Celebrations

Part of what I want to accomplish in the coming year is the making of memories. I already have on my list (though I have slacked in its execution) to take a family field trip once a month -- nothing fancy, just a family outing that doesn't involve going to the grocery store. It could be a trip to the park, or a drive-in movie, or a museum visit. Just something we do together, for fun.

I want more of that. More adventures. More family time.

Santa brought games to my minions, and I want us to have a family game night. I also want us to eat meals around our new (to us) dining table.

These years are short, and I don't want to miss them. I want to stop and notice my family, appreciate our time together as it passes -- not just in retrospect.

I also want to make a bigger deal out of holidays. Christmas gets a lot of attention, but what about the others? They make bibs and clothes and crap for baby's first everything, but then we seem to lose interest. (And apparently "baby's first" stops around 6 months; I can't find any of that cute stuff to fit Kai anymore. He's still in his first year of life! Not one New Year's onesie for him?) Gretchen Rubin says she does little things to commemorate holidays -- special placemats and such for Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, etc. I think that is a great idea. I want to buy or make seasonal/holiday wreaths for the front door, maybe get placemats, or perhaps t-shirts. We could make cookies (or green milk on St. Pat's!), have a special dinner...something to acknowledge the day, the passing of time.

Sure, I want to do the big things -- family vacations, amusement park visits, that kind of stuff. But the everyday celebrations are equally important, I think.

Which is why I bought my girl a party dress for NYE, though we aren't going out. We will drink ginger ale out of champagne flutes and wear party hats and count down the clock.

Happy New Year's Eve! See ya next year.

Be the water

So this past week has had me thinking a lot about the coming year. I'm finding that I need to make some changes in order to "be the water," so to speak. Some of it sounds very Serenity Prayer, but there's a lot of wisdom in those lines.

I need to accept that certain people are going to treat me a certain way. Always have, always will. It may not be fair, but there is no changing it. Nor I cannot cut them out of my life, so I need to adapt how I react to the treatment instead of stewing over it and then getting all bent out of shape over little things. Some days it feels like everyone is against me. This is not so. (At the very least, Baby Kai always has my back.)

I need to accept that my family's priorities are not necessarily my priorities, and do what I can to compromise rather than becoming Crazy Germaphobe Harpy Mommy. This may mean I do more work than they do. But it really is a priority to me to keep the kitchen clean, for instance, so I will just need to make time for it.

(They do need to pick up after themselves a little better, though. I found a string cheese wrapper under the bed, for Pete's sake. And an empty soda bottle behind the recliner. Like I said...compromise.)

I need to accept that my personality is a large part of what makes me so stressed out, and work with that energy rather than against it. I spent so many years wallowing in apathy that it's nice to have so many interests now. But if I let my frustration at my lack of free time rule me, I will go bonkers before the kids start school. I must resist the feeling that I am running out of time. My time is finite, yes, but odds are I have many good years left in me.

I need to take more responsibility for my own calm. Because I'm on the merry-go-round now, and it won't stop for a couple of decades at least. What's going to happen when the kids start school? Driving? Dating? College? How will I handle moving? Getting a new job? I cannot control the stresses that enter my life, but I can control how I handle them. I need to make yoga and meditation a higher priority in the coming year.

I was doing really well spinning my plates, but then I came apart emotionally when they fell due to circumstances beyond my control. I tend to assume that if I want something bad enough, I can just make it so. Sheer grit and determination, while useful, do not guarantee a win. Sometimes my bullheadedness works for me, sometimes not. I need to work on dealing with disappointment when my best efforts fail, and give myself credit for doing all I can regardless of the outcome.

So that's all nice and vague, huh? Thus far, my 2016 credo consists of "All life is precious" and "Be the water." I basically want to be Morgan from TWD, sans all those zombies and personal tragedies. It's a nice goal, but I have no idea how to translate that into a resolution list of any sort. I still have a little time for that, I guess.

A long December

So it's December. Where my life usually veers wildly out of control. A poorly balanced diet and erratic bedtimes and extra freelancing and holiday-related craziness. This is the month that I send the rent check late and oversleep and totally forget important appointments. It's only the beginning of the month, and I am already dragging.

Our bootcamp theme this month is "Wrapping up 2015 with Great Balance and Poise." I've not done yoga once this month. Haven't meditated in weeks. Other than the walk I took on Thanksgiving, the only exercise I've gotten recently has been shopping. And shopping with my daughter is not the greatest example of my poise. (Especially when she runs off and hides in the clothes racks.)

