Chicken Lady thanks for asking. I am getting better at redirecting my thoughts. Also I have been trying to eat more deliberately and am down one pound. Another thing I am working on is better listening instead of racing ahead in my thoughts as to how I want to respond. Instead I try to just choose one thing and tuck it away until my turn, rather than a half dozen points to make.
You all are admirable on your environmental focus.
Most of the environmental stuff is small - I think it does more to make me feel better than anything else. i keep trying to figure out how I can be a smaller part of the problem (not building the addition would have been one)
today i I am sore all over, but that is a good thing because it is the result of getting back into my groove on the farm. The chicken coop is cleaned out, and I cleaned up 100sqft of the three sisters garden that had been fallow for over a year and was growing up in wild blackberries. (We have tons of wild blackberries already.). I think I might do just corn in it this year, there's another 100 sqft to clear though.
I had to cancel my registration for a backyard organic gardening class this morning - I had signed up mostly to build community, but when they sent more information, I realized that the class was being held not on the farm, half an hour from me, but downtown in the city, over an hour away, mostly highway, find a parking garage yourself. The logistics of that are daunting to me, even if it weren't going to be an evening class (dinner, chores, city driving in an new area in the dark) and the point was to meet people I have something in common with who live close(ish) to me.
my weight is creeping up again - at the very top of my range this morning, and I don't think it's muscle. I think I overestimate the amount of energy I burn doing chores and i've been grabbing "easy" foods like bread, cheese, and cookies because I'm tired. I need to peel some carrots and put them in the fridge.
the weather is slated to be awful today, so I am planning to do laundry and work in the studio. I don't snack when my hands are covered in clay.
tomorrow is food bank again. Last week I had a short conversation with Quinn about where his son goes to school. I don't know how old Quinn is, but he is quite a bit younger than I am. He seems like a nice guy, and I am setting a goal to have another conversation with him tomorrow. He's a single dad, maybe he's lonely enough to make friends with an old lady who loves kids. (Ultralight Angler has encouraged me) He hasn't used the word "church" yet.
Chicken Lady I totally get you with the class. Recently I tried to volunteer for an organization which operates in my area but has orientation sessions with the same distance/no parking challenges so I bailed and reached out to a closer group that can hopefully use my help.
The food bank definitely needs my help. Most of the volunteers are 20 years older than I am and one hospitalized herself two weeks ago by injuring her back lifting a bag of frozen meat off the floor.
the sun came out, so I cleaned out more in the barn instead of doing pottery.
my plan for tomorrow is (after my usual morning routine)
food bank, feed store, then home - knowing I will be over peopled, so:
unload the car right away, switch over the laundry, eat a healthy lunch (I'll fix it before I go) and then spend some time brushing my rabbit - a necessary chore which soothes us both - before I go out to the pottery studio.
stop working in the studio early enough to come back, wash up, and make a good dinner.
Quinn thwarted my "talk to Quinn" plan by not being there.
i did bring home a lot of case wrap to recycle. And a couple of empty water bottles and three boxes of matzoh that the food culling lady was determined to throw out because "nobody ever wants this crap." And I put a bag of mushy pears in the compost.
i stopped drinking the coffee because of the bottled water.
i did ok with my plan for the day, right up to "pottery studio". Then I checked on my goat (the last one bred for this year) and ended up pretty much spending the next 7 hours checking on her every 20 minutes as her labor progressed very slowly, so no pottery. But, two beautiful, healthy baby goats!
also, I cut up the vegetables for dinner, but before I put the rice on, dh called to say they were keeping him for second shift (lot going on at his job right now). So dinner prep is done for tonight, but I then proceeded to make bad choices - eating cereal for dinner and waiting up half the night watching videos and reading depressing news until dh got home.
my head hurts, and I have to go to bed early tonight even if he doesn't come home, because I go back to work tomorrow.
So, I was back to a regular work week plus some extra hours this week.
the secondary fridge is plugged in again to handle the spring flood of milk and eggs.
My exercise program tanked this week, but my weight is ok.
The "no trash service" system is working fine though, despite a week of spring break in March.
I'm doing ok with the cooking.
I'm doing ok with the food budget.
i'm doing ok with the driving.
not as well as I'd like on the pottery, but significant progress.
behind on the garden and house (mess, not quantity in vs. out) and about to be late on shearing a goat.
i have spent a lot of time on the phone this week listening to my girls work through things in their lives.
i still have trouble with transitions (pretty sure that's inherent) and haven't really found a good solution. I have started finding ways to push myself to do just a little bit more in a lot of areas (tidy up when I'm done, do end an extra 5 minutes loading the dishwasher, hang up laundry instead of surfing the net or reading the paper when I don't have to be out the door for 10 minutes....)
Also still working on caring for myself in positive ways (fruit and nut mix, a cup of herbal tea, a walk, time with a book...) instead of less helpful ways (chocolate, coffee or wine, videos or surfing the net....)
I kerp reminding myself that I am making a choice. Sometimes I still decide to make the bad choice, but I think I am trending better.
today I stayed late to cover for an exhausted co-worker. As a result, i didn't swim. I may or may not have made the same choice another time, but today it wasn't "what do I feel like doing?" It was "yes, I think the right choice is to exchange my exercise time for some extra pay and helping a friend." I could still have exercised late, but I knew that if I did I would have to deal with traffic and be unlikely to cook dinner. So I mentally rehearsed cooking dinner on the way home and then did it before I could fall into my common arriving home pattern of "sit, computer, snack, computer." That definitely needs disrupting.
Yesterday I went out in the world with dh.
we drove his car, which gets much better gas mileage, over an hour to see dd2 compete in a swim meet. Dd1 came up to meet us and I took her eggs. I also took her a bag of broken electronics because her community has a free drop off recycling day for them today.
dh bought me swim goggles - new in packaging - because I've been wanting them for over a year now so I can do front crawl at the pool.
on the way home we stopped at a far away fancy grocery store we really like and spent the slack from the March grocery budget, plus too much of April, on wine, meat, fancy cheese and crackers, artisan bread, local mustard packaged in a canning jar and a few vegetables. Dh also bought me a soda in a glass bottle as a treat. - my third soda of the year.
We also stopped to buy more wire for the addition.
dh didn't ask the butcher for paper and he wrapped the lamb chops on a styrofoam tray, so now I have that.
i was wiped out from all the people by the time we got home.
good weather today, but my afternoon belongs to a school fair.
Styrofoam is my bane... I used to be able to recycle it at my mother's, as her town took it. Now I just try to avoid it, and have to trash what I can't reuse. Sounds like you had a nice outing, Chicken Lady! Jungle Jim's, perchance? That's MY fav far-away store! Trader Joe's, Dorothy Lane Markets near Dayton, and Jungle Jim's are wonderful places we really enjoy visiting sporadically... and JJ's http://www.junglejims.com/ is great entertainment AND shopping!
oh I wouldn't be too concerned. A lot of the times Styrofoam doesn't actually get recycled anyway. Better off just avoided, ok easy to avoid Styrofoam cups or something, harder to avoid it if one buys stuff online and it's shipped with it (well remember what companies ship with Styrofoam maybe - actually Amazon doesn't usually - but other than that ..).Styrofoam is my bane... I used to be able to recycle it at my mother's, as her town took it. Now I just try to avoid it, and have to trash what I can't reuse.
http://keenforgreen.com/b/styrofoam-recyclable
Trees don't grow on money
Today was a beautiful day but instead of walking in the slush I shovelled out my son's car for exercise and to surprise him. It felt good to do something with a purpose.
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