Hello Alice’s friends:
It is me Hubby again. A few days ago, I told Alice that I would like to do a guest post on her blog. She immediately got a little defensive and told me that she would like to review and approve it before I hit the Publish button. I told her that would make me not want to write the post but decided to do it anyway. She is still nervous about it and told me that if she did not like it she may “un-publish” it. So, she still has that prerogative as the Big Boss of this blog.
I am rambling a bit but please bear with me. What I really wanted to write about were those many little things that were annoying me to no end lately. My annoyances usually showed up while I was driving. I would complain about other drivers, pedestrians taking their sweet time crossing the street, people parking their cars and trucks on narrow streets and many more things. I was going to write about these things and others going on in our daily home life (printer suddenly not working, Alice not being able to find our old photos from 1980 etc., etc.).
Alice had been watching my annoyances showing up at various times and mentioned recently that perhaps it was time for us to go to church again. This is sort of an old joke between us. Many years ago we used to go to a non-denominational New Agey kind of church. I used to call this a “cult church” to our daughters. The reason we started going to this church is for another post. In any case, the church believed in the power of the mind and that your happiness or grumpiness depended very much on how you reacted to things and people and circumstances. In many ways it was like the book Don’t sweat the Small Stuff and it is all Small Stuff.
Attending church also made us much more tolerant of people and their quirkiness. While I almost always had a rather positive view of things, I would sometimes get irritated with things going on at work and show my irritation while driving. Then Alice would say that it is time to go to church. The church did reinforce the idea of looking at things with a positive spin and that you are responsible for you own happiness. It was good to get this boost even though it lasted only a few days. The church also taught us to look at the big picture and to be thankful for them. My big picture things have always been the family, roof over our head, no worry about the source of next meal and more importantly overall health.
Needless to say that we did not go to any “cult church” here but just Alice saying that I may need to go to church made me think of the big picture and be able to get rid of most of my irritations. In fact, I do not even remember most of the things that caused my annoyances anymore.
This brings me to another minor issue. I should know how to deal with it but I need Alice’s help with this. I have noticed that she has been focusing on her hair a lot lately. She would spend a few minutes getting it primped and complain about how it lays flat on one side or how it is thin here or there etc. To me her hair looks great and many others have said so. I am NOT asking any of you to write about her hair and to compliment her on her hair. One of our friends already posted on Alice’s Facebook about how being healthy is the most important thing and hair will take care of itself. I wish she would remember this and the big picture in our lives now which is NED (no evidence of disease). We still have NED and everything else is small stuff. We should be very thankful for that and the other big picture items.
Happy Thanksgiving everybody!
H
P.S: Well, what do you know! The boss looked at the draft and liked it. So the danger of un-publishing it is probably gone.
My Wintersong 
It’s nice to hear from you. If that’s ‘annoyed’, I wish you had been around to teach my ex-hubby (the poster child for anger management) how to be ‘annoyed’. It might have saved our marriage. Then again, if I were still married, I’d want to see what you wrote first. too.
As to Alice’s hair, I need to write to her about it but not today (OSU is playing) but I think she’s doing just great. The big part of her frustration is that we gals were culturally conditioned by TV, magazines etc., and old sayings about our hair being our ‘crowning glory’ and we get crabby if it isn’t as we want it.
Hope this helps. And give Alice a big hug!!!!!
Thanks Kay. I am going to write a generic reply to all of the commenters to avoid repeating the same stuff to everyone. I know Alice takes the time to reply to everyone and I probably will come across as not being as considerate as she is.. Please check in on the blog post in a day or two. I am just waiting to see if I get a comment from a male with a slightly different perspective on the hair issue.
H
I think it’s awesome (overused word, I know, but such a good one)that you would come back as a guest blogger! It’s good to hear from you again. I have long been a believer in “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff”. I adopted it as a goal when my son was 17 and got a permanent in his copper colored, 4″ long hair that resulted in a bozo the clown look. It was his only teenage “rebellion”. This son was a straight A student, 100% attendance in school for 12 years straight, and in every way an ideal son. We had a couple of friends who absolutely could not stand his hair (which I admit was far from conventional back then) and they complained about it to me every Sunday at church. I told them then that he didn’t do drugs, he was home every night with the family, never talked back to us, and was in every way a wonderful son and I was not going to “sweat the small stuff”. I am so grateful I didn’t! I don’t always remember to think about that phrase but I’m always better off when I do, so thanks for the timely reminder.
