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Things are looking up, here. My MIL is recovering well from her injury and I've put together a solid plan for going forward. Our various household challenges have started easing (thank god). The house project is at a very satisfying point (I have a functional back porch!!!).

I am so damn proud of myself for all the work I've done over these last months, managing so many different situations, keeping everything afloat. I'm grateful for all the coping skills and management skills I've learned at the schools and in my own life, so that I was ready to put them to use to support the people in my life. I feel like I'm walking in the steps of my ancestors. Grandma and Grandpa would be proud of me.

In many ways I have no idea what's ahead. I had a plan for this year that involved getting kiddo solidly settled into college and then focusing on preparing for my next career steps and cultivating more post-homeschooling community. Little to none of that happened. Life just needed me elsewhere. I have no idea how we would have gotten through the last couple months if I were working. But I am not cut out to be a fulltime homemaker when I'm not also homeschooling or doing some other work that feels creative/meaningful to me.

What do I want? I want to start taking classes again. I do want to start working -- maybe doing some personal assistant stuff because it's flexible and lowkey and satisfying, maybe tutoring and teaching workshops again because that stuff feeds my soul. I want to be making more music, to be having more adventures, to be getting back to using my body in more adventurous ways (kayaking, rock climbing, fighting with sticks). Getting the household set up even more solidly and satisfyingly. I want to make a difference in the world -- maybe through my job, maybe through getting back to volunteering. I want to get back to various community activities that have fallen through the cracks recently.

I've been using habitica to build and sustain my good habits, and to join challenges and have a place to check in -- the 52 week Organized Home, 5x5 stronglifts, book-a-week, financial management. I'm going to tweak those challenges a bit, this week, as I think about which habits I still need support with, and which ones are either solidly established or just aren't for me.

I don't know what to do about this site. When I came back I was hopeful that it would slowly grow, maybe get a dozen folks here I knew, but that hasn't happened. I'm going to give it a little longer before I make a decision, and in the meantime I'll stick with my gentle intention to get here once a week or so.
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Mondays have not been good for me recently, for journaling here. Monday before last we spent with my MIL, helping her recover from being targetted by a scammer. Last Monday I spent with her at the ER getting treated for her broken arm, and then helping her get settled back in at home. And then Joe and I spent most of the rest of the week helping her deal with various follow up tests and doctor visits and so on.

I'd carved out last week for a self care "vacation" -- no appointments, no time sensitive errands or projects, very little driving, and plenty of time to refocus on the basics of my good habits. That obviously didn't work out, which is an issue because I'd carved it out in the first place because I was already running ragged before this week's crises. At this point I've borrowed against the next month or two of inner resources.

We're going to be solidly in the midst of eldercare for the next little while, in addition to everything else we've got going on. Which means I'm going to need to find a way to balance that with a basic self care regimen.

November

Nov. 4th, 2019 02:15 pm
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I'm cozying in for winter, this week -- looking at a big pile of quick reads to help me get to my reading goal for the year, wrapping up the last couple pre-winter house projects, and letting go of a whole bunch of things that are no longer useful to me.

Some of the lessons I've learned this year:

* build habits, don't set goals (I already knew this,mostly, but it seems I need to keep expanding my understanding of it. Not just for household and health intentions, but also for things like playing board games or going on field trips)

* everything will take longer than I think it will -- don't try to do so much in an afternoon/week/year (again, I mostly already knew this, but I keep needing to expand my knowledge, apparently)

* almost nothing is as bad as it felt to spend so long putting it off and being afraid of it (phone calls, tax paperwork, uncomfortable conversations, medical appointments)
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I had a nice visit with A, this weekend. We were talking about a blurb she'd seen about some author's ideal dinner party, and got to comparing notes on what ours would be.

