They

...are the reason this blog has remained quiet for a year.
...are similar and completely unique.
...make chugging a cold cup of coffee normal.
...inspire me to cook, innovate, be intentional, and create.  and suck all of the energy away that I have to do those things. sometimes by 6:45 a.m.
...are 6, 2, and 2.
...make me one of millions in a community of parents who share a bond over this relationship we live.
...can turn my house from tidy to Armageddon in 2.4 seconds.
...are responsible for making sure I have someone else's food or drink on my person at all times. (and by "on my person," I don't mean a closed sippy cup or neatly wrapped snack in my purse)
...have made my marriage stronger and harder.
...were all cloth-diapered and breast-fed.  and made the day I donated my Medela pump one of the happiest of my parenting existence. and I'm really proud of sticking to what I thought was best.
...make me cry.  proud tears, nostalgic tears, exhausted tears, doubting myself tears.  again, sometimes all by 6:45 a.m.
...eat a lot of groceries. so. many. gallons. of. milk.
...have re-shaped my body in some unfortunate ways.  and made me care less about that and more about keeping it healthy enough to be around to see grandchildren.
...have given me a deep appreciation for the beauty of well-written children's books and programming.
...make it hard to keep up with the things it takes to be a grown-up.  the amount of important everything that I forget on a daily basis is staggering.
...can make a day seem like it will never end while simultaneously making me wonder how they are growing up so fast.
...are a really good cover for keeping things like mac n' cheese, oreos, chicken nuggets, and string cheese in the house.
...make putting them first a mostly guilt-free decision.
...are all in bed.

12 Things I Learned In 2014

The end of the calendar year inevitably brings many retrospectives, lists, and best-of's.  I have not been posting much in 2014, with most of my focus spent on two not-so tiny twin girls and their big brother.  So this list of things I learned seemed as good a way as any to summarize where I've been.

I learned, in no particular order because my memory could never chronologically sort these, that:

1) I love instant win games.  Not the lottery type, because you have to buy a ticket specifically for the purpose of winning, but the type that says "Hey, you bought something anyway or are a member of our group, please enter for a chance to win!"  I didn't win much more than some fries and a free movie rental this year, but the chance that I could makes me feel like a kid in a candy store.
2) Raising twins is just as hard as I thought it would be. Sometimes in life I fret and worry over something that ends up being smooth and easy.  This would not be an example of that.
3) If you enjoy photography like I do, especially the editing and printing part, do not wait a year to process your pictures.
4) Losing a pet plain old sucks.  My first and only dog so far died abruptly in May, after 11 years of trailing after my heels and being awesome.  It still doesn't feel right around here.
5) Even at this stage in my life when I have seen a few rodeos and am responsible for the lives of three little people, I am still susceptible to fan-girl tendencies.  Exhibit A: The Divergent Series books.  See also Theo James, acting in the movie interpretations of said books.
6) Sometimes the hardest part of having twins is having a five-year-old too.  Poor guy had his whole world change pretty abruptly.  Sometimes he wanted to love them too much, sometimes he wanted more of his own attention, sometimes he was just plain old tired of the crazy here.
7) Related to #6, mommy guilt is the worst.  I'm doing the best I can, and because of that, I compare and second-guess and stress and worry that it's never good enough.  I know I'm not alone here, but it is still the worst.
8) I read a lot of young adult fiction this year. I figured out that I could navigate my e-reader while pumping during my nursing stage, so I was able to read a lot of books in 2014.  When I looked at my Goodreads year in books, I saw a whole lot of dystopia and escape from reality.  Why?  See #2.
9) Having twins, while being a lot of hard work, is a gift from God in so many ways.  One that I've reflected on a lot this year is the fact that a hard pregnancy and a crazy first year has made me SO very ok with being done growing our family.  This could have been a difficult time of my life, having to transition from family growth to family stability, but instead, I thank my lucky stars that I am moving forward.  Next time I get to enjoy this stage is when they are my grandchildren.  Minus the whole pregnancy and nursing thing.  Sweet.
10) I am happiest when my personal email inbox doesn't require the use of the search bar to find what I need.  Which never happens.
11) I am of the age, along with being a grown-up and parent, where current events make my heart hurt.  Everything is more.  More evil, more dangerous, more overwhelming, more sad, more enraging, more frightening, more divisive.  Stories of children in harm's way bring me to my knees.  Growing up we just didn't get it, why adults argued over politics, and read the paper every day, and cried over bad news half a world away.  I get it now.  Lord, have mercy.
12) Parenting young children is my most important life's work, but I miss things.  I miss pondering, creating, exercising, remembering, sleeping, blogging, gardening, relaxing, watching, cooking, organizing, baking, decorating.  A lot of "-ings".  I know from having my first child that this changes, and I have about another year before I start getting more consistent time for those "-ings".  Halfway there.

