Laughter

There is an old saying that goes something like "if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans." Another saying we had pinned on a wall growing up said "A collision at sea can ruin your entire day." This was my week.

I had made a great plan. It was to be a busy but productive week. And then Monday, I made a mistake. I did not see a car coming. I pulled out, the car hit mine, and we all got a ride in an ambulance. By the way, that was NOT on my bucket list. Everyone is okay. The other driver, myself, and my youngest had minor injuries. The passenger in the other vehicle had serious but not life-threatening injuries. 

I am disappointed in myself for making the mistake. I am kicking myself, not just because of the accident, but because everything has now gone sideways. My plans for this week, yes, but even things for next week and beyond. The car was totaled. It was not our car; we borrowed it from my in-laws. A friend is getting married next week and I was going to help with the wedding. Plans for the school year were going to be made. I have a ticket to pay. The ramifications of this one mistake are exponential. 

The car took the brunt of the impact and most of the damage. God provided me with a loving church family, one who has checked on me and my child for the past week or so, asking us how we were doing. He also protected us from this being worse, which He has reminded me through another local accident that involved a church bus and SUV. That accident, which I was not in, had far more injuries than mine. I should be grateful for the mercy shown, and I am. While I am upset with myself and the circumstances, I also recognize God's hand in this. 

This week has been much less eventful, fortunately. My bruises are healing and my soreness is lessening. I am slowly getting back into the swing of things. The heat has been miserable, with days in the 90s. It keeps me inside more, and I am trying to read and craft a bit more. How has your week been? Do you have big plans for Independence Day? It's just a wedding here! 

Halfway There...

We are almost halfway through the year. Scary, or relieved? A little of both, in my mind. It has been hot, and getting hotter, this summer, with 90+ degree days. I made a list of goals for this week, to hopefully keep on track.

The financials should be fairly easy, and done on Monday, since the board meeting is Monday evening. The books are also somewhat easy, since I have a list, and just need to find the lowest price on them. I am about halfway done with that as well. 

The homeschool schedule is a little tricky, as I have figured out some of what needs to be done, but I am still processing through it. The calendar sort of hinges on the school calendar, but I think I can manage it. 

The book goal looks lofty, but I have a secret - I am close to finishing a couple of the 4, and the girls have art camp, which means I will be in the library for about 4 hours every day this week. That is a lovely amount of reading time. I am still behind my goal of 52 books this year; finishing 4 will bring me to 15. If I can finish a fifth, I will only be 10 behind by the end of the week. 

How are you doing with your goals for the year? Are you behind or on track?

Reset

The musical is finally over, and the girls are already begging to do the next one. I told them we are taking the summer off, to reset and figure out our schedules. Fortunately, the next show with this company doesn't start until August. As much as I have wanted to stay home, God has other plans.

I have been trying to reset the house and our schedules. This season is busier than expected and busier than we want. Sometimes life is like that. We must move on, and move to a different beat. 

Goals have been changed and have not been kept up as well as one would hope. I am prioritizing my time and June is a focus on some routines: health and home. Walking more days than not, reading, and making time for personal wellness habits are all at the top of my list. I have had to shift my schedule and my expectations.

July will be school, and August has the next musical starting. I am the vocal director now, so I will be involved with all the shows, to my girls' delight. They both have physical therapy until about the same time that the musical starts, so we will trade one obligation for another. September may hold some new ventures, and then we are into the holiday season. 

One habit that I am focusing on is a little organizing/cleaning/decluttering each day. I have started being more protective of my time, which really helps. Also staying off my phone keeps my time free. Little by little I am moving from room to room and doing small tasks. I hope to see big improvement with a few months.

Food Budget

I have managed to trim our food budget by a couple of hundred dollars the past few months, and no, we haven't starved. No meals were missed, and no one pitched major fits about what was served. How did that happen? I took the conventional advice and found how to make it work for me. Let me explain...

.                                   Not my photo

Advice #1: shop your pantry. This seems to be a "duh" piece of advice, but here is how I applied it. I did look through my pantry and took stock of what was there. Rice, beans, cans of diced tomatoes, salmon, anything that was overflowing got noticed. I would like to say that I wrote it down, but I didn't. I also took stock of what wasn't overflowing but that we liked to keep on hand. Some of this I did write down. I did not take a long time to do this. I did most of it while I was busy making dinner. 

