess (being you know... female and all LOL) is that she's re-evaluating their marriage and her past decisions. She's re-evaluating HER past decisions like the age she picked to settle down, the man she picked to stay with forever, to forgo her career or stay home, to have kids at a certain age or to wait. Literally this is when all her past decisions seem to rain down on her like a thunderstorm and she's figuring out if they were, "right," or not. I really do think Lootie is right that it's some kind of, "crisis," of the self moment for a lot of women... and I've seen and known a few who have gone through it. They really are at a point where they question everything. So I did tell my husband that I think it starts in the 30's sometimes, and that I could literally see how a woman's brain could go that way, like other women friends I've known and seen. The crazy part is that when a woman reframes her past history like that, it usually is NOT based in truth. Partial truth, yes, but there's a lot of refusal on their part to take responsibility for their choices... there's a lot of refusal to accept the consequences of all their past decisions... and most times it just looks like they're trying to play victim of their own life's choices to obtain some kind of, "get out of marriage free card," and go and make drastically different choices (like go wild and free, or chase after African men like her MIL, etc.). And the husbands never seem to understand what the hell happened to their wife! I know what happened to their wives... they reframed their history and decided they had made all the wrong choices and, "Missed Out," on all the fun they think they could have had. Lootie is exactly right here. What can a husband do in these circumstances? Probably brace for divorce, but also in the in between... he can make sure he's doing his own life well. Taking care of himself and becoming the best man he can be (in shape, work to make his career or finances good), brace for the storm king of thing, because the divorce will hit everything hard and it will be easier if he's already in a good position for it. He may end up showing her she's risking throwing away someone so great that will have endless opportunities with other women (whether he's really interested in that or not), but it does help to know that your husband would not be lonely, that he'd have lots of other women looking to take her place. If her husband can flip the script and show her she's replaceable (which is how she's treating him) there's a chance it could spark an insecurity that helps bring her back to reality. Link to comment
maritalbliss86 Posted February 12, 2021 Author Share Posted February 12, 2021 Something else I thought of only after writing and while doing things throughout the day... the reason why Christianity seems to help people do marriages and life in general, better, is because they counter things like the FOMO or female mid-life crisis moments with biblical advice that isn't noticed in the mainstream Westernized culture. Older Eastern cultures with different religions usually get this, and go figure their marriages tend to last longer and with more happiness as well. It's because if something is true, it's true, and it works, even if it's not popular or well-known or accepted. What I've often thought when hearing a friend or acquaintance spout off about their FOMO thoughts in the timeframe before they implode their marriage, is how on earth do they not see that they're reframing things in a very negative light? How can they not see they're only reframing things in partial truth? Why are they cutting out all the parts where they made some of these choices? Why are they suddenly reframing things to make their husbands look like The Bad Guy? In one case it was a woman who decided to stay home with her kids, but then reframed it as her husband, "forcing," her to, even though she later admitted he never forced her at all, it was actually her preference back then. Good grief right?! Stuff like that drives men crazy and leads them to think marriage is doomed overall. Why aren't women more truthful with these things? Or why is it known that men sometimes go through a mid-life crisis that is a societal joke, but I've never heard of women going through a similar phenomenon? This is newish to me, as I've watched women older and my age go through it in real-time. And the female version is excused, whereas the male version is made-fun of, the story-line plots of sitcoms etc. Anyway... biblical advice as well as older Eastern Religions, focus on self-control and they widely teach that the emotions aren't to be fully trusted, because of phenomena like this. Because emotions can sometimes cause us to reframe our own history, among of things, making trusting them dangerous. This used to be known, but then people used to actually read paper books (LOL). In these ancient forms of wisdom, it's taught that emotions especially are not allowed to lead a person's choices in life. Self-control is a fruit of the spirit, and it's way more than just abstaining from eating too much (although it does mean that)... biblically, it's meant to go deeper, it's meaning is to become mature, disciplined, self-controlled in the way a person deals with everything - including their emotions. So when a woman experiences mood swings while on her period or during pregnancy, she can understand that they're just emotions, and aren't based in fact in those moments, even though mood swings make the emotions feel very real. Or when she goes through her mid-life crisis FOMO experience, (which I'm not sure all do and like i said, it doesn't seem to affect some as badly as others) if she has ability to see things for what they truly are, her emotions in the moment don't drive her to make insane choices (or choices that basically look insane like Lootie's MIL suddenly lustfully chasing after African men, and while still married at that!!). Utilizing this ancient, long-forgotten wisdom may help women to navigate the storms of their own faulty emotions. The reason why this strange female phenomenon is even becoming wider known is because more women are experiencing it and giving in to it. I hypothesize that it's becoming more of a thing because people have stepped away from that kind of ancient wisdom. The New Age type thinking is to, "follow your heart," there's even all kinds of songs about that, but the Bible actually says the heart is corrupted and sick, who can understand it? There are Bible verses asking God to purify a person's heart... the heart is not something normal Christians, "trust," or allow themselves to be led by, at all. Nor are they supposed to allow their emotions to lead them, they're supposed to take every thought captive to the word of God and see if it lines up with their ancient wisdom's truth. If it doesn't, they let it go. And letting frivolous passing things like that go actually produces tremendous growth and maturity. The kind of growth and maturity that Eastern religions have sometimes stumbled upon as well with their understanding of self-control leading to spiritual growth. What is this generation of FOMO moms teaching their kids with their example? Link to comment
Seraphim Posted February 12, 2021 Share Posted February 12, 2021 Hahaha my midlife crisis was in the form of crazy hair colours and wild make up. Link to comment
Jibralta Posted February 12, 2021 Share Posted February 12, 2021 I think that may be what mine is. Link to comment
maritalbliss86 Posted February 13, 2021 Author Share Posted February 13, 2021 Those are nice ones LOL! Not harming anyone and fun! Link to comment
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