Where Bloggers Live 08.2024: Best Advice I Was Ever Given

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening!!  Thank you for stopping by for this month’s edition of Where Bloggers Live.  Today the gals and I have been tasked with writing about the best advice we’ve ever gotten.  To be honest, I don’t remember a lot of advice that I have been given, maybe because I can’t remember much of anything these days.  Or maybe because I can be hard-headed and don’t necessarily follow advice very well.

Where Bloggers Live

The ideas for this colorful series originated with our adventurous leader, Bettye, at Fashion Schlub.  She describes this series as being kind of like HGTV’s “Celebrities at Home,” but…with bloggers! Every month, Bettye provides the six WBL bloggers with a prompt that invites us to share our lives, thoughts and memories.  Every prompt makes me think!!  And that’s a tall order for me these days.

You can find last month’s Where Bloggers Live post, here.  Always pleased to join my friends for this series.

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Speaking of…you remember these gals, right?

Bettye at Fashion Schlub
Daenel at Living Outside the Stacks
Em at Dust and Doghair
Iris at Iris’ Original Ramblings
Jodie at Jodie’s Touch of Style
Sally at Within a World of My Own
Leslie at Once Upon a Time & Happily Ever After

Where Bloggers Live 08.2024

I’m not terribly good about taking advice.  At least not right off the bat.  How ’bout you?  Advice has to kind of sit with me a bit.  I have to ponder it. And consider my own natural inclinations for whatever the situation is first.  And then I might consider any advice. As I have shared many times before, I come from a long-line of A-#1 worriers.  So I have to worry every situation to death before I take action, and then again after I have decided what I am going to do!!

In looking back over my life in preparation for writing this post, I don’t remember ooodles of advice being offered my way.  Maybe things like ‘wear the heels instead of the flats’ or ‘you should wear more blue.’  But I don’t remember being given a whole lot of life-altering advice.  Probably because I would have dismissed most of it and done things my way, anyway.  That says a lot right there!!  I guess there were a couple of times when people suggested maybe I really didn’t want to marry him or him.

Which brings me to…

The Best Advice I Was Ever Given

You may remember PC and I ‘met’ on Match.com in May 2023.  He messaged me on a Tuesday and I was immediately enamored with the complete sentences, excellent grammar and punctuation in his message to me.  Not to mention his profile picture – that handsome face and full head of hair!!  We agreed to meet on Thursday night at Applebee’s and I would like to say the rest is history.

But it’s not.

We dated for a very long time.  Five years.  With lots of hiccups and road blocks along the way.  Which is to be expected in a relationship where both parties have been badly burned in the past.  And both parties come into the new relationship loaded down with baggage…not to mention, 2 teens/young adult children a piece.

Year One

The first year, I was head over heels.  But, sadly, I also just thought at 45 years old I was supposed to be married.  Living that grand happily ever after.  And I wasn’t.  Within a few months, I told PC I was falling in love with him.  Actually whispered it when I thought he was sleeping but he was awake and heard me.  Oh, the horrors.  Made for a few very awkward days afterward because he wasn’t ready to reciprocate.

He was still pining over the rebound girlfriend he had fallen for after his marriage dissolved.  And in a lot of ways, Paul was still very sad about the dissolution of his 15-year marriage.  Mostly sad for his children on whom the divorce was very difficult.  I was looking forward – forward to the future, and wanting to get on with life and love.

Year Two and Three

During the next 2 years of our ‘courtship’ – how very old fashioned – we seemed to be in a similar place.  Both of us had full plates with our separate lives parenting our children, and our families were not blending well at all.  Who are these people, these divorced parents with children who remarry and have the perfected blended his-hers-OURS families??  Our kids were like oil and water with each other.  And Paul’s kids didn’t care for me in the least.  My daughters were very cautious about Paul, too.

Our lives were busy with work, kids, responsibilities and trying to fall in love simultaneously.  But during this time we were on at least on the same sheet of music, more or less.

Year Four

Along about 2007-ish, we kind of flip-flopped and Paul became more of the initiator or pursuer.  I felt like he was becoming more serious about a long-term (after 4 years!!) relationship.  We talked about building a house together.  Of course, getting married first.  But while my girls were kind of settling down into adulthood, his children were still in the throes of their teenage years.  His son, Matt was living with Paul.  My daughter Lauren was living with me.  And as far as the kids were concerned, ‘ne’er the twain shall meet.’  Of course, they had met, and we had done family activities together for several years but Matt and Paul went back to their house and Lauren and I went back to ours.  I was not at all sure I wanted to (step) mother his children.  Decided that the status quo was just fine for me.