The next and biggest beneficiary of this was the freezer. I don't know about you, but our freezers always seem to be overflowing with food, but not what we want. Odd, since we bought it. So, one shelf at a time, I looked in the freezer and made a mental note about it. Maybe there was some soup or a package of meat I had forgotten. This became the basis of a meal for the week. 

I also went to old stand-bys: meals I know the family will always eat and we keep the basics on hand - breakfast, hot dogs, spaghetti. We have a longer list than that, but you get the idea. As I wrote down the list of "this needs to be used" from the freezer and things we have, I noticed I had between 4 and 6 meals, and I didn't need to buy anything, or very little. If you haven't done this already, make yourself a list of "go-to" meals. These are things that you can make for dinner when life explodes and you just don't have the energy or time to make a huge meal. Meals like cereal, spaghetti, breakfast, sandwiches, chicken nuggets, macaroni and cheese, are all viable options. Ramen counts too!

Advice #2: shop sales. Again, conventional wisdom here. But when I had a list of meals available at home, I checked the ads of local stores. Perhaps I had all the ingredients for a meal, but could use some fresh bread. Or I saw ham on sale and decided to use that with beans. When I found pork tenderloin on sale, I bought one to make Carolina Pork Barbeque. It was easy to add that into the menu plan. I used the weekly sales ad only to fill in meals that I couldn't from the pantry. I did not base the whole week on the sales, just one of two meals. 

Advice #3: shop with a list. My list for "added items" became very small. We have some staples that get bought every month, but sometimes I get overzealous with what I see and I buy without a plan so things get shoved in the freezer. Hence the problem mentioned in #1. I add items that I need to replace, like a can of carrots that I used because I only have 1 left. If I have several left, I don't add those, until I am down to just a couple. 

All this managed to keep our food expenses down. It doesn't always work, but it helps. Also, this does not always include extra things like sodas, birthdays, social events, etc. Sometimes I can manage to use what we have and make a special event special. Other times, it requires a little extra. 

While advice you find online or from other people may be helpful, it has to be applied. Not everyone can apply it in the same fashion, but it can be applied. I can hear someone ask: what if you don't have a pantry to shop from? That definitely can be a problem. If you have a tendency to not keep some items on hand, it means your grocery bill will be higher. This is where the " stocking up" advice comes in. Maybe you don't keep certain things at home, but you notice that the store has that pork tenderloin on sale. Buy two. Cut them, wrap them in plastic wrap and foil, label them, and freeze them. Now you have a good 4-6 meals stashed. Perhaps the store also has cans of soup on sale. Buy a flat (about 24 cans). Now you can just grab a loaf of bread and have soup and grilled cheese on nights when you get home late. 

Quarterly update

A quarter of the year is gone. Time to evaluate the goals for this year. 

Read 52 books. I have read 6 so far, so I have some catching up to do. I find two big culprits for not reading are the television and my phone. I never considered myself a big TV watcher, but I do watch while I craft. 

Recently I have been doing embroidery and cross stitch. These are hard to do while reading. I will not say impossible but definitely difficult. Audiobooks make it possible, but I have trouble with them as mentioned before. 

I have started reading before bed though. This has given my brain a good rest and I am making progress on a book. 

Declutter and organize each room twice. I made a dent in the living room, and I have struggled with energy for the girls' room. I have a plan now for it, provided that I actually put it into action. I would like to say that I can get it done by the end of April, but I doubt that is realistic. I may be able to catch up a bit over the summer, when things hopefully slow down.

Walk more days than not. After having three rounds of antibiotics to get rid of a sinus infection, pollen season started. That will cause more problems health wise, so I am postponing this one. To have a related health goal, I am trying to sleep more. I feel like some days all I do is sleep, eat, and basic chores. However, when you need to recover from a long illness or season of stress, you do what you need to do. The sleep helps me stay healthy, and I am optimistic that during the summer (when pollen season is over), I can start to walk again. 

When I made these goals, the year looked different. Sometimes what we get is not what we expect, and we have to adjust. I am adding more joy with little things and trying to think things through before starting on them, to avoid hiccups. I have also added some responsibilities that are short term, like the musical, and some that are long term. 

