Ten Percent Better

The greatest accomplishment of this past month has been creating a schedule for school, and then sticking with it for four weeks. The kids look forward to school, they've been getting their chore chart check marks and Brooklyn took her nicely loaded debit card to Target last week to expand her Barbie collection (I found a cute filing tote while cleaning and we discovered that it's the perfect size for Barbie storage - and pink lined, to boot!) I've been told more than once, by both of them, that they love school. And the schedule has become sufficiently self sustaining that on the day I had a tension headache that laid me out I wasn't worried about what to do/what they were doing, because they were doing what they were supposed to be doing. It's wonderful.

A couple of months ago I mentioned the examen practice. I've continued doing that every week, and a couple of things I've really liked about it is how, with repetition, patterns become apparent, and also how those patterns are addressed with one small step: after examining the past week, what would I like to mitigate or embrace in the coming week? One week at a time, one change at a time, moving toward a better future.

I could look at all the things I didn't get done this past month. I could get bogged down in how bad my sleep hygiene was (it really was atrocious) or that one whole week where I fell down a rabbit hole with a game on my phone (it has since been deleted), or how little writing I did. Or I could focus on how one small change (creating a workable daily routine) made all our lives more than ten percent better.

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Reading and Writing

#attunedpracticetuesdays: where we share the rituals and routines that are aligned with our sense of peace and wellbeing A couple of months ago, while working on a commission project , I started a new practice. I was listening to audio books while working since the project required my eyes but not my full attention, and since it was fairly labor intensive, I took the weekends off (not something I would normally do). Lacking something to do with my hands, the first Saturday I decided to put my speedy reading to good use and read a novel in one sitting (my preferred method, anyway). Then I read another novel the next Saturday. And now it has becomes a weekly thing. The only rule is that it has to be fiction - I read enough non fiction that a novel a week isn't going to hurt anything (and it wouldn't anyway, reading is reading). Helping out with Paper Heart Books and attending a bring-your-own-book-club meeting last week helped restock my dwindling supply. I like to get hard cop

Festivals and Fairs

October is the Month of Fun Outings. The weather is generally pleasant, many things are less crowded than they are in summer because school has started back, and there are also an array of local events. We try to make the most of it, since I got used to not getting sick while we stayed in for a couple years so now we ride out the germiest months at home. But before that, we frolic. We'll miss our favorite fall festival due to scheduling conflict, but there will be a small one at my eldest's dance studio, and we're all going to the state fair this year. There are street fairs and at some point soon we'll go and each choose a pumpkin to stack on the front step five deep, and my littlest will name each family member while pointing at their pumpkin every time we go in or out the door. I've started leaving windows open at night, and sometimes it's been cool enough to have them open during the day, too. My desk candle has expanded to three candles on a cheese board b

3.3 - Forage

I recently looked up the rest of the Mary Oliver poem that ends in "tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" because that was the only part I had ever heard, and it turns out the rest of The Summer Day is about going for a walk and lying about in the grass. That's what she planned to do with her one wild and precious life. I feel like it gets misapplied a lot. As the weather grows cooler, I've been thinking about foraging, as a concept. I am a terrible gardener. Even as a child I loathed getting up early and tramping through the dewy grass to the dusty garden to water and pull weeds. As an adult, I stumbled onto the one plant that likes the climate of my front windows but claim no personal credit for their flourishing. If we ever move I may have to leave them here, to ensure their survival. There's also a pot of mint by my front step that survives on rain water or when one of the kids points out that it's a bit crunchy. Plants

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