Does anyone else watch perhaps too many British shows and movies and then, seeing houses you recognize from other things, feel at once comforted by them, but then a little later disconcerted because they didn’t actually use that particular houses inside for the inside scenes? Is it just me?
Category: What I Love
I had an early brunch with a dear, dear friend of mine this morning. As we sat in her sweet little breakfast nook with tea, boiled eggs, and stollen, we chatted about how the year was going and she asked me what I was doing to nurture myself. Honestly y’all, I babbled out an answer full of things that made her go “THAT’S what you find nourishing?” Things like scheduling things, making sure everything had a task associated with it, being better organized, etc. She expressed a bit of doubt with my methods, but being the gracious hostess she is, she just let it go and the topic moved onward.
I got home a while later and really started thinking about it. I am not really a planner. Oh, I try and try to be, but in the end every plan lasts a few days and then I scrap it. So I spent some time just meditating on the idea of nurture and what it meant to me.
Here’s what I came up with:
- Nurturing me means extra time around everything so I can digest experiences. Yes, that means a bit of planning, but it is soooo good to have time around things and not just be chock-a-block busy.
- Nurturing me also means time for music, which I have not been making. The words “I haven’t played the piano since I got these progressive lenses” slipped out of my mouth and now that I’ve ruminated on it, I got the glasses in January (9 months ago) and haven’t really touched the piano since my mom died. Hmmm….
- Nurturing me means time to read. I have “Time to Read” in my Habit Tracker, but how much have I really been reading? None. Like one day a week, which is very close to none for a Lisa.
- Nurturing me also means eating foods I actually like. My husband is very good about cooking dinner, but he is very bad about making food that I really am fond of. Part of that is that the kids hate everything and part of that is that we really, Nick and I, have a totally different palate. I’ve been cooking my own lunches this week and eating all the things I love, like mushrooms and onions and zucchini and sweet potatoes and cabbage, and have been so happy at lunch time!
Anyways, that’s what’s on my mind today. Time to go eat the mushroom/onion/zucchini/feta dish that’s been sauteing while I type. 🙂 Hope y’all have a good afternoon!
Got up and started driving before at 6am to see the little twin humans on their 1st birthday. Spent the day with Katherine & the twins, hugged the Kelly between her classes, and then drove back home. It took 2.5 hours to get there and nearly 4 to get home [plus a stop for food I’m not counting in there]. Well worth it, though. 🙂
Nick and I had a rare afternoon movie date this afternoon. We grabbed a super quick lunch at Torchy’s Tacos, wherein I discovered the joy that is the happy corn side dish (unfortunately it was Nick’s- sorry babe!). Then we headed down to Time Square Cinema for the Downton Abbey movie. We’d bought tickets way ahead of time on Fandango, so of course it all had to go wrong. Apparently the movie theatre didn’t think anyone was going to want to see the movie, so they’d only scheduled one theater and the people all revolted and demanded more screenings, so ours got scrapped and moved, so our tickets were hiding in a pile behind the old ticket counter (which is now just the concession stand). We had to wait in the concession line for our tickets, our seats we had picked out online had been given to other people in the meantime, so we ended up sitting in the very front section. The whole thing was chaos because all the seats were messed up, so people had all gone to the places they thought they had tickets, sat in the them, and then had to be moved because when the theater redid the seats, they didn’t do it right at all and just stuck people in willy-nilly, so everyone was having to re-jigger themselves and try to trade seats to sit with the people they came with. This chaos went on all the way through the previews and until the actual movie went on, when everyone finally just shut up and sat where they were.
In any case, The Downton Abbey movie was most excellent. Many super improbable things happened and Maggie Smith was once again deliciously quick witted. We loved every bit of it, although we did yell at a certain character in our heads quite a lot that he was being dim witted. Ah well, at least it ended well. Really, we have watched this show so long that it felt like we went home, some how, like we had gone to see friends that we missed. It was delightful.
Our Secret Somebody sent us another gift in the mail. Nick looked at it and said “We don’t need another waffle maker. What are we going to do with it; it’s so small.” This was my response. (Two kids have already been through and eaten the other 2/3 of the pile)
Having that moment/series of ongoing moments where I realize that my interests/priorities have shifted in the last year. Pondering changes that will be needed to support things that are floating to the surface and how to gently extricate myself from things that used to be higher on the list. #thismessagebroughttoyoubytherapy #changeisgrowth #closingdoorsopeningwindows
We started the night by going to 1836 Texas Kitchen for dinner. Nick really loved all of his food. Mine was just okay, but I did get the novelty of trying a Cucumber Margarita. We finished up our anniversary night with the by-now-traditional stops at Half Price Books and World Market. 🙂 At Half Price, I got a craft book, a writing book, and a fantasy book, and Nick got a sci fi series. At World Market we got a replacement wine glass for the one I knocked over earlier this week, some “extra strong” British tea for Nick, some lemon poppyseed scone mix for the kids who insist that it’s better than homemade, and currywurst (because everyone likes it). And now we’re back home polling everyone on what they want the Back to School tasting to be. 🙂
I love how facebook always gives me so many years worths of memories every single day. I really have used it as another journal of sorts over the years. Today it reminded me of two very important things in my life that happened on November 28th over the years:
- Nick proposed to me on November 28th, 1997. He hadn’t meant to, really, but he’d asked my dad for my hand in marriage and my dad got super excited and congratulated me on my engagement before Nick had a chance to pop the question. So he went out to his car, got the ring, and proposed on the spot. 🙂
- We moved to our current town on November 28th, 2002. We lived in a little rental house next to the middle school that all my kids have now gone to (one would have been there right now, but he has strep throat, so he’s home with me today). Here’s a lovely photo of David from one of the first days we lived in the house. Why is he in the dishwasher? Who knows?! Did you know that this blog goes back to before 2002? You probably can’t read all the old posts, but I can and wow are they fun. I just learned that even though we moved on November 28th, our phone line didn’t get installed until December 5th. How did I live without the internet for that long?