What did you learn in 2014?
May the next year bring you all the "-ings" you wish for, and maybe a few that are unexpected as well.

Sixteen

I can't remember my sixteenth birthday.  Is that weird?  What girl doesn't remember their sweet sixteen, either for how great it was, or how awful it was instead of how great it was supposed to be?  Granted, that was 21 a few years ago, I have three kids, and I feel lucky that I remember to put shoes on some mornings, so I'm not entirely surprised.

I do have a strong memory from the day before my seventeenth birthday.  I was riding somewhere in the back seat of the car, "Jack and Diane" was playing on the radio, and I heard the lyrics "Hold on to sixteen as long as you can / Changes come around real soon / Make us women and men."  I smiled at the irony of hearing that line on that day, and then quickly went grim as the fear of that being true took over.  I had missed 364 days that I should have been holding on to sixteen, and here I was on the last day without ever even noticing that they had come and gone!

I suppose the next day wasn't any different than the day before, but the point had been made.  Now I am many years wiser and I can agree with Mellencamp (Cougar?  Not sure what he goes by these days) that there was a significant amount of change in the next sixteen years to follow.  Thank goodness.

*this post was inspired by the Wordpress Daily Prompt*

Being her first example

When my son was born, I was introduced to the pressure of parenting. I did, and still do, spend a lot of time thinking about the best way to teach, discipline, play, talk, be a role model, balance responsibilities, and everything else that goes into being the best I can be for the love of my child.  Now I am a mom of three: my son and two twin girls.  The girls are only a week old, and I have discovered the dumbfounding realization that their first example of what it means to be a woman/mom/wife will come from me.  I know they won't want to copy it all.  In fact, I hope that they don't.  I hope they emulate the traits that mean the most to each of them, make them their own, and accept and discard all of my shortcomings.

But what kind of example do I want to be?  If I had to paint a picture of the person I want them to see when they see me, what colors would I use? My answer to those questions are surely different today than they will be 10 years from now, but I hope that by sorting out what is important to me now, it will help me to live as not only the person I want them to see, but who I truly want me to be.

So, for the sake of those two swaddled little girls just beginning their beautiful lives, I have decided to start to figure out who this woman is today, and what is important to her, before I start falling down the several-year rabbit hole of sleep deprivation and living on adrenaline that is known as parenting early childhood.  When my girls think about who I am, these are some of the things I want them to know are part of me:

• The priorities are God-Family (however you choose to define it)-everything else. 
• Being married makes you part of a team that shares responsibility.  Each person contributes with what they do best, not based on how society says they should behave.
• Exercise and being active are a part of life, not a weekly chore.
• Electronics and social media are tools and fun distractions to be used sparingly, not as an extension of one's arm.  
• Be passionate.  About faith, about love, about work, about sports, about books, about whatever moves you.  
• Girls don't have to wear pink.  Or heels.  Or makeup.  But you can if you want.  Only if you want.
• Being a female athlete teaches a level of self-respect that few other things can.  
• Nature and open lands should be protected and enjoyed.  Turn off the music and noise to hear your own thoughts on the trail/beach/waves/hills/mountains.
• Being truly present with friends and family is more important than where you are or what you're doing. 
• Every hour of the day does not need to be scheduled, nor should it be.  Time should be spared for spontaneity and reflection on the rest of the crazy called life.
• Being a mom is simultaneously the hardest and greatest role of my life.  

This list is really only scratching the surface.  Luckily, I don't have to hand each girl a double-spaced copy of everything I am, I have the rest of my lifetime to teach them.  God willing, they'll grow up to be awesome and teach me a thing or two about what their own version of woman has become.

