I will try to start my posts earlier so I can write more on a consistent basis.  I wrote last night and finished at 12:01 am.  I got up at 5:45 am.  Deb, I know you do it all the time.  I need to plan my sleep patterns better in order to handle all my responsibilities in a civil loving manner.

Speaking of which, I have applied for a job.  The money situation has become quite serious.  I have applied in the past, but this time I had a telephone interview and I think they will be calling me for an in-person interview next week.  It is for part time around 32-36 hours.  The hard part will be that the shifts available are over night until 8:00 in the morning.  I will need to figure the balance with everything else.  I will wait and see...  Here's hoping.

The past two weeks we've been eating out of the cupboards and freezer.  The past several days there have been complaints that there has been nothing to pack for lunches.  They were right, but I told them to be creative.  Today I finally get to shop.  I'll be hitting two stores and stocking up.

My 16 year old has been trying to identify when she is negative and turn it around before it gets out of hand.  I finally realized (duh!), that she didn't recognize 'caring'.  Just the simplest to the overt acts of kindness.  Like giving her music lessons that are so important to her even though money is tight to getting her the shampoo she wants.  So, I started saying, "Why do I choose to drive 45 minutes so you can speak with someone to help heal you and 45 minutes back and I'm always late for my EMT training?"  She said, "It's too hard to say."  "Try," I encouraged.  She hesitated and mumbled something.  I said, "I didn't understand what you said."  Again a mumble that was a bit clearer, "Because you care." "Hm?" I enquired. "Because you care,"  she replied very clearly now. "Yes," I told her, "you're right.  And each time you say it, it will become easier and easier to say until it will be quite natural for you to think and believe that."

Fast forward several weeks, I had asked her the question several more times, and each time it became easier and easier for her to say.  Yesterday I asked how it felt and she said, "Good."  I also asked how it was going with stopping the negative thoughts and switching them to positive thoughts.  She said it was hard,  but she would still work on it.

My thoughts behind doing this was that she never really 'got' or recognized caring acts, let alone that they were meant for her.  So by her acknowledging that what we do are acts of caring, it places a subliminal message in her brain to open that part of her that is so tightly protected and abolishes the part that says she is worthless, always wrong, never is right, and unlovable.  In the past few weeks, I have see a lighter girl, as if she had shed some heavy weights form her shoulders.  We still have several years of healing to go, but this is a great start.  Especially since she enters high school next year, which in itself is a whole different bag of worms.