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.

Maybe next year

This was supposed to be it.  Right now.  Over the past few years, every time I uttered the words "Well, I guess we can't right now, but next summer we should (fill in the blank here)," I was talking about this summer.  Three summers ago I was pregnant.  Two summers ago I had a wobbly, nap-taking, one-year-old. Last summer I had a determined, quicker-than-lightning, two-year-old.  But this summer, this summer, I have a child old enough to safely join in most activities and I am so very experienced at being a Mom that it should be easy to schedule life in order to accommodate anything.
.....Is there a font for sarcasm?  I guess not.  You'll have to improvise.

The air in my house is thick with laters, not yets, and soons that are looking for a place to land.  My son doesn't take very kindly to hearing those words, and I really can't blame him because I don't either. The current focus of my impatience is our garden.  I was so looking forward to the flowers we were going to plant, the landscaping we were going to complete, and endless summer nights of relaxing on our newly-painted deck enjoying the view.

At least the deck is painted.

I don't consider our yard anything out of the ordinary when it comes to the amount of work required to maintain it.  It takes quite a bit of time and effort throughout the spring and summer, but for anyone with a suburban yard who doesn't employ landscapers, that seems normal to me.  And I enjoy doing it.  But the time just isn't there right now.  Every year we research, measure, sketch, plan, and we end up weeding, pruning, watering, and wishing.

I suppose I should be grateful this year, as we sit in the middle of one very long Midwest drought.  Just keeping the few perennials watered enough to stay green is a nightly task that would take much, much longer  if we had planted everything we had wanted.  But seeing all of the empty, dry beds of dirt every night does not give me peace.  I recognize it is more frustrating because it is a symptom of my larger issue with scheduling, but that perspective doesn't put color in my yard.

However, we did manage to try one new thing this year that isn't dead yet.  Back in March we placed an order for a native plant kit from Conserve Lake County, an organization that works towards land and water preservation and conservation in our area.  The kit arrived just after we came home from our June vacation, thanks to some customer service and a purposely delayed shipment, and we were able to plant it right away.






When it comes to planning a garden, it doesn't get much easier than how they set it up for us.  It came like this.....

.....with a little map like this.....











....and once we got them all in the ground, we had ourselves a little area of life that had a plan and purpose:

They look a little tiny and sad in these photos, but a few weeks later, the plants are taller and thicker and generating new sprouts, so we may well be on our way to something successful.  I will wait a while before posting updated pictures; right now there is not much more to show.  In theory, there should eventually be flowers and butterflies, which will make for much more exciting images.

I'm pretty sure these are all going to come back next year, as long as they grow and get established right now.  So next year will definitely be the year that our yard is going to look great.

It's no wonder I am a Cub fan.

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.

My perfect pizza

A few months ago, based on the positive experience of a friend who had done the same thing, we signed up for a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program.  In a nutshell, members pay a fee to the farm early in the season, and then get weekly shares of whatever fruits and vegetables are ready for harvest.  Kind of our own farmer's market.  Sandhill Organics is the farm that is providing our bounty, though they are one of many who do this kind of thing.  We missed the first week of the season, so this past Thursday was our first trip to the farm.   My son thinks it is fun to go to the farm for vegetables, my husband and I both really like the idea of supporting local farmers, and the produce is so much tastier than anything I could find in a grocery store.

The farm puts out a weekly newsletter that tells you a little bit about the crops and the going's on at the farm, and then provides a list of what is expected to be ready for that week's pick-up.  We were not signed up for the spring share, but I had been reading the newsletters and was beyond excited to finally get our first pick-up once June rolled around.  They also provide tips for the different items for storage, cooking, and even some recipes, which I find almost as valuable as the actual produce.  It opens a whole new world for us of things we've never eaten before, ways of preparing that we've never tried, and a little extra motivation to use all of produce before it goes bad and we have to throw it away.

This week's pick-up needed two 5-gallon buckets to tote home.  We got raspberries, strawberries, carrots, lettuce, kale, garlic scapes, turnips, baby leeks, a garlic bulb, zucchini, kohlrabi, and popcorn on the cob.  Since we had the newsletter before shopping for the week, we were able to plan our recipes ahead of time to ensure we knew what to do with all of those things.  And surprisingly enough, by the time we have dinner tonight, I bet we'll have eaten through 80% of it in four days.

I can imagine you're asking at least two questions.  First, what is a garlic scape, and who in the world eats kohlrabi?  Second, do you really expect us to believe that your three-year-old is eating all of that?  The answer to the first is that a garlic scape is the flower stalk of a garlic plant, and I don't know who makes a regular habit of kohlrabi, but we used it in a cole slaw and it was quite nice.  As far as my son, well, he eats some of it and some he doesn't.  But since he treats chicken nuggets the same way (he is three, after all), I take that as a victory.

Today's lunch was a meal that I can guarantee I have never eaten before in my life, and it was fantastic.  I sauteed turnips, kale, garlic scapes, and baby leeks in butter, salt, and pepper.

Next, I put it all on top of a store-bought pizza crust, topped it with feta and mozzarella cheese, and put it in the oven for ten minutes.  This beautiful thing is what came out of the oven.  It tasted just as good as it looked.  The sauteed kale and garlic added a zing of flavor, the turnips were buttery and soft with just enough crisp when you bit into them, and the cheese held it all together nicely and added a smooth topper to it all.  Amazing.  Without the recommendation from the Sandhill Organics newsletter, I never would have dreamed of this combination, but I'm so thankful I tried.




I will admit, it is extra work to prepare this kind of weekly menu and the vegetables themselves, and I can image there will be some Thursday nights where I just don't feel like putting forth the effort.  Since one of my initial goals for this year, when I started this blog, was to cook more good meals for my family, this is a home-run solution for at least five months of the year.  I am very excited to be a part of this and hope that it becomes as much of a normal summertime habit as marveling at the impressive locations that weeds take root in my garden.

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.