Too much good stuff...for real this time

Last summer, I started a season of reigning in the crazy.  I recognized that while I had an abundance good things in my life, it was time to take a hard look at all of the activities that I said yes to and set some priorities.    I do think progress has been made.  All of the same opportunities are still there, tempting me and shaming me into thinking I should say yes because I'm good enough to handle it all.  But I think I have gotten a little smarter, a little braver, and a little healthier.  This weekend, for example, is pretty unscheduled.  By this past Thursday afternoon I realized that and started thinking "Who haven't we seen lately?  What project have we been putting off?  How can I make sure this open time isn't wasted?"  By Thursday night I had successfully shaken myself by the shoulders and canned any ideas of filling this open time.  My entire family is benefiting from it as we glide through the hours having fun and getting moderate chores completed.

As I continue to work at being smart about over-scheduling, I am moving from a season of pruning away figurative life-clutter into a season of getting rid of actual, filling-my-house, clutter.  No one in my house is a collector, or a hoarder, but there is just a lot of, well, stuff.  The way this scenario would have played out in the past goes something like this:  Live, obtain stuff, use stuff, put stuff away in different places, lose stuff as it gets covered by new stuff, organize big heaps of stuff into more structured big heaps of stuff, get frustrated, lose my mind, snap, and spend three weeks using every open moment to tackle every single room, donating, throwing-away, and super cleaning.  I suppose life experience and parenting has helped me realize that this is not a sustainable system.  So instead I have made the very sensible decision to just take a section at a time as I go about my normal day.  When that shelf is so full that I can't put something else on it without five minutes of balancing things just right, I will take the 15 minutes required to take the stuff down, throw away what is expired, old, and over-used, start a donate bag for the items that someone else could use for a while, and have one less cluttered shelf.  You might ask why I haven't been doing that all along, but this is a paradigm shift for me.  I am fighting life-long learned tendencies to keep things because I might be able to somehow reuse them and save the money and hassle of buying a new one.  It is why I am just starting, 14 years after graduating from college, to throw away gross college t-shirts that I had just in case I needed to a dirty job.  Not even a mechanic could need the amount of ratty t-shirts I have collected.  My need for order and space is finally beating out that need to keep things "just in case."

So far:

• Expired drug-store items have been trashed (expired in 2009?  really??)
• Kitchen cabinets have been cleared of glassware (how did we ever collect enough sets of margarita glasses and beer steins to entertain an entire frat house?)
• Place-mats that have been used since we were married have been replaced (10 years creates a lot of stains)
• Another bag of clothes has been donated
• An armada of plastic grocery bags has been dropped off at the store for recycling
• At least a year's-worth of batteries was taken for recycling (did I mention we have a three-year-old who likes toys that make noise?)

Next up is a bag of old shoes that need to be taken from my closet floor to a recycle drop off  location.  Since spring is around the corner, I'm guessing something in the garage isn't far behind.  The difference between today and five years ago is that in the past, that list of what has already been done would have been forced into a single weekend and I would have been near-tears by Sunday night.  Present-day, I have completed those things comfortably over the course of the last month or so, and none of them have felt like an imposition to complete.  And yes, it feels really good to not have things come tumbling out of the medicine cabinet when it is opened, and to eat on pretty place-mats.

I am still wondering what finally changed in me that I decided to do things differently.  Clearly, scaling back has been the over-riding theme this past year, and it is a very welcome and positive move.  I'm just not sure what finally pushed me, gave me the bravery, the ability to stand up to myself, the oom-pha, to finally just do it.  I suppose that shouldn't matter, but it is something I ponder anyway.

What mountains have you scaled after living under the assumption they were just too high?  What changes are being put on your heart that you might not be paying enough attention to yet?  

A different kind of church

Sunday mornings have never been about sleeping in around my house.  Except for instances of college, illness, or vacation, Sunday mornings have been up-and-at-em time for church.  Today, both my husband and I are under the weather.  Not enough to stay in bed, but enough not to bring our germs to church.  Which is good, because since my son is feeling just fine, staying in bed is not an option anyway.

So after breakfast today, I went out for a walk.  It's a sunny, cold morning, enough that I could cover my bed-head with a hat, but not so cold that it was unpleasant. I haven't been exercising much lately because of my work schedule, so it's just as well that I wasn't up for a full jog today.  With some good tunes in my headphones, turned down just low enough to hear the birds, and some alone time to hear myself think, I got to spend some time churching in a whole different way.  I missed seeing my church family today, but sometimes it's good to change it up a little and see things when it's quiet.  Happy Sunday, all.

"Click"

We've all had those moments.  The ones where a small smile crosses your face and you know that moment, no matter how ordinary, has been impressed in your memory to last a lifetime.