In a way, I am glad for the disintegration of my routine. It usually means I slide into January head first, begging for some structure to my life. I hit the ground running January 2, and uphold my resolutions faithfully...oh, until March or so. But some of them do stick, so it's not a completely wasted effort.

For this month's bootcamp goals, I'm knocking out a lot of holiday-related tasks, but also looking ahead to those resolutions. My big three (exercise more, sleep more, eat better) will of course be on there. And working on my debt -- that's a biggie. But more and more, I'm beginning to realize that I need to rein in my gaze. Instead of always looking out ahead of me, I need to look at the ground I'm standing on. Make more time to do special things with the kids, even if it's just a walk to the local playground. Put a little more effort into making the house look nice; Anya can't stop talking about "Anya's beautiful house" since we've put up the Christmas decorations. Find a way to add a little more peace to my days.

It's so easy to hop on the work treadmill and fix my gaze on the horizon -- buying a house, getting a larger vehicle, getting married (yes, that is on my radar, though not an immediate goal). Plow through the days and weeks and months with little thought beyond my long-term goals. But the process of achieving those goals will be far more pleasant if I spend a little effort on the here and now. I just need to figure out how I want to go about doing that.

Fluidity

A fellow Clogger recommended this article, and it's given me some things to think about:

http://themindunleashed.org/2015/11/the-art-of-fighting-without-fighting.html

Love this article. It's good advice to keep in mind when my daughter is pushing my buttons. My favorite quotes:

It is useless to fight against people’s rigid ways, or to argue against their irrational concepts. You will only waste time and make yourself rigid in the process. The best strategy is to simply accept rigidity in others, outwardly displaying deference to their need for order. On your own, however, you must work to maintain your open spirit, letting go of bad habits and deliberately cultivating new ideas. –Robert Greene, emphasis mine

My daughter is very rigid. And I deal with it badly because her rigidity directly affects me. It's important to me to not fight with her, though, so I need to start working on my own fluidity.

Years ago, I dated a guy who loaned me some books on the Tao Te Ching. The part that stuck with me was how being soft is more powerful than being hard; the water will, over time, wear away the rock.

I have been working on my softness, but it's easier said than done. Particularly when I am already stretched thin and my child digs in her heels over stupid things. Because we are both bull-headed control freaks, apparently.

In these moments, I need to learn to flow. Make her laugh. Indulge the whims I can. Or just get over myself. In the immortal words of Bob Seger,*

As you step out in the night, take a lesson from the trees
Watch the way they learn to bend with each breeze.

My second favorite quote from this article is this:

Like E.E. Cummings said, "To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”

This feeds nicely into my Be Awesome goal. And it's an example I would very much like to set for my children.

In the coming year, I want to focus on these concepts. Maybe I'll have more luck with them than I have been with getting up before dawn.

*"Little Victories." Because everything goes back to either Road House or a Seger song in my mind.

Gratitude

I thought I understood the concept of gratitude. I completed the "List 5 things for which I am grateful" goal -- on both 43 Things and PopClogs. I can pull gratitude out of the worst days, and can find the silver lining in just about any situation. I thought that this meant I had gratitude down.

I do not.

This week has just not gone according to plan. This week was supposed to be cleaning and wrapping Advent gifts and putting together care packages for the Memphis Union Mission and cooking Thanksgiving dinner. We were going to go to Zoo Lights and Starry Nights, have dinner with our families, and I was going to go shopping a couple more times before Freaky...er, Black Friday. I was going to knock out a little freelancing and clean my office and prepare my list for Cyber Monday. I was going to send my daughter to her grandparents for a sleepover so I could go through her toys before Santa dumps another load of them on our house. I was going to get. stuff. done.

And then everybody got sick.

We saw the doctor yesterday; the kids and R have colds, and Kai also has impetigo. Which, given Mom's precarious immune state, means we are on our own for Turkey Day, and pretty much housebound besides until everyone gets to feeling better.

I feel okay. A little scratchy throat, a barely there headache. Probably more allergies than illness, as I have been dusting that which has not been dusted since I got pregnant with Kai. But I am seriously bummed that my big, beautiful week isn't shaping up as I'd hoped. I've been planning this crap for over a month. I took time off from work. Of course it all fell apart.

That's fine. Disappointment is fine. The trick is to be grateful anyway.

I may not get everything done, but I can get most of it done. The rest can be rescheduled.

The important part -- the family togetherness -- will happen regardless of whether or not we check off every box on my list. It just may be more hot cocoa and jammies and Netflix than lights and music and outings.

And isn't that what my list is really about -- spending time with my family? Doing fun things with them?