Love and Marriage?

After a walk up McKelligon Canyon one Sunday, Paul suggested we go look at rings.  Yikes.  But I like a nice diamond engagement ring as well as the next girl.  So we did.  We picked out the rings (engagement and WEDDING!!)  together but I told Paul I wanted him to actually propose, not just hand me the ring after he paid for it.  And I wanted him to surprise me.  He did.

In the fall of 2007, while PC and I were checking out model homes and houses for sale, he pulled a small black box from his pocket and proposed to me.  On the balcony of an open house overlooking our beloved Franklin Mountains, he pulled out the ring and said he would do everything he could to make me happy the rest of my life.

Trouble in Paradise

I was a little afraid to tell family and friends (and my daughters), that we were engaged.  Had made more than one mistake in the love and marriage department before.  Now, at almost 50 years old, I couldn’t get it wrong again.  While I was hesitant to share our news, I was excited to begin putting into place the plans for our lives together.  We found a house plan that we both liked and a lot on which to build.  My parents came for a visit and were happy to learn of our engagement.  Really liked the floor plan we had selected.  I told my daughters, Paul told Matt and it was soon full speed ahead.

Until it wasn’t.

Cold Feet

A few months after our engagement, it was time to sign papers so construction on our house could begin.  I panicked.  Was I ready to try my hand at lady love again?  To be a step-mother when that had gone so badly for me before.  And to put my girls through another marriage that might potentially fail?

We had begun seeing a counselor in hopes of making the merger of our families more successful.  My girls and I had worked with Kathy Curley for several years and she had helped us through some dark days. Kathy worked with Lauren and Matt, Paul and I, together and separately.  I confided in Kathy that I was terrified to proceed in marriage.  On the day of our appointment to sign the papers for our house, I told Paul I needed to step back from our plans.

Finally, The Good Advice Part

For a few weeks, Paul and I, ‘we’ were in limbo.  I continued to see Kathy, the counselor, expressing my worries about marrying again at each appointment.  After several sessions, Kathy stepped out of her role as my counselor and spoke to me as a friend.  She told me that Paul was a good man, that he was responsible and supportive.  He had stick-to-it-iveness – he had retired from the Army after 23 years; he had stayed in a doomed marriage for 15  years because he thought it was the right thing to do.  Kathy reminded me that we had similar values and goals for our lives and we almost always had fun together.  I told her again that I was scared to remarry.  Kathy assured me that this time it would be good.  She could tell how much we loved each other.  That I could finally have my happily ever after.  She encouraged me to marry my PC.

And I did.  Best advice I’ve ever been given.

Best Advice I've Been Given

Shopping in Cloudcroft, NM

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Today

We have just begun a new chapter in our lives together, in our marriage.  This week was PC’s first week of retirement from his job with the Department of Defense.  After Paul’s cancer scare, followed by considerable talking and praying and talking, we decided it was time.  And this first week has been a fairly easy adjustment.  Hope we can continue to have fun together, making new memories, trying new activities and enjoying old favorites.  I couldn’t ask for a more reasonable, grounded, level-headed partner.  Paul is my grandchildren’s grandfather.  He has become Lauren’s stepfather, for sure, and someone Brennyn looks up to in a fatherly way.

I would like to say that things are really good between Matt and Kate and me.  But they are not.  Kate and Paul don’t have much of a relationship and she doesn’t accept me at all.  Matt is kind of lukewarm.  Medicated Matt is less reluctant to let me in.  He is medicated now but went for so long unmedicated that we have a rough history together.  We are going to Ohio the end of the month and will see him then.  Hope we can have a good drama-free visit.

Your Turn

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?  Did you follow the advice?  Do you receive advice easily?  I am so thankful that I swallowed my fears and became Mrs. Paul Clingan.  Our 16 years have not always been trouble-free but we are quick to remind each other that we are a team.  And we cannot allow anything to come between us.

Thank you for spending a few moments here with me.  Wishing you a restful, peaceful weekend.

Hugs and kisses,