Lughnasad to equinox

[Chicken lady]

It’s a new cross quarter.

so, once again with more ambition than sense, I am laying out goals.

my class ends in two weeks - so finish class work.
the classes I TEACH start soon after that, so syllabi, welcome letters, classroom set up and lesson plans.
Exercise - i’m still Trying to swim twice a week, maybe getting dh to do yoga with me again or riding the bike.
and I am working on clearing out and reorganizing my home pottery studio - this will not be done by equinox.
other potential areas of focus - garden/barn work, basement (which is actually getting worse with the studio project, but just because water is coming in faster than you are bailing, you don’t stop bailing), and basic cooking (things like bread and cheese which I have let slip.)

[rosarugosa]

I can never quite decide if it's better to just include a couple of my "big rocks" to keep me focused on that which is the most important, or to include some smaller, quicker hits to get the satisfaction of checking things off my list (one of life's great pleasures!) and let me feel like I'm accomplishing stuff.
I've selected 3 items in order of priority and also in order of time/energy consumption:
Strip kitchen cupboard
Renovate front garden
Replace plants in front of birdbath
Good luck CL. It's supposed to be good for our reach to exceed our grasp, or so they say!

[Yppej]

I had to look this up. It is until September 23rd.

1. Visit with family coming from out of state.
2. Do some more day trips. It would nice to combine this with #1 but I don't see that happening.
3. Clean up the yard. After yard waste is picked up this month refill the barrels with the rest of the brush laying around which is an eyesore.
4. Find out what deals are out there for fall home heating oil.
5. Finish the books on my list from 1000 Books to Read Before You Die
6. Would like to get an electrician in but that involves DS; at a minimum get him to borrow DB's gadget to see what outlets if any need to be grounded

[rosarugosa]

Yppej: Does your town pick up brush? Our does not, and after a recent pruning session, we have loads of brush and branches. I have my little branch chipper and leaf shredder, but it's going to take me forever. We just have one leaf pickup in the spring and 3 in the fall.

[Yppej]

Rosarugosa, we have 5 or 6 pickups in the spring, 5 or 6 in the fall, one each in June, July and August and one in early January for Christmas trees.

[rosarugosa]

That sounds a lot more reasonable!

[Chicken lady]

Today was good. I cleaned stalls and mulched part of the garden.

i worked on one of my English classes.

and I worked in the studio barn a bit.

last fall my gyno put me on prescription iron. Then my gp told me my numbers were back up and I could stop taking it when the prescription ran out. The prescription ran out in April. Red blood cells live up to 4 months. 4 days ago I decided to put myself back on the same dose with otc tablets. Today I started to see a difference - I was physically active all morning, and I didn’t feel wiped out until 7pm.

[Chicken lady]

Well, it’s been over a week.

my stalls will need cleaning again soon, but they are in good shape for now.

i still need to do lesson plans, but, for my two English classes, I have everything ready that I will need at open house on the 25th. I have 11 classes to go, but six of them are repeats that will just need minor editing and three are variations of the same class - i’ll write the high school one and then edit it for the younger groups. - clearly that is the focus for the next week.

i go down to finish doing the glaze work for the class i’ve been taking this morning, then drop stuff off at the reuse store and do some classroom set up.

I did swim twice this week.

i’ve done A lot of work on the pottery studio and it is significantly better.

the basement is notably worse, but I expected that. It is still better than it was at the beginning of the summer.

[rosarugosa]

CL: It sounds like you have been productive. I don't know if you have this issue, but I think another reason I sometimes shy away from my most important, but most time-consuming projects is because I don't get the satisfaction of something being completed for such a long time. I want my gratification to be more immediate! It sounds like your basement and studio are two big projects.
I did replace the plants in front of the birdbath, which was the smallest of my 3 projects but has a significant visual impact. I had to dig up and relocate the daylilies that were there and then dig up and move the asarums to where the daylilies were, but we are pleased with the result.
I spent a couple of hours stripping the cupboard the other day, and I'm finally getting the sense that I will be able to actually complete this project in my lifetime! It looks like hell as a work in progress in our kitchen, but I figure that's another motivator to getting it done.

[Chicken lady]

Rosa, I like to have a big chunk of time so I don’t have to keep quitting while i’m Still interested - that just makes me frustrated. I think I timed the studio well, because i’m Running out of time and my attention span has gotten shorter. Partly because i’m down to sorting little stuff and hard decisions.

you finished a thing! It doesn’t matter that it was your smallest thing. It’s like paying off the smallest debt first to give yourself a sense of progress.

my boss asked me for a rewrite on one of the syllabi, so step backward on that. But I dropped three small storage racks off at goodwill. Two of them were in the basement and one was in the studio.

and I did finish my glazing, drop stuff at the reuse store, and work on my classroom. Long day.