I'm torn. I don't want to mix friend-groups, because I don't want conversation to take any conscious effort. I want everyone to just be able to relax and let things flow. So I'm thinking one imaginary party would have just my most raucous mom-friends, and we would drink and laugh and tell outrageous tales about sex and aging and parenting. That wouldn't actually be dinner as such -- I'd have everything made ahead, so I could just set the table once and then relax and talk and not think about timing or clearing the table or anything but being there together.

And then the other party would be inspired by a line in one of my favorite cookbooks. There's a recipe for something like Spanish Potato Garlic Soup, and the instructions include the line "serve with crusty bread, play Spanish guitar music, discuss passion and death". For that party I think I actually would serve a soup, a salad, a few types of bread, and something warm and easy for dessert. I would want all the guests to be people who think and speak slowly and deeply -- no one who would dominate the conversation or speak as if their opinion was revealed Truth or somehow obvious. People who would sit with questions, and who would look at disagreements as an opportunity to explore possibilities together, not as an invitation to debate or as something to win.
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It's so odd remembering all the years I got seriously into my birthday festivities, thoroughly enjoying organizing high energy, Peopley, fiddly activities. I remember how much I enjoyed that, I feel an affection for and an affinity with that past self. At the same time, it feels like those emotions belong to someone else. I can't imagine wanting that.

I'm looking forward to taking myself clothes shopping this week, filling in a couple holes in my wardrobe. I'm looking forward to some quiet time to reflect on my life and on the year ahead. I'm looking forward to gardening together on my birthday, and to having a couple relatives over for tea and scones.

My Wise Women group was over, this weekend. We planned our gatherings for this school year, talked about our summers, and chose our next book to read together -- Flash Count Diary. I'm looking forward to it. The author is blunt and combative about society's attitudes toward menopause and older women, and it's exactly what I'm in the mood for.

Today I'm having an anti-procrastination day, working to clear space (physical, emotional, mental) for the week and year ahead. I'm on task 8/26, and I'm feeling damn good about my progress.

October!

Oct. 1st, 2019 10:10 am
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The further we get into my favorite season, the better I feel.

It helps that I recently faced some fears, I figured out a next step for the most time sensitive house repair project, we finished paying off one of our significant monthly bills (the boiler we suddenly needed, a couple years ago), Joe is taking a bunch of vacation time this month and we have some cozy family plans in place for that time, one of my favorite relatives is visiting today, we stocked the freezer with an abundance of tasty lunches, and I've been hitting most of my good habits.

I also set a hard deadline with Joe for getting him a first draft of the professional project I've been working on, on and off, for the last three or so years. The deadline is the end of the year, which is a little more ambitious than I'd entirely realized when I set it, but I'm going to do my best to get it done. I mean, the purpose of the first draft is to be full of holes and lacking in coherence, right? So I should be fine. :) The deadline puts the project right on the line between exciting and nerve-wracking, which is just what I need right now. And the sort of low-key accountability he provides is also just what I need. I'm likely to be kinda vague and coy about the project itself until I have more of it done -- I'm a little superstitious about talking too much about it until I have a more solid chunk of it worked out.

Okay, I'm off to make soup. Garlic and greens, with potatoes and white beans. First soup of the season, with bread and tea and family.
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I have visited DW the last few Mondays, but haven't felt as if I had anything to say. I've been a little low, and getting lower, for the last couple weeks. It finally coalesced into something I could get a grip on yesterday.

I have no idea what I want to do with the rest of my working life. I have a history of stumbling upon work situations that are very meaningful, very intense, with very little financial benefit. Situations that take a couple years to recover from. I don't want to do that again. I've also had several jobs that were steady and dull, with zero flexibility and moderate financial benefit. I don't really want to do that again, at least not right now. I want flexibility for at least another couple years, until Sarah's driving and the house projects are all under control. The axes of meaning, flexibility, intensity/stress, and income, and the tradeoffs between them... It feels impossible to discern what I want or need right now.

