Week 38: Somebody Pinch Me!

This year, I set myself 22 little goals to pursue throughout the year. I call them the 22 in 22. Once a week (or there abouts), I take a few minutes to check my progress on a few of my goals.

#1 Connect better with the Scalawags according to their Love Languages

Okay, somebody pinch me.

I am experiencing a parenting seachange and I am wedged between waiting for the other shoe to drop, and flailing into nostalgic oubli of just how horrendously difficult these last few years have been.

You see, things are going well right now. Something dramatic has happened with my eldest, who is now proudly seven years old. He is…I don’t know how to say this…reasonable? Less moody? Rational?

The problem of course, is that I have six years of PTSD from his childhood nagging at my psyche, so I am distrusting of this change. But with each day that passes and he is pleasant, and polite, and kind to his brother, I get the inkling that this might actually be who he is.

Not to mention my littlest, who surprised me this week by making us late for school…not because he wouldn’t get his shoes on, not because he wouldn’t put his coat on but because he had found a little whiteboard and a whiteboard marker and was practicing sounding out words and writing them on the aforementioned whiteboard.

Or as we were listening to a story from Dan Gutman’s My Weird School series, and when one of the characters is practicing his times tables, my eldest starts mocking the character, saying, “everybody knows that 4 times 4 is 16!” and then his younger brother, who was seated next to him, says, “Would you teach me to do math?” and the eldest says, “Sure. It’s easy. Mama, turn off the book,” and they proceed to do math for fun.

And I’m wondering if I am in the Twilight Zone or if this is my life now.

#13 Develop the Go-To Catalogue

While not nearly as important as the above, I was still tickled pink when it came time to decide what I was going to wear on Tuesday, and then I had just a little flash of “I wonder what I was wearing this time last year?” and it happened by the miracle of hyperattention to detail that I had a photographic record of nearly all my outfits from last Fall.

Why? Because I’ve been working on this Go-To Catalogue thing for some time, and last Fall I didn’t have a method or a place to keep notes of it like I do now with Poppy Fields’ Miracle Planner. So I took photos.

Using those photos as inspiration, by Tuesday before I went to bed, I knew what I was wearing for the rest of the week. This felt like progress.

Sidenote: last Saturday I met up for lunch with my friends in the orchestra with which I sing, who were having an all-day rehearsal. Someone got an icebreaker game started, in which we were to write down a weird habit we have, and drop it into a hat. Then, we were to take one out of the hat and guess whose it was.

I wrote: I decide what I am going to wear the night before. I know. It’s juvenile and silly.

But it became a subject of discussion amongst the group and I had a minute or five to expound on the gospel of Mise en Place. I know, I know, I’m doing God’s work over here.

#4 Complete and Update the Home Binder

And completely not as interesting as any of the above, I took a dive into the home binder this week to find some info, and lo and behold, it was exactly where I hoped it would be and I felt like a freaking superhero.

Progress is a beautiful thing.

Episode 54: Shopping Hiatus – Sing With Your Feet

Talking points: Breaking the cycle of shopping addiction; contentment hunting; being a good steward; the Dopamine Loop; finding motivation to stop shopping. A big thank you to Seven Productions here in Mulhouse France for the use of the song La Joie as the intro and outro to the show, as well as Matt Kugler, whose new album Aventura is out now on all the digital music platforms, who sang it and to Claude Ekwe, who wrote it.

1. Episode 54: Shopping Hiatus 30:32
2. Episode 53: Curbing Our Impulses 29:41
3. Episode 52: What Should I Wear? 30:16
4. Episode 51: Wardrobe Choices 27:48
5. Episode 50: Decluttering Your Closet 30:11