threat level tonight . . .

Indecision: Yellow
Over-thinking: Orange
Fretting: Red
Change: Red

:) Things were getting too serious.

Shush

I started watching The Dog Whisperer. I have a backlog of nearly a dozen episodes (on my DVR). I watched another tonight. The foundation is walking.
So tonight the walks began. We only went around the block (the big block); it took about 20 minutes. Zulu and Cleo started off with me. Jeremy was with D. About halfway through we swapped dogs.
For the first night they weren't that bad. Z & Cleo behaved right away (sorta). I knew J would be an issue, and he was. It actually got worse. Only a few feet from home, he mustered all his energy to hop on his hind legs towards a squirrel.
The walks will continue - and soon with new leashes. The current leash situation made walking just that much more difficult.
Stay tuned.
Miraculously well-behaved dogs on the horizon!

Gourmet #1

This weekend was our first gourmet. We hosted it, and the theme was Native American food. We spent Friday and Saturday getting ready. We had a lot to do, including clean the house, and buy enough dishes for 16 people. And we had to find a way seat 16 people!
The weather didn't cooperate - it was raining, sleeting, and it even snowed a bit.
But the food turned out well. We made Three Sisters Stew which is touted as being from the Oneida nation. And we made frybread which is apparently a staple to many nations including Navajo, Cree, and Seminole. Both were really easy to make, and everyone seemed to like them.
Our menu consisted of:
Popcorn
Three Sisters Stew
Frybread
Squash bread
Carrots
Acorn Squash
Wild Rice Salad
Honey Apple chicken
Lakota Plum cake
Sioux pudding
Yummy, Yummie, Yummy!!! :)
The company couldn't be beat either. The 16 people we had over included the Gourmet's core group of ten, plus extra guests we (the hosts) invited. We had to have three tables to accomdate everyone. This was the only negative of the night - it decreased how much everyone could talk and get to know each other. I would have liked to talk to more people, more.
We're taking May off, but someone will be hosting our second in June. Yeah!
I feel like I'm missing something.
It was tons of fun - tiring, but fun! Can't wait for the next one!

over-thinking

I didn't re-read that last blog, but did I mention over-thinking? I get sucked into it. I think it could be part of the indecision. But so is my ridiculously tight grip on life.
I'm going after change. I can do it.
BUT that opens the door for thinking, planning, questioning, and generally driving myself and others crazy. Fun. So now I need to just STOP IT!
Ugh.
Nothing is going to be perfect and I need to make choices and live with them. By the time I weigh ALL the options, the options change. Or, my favorite, I add to the options. There's the times when I'm trying to decide between nearly opposite things, conflicting things, or nearly identical things. It's enough already.
So if I really want to do something, have something, be something, go somewhere, etc. I just need to do it. Now, in my own defense, I often simply don't know what I want.
How can that be?
Or more importantly, how can I figure out what I want?

And lastly, does "over-thinking" have a hyphen?

are things getting too deep?

Do you like change? Do you ever crave change?

I go through stages of being pretty content, working towards a goal, and wanting a change. Of course, that’s probably typical for a lot of people. It just annoys me. I like change, but I hate craving change. I wish I could just settle in and be content with things for longer than a few months at a time. Nothing is so bad in my life that I need to change it. So I’m not sure why I behave like this.

In general I have a tendency to view the grass as greener elsewhere. But I also have a problem with trusting myself and choosing a path, green or not. I stayed in a job that I liked for way too long. Yes, a job I liked, but it was a dead end. I needed to either be happy where I was, and stay there with little advancement and little learning, OR move on into some kind of unknown. After whining and complaining and fretting for 2 years I finally made a change.

If I like change, why am I so slow to make it? I don’t know.

Unlike some, I can deal with changes that I don’t control. I won’t say I love them, but I cope. I don’t seem to trust myself though in making decisions to initiate change. Thinking back, the only reasons I could have to not to trust myself are cases where I didn’t make a decision. I can’t think of many (any) decisions or changes I’ve made that I’ve regretted. Based on that, it would make sense that I should “go for it,” and make some decisions. Life will be fine. It’ll go on. I probably won’t even regret it.

Ah, but some of you who know me well may have other insight. This goes back to my recent post where I asked if I was delusional. [By the way, I got no response on that, so perhaps that’s a gentle way of say, ah, yeah you are, Shannon. ;)]

I think out loud – a lot. I may ponder and mull more than the average person. Because I think through things somewhat publicly, I end up not doing things one might have thought I would. Usually, all this talking makes me pretty predictable though (I think). The talking keeps me in the decision making stage and I end up confused. It’s bad. And it’s something I’m trying to stop doing.

I’m losing focus here.

Okay, so I like change, but I’m slow to initiate it because I don’t trust myself . And I talk about all of it too much, most likely because I want someone else to show me the way, and hence initiate the change for me. Very lame, I know.

In my defense, I’m a very confused person. I’ve been in this confused state for more than a decade. I can’t seem to get out of it, it’s a circle that feeds on itself. It started with no knowing what I wanted to do in college, hence I couldn’t choose a major. Then I had no guts to change my major, or even to add a minor. In the end, it’s worked out and I use the major I got and the minor I wanted. I have not learned any lessons from this – at least not any that I apparently use. I still don’t know what I want, and when I think I have it figured out I question myself. It’s all quite unnecessary. I know.

So if you can’t already tell, I’m feeling whiny again – like I need a change. I’m not sure yet what change though. Ha, that’s surely a lie. But like I said, I need to spend more time with internal struggle and less time talking. Okay, I need to spend less time with both and just make some freakin’ decisions!

Or maybe I should have just stayed in bed today and tomorrow will be completely different.