Like when I was a freshman at Indiana University, on a sunny afternoon during finals week, and a gathering of people ended up on the roof of Briscoe Hall for a study break.  At the moment a few people started to dance around to Brown-Eyed Girl, and everyone joined in just because, I remember stepping back and looking over that scene, realizing it was a snapshot in time I would never forget.  "Click"

Fast forward a few years to tonight.  My son lounged in the bathtub, playing with his boat, singing loudly along to a song called "10,000 Reasons" by Matt Redman.  The refrain goes something like "Bless the Lord oh my soul, oh my soul, worship His holy name.  Sing like never before, oh my soul, I worship Your holy name."  He makes up his own live rendition, but it's close enough.  Watching that cute little dude sing at the top of his lungs with no fear or embarrassment, to music like that, well, that's a moment I want to hold onto forever. "Click"

Dear God, in 15 years when that cute little dude is sauntering in past curfew and giving me attitude, please, please help me remember that moment.

People Watching

For several years I've been in restaurants, catching flying splatters of food and asking my child to sit still and eat, while I enviously eyed those headphone-wearing, laptop-toting, coffee-drinking solo patrons relaxing around me.  Tonight I am one of them, and I have to say, it's just as awesome as I imagined.  These are the types of things I took for granted before I lost the option to finish a cup of coffee while it is still hot.  So here I sit, ignored by the constant flow of people coming and going, and have very wisely switched to decaf.

Even though I am attempting to "escape" for a little while, I notice that I keep getting distracted from my solitary screen-staring by the real life going on around me.  The young couple with a new baby and a two-year-old taking turns eating and parenting, strained smiles and sleepy eyes.  The very serious-looking teenager sitting with her parents and talking about very serious-looking things.  The twenty-something guy who breaks into a grin as he texts or tweets or posts from his cell phone while waiting for his dinner.  The fellow laptop guy who asks me to watch his stuff as he gets up from the table, since I must be much less likely to swipe his things while I am busy with my own.

Then there are those that catch my attention because they hit a little closer to home.  The high-pitched story-telling I can hear from the kindergartner talking to her mom about school.  Watching her bounce around her table and eyeball my coffee as her mom coaxes her back.  I can't help but smile at her, which I'm sure isn't helping mom's case.  I always find it comforting when I see other little people floating around and other parents futilely trying to pull them back, because at least I know it's not just me who can't do it.  I also find it both comforting and sad to hear the exasperated mom in the bathroom with two girls under 6.  Comforting because the words coming out of her mouth are so very similar to the ones I have heard myself using, sad because they are words like stop, no, child's name in an exhausted whine, repeating the same commands in a louder voice in the hopes that maybe it just wasn't loud enough the first time, etc.  The ugly is always uglier when I see it reflected by someone else.  Thankfully it is quickly followed by compassion and a vow to not be the mom that reminds other moms to stop being so cranky.

We could all learn a thing or two from each other.  I raise my cup to you, exasperated bathroom mom, and hope that you can find yourself restfully pondering other people someday soon.

More than enough

I have reached my limit before.  In many ways, at many different times in my life, I've hit that point where it was very clear to me that whatever my limit was, I had found it.  I am confident it's not the best way to handle it, but it takes that point of explosion before I am able to finally hand over the controls.  This time, the limit reached was in regards to too many things.  Obligations, commitments, chores, tasks, work, hobbies, all of it.  It has been a frequent pattern of mine.  I say yes, I plan more, I underestimate the amount of rest I need, and it all goes great until it doesn't.

The past few weeks have brought some changes.  Work has gotten busier and later, time has decreased, stress has gone up, balls have been dropped.  Never in my life have I just completely forgotten plans that had been made.  I might confuse dates, times, need to look at the calendar a few extra times, cancel on short notice, but never just forgotten.  Until I did.  That was the limit this time around.  A kick-to-the-gut announcement that this just can't continue.  So I started making changes.  Things that I wouldn't even consider discontinuing a few days prior were suddenly the things that had to go.

I heard a story a few weeks ago about an Olympic athlete and the after-training recovery he endures.  Rather than ice packs or ice baths to soothe muscles and joints, he goes into some kind of cryofreeze chamber.  For 30 seconds, it gets so cold that the body abandons all hope for the limbs and pulls all the blood flow into the core.   When he comes out of the chamber, the blood that rushes back into the limbs has gone through a filtering process that has removed much of the lactic acid that causes soreness and swelling, etc.  I think it sounds absolutely crazy, but I like the metaphor that it creates.  I am going through my own similar process.  My limbs are important to my body, just like many of these to-do's are important to who I am.  But in a crisis, those to-do's need to be abandoned to take care of my core for a while.  And when I'm ready to start reaching out and getting back into some of those things, the energy I am able to put into them is increased ten-fold.

