Love Dare Day 13

Today's Dare:

Talk with your spouse about establishing healthy rules of engagement. If your mate is not ready for this, then write out your own personal rules to “fight” by. Resolve to abide by them when the next disagreement occurs.If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.

OK, there is something that has recently surfaced about this dare. It seems to be driven by the desire to keep a failing relationship together. I'm all for trying that, but my relationship, while not always on a smooth path, is certainly nowhere near this dire. I've been skimming the official blog, and these folks are at the end of their relationships, so I can see where some of this would help. Me and The Dude? We're fine. Seriously, we piss each other off sometimes, but we rarely fight. We disagree about lots of things, but we always respect each other's opinions, and most of the time find a compromise we can both live with. But really, we agree on alot more than we disagree. And even during the rocky parts, we only ever really fought about once a year. That was before I learned to just say what was bothering me in the moment, and get over it. I used to bottle it all up, harboring resentments for months, then about once a year, it would all crash and come pouring out of me! That wasn't a particularly healthy way to be and I'm over it now.

Today is Friday the 13th, and it seems like the number 13 is rather lucky for me (unlike the Knights Templar). The Dude and I were married on the 13th, and had 13 people in the wedding party. And today? Today I had THREE job offers in my e-mail when I logged on! I have accepted one of those offers after grilling everyone I knew who also knew the managers I would be working for. I've picked what I think is by far the best fit for my skills, knowledge, desires, and management style. I am looking forward to being happy and excited about what I do again! I am looking forward to the weekend, even with all of the things we'll be doing because I won't also be worried about work - what a relief!

Of course the best laid plans... On Tuesday, my folks were over for dinner and mentioned that they thought they had a virus on the computer, and could I come over sometime and look at it. I guess today was the time limit on that, as I got a call from them while also working with 3 kids on a science project due Monday, and visiting with my father-in-law, whom I call The Geez. The Geez lives in AZ, and is here for a short visit. It was nice to see him, but I didn't really get to visit. So I agreed to go look at a computer after dinner. I went instead of dinner because since I made that plan, the boys and The Dude were invited to pizza with The Dude's step brothers. I was at my folks for THREE hours fixing the problem. I was successful, but now I'm really very tired. Not because staring at a computer is tiring (even though it is), but because my folks want to know HOW this could have possibly happened, and WHO might have done this, and do I think maybe it was (name your choice of ridiculous person/organization here). That and they also second guess everything that I am doing on the computer, as well as wanting me to slow down so that they can read EVERYTHING that comes up on the screen. It was only malware that had written to the registry, and now that it's fixed it will be good for a while. Also, I now know how to fix that particular problem, should it come up again.