Naughty crayons and a marriage encounter
First, an anecdote:
So, I was tucking Two into bed tonight. While I'd been reading to him, he had been trying to draw various school supplies on a small pad of paper in preparation for entering the yearbook cover art contest. He has a plush crayon (only more of a raspberry color) among his zillions of stuffies and had used it as a model (as well as drawing a pencil, glue bottle, etc); when he showed me his initial artwork, I suggested maybe he also add an eraser. He pointed to the tip of Jazzy (the crayon - the color stitched on it is "Jazzberry") and jokingly said, "There's the eraser!" Jazzy got all offended, of course (courtesy of my brilliant play-acting ;-) ) and attempted to "draw" all over Two in retaliation.
So Two held out the pad of paper, instead. "Draw on this, Jazzy!"
Me-as-Jazzy: *pretend scribbles*
Two: *looks at the paper* *exclaims, in mock-horror* "We're not supposed to use THOSE words!"
Me: *cracks up completely*
Meanwhile, the average morning with MiniPlu can best be described by this comic. :P
To add to yesterday's update, let me tell you about my weekend. Back in January, I coaxed Will into signing up for a Marriage Encounter (WWME). See, I knew my aunt/uncle (who are "spiritual" but not religious, if you know what I mean?) had attended several WWME weekends and really enjoyed them, and I know they have a wonderful marriage; it's long been in my head that I wanted to try it, too, once our kids were old enough to foist on someone else for the weekend. Finding an Encounter weekend that's relatively nearby was problematic for awhile, until I discovered one being held right in our region. So - we signed up.
The idea behind WWME's philosophy is to teach you how to better communicate your feelings to your spouse. It is not meant specifically as a means to solve problems, although you may find that it does that, or that it can lead to that. The idea is to be able to truly describe your feelings and to understand your spouses, so that if they say, "I'm angry about..." you really put yourself in their shoes to see what sort of anger it is to them, seeing as what constitutes "angry" to you might not be the same for them. By truly feeling what they feel, or at least understanding, clearly, what they feel, you can then adjust what you might say or do, or they - in better understanding their own feelings - can make changes, too. And you become more aware of what roadblocks frequently get in the way of your ability to listen fully, to really pay attention.
I won't get too much into the means by which you communicate said feelings because that feels somehow like pirating their retreats, but it does involve taking certain actions on a daily basis. The three lead couples had been doing this for decades. Seriously, decades. And, clearly, they had tight, loving relationships - at various points, every one of them, men and women both, got choked up with emotion as they described their marriage, or some event therein.
So, on the one hand, you, as an attendee, see this and think, "I want what they're having!" But it wasn't that easy, mentally. I think there's some issue of "trying to appreciate the message and separate it from the messenger" because while the lead couples were all perfectly nice, I did feel like they weren't people I would otherwise normally be friends with or identify with. That if they knew who my friends were, and what our values were, and the kid we had in our household, that they wouldn't like us at all, and it was therefore hard to think, "Do I really want to do these things and be like these people?"
Also - does anyone here remember Sadie Dragonfire's early H/D fic, "Protective Bonds"? Or, really, any fic (any fandom) that involves two characters being locked in a closet, or cursed somehow so they can't be separated, or accidentally handcuffed or whatever, and by the end of the fic they've realized their attraction/fallen in love, and possibly already had sex. I felt a little bit like that this weekend, especially at the beginning. You are STRONGLY encouraged to cut out anything that might distract you from focusing totally on your spouse and your marriage for the duration of the weekend. Cell phones are to be turned off except at bedtime, if you really feel you must check in with your kids. (One of the lead-couple wives said, "You wouldn't leave them with anyone you don't trust, would you? Then assume they're FINE." Well, sure, we trust R&K - which is where our kids were; Karen kindly came to fetch them Fri night and took them AND the dog to NJ for the weekend. But still - we figured, correctly, that our kids might want to, you know, hear from us periodically.) No computers, no TV, not even supposed to make use of the hotel gym (Will was initially ticked off about that - especially as we would have been exercising together, at least part of the time, but he got over it); the hotel room phones had been disconnected in terms of external lines (calling room-to-room worked fine). Maid service was cancelled because we would be in and out of our rooms throughout the day and they didn't want us to be intruded upon or distracted. We were discouraged from wearing watches so we could just live in a sort of timeless bubble, and let the leaders keep track of time. I was surprised they didn't forbid us from reading in bed at night. :-P
Now, in actuality, it really wasn't hard to comply with this. Sometimes an electronics detox is nice. And they kept us going late enough at night and early enough in the morning that it was just as well we didn't get to exercise. Our friends and family had an emergency contact number (provided by the WWME team) to use that didn't involve either our room phone or cell phones. But, still - my initial reaction was to suddenly envision myself and Will as living in a "Protective Bonds"-type fic. :-P
The reason we were in and out of our rooms a lot was because the format went like this: we'd sit in the little conference room and listen to one or another of the lead couples (they took turns - there was also a priest who did some talking, too; WWME is predominantly a Catholic-based phenomenon but you don't have to be Catholic to attend) go over the lesson in our workbook, adding real-life experiences, and other commentary. Then we'd separate by gender to start working on a particular exercise. The skills being taught involved doing some writing, and then discussing what you wrote, with a focus on the whole "I feel what you're feeling" concept. So, one gender would go up to the bedrooms to write while the other gender stayed in the conference room to write. After a bit, you'd reunite in the bedrooms to talk; the team leaders would call your room to tell you when to come back to the conference room. Lather, rinse, repeat. Sat and Sun started 7:30-8am with breakfast (8a on Sat and 7:30a on Sun), and Fri/Sat went until well after 10pm. It was pretty exhausting, despite all the sitting we were doing.
