Rhythm and Repetition

I so enjoy the beginning of the school year. It is, as I write every year, a time of renewal, of fresh starts, of new pencils and notebooks ready to have a brand new chapter filled in. We've started to get into our routine and I'm grateful for the structure and discipline it brings to our days. Summer is so decadent and relaxing, and it is a good and useful cycle of intellectual fallowness. There is, however, an energy to getting back to calendaring every single day instead of once a week and of maintaining household records and systems regularly because one's mind is back into a system of "now is the time, tomorrow will be here before I know it" after the golden, endless-summer opportunities to be completely in the moment.

I always think about the tendency of most women to multi-task, and, inspired by a post on one of my favorite blogs, I've decided to be choosier about multi-tasking and take more things one at a time. I think that way I can better combine the output-orientation that is necessary to be a productive family with a little more process-orientation. By that I mean I can enjoy the process and see it as productive, even if I don't always get to the exact outcome I think I should. I was actually better at this when I had little children. I am pretty childlike myself, so it was easy for me to drop everything and just play. I caught a lot of those moments we worry about missing. Now I hope that instead of the pendulum swinging too far the other way, I can remember to include moments of play in the getting-to-the-finish line.

In spite of the fact that I still struggle to keep consistent, good habits, I truly believe in the conclusion that so many writers have come to, that simplifying and peace in the midst of family chaos come in the form of routine. I am learning to embrace those routines that I think are most likely to free me and help me be more productive, like my morning and nighttime routines. Rather than making me feel fettered, they actually leave me feeling that no matter what the rest of the day brings, my mind is under control because the real, true, most important things are done.

I find most of my inspiration in nature, which is perfect, but not static. My hope is that my daily life, like a forest path or a sunrise or the waves on the shore, will have rhythm and repetition, but that each new attempt will still be a unique expression of me and who I'm becoming.

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Home Again

I'm back from Chicago (got home at 1 am this morning) and glad to be here. I have not a single photo because I was working pretty much the whole time. I taught 17 hours of knitting classes over the course of 4 days and I'm a little brain-dead. I enjoy it though, and have made some awesome friends among the other teachers, so in spite of the lack of photographic evidence, I had a great time. I got to celebrate my birthday on Saturday with a luscious room service breakfast with my friend Debbie from Yakima, and got sung to several times by the good folks I work with at these conventions. It was a good day. It has continued on into this week as I came home to lots of fun wishes from friends and family and the promise of lunches and dinners with pals. That is my favorite way to celebrate. It is good to be loved and I love everyone back. I came home with scads of free swag from the sponsors as appreciation gifts to the teachers, and was relieved that my suitcase topped out at 48.5 pounds so I didn't have to pay 125 bucks to get it on the plane.

Now as reality dawns, I realize anew that it was a less-than-ideal weekend to be away, and even though Eric did an amazing job as usual holding down the fort while I was gone, there were some small details that fell by the wayside. I was scrambling to find the high school bus schedule so Sara and Sam missed the bus, I had no chips, pretzels or fruit for lunches, and I completely forgot to take first day of school photos. I also didn't get copies of Sam and Sara's schedules before those precious slips of paper disappeared into the abysses of their backpacks. I'll probably never see them again. The schedules, not the kids. Evan never received his schedule, so I took him over to the middle school to get it and they wouldn't print one out. He had to just go to homeroom. In addition, because we never received the mailing, he has no emergency cards to turn in, so no locker. Luckily, he's a trooper and handled it all with poise and aplomb. Oh yeah, and I completely forgot to pick songs for Relief Society. I so hate it when I leave people hanging. Those emails made me cringe.

But, if those are my biggest troubles, then I'm a pretty lucky woman. The kids will survive on just a sandwich and cookies and a drink, the photos will get taken tomorrow, and all will be well. Now it's time to get ready for seminary. And so it begins...

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Boys Made it Safe and Sound

The boys made it to Utah with time to spare and had a good experience on the road. It was really, really nice to have Jeff home for a few weeks.

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Excellent Adventure

My boys have headed out on their Excellent Adventure. Jeff took our little car out to school and Johnathan and Sam went with to help with the drive and hopefully make some memories. It was not a difficult goodbye because I'll see Jeff in a couple of weeks when we take Johnathan out to start his mission. It was a less than excellent adventure getting the car ready to go. In the course of some fairly routine work on the brakes, Eric, who is really good at working on cars and has done just about all of our car repairs over the years, had some trouble with broken bolts and the job went from a two-hour Saturday afternoon accomplishment to two 8 hours days with about 4 new tools purchased, and a trip to the junkyard for parts thrown in plus a morning at a brake shop to finish things up. Bless his heart. He worked so hard and was so patient in the face of frustration. It got done though, everyone stayed positive and the boys left about 24 hours later than they originally planned. They are now in Indiana with my Mother in Law and will head to the Denver area tomorrow. After that, onto Utah. Johnathan and Sam fly home on Saturday and Jeff will get settled in his house in Provo. I think they had a good day yesterday. Apparently, their biggest worry was whether or not they would be able to find a White Castle (if you don't know what that is, you must not be from the midwest) close to the Ohio Turnpike. The only call I got was from Jeff was to ask me google every WC location in Ohio. Yeah. Ah to be 21 again.


