Eating That Elephant

I really need to get email under control…I have 250 messages in my inbox alone (and all my group mail is filtered).

A friend just wrote me a message of concern about how curt my email to her was, wondering if she was at fault. So just out of curiosity (I love Eudora’s search capability – super fast) I had Eudora do a count.

I’ve gotten 762 emails in the last 7 days (that may be slow due to the 4th). 397 are not yet “trashed” so I’ve either not read them or plan to do something with them. But that’s not exactly fair because it includes a high-volume list I don’t actually read these days. Taking out that it is only 150. I’ve sent 61 – seems lower than I would have guessed. But I blog some too, so that would raise it a bit…

I don’t know who else will appreciate this find IRL…

Anyone else have a dream as a child..that you got to take home a huge bag of candy and it didn’t cost anything…Ok, maybe I’m strange and was deprived but it was a recurring one for me.

Well, the other day…jeans shopping…feeling fat as usual. I try on a pair of 10s even though I’m pushing 12s these days (ack! I was down to a loose 8 for a while…which is just right as I’m not that tall). They were HUGE!! I go to the saleslady in disbelief and she says, oh, the sizes vary widely on those, that’s why they are 70% off. So I grab a huge pile to try on. The 12s were too tight.

Well, I got 3 pairs of size 8 jeans that look fabulous (though a little long, I’ll have to wear pretty high heels 🙂 for $13.45 a peice!! Just like the candy dream 🙂

Well, I did it…I broke down and bought DS a weapon. Me, the staunch liberal, “we don’t even pretend to hurt people or animals”. My step-dad, Mr Green, will probably be horrified.

He’s finally gotten into the “I want to pretend to shoot at things” mode and I decided to go with the Lawrence Cohen/Playful parenting approach and let go of what are probably MY hangups and “join him” rather than shutting him down. After all, he really IS old enough to know the difference between actually shooting live animals and shooting a piece of burlap with paint on it.

But at least it is a COOL weapon. It’s a PSE Polaris bow with 6 carbon arrows. Since we are both left-eye-dominant, we can even share a bow.

(You can tell with the following exercise – we just figured out yesterday it works with mirrors too. Stand either in front of another person or in front of a mirror. Hold your hands facing away in an “L” shape but with all fingers open. Move them together to form a small triangular hole. Now, look at the other person (or yourself in the mirror) through the hole with both eyes open. The eye that is visible to the person/in the mirror is your dominant eye – the eye you use to determine object placement).

There is a local (free) range about 15 minutes away where we can shoot at hay bales with pictures of animals drawn on them. It’s actually pretty fun.

Now, not being a particularly “cool” person, I’m wondering why the bow is so cool, when even water guns annoy me. Part of it is the reaction I get from others that are “alternative” moms. I’m expecting … judgement and instead I get looks of approval. (except from my husband. I was hoping it would awaken a deep seated urge to have this as a common interest with our son. Not so far. Hmmpfh). Kind of strange. The other part though, is that it is so……traditional? It shows up in everything from history to fantasy.

Here’s my mindfulness bracelet. The beads are made from marbled polymer clay, stamped with rubber stamps, and “embossed” with pearlex. Some of the wire work was done on wigjig, and some by hand.

This is a bracelet I made after a workshop on soul wisdom. We were supposed to first be aware of what we knew at a deep level (mine was that I need to enjoy the moment more and not live in the future) and commit to an action that would anchor that awareness. I knew that adding another todo item to be mindful each day was not the answer:) So this is what I came up with. If you can’t see it, it says joy, True, Laugh, love. These were the words I happened to have that I liked best 🙂

Mindfulness

Simply Charming Swap Bracelet

I and others swapped charms – I made the wire-wrapped polymer bead on the far left.

Charm bracelet details

Individual charms on the swap bracelet

Does anyone else ever feel like they are always behind? Of course here I am on the computer so of course that could have something to do with it 🙂 Seriously, though, I can’t figure out why I sabotage myself so much…I’ll be thinking of all the 10 most important things I need to do, then it feels overwhelming, and none of it gets done!

Perhaps expecations are the problem…if I just dropped my expectations of myself then I could perhaps meet them.

A friend of mine had the idea of worrying for only 15 minutes and then being done with worrying for the day. (Worrying, in this case, is really a codeword for obsessing about, well, all the things that moms obsess about). Sounds good doesn’t it? I was going to do that but that was 30+ minutes ago. I got sucked into reading email. Then into doing “urgent” tasks. Sigh.

When I get like this the thoughts go round and round so fast I can’t keep up. It goes like this…I would love to be blogging this. I ought to update my blog. I should post to it more regularly. (Why? For others? Hmmm.). Thinking about blogging makes me remember that I’m blogging with a friend about a book we want to write, which makes me want to work on that. Thinking about working on our book makes me want to contact my friend and all my clients. Thinking about my clients makes me want to work on business….there must be a mouse and a cookie in here somewhere.

So what to worry about? I have a week between Christmas and New year and it feels like I should do all the things I haven’t done this year in this week. I simultaneously want to get my house all clean, relax and enjoy my crafts and hobbies, work on my business, call all my friends, spend quality
time with my family, catch up on paperwork, make all kinds of yummy food to stock the freezer for school days….well, I’m sure there is more but we all get the picture.

