Tag: lists

Busy Summer

Katie6 Comments

It’s been a busy morning around here.  Actually, I lied.  It totally hasn’t.  The pace has been slow and leisurely, and we enjoyed some playtime on the porch this morning.  After last week’s soaking in all the gratitude for this new SAHM gig, I feel like I need to get busy and establish a routine for myself.  But, oh!  These are the days.  Sometimes I want to do nothing but play with this happy boy.

Memorial Day is sort of the unofficial beginning to summer around here, and Labor Day is the unofficial end to sweaty pool days and beginning to autumn.  As a teacher, I would begin each summer with absolute laziness and then panic some time around the Fourth of July when I realized that I had a to-do list a mile long and I had accomplished none of it.  While I don’t have the start of the academic year looming ahead this time, I do feel the need to get some A LOT of things done in the next 3 months.  Inspired by my friend Amanda’s list, I decided to write down my goals here so that I have to achieve them or else be shamed by my laziness.  So here they are.  Some big, some small.  I’ve tried to categorize them, but in that process I’ve realized that some of them are quite random.

    In the Kitchen – Cook better food when Scott is out of town.  (I got this awesome book to help me.) – Overcome prior disappointment with dough that refuses to rise and successfully bake my own bread. – Master ten new dishes. – Make decent-tasting tofu dish. 

  • Craftiness – Get my Grandmother to reteach me how to sew. (I have a sewing machine and sewed often before graduate school and teaching, but I haven’t done anything on it at all since the fall of 2004 when I enrolled in Agnes Scott.) – Sew 3 fleece diaper covers for Jude’s cloth diapers. – Complete 25 pages in Jude’s digital scrapbook. I used to love paper crafts (scrapping included), but this AMAZING book made me want to do digital.  I’ve paid $30 for software and now need to get started. – Take more pictures.  Take better pictures. (I began a 365 project on Flickr that has me taking photos everyday and learning slowly but surely to use our camera to soak up those pretty little moments.) – Finish the jewelry organizer I started last weekend.  The window screening I’m using is being difficult, so I think I need to take another route and amend my original plans on that one.
  • Personal / Health – Drink more water. – Drink Kefir everyday. (This stuff does wonders for me; I just need to remember to drink it.) – Make time for reading again. – Start yoga again after not practicing for 7 months. – Partake in some form of physical activity for at least 20 minutes everyday, Monday-Friday.  (This makes me sound like an absolute lazy lard lump, but of course I am up and moving all the time – laundry, playing in the floor with Jude, wearing and carrying him all over town. etc.  What I haven’t done in about 7 months is deliberate physical exercise for the purpose of burning calories or toning myself.  This has to change.  My ass says so.)
  • Home / Organizational – Establish a housecleaning routine that gets the job done and works for me. – Organize our home office. (Y’all this is THE project around here.  The one that hangs over me and slaps me in the face every time I walk in there.  Scary, scary place right now.) – Clean out Jude’s drawers and closet, pack away outgrown clothes, get out new sizes. – Come up with at least 5 bags of junk to leave this house and take to Goodwill. – Pack up infant gear we have outgrown the need for. – Sell cloth diapers that didn’t work for us.  (Yes, people do this.  I have high-quality hemp BabyKicks brand prefolds and cute gDiapers that don’t work for me.  I need to make the money from them and get this out of this cluttered house.)
  • Miscellaneous – Learn to can vegetables.  (My Grandmother is dying to teach me, and it’s a trade I’d like to know if I can get over my fear of the pressure cooker.) – Update this blog twice a week. – Visit the Alpharetta Farmer’s Market at least twice this summer. – Go on at least 5 real dates with my husband. (Real means make-up, sitter, dinner out, maybe even earrings.) – Pay off the Nissan so that we don’t have a car payment and can breathe a little easier with only one income. – Find 2 tutoring clients so that I have some spending money. – Keep my grocery bill at $75 a week and stay on our no-processed rule.  (This is HARD, y’all.  Why is unhealthy food so much cheaper?)

Whew.  It looks like so much when I write it all down.  Public acocuntability works for me though.  What’s on your list this summer?

Ten Things

KatieLeave a comment

Ten things about me.  Because you have to start somewhere.

  1. I’ve spent the past 5 + years of my life in a high school classroom.  I’ve only got a few weeks left before I turn the page to life as a SAHM.  While I am really excited about this opportunity to devote myself full-time to my son, I will miss my awesome colleagues and the hilariously ridiculous things that you encounter on a daily basis as a high school teacher.  I will also miss the opportunity to talk books all day.  Jude doesn’t understand the poetic beauty of Keats or Wordsworth.  Not yet anyway.
  2. I had a blog before and had a few readers during the period of time when I updated it.  I abandoned it eventually, but I hope to be better this time.  Writing is therapeutic and motherhood is challenging.  I figure it’s a good combination.
  3. I met my husband 10 years ago.  We dated for 5 years before we got married.  As evidenced, I am not an impulsive person.
  4. My husband, on the other hand, is quite the opposite.  He is spontaneous and goofy. He says and does ridiculous things quite often.  This is why I love him.
  5. I’ve always been interested in natural living (I grew up going to a homoeopathist and eating garden-fresh veggies), but having a child really put me on overdrive in that regard.  I think when you look at this tiny, defenseless little thing who is so new to the world, you get really protective and don’t want anything harmful to make its way in to that little body if you can help it.  I labored unmedicated (although – long, long story – delivered by Cesarean birth).  I cloth diaper.  I breastfeed.  I follow an alternate vaccine schedule. I make my own baby food.  I’m getting used to people assuming I am nuts.
  6. A few months ago, my husband and I saw Food, Inc. I’m not exaggerating that it completely changed my perspective of food.  We are gradually phasing out all processed foods around here, and we don’t eat anything with a processed ingredient we cannot pronounce. (And that’s A LOT of stuff on grocery shelves, people.)  Bonus: Those stubborn last seven pounds of baby weight fell off in only three weeks of eating real food.
  7. I love British poetry.  All poetry really.  But I can bore you for hours discussing British Romanticism.
  8. I was an English major and have an M.A. in English as well.  I love books and miss college.
  9. I love to read, obviously, but I don’t have the time for it that I used to.  I am trying to change this.
  10. This blog will be full of nauseatingly cute photos like this one.  I love my Jude.