So I will suck up this internal pouty lip and get over myself. Be grateful for the time I have with my loved ones, even though our activities may not measure up to my highest hopes. And I will enjoy Thanksgiving no matter how we end up spending it.

I hope you, too, are having a pleasant Thanksgiving.

Be awesome

One of my goals on PopClogs is "Be awesome." My adding it to my goal list was completely tongue-in-cheek, but I find it a good tool for focusing my intentions.

What does it mean to me to be awesome? First of all, it is to be genuinely myself. Which means to take others' feelings into consideration. To refrain from saying or doing something that would intentionally or unintentionally hurt someone else. It is important to me to treat others as I would be treated, and this is a huge first step. I sleep much better in my own skin when I do this.

I could take that one step further, though. Go out of my way to say and do things to make people feel good. That's less passive, though. It sets me up for being rebuffed. Takes me out of my comfort zone. But it would mean so much more than merely doing no harm.

As a parent, my goal is to be the kind of mom who steers her children with love and gentle humor. I am not this kind of mom right now. I am more the bribe-and-bark sort of mom, with the occasional guilt trip and threat thrown in. I have a very headstrong daughter, and barking orders is efficient. But it makes me feel like a heel. So I am working on this.

I'd like to do more than that, though. I want to be the mom who helps her kids fly, not just the mom who keeps her kids safe. I could stick them in a hole for 18 years, and they would be perfectly safe. But what kind of life would that be? What kind of life would it prepare them for?

As a citizen, I want to take a more active role in my town, in my community, in the world. Recycle. Reuse. Repurpose. Give. Get involved. I don't know how I am going to go about this when I can barely stay on top of the laundry, but I'm giving it thought. If I want to live in a good place, I need to do my part to make it a good place.

It's a tall order, being awesome. An open-ended prompt. I could never possibly finish being awesome.

I like goals like that, though. It's satisfying to create a to-do list and check it off, but you don't grow that way. You grow by setting a bar that you can never stop raising.

November 2015: Never say die! (And be grateful, bitch.)

The above is the title of the November 2015 PopClogs Bootcamp. If you're not on PopClogs, the Bootcamps are basically a set of monthly goals we set for ourselves. Largely fitness related, but not entirely. Each month has a theme. I'm particularly fond of this one, because it captures perfectly my current mindset.

I had big plans for October. Through no fault of my own, I did not accomplish everything I set out to do (or even most of it), but I am not giving up. I have refined my list and added to it (probably too much, to be honest), and am approaching November with a Goonies "give-'em-hell" grin.

Despite my big list, which I will refrain  from sharing so you can't laugh at me a few weeks from now, my main focus is to get my mornings in order. I've found that when my mornings go well, my whole day goes well. So it is my goal to achieve the following each morning:

• Get up at 5:30.
• Practice yoga.
• Meditate. (Even 2 minutes would be nice.)
• Write a blog entry.
• Write a paragraph on my book.

I have a weekend cleaning routine going, finally. The house does not get 100% clean every week, but I get the big chunks. The laundry gets done -- sometimes it even gets put away! Each Saturday morning I get up, practice yoga, and clean the house before we do anything else. Sundays are free days, or I repeat the Saturday process if there is still cleaning left to do. I've been doing this for a few months now, and it's finally become routine; even Anya is into the "clean on Saturday morning" groove. So now I just need to get my weekdays in order, in order to accomplish the things I want to before the work day starts.

This is my focus for November. Everything else is just gravy.

Speaking of gravy, some of my subgoals this month are to work on teaching Anya about gratitude and taking over some of the Turkey Day preparations. I'll talk more about both later. Should be interesting.

Do all the things!

Though my projects this month haven't necessarily been creative, and I have had damn good reasons for not accomplishing all I set out to do, I still feel like this right now:

I haven't been able to keep up with my webcomics, but I still heart Toothpaste for Dinner.

That green bit? That's this week. I have probably doomed us to fail with my overplanning, in fact. But sometimes, things go right. So here is the agenda:

• Tuesday: Hair cuts (though no color...I will just have to be sparkly rooted in our family pics) for Anya and I, also a quick shopping trip 
• Wednesday: Corn maze if it's not too muddy; pumpkin carving if it is
• Thursday: Flu vacs for the kids; family pics
• Friday: Corn maze if Wednesday was too muddy and the kids don't feel yucky; pumpkin carving otherwise
• Saturday: Cleaning; shopping for Poppy's birthday present; trick or treat; Halloween festival

Also, somewhere in there I will put in a few hours of editing for one of my clients. In addition, I will be starting my day job an hour early and taking short lunches to make up time for Monday's visit with Kai (I thought he might have an ear infection, but was just being paranoid :) and Thursday's shots.