In other news, Sara made the Freshman Volleyball team and is very happy about that, I leave for Chicago tomorrow to teach at a knitting convention and we have the school supply situation in hand. In my 15 years in the public school system, I've learned to relax a little about the school supplies, plus we've built up quite a stockpile. Happily, it is much simplified in high school, so there something to look forward to. So, Evan looked through our shelf and found about 2/3 of what is on his list and that's enough to get started with.

Enjoy the last weekend of summer here in Howard County and I'll see you on Monday!

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Special Announcement

I am now CAUGHT UP with the dishes for the first time since FRIDAY!

Just thought you'd want to know...
You may now return to your regularly scheduled Blogging.

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The Fam, 2008

Here is the best shot I could get in 20 minutes with a camera-shy family, a self-timer shot while I'm wearing a dress and trying to set the tripod up to get a cool angle without lying on the ground and my family asking after every adjustment if that was the end. Not bad for less than optimal artistic conditions.

Here is our last family picture, from almost 4 years ago. It is fun to see how everyone has changed. Yes, I said 4 years. That is about how often I can rope them in front of the camera. Sigh.

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Good to be Found

I really liked this message in a daily email newsletter that I get. To give proper credit, the website is http://www.debtproofliving.com/ and the author is Mary Hunt. Here's hoping you have a half-full kind of day, even though some things are a little tough right now:

Finding Good, Even in a Recession

It’s pretty hard to find anything good about gasoline prices hovering at an all-time high in the U.S. But I know that my grandmother would find something to point out. That’s just the way she was. She could always find a rainbow no matter how dark the storm.

I thought about her recently when I read about professors Michael Morrisey, Ph.D. of the University of Alabama and David Grabowski, Ph.D. of Harvard Medical School. They studied traffic fatalities from 1985 to 2006 when the price of gas hit $2.50 a gallon. They’ve found that for every 10 percent increase in gas prices, there’s been a 2.3 percent decline in auto-related deaths. Now that gas prices have pierced the $4-a-gallon mark, they expect to see a drop of about 1,000 deaths per month. In those terms, it’s pretty difficult to loathe the high cost of gas. Well, maybe not loathe it quite as much.

And there’s another good thing about rising gas costs. People are shifting where they want to live and shop so they stay closer to work and home. That means that some blighted areas close to inner cities are getting revitalized—all because of the high cost of gas.

By staying closer to home, shoppers are helping out the smaller local stores that struggle to survive. That’s what is happening in Thomasville, Alabama, a town that was slowly dying and now is seeing a major resurgence. In fact, the once-sleepy town is experiencing traffic jams on its main street from shoppers who can no longer afford the gas to drive many miles away to a big, fancy mall.

If it’s any further consolation for the poor economy, Americans are racking up debt at a slower pace these days because it’s getting increasingly difficult to acquire new credit.

We’re also eating out less which, I can only assume, means we’re cooking at home more. Could it be that this slowing economy might actually be good for families by bringing them back to the dinner table?

There are a few economists who argue that a recession could make us healthier. When times are economically tough, they say, we take better care of ourselves, are more likely to look after others and, surprisingly, we become less anxious. Edward Glaeser, economics professor at Harvard, says that a recession becomes a time of possibility, despite the inevitable human suffering that accompanies it.

I don’t know all the ways the slumping housing market, high gas prices and soaring food prices are affecting you specifically. But I do know this: in every difficult situation, there is always a bright spot, be it ever so tiny. If we look deeply enough, we will find something for which to give thanks. Even in a recession.

© Copyright 2008 Mary Hunt
Everyday Cheapskate is a Registered Trademark

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Dear to My Heart

One of the bright spots from last week was a lovely dinner with some of the dearest friends that I have. I don't see any of them often anymore, but they're an important part of my life nonetheless. I've spent some very enjoyable time this week thinking about the connections between us and retracing the development of our bond over the years. This annual event is a big part of that bond.

It is interesting to me how friendships change throughout life. Some friends I thought I would have forever have become just good memories and the occasional Christmas card. Other friends have found tenacious footholds in my life and stayed in spite of major challenges of time, distance, and differences in personality or lifestyle. Old friends are back in my life thanks to technology like facebook and blogging. And of course there are new friends all the time, so the journey of friendship is never quite complete. All's the better for that.

Often, friends that come to mean the most are the ones who have one of my missing pieces. These are the folks who have something I need to learn. Either that or they help me become better by refining my strengths or tempering my weaknesses.

