thoughts from the deep recesses

This is the first Thursday all month that I've been able to be HOME on my day off... January 3rd I worked - coaching a leader up in Deer Park. January 10th I worked again, coaching a leader in Coeur D'Alene. Oh - and I totaled my car. January 17th I was home most of the day, but had a doctor's appointment and an errand to the grocery store... having to be at an appointment at a set time is the biggest day-off-killer... January 24th I was back in Coeur D'Alene, getting my possessions out of my totaled car and then spent the whole afternoon at the car dealership shopping for a new car. Today, January 31st, I am home. ALL DAY LONG. I'm not even putting on makeup, people. I have quite the to-do list today... considering how busy I've been and the fact that the past two Mondays (also days I can be home getting things done) my kids have been home. I never accomplish much when they're around, for some reason. Lots to try to catch up on. One of the thing...

The dust bunnies on my bedroom floor. I decided a few weeks ago to stop having the housekeeper come... in an effort to be more industrious myself and save money. However, she was apparently much better at finding and destroying the wayward fluffs than I am. For days I've been saying 'I must get the vacuum out later and suck those up' and then I never do. My furrowed brow. Lots of parenting conflicts over the past week. I'm tired of it all. The laundry baskets that seem to be forever in my living room - overflowing with clothes/towels/sheets/socks that need to be folded. I was so far behind last weekend that I actually let Asia fold. That's NEVER happened before. I'm pretty stinking anal about how things get folded. I just didn't care anymore. My scrapbook room. Currently I'm in transition with this space - I really haven't been using it regularly since I stopped working at Apropos almost 4 years ago. We've decided to turn it into a media room...

I woke up early this morning... I've slept hard all week - it's been a heckuva ten days... our accident on the 10th a major 'special event' at work that I was in charge of on the 12th - a 10 hour day 15 minutes of fame on the 15th when my newspaper article came out lots of phone calls and waiting on phone calls to finally hear on the 16th that the car was totaled one chiropractic adjustment and two massages transitioning from two meetings back-to-back on Saturdays to three, which yesterday we managed to pull off with our computer down and being short-staffed - I ended up working until 1:00 a shift that should have ended at 11:30. It's been a lot. My sweet Savannah, who came back from Africa with a forever-changed perspective on the world, keeps reminding me when I get impatient with the whole insurance process... "First-world problem, Mom..." And she is, of course, perfectly right. My aching and tired body still gets to crawl into bed ever...

Thursday night Asia, Ethan and I were on our way downtown to attend the big Rubber Chicken spirit competition/basketball game between Lewis & Clark and Ferris high schools... I had taken Savannah and her girlfriend down an hour before - they wanted to get good seats, but I wanted to wait until Asia got home so we could go together, so I just dropped the girls off. It was cold out, and there were just a few stray flakes of snow falling here and there. The roads were dry. When Asia got home, he mentioned that the roads were getting a little slick on his drive up the hill. Not unusual for Spokane... Spokane city crews do a pretty amazing job of keeping our roads de-iced and plowed. So when it snows here, generally, you just go where you need to go. It certainly doesn't stop us from getting where we have to go. We left for the game. We live on the South Hill - which means we have to go down to get downtown. Down we went... the roads had less than an inch of snow ...

There are days (nights) I simply cannot identify with this silly aging body. While I'm confident and sure of myself in ways I NEVER was in my 20's and 30's, wrestling with the reality of aging sometimes catches me off guard. Case in point: for the past three nights, while I've been safe and warm and snug in my own bed (which my kids have described as the most comfortable bed in the world) I have in those three nights slept a total of less than 10 hours. I'm definitely tired. But wide awake, if that makes any sense. The good thing is that I now have a maturity/wisdom/familiarity-with-sacrifice that makes three days of surviving on little to no sleep a no-brainer. If I'd had this little sleep in my 20's I wouldn't have been able to function. Now I just get up and do it. No whining. What's the point? The sleep will come eventually and until then, there's plenty to do. And then there are the random aches and pains. Shoulders that feel loo...

January first always feels like a package... waiting to be opened. A whole year of possibility. I have been known to make grand statements on January first... not resolutions exactly, but definitely goals. I respond well to goals, I've learned. The years I set them, I accomplish something significant. And the years I don't, I generally flail. So this year, I'm setting some. Flailing isn't particularly flattering to anyone, in my opinion. And it certainly isn't good for me. Here they are: Be active EVERY single day. For me in the past this has taken the form of a daily walk. I don't want to limit it to just a walk, so I will record whatever activity I participate in, aiming to make my body MOVE - preferably outside. If I don't do this, it's WAY too easy for me to become sedentary. Be productive EVERY day. This comes with a time limit... 60 minutes a day of accomplishing something specific in my home each day. Today it was taking down the ...