Here I am again. Another mixed week with a restorative weekend. I have fallen off the exercise bandwagon again the last two weeks, but hauled my slow unfit butt up to the shoulder of Mt. Monadnock yesterday in the scorching heat for glorious views.

Next time, we’ll make sure to bring bug spray, eat a substantial breakfast beforehand, and take the sign saying to bring at least two liters of water per person seriously. Both Elanor and Dorian felt faint during a steep scrambly section, which was scary. Kira bounding on ahead was differently scary. We definitely have our work cut out for us ahead of the Presidential Traverse in August.  On the upside, Dorian is feeling less arthritic today than we had feared, which is a good sign for him being able to handle a multi-day hike. And everyone mostly enjoyed the scrambles and is keen to keep hiking. And we got down in time to enjoy a lovely late afternoon and evening with friends, including a cold and refreshing swim. And we got to spend time together as a family, which seems to be a rare event these days!

Speaking of rebounding quickly, I need to get better at getting back on track after setbacks. I was doing well tracking my exercise, walking and meditating for a while with my bullet journal, but then something derailed me and before I knew it over a week had gone by. I know setbacks are inevitable. At least they give me plenty of opportunity to practice getting back on track. It would be good for me to look at them that way instead of getting discouraged.

And maybe getting better at rebounding quickly from small things will help when life throws some major whammies. This past month seems pretty absurd for the number of scary medical things that have happened to friends of ours, and also for the number of people I know making major life changes after many years. Grit, resilience, confidence and hope seem to be the order of the day. I wish those good things for all of us, along with a healthy dose of luck and/or grace, depending on your worldview!

I had wanted to show off my bullet journal, and how wonderful it is at keeping me on track. My couple of weeks of initial stick-to-itiveness have faltered, but I do still like it and do still find it helpful, even if it is not a silver bullet (pun intentend)! The basic system of creating an index and daily and monthly logs is good. The thing that makes me happy is having a habit tracker where I get to color things in each time I do one of the things I’m tracking. I find that surprisingly motivating (but only if I look at it regularly, which I avoid when I’m discouraged). I have things I try to do once or twice a week, along with daily habits.

I have also color coded tasks/events/habits by category, and I came up with my categories based on resolutions for the year.  My categories being: creative outlets (music + writing), adventure, exercise, friends+family, nature/wellbeing, saving the world, self-improvement, home improvement, and community.  I have one page that has all the big things I want to focus on this year, by category, with “H” for things that are habits to track.  

We’ll see how it goes, but I like how it keeps things in perspective. I can see how I’m doing towards my goals in various dimensions of life, and keep them in mind when setting goals for each month and day. It also helps me appreciate the things I have done and am doing, instead of only seeing all the things I haven’t gotten to yet. This is particularly helpful when I am choosing to spend more time in one area that matters to me (gardening right now) and so am necessarily lagging in others. The journal is intentionally focused on personal and home goals, rather than work. We’ll see how it goes.

Until later this week! (Yes, this is my latest post yet. I blame the holiday weekend.)

Another late post, but much happier than last week. This week I blame my tardiness on getting sucked into binge watching season 8 of Game of Thrones (after having given up on the series pretty early on).  I also have an incentive to keep this brief since the final episode airs in half an hour…

Thank you so much to all of you who reached out to support me last week. I feel so honored and so loved! And you gave me plenty to ponder. The Mother’s Day Polly’s Pancakes and White Mountain hike really turned things around. I think mountain hiking really is this super-charged combo for me – nature, exercise, accomplishment, views, family, friends. Here we are on top of Mt Pemigewasset (our traditional first hike of the season). Note the deciduous trees don’t even have their leaves yet.

And Polly’s is always terrific. It was even more terrific than usual because they now offer maple whipped cream, in addition to all their usual maple-y goodness. And also because my friend Rebecca and her family, and Dorian’s mom Charlotte were there.

