Spring Cleaning/Summer Goals

Memorial Day was spent scrubbing my kitchen and the downstairs bath. I've been working on them a little at a time, but Monday gave me a whole day to simply focus on Spring cleaning. It is surprising how much I enjoy cleaning these days. I had Kurt move all the appliances and thoroughly enjoyed scraping the dust off of our refrigerator coils. Kurt scrubbed the back deck and began the process of cleaning out the garage. We want the garage to provide more rainy day play space this year, which means we've got to get those last few boxes out of there.
While scrubbing I had time to start formulating summer goals, here's what I've got so far.
1. Ride my bike to the library. I'm not very good on my bike, but it's great exercise. I've always wanted to master the machine. Maybe this summer is the summer.
2. Do more walking and less driving. We live in a beautiful village with almost everything you need within a reasonable walking distance. With gas prices going through the roof and my new environmental consciousness, I'm going to take advantage of small town living.
3. Ditch television, with the only exception being a weekly family DVD and possible sick day entertainment. This will be hard with all the great stuff there is to Netflix--I've grown addicted to the documentaries.
4. Work in cultural enrichment activities from the free section of the Entertainment calendar in the newspaper. We found some great stuff last summer, weekly concerts of various styles of music, an archaeological dig, and kiting gatherings. Not to mention our local library's terrific offerings for kids.
5. Get back in the habit of reading. Ordinarily, I read all the time, but recently what with writing a novel, publicizing Heifer, and the new cleaning obsession, not much reading is going on. The books are piling up.
6. Eat more salads. We want to picnic most nights this summer, and I like salads when I picnic. Sure, KFC is the classic option, and I'm not under-rating it, but chicken salad is better for you. I'm going to become a salad recipe maven. I'll post the best ones.
7. Recycle. We used to recycle at our last house, but we never got around to setting up the service here in Spring Lake. I'd like to get my sorting bins back in action.
8. Finally and irrevocably build the habit of daily cleanup into my children. We keep working away, and little by little the habit is coming along, but summer provides real opportunity to tighten the screws--I mean create incentives. If we have to miss swim class or their newly earned tennis lessons, the message just might get through that doing chores is non-negotiable. That's much harder to teach during the school year. If I make them go back and fix their rooms that means less time in school. Summer is my opportunity.
So, what are you doing this summer? I'd love to hear from you.

100 Pages

The rough draft of my novel has passed 100 pages. The need to have something to read at my writer's group has been a gentle but steady push to make progress. It's quite satisfying to open the black binder and see all those double-spaced pages filled with text.
Of course, the minute you achieve a milestone of this sort you become anxious about keeping up. The scene I just finished was powerful and moved along on its own, sometimes without my say so. Working on the next part has gone more slowly, and the match between scene and plot isn't as clear or as powerful. However, I had the same worries about the last bit, and it turned out quite nicely.
Creating the first telling of a story has, so far, turned out to be much easier than I expected it to be. Once I embraced the "shitty first draft" concept, the only thing that matters is actually telling the story. If I can tell this story at all, then I can worry about knocking it into a well-told story later.

Hurry, Dad, Come see the Kittens!

My sister-in-law sent me this picture. I don't know anything about it, but it was too cute to keep to myself. Thanks, Mary!

I didn't stand a chance, really.

Not with this much estrogen in the room. I wouldn't change it. The opportunity to watch the mother/daughter relationship evolve over this much time in such depth was/is amazing. They all told/tell me stories about what it means to be a daughter or to be a mother and each one is a new lens for life's experience. These women taught me that you never outgrow your mother. I had to teach myself that you have to grow into yourself--anyway.

after Repeat me.

"Mommy is the boss."

theimamesobsof

I am Mommy

I am Mommy.

I am Mommy!

I am Mommy!!

I am Mommy!!!

eHeM

i am the boss of me

He Me

I AM, the boss of me.

Amen.

Phew!

Saving the world is serious business. I realize my blog has been suffering some neglect. I've been busy developing communication/publicity tools for Heifer Happening. I'm really enjoying myself, but I haven't had time to think up articles for this blog. I've got a new character I want to introduce for TV School fans, but I don't have time to write it yet.
School will be over soon, and that ought to free up some spare time.

Freedom!

Thanks to an entire family effort, we are finished with "quiet school" for the rest of the year! Three and Four finished up last week and One and Two finished this afternoon. What a relief. Now we get to focus full time on experiments, writing and projects. I love the way that quiet school builds discipline, but we all get tired of the drill. We learned a lesson in the benefits of a little extra effort. Everyone is ecstatic.

My other blog

I've begun a second blog, Heifer Happening Grand Rapids, to publicize the Grand Rapids area Living Gift Market. The Living Gift Market encourages alternative giving to help the developing world by "selling" animals that will be placed with struggling families on five continents through Heifer International. The market isn't unique to Grand Rapids. Heifer volunteers all over the country organize fund raising events of one kind or another. If you live in the area, check us out. You might find the perfect gift for the person who has everything. I can pretty much guarantee they don't have a water buffalo.