And of course, what I really “should” be doing is just being thankful to be here unhurt. My reality check – that all this other stuff is just not important enough to stress over – lasted exactly 3 days. Does that make me ungrateful?

Why do I do this to myself? What is special about this week that makes me want to get everything in the world done?

Ok, off to spend the last 10 minutes of quality worrying time with my todo list.

We’re all fine. Have to start with that.

My neighbor/friend Carolyn and I and our two boys were going to go skiing
today. Two miles before we got there, we skidded, swerved, skidded, and
ended up sliding off the road and 137 feet down the side of a mountain
(very close to vertical, no exaggeration), rolling once or twice and
landing upside down hanging by our seatbelts. Luckily there was a ton of
snow so it slowed us down a bit and the slide was very soft for going over
a cliff.

We were going slow (less than 30) uphill; the road seemed fine (wet and
slushy) and there must have been ice but the people behind us,who stopped
abruptly when they saw us go over, didn’t notice any loss of traction. We
think the tires were bad or something went wrong with the 4 wheel drive.

No-one was even hurt which was pretty miraculous. The children both had
booster seats (despite being way over the age requirements for
Colorado). Somehow the ski boots which ended up in the front on the
windshield didn’t whack anyone. We were able to unbuckle everyone from the
“ceiling” and the power windows still worked and one door opened. The many
people who stopped were incredible and formed a chain up the steep side of
the hill and got us up and into a warm car. Sorting it out took most
the rest of the day but we are all safe and sound at home.

I’m so thankful that I chose to put in the booster seat even though Alex is
almost at its weight limit (otherwise he likely would have slipped down
under until the seatbelt was on his belly, since his legs aren’t long
enough for SUV seats), that I anchored the booster in, that we stopped to
put up Ben’s headrest to the right height, that we made Ben sit up straight
instead of laying down for a nap. I’m thankful that someone saw it (and
that the first thing the witness told us after finding out we were OK was
that the car was stable and wouldn’t go anywhere). I guess I have
something to put in our holiday letters now….

Please, everyone, don’t get lazy with safety. Over 80% of carseats are
installed incorrectly (usually not tight enough – if you can wiggle it more
than an inch or two side to side, you may need to put your whole weight in
it and tighten it). IIRC, children should be in boosters until their legs
fold at the seat edge without pulling them forward and until the seatbelt
rests across their shoulder. Anchor seats and boosters if you can (the one
that wasn’t anchored slipped out from under the child when we rolled, but
he was OK).  Drive safe this season.

My son (8) has had to do vision therapy for the last few months. VT involves weekly appts with a therapist and daily exercises. Last summer, we did a short amount and it helped for a while but then his eyes reverted. He went from reading chapter books to not even reading signs and labels. Not something that really works in 3rd grade. The research I did indicated it wouldn’t just resolve itself. Much as we all hated the boring exercises, we chose to put him back in, and this time do the full course so that he wouldn’t have to do it again. (The exercises strengthen underused muscles in the eyes, and once the muscles are strong the exercises have to be repeated until the brain uses those muscles automatically so they don’t revert to old patterns).

We tried games (puppy school, seeing eye dog school, etc), we tried explanations, etc. We switched to a more flexible therapist, and used a computer program that isn’t quite as boring as the paper exercises. We did everything we could to make it a positive experience. What it came down to, is these are *very* hard (they are hard even for adults), yet if they aren’t done, my $80 / week is wasted and he won’t be able to read. Finally I decided that much as I dislike rewards, this is not a long-term behavior that I’m trying to reinforce, and the positives outweighed the negatives. So I tied the exercises (minute for minute time earned) with his favorite, adored, computer game. Of course after a while I had to up the ante (double minutes for the hardest exercises), which is expected with rewards. Lately he has been not choosing to do them even for the incentive so I’ve had to restrict other activities until the exercises are done as well (also expected). Not ideal but not awful either I guess, given the alternatives.

Anyway, hopefully tomorrow he will be completely finished with the program. (Note – Though he knows I teach it, I’ve never explained positive discipline to him. I’ve probably explained it to others in front of him, but even that I can’t remember much of…and I’m pretty sure the disadvantages of rewards has never come up). So here is his take on the situation today:

(whiny, tired, voice) “Mom, offering to reward your child for doing something they really don’t want to do ISN’T positive discipline. Because then, they only have the choice of doing the thing they really don’t want to do, or not getting the thing they really do want to do. That’s not really a choice and then that makes them feel bad! And that is NOT positive discipline! So I know you like positive discipline. So why do I have to do them?”

He was kind of right, what could I say? Yet they still needed to be done.

I went and got some crackers and called, “Come here boy! Dog biscuits!!” and we got them done. Whew.

So you can tell from the date of my last entry – I’m a blog failure!! I started a blog and then never wrote in it! This reminds me of high school when I would get a new journal, write, “July 19th…nothing much happened today” and so on for a few days, and then never write in it again.

Thank goodness there haven’t been any comments that I didn’t see. There must be a way to get notifications of changes through email.

Sigh. For someone that prides herself on technical savvy I’m embarrassed.

Nothing much happened today.