I am getting a lot of positive reinforcement that I am doing the right thing.  Have you ever had that experience where you hear something you've never heard before, and then all of the sudden it keeps coming up?  Ever since I decided to start pruning things, I've read blogs, seen pictures, heard stories, had discussions, all about exactly this topic.  And every decision I make to reduce the list makes me feel a little bit better.  I know I am doing the right thing, as much as I wish I didn't have to let some of these things go.

One of the blogs I read makes the amazing point that sometimes you have to get rid of some of the extraneous good things to make room to really enjoy the important good things.  That is a great explanation for myself of what I am trying to do.  I have been blessed more than I can ever understand with so many things.  Everything I am pulling back from is important to me somehow; I don't want to let it go.  But if I can't  truly be in the present and enjoying any one thing because I am focused on trying to juggle 50 things, then there doesn't seem to be much point in doing any of them.

I am on the right track and feeling better.  The long-term challenge will be maintaining a lower level of stuff so that I can go through smaller cycles of building and pruning instead of hitting the wall and sliding downward.  I'm not ready for that challenge yet.  For now I just have to focus on enjoying the important good things...

 ....and saying goodbye to some others.

...and then stop thinking.

I went for a run tonight with no distractions: no music, no GPS, nothing.  In the absence of distraction, my brain was overflowing with things I didn't want to think about, including the desire to be done running.  I have no idea how far I ran or how long I was gone.  But after about halfway of whatever that final distance was, I was too tired to focus on anything but my own breathing, yet not tired enough to quit.  So I kept going until tired was winning.  And then I went a little more.  In total brain silence.

In my life leading up to this year, I have never considered myself a runner.  I was a two-sport varsity athlete for four years of high school, and couldn't run long distances.  I kept in on-and-off shape in college, and couldn't run long distances.  I played beach volleyball for six months a year for five years of adulthood, and I couldn't run long distances.  I have been exercising relatively regularly for about seven months now after a two-year parenting hiatus, and all of the sudden, I can run longer distances.  It's certainly not magic.  I've been working hard, losing weight, building muscle, so it makes logical sense that it is improving my distance running.  But after a lifetime of defeat, I cannot wrap my brain around this new ability.

As I sat stretching and recovering, I considered what I just did, and was really fascinated about the idea that when I stopped thinking and kept pushing, it just worked.  Much of what I have been doing the last seven months has been P90X, which has done amazing things for me.  In the yoga workout, there is a point where you are standing tall on your toes and reaching toward the ceiling.  To help keep balance, Tony Horton (the guy responsible for the P90X workout), says "Don't think about your feet on the floor, think about your hands in the air.  And then stop thinking."  And it works every time.  I go from wobbly and shaky to stiff as a board, just like that.  The power of anti-thought.

Am I on to something here?  Is this what I need to do in other situations too?  Consider parenting.  A good friend asked me how it works, how you are able to put it all aside, the exhaustion, frustration, scheduling, etc., to be a parent.  I think about childbirth, sleep deprivation, hour-long temper tantrums, balancing stressful work days with calmer family time, and I know I have used that same strategy.  Too tired to focus on anything but my own breathing, and not tired enough to quit, so I just keep going.  I think this is a solid strategy for sports.  For other areas of life, I'm not so sure.  But it's an honest strategy, and I would hazard a guess that I'm not alone in using it. Unfortunately, it works well for the short-term, but completely unravels in the long haul.  It's helpful when your newborn is crying at 10 pm, 2 am, and 5 am.  Don't think, just do.  It's not helpful when your schedule is so full that you forget the plans you just confirmed 24 hours ago.  Must think, can't do.  There's a balance there somewhere that I just haven't found.  Better go for a longer run.

I get by with a little help from my (online) friends

This post is a part of a blog carnival with the new online community mom.me, and is sponsored by P&G.  Head on over to the mom.me site to take part in the discussion about motherhood and online communities, and you will be entered to win one of five P&G gift baskets valued at $250.


