butterfly blog

leaving blogger behind

I'm experimenting with WordPress. Blogger has been great, but I think it's time to move on.
I've also been contemplating the future of my "duelling" blogs. I think it's time to retire dear butterfly blog. I kept it through this first year of marriage, in hopes of proving that I can be married and still be "me." What I've learned is that I'm not the me I was before I was married. I'm still me, just a very married me. Now, when I think about blogging things, they nearly always revolve around my marriage. I still enjoy my "me-time" but life is just that much better when shared with my partner in crime.
The Buchwald blog will stick around, but it'll be getting a makeover once I'm satisfied with WordPress. With any luck, a little bit of the sentiment behind this blog will appear over there.

you know...

It strikes me as odd that I felt the urge to write about judgements people have made about me. Especially when one of them is that I'm judgemental.
Maybe they were really just observations, but looking back, they sure feel like judgements, especially with all the examples of the things I did wrong and how wrong it was of me to do/say what I did/said.
There are two different things that I've learned from writing this.
1. Calling someone judgemental is being judgemental yourself.
2. Even if you think you're just stating an opinion/observation, your listener might think you're judging them.

It leaves me with one very important question: How can we distinguish between opinion/concern and judgement?

(this is where, if you actually read this, you're supposed to comment)

the bad post

This is a reminder to myself that I really do need to learn to think before I speak. It's a good skill to have and one that I apparently STILL do not posess with any consistency. The worst of it is that I seem to stop thinking before I speak with the people I consider myself to be closest to. Apparently I've ticked an awful lot of people off with my not-thinking, but nobody seems to want to smack me over the head with this information. Instead, it seems to get pushed aside & collected up until I just get too annoying to talk to and I'm left to wonder "what the heck did I do?" This is an extreme over-simplification of a lot of things, but I suppose it's a good starting point for adjusting my behavior. It's really not nice to say stupid stuff that can be misinterpreted because it doesn't sound nice in the first place.
On the flip-side, it's also not good to not point out to me that I'm being an idiot. I can't learn that I'm causing a problem if nobody tells me. And I can't apologize for hurting your feelings if I'm too oblivious to realize that I've done it. I need a lot of people to do this (tell me when I'm being dumb). My dear husband sure won't, sometimes I think he's more oblivious to it than I am, so I need someone to pick up his slack... but to also do this in a loving way.

Any volunteers?

Some of my problem areas are: Sounding judgemental, being snippy without realizing it, being too rigid/goal-oriented and unflexible, being afraid to apologize even when I know that I should and a very general fear of driving unfamiliar or unreliable vehicles to unfamiliar places and/or places without parking lots.

I'm well aware of these problem areas and I thought I'd been working on some of them... I have a few completely spontaneous and irrational adventures in the last few months... I even drove my very unreliable car to Pittsburgh in the dark, except that where I went had a parking lot. It actually resolved most of the fear about driving the unreliable car to an unfamiliar place, but I still won't go somewhere without a parking lot. And there was also that trip that involved the flood detour... lemme tell ya, though, never again will I drive into a flood detour on purpose. Then again, I also thought that I was trying very hard to not be judgemental, but I guess even just my opinion is considered a judgement.

the good post

I've been tagged again.

1) Total Number of Books I've Owned
hundreds... too many to count.

2) Last Book I Bought
Life-Giving Love by Kimberly Hahn

3) Last Book I Read
I'm in the middle of God & Ronald Reagan by Paul Kengor. I'm reading it in part because Paul's wife kicks my butt twice a week during aerobics class.

4) Five Books That Mean A Lot to Me (I'll assume besides the Holy Bible)
1-Oh, The Places You'll Go by Dr. Seuss: Has there ever been a better graduation gift?

2-The Pigman by Paul Zindel: my copy belonged to my mom. The book is definitely a classic, in my not-so-humble opinion. It's a great story about growing up.

3-Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson: An award winning book the teachers at my elementary school loved it so much that I think I read it at least once a year from 4th grade through 6th. It's just a shame that the ending never changes.

4-The Baby-Sitters Club series by Ann M. Martin: I read and collected these books for far longer than I theoretically should have. To this day, though, I'm annoyed that I didn't continue. I have some pretty icky gaps and the books are getting harder and harder to find.

5-Little Women by Louisa May Allcott: This is the one book that actually made me cry while reading it... before I became a weepy sobby mess about everything. Now, I can't even watch Star Trek: TNG without tearing up.

I'm supposed to tag someone else to do this, but I've seen it on just about every blog I read, so I'll just leave it up to you... If you haven't yet done this and you want to, just leave me a comment with a link to where you posted your answers :)

new blog to read

Go read Feminine Genius. They present a refreshing view of feminism in light of Catholicism. I haven't read much yet, but what I've read I've enjoyed.