Not only did my brain shift from tiresome ruminating to “isn’t the world vast and beautiful” mode, but the songs even started flowing again. My chorus sings a gospel version of “How Can I Keep from Singing” that I love and had stuck in my head most of the way down the mountain (along with Flanders and Swann’s “mud” song when appropriate).  And then on Monday when I sat to try composing the piano accompaniment to the song I have been stuck on for weeks, notes came readily.  The well is no longer dry.

My life flows on in endless song.  How can I keep from singing?
No storm can shake my inmost calm.  How can I keep from singing?

I held up more or less fine during the week, and then had my Reading Community Singers 100^th Anniversary Celebration concert last night, for an extra happiness boost. We had huge and enthusiastic audience, and the concert was so much fun to sing. Thank you to everyone who took part in it!

I also made significant progress on yard improvement project #2 this weekend, setting up a raised bed planter so that Charlotte can garden in our yard without having to lean over so much.

I’m sure there will be more ups and downs ahead. I want to watch the Brene Brown Netflix special on courage that two of you recommended, and try to follow Reshma Saujani (the founder of Girls Who Code)’s bravery advice from her book “Brave, Not Perfect” (a lot of which hits home, though good heavens, her version of the perfect I should stop trying to be is way more perfect than mine). I am definitely a work in progress.

Until next week!

I’m going to keep this post short. I hit an emotional wall the last couple of days for stupid reasons, but want to keep up my blogging streak! I’m suffering from the triad of not knowing how to fix continued flailing at work, perfectionistic self-loathing, and insomnia-induced exhaustion. But it doesn’t seem very interesting for you to listen to me flagellate myself for being a complete failure as a human being, when even part of me realizes that is perhaps an unnecessarily extreme conclusion. So instead I’ll try to focus on recent things that I am grateful for, and some quotes that help me somewhat when I’m a mess.

Isn’t this beautiful? Kira and I went for a walk yesterday, our “usual circuit” of about 15 minutes around our neighborhood (including a steep hill for her to ride down on her scooter, and a less steep hill for me to pull her back up). It involves one section where we go past a stream / drainage ditch that passes under the road. Someone had cleared out the thicket of razor sharp thorny bushes next to the stream, revealing a short path next to the stream. We followed it until it petered out into swamp, saw this view, and watched this deer.

I have been thinking for years that it would be great to clear that trail (after tearing clothes on the thorny bushes) but never acted on it. The kids and I kayaked on that stream once when the water was high and got mired in thigh-deep muck (but it was worth it!). It was such a surprise and a delight to find this clear, and to have this spot so close to home and filled with bird song.

I am also grateful for the daffodils still blooming in our front garden. I think the cool, damp spring we have been having has kept them blooming for longer than usual, and they make me happy every time I see them. I took a bunch of photos of them to put in this blog, but I think my favorite is one of the only two that Kira took. I am grateful for the daffodils, and grateful that Kira wanted to stop and admire them! I am glad that my children love noticing and delighting in natural beauty even in ordinary places (and even when my garden desperately needs weeding – maple saplings everywhere).

My third gratitude is that we are celebrating Mother’s Day tomorrow with a trip to Polly’s Pancake Parlor and a hike up Mt. Pemigewasset in the White Mountains with my friend Rebecca and her family, and my mother-in-law Charlotte. It has been our tradition for several years running, and I really need it right now! I’m glad the weather looks good, everyone is available, and that the Reading Symphony Orchestra concert we want to attend doesn’t conflict with it after all. Hiking is perfect for me. It combines nature time, exercise, and time with friends all in one! Plus the most delicious pancakes ever with plenty of maple product.

Also, I am liking my bullet journal so far, which is what I had originally planned to blog about this week, but don’t really want to right now. And I am happy to have learned that the “How the Internet Works” kids’ workshop that I developed a few years ago has taken root in our Costa Rica office, so much so that they built a dedicated permanent space for it (amongst other uses). They also have a truck they take out to rural villages to bring outreach activities to kids who otherwise wouldn’t have access. How cool is that?!

Now some quotes. I guess another gratitude of mine is my “Poetry Pharmacy” book, which has poem prescriptions for various afflictions. It brought me this segment of a poem “My Brilliant Image” by Hafiz, a much revered ancient Persian poet:

I wish I could show you,
When you are lonely or in darkness,
The Astonishing Light
Of your own Being!