How the online world has helped me as a mom


As a kid, days lasted forever.  The time from any day of the year until Christmas felt like an eternity.  Summers lollygagged along, hours of the day were spent doing nothing and being perfectly content with that.  Impressions of the world were permanently stamped on my brain, and are ones that I can actually recall as an adult.  Fast forward to today, and it seems that if I blink too long, a month will have passed and I won't even remember what I had for breakfast.

The pace of life as a parent is hard to describe to anyone who has yet to experience it.  You hear the snide remarks about never sleeping in again, trading in Foo Fighters for Twinkle Twinkle, losing softball for little league, and the ever dreaded "You think that's bad, just wait!"  But I know now that I never had a complete understanding of just how easy it is to fall into a fast and furious whirlpool of scheduling until I had my own child to revolve around.  He is about to turn three, and it took until about six months ago when I finally popped my head out of the water to look around and realize how much me and my life have changed.

My husband and I have never really lived quiet lives.  We worked, played sports, had far-reaching circles of friends and family, were active in church, and generally lived in an on-the-move schedule.  Once my son was born, that schedule hit a brick wall, got swept up into a bag and shaken around, planted, and grew into something even bigger and faster than I ever knew existed.  Calm is preferable. Busy is ok.  Overwhelmed is not.  The lines between each of those is very fuzzy, but with help of a friend's perspective (thanks!) I'm finally understanding what an important determining factor is:  time to ponder.

When I have time to think, reflect, and absorb the happenings going on around me, I have a sense of calm.  Even if it is busy, as long as I can carve out that time for review, things feel in control.  I have a handle on what is going on.  I can enjoy, or not, and react.  When the to-do list is so long that I am blinded to everything other than getting the tasks completed, discontent sets in.  It might sound counter-intuitive, but the time I have spent online, when handled correctly, has helped me to ponder.

When I had an infant and was in a state of complete sleep deprivation and a daily schedule merry-go-round, Facebook kept me connected to the world I felt so far from.  I could share with my friends and family, keep up on some of their lives, all without the worry of the stains on my t-shirt and whether my brain could even form a complete sentence.

When I had a toddler and was completely perplexed on how to handle that new little person, I started reading websites geared towards parents.  I was interested to read the developmental milestone information, different tips and theories, any tools I could find to navigate this stage of parenting.  That's the time that started to notice the negatives of too much of that type of reading.  Comparing parenting styles can be a very judgmental, self-depreciating, negative thing if you aren't careful.  Parenting ideas are as different and varied as the kids being discussed, and it is easy to question of you are making the right choices.  Being a mom is hard enough, there is no need to add extra imaginary pressure to make it worse.  Once I figured out that I knew best how to parent my son, just as everyone else their own children, it was a much happier place to be.

Enter blogging.  This blog was started to chronicle the journey of doing things I enjoyed again, in addition to parenting.  I never realized how much I would like it.  Writing gives me that time I need to ponder.  The activities that I am blogging about all seem to do the same.  Exercise clears my head to make room for reflection.  Reading helps me think in new ways.  Gardening, cooking and photography are all deliberate, quiet hobbies and give me calm and time to reflect as I do them.  Along with writing my own blog, I've also started to spend more time reading other people's blogs. There are the incredibly beautiful, brilliant, hysterical  authors that I don't know but want to electronically hug.  There are authors that frustrate me, that I don't agree with.  Both help me shape who I am and how I think, and I appreciate them both.   Would I have been the same mom without the internet?  Probably.  Did it make it a little easier? A little more fun?  Yes.  And no matter how big or small, I will take every bit of help I can get.

Attack of the gnome

Six months ago I started to write a blog.  The blog was some extra motivation to make good changes and stick to them so I would have something to write.  Changes were made, and are ongoing, and that is good.  Looking back at my list of posts, I can see that in February that annoying little overachieving gnome started to poke holes in my happy plan.  In March, he took over.  I'm pretty sure that life has been on the downhill of a roller-coaster since then.  Not downhill as in negative, but definitely downhill as in super-speed.  I know it feels like this has been going on for a while, but when I see that I've written two posts in the last three months, it makes it even more clear.  What have I been doing?  I'm not quite sure, it's hard to pick out the shapes in the blur.  There has been plenty of fun mixed in with the work.  There has been cooking, reading, exercise, gardening, picture taking, time with family and time with friends.  But that gnome has been sprinting laps around my brain for three months, reminding me of all the to-do's that are sitting and waiting for me, and I think it's about time to make it stop.  The to-do's will never go away, and that's ok.  But that gnome, I think it's time to send him on a long vacation, and while he's gone try to figure out how to send him on a swim with the fishes.

