Sometimes it just takes time to heal from some fights and emotional damage that can occur in any relationship.  Even the best of relationships can have an occasional argument, or after being together for years your partner may make a choice or a decision that seems selfish and harms the relationship, but if they are truly sorry and regret and come back into the relationship as a result the relationship may be salvaged.

The main thing you have to acknowledge is there is no quick fix, you cannot magically undo emotional hurt and damage.  You must give it some time and reinforce each others feelings with empathy, respect, and open honest communication.  Some fights and arguments heal within a few days, others can take weeks or months to fully recover.  I have been told this advice and think it is quite sound:

“Listen to your heart and not always your mind”

Remember that human beings are fragile creatures and prone to error and mistakes, we are all human and all deserve a second chance as long as we learn and grow.  You need to be able to learn to trust each other and express each others open and honest feelings without putting blame or judging anyone.  Do your best to make your partner feel less like a target even if they are the cause of some of your feelings.

In time if both of you think you can recover from the previous fight or strain on the relationship then you both likely will, but this can only happen if both parties can see recovery and still find something good in one another to build as a foundation for rebuilding.  Try creating a list with each other of all the things you like about each other, never create a list of things you dislike or wish were different.  Try to be optimistic and positive, and if both of you are still angered or have your tempers set off, then just put a little distance between yourselves in separate rooms for a few hours or a day.  Avoid going and spending time with your friends or buddies and waiting for your partner to cool down, this will only aggravate the situation as when one or both people are emotionally hurt, the other party should not be seeking to have fun while things cool down.  Use this as a time to reflect and see if there are things you could do to be more understanding, forgiving or if you were the one who caused the issue, reflect on the what, why and do you feel like you have learned something and want to continue the relationship and rebuild.

Just some pieces of advice that I have been trying to follow and seem to be helping in my own relationship, I hope this advice helps you a little.

-Justin Germino

I have a Dwarf Lemon Tree in the yard for over 2 years and it hasn’t yielded any viable fruit yet, I have 2 fig tree’s which my wife turned into fig jam but these took over a year before they bloomed. I would love to try out some genetically engineered fruit tree’s to see how they fare, but I am worried the harsh summer’s of Arizona would kill just about anything I purchase. One type tree that does pretty well out here are the Pomegranate trees. We can see them over people’s yards, did you know there is a Pomegranate bug that can be fairly large, like an inch or two in length with a long mosquito like tube that it uses to pierce the pomegranate skin. They are very common here in Arizona, and my son likes to catch them and put them in their bug tanks.

Citrus grows out here but can be very dry and thick skinned oranges with little pulp and too much skin are common without proper irrigation, what I really want to try are those hybrid trees that grow 4 or 5 different fruits on a single tree. I just don’t know how well they would do here, but I do love the idea of growing my own fruit. We had spent nearly a thousand dollars on tree’s when we first bought this house only to have many of them die during the first winter. When you buy hardy summer plants, they can’t survive freezing temperatures, so we have the worst extremes in Casa Grande, where it can get below 32 degrees in the winter and over 117 in the Summer.

-Justin Germino

In learning new things almost every day I discovered something about Victorinox swiss army watches, there is a whole range of high quality and classic design watches by the same makers as the Swiss Army Knives. In addition almost every watch comes with a Swiss Army Knife and an Exec Knife Pack (which is kind of like a credit card holder with a whole bunch of tools that slide in it).

So if you purchase any watch it comes with $150 worth of free accessories of Victorinox products. Some of the watches are very regal looking and high quality, some with leather wristbands, steel wristbands or combination’s. Free shipping is included with every watch and watches start in the $175 dollar range and up.

I really liked the look of the Victorinox Swiss Army 241123 Chrono Classic Mens Watch, which would be on one of my wish lists eventually. There are over one hundred Victorinox swiss army watches to choose from to fit any budget, and with teh $150 in free accessories, if you should happen to chose one of the sub $200 watches you are getting a fantastic deal.

-Justin Germino

I spent about seven hours yesterday alternating between testing strands of xmas lights and stringing them up all around the house and decorating the bushes.  We usually go gung ho decorating the outside of our house every year and even topped 10,000 lights last year.  This year we are doing a little lighter as we lost some strands and didn’t add as many new ones as we usually do each year.  Still I expect I will have more than 7500 lights up by the time I am finished.  I stranded about 2500 today alone which took me most of my afternoon and some of the evening.

We had put in 4 dedicated 20 amp circuits a while back into the house specifically for our xmas lights and have come pretty close to maxing it out over the years, having to do a good job load balancing the power and making sure one circuit doesn’t trip.  When I am finished I will post pictures of this year as well as previous years in how we decorate our houses. I will be doing about 5 more hours of decorating on Sunday and then some more each evening this week.  I hope to be completely finished by Friday December 5th if possible.

-Justin Germino

Some of you who know me know that I run four blogs, you can look at the About Me page to see more about them and what categories the encompass.  My Poetry blog is the one that means a lot to me as it is all original poems and stories that I create on a daily basis and share with my readers.  On my Wanderer Thoughts blog I don’t take any paid assignments at this time, and I strictly try to share my poetry with my readers.

One of my favorite contests is my Random Twitter Poems where every Monday through Friday at around 10am each morning I will ask people on twitter to send me random words via reply or direct message.  I will build a poem around these random words that are provided.  I have been doing it for a few weeks and people love the results in most cases.  Some days a light poem emerges or is requested, other days dark poetry is requested or created.

I enjoy doing it because it challenges me as a poet and helps me build something with some building blocks to work with.  I want to spread the word about my poetry and am trying to make my poetry blog more popular and gain more readership.

