Today happens to be Military Spouse Appreciation Day. I was a military spouse for 24 plus years. It was the greatest honor and the greatest burden. It may sound cynical, but my goal was always to bring attention and improve the lives of military spouses.
After my husband’s retirement he was gainfully employed and during that time, we had a son that was diagnosed with cancer, my husband was relieved of his duties (it was a blessing), he was reassigned to a much better job, and we were facing a future empty nest. We took proactive steps to receive some outside counseling. It was there I learned that I had a lot of unpacked boxes so to speak. Many of these boxes were emotions, trauma responses and unresolved feelings that I had packed up and put on a shelf. In my discovery I realized that this was a way to protect myself against being vulnerable. I had packed up my true emotions and feelings in order to seem strong. I realize now that it was ill-advised guidance to ‘stay strong’ when bad things happened. Maybe there’s a better word or a better way to tell hurting people that they can survive whatever it is they are enduring.
“Quite often, people equate strength with being able to withstand pain, emotional or otherwise. This is a rather narrow understanding of it, explains Leah Anderson, a British UAE-based wellness expert and mindset coach. “I think the idea of strength is misunderstood so often. It’s equated with acting tough, which is just an external appearance,” she says. “People think acting tough is strength; but that’s not always the case. It’s a very limited idea of what strength really means,” she says.
“We can’t restrict the definitions of strength like that. Strength also means knowing when to just pause. It means to take breaks, looking after yourself when life gets too much. It means finally crying and letting your emotions flow freely, rather than suppressing them. It means asking for help,” she says. “Being strong means finding a way to just being true to yourself and what you need,” says Anderson. (See the whole article here: https://gn24.ae/108ab17079935000)
I’ll admit, maybe I just didn’t understand the word strong. No one told me I could have a breakdown, miss my husband, be mad because he wasn’t there, or temporarily hate the way things were. So today, on National Military Spouse Day I give permission to my fellow military spouses to not be so strong. Be you. Do what it takes for you to be healthy. And promise me you won’t box up those feelings and put them on a shelf for later.
Watch any home show on HGTV and you will see decorators using today’s hottest trends to remodel, update or create new homes. The only problem is that there isn’t one on the quirkiness of a home and how to embrace it or turn it into the hottest new trend. Where is that show? What Joanna Gaines did for shiplap, I could do for quirkiness. That’s the show I need. I may just have to embrace the quirkiness of our old house. Truthfully, we may have to gut the entire thing and start over. What quirks, you ask? Let’s look at some of the quirkiness things we discovered. But promise me you’ll abide by our farm rule. You are not allowed to ask why things are the way they are. We just don’t have the answers.
Quirkiness or Character
Oxford Languages defines quirk as “characterized by peculiar or unexpected traits.” That would definitely describe our house. However, Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines quirky as “unusual in especially an interesting or appealing way.” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quirky Our house is interesting but not necessarily appealing.
Stairs to Quirkiness
Let’s start at the stairs because it’s fascinating to me. At some point, the owner diverted the stairs. According to the last owner, the house was two living units at one time with the stairs running up along the exterior wall of the house. Later, they turned the stairs to come out to its existing spot but left the old stairs. It is currently a closet in what used to be a foyer but then became a bedroom and is now a room in question. Are you following? This spring we are going to open the wall up and see if we like the original route of the stairs.
With everything, I am sure that at the time it was the best option. Now, it just perplexes me. Somehow I didn’t get a great picture of our living room. Our hot-water heater sits in a closet in our living room. Everyone notices it because it’s that quirky. The goal is to relocate it because we want to tear down the adjacent wall. But in order to move the heater, we have to move it to the other side of the wall in what will be the laundry room. To do step C, we have to do steps A and B.
It won’t always be like this, right?
This entire room is full of quirkiness. We will remove the carpet to see what is underneath. The whole back wall needs to be redone. The “bay” window is three different size windows. Behind the curtain is the world’s ugliest sliding glass door. As we understand it, the original kitchen was here which would explain some things.
You can see the edge of the hot water heater closet to the left of the couch
While we are in this room, look up. Let’s see if we can get one light for this small room instead of four. It will require moving the fake beams and the ceiling that seems to be lower than the rest of the room. Quirky!
These beams are probably decorative. But what is more troublesome is the many light fixtures. This will be rectified once we figure this room out.
Goodbye awkward Sauna
While a sauna sounds like a good idea, we found the one attached to the back of our house to be dangerous. It was close to setting the whole place on fire. The wiring was questionable. And as you can see the only creatures using it were the birds. It was ugly as well and was not appeasing. It had to go.
Goodbye awkward, quirky sauna! It looks so much better.
I appreciate that someone removed the knee walls of the attic to make the bedrooms larger. My quandary is what to do with that space. Thank God for Pinterest and all the amazing ideas I have pinned. https://www.pinterest.com/
Here is our current situation upstairs in two of the bedrooms. I have included ideas of what to do with the space. Also, can you spot the hidden hatch in the floor? That secret storage may very well be the reason the ceiling is so low downstairs. We shall see!
Upstairs bedroom eaves. There is a secret hatch under the rug. The linoleum area of the floor is where the attic used to be.
We need all new windows but that will be one of the last projects along with exterior work. But this one window is always the subject of dinner conversations. It’s two storm windows used to make one window. You promised not to ask why!
There is a long list of things that aren’t quite right but this blog only has so much room. I will include and explain the wall we took down in another post.
This can all be fixed. When we change things it gives us a sense of accomplishment. One day this blog will show us how far we’ve come. Thanks for following along and not asking why.