So yoga might not be happening this week, either. I will have to work on that in November.

And the meditation. I only managed to squeeze in a couple of sessions all month.

I have kept the house relatively clean, though. And kept up with the blogging. I also may very well meet my (modest) step goal. Not all of the plates hit the floor. Just...most of them.

So this week will be crazy. And for what I do not accomplish, there is always next month.

Speaking of the passage of time

So I just realized two things:

• I will need reading glasses, sooner rather than later. Not just for reading 4-pt type on an iPad. (You're so jealous of my job right now, I know.)
• My preschooler, who is unusually silent, is not hammering pushpins into the wall or flooding the bathroom or coating the fridge with lip balm,* but is instead calmly listening to music with headphones on.

I'm old.

It's a weird feeling, seeing evidence that I am getting older. I honestly felt older at 25. I'm in better shape now, and better health. I'm more emotionally stable (except for the weird Mom-crying at every bad thing everywhere). Sadly, I'm not more financially stable, but that's what taking maternity leave in the US does to ya. Most of all, I am far more hopeful about the future. In my 20s, the future was uncertain and scary. It's no less certain now, but it looks like a lot more fun.

Kids age you, yes, but they also make the years more enjoyable.

As for me, I have never really had a problem with my aging. I had to explain to R the other day a set of candles we saw that said "29 again?" -- like me, he can't imagine wanting to be 29 more than once. I had no problem turning 30, or 40. However, I do think I will milk 42 for all it is worth. Mom did; it was her favorite age. And it is the Answer to the Ultimate Question, after all.** So while I am anticipating the future, I need to start making plans for ways to celebrate my 42nd year on the planet.

Speaking of birthdays, it's my mom's birthday today.*** Happy birthday, Mom!

*Not random, fictitious examples.

**Yes, I am one of those people.
***She's moved on from 42; she is now happily 66, and ready to retire.

Celebrating the seasons

I find myself working to establish seasonal family traditions. The Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year's trifecta is pretty well set, though I have tweaked it over Anya's lifetime. I'd started out trying to implement a tradition I had with my parents (giving a small gift for each of the 11 days preceding Christmas*), but it's evolved into a longer time range with smaller presents thanks to the advent calendar I made last year. And there are other activities, which do not involve gifts. We do Zoo Lights. Starry Nights. We visit Santa. We bake cookies. We eat Thanksgiving dinner with both families. We decorate the tree the day after Thanksgiving, and take it down around Little Christmas, January 6. I take a picture of Anya (new this year: Anya and Kai) in front of the tree in a Christmas outfit for our Christmas cards. Actually, I take about 50 pictures, and never quite get the one I want -- though I always get one that captures her personality perfectly.

I have personal celebrations, too. A quiet reflection on the year that starts with 10Q in the fall and culminates in my revising my goal list and recapping my year on PopClogs. I try to start the year in the manner in which I intend to continue -- full of energy and hope and good intentions. It usually falls apart by March, but I mean well.

I love these traditions. They pull me out of my head, out of my to-do list, out of my present worries and future plans. They make me focus on what's in front of me: A loving partner, amazing kids, and an imperfect but pretty awesome life. I need that.

That's just one season, though. Just a month, really. I need that sort of pause all year round. So I have been slowly testing other seasonal celebrations. For fall, I've made the following list:

• Go to a farmer's market
• Bake mini apple pies
• Walk in the park and collect fall leaves
• Visit a corn maze
• Go to Zoo Boo
• Pick out pumpkins
• Carve/decorate pumpkins
• Bake mini pumpkin pies
• Make soup
• Do a leaf-based art project
• Make an autumn centerpiece for the kitchen table

I've been working on this for a month and a half now, and it's really helped me savor the season. Which is nice, because it's my favorite season -- I would really hate to miss it.

Gets me to thinking, though. I should make lists like this for the other seasons. Things that I want to be sure to do and make and experience. Things I want to share with my family. The highlights reel. Because time often gets away from me, and you never know when your last chance to do something will be.


*A tradition I started as a child, I must confess, in order to get a few presents early. It was a lot of fun, though. And yes, I gave presents back.

Spinning plates

I am currently trying to accumulate good habits. Not all at once, but a few at a time. I think of them as my spinning plates.

First, after having Kai, I had to incorporate New Baby into my routine. If you've ever had a new baby, you know that everything from eating to bathing to using the restroom is challenging. Especially if you have a brand-new abdominal incision to contend with. Incorporating New Kai was far easier than incorporating New Anya, mostly because with New Kai I got plenty of sleep. But it was still a process.

