Friday, October 11, 2013

7 Quick Takes Friday

1. So what did you learn on your week off?

I need to write. It helps me to deal with everything.  It also keeps my family and friends in the loop. It also helps me to keep my sense of humor.  The biggest problem with this blog business is I merged all of my types of writing to one format.  Humor, spiritual, book writing, on writing, politics, personal. The blog lost its focus over years and I let it, because it was the need to write more than the need to create a particular product.   However, having taken the week off, I found my funny bone again.  I'm not scrapping this blog, I think it is part of what makes sure I write, having an audience, having a place to place memories and material.

2.  What does this mean, are you taking another week off?

No.  I'm here. I intend to keep writing, but I've placed Small Success Thursday back over at Catholicmom.com where it belongs, I'll just link to it on Thursday.  I'm going to start submitting pieces to places that publish again --the Catholic Standard and the Catholic Digest and Catholic Stand, National Catholic Register, and I'm going to keep this place, a source of mirth on the internet.   I'm still writing Penelope, she's now at 32,600+words.

3. What are you reading?    Well, I just finished Rock Bottom Blessings, a beautiful life story about a woman and her husband and their growth as people and as a married couple as they faced the pain of infertility and the hardness of trying to adopt.  It was very enjoyable read.  Now I have three books on the side of my night stand, first is We Followed Odysseus --actual people who traced and visited every place Odysseus went as far as they could tell based on maps, currents, references, etc.  Should be fun, the second is 50 Major Plots, which I'm half through and starting to get bored with, but think it is probably important to finish, and the third is on my PC kindle, How To Defend the Faith Without Raising Your Voice. Just started so I'm still in the introduction.  Also received a nice email from Bettany Hughes, I wrote her about how her book Helen of Troy was instrumental in research for The Book of Helen.  She wrote back. Very cool.

4.  What are you doing?  Trying out the I can do anything for 15 minutes. I'm a believer.  If I set the timer, the house can be in tolerable shape in 45 minutes (15 per floor) and I don't hate life.   We're also trying (my daughter and I) the -5 rule.  I have a pile of 5 things to get rid of, today I will add 5 more.  She is too. We're both packrats of the wrong kind, so this is helpful. We've decided to do this for 30 days and see how things look at the end.  Where'd I get these two ideas?  Flylady and Real Simple.

5.  Exercising?  I'd say no, but my personal trainer pointed out what I said in #4 so I'm now putting down 15 minutes, and now because of #4, I've eliminated my excuse so yesterday I did 40 push ups.   (During commercial breaks of Dr. Who).

6.  What else is going on?   We're taking our second oldest to look at colleges.  Should have done this sooner.  Will hopefully one day get on the right schedule so it is less stressful. Her brother is going to take her around UMD today.   We also have to plan a birthday party for Rita and get an airline ticket for Bonnie so she can fly out and visit college #2 first week of November.  Busy.

7.  Goals.  I'm setting them for my children. (They don't know it yet).

Oldest: Not setting a goal for him, he's doing great, loving college, loving his major, really loving student teaching.
Next oldest: Finish applications.  All of them.
Next oldest: Make Honor roll by May.
8th grader:  Begin service project, get faster at speed round mathematics.
6th grader: Keep up fitness program and -5 program.
4th grader: Add 15 minutes of studying a night during the week, and once on Sunday --any subject, just to get in the habit.
2nd Grader: Chapter Books
1st Grader: Tie shoes
5 year old: Potty Training, Big boy bed.
2 year old:  Potty Training, toddler bed.
Me: Write 5K a week on Penelope, lose 17 lbs, continue doing all the juggling.   Don't drop any of those balls.

1 comment:

RAnn said...

Quite a juggler; lots of balls in the air. Good work!

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