How are your goals for the year going? 

Little things add up

Ever wonder why we hesitate to do little things, even though we know it will help in the long run? I do. I know it would help if I would wipe down the bathroom daily, or dust weekly, and yet I don't do it. Sigh. Building those habits is tough for me. Maybe they are for you as well.

I have had my hands full so far this year. January was punctuated with sickness, and rehearsals started. Did I tell you that I am in The Sound of Music? Our local community theater group is performing it in April, and I am Mother Abbess. I am really excited. My youngest is also in it, as part of the ensemble. My middle child decided she wanted to help and she is part of the crew. 

Both of the girls have had surgery to correct their toe walking. It is an outpatient procedure, but takes six weeks in walking casts, then a couple of weeks in air casts. But once it's done, it should be done. We have physical therapy to do, but everything so far is working. The youngest had her surgery at the end of January and the middle child had hers this week. 

On to goals! Because of this first quarter being full of everything else, I honestly have not made much progress on my goals for the year. 

Read 52 books. I finished 4 so far. I have finished:

The Sherwood Ring, Elizabeth Marie Pope

Shadow of Sacrifice, Michael Webb

Jasper and the Riddle of Riley's Mine, Caroline Rose Starr

Rob Roy, Walter Scott

I finally finished Rob Roy! That was indeed a triumph. It moved really well in the last 30-40 pages, but it was a long, slow set up. It was a good story, but just took a while to really get going. 

This week, while my older daughter is convalescing at my in-laws' house and I am with her, I am attempting to finish a few other books. We will see how that goes. I finished a few craft projects, as I can focus better on those than a book at night. I have been in to embroidery and cross stitch recently. I finished the piece in the first picture, Just One More Chapter, and an Easter stitch-a-long in the picture below. 

I am not sure why Blogger keeps turning my photos. Sigh. 

Declutter and organize each room twice. I am really behind on this one. I have done a few things here and there, but the living room is mostly done. The second room to get attention is the girls' room. I have not spent as much time in there as I would have liked, but I have managed to get in front of the armoire cleared and the armoire holds only clothes they can wear. As it is March already, I should be on to the third room, my son's, but I have not finished the girls' room yet. I barely made a dent in it. His room is actually one of the better rooms, but I don't want to neglect it. This is where establishing habits is important and also where I fail.

Walk daily more often than not. This goal is also suffering. I managed to walk once for about 25 minutes on a random day. I had to take the car in to a shop for service, and the shop was really close to our house. I thought about calling a friend to pick me up, but realized that by the time whoever got to me, I could have walked home. So I did. It was a good walk, and took me longer than it should have but I wasn't trying to race. I had my earbuds with me, stopped and put them in, and then continued home. It was mostly uphill, so I had to take it slow. I still want to make progress on this one. Something that has helped my activity is rehearsals. We're walking and singing and being active for a couple of hours twice a week. That counts, right?

Still Looking Forward

January was a different kind of month. We tried to catch up on doctor appointments, dentist appointments, and basic life tasks. This was made harder by everyone being sick over the holidays. The flu turned bad, giving me a sinus infection that I still cannot shake, and my husband pneumonia. Just as we are clearing this hurdle, my oldest comes down with strep on his birthday. Then my youngest just had surgery. Life happens.

So far, here is the progress I have made on my goals:

Read 52 books. I have only finished 2 so far, but I am making progress on several at a time. I have finished:

The Sherwood Ring, Elizabeth Marie Pope

Shadow of Sacrifice, Michael Webb

I am close to being done with Rob Roy, but I find it hard to pick up sometimes. 

Declutter and organize each room twice. I decided to start with the living room, as it was the "easiest" room to do and I could use it as a staging area for donations during the week. I only got about halfway through what I wanted to, and will continue to finish a few things there before I tackle the next space, which is bedroom #1. Again, January was a different kind of month.

Walk daily more often than not. Being ill has really put a dent in this one so far, but the 15 pounds I lost over the holidays (thanks, Flu) has stayed off, even without walking. The weather also was loathe to cooperate, as it alternated between freezing temperatures and pouring rain. I did manage to walk once this past week, so I have not forgotten about it. Getting back into the swing of things takes some time.

We celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary last month, which was wonderful and low key. How was your January?