It captures in a much more succinct but less colorful way the sentiments expressed in this passage by Anne Lamott, an also-revered modern day American both-wise-and-messed-up person:

You are not your bank account, or your ambitiousness. You’re not the cold clay lump with a big belly you leave behind when you die. You’re not your collection of walking personality disorders. You are spirit, you are love…

Anne Lamott, “Plan B”

I need the reminder right now that I am more than my personality disorders. That within all the mess is a being of love and light, and that really, the latter is who all of us are truly if only we had eyes to see it.

One bonus gratitude. I just got back from visiting our local bookshop, and they had a whole window display on nature and trees, and I bought a very-me-looking book, “The Song of Trees”. They also had a book on Icelandic horseback riding and Polynesian sea voyages (and hosted a talk by the author). And they carry Dorian’s books. I’m so grateful to have them in our town.

Until next week!

I’m back with a cup of tea, a sofa, and a view of happy damp spring trees. I had a hard time writing on Friday again this week. Partly is was because Kira was off school and we were busy finding donations for her Saturday school trip fundraiser yard sale. But I think mostly it was because I was feeling lame and didn’t want to write about not having actually accomplished anything much, so wanted to quick get some things done first (like set up my bullet journal). This blog is intended to keep me accountable for my various resolutions for the year – exercise, nature time, composing music – so I should fess up rather than skip writing in order to avoid looking bad. That said, I was indeed motivated to do stuff so I could write about it today! Work stress has also been bleeding over into my non-work life, so I have been feeling pretty blah.  And my back has been a bit creaky and not up for heavy exercise, likely itself a result of my falling off the exercise bandwagon.

I battled the doldrums this morning by going for a moss and ferny walk in Mattera woods and then doing a very silly BollyX exercise video. It helped a lot. The woods were cool and damp, and the moss and lichen were very happy. There were fiddleheaded ferns everywhere.

I did a Headspace “joy” walking meditation the other week and really liked it. They have you go out for a walk and to notice something around you that brings you joy (a robin, that time). The ferns and happy moss were my gloom vanquishers today, as were the singing birds and massive pine trees. The BollyX was great, too, since it wasn’t too strenuous but got my exercise endorphins going. Also, it let me tell you that I exercised and went for a nature walk!

The week wasn’t really as bad resolution-wise as I had been thinking it was. I did my spin class on Monday, walked from my office from North Station one day (and saw baby geese!), and I even spent some time on music (not much, but some – I have been feeling pretty discouraged in that department after getting “meh” feedback). And we spent lovely time with friends we haven’t seen in far too long.

I did set up my bullet journal on Friday (instead of writing my blog on time, alas). It’s a bit early to say whether it will indeed transform my life into one of organization, productivity and focus. I like it so far. I was going to write about how it works and how I customized it today, but my bullet journal is telling me that I’m behind so I’ll save that for next post. I’ll just let you know that doodles and colored pens are involved, which make me happy.

Until Friday (which at this point is not next week)!

Okay, so my “let’s get serious again about a post-on-Fridays routine” didn’t work. I did think about it a lot yesterday. I just never quite got there. There was a lot of that this week. I thought about exercising but only got to one tread class. I thought about getting back to working on my music (it has been so long!) but didn’t quite. I thought about getting back into nature, and did manage to walk along the Charles River to work one day (open water galore!), and go for one walk around my neighborhood. That was nice, but I seriously need some time in the woods, especially with all the spring birds and spring-green trees. (That said, yesterday I did donate about eight bags of clothes to a local charity, carry groceries for a lady at the food pantry, and make a yummy ham and bean soup with Easter leftovers, so I haven’t been entirely useless. The bags had been in our garage ready to donate for years, so don’t be too impressed.)