I'm also deeply, deeply lonely. For years I've had my weeks and months designed in such a way that I see people on a regular basis, just by going about my life. I don't mean making plans with friends, although I do want to do more of that, and I'll start taking action on that next week. I mean two hours chatting with good friends while our kids are at DIY, and four hours chatting with friendly acquaintances while our kids are hanging out after the Friday readings, and a couple hours catching up with whomever shows up for tea at the library that week, and seeing people at the monthly RPG, and at the other monthly activities...

And now they're all done. Because the kids are in college, or chose other activities, or because things imploded for interpersonal reasons.

I've been so exhausted with all the start of the school year busy-ness and the changes to my own sleep schedule that it's taken me this long to really notice the fact that I can now easily go a month at a time without spending time with anyone outside my household. And again, I know I can make plans with friends, but my baseline for weeks when I don't have time or energy to make plans went from 3 days of human contact to none. No wonder I've been out of sorts.

I'm not looking for advice here, just getting it down in one place, in some sort of coherent narrative, aiming to find my own clarity.

Maybe I need to stop grasping after my old routines and old community, and relax into the possibilities of new routines and new communities. Maybe once the semester settles in place I can reach out to old friends who might also be missing our old rhythms and work on figuring out new rhythms together. Maybe this level of intense discomfort with my current situation is necessary to kick my ass into gear, to start doing new things. I don't know, man. Why does growth have to be so uncomfortable?
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Sarah starts college this week, I restart my regular routines (turned upside down first by summer and then by regularly picking Joe up from the train at 10 or 11 at night), I move on to the next steps in the house project, I hope that Joe's work situation will allow for us all to get back to our cozy home rituals and traditions, I'm excited to be doing some work in the garden.


I had my summer date with A, this weekend, after needing to postpone and reschedule for a variety of sad reasons. That was really nice. I'm restarting my weekly phone call with my sister. We hope to be seeing Kerry next weekend, after playing scheduling tag all summer.


I've been thinking a lot about what parents owe their adult or almost children, and what adult children owe their aging parents, and how that might change depending on circumstances. (this is unrelated to pretty much everything above, it's just been on my mind) I'm also continuing to think a whole lot about who I am at 47 and where I want to go next and what I want out of this time of transition.
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This week I read and then watched a performance of Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Oh my god I hated it. I hate the play, I hate Beckett for writing it, I hate anyone who ever made some poor hapless high school student read it.

I've hated plenty of books before -- usually because they were so grim or gory that they stuck with me and affected my mood or mental health in really unpleasant ways. This wasn't like that. This was... There was no point to the play. It wasn't pleasant, it wasn't thought provoking, it didn't teach me anything, it didn't inspire me, it didn't pose any interesting questions, it didn't take me on a journey, it didn't present me with a POV I'd never considered before. It was just unpleasant, and long, and pointless, and then it was over and I was left feeling mildly queasy. (the queasiness was probably because the performance I watched made it seem like half their conversation involved one of them yelling at the other in a sort of chiding, mocking way, which is a speaking style that brings up old crap for me, but even without the yelling I would have hated it)

I've been thinking, since finishing it, about what other purpose of theater or literature there could be, besides the ones I mention above. To transform the reader or viewer in some way, perhaps. Sarah mentioned catharsis as another possible purpose. It didn't succeed at either of those purposes, either.

In other news, Sarah is a registered college student (woohoo!), we have a complete set of working faucets again, and I'm continuing to prep for my tutoring gig that starts this week.
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Well, as 4/5 of the people I know on here are already aware, our home life has been a little chaotic since the middle of last week -- Joe's got work stuff going on that has required every waking hour. But that's his story to tell, or not. I miss him, of course, but I'm also reminded just to what extent my sense of time and day depends on his comings and goings.

On the home front, this week is the culmination of a couple projects I've been working toward for a long time. Plumbing repairs that required a bunch of preparation and which had been way overdue, and Sarah getting registered for college. Also my last dental visit in a too-long series of visits.

