Moving Forward

I feel  like I'm supposed to make up for my blogging absence by posting a really awesome story about our epic move and all of the things that went wrong and how much more insightful I am because of the experience.

Strangely enough, though, I don't think I have had any insights. I think I have simply wandered into a new level of happy.

This seems like a huge breakthrough, and it is, it's just that it has been happening so gradually that I didn't even really realize it until I typed it just now.

I am happy.

I think it's a combination of many things, as most things are. We found movers and were packed and loaded and unloaded within a week. I've been driving between our new home and my job (last day tomorrow!), which is actually a really nice time to me to transition mentally and emotionally. Instead of a sudden transition, it's a gradual one. It helps, too, that spring is arriving and the sun is shining more often.

It took some time for me to figure out that our new home is "home" now. It didn't feel like home at all at first. The town was just the place where I would visit Donald while he worked on a contract basis and now you're telling me we're staying here "forever"? Really? It was hard to wrap my head around that. I keep wandering around saying "We LIVE here!"

It's also hard to feel at home when you're surrounded by furniture and boxes of things you've been living without for over a year. It's a weird feeling, like coming home after your first semester away at college. Your room is still yours and it's not. It's like it belongs to someone else and you at the same time.

It has been emotional. Unpacking boxes and finding things has given me such mixed feelings. My pratice with decluttering from going through my closet, though, has helped significantly. While I don't use the "If I haven't used it in a year, then it goes" rule because then we would have nothing left, I am being pretty liberal with the "give away" box and I am proud of how my efforts are going so far.

Our two cats LOVE the new place and I love seeing them in it. They are happy to have us around more, happy to have some of their favorite things again, happy to be discovering new favorite things. They are the closest thing we have to children and it is so much fun to share this new adventure with them and show them all the newness.

Donald and I have had some great opportunities for teamwork, which is something that we tend to be good at, that strengthens our marriage. We spent an entire day looking for an 8x10 area rug for our main room, running through the rain between the car and store after store after store. None of them had anything bigger than 5x7 and we needed something TODAY according to Donald, so we kept looking.

We struck gold when we wandered into a furniture store looking frustrated and asked an employee for advice. He leaned in and said "I shouldn't tell you this, but..." and proceeded to direct us to a discount store nearby. We had stumbled onto the mecca of area rugs. They had rolls of remnants from floor to ceiling of a warehouse sized building and stacks and stacks of "Oriental" rugs just our size. And the price was right, too.

I had brought a pillow from one of our pieces of furniture so we could guess on color matches and we found the only 8x10 in the store that would work. We unearthed our treasure and headed for the register, Donald nearly knocking down several floor lamps ala The Three Stooges. It was pouring rain, so Donald suggested that I bring my car around to the curb. In that moment, it dawned on both of us that there was a significant possibility that our awesome find would not fit in my vehicle (a small four-door hatchback).

Cursing inwardly, I ran into the rain with my keys towards my car, thinking that there was no way, that this rug was obviously bigger than my car and that this would not work. I pulled the car around and pushed the front seat forward, opened the hatchback and prayed. Donald brought out the rug and started inching it from the back towards the dashboard while I adjusted as well as I could at the front. Miraculously, just as the rug was heading for my windshield, the end slid into place inside the trunk and we were home free. Giggling uncontrollably about our luck, we drove home.

I guess I did have a story in me.

I have more travel and unpacking ahead of me before I will really feel settled. Things should be calmer next week, at which point I hope to catch up with all of you and your blogs and share more about our latest adventure.

Until then, just know that things really do work out for the best.

Makeup and Animal Cruelty

Donald and I will be occupied for the next several days with moving and working, so I thought I would write a post completely unrelated to it all to tide my readers over until I can write an update. I would love to read your thoughts on the topic.

If anything, wish us well on the move!

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Animal testing is a touchy topic for me. Many important medical advancements have come from research conducted on animals. State and federal laws also require that certain consumer goods be tested on animals to make sure that they are safe for people to use. I'm not going to address these things. Instead, I want to address the testing of luxury goods on animals, namely cosmetics.

I had noticed that some of my cosmetic products have a symbol or words on them that say "Not tested on animals". It made me curious, so I went through all of the products in my makeup bag and daily routine to see whether all of them had this distinction. Finding very few, I did a little research.

I discovered that state and federal testing is not required for these products. Putting the words "Not tested on animals" is regulated, so you can trust that it is accurate. Watch our for "Final product not tested on animals" because that means that it was tested on animals at some point in the manufacturing process.

I am uncomfortable with the fact that most of my cosmetics are not cruelty free. I decided that my external beauty is not worth causing unnecessary animal suffering. There are quality cosmetics available that do not engage in animal testing. I am making the switch.

I am using my money to make a stand.

I am not a PETA member and I don't agree with many of their practices. They do, however, have a great website that lets you search for companies that do or do not test their products on animals. The list for those that do not test on animals is quite long and extensive and includes many well-known brands. You can also search for cruelty-free manufacturers of specific products.

Some of my favorite products are from cruelty-free companies:
Aveda
Bath & Body Works
Burt's Bees
Crabtree & Evelyn
M.A.C.
Revlon
St. Ives
Tom's of Maine
Wet N' Wild

Surprisingly NOT on the cruelty-free list (these products will be phased out of my collection ASAP):
Aveeno
Cover Girl
L'Oreal
Maybelline
Neutrogena
Olay

I have a choice. I'm glad I had the information to make the choice that is most in line with my values.