My brain has been leaping around all over the place, and I have been feeling scattered. I’ve been waking up at 3-5 a.m.-ish and having trouble falling back asleep, which is probably a big part of it. Of course that itself may be a result of me not exercising or getting meditative nature hermit time, as well as a cause. My executive function skills are not strong in the first place, but now they seem non-existent. One upside of the insomnia is that I found time to read the book for the family book club Kira and I just joined (“Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus” – a great book!), and the time to start on this post. (It is currently 6:34 a.m.) Also, the places my brain has been bouncing through are pretty interesting (to me!), and not entirely off-topic. Here is a smattering.

Save the world! I was thinking about Brooks’ advice to commit to tackling a problem, and my persistent “I want to do something about global warming but have no idea what to do” conundrum. And about envying Rebecca because she has useful expertise to share with people outside of where she works. Somehow this led me to stumble upon something awesome – Microsoft’s AI for Earth initiative. They are investing heavily in applying AI to address environmental problems around climate, biodiversity, agriculture and water. Microsoft Research has been studying these problems for years, but now the company has put up $50 million to partner with non-profits to actually do something about it. One example is working on a tree map of the US at 10 meter resolution, using satellite data to count the number of trees of each species and their size and health, in order to inform forest and habitat management policy. Another is sensor networks to monitor for poaching activity in endangered animal preserves. Another is how to help farmers better optimize their crop yields with minimal waste of resources like water and fertilizer. How cool is that? They give grants to non-profits that are doing important work, and then work with them to help them do what they do faster, cheaper, and at massive scale. Sigh. If I had spent the last ten years becoming an expert in machine learning and ecology I would be all over it. It seems an impossible leap now. Ah well. I did discover that my former boss from years ago is now at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, England (after a long MIT PhD stint in between).

Another fantasy of mine is helping to combat climate change and also feed people by reducing food waste, starting here in Reading. There was a really interesting CNN Project Drawdown Quiz on Earth Day, showing how much various changes would reduce carbon emissions. The 3rd best thing (after managing refrigeration chemicals and installing wind turbines) was reducing food waste. A third of all food raised or grown never gets consumed. It happens all along the supply chain as well as in our homes. What if I could help get food that is good but going to be discarded for superficial reasons by farms or supermarkets (e.g. ugly fruit or close to expiration date) into the hands of local food pantries? There are also towns doing anaerobic composting of food waste to generate energy, which seems intriguing. It makes me feel rather virtuous about emptying the not-yet-dodgy contents of my refrigerator into my ham soup (and guilty about throwing away most of a too-long-forgotten bag of clementines). It turns out my mother-in-law was right all along about wasting food! Luckily, my daughter Elanor’s conversion to vegetarianism means that we are all eating a lot less meat that we used to. Eating more plants and less meat was ranked #4, just ahead of restoring our tropical rainforests.

That also got me thinking that I should volunteer at our local food pantry, which is only a couple of blocks from my house and distributes food on Fridays (my day off). I’ve been thinking about it for years but never felt I had enough time. Maybe I should do it anyway, especially since I apparently am not actually composing music or blogging on Fridays and it is something concrete and helpful I can do in my community. The clothing donation collection was at the same church, which is how I ran into the lady who needed help carrying her Food Pantry groceries. There were a lot of senior citizens there. I wonder what happens to those who can’t drive and don’t have help?

That also got me thinking about how it would be great if seniors and pre-schoolers could somehow share community space in our town, and also how great it would be if preschools could rent place in our local churches. Our Senior Center needs renovation in our town, and we are also strapped for space for providing pre-K education, and it would be great for kids and seniors to befriend and help each other. Our local churches have lots of great space that is likely underutilized during the week and they could use rental money. This is in the “something I’ll likely never follow up on” category. I don’t know if it is even legal for the public school system to rent space from churches. Maybe I should send an e-mail to our recently selected town board members. I wish they held office hours at Cafe Nero to sit and chat with people and hear their random ideas. That’s another random idea I should tell them about!

