Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Well, gang, I still don't have this whole blog thing figured out - I thought I did and I am quite obviously blogging but this is how it went this morning had you been listening in at my house "wait, I DO exist!" "No! I DO have a blog!" "Wait wait wait - it is ME!" then I'd call my husband "HONEY! HELP!" and he'd look and say " I have no idea", which didn't help. At all, really. But I am here - hooray! But just in case you don't here anything from me for awhile, you will know I'm having 'issues' over here.

And now, on to the story of the day..................

Today is St. Patrick's day. So, at some point, I will dig out my Gone With The Wind book as well as my Scarlett book to read about the holiday. I have a few marked passages I have to check out to read, it's my St. Patrick's Day tradition. I am, in very teeny tiny small part, Irish. I like to think I would do well if I were to ever visit Ireland. They have no snakes and they walk around barefoot and keep a bucket of water by the door to wash off their feet before coming in (at least according to the Scarlett O'Hara book) and I could be all about that. But, since I am mostly Dutch and my husband is as Dutch as Dutch can be, I'll probably never see Ireland but may get to see a cool documentary on the Netherlands. :)

I regress...

Anyhow, today is also one of my dearest friends birthday. Her husband surprised her, got her the day off and is taking her out for a day of pampering at a spa and lunch and so on and so on. She told me how surprised she was as she was about to walk out the door with her husband and I was all like "awwwww, that is the sweetest ever!"

So, I am telling my husband this as he is looking through seed catalogs (I'll blog more on farm things soon, I know you all want to hear how the asparagus is doing) and he says "I got you a massage once and you never used it."

Can anyone feel my instant anger? Oh, I was mad! Wondering why I had ever given him my cute little Happy Saint Patrick's Day card and all that. I quietly went off to wash dishes because I had too many for the dishwasher and the dishwasher has a few problems right now so I can't really over use it and we have a TON of dirty dishes (we ran out of spoons, I am stirring my coffee with a fork this morning) and that gave me a bit of time to think.

Drat that new Bible study I just started! Wouldn't you know that we were talking about how we handle conflict and so on and I had to learn a verse about being honest and so on because I am the whole 'not say anything til I explode' type person just to avoid conflict and my verse is in Ephesians about being honest. I really began to wrestle with this, badly. But there is no better time to put to practice what I am learning than the present so I poured my husband some coffee (silently, not obviously so he knew I was working in the kitchen) with is favorite yummy mix (Hills Brothers Cappuccino Double Mocha mix, you can find it right next to the cans of coffee and it is SO yummy! He calls it 'special coffee') - I stirred his with a knife it was such a big cup - and I set it (not slammed, so it spilled coffee on his work) in front of him. I sat next to him and listened to him explain the different kinds of squash we would be growing and waited for him to finish so I could say "that really hurt my feelings when you said that about the massage."

He didn't know what to say so I used that to my advantage. "You got me that massage when I was pregnant for #3 and they didn't have a pregnancy massage there and after I had him they wouldn't let me bring him and he was so little to leave behind so I went and got the pedicure instead and Mom sat out in the van with him in case he cried and I had to leave suddenly and I really loved the idea and if you remember I was really really excited, it's not like I just threw it to the side and I DID use the certificate."

"Well, that was a long time ago and that's fine, I'm over it."

"Obviously not."

So we chatted it through and got it all resolved, rather quickly and totally peaceably and now I don't have to give him a cold shoulder today and just enjoy the whole day with him, which is good, because it's going to be nearly seventy so we will be working outside all day as soon as I finally finish those dishes which I'll do as soon as I am done blogging and our youngest gets out of the tub (but he is crying that the tub is so boring that he can't pick up his toys) and our #3 leaves brother #2 - who is home sick with an ear infection and THAT is a great story I hope to write about later today - alone so he can do his homework. And I am thankful for the lesson I learned and applied from Bible study.

Got any lesson you should be applying to your day? I'm telling you, I am thankful I applied mine to the day...I think my day is going to seem blessed (with peace and joy) because of it.