**Disclaimer: I am not in any way affiliated with any of the companies or websites listed above.**

Leap of Faith

I have been waiting to write this post since I started my blog. I have been waiting to say these words for a year and a half.

Donald has a full-time job.

He accepted the offer this week. He's signing the lease on our new apartment this morning. I gave notice at my current job yesterday. We are moving in mid-March. We are starting our lives again.

I didn't write this post the minute he received his job offer because it was a mixed experience. He was offered a different position from the one he had been doing on contract, which really surprised us. It was like he had lost a job and been offered a job in the same moment, a moment filled with disappointment and confusion rather than joy and relief.

It didn't help that I was home alone and that he was a three-hour drive away. That evening was especially difficult because we were physically apart. It is so hard to make life-changing decisions when you cannot look each other in the eye, when you cannot hold hands, when you cannot give or receive hugs.

Since that difficult moment, however, we have re-rooted ourselves in what is most important. The job is still with the same company. It will further Donald's career. He will still get to work with his amazing coworkers, just not as closely. He still has the chance to get the position he wants next year (it wasn't in the budget this year).

And he HAS A JOB! We can move forward! We can move out of his parents' home and get a dog and have our own lives again.

We weren't exactly going to say "no, thanks".

We are taking a leap of faith. We trust this company to do right by Donald and our family. We trust that our scramble to find housing has resulted in an apartment that will be "good enough". It might even be great. We chose location over space and I think it was the right choice.

Somehow we had gotten it into our heads that this moment, the one we have been waiting for for so long, would be nothing but happiness, relief, and the end of compromises. As I type that, it seems clearly silly. But that's what we expected. And that's why it wasn't obvious right away that this was real, that we really were doing something good. That compromising didn't mean that it wasn't what we should do.

We are SO excited. We are taking our next steps with our eyes open, our hearts forward, and we are leaping feet first into this next adventure.

Won't you come with us?

Five Love Languages

Kate at Newlywed & Unemployed wrote this month about a book by Gary Chapman called The 5 Love Languages. I found her review intriguing and checked out the website for the book, which includes free personal profiles for men and women to determine their love language ranking.

Donald and I both took the online personal profile quiz and then talked about our results. The outcome was so eye opening and so helpful to both of us. The results below show how each of us want to be loved, not necessarily how we show our love for others, although these are related.

My results (in order of importance) were:
Words
Touch
Time
Service
Gifts

Donald's results (in order of importance) were:
Time
Service
Touch
Gifts
Words

I actually had equally high scores on my top three, which gives Donald all sorts of options for showing his love for me. It was particularly revealing to see that Words, one of my top needs, was at the bottom for Donald. I realized that my words to him don't mean nearly so much as his words to me. It helped me see that the things I do for him and the time we spend together is more important than I had previously thought.

We also talked about my low Service need. I chalked it up to being so independent, not wanting to wait for him to open doors for me or do something for me that I could do myself. It's funny how we assume that other people want to be loved the same way we do. If I had pushed on showing most of my love for Donald through Words, I think he would have been mighty disappointed. Same thing if Donald insisted on showing his love for me by showering me with gifts. It's always nice, but not as fulfilling as other things he could do.

What are your love languages? How does this affect your relationships? Have you talked about your needs with your significant other? Do you know what their needs are?

Disability Awareness

My job working with rehabilitation specialists has educated me about the myths and realities about people with disabilities. In my short time in the blogosphere, I have come across quite a few people who are trying to share good information about the realities of living with disabilities and the things each of us can do to make their lives that much easier.

For example, Barbara Swafford wrote a post a while back at Blogging Without a Blog about how to make your website or blog more accessible to people with disabilities. A recent commenter on my blog, Lindsey, writes her own blog about raising five children with disabilities.

If you're following the Olympics in Vancouver this winter, you might not know that the Paralympics take place from March 12-21 in the same facilities.

I have also been seeing these wonderful ads on TV from Think Beyond the Label about promoting the hiring of people with disabilities. This ties in with my interest in helping Veterans return to "normal" life when they return from the war. Many returning Veterans have disabilities of one kind or another, and they deserve fair hiring practices that allow them to contribute to their country when they come back.

Many of us are currently buried under feet of snow. My particular city has neglected to clear most sidewalks in a high pedestrian area. Pedestrians have been killed by cars because they were walking in the street, the only place clear enough to walk. This is bad enough for those of us who can walk independently. Put yourself in the shoes of someone in a wheelchair and the problem is even more complicated. Public busses cannot get to the curb, so people using wheelchairs have a hard time getting on and off the bus. This is unacceptable, for everyone involved. Solutions are delayed by fights over who's responsibility it is to fix the problem instead of mobilizing the public to help everyone in a communal effort.

On a happier note, many companies are actively making efforts to accommodate people with disabilities. EA Games, a video game company, has taken strides to create settings that meet the needs of people with physical and developmental disabilities. EA Games has partnered with a company called VTree to do more of this kind of work in a project called Games for Good. A group called Able Gamers runs a website all about games and their accessibility highs and lows. This is a powerful group considering that one of their largest consumer bases is made up of Veterans.

As a side note, if you haven't come across Games That Give, check them out. Turn the time you spend playing games on your computer into money for your favorite charity. And it's free.

**Disclaimer: I am not in any way affiliated with the companies, events, or websites listed above.**