Once I had regular meals, showers, and bathroom breaks under my belt, I worked on keeping normal hours. With Anya, I was tossed unceremoniously back into the land of the living when my maternity leave ended. I was adrift in a sea of dirty laundry and dirty bottles, sleep deprived and overcaffeinated, armed with nothing but an empty fridge and an expression of exhausted bewilderment. With Kai, I wanted to do better. So I worked at getting up at the same time each day, eliminating naps, and then pushing back my wake time until it was where I needed it to be for work.

Then I started work. It was a bit of a challenge at first, mostly because Kai didn't understand what was going on. Working from home made it infinitely easier, because I was right down the hall. I tried, and pretty much failed, to pump milk and bottle feed him during the day. (He is not a fan of the bottle, and thinks the pump is stealing his food.) So I learned to work while breastfeeding.

After I got that down, I worked in eating. Then cooking. Then cooking regularly. Menu planning (which I am still working on). House cleaning (ditto). R got a job, and we worked around his schedule (which, happily, balances mine so that we don't need much in the way of daycare). I'm even working in a little freelancing.

Regular exercise is next on the list. I've made working out on the weekends a habit. Now I'd like to add daily yoga and meditation. To accomplish this, I am getting up an hour and a half early Monday through Friday. I've only been at it three days, but so far it's working out well. One or both kids usually wakes up before I complete the meditation -- sometimes before I even complete the yoga. But that's okay. It's a work in progress.

I'm willing to take the time to fiddle with the routine to make it stick. I feel so much better about life, the universe, and everything when I have the basics down. And next year, I'd like to start tackling new goals, instead of circling the same maintenance goals all the time.

Something to work toward

I remember summer vacations as a child. They were boring as hell. I used to set myself a schedule just to give myself something to do.

8:00 Get up (yes, I set an alarm on summer vacation)
8:30 Eat
9:00 Shower

I would schedule which game shows to watch, riding my bike to the post office to get the mail, lunch with a similarly bored friend, things like that. Nothing pressing, enriching, lasting. Just killing time.

I loved being free of the rigid schedule of the school year, but I needed something to look forward to. Three months of nothingness wore on me.

It took me a ridiculously long time to realize that what I need is not structure, but goals. Something to work toward. Which is nice, because there is no end to the things I would like to do in this life. I will never run out of goals. How cool is that?

I used to avoid trying things I thought were beyond me, until I realized that I gain far more satisfaction from improving at something I formerly sucked at than maintaining a stellar track record at something that comes easily to me.

In that vein, here are some things I would like to accomplish. No time limits; I'll do them when I do them. The fun is in the trying.

- Learn to draw
- Jog a mile
- Do a proper cobra pose (I could before the c-sections, but no longer)
- Learn to play drums
- Visit more national landmarks (Mt Rushmore, Yellowstone, the Liberty Bell, etc.)
- Shop local farmer's markets
- Own my own home
- Get a bike; use it

See? I do think about things other than my kids sometimes.

I am not my nipples

Well, actually, right now I kinda am. My life revolves around them: How accessible they are, if there is anything coming out of them, if there is presently a baby attached to one of them. I eat oats not just for breakfast, but several times a day. I drink gallons of lactation tea, take fenugreek and prenatal vitamins. I don't take any other medications, either because they would interfere with my tenuous lactation or because they could be transmitted through the milk to my child. (I do not consume so much as an Altoid for fear of rocking the milk production boat.) I wear only v necks, tank tops/camis, and shirts that button or zip; crew necks are for another year. My bras all have escape hatches; I spent close to $100 on each of them, because I am a weird size even among the lactating. I rarely leave home without my child, and only go on short outings even when he is with me, making sure I plan for breastfeeding stops and drink refills. I don't go anywhere I can't breastfeed.

To my son, the universe is not heliocentric, but areolacentric. And thus my life has become focused on my nipples.

I'm wanting to move this blog over to WordPress, but the current name is taken there. I'm kind of tired of it anyway, so I don't mind the renaming; I just don't know what to rename it. I want something that reflects me. Not just my status as a mom, but who I am overall. Problem is, I don't quite know how to sum that up. Especially now, when I feel like I am hardly more than a walking nipple.

Becoming a "good enough"ist

Gretchen Rubin advises not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I'm a perfectionist from birth (I am an editor, after all), so this is hard for me. But I get what she's saying. Doing something, even if it's not everything you'd hoped it would be, is better than letting your perfectionism keep you from doing anything at all.