Once I'm through this week, a whole vista will open up. I can't even quite imagine what next week will look like.
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I finished putting together Sarah's high school transcript this afternoon. It was satisfying looking back over the last few years, and gathering all the information together. Next week they get the two boosters they need for college, and they'll spend some time preparing for the meeting with the admissions counselor, and by the end of the week (knock wood) they should be registered for their first college class.

Next week I also have my first tutoring gig since... maybe two years ago? I'm tutoring a past student of mine in writing their college application essay. Like most of my tutoring gigs, it came out of the blue. I'm considering hanging out my shingle officially, once Sarah's settled into their new semester. I also think about doing something like virtual personal assistant gigs. I enjoy administrative work and taking capture lists and turning them into bite sized tasks, and I *really* enjoy the idea of a job that I never have to think about when I'm not on the clock.

We really need me to start bringing in money soon -- this has been a very expensive year in terms of teeth and trees and taxes. But we're also relying on my flexible schedule for things like running errands, dealing with repair people, driving Sarah places (yes, they will be learning to drive this year, but that will take time, and we will still only be a one car household)... Something part-time a/o work from home would be a good compromise.

August

Aug. 5th, 2019 05:40 pm
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It's been a busy, satisfying week. A long dental appointment, a short visit to the North Country to see my parents, my sister, and to see a performance of King Lear in the park in Saratoga. This is the second or third year that the Saratoga performers happened to put on the same play that kiddo's Shakespeare group put on, and we're all enjoying the tradition of taking a trip up to see how the other group's performance compares.

And then over the weekend I hosted a tea for several friends who've been part of my parenting and homeschooling communities over the last 18 years, to help me mark the transition between the homeschooling-mom phase and whatever this next stage brings. My heart is still overflowing from that gathering. It was everything I wanted it to be -- an afternoon of reflecting and reminiscing together.

Sunday was a trip down to the director's house so the kids could strike the set for the last time. That was a quietly social afternoon, sitting in the shade and under the ceiling fan, chatting with a few other parents while the kids went wild on the set and then went out for pizza and ice cream.

It was a good week but jeez am I exhausted from all that emotion and from all the work that went into planning and executing.
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I've been reading a lot of neuroscience and cognitive psych, as I continue going through various professional development materials to see what still interests me and to finish reading the things I didn't have time to finish while I was actually teaching. I'm spending way too much time thinking about how I'm thinking and how likely it is that I'm just making up a story for myself about why I'm doing what I'm doing. Brains are weird.

I've also been listening to a lot of traditional slavic music -- Polish, Slovenian, Tatar, Latvian -- after a recent conversation about the sort of watered down or mainstream-ified traditional music that often makes it to US cultural festivals, until even Polish people don't realize there's anything but polkas to listen to.

My TCM healer is nudging me to do a variety of practices to keep my energy flowing, to keep from stagnating, so I've been working on that -- adding some more movement to my day, singing, creating, going on small adventures, eating more bitter foods, stepping gently outside my comfort zone.

Other than that, honestly, I'm just trudging along getting things done.
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I'm restless, these days. I've wrapped up so much of my old stuff -- healing and recovering from having pushed myself past the breaking point, both physically and emotionally; helping Sarah wrap up their homeschool journey; my own weekly, monthly, and annual rhythms that were tied to Sarah's homeschooling activities and our homeschool community; the high priority household tasks that were way overdue and needed to be powered through... But I'm not quite ready to move forward into new stuff.

Some of it's just timing. This is a weird week because of Dexcon; I have a few medical followups I still have to deal with before I can place my attention fully on what's ahead of me; there are still a few household projects that resisting easy execution; there are family plans that need to slot into place for the summer before I can make any additional plans of my own.

Some of it is physical/energetic/psychological. I still have trouble focusing on one thing at a time, especially when that one thing is reading. That could be a lingering symptom of the anxiety (which is otherwise mostly under control), could be genetic (my dad has trouble sitting still or doing just one thing at a time), could be a leftover habit from when the anxiety was worse, or one of those habits that are just part of our multitasking society. I'm also having trouble choosing which things to move forward with -- or which ones to move forward with *first*. Community, activism, self-expression, adventure, professional development... There's so much to choose from, and each one has its draws, and its drawbacks.

