A hunter who can hunt without hunting is a good hunter....

Ok so my family is larger then most, not extreme like the Duggars or anything, but not your typical husband and wife and 2.2 kids...There are 7 people in this family.  Well, that being said, times are tough and stretching the dollar is most definitely needed, my solution..go online and find some recipes for things that will feed a large family. 

Now, having cooked for several years i know that if a recipe says "feeds 4" they are talking about 4 servings of about 1 cup per serving...Ok this doesn't work... i have 4 grown men in this household plus a pregnant woman...1 cup servings not happening! If i put 1 cup of something in front of each of them there would be a major revolt and that doesn't even include what the pregnant one would do, i would be murdered in my sleep for sure!!!

But i digress...So i go hunting with my favorite shooting partner Mr. Google for some rib sticking, money saving, feed the damn army recipes...what do i find? Lots of sights that say "large family cooking"..Awesome, Mr. Google, he knows how to hunt lemme tell you.  So imagine my dismay when i click on these recipes and what do they say..Feeds 5, Feeds 4...OMFG Seriously! I am quite certain that the link said Large Family Cooking, perhaps i am getting blind, lemme go back an see...Nope, that is what is says in big bold, underlined letters.  Really, you think 5 is a big family!  What happened to stews that filled 10 gallon pans, hell what happened to 10 gallon pans for that matter!  What happened to recipes for food that fed more then delicate yuppies watching thier calories...I need food people, lots of it and STAT!!!!!!

So after 5 minutes of breathing techniques and a shot of jack daniels it hits me...The Duggars, they got 19 kids, they gotta have recipes to feed 3 armies...So Mr. Google lets go hunting in Arkansas....Mr. Google immediately finds the duggar sight (isn't he amazing!!!) and i click and yup, lookie there a recipes tab...Hallelujah we are saved...um, well, wait a minute Joe Bob Duggar why do your recipes say Feeds 5! Your show is called 19 Kids and Counting!!!  OMG it's a conspiracy, even the duggars won't just gimme a recipe i don't need to double, or triple or quadruple.....  That's it i am taking Mr. Google out back and shooting him behind the woodshed and cooking him for dinner.  Don't worry i will just tell everyone else he ran away.


Anryan

Why do they always say that.....

There have been times when I’ve been really stressed out over something going on in my life only to hear someone say "…just let it go". I tried on a few occasions, but it never quite worked that way for me.   People often say things like "…don’t give it any power, you can actually feed your issues and make them bigger if you constantly think and talk about them”. However, my thought there was that ignoring your issues will not cause them to go away. 

It seems to me that I often think I’m letting go, but what usually happens is that I end up disconnecting from parts of myself. All those painful feelings and conflicted issues then stay trapped in my body. These conflicts will eventually resurface in one form or another.Thoughts, feelings, emotions and life experiences have to be absorbed. 

Many of us struggle with parts of our lives that are not working the way that we want them to. We may try to control the outcome by manipulating other people or the situation that we find ourselves in. In my experience, trying to force matters usually generates more stress and it causes us to jam up inside. The additional pressure we generate may cause things to blow up around us.  Don’t get me wrong, there are times when it’s appropriate to take charge to create a more favorable outcome. But there are times when I now realize that I’m holding on too tightly by trying to control the outcome. I have to stop and allow myself to feel and understand what is going on and that it isn’t necessarily my thing to control.  Fear, anxiety or feelings of frustration definitely surface when I let go of my need to control certain things. I think that understanding these feelings will make it easier for me to come to a place of acceptance, relax into what’s happening and allow things take their course. 

Unresolved issues and unprocessed thoughts, emotions and life experiences seem to accumulate within me. I have become so saturated with all this old clutter that i have very little room to take in anything new. Look at young people today, how they learn quickly, are full of life and they tend to jump right into things. Notice too, how some people slow down and sometimes become set in their ways as they age. They may also have a tendency to live in the past.   I think if you truly look at someone you can see the accumulated residue of people’s past in how they act and their body language. I think that I have become  saturated by the clutter of my unprocessed thoughts, emotions and life experiences and that it has had a tremendous deadening effect on me. I think I have lost that passionate fire within that would renew me and cause me to want to engage in life. It’s as if my circuitry has become so corroded that I have very little openness or receptivity to take in anything new. 

All of us have difficulty moving on at times. People change; friends often move away or grow in different directions. We may have found the love of our life, but we eventually grow old and die. The only constant in my life is change. But if I dwell on those things I become blind to the good things and times that are happening right before me.

We can’t see our emotions and I think that’s why so many people are not aware of the impact they have upon us. Feelings and emotions arise in response to the events taking place in my life and from my interpretation of these events.  The conflicted thoughts, feelings and unresolved issues that I fail to absorb get pushed down inside of me.  I therefore continue to struggle with the same issues throughout the course of my life. I try to change but I find myself running into many of the same problems. Buried emotions keep these patterns locked into place. I can’t change these things unless I begin to absorb the underlying thoughts and emotions. 

I often say that I have forgiven those who have wronged me. I think that a lot of times I am not being honest with myself and still carrying around lots of hurt, resentment and other conflicted thoughts and feelings on the inside.   What would happen if I focused all my attention on a person who has hurt me at some time in my life?   What if I imagined the person as if they were sitting right there in the room with me? How would I feel? What would I say? If I said those things would I start to feel different about that situation, freer from it?  Hell yes I would!!!  How many times have you gotten into a disagreement with someone, walked away talking to yourself and had an epiphany…..wouldn’t that be the exact the same thing!!!!

I think that I, like many people, gain some form of gratification from holding onto past hurts. That it may serve as a means of gaining attention or acknowledgement. For instance, some children could only get attention from their parents by creating some drama or being sick and then  these patterns become more deeply ingrained over time.   It can be a little painful to really look into the mirror and see who I am and what I am doing. It’s important for me to be fully honest with myself and acknowledge the unhealthy ways that I have tried to manipulate myself.  

It can be very difficult to let go of people who for one reason or another are no longer an active part of our lives. Parts of us are still very much attached to these individuals.   Feelings and emotions are the same way.   I think the key to this is to come from a place of acceptance of myself and how i feel by saying something like "…okay, this is what I’m feeling right now … why am I feeling it".

I think I  try to busy myself or create distractions so I don’t have to think about or experience all those unpleasant feelings.  But then all that yuk stays trapped inside of me. I never really resolve the underlying issues when I do that. I then go on down the road in life and end up creating the same kinds of issues all over again.    I think the unhealthy patterns that cause me to fixate on these things are programmed into my subconscious mind. There’s no intellectual process or attitude shift that will change that. These patterns are hardwired into my brain and they have to be reformatted…by me!!!! 

I think that I have to bring my attention to what’s really happening at that moment. This may involve acknowledging something I am uncomfortable with or confronting feelings/experiences I have buried deep down inside. I don’t think that I can just make these things go away but I do think I can allow them to stop owning me and that I can feel the things that I should feel about that situation and then … THEN I can in fact simply let it go.