Will and I both agreed that the tools/skills we learned were useful - we had some good breakthroughs and some emotional moments on Sat, in particular. But we're still working on how we want to use said tools, and how we feel about the weekend overall. Still processing it, I think. Also, they ended on kind of a sour note for us because a) they REALLY pushed for "free will" donations - but of a substantial amount - to subsidize these events. Participants only pay about 1/6 the true cost of the weekend (two nights in the hotel with late check-out, plus five meals and various materials) and I get that the money has to come from SOMEWHERE, but the pushiness for Big Money really annoyed me. Also, they wanted us to recruit friends and family to sign up for a future WWME weekend, and ... I really just don't like being pushed into doing that. If I truly think someone I know would enjoy and benefit from something, then I'll cheerfully tell them all about it and encourage them to try, but I don't like being presented with a blank page and challenged to see if I could come up with ten names for them. (At most, I could think of two couples. Maybe.) So, yeah, the vibe we got at the end kind of negated the positive things we experienced earlier in the weekend, and it was hard to mentally shake that off, and focus on those positives.
So - I'm not sorry we did this, because I would otherwise have always wondered about it, and hopefully we'll find it helpful - but it wasn't really what I was expecting, either.
Meanwhile, Karen took our kids to the Camden Aquarium on Sat, where they all apparently had a great time. MiniPlu came home with an adorable floppy plush hippo, and Two got yet another penguin, of course. :-P Sun the kids didn't get as much attention because Karen was trying to get a very stressed Rob ready and out the door to a two-week business trip in TX, but they were safe and content to be where they were, so no problems there. Dog behaved herself, too.
Will finished our taxes today, in the nick of time - which means I get to join the insane mob thronging hordes at the post office tomorrow, ensuring it gets processed in time. Whee!
So, I was tucking Two into bed tonight. While I'd been reading to him, he had been trying to draw various school supplies on a small pad of paper in preparation for entering the yearbook cover art contest. He has a plush crayon (only more of a raspberry color) among his zillions of stuffies and had used it as a model (as well as drawing a pencil, glue bottle, etc); when he showed me his initial artwork, I suggested maybe he also add an eraser. He pointed to the tip of Jazzy (the crayon - the color stitched on it is "Jazzberry") and jokingly said, "There's the eraser!" Jazzy got all offended, of course (courtesy of my brilliant play-acting ;-) ) and attempted to "draw" all over Two in retaliation.
So Two held out the pad of paper, instead. "Draw on this, Jazzy!"
Me-as-Jazzy: *pretend scribbles*
Two: *looks at the paper* *exclaims, in mock-horror* "We're not supposed to use THOSE words!"
Me: *cracks up completely*
Meanwhile, the average morning with MiniPlu can best be described by this comic. :P
To add to yesterday's update, let me tell you about my weekend. Back in January, I coaxed Will into signing up for a Marriage Encounter (WWME). See, I knew my aunt/uncle (who are "spiritual" but not religious, if you know what I mean?) had attended several WWME weekends and really enjoyed them, and I know they have a wonderful marriage; it's long been in my head that I wanted to try it, too, once our kids were old enough to foist on someone else for the weekend. Finding an Encounter weekend that's relatively nearby was problematic for awhile, until I discovered one being held right in our region. So - we signed up.
The idea behind WWME's philosophy is to teach you how to better communicate your feelings to your spouse. It is not meant specifically as a means to solve problems, although you may find that it does that, or that it can lead to that. The idea is to be able to truly describe your feelings and to understand your spouses, so that if they say, "I'm angry about..." you really put yourself in their shoes to see what sort of anger it is to them, seeing as what constitutes "angry" to you might not be the same for them. By truly feeling what they feel, or at least understanding, clearly, what they feel, you can then adjust what you might say or do, or they - in better understanding their own feelings - can make changes, too. And you become more aware of what roadblocks frequently get in the way of your ability to listen fully, to really pay attention.
I won't get too much into the means by which you communicate said feelings because that feels somehow like pirating their retreats, but it does involve taking certain actions on a daily basis. The three lead couples had been doing this for decades. Seriously, decades. And, clearly, they had tight, loving relationships - at various points, every one of them, men and women both, got choked up with emotion as they described their marriage, or some event therein.
