Sunday

I can't remember which day it was, but I kind of had a bad day. I just woke up feeling poopy. I hate that. It wasn't anything I could put my finger on, I just felt like growling. All day I was kind of emotional. When I am like that, I tend to pull inwards. Robby doesn't know how to handle it because I'm usually not like that. When he is "triggered", he usually pulls in as well. I know that I need to just give him some space, let him know I'm there and he will kind of pull out of it. The problem with PTSD is that you can get triggered all the time. You don't know why, you just know you feel edgy all of a sudden. I don't have PTSD, but I get PMS and that's about how I can understand "triggers" from PTSD. It's like someone has peeled the top layer of your skin back and all your nerves are exposed. Everything bugs you. So when I am feeling kind of poopy, Robby just gives me space and lets me know he is there. I finally snapped out of it at around bedtime, which sucks because your whole day is wasted.

Sometimes it's memories of my divorce and all the crap that happened at that time of my life. It was a very dark time and I don't like to go back there in my mind. I know that the only thing that sustained me was my faith in Jesus Christ. I knew He understood what I was going through and I knew that I wasn't going through anything He had not endured Himself. But it was still a very dark time. I lost my faith in a lot of things that I had always believed in my whole life. I remember talking to the Stake President. He had asked me to come and talk to him in his office because he wanted to let me know that Fred had been disciplined by the church. I was still married to Fred, so that is why he could tell me about it. Plus, I think he wanted to make sure I knew that Fred was not getting away with all the things he had done. He asked me about my faith in Christ. There was a picture of Him on the wall and I looked at it. I remember feeling a warm sensation in my heart because I knew He has always been there for me. I knew I had strayed, but He was still there for me and still loved me, no matter what. I do not doubt Jesus Christ.

I had a dream about my dad last night. It felt very real. We were somewhere where he had all his videos. I was visiting him and he had no food in his house. I had a grocery list of things I needed to buy so I could cook for Dad. He always loved my cooking and loved it when I took care of him when he was sick. I spoiled him. I figured he deserved it for all the ways he took care of me as a child. As I was leaving, my dad yelled out, "Don't spend more than $25!" I looked at him and laughed because there was no food in his house and I had a long grocery list. That was the end of the dream. But as I was waking up, I knew he had a message for me. He was disappointed in how I have been treating my mother since her mission. She will call me and I will not answer because I know she wants to talk to me about her video business. I personally feel she needs to concentrate on her mission more and not be looking on her Amazon account and checking it. Robby and I are watching it and getting movies out for her. She needs to have faith in that. But my dad was letting me know that I need to be more patient with her. I lay there for about an hour feeling unsettled and guilty. Then I woke up later missing him.

I could talk to him about anything. I knew if I told him something, he wouldn't tell a soul, not even my mom. She would ask him what we had talked about and he would just say something like, "I don't know, just stuff..." and that would frustrate her. He always gave THE best advise. He was very wise. He understood people.

Emeli is telling me that she doesn't want to go to seminary. I'm going to have to be the "mean mom" and make her go. She needs it. Not only that, her brothers all went and she needs to give it a try for a while. She's lucky. Her brothers had to go to early morning seminary and so did I. That really sucks. I would get up at 5am every morning. I would come downstairs and catch my dad eating breakfast because he left the house at 6am. I would plop down in my seat with my cereal and just start chatting away. I don't know how many times he told me to be quiet and let him enjoy the silence of the morning. He was not a morning person and I am. Robby is not a morning person, either, and he is not always ready to chat in the morning. I wake up and I'm ready to jump out of bed and get moving and listen to music (loud) and chatter away. I've noticed that Emeli is not always in a great mood in the mornings, either.

On Thursday, she was especially snippy. She had misplaced her face cover-up and she was looking for it. I was just kind of standing there eating my cereal and she snapped, "I can see you're busy helping me find my make-up." I looked at her with a "be careful" kind of stare and she huffed. I picked up two things, looked under them, found nothing and went back to eating my cereal. After that rudeness, I wasn't going to break out in a sweat to help her. After about fifteen minutes, when I went into the hall bathroom to do my make-up, she apologized for being rude. She had several projects due this week and it was really getting to her.

On Tuesday night, she had a meltdown. She stood in the doorway of her room and stared Robby down. Don't stare Robby down. I don't take well to my kids staring me down, but I'm like Carol Brady compared to Robby if you stare him down and you are a kid. He said the exact thing Dad would have said to me if I had dared to stare him down (which I never would have dared to do!), "Don't stare me down, Young Lady, or I'll knock your head off." I knew he wasn't going to literally knock her head off. Emeli knows he would not literally knock her head off, either. But she quietly closed her door and ignored us for a while. She has also learned not to slam her door on us. In our last house, she lost her door for a week from slamming it. We had warned her several times not to slam her door. One night she slammed it good and hard and it was the straw that broke the camel's back and she lost her door. She was PISSED! But not as pissed as Robby and I. Robby immediately got his tools and surprised her by taking her door off the hinges.

Anyways, she came out of the bedroom a few minutes later when we sat down to dinner and apologized. I am impressed with how Robby accepts her apologies. He doesn't keep on and on about what she did. He just quietly accepts her apology and moves on as if nothing has happened. We had a very nice dinner and he ended up helping her with the project she was melting down about. All in all, it ended well.