The reason my books haven't gotten anywhere: They keep turning into chick lit, and I don't want to be a chick lit author. So I stop writing. Meanwhile, my best friend is making money from his writing. Sure, it's not his dream gig -- he's selling smut on Amazon. But at least he's being read. (And getting paid!)

The reason this blog isn't getting anywhere: I keep waiting for a topic idea (not an issue) and the time to write it (um...) and also time to polish the writing into something I'm proud of (ahahahaha). Ultimately, I don't end up posting anything.

I've been applying the "good enough" approach to other areas of my life. I am learning to live with a house that looks clean on the surface. (If a door is shut, please don't open it.) I'm okay with doing some form of exercise most days, meditating almost every day (even when I fall asleep doing it), and having well-rounded family dinners often. I should cut myself some slack in other areas. Like this blog.

I follow all manner of creative people on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. I like seeing how their minds work -- what they're doing, reading, making. It's inspiring to me. I don't want to be the person who works all day, watches TV all night, cleans all weekend, and never creates anything. But I have something most of them don't: Small children. Who also want a piece of me. And they come first.

Still, I want to do something. So I am going to try to post M-F, even if it's just a thought or a photo. Expect a rocky start; I've got a ton of freelancing work at the moment, and am also trying to get some other plates spinning (minor things like regular exercise and adequate sleep). I've queued up a few ideas to get the ball rolling.

Home making

My daughter's language skills improve more and more each day. Lately she has been focused on classifications: boys/girls, old/new, the color (preferably pink!) and size (tiny babies, biiiiig ice creams) of things. One of the things she specifies is whose house she wants to be at -- usually it's Mimi's house, but sometimes it is Anya's house.

The way she says that, Anya's house, resonates with me. However temporary I feel about the house we rent (I was hoping we'd have bought a house by now, but it looks like that goal is a few years off yet), it is the only home she has ever known. It's her whole childhood. The center of her universe. I should do what I can to make it nice.

So that's my new goal (in addition to adapting to life with two kids and finding my abs under all this postpregnancy sag): Making this house a home.

The best-laid plans

I am a plan junkie. I've had a plan as far back as I can remember. (Which, considering I have fragments of memory reaching as far back as my first birthday, is a ridiculously long time). For many of the intervening years, I've been unable to sleep if I didn't have the next 5 or so years of my life mapped out. Pathetic, but true.

However, there is something to be said for not having a plan -- for just jumping in. That's how I finally managed to quit smoking, after a couple of decades and dozens of well-plotted attempts. I ran out of cigarettes one day and just didn't buy any more. Didn't talk about it much, either -- obviously my family noticed right away, but I didn't make any grand announcements or anything. (In fact, there are people who may not yet know I quit. I don't get out much these days.)

Being who I am, doing anything without a plan is...well, freakin' scary. I don't go to the store without a plan -- what time and day I'll go, which route I'll take, what I'm buying, what I'm putting off until later. In my current gestational state, I also plan which clothes to wear (comfy shoes, pants with back pockets for my phone that I can keep up with a minimum of fuss even after squatting down to get stuff off the bottom shelves, a shirt that covers my belly, possibly a light jacket if my list contains much from the refrigerated/frozen section). Ms. Spontaneity I am not.

But I am also a firm believer in recognizing when my efforts are failing and trying a new approach, and there are some things in life for which a plan just doesn't work. Like quitting smoking. I'd tried the plan approach before. I wrote out a list of reasons to quit -- all valid, meaningful reasons to me. I replaced my cigarettes with this or that nicotine replacement method. I had an arsenal of distraction techniques and a support system at the ready. I announced to the world that I was quitting. And suddenly, my life became all about smoking. Everyone asked me about it, every day. Every night, I dreamed about it. How could I miss it if it didn't go away?

What worked was just jumping in. I had nicotine gum on hand already, from my last quit attempt. So when my partner announced one day, out of the blue, that he was quitting, I called his bluff. Smoked my last cigarette, didn't buy more. He later tried to bum one off me, but of course I had none to give. We were stuck.

But I muddled through. It took me more than the allotted 12 weeks to kick the gum, but I did it within 6 months. I can't say I never had another cigarette after that day; I did. It was awful. Tasted like dish soap, for some reason. So even though I still occasional miss smoking (mentally, not physically; the physical part is really absurdly easy to kick), I work around those moments as they come. I don't call attention to them or make a big deal of them. I can't even tell you how long it's been since I quit, as I noted neither the day nor the year. A while. The point is, I don't smoke now, and I never will again. I couldn't ever say that before, but I can now.

So. Plans are not the end-all, be-all. Sometimes, plans are just crutches. Knowing that won't stop me from clinging to them, but perhaps my experience with unplanned success will help me loosen up. Just a little.