So, today is a new day.  Thanks to a long vacation with family, I'm rested.  Thanks to a quiet morning with my son, and a leisurely walk with the dog, I'm relaxed.  Thanks to this post, I'm ready to get back to doing awesome things and blogging about them.  Stay tuned.

Limit Reached

I set out a few months ago with an ambitious list of things I wanted to accomplish.  And in true me fashion, I took that list with the intention of tackling the whole thing.  And in true me fashion, I found the proverbial wall and crashed into it with impressive force.

I have incorporated a lot of the things I wanted to do.  That includes both actions and schedule fillers and also just a better awareness for myself of  what I want to use my time doing.  And I'm happy with what I've done.  But, I'm tapped out.  All of the sudden all of the things, more prayer, more cooking, more reading, more exercise, more family time, more time with friends, more focused parenting, more time outside, more more more MORE MORE MORE MORE has gotten to the point of, well, too many "mores".  But it is also the season where it gets nicer outside and all of the sudden the schedule of things to do explodes.  But the problem is that I don't want to stop or slow down on any of the things I've added.  So somehow I have to figure out how to reorganize what I have with what is coming.  Now I have to make room for gardening and forest preserve walks and baseball games and swimming and vacations, and whatever else summer brings.  Which is all good stuff.  But my brain starts to smoke a little when I think about managing it all.  And I kind of just want to crawl onto the couch and turn it all off and pretend I have plenty of time to do whatever I want.

But I can't.  So I won't.  I'll figure it out.  I think.  Stay tuned.

Chapters

Life can be separated by many different generic stages.  Childhood / Young Adult / Adult/ Senior.  Pre-college / College / Post college.  Single / Married.  Pre-kids / Post-kids / Post-grand-kids.  Jobs / Career.  Today I came upon the idea that I can also break my life into chapters based on church.  We worshiped with our Goddaughter and her family at the church we transferred from about a year ago, and sitting there was a very pleasant reminder to me of where I've been.

So far I have spent most of my life in three different churches.  For most of my childhood I attended the same church, which I almost now consider my parents' church.  I find it kind of odd that I view it that way, since I went through first communion, confirmation, graduation, and my wedding at that church, which encompasses about half of my life.  But I guess in all things, once you're an adult you feel more ownership of the things that you do, rather than just being a tag-along. So that church now, which was such a constant for so many years, has become Chapter 1.

Present day, Chapter 3, we are at a new, well, new to us, church.  We have been there about a year, and really just starting to get more involved and take ownership of our role as members.  It will be the first church my son remembers, and maybe even the one he looks back on and dubs his parents' church.  Chapter 2, then, is the church we visited today.  That was the first church my husband and I joined together after we were married.  I think we were there about six years, until a few months after our son was baptized.  I sat there looking around and couldn't help but think about the people we were during the time we spent there.  What was happening, how we lived, who we spent time with.   I sat with my little blessing on my lap, staring at the same cross at the front of the church that I stared at for all those prayers to bring him safely into our lives.

The person staring at each of those three different crosses at the front of each church is so very different.  The first was filled with the confusion and distraction of everything that goes into growing up.  The second was consumed with marriage and home ownership and work and family.  Well, I supposed the third is currently consumed with the same types of thoughts, but at a different stage.  I'm not quite the newbie to any of that anymore like I was then.  But I recognize now what I didn't then, that things are happening.  Now that the book is a little longer, there are more chapters to show me where this story is going.

Check, check, and check

I read an article today about the positive effects of artistic expression, specifically art, music, and writing.  It mentioned a few different studies that have been done, but didn't cite any directly, so I unfortunately can't share more details for anyone who is interested. I certainly don't have to be convinced that these effects are real; I have long been a proponent and benefactor of being involved in the arts.  But in this article, the piece about writing caught my attention.


"Writing seems to curtail symptoms associated with chronic disease, promote immune response, and lower stress, according to various studies.....Not only does it de-clutter thoughts, it can relieve tension, inspire problem solving, and offer insight into psychological and emotional burdens that stifle wellness."


If I step back and look at my blogging experience so far, I can see all of those things happening.  Well, I can't really speak to curtailing symptoms associated with chronic disease, talk to me in 20 years and I'll let you know how that is working out for me.  Also, I don't have any objective evidence to support a strengthened immune response, because I haven't really been doing this long enough for any point of comparison.  But for all that other stuff, there is no doubt.