When I think about my dinner companions from last week, there is someone in each of these categories. It was a sweet thing to be able to spend some precious time with them.

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No Mental Energy for a Clever Title

So, what to say about this week. It has been fine, really, I'm just in the depths of an anemia-induced funk. Thus everything, in spite of the good times, has seemed a little blah. Thus no writing. It didn't really seem fair you, the reader.

I refuse to succumb when I feel this way, however, so I get out and do things and in fact I force myself to so that I won't curl up in a ball like a potato bug and just stay there. But man, I am tired. Not lack-of-sleep tired, that would be easy. No, this kind of tired just turns the world grey, with paths that are all slippery and uphill-nothing is easy, nothing is particularly fun, and my emotions respond to my body, so it is incredibly difficult to focus on the positive. I really think that is what saps the energy. The mental exercise of choosing to look at something as an opportunity or as a learning experience or as just a normal part of life is MUCH more difficult than just giving in and seeing normal setbacks and challenges as evidence that my worst fears really are true (you know-the usual: that I probably am a failure at most really important things in life like being organized and detail-oriented and ambitious and tidy, with an uncluttered, well-decorated home and scrapbooks that are all caught up and not having to pay the late fee AGAIN to register for soccer, etc. and will probably never truly succeed at any of them)

But, since those fears are ridiculous and deserve to be in even smaller type, I offer up a report of my week that hopefully will tell the story to my future self that I kept on going, even though I really didn't want to most days. I am soooo grateful to the people who are part of my life that let me be part of their lives so I have reasons to get beyond these inevitable moments.

Here are the good things for this week:

• The Weather! We have been having positively California-esque weather here. Okay, so I realize that if you're FROM Cali, it might not seem that way, but for me, this is heaven. It has been warm, but the humidity has been low, so the sky has been this exquisite clear blue with gorgeous fluffy clouds. We've had a few storms go by, but they've just served to make some nice cool evenings. Seriously, this weather has been such a blessing this week, because the brilliance has literally broken the grey into little shards under my feet. I've tried to be outside as much as possible.
  
• I got tickets to see So You Think You Can Dance with friends who are all significantly younger and hipper than I. I'm taking my daughter along and if you average my age and her age, together we are 28, so I fit in a bit better. Actually I'm really excited. My one indulgence to the blahs this week was to get under my covers when I felt all achy and cold and catch up on episodes of this fun series. The more I watch, the more I remember how much I loved to dance in high school and how, like poetry, dance is such a beautiful and succinct way to express emotion and experience. Some of the performances made me cry. But maybe that's not saying much this week. ;o)
  
• As a bonus to getting together to buy said tickets, two lovely pals that I haven't been able to spend tons of time with lately went out for breakfast and ate yummy food and laughed for a good hour and a half. That is always good for the body and soul.
  
• The one good thing about my anemia getting to this point is I start remembering to take my medicine again, so I start feeling better pretty fast. Unfortunately my learning curve is a little flat and I'll forget again when life gets busy. Probably around Christmas. Maybe you could email me and tell me to take my pills...
  
• I took a few photos up to the County Fair and whaddayaknow, I got a first place ribbon! There were 963 entries in the photography exhibit, so I am feeling kinda proud about that one. Even more fun is that I got to share the experience with a pal, but I'll let her tell her story. I find it cosmically, ironically, darkly humorous that the winning photo perfectly expresses my physical state this week:
• My darling daughter returned from AZ. She was visiting my youngest sister. There is less of an age difference between my sister and Sara than there is between my sister and me, so they've grown up a bit like sisters themselves. They had a wonderful time, experienced the Breaking Dawn phenomenon together, and she came home happy and sweet. I really missed her.
  

• My young kindred spirit friend S. and I did something I've always wanted to try: We dyed yarn. It was so fun and creative. I don't know if I'll get deep into it because it requires precision, one of my worst things, but it was super-fun as a try-out. I offered all this knitting and fiber arts stuff to my kids when they were younger but because it was me and I do this professionally, none of them ever responded beyond the okay-we'll-try-it-once stage, so it is really a thrill for me to have someone to play with who really likes these particular endeavors.
  

We start with Plain, Natural Colored Yarn

Then Paint and Play and Squeeze

And all the yarn is colored.

See, lots of good things. Lovely times, lovely friends, lovely family, all good. Thanks for reading as I cast it all in that light for myself. It really does help.

Naturally though, the week finished out with me facing my fears again as I find myself unable to find either of my TWO battery chargers for my camera. I've looked EVERYWHERE. Pete's Sakes, as my friend Corinne would say. It should not be this hard. My mom loaned me hers, and I have two super-batteries, so I only need to charge once a month or so, so I'll live, but I can't escape the nagging thought that always strikes me at times like this: Normal people just don't go through things like this. They put the battery charger away and there it is the next time they need it. What is my problem??? Well, at least I have something to aspire to.

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Something to Look Forward To!

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