Bucket lists

Know how sometimes all it takes is one thing to throw a wrench in the whole works? You're running along full speed, and the toe of one shoe catches the heel of the other foot and you go tumbling down?

My grandfather died.

He died on a Saturday. The first of November. We found out on Sunday, drove up Monday, attended the funeral Tuesday, and drove back Wednesday. I've been chasing my tail ever since, trying to take care of the things I was supposed to do those few days. Which didn't really seem like that much until I didn't do it.

I haven't even had time to process how I feel about losing Pop. I'm awash in deadlines and bills and the holidays and busy work. It's all just frickin' busy work.

This is not how I want to live my life. Not that I want to do nothing -- quite the opposite. But to feel like I can't take a few days off, to grieve or travel or just hang out with my family a bit, without having to run double-time to catch up afterwards...well, it makes taking time off seem not worth the effort.

A while back, I wrote this:

So I just read this: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/15/forget-the-bucket-list-these-are-the-things-you-should-avoid-before-you-die.

Here's a list of things I still want to do anyway:
* Learn to play an instrument. (Actually two.)
* See Stonehenge.
* See the Blarney Stone. (Not kissing it, though, because ew.)
* Visit Paris. (Though it's not as high on my list as Stonehenge...or even the Blarney Stone. If I were honest, however, I'd probably be happier visiting a less populated area of France.)

Nothing else listed was on my list in the first place, or if it was, it no longer is. One of the nice things about getting older is you can be more realistic about yourself. (I would, for instance, hate Burning Man. I might not hate it quite so much if it were nearer to civilization and not out in the desert, but I would still hate it. Crowds are not my thing. The desert in the summer is not my thing. And camping? Forget it.)

There aren't a tremendous amount of trips on my bucket list. Because while I would like to see certain places, I hate traveling. Mostly what's on my bucket list are things I want to learn and do. And someday I'll get around to writing it all down.

But the bottom line is, I don't let lists like this inhibit me because we're all different. One person's dream is another's personal idea of hell.

I really meant to revisit it, polish it up and maybe expand upon the train of thought. But it never happened. Because I can't think that far ahead. Right now, my priorities are more like this:
* Make the minimum amount I need to pay bills next month.
* If  I do that, and still have time left before invoice, I try to make enough to maybe pay for some of the prenatal care fees.
* If I do that and still have time left, I try to squeeze in a little extra work so maybe I can buy Christmas presents.
* Spend time with my family.
* Take a nap.
* Maybe clean a little, wash a load of clothes.
* Go for a walk if I have the energy.
* Work on a project.
* Fret about all the things I'm not doing.

Long-term, I'm plotting how to afford nursery furniture for the baby, and trying to come up with ways I can cut corners financially so we can start saving up for a house; the kids can share a room for a while, but in a few years they will likely start to protest.

That's it. That's all the further ahead I can think. And all I can manage to worry about are the basics; bucket list items aren't even on my horizon.

Even still, things fall through the cracks. Like the letter I'd meant to send my grandparents, with recent photos of my child. I finally decided to hold out until I had the sonogram, and send those pictures too. My grandfather died the day after I had the sonogram, though, so that didn't happen.

But perhaps the point I should be taking away from all this is that I'm focused on life. My life, right now. My daughter's life. My partner's life. The life that's growing inside of me. Not what I want to do before I die, because I don't plan on doing that for a good many years.

I really don't have time for it anyway.

What I need to do is start finding ways to take care of the essentials that will leave me time to enjoy the stuff I want to do, too. Because there's nothing that makes time feel wasted like pointless busy-ness. If I were to die tomorrow, that would be my regret. Not the big things I didn't do, but the little things I missed.

Labels

I am not good at labels. Back when I wrote extremely vague, emo poetry, I almost never titled my work, because I suck at titles. (Conversely, the title to my master's thesis is embarrassingly long and awkward. I guess since I was forced to give something a title, I decided to title the hell out of it.) I find titles too confining. That's why the title of this blog is so vague. I don't know what kind of blog it is. I don't even know what kind of blog I want it to be.

It's not a mommy blog. It seems to me that mommy blogs are about explaining how to handle this or that parenting situation. There's some takeaway, some nugget of advice. I have no advice for anyone. I'm flying by the seat of my pants here. And right now, those pants have a cream cheese stain on them.

I do, however, talk about my kid a lot. I can't help it, though. I waited a long damn time to have kids; it's all I ever really wanted to do. And I thought for a while that I would never be able to do so. So I'm pretty excited about the whole parenthood thing. My daughter is my greatest achievement, my favorite person in the world, and the reason I get out of bed every morning. That I've managed to get and stay (knock wood) pregnant twice seems like an embarrassment of riches.