I also feel strongly that I don't want to give this time short shrift. I want to really experience this divine discontent before stepping out onto any particular path.

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In more prosaic news: the wedding we attended this weekend was lovely --so perfectly in character for the couple -- and it was so good to see so many friends. I loved finally having a chance to wear my floral dress. Bits of it were awkward -- it's rare for me to just write someone off, so I was pretty stressed at the prospect of having to tell an old friend to sod off, but I was able to avoid it entirely. And for the most part it was just a really pleasant day.

Yesterday we had the tree guys here to trim the tree that's been having problems and I got the ultrasound I've been waiting for (ruling stuff out --no news yet, but I'm not especially concerned).

Today and tomorrow I have about a dozen time sensitive tasks to complete, and then we're off for Dexcon.
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My grandparents would talk, sometimes, about the years when they would regularly visit with the Cerars -- my grandfather's cousin and his wife. They shared a love of gardening, singing, and going for drives, and they often shared cuttings with each other of their most successful plants. I still remember the Cerars' 50th anniversary party (I was probably in college at the time). We all joined hands in a big circle around them and sang "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" to them. For my grandparents' 50th, of course, my sister, my cousin, and I dressed up like the Andrews Sisters, sang a few songs from the War and then led all the guests through another dozen songs. Like every party of theirs, it was held in the backyard, under the grapevines.

The Cerars are on my mind today because I was in Queens for the afternoon, picking up some furniture and taking cuttings from a few of my grandma's rose bushes. I also took some soil from their yard (I'd been planning to use potting soil but didn't have any ready to take with me this morning). I might take some lily of the valley,rose a sharon, and mulberry next time.

I don't know if it's easier or harder to say goodbye to the house and yard in slow motion like this.
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In other news, Sarah had their homeschool graduation party this weekend. There are 7 kids from their drama group wrapping up their homeschool journey this year, so one of the moms hosted a huge, lovely gathering at her home. It was perfect -- the kids who wanted to, wore caps and gowns and fancy dresses, and the kids who didn't want to, didn't. Sarah wore their Monster tshirt and denim shorts. The director gave a short, sweet, perfect speech. When the sun went down, there were surprise fireworks thanks to the college nearby.

There is nothing I can say that hasn't been said by every parent who's been through this. I would swear Sarah was 3 years old last week. I am full to overflowing with love and pride for this child of ours.

Gearing up

Feb. 22nd, 2019 06:21 pm
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The lead up to the next six weeks feels oddly like the lead up to a new semester. Not so much as a student, but as a teacher and as the kid of teachers -- every year there would be this flurry of organization and wrapping up loose ends in order to make the start of the school year as smooth as possible. I don't think most of it ever made it all the way to my birthday, but whatever that year's new systems were, they definitely smoothed those first few weeks.

I did an organizational clean sweep thing, as part of the lead up, and one thing I got out of it was a list of the most urgent tasks -- fires I need to put out quickly in order to avoid things blowing up or going badly wrong. I got through 7 out of 10 of those today, which feels damn good. I also said No to a few things I don't really want/need to do. My weekends are still a little too packed, but it's just that time of year, I think.

I also did a journaling exercise. What seeds do I want to be planting right now? What current projects do I want to be tending more actively? And various other gardening metaphors about weeding and thinning and such.

That sort of thing usually works really well for me. Right now not so much. I guess I'm back to where I was last fall -- I already know what to do, I just need to collect my scattered energy and attention and get them back on task. And breathe through the perimenopausal antsiness. I've made the decisions, now I just need to practice sitting with the discomfort of seeing them through.
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Hmm. I've been thinking about how much fun I had with the reading challenge, and how easy it was to read for hours a day when I had a self-directed if arbitrary goal -- and comparing that to how easy it is to let myself get completely caught up in the drudgery of housework and adulting and homeschool-related-driving and let all my passions and joys and hobbies fall to the wayside when I don't have any deadlines or concrete, time-sensitive goals driving me.