So my poetry blog is listed on BlogNetAwards, here is the sample of it:

I am encouraging all my readers to please visit my blog on BlogNetAwards and register, after registering please vote and comment on my poetry blog.  You can vote by clicking the # of stars (see above) to rate my blog.

To register click on the link on the bottom right of BlogNetAwards:  (See image below)

In addition to registering and commenting, the site will automatically enter all commentors into a monthly drawing where you could win $250 or $100 CAD, which is a little less USD, but still amounts to some free money. I luckily won in October and got a paypal payment of $190 dollars after currency conversion and paypal fee to convert.

Everyone vote for my blog and comment, to encourage participation I will gift 500 Entrecredits to anyone who votes and comments and then contacts me afterward. I obviously can only gift 2 people per week, but I will keep gifting as long as people keep participating.

So Click to Vote Wanderer Thoughts on BlogNetAwards

-Justin Germino

My wife and I have never been big on “Black Friday” shopping, and have always heard horror stories about what its like to get up at 3am to go to the store and get the “best deals” on the one day only sales.  We just weren’t those type of people, we are fairly comfortable and didn’t mind paying an extra few bucks to not have to do the rush and mob thing.

That being said this was tight year and when Walmart showed they had Power Wheels Jeep’s for $88 one day only at their Casa Grande store starting at 5am, we decided we would get one for each of our boys.  We got up at 4am this morning after barely sleeping, and waded down to the Walmart parking lot only to be astounded by it being almost completely packed.

We fought the herd and once inside the store there was a hundred people in line to the garden area where by the time they opened the doors each and every jeep was picked and scavenged by the first fifty people in line.  We stood no chance at all at getting one unless we had been there at like 2:30am instead of arriving exactly at 5 when the sale started.

We tried to navigate the aisled to see some other deals but fighting a crowd of vicious deal hungry people became too much to bear, after the second person was deliberately bashing her shopping cart and then backhandingly apologizing after we abandoned our cart and fled the store to save our sanity.

Here is my observation and it would seem true, the rudest, meanest and most greedy people seem to be the ones that do this type of mad rush.  They are impossibly vicious and try to save every last buck not because they are desperate or need the extra money but because that is they type of miser and scrooge that they are.

Desperate people who save every buck to at least have a Christmas do not have that intolerance, rude and “I am better than you” attitude that is only found with people who are doing well for themselves but still go the extra mile to save the extra five to ten dollars.

In summary, I shall never again bother to get up early for a Black Friday sale to save an extra twenty to thirty dollars over a few items.  It just isn’t worth the inconvenience and with online shopping easier than ever before I barely will do any local shopping at all anymore.  It isn’t the stores that are the problem, its the people and their rude, obnoxious and intolerable behavior.

-Justin Germino

Now I have moved about twelve times over the course of my life and sometimes I have actually moved and left almost all my furniture behind in my sold or rented establishment. Either because I didn’t need it anymore or I had included it in the price of the house that was sold.

On the few occasions I had done this I would have to go out and find discount furniture for my new establishment, and I usually started off with new sofas every time I bought a new house. This would be followed up with new kitchen table, and sometimes appliances if the ones I had were too old and crusty.

One of the houses we bought in AZ came with appliances that were so old we just left them behind when we purchased a new house. Sometimes the right decision is to buy furniture instead of moving your old stuff, but try to re-use what you can.

-Justin Germino

A little history about my past, I was born in Brooklyn and had lived in Brooklyn, Ozone Park and South Ozone Park before moving to Arizona thirteen years ago. Back when I was about fourteen years old we had moved from Brooklyn where we shared a house with my Grandmother and Grandfather to South Ozone Park, which we all bought and stayed at as a family.

It was a two family house with three floors and two kitchens, 3 bathrooms, and they don’t make those type of two family houses common out here in Arizona. I remember several times moving and we always did all the moving ourselves, it would have been nice to have hired movers New York to assist and make the operation smoother.

But you do get stronger moving heavy furniture yourself and you learn the hard way sometimes, my last few moves in Arizona I always go through movies, they pack the trucks better and it gets done faster. So if you happen to be moving anytime in the near future in New York area, check out Shleppers Moving & Storage and see if they can help make it easier for you.

-Justin Germino

In just two hours I will be sitting at the dinner table with my wife, children and my in-laws who are very close to this family. We will be sharing turkey, rolls, cranberry sauce, stuffing, sweet potato and green been casserole and a deviled egg platter.

I skipped lunch and had a breakfast at IHOP this morning since I know I will gorge more than I should tonight. I started putting up the two fake Christmas tree’s only to learn light strands were shorted on one, so a trip through the rain to Walmart and we bought a few more strands. One tree is almost done, the other is half complete.

I am trying to do some last minute blogging and EC drops, since I don’t know how much I will get to tomorrow since I have to spend 8 hours doing outdoor Christmas lights.

-Justin Germino

Some military families have endured difficult times that we can only imagine and empathize with, we are used to being with our loved ones and family day after day for the most part, but imagine spending months apart with the worry that comes with your loved one fighting for your country. I urge anyone to consider lending some support with the Sears Heroes at Home Wish Registry.

By visiting this site and learning about how you can help you can see what the top wish list items are for military families, donations as little as $1 are accepted, who doesn’t have a dollar to spare to support this noble effort? The money donated is pooled and divided into equal gift cards for each registered military family and whether you choose to donate monetarily or not, you can still post a Thank You and other message of support, or collect a badge to help spread the word.

You can even spread the word by emailing a friend or family member from the site encouraging them to participate. Learn more about the families that are asking for help, the stories behind them and the people who serve. It doesn’t matter whether you support the war or are opposed to it, these service memberes are our countrymen and family and do what they think is right for the good of us all.

I encourage everyone to take a look the link above, see how easy it is to contribute and share just a little bit this holiday season with people would really appreciate the support.

-Justin Germino