Getting organized, for real this time! Kira and I ended up watching a bunch of “How To ADHD” videos this week (in addition to our usual Xena Warrior Princess + Ben & Jerry’s), and now I want to try a Bullet Journal. (Also, the woman who makes those videos is another great example of someone finding work uniquely suited to them that helps people. The videos are terrific for Kira and for me!) I feel like I keep adding things to my “things I want to do / habits I want to form” list without actually making consistent progress on any of them. This blog started with resolutions for nature time, exercise, music, writing, and maybe somehow finding some way to help stop global warming. I want to do all that and spend more time with friends, do a variety of home improvement projects, start a regular loving-kindness meditation practice with Kira (it makes you a happier, kinder, less anxious person AND boosts executive function!), get my act together at work, and bathe regularly. All of my previous get-my-act-together attempts have petered out (though look, I AM still writing, if a bit late), but if a Bullet Journal works for a hard core ADHD person, maybe it will work for me! And it’s new and shiny so of course I’m interested, for like two minutes. I also just ordered myself the grownups-oriented version of “Smart But Scattered”. It’s much more fun to read about ways to get organized than to actually do things. We’ll see how it goes. If it works I’ll try the original kids’ version with Kira.

Alright, well that’s enough bouncing around for one post. It is now 6:47 p.m. and I need to start making dinner. That said, we did manage to see Captain Marvel, go to a neighbor’s birthday party, and make plans with friends today. Nature and music tomorrow?

Oh dear.  I’m really slipping here! This is my tardiest blog post yet. I have the excuse that we spent the week in the D.C. area visiting my dad and Connie, some friends, and D.C. sights, and spent all of Friday driving home and then the weekend getting ready for and then celebrating Easter, but I also should make a more concerted effort to stick to my Friday schedule. It is a slippery slope.

I did no music composing, no cardio exercise (until today, unless you count walking around museums for hours, which I don’t), no walks in the woods pondering the meaning of life, but I enjoyed lots of long overdue bonding time with people I care about and soaked up oodles of springtime. Spring in greater D.C. is in a league of its own, and we timed it perfectly. The weather was glorious, trees everywhere were in bloom, the grass was vibrant green, and the birds were flying around and singing their hearts out. (To be fair, Boston decided it was finally springtime while we were away, and we returned to daffodils and forsythia blooms, which is a good start!). I spent as much time as I could sitting outside or on the porch absorbing it all. Winter is done, and the world has renewed itself once again. Alas with tornadoes and severe thunderstroms, but we missed those.

I read a David Brooks column in the New York Times while I was away, “Five Lies Our Culture Tells”. I’m not sure I agree with everything he says, but it was thought provoking, as were the comments. The gist was largely that happiness and fulfillment don’t come from racking up career accomplishments, or novel experiences, or from various endeavors around individual self-improvement (getting in shape, losing weight etc), from personal freedom from restraints and obligations, or from finding your own answers to life’s questions. He pretty much ticked off everything that I run around doing! He claims that rather it comes from relationships with other people, and from choosing to tie yourself down with some commitments that you stick with over time. It comes from instead of asking “what cool thing can I do next?”, asking “what is my responsibility here?” and responding to some problem or getting called outside of yourself by a deep love.  

In many ways, he seems to be making the exact opposite claim as Mary Oliver, who finds salvation in shrugging off the mantle of social obligations and taking refuge in nature, and who says “the most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time”. But in other ways perhaps they are not so far apart. Both value relationships and connection, it is just that Mary Oliver’s is connection with the natural world and the vastness larger than ourselves, rather than only with people. Her responsibility is to her creative calling, a calling grounded in a deep love.

For me, I think that self-improvement things like exercise do contribute to happiness in terms of making me less grouchy and more energetic. I love travel and novel experiences, because they make me feel alive and receptive and grateful and full of wonder in a way that is easily missed amidst the ruts of daily routine. I love sharing those experiences with people I love. I think vacations definitely make me happier. I think that financial stability reduces stress, but agree that accomplishments per se are only temporarily satisfying. That said, I think that meaningful work can be a great source of happiness for those lucky enough to have a vocation that is also their career. I think that the “responding to some problem” or “getting called outside of yourself by a deep love” Brooks refers to can be a career for some people, but isn’t necessarily so, and perhaps it is unfair to expect a career to be that. I dither about that.