My first blog rattled off a list of things I wanted to do.  At the time, that list seemed massive and unattainable.  But I have accomplished at least a start to quite a few of those things.  And really, really, enjoying them.  Writing about what I want to do and then writing about doing it is both a motivational tool and positive reinforcement to keep doing more.  I was really bothered by the lack of all those wants/needs being absent in my life, and writing has provided a path to change that.  


I have even noticed the negatively-overachieving part of my personality starting to creep back and poke questions into my happy little hobby nirvana.  Meals are being cooked, chores are being completed, errands are being run, parenting and fun is ongoing, exercise is slowly increasing, bills are being paid, to-do lists are being worked on, and I'm still finding time to enjoy hobbies I haven't paid attention to in a long time.  Yet I am still always wondering if there is something I am forgetting, some task, some project, something that is going to fall apart or explode. Then that little overachieving gnome is going to crawl out of the shadows and smugly say, while waggling a pointy finger at me, "See?!  SEE?!  I told you so.  You can't possibly have time for you, LOOK at what happened!"  I recognize now that sending that gnome back to the shadows every now and again is a good thing.  Until recently, he constantly sat on my shoulder whispering endless checklists as the soundtrack of my day.  So if that's not "insight into psychological and emotional burdens that stifle wellness," I don't know what is.

So I write.  Sometimes I'll have no choice but to abandon ship and go back to the check-lists and the stress.  Somebody just make sure to keep the gnome patrol on speed-dial.

Stepping back, looking forward

About a month ago, I decided to write a blog.  In making that decision, I set some pretty lofty goals for myself to make some changes.  The changes themselves weren't exactly lofty, but because I had been struggling to find the opportunity to do any of them for so long, just the idea of accomplishing one felt like a stretch.  Now that this first month has passed, I want to do a little review, a re-cap, to hold myself accountable to what I originally set out to do.  Maybe I'll continue to do this review monthly.  Maybe I'll be doing so well, or so poorly, that I won't find it necessary.  So what have I done?

Well, not all of my original changes have even been possible yet.  Gardening, painting walls, hanging more pictures, all projects for another time.  Seeing more amazing nature I suppose could have been possible, but I haven't made the effort to go out beyond the normal.  I did see a lot of pretty snow-covered things around the neighborhood.  But that's not what I was aiming for.

Keeping in more constant contact with friends and family.....  No, I don't think I've made any progress on this one, but I don't think it was a complete failure either.  Normal life has kept much of that in the forefront anyway, but additional effort has not been made.  Honestly kind of forgot about this.

Want to take better pictures.....This is not a happy topic for me.  I adore taking and sharing pictures.  We don't have a fancy camera, but it has done a great job the past few years.  It is now ready to take a ride to the farm.  But I don't want to go out and get another low-end camera that is going to do this again.  So I must wait.  And take dark, slightly out-of-focus, occasionally perfect, usually not, pictures.  This is just going to have to sit along with the other projects on the shelf.

Need to pray more....You know, this one has in fact seen some progress.  I am a part of a weekly prayer group at church with some very inspiring friends.  Thanks to God's work through them, I am getting better.  Much work to be continued, however.

Need to read more scripture....I made an attempt at this one, and it was not successful.  Happy I tried something, determined to find another way.

Want to bake more...nope.  And now that I am trying to eat better, this project gets shelved for a bit also.  At least until I have time to uncover healthy baking things.  Which leads me into...Want to cook more good meals...This is another that I think has made progress.  I'm not by any means doing anything gourmet or impressive, but I'm trying new things and just plain old cooking more, and getting out of the recipe rut.

Want to read...Not only have I read, I read TWO books in one month!  Without pictures!  And the group of friends I have joined in a book club are all very avid and enthusiastic readers, which will only encourage me more.

Need to exercise...According to the CardioTrainer app on my phone, which I adore, I have exercised 13 times in the past month.  That's not great, but it's better than it has been in the past.  And now that I have challenged my husband to join me in exercising more and eating healthier, I am guaranteed to do it more often, because I do NOT like to lose challenges with him.

What a busy month!  I haven't even mentioned my favorite part of all these challenges, which is writing the blog.  I love writing this blog.  Thank you to all of you who have read it and given me such encouraging feedback to continue.  I suppose I would enjoy the process whether anyone read it or not, but really it is so much more fun when I get to hear your experiences and feedback also.  Bring on February!