Desk Love

I keep trying to create a working office, and until now they've at best partially succeeded.  I needed to separate homeschooling from my other work, and that meant learning to value my other work.  After a lot of soul searching I decided I needed an adult desk where I could get things done, problem was, we had no budget.  Lucky for me, my parents have a furniture surplus at the moment and their giant pain was my giant gift.  It fits so perfectly upstairs in our bedroom that a quarter of an inch would have meant it would have had to wander the house like my other desk options.  Instead it is nestled in-between two well-stocked bookcases.  The chair was on clearance at Sam's Club and just allows me enough room to get to bed.

The desk top is huge!  I can park a filing tray and my blue thing on the left.  My backpack now has designated parking on the right.  The back has a tool caddy, a lamp and miscellaneous useful knick-knacks, especially the first owl in my new collection. 

Perfect fit is almost a theme.  I found these organizers for my pencil drawer at Staples and they are literally perfect, not a wasted centimeter.  The top right side drawer has materials for my primary project--Harriet, a.k.a. my novel.  The bottom right side drawer has storage for large materials, a filing box and two shoe boxes of useful items.

On the left, I've started with supplies in the top drawer.  My second drawer holds materials for my secondary project--A Rule of Life, a homeschool co-op class on medieval monasticism.  The bottom drawer has my stationary.

Behind the black out curtains, we have a deep window sill, perfect for these large filing boxes.  I don't have that much filing--yet.

 These were another Sam's Club find.  I'll still resort to my giant white board in the basement, but I think this is going to be a great place to do the detail work on Harriet, the characters and the world.  I hope to incorporate 3x5 cards on the bulletin board.  If it turns out I need more of one or the other I can flip the boards and change the configuration.

Sometimes the material world is quite useful to the spiritual, at least I hope that will be so.  Everything is perfect at the moment.

 

Ten or Eleven Reasons

Love It or List It is one of those TV shows that we all watch together.  The premise is that a family is no longer happy in their home and a designer competes with a realtor to see who can make them happy again.  Both experts are given a list of must haves and a budget.  Like everybody my life has its moments when I'm not sure whether I love it or whether I want to list it.  I think I've made up my mind to love it, and here's why.

My kids--The ultimate reason for breathing is to see what they'll do next.  I can't imagine my life without that dramatic tension.

Kurt--We took all this on together and we work through it together.  I couldn't ask for a better partner.  Between us we are getting it done.

St. Mary's--I have a standing date with Jesus Christ every Saturday night.  After all those revivals and worship services where we begged Jesus to show, it's nice to know he's guaranteed.

Harriet--I've produced a viable outline of my novel, now it's time to flesh it out and cut it up.  It's a reason to keep breathing when the kids have gone.

Homeschooling--This is going to be the best year ever!  I've got everything figured out and lots of great stuff planned.  Last year was great, but I think this year might be even better.

My Desk--Maybe it's silly, but I needed a desk.  My childhood desk was damaged.  My substitutes were too small, or lacked storage or whatever.  I needed a place to do my non-homeschool work.  My parent's are moving in with my sister.  They don't have room for all their furniture, so they were happy to give me a huge oak desk with excellent storage.  It's in my bedroom and changing my life.

Exercise--I enjoy exercise, but it's been difficult to figure out the where and how.  My recent diet adventures have pushed me back to the treadmill, but this time we've put a TV in there.  I can watch Teaching Company lectures while I jog.  Perfect combination for me.

My larger family--I only have one sister, a scarcity I feel so keenly that I gave my kids lots of siblings.  Every year that goes by my original family becomes more precious.  I want to hold everyone close while I can.

Medieval Monasticism Class--I'm teaching this for our Homeschooling Co-op.  I've learned so much and had so much fun imagining games and activites for this fascinating subject.  It's a chance to keep my toe in the world of education a little.

Friends--Facebook keeps me up on the news I care the most about--how my friends are doing.  It's so nice to keep up with those friends I'm separated from as well as making time for the friends who are here now.

Maturity--Most people would consider this a mixed bag, and some would say I'm a long way from achieving it.  All I know is that the knowledge that I'll accomplish more by slowing down and focusing on now, doing my best to be present in this moment, is far more valuable than all the tony perts of youth.

So, I'm loving it, and plan to continue doing so for a long time to come.

Fan

The University of Michigan's Fan Day has a way of restoring my faith in humanity.  To see so many people taking such great pleasure in things like meeting football players and talking to cheerleaders; throwing your own touchdown or kicking field goals; or in my case taking off my sandals so I could feel the soft, bouncy astro-turf between my toes.  Michigan's stadium is the third largest in the world and you see that on TV, but you don't really feel it until you're there.  Likewise Michigan is one of the world's great universities, but you don't see it until you are there.  The campus is beautiful, even the North Campus where my engineering husband's, favorite memories are.  He looks at a parking lot, remembering picking up a car and relocating it with his friends.  I look at the quaint houses and think, someday, when the kids are gone...

Pax Potato

There came a morning when I woke up, stepped on the scale and decided it was time to do something about that.  Like everything else there was an app for that, and I found the Livestrong Calorie Counter to be very effective and lost a nice chunk of weight.  As long as I could eat what I like, just less and less often, I coped with dieting very well.  Then I went in to see Doc and he said I really ought to be on the Low Glycemic Index Diet.
There is an app for that too.  The GI diet app helps me track the Glycemic load of all the food I eat.  It allowed me multigrain bread, sourdough bread, and reasonable quantities of pasta.  I can do that.  It's not my favorite having been raised on starch because it is tasty and affordable.  The real struggle didn't kick in until I decided to widen my research and read some books from the library.  The current book forbids potatoes, rice and bread--period.  I'm not sure I can do that.  My Irish grandfather could do things with potatoes that would make you cry.  The bowl they were served in is a hallowed family artifact. Give my mother a pound of hamburger and rice, and you'll have a feast in 30 minutes.  Bread, don't get me started on bread.  We would tease my grandmother and great-grandmother into bread wars, each trying to top the other and succeeding.  It meant fresh hot bread every day for weeks.
I feel like a snob foregoing these basic calories.  I realize it's because my doctor said so, and he's a pretty smart guy. but I can still remember the look on my soon-to-be-ex best friend's face when I failed to understand the part that Ramen noodles played in her diet.  The stupidest thing I ever saw on TV and anyone who has watched TV knows that a pretty serious insult was when Jamie Oliver tried to gross out Appalachian kids with food.  No one thought to hire a guide to local culture?  Don't get me wrong, Jamie is a pleasure to watch cook, naked or clothed, and he meant well, but  when your family has at least one living memory of hunger, you eat anything you're offered and you're trained to.  His "whazzed" up chicken nasties turned into chicken nuggets were just calories and you don't say no to calories.
I guess somehow I have to figure this out.