I also think that commitments are good if you can prioritize and you honor a few that really matter to you. Especially for women, I think it is easy to overcommit, to feel responsible for everything, to feel guilty about saying no to requests and then to get burned out and resentful. This is Gretchen Rubin’s “Obliger Rebellion”. Or maybe I’m just extrapolating. But certainly my most important long term commitments are tremendous sources of happiness – commitments to Dorian, my kids, even things like singing with my community chorus for fourteen years.

And then comes the importance of relationships. I side with Mary Oliver and count connection with the natural world and the vastness beyond ourselves as central to who we are. But I also love my relationships with other people – with my friends and wonderful extended family in addition to Dorian, Elanor and Kira. I spend a lot of time and attention cherishing my hubby and kids, and need to do a better job of being a good friend / cousin / niece / sibling / daughter / daughter-in-law to all the other people I care about!

Luckily, my week was full of bonding time with friends and family. And novel experiences (Crokinole! The Smithsonian Natural History Museum!). Spending time with my Dad and Connie meant a lot to me. Reconnecting with old friends and acquaintances in the D.C. area reminded me how much I like them and how we should have done this sooner. And my friends-and-family-filled Easter was an abundance of riches – it reminded me how much I want to spend more one on one (or two on two) time with each of the people there so we can really connect. I am so blessed, and inspired to carve out more time with friends. Hopefully that will go better than my home improvement spurt (which has only resulted in a clean swing set so far). I’ll try.

More on Friday (I hope)!

I want to write a joyful post full of creative accomplishments and nature-y goodness, and I am indeed listening to the birds singing through the windows while I’m curled up on my couch with cat Whitby beside me, but it has been a pretty rough week. I get headaches from time to time, but I think they usually are caffeine-withdrawal induced and go away overnight. I got one Thursday at work that was a doozy, and it still hasn’t entirely gone away. Yesterday was pretty much a total loss and I just rested a lot. I’m not sure what triggered it, but I suspect it was some combination of work stress, lack of sleep, getting up at 5am to fit in an exercise class, and dehydration. Having a glass of barley wine at lunch certainly didn’t help. But I’ve never felt so wiped out by a headache and it’s really annoying! There is so much I feel I should be doing, some of I which I would normally want to be doing, but I am sapped of the will to do any of it.

Ah well, enough kvetching. I have a lot to look forward to this week, and at least we didn’t get hit by a bomb cyclone blizzard thunder snow like my friends back in Minnesota! We have another fancy black tie dinner tonight, I just bought a new dress that is lovely and fits (I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of my old bridesmaid dresses), and we are heading down to Virginia to visit Dad and Connie and some of our D.C. area friends for school vacation week. I am so looking forward to seeing them. I am keenly aware of how precious and unreliable time and good health are, and the need to make the most of the opportunities we have while we have them.

I do have one more thing I want to share on last week’s topic of people I care about doing amazing things that suit them. My cousin Rachel is one of my favorite people, and is my complete opposite in many ways. She teaches drama in London, and has this enviable knack of connecting with people easily and spreading joy. She is outgoing, athletic, adventurous, tons of fun, and deeply kind. My kids adore her (as do I!). She runs her own “Scallywags” kids’ party business, and has a penchant for doing handstands in all kinds of improbable and scenic places.

Rachel just returned from a few weeks at a Syrian refugee camp in Greece, where she was a performer with “The Flying Seagulls Project”. It’s a non-profit troupe of clowns, magicians, circus performers and musicians taking smiles to those in need. They work with marginalized and traumatized children to engage them through play, make them laugh, and help free them to be kids again. They tout various scientific evidence on the importance of play and laughter for children’s development and emotional health, and the organization has run all kinds of projects all over the world. It is hard to imagine a person better suited for this than my cousin Rachel, or a worthier outlet for her talents. Apparently it was a really powerful and uplifting experience. I’m so proud of her!

I do wish I could identify some talent of my own that I could direct towards some similarly meaningful outlet. But mostly right now I wish that I were less tired and my head didn’t hurt. Anyway, I should sign off now and try to make myself useful.