However, though my focus is mostly on being a mother, I do more than mommy. And while I track most of my progress at PopClogs now that 43t is defunct (sniff), occasionally I feel things require more elaboration than I feel comfortable putting into such a forum. These tend to become blog entries. (Or will, once I find the time/energy to write them all down. I've been writing this entry in my head for a week.) I have a host of projects and goals that I will begin to address once I can stay conscious more than two hours at a time and stop feeling so violently seasick. Until then, I'm just surviving.

But it's not just a self-improvement blog. I want to start focusing on my career at some point (right now, it's mostly just a way to keep the lights on). Over the years, I've amassed a variety of related but distinct skills that I would eventually like to package into a service, because I really have no intention of returning to the office. I like working from home. It suits me.

That's part of what this blog is all about. I have no official writing samples in my portfolio -- nothing I'm proud of, anyway. Nothing I feel is special, or indicative of my voice. And the informal writing I've done is all over the place -- entries on this site or that site. I wanted to create a place where I could showcase my best work, and also get back into the writing groove. Part of being an editor is being a good writer, but it's been so very long since I wrote anything more than a few paragraphs that I'm not even sure I remember how.

And I miss writing. I used to write every day, just for fun. Now I barely have time to respond to email. But I want to make a point of writing, to feel comfortable calling myself a writer again.

So...here I am. Welcome to the pile. It's sure to be a mixed bag, but I'll try to make it an entertaining mess, at least.

I'm still here

There goes another month. This one's been a haze of nausea and exhaustion. The first trimester is hard enough without 60-hour work weeks, but with them...well, let's just say that it's a good day when my shirt's on right side out.

Unless I'm suffering from selective amnesia, this pregnancy is harder than Anya's in terms of morning sickness. I haven't vomited (I'm not a puker), but the food aversions are brutal this time. (And when I say that, know that I lived on cheese and crackers for the first three months last time around.) I have days in which I can maybe choke down the equivalent of one meal. So I also have headaches. And exhaustion is just par for the course.

Things have also been crazy lately. In a few days, my baby turns 3, and won't be such a baby anymore. The preparations for her celebrations (yes, plural) have just added to the hectic pace of my life. Today's pretty much booked from morning through bedtime, and I'm not convinced I'll get it all done. I have the possibility of pockets of free time over the weekend, but I can't count on them. 

And this is how the last few weeks have gone. Occasionally I get a free afternoon on a Sunday, but most days I get perhaps a couple of hours of downtime, total. It's wearing on me.

So I was pretty cranky last night. We were folding laundry at 9:30, just so I'd have one less thing to do today. And I was snippy, and I knew I was being snippy, but I was just so tired and sick and stressed out that I could not stop.

All Anya wanted to do was play. But her play was undoing the work I was doing faster than I was doing it, so I snapped at her.

She kind of steered clear of me the rest of the night.

My time with this child is too short as it is; I don't want to waste what time I do have.

So I gave myself the next few days off of freelancing. Being short two articles this month isn't going to make or break me financially, and the extra hour's sleep this morning took the edge off the headache I woke with.

I need to make more of an effort to give myself time off. Yes, we need the money. We will always need the money. But I need to take care of myself, too. It's all too easy to let that slide until the damage is done.

To be

“We all know people…who are at loggerheads with existence; unhappy people who never get what they want; are baffled, complaining, who stand at an uncomfortable angle when they see everything askew. There are others again who, though they appear perfectly content, seem to have lost all touch with reality. They lavish all their affections upon little dogs and old china. They take interest in nothing but the vicissitudes of their own health and the ups and downs of social snobbery. There are, however, others who strike us, why precisely it would be difficult to say, as being by nature or circumstances in a position where they can use their faculties to the full upon things that are of importance. They are not necessarily happy or successful, but there is a zest in their presence, an interest in their doings. They seem to be alive all over."

- Virginia Woolf, “The Narrow Bridge of Art”; emphasis mine.

The text above, particularly the bolded portion, is what I aspire to be. Everything I do, and everything I do not do, filters down to that one thought.

I was in pain yesterday, so I did pretty much nothing. A short grocery run and dinner, preceded by naps. Plural. And it was nice, being lazy. I'm not often lazy. But I also felt frustrated because I was wasting my day. I have so very many things I want to accomplish, and so few hours in which to accomplish them. I'd rather not waste those hours sleeping, or playing games, or watching TV.

I want to be. And I want to do so to the best of my ability, over and over until I get it right.