I seem to recall there was a challenge that went around LJ, years ago, in which people set themselves NaNoWriMo style goals each month. I wonder if I want to do something like that.

Some of the things I enjoy doing a/o want to do more of:
walking (casual and walking tours)
kayaking and other boating
baking and cooking (especially getting back to sourdough and sauerkraut)
writing
painting
reading
going to museums
going to ecology centers for things like birdwatching
jewelry making and similar crafting -- oh, and crocheting
making music
listening to live music
attending lectures
gardening
going dancing

I've also finally recovered enough from my years at the school that I want to get involved in some sort of volunteering or community organizing again. The racial justice group just isn't going anywhere. The woman who started it doesn't seem to be familiar with or interested in the sort of steady effort required for community groups to get off the ground, and she hasn't even gotten around to the few lowkey commitments she did make (like restarting the FB group to build online community because it's hard to get homeschool parents to show up in person for things that aren't activities for their kids). If we weren't about to graduate from the homeschool community as of the end of this year, I'd offer to take the group over entirely but what it really needs is a couple parents of 7 or 8 year olds who are committed to the community for years to come.

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ETA: On the concrete goals -- I agree with the zen habits guy and others who emphasize the benefits of building habits rather than setting goals. But for the list above, only a handful lend themselves to habit. I don't want to paint every day, for example, but over the course of the year I'd like to have added a dozen or so details to the house -- Polish flowers in the hallway, mary poppins and a Chinese dragon above the houses on the mural, some twisted branches in among the poems on the wall by Sarah's room... I'll think a little about whether a goal is what I want, or a different sort of habit...
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I keep forgetting to come to DW. I'll think about where to plug it into my weekly routines, so that I'm at least consistently popping in once a week. In the meantime, I came here to post a little about the start of my year and found this draft from the end of December:
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Tonight we did our belated marking of the solstice. I thought about the things I hope to leave behind in the old year, and the things I hope to welcome in the new one. I spent some time just being present, appreciating our rituals, being aware of the darkness and the connection and the returning light. It went a long way to healing the things that are still hurting after Christmas.

I love this time between Christmas and New Year -- mostly quiet and cozy, a bit of reflection and a bit of lowkey festivity. I also love the impatience I feel -- looking forward to that first post-new-year weekday, to getting back into the swing of things, maybe with a couple refinements.

I have three books to go, to hit my goal. I took the challenge back up on a whim, after alternately avoiding it and forgetting about it for months. I'm so glad that I did -- it really has woken my inner reader back up, and it's so good to have a goal I'm working on that isn't about house repairs or budgeting or overdue dental and medical appointments.

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Back to 1/8/19: Speaking of overdue dental appointments, today I had the final root canal of the work that started over the summer. Next week I see my regular dentist to set up appointments for 4 or 5 crowns over the course of the year. I cannot overstate how glad I am to be done with the most involved work -- I couldn't think of much else for the last week.

I did complete my 2018 reading goal, . I'll be honest, for the last month of 2018 I was focused on reading the shortest books on my TBR list and that was perfect for the near-immediate gratification of getting to add one more book to my total -- and for reminding me of how much I love to read. But now with a whole year opened up in front of me, I'm enjoying the idea of stretching myself a little more.

The main other thing I'm doing right now is waiting for things to fall into place for the Spring -- mostly Sarah's activities, but a few of mine. I'm trying to enjoy the slow and cozy pace of these winter months, instead of just feeling impatient for the warmer, more active months.

Halloween

Oct. 31st, 2018 11:48 am
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It's Halloween, time to get serious about settling in for Winter.