Until next week!

Another late start to writing my Friday blog post, given it is already mid-afternoon on Saturday. I’ve been hesitant to sit and write because I don’t have anything exciting to say, but hopefully I won’t waste your time completely. It is a beautiful, warm sunny spring day. The kind of day that makes me keen to kick off all kinds of yard and home improvement projects that will likely never actually get done.

But right now I’ll imagine I’ve snapped my fingers and I am sitting on a super comfy outdoor sofa underneath an awning that keeps tree and bird detritus off our deck, rather than just sitting on the bare deck with my back against the house. All the sticks have been picked up from our beautifully landscaped yard that is devoid of rotting old wooden beams and overgrown forsythia, and our minivan is parked in our widened driveway that has room to get into the car from the driver’s side without being precariously balanced on an eroding slope, and which has somewhere to put shoveled snow rather than having to hurl it several feet into the air. Peas are planted in our lovely raised bed vegetable garden that does NOT have maple roots invading from below and neighborhood cats invading from above. Our swing set has been cleaned so the three-year old next door can enjoy it without getting filthy. Kira’s room is repainted and devoid of the mural from her toddler days (and is NOT strewn with clothes, books and toys everywhere). Elanor’s room is stripped of its dust-allergy-inducing carpet, and I have sorted through all my childhood albums and papers in boxes in my room. Our basement is cleared of many years’ accumulation of toys and is an inviting space for kids to hang out with their friends.

There, that was nice to imagine. Too bad my Mary Poppins snapping didn’t work! Instead, I’ll sit here and enjoy the warmth of the sun and the sounds of the birds, try to ignore the background traffic noise, and write.

I do have some exciting news. Tonight my community chorus is celebrating its 100 year anniversary with a fancy black tie gala, so Dorian and I will be glamming it up. My hair is all defrizzed and everything, which is a rare event! (I just got it cut this morning.)

Even more exciting is that my friend Rebecca is in Tunisia for three weeks as a Fulbright specialist. She is there to help a local university develop its interdisciplinary project-based learning engineering curriculum. Or something like that. All I know is that she and her sister are being hosted by really nice people from the university, who are taking them to see all sorts of incredible ancient ruins (Tunis is where Carthage was before it got sacked by Rome) and to have lunch with families in super beautiful villages, and that Rebecca is busy doing important work that people there really care about. I am trying very hard not to be insanely jealous. Sure, they need to have a man with them when sight-seeing, and get stopped at police checkpoints because of terrorist cells in the area (Tunisia borders Libya and Algeria). But that makes building bridges even more important. Rebecca and her sister Nikki are also writing blogs about their experiences.

I think there are two parts that make me equally jealous. One is travelling abroad somewhere exciting and adventurous. I love exploring new places. The second is being useful to people. I’ve been really lucky to have business trips to Edinburgh and Copenhagen which I relished for those very reasons (not as adventurous as Tunisia, but works for me), as well as trips to California (which feels pretty exotic in February!). But a tighter fiscal belt at my company means that I won’t have anything similar anytime soon. (I’m also jealous of my childhood friend Megan who just had a business trip to Norway to talk to fisherman about sustainable aquaculture – how awesome is that?)

I know jealousy is bad, but maybe it has something to teach me. I guess in addition to enjoying long hikes, writing songs and poems, and hosting friends and family in her mountain refuge, I’d like future me to get to travel a lot in some capacity in which she can connect with people and be useful in some way. I don’t know what I have to offer, though. Maybe having some specialized skill or knowledge to contribute to others is the thing I covet most. I feel like I mostly wing it and muddle through life, and am not an expert in anything (besides the internal workings of my company’s software, which is only relevant to other people I work with). I’d like to find something. Oh, well.

What a depressing post! It seems to pretty much consist of me wishing things were different than they are now. But aspirations need to start somewhere. Maybe it is okay as long as it gets balanced with a healthy dose of gratitude and awareness of how blessed I am already. What is a healthy amount of ambition? When is constant striving and refusing to settle a good thing, and when is it blinders that just makes you and everyone around you miserable? Maybe it depends on whether I just sit here complaining or start actually doing something to work towards a goal. And maybe it depends on whether I take pride in each step taken or berate myself about not having achieved everything already. Prioritization is important. So is being able to set goals and ambition aside to savor the present, and the people I share it with.