So, on the one hand, you, as an attendee, see this and think, "I want what they're having!" But it wasn't that easy, mentally. I think there's some issue of "trying to appreciate the message and separate it from the messenger" because while the lead couples were all perfectly nice, I did feel like they weren't people I would otherwise normally be friends with or identify with. That if they knew who my friends were, and what our values were, and the kid we had in our household, that they wouldn't like us at all, and it was therefore hard to think, "Do I really want to do these things and be like these people?"
Also - does anyone here remember Sadie Dragonfire's early H/D fic, "Protective Bonds"? Or, really, any fic (any fandom) that involves two characters being locked in a closet, or cursed somehow so they can't be separated, or accidentally handcuffed or whatever, and by the end of the fic they've realized their attraction/fallen in love, and possibly already had sex. I felt a little bit like that this weekend, especially at the beginning. You are STRONGLY encouraged to cut out anything that might distract you from focusing totally on your spouse and your marriage for the duration of the weekend. Cell phones are to be turned off except at bedtime, if you really feel you must check in with your kids. (One of the lead-couple wives said, "You wouldn't leave them with anyone you don't trust, would you? Then assume they're FINE." Well, sure, we trust R&K - which is where our kids were; Karen kindly came to fetch them Fri night and took them AND the dog to NJ for the weekend. But still - we figured, correctly, that our kids might want to, you know, hear from us periodically.) No computers, no TV, not even supposed to make use of the hotel gym (Will was initially ticked off about that - especially as we would have been exercising together, at least part of the time, but he got over it); the hotel room phones had been disconnected in terms of external lines (calling room-to-room worked fine). Maid service was cancelled because we would be in and out of our rooms throughout the day and they didn't want us to be intruded upon or distracted. We were discouraged from wearing watches so we could just live in a sort of timeless bubble, and let the leaders keep track of time. I was surprised they didn't forbid us from reading in bed at night. :-P
Now, in actuality, it really wasn't hard to comply with this. Sometimes an electronics detox is nice. And they kept us going late enough at night and early enough in the morning that it was just as well we didn't get to exercise. Our friends and family had an emergency contact number (provided by the WWME team) to use that didn't involve either our room phone or cell phones. But, still - my initial reaction was to suddenly envision myself and Will as living in a "Protective Bonds"-type fic. :-P
The reason we were in and out of our rooms a lot was because the format went like this: we'd sit in the little conference room and listen to one or another of the lead couples (they took turns - there was also a priest who did some talking, too; WWME is predominantly a Catholic-based phenomenon but you don't have to be Catholic to attend) go over the lesson in our workbook, adding real-life experiences, and other commentary. Then we'd separate by gender to start working on a particular exercise. The skills being taught involved doing some writing, and then discussing what you wrote, with a focus on the whole "I feel what you're feeling" concept. So, one gender would go up to the bedrooms to write while the other gender stayed in the conference room to write. After a bit, you'd reunite in the bedrooms to talk; the team leaders would call your room to tell you when to come back to the conference room. Lather, rinse, repeat. Sat and Sun started 7:30-8am with breakfast (8a on Sat and 7:30a on Sun), and Fri/Sat went until well after 10pm. It was pretty exhausting, despite all the sitting we were doing.
Will and I both agreed that the tools/skills we learned were useful - we had some good breakthroughs and some emotional moments on Sat, in particular. But we're still working on how we want to use said tools, and how we feel about the weekend overall. Still processing it, I think. Also, they ended on kind of a sour note for us because a) they REALLY pushed for "free will" donations - but of a substantial amount - to subsidize these events. Participants only pay about 1/6 the true cost of the weekend (two nights in the hotel with late check-out, plus five meals and various materials) and I get that the money has to come from SOMEWHERE, but the pushiness for Big Money really annoyed me. Also, they wanted us to recruit friends and family to sign up for a future WWME weekend, and ... I really just don't like being pushed into doing that. If I truly think someone I know would enjoy and benefit from something, then I'll cheerfully tell them all about it and encourage them to try, but I don't like being presented with a blank page and challenged to see if I could come up with ten names for them. (At most, I could think of two couples. Maybe.) So, yeah, the vibe we got at the end kind of negated the positive things we experienced earlier in the weekend, and it was hard to mentally shake that off, and focus on those positives.
So - I'm not sorry we did this, because I would otherwise have always wondered about it, and hopefully we'll find it helpful - but it wasn't really what I was expecting, either.
Meanwhile, Karen took our kids to the Camden Aquarium on Sat, where they all apparently had a great time. MiniPlu came home with an adorable floppy plush hippo, and Two got yet another penguin, of course. :-P Sun the kids didn't get as much attention because Karen was trying to get a very stressed Rob ready and out the door to a two-week business trip in TX, but they were safe and content to be where they were, so no problems there. Dog behaved herself, too.
Will finished our taxes today, in the nick of time - which means I get to join the insane mob thronging hordes at the post office tomorrow, ensuring it gets processed in time. Whee!