My Winter's work:
* decluttering (J's room, my room, going through all the scrapbook stuff and getting them in books, my personal paperwork backlog)
* finding joy through creation (the murals in the hallway, making music, practicing harmonies, crochet, jewelry, writing)
* my professional development project
* self ed (I don't even care which bits I work on, I just want to start intentionally devoting time every day to learning, again)
* community (uu, quaker, kafg, pride center, non spaghetti dinners)
* health and wellbeing (work on self-nourishing)
* organize the documentary discussion group for Spring

But first:
* get the 5 way-overdue projects done
* get the household ready for winter -- house, clothes, car
* get everything in place for the Big House Project

Also, a bit of end-of-year reflection. I have made great strides this year. I dealt with shit I had been avoiding dealing with for years. There is still more progress to make, but I have cleared out so much old stuff, and been so brave. I'm very proud of the work I've done this year. I also built up a self-care practice that is the best, most sustainable one I've ever had.

What I want out of the year ahead: a more robust local community; a cozier home (kitchen, bathroom, back porch); a backyard we can really enjoy; a clearer vision of what shape I want my activism and community service to take next; a clearer vision of what I want to do with my next 20 working years; more opportunities to make music and spend time with friends; to eat lots of yummy, nourishing food.
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It's been a busy week -- a follow up mammogram and ultrasound (short version: everything's fine, but it was a little nervewracking while I was waiting to find that out), the car is having trouble starting but the mechanic can't find anything wrong with it, I keep having to cancel and reschedule my appointment to get my phone fixed and at the moment it's still busted...

I've been enjoying reading everybody's posts here, and have half a dozen comments I meant to come back and post this afternoon, but I spent it at the mechanic instead and now I'm too sleepy to make the words go. I hope to do that tomorrow before heading out for the afternoon's errands. In the meantime, a silly old Friday Five:

1) Who made you feel good this week, and how?
Sarah read me a comic that had made them think of me -- it felt good to feel seen, and to feel like I'm passing along my most dearly held values and the lessons I've learned. Joe has been especially sweet lately and there were a couple little moments that made me feel especially good, but nothing I can really explain -- just sweet moments of connection. K (a friend, and the mom of several former students of mine) said a bunch of really nice things about what a good teacher I am, and that she thinks the parents at her kids' current school would love me.

2) What did you do this week that moved you closer to reaching your goals?
My priorities are: health and wellbeing; home; community; self-ed; service and activism; creation. My current concrete goals are my professional project and getting the house stuff under control (which includes both the physical home and the household's wellbeing). For the concrete goals: this week I got in a couple medical appointments, got the car to the mechanic, dealt with our lawnguy, supported Sarah in a couple homeschool and personal wellbeing situations, did some research and watched some lectures that were part of my professional development... I think that's everything. For the priorities, this week I: sent out a link for the racial justice group, got together with another mom of a gender nonconforming kid, did a bunch of self-ed, reached out to several family members, saw the tea group, exercised, meditated, took my meds, took my vitamins... I didn't make time for any of my creative projects, and didn't catch up on my correspondence. I'd like to make time for both of those next week.

3) What did you most enjoy doing this week?
Cuddling with Sarah this morning; listening to the audiobook with Joe (technically last week, but within the last 7 days); playing board games with them; watching my mindfulness videos.

4) What did you learn this week?
I learned about why humans menstruate, some of the most recent neuroscience around mindfulness, militancy in LGBT history, some depressing stats about how hard it is to get young people to vote, how B12 supplementation works, that Alton Brown recently got married, that Megyn Kelly was (is?) on the Today show, that Samuel L Jackson used to be a social worker and was involved in the Black Power movement in the 70s, about the use of Ladino in Bosnia, about US diplomacy during the war of 1812, about -ir verbs in Spanish. I'm sure there was other stuff, but that's apparently what stuck with me.

5) What’s the funniest thing that happened to you this week?
Honestly, nothing funny happened to me this week. Joe and Sarah make me laugh often, but that's just, you know, conversation. We laughed so hard at the latest episode of The Good Place that we made ourselves sick, and then immediately watched it again.
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