So I’ll give myself a pat on the back for achieving some of my goals this week. I got back on track exercise-wise, and I wrote this post (only a day late!). Kira and I enjoyed a lovely walk in the town forest last weekend. I bought socks (the sock situation was pretty dire – where do they all go?). I shared my songs with scary people. Now I’ll finish getting all dressed up and head off to my gala with my incredibly patient and wonderful husband. And tomorrow perhaps I’ll clean a swing set.

More next week!

— Sunday update: The gala was lovely, the swing set is clean, and Kira won a gold medal in her karate grappling competition today. She was determined and scrappy and it was well fought. Yay, Kira!

Today seems to be a day for digging myself out of holes. It is warm and the birds are singing, and I am sitting on my deck trying to motivate myself to get started on all sorts of things.

I didn’t intend to be a slacker this week. There were always reasonable-seeming reasons why I couldn’t exercise on any particular day (kid logistics, conflicts that fell through at the last minute etc). And why I couldn’t do anything music related. I did finish a really good novel that sucked me in for a good chunk of the week (The Hod King).  I blame Dorian for that!  Yesterday was entirely consumed by reading up on the details of various computer networking protocols that I had heard about but didn’t fully understand (sadly, I think my conclusion is that none of them really do the thing I want yet). 

I guess both time black holes are indicative of my somewhat obsessive personality, which is sometimes a strength and often a liability. I was late picking up Elanor from school and Kira from karate because I was sucked in and lost track of time. And I failed to do most of the things I had intended to do this week.  Maybe it is acceptable when wrestling with angels to write a poem or a song. Not so much when reading a book. Oh well.

Part of what is motivating me to write today is that at least one of you said you wanted to find out what Elanor decided about school. (Another part is that I don’t want to break my twelve week writing streak!) Elanor visited both our local high school and Waring (again) this week, and decided that she wants to stay in Reading. Part of me is sad, but the rest of me knows that it was probably the right decision for Elanor. Especially since her biggest hesitation in turning down Waring was that she didn’t want to disappoint me or Dorian.

I think it is kind of comparable to my feelings about Elanor not being at all interested in horseback riding lessons or leasing a horse. If she were gung-ho, would I do everything in my power to make it happen? Yes. Would I want it if I were in her position? OMG yes. Is that relevant? No. Am I a little sad that she doesn’t want it? Yes. Does it make sense to do if Elanor isn’t interested? Absolutely not. (Also, do I realize that I’m super privileged to even have these options? Yes!) 

The visit to our local high school was really good. Elanor enjoyed shadowing a 9^thgrader and came away deciding to take all of the honors classes her teachers had recommended her for instead of limiting herself to two or three (which meant adding history and biology to her list). She also shuffled around her electives a bit so she can take foundations of art, which unlocks all sorts of other art classes for her in future. Her school counselor seems both warm and helpful. The kids and teachers were nice, and Elanor came out smiling. That counts for a lot.

It feels so odd to even be in the position where my little girl is making plans for high school. How can she be so grown up already? 

This week was also the twelve year anniversary of my mom’s death. The day doesn’t really hit me harder than any other day – I tend to miss her terribly at unpredictable times, with unpredictable triggers. My main feeling this week was that so much has happened in those twelve years that she has missed, and how much she would have loved being part of Elanor and Kira’s lives as they’ve grown up. There are countless times when I wish I could talk to her, to get her advice, support, love, humor, and kick in the butt. Mom was larger than life, one of kind, and mine. The hole she has left behind hasn’t become any smaller over the years. Ok, now I’m crying. I miss her so much. What would she tell me today? Probably not to take myself or life so seriously. She was always telling me that. And to sit with a cup of tea in the sunshine and listen to the birds. And to take a shower and brush my hair. Maybe I’ll go do that now.

Until next week!