As for Alice’s hair,I’m one who thinks her new style looks beautiful on her, but I also know that to us women some days we have issues with our hair that are not “small stuff” even if we try to convince ourselves otherwise. Some of my most irrational moments are a result of “bad hair days” so I’m not a good one to give advice on the matter.
Perfect timing with Thanksgiving coming up. Your “don’t sweat the small stuff” approach is great. I also think of a scripture verse that says in all things give thanks. That is sometimes hard to do, but when i manage to do that, it certainly calms my anger, resentment, irritation, fear or anxiety.
About the hair, Kay and Edna are on the money. All the women i know are rarely completely satisfied with their hair. From the photo Alice posted, it looks like she is doing really well in the hair department.
How nice to see you again. Guest blogging suits you….please tell Alice I said so.
Yes, “going to church” teaches techniques that get you through the everyday twitchy bits of life. I use bits of my “church” philosophy to handle my life everyday.
Yes, please tell Alice, we all have hated hair. Mine is wispy and goes what ever direction it wants to go limply and thinly. 🙂
Church is assembling with others and caring for each other. 10-4 willy
Thank you all for your comments. It is so nice to feel welcomed so warmly into your world with Alice. I am sorry that I am not creative enough to write a separate and different reply to each of you as Alice does routinely. I am afraid that I will be saying the same thing six diffrent times. So I am doing just one generic reply.
As for Alice’s issues with her hair, I should have known that all you ladies will be empathetic and completely understand her “obsession” with the hair problem. I was hoping to hear from a male reader to get a different perspective. Hey, where are you guys?
We men tend to view our hair problems differently. To us the big difference between a very bad haircut and a very good haircut is two weeks. We can also deal with a bad hair situation for two weeks without having to lock ourselves in.
While Alice is still having her issues with her hair (not so strongly any more) her view of the bigger picture got into better focus. Her post about our weather shows how much calmer she is. Of course all this cool behavior lasted just until she started to work on scanning her photos with the new all-in-one printer. It is just a good thing that our grandkids were not around to listen to her rants and use of words even I do not use.
Happy Thanksgiving to all.
H
Amen! Amen!
I am not over religious but suggest that you try the Serenity Prayer
“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time”
It does go further , but that much is enough for me.
I was full-time carer for my soul-mate and husband during his six year battle with cancer. The dreaded cancer won. Hubby and Alice, you had a warning, but came through it. You have that second chance, make the most of it and don’t waste precious time sweating the small stuff!
Sermon over… Happy Thanksgiving!
Thank you Grannymar. I really think that you should start a church because I feel that there are hundreds of people like us who need to be reminded of the Serenity Prayer and other common sense advice. You will be proud of my reaction to a “small” problem we found this morning. The furnace which heats up most of our house quit this morning and it about minus 10 C outside. I have called the service people after checking a few things to see if I can get it restarted. Even Alice is being calm because of my reaction.
I hope the big Irish financial crisis we are hearing about on TV is not affecting your personal life too much.
Take care and Happy Thanksgiving to you too.
H
I live in Northern Ireland – part of UK, and although there are many belt tightening exercises for us, the Westminster Government seems happy to lend £300.00 Sterling from every UK and NI householder to help the Republic of Ireland’s economy.
I can see why the boss approved this post………..very important things to try and always remember, and I admit, I don’t always do so either. And I have SO very much to be grateful and thankful for. One of which is, thank you for posting this because hopefully the next time I get annoyed at the small stuff, I’ll remember your words. Well done!
OH, and on Alice’s hair………..I already told her, I think it looks super! The new cut she got took 10 years off her age! It’s very tres chic, so tell her to stop moaning………..lol
I think you should post more often! But don’t tell Alice I said that! 😉
I saw that !!!! (Alice) But I agree with you, and I try to get him to but he’s stubborn. I did get him to write the holiday letter to family this year. That’s a good thing. 😀