Everything is a saga this week and I’m chronicling them because I am working on practicing upping my word counts for NANOWRIMO next month.
I am a Day Planner enthusiast. I use one year in, year out, have done since I was a freshman in high school. It always lines up with the school year, even as an adult, because I’ve always bought one-year academic calendars and I started in August and it ends in July every year and I get another one. Over the years the things I’ve used it for have changed, but I always use one. Those of you that see me in person know that I also use my phone calendar. I have an online Google calendar for each of my family members and one for the whole family. I’m pretty obsessed with keeping it up to date and I get pretty annoyed when people don’t keep up their end of the bargain with their calendars. There is quite a lot of overlap with my two systems, but it is not 100%. My paper planner tends to hold a lot of things that my online calendar does not, like personal schedules for crocheting things, when to mail cards to loved ones for weird anniversaries of things that probably don’t make sense to anyone else, passwords to things I use fairly frequently yet didn’t get to make the password for (I remember ones I made), notes about what I’m writing, when I want to blog about certain things, gift ideas for the kids and the cousins, kids current sizes, colors I like for painting the other half of the bathroom, stars and triangles and hearts and circles to remind me about progress with different things or pain levels or how many headaches I’ve had lately. It’s my brain outsourced, basically. I feel lost without it.
The last full day we were in Florida everyone was supposed to come home from church and pack up all their stuff. I knew this, and I knew that at least one of my kids was going to need help, so I spent my time at home in the morning washing clothes and pulling stuff out of dark corners and drawers of forgetfulness. I was just about done in my own room, one drawer mid-way to clear, when the kids started pounding on the door to come back into the condo.
I slid the drawer closed, set the bag I was working on down beside the bed, and went to open the front door. The kids exploded in, each telling me in their separate ways simultaneously what their dad had told them to do as soon as they got in. It was basically exactly what I had told them when they’d left: come in, change into play clothes, eat some lunch, and then start your packing.
I got busy taking laundry out of the dryer and putting more in. I moved on to showing kids for the umpteenth time how to roll their clothes to fit them all in their suitcases. I tried to get people to do their homework.
I completely forgot about the drawer I was emptying.
The next day, I double checked the kids rooms, looking under beds, inside closets, and even into drawers I knew they hadn’t used. I double checked their bathrooms for forgotten toiletries. I double checked the kitchen for hidden food, forgotten laundry, and dirty towels. I double checked the living room sofa for items that slid between the cushions, behind the entertainment center, and under the edges of the sliding curtains. I double checked my bathroom, my closet, the other closet, the dresser, the other part of the bathroom. I looked under the bed, under the chairs, behind the headboard.
I completely forgot about the drawer.
So we traveled home. I dug a few times into the bag that should have held the contents of that drawer. I thought it felt light, but several people were reading books out of that bag, so I didn’t really think about it too hard.
This morning, amidst the chaos with the dogs, I reached into the bag to pull out my planner so I could make today’s To Do list. It wasn’t there. I looked through the few bags left packed. Not there. I thought I spied it on my bedroom floor peeking out from a pile of books, but that was just a scrap of the fabric I used to cover it.
Panic set it.
Everyone else was calm about it: “Just call the condo and have them look for it. They will mail it to you.” I know, I know. But I need it to make the list so that I can remember to make the call when the condo office opens. If it’s not on the list, it doesn’t get done.
So I printed a copy of the online calendar for this week. It’s not the same format as my paper planner. I started writing things in that I thought I remembered I needed to do. I dug out last years planner and stared at this weeks list from last year and I felt a bit calmer. I added a few things I wouldn’t have thought of until it was too late. I tried to remember if I had any tasks from new positions I’ve taken on this year (I haven’t. Sorry!)
Once I ran around and dealt with dog things for a while, I finally had time to call the condo office. Well, first the resort hotline, which was just booking. They gave me the resort office number. The resort office transferred me to housekeeping. Housekeeping said they had a book and some glasses from that room yesterday, but it all had been sent on to Owners Services. They said things usually take around a week to get back to the people that left them behind. Housekeeping took my name and number and sent it on to Owners Services and said that they would call me soon. Seven hours later they did. Owners Services took my name and address and phone number and said they were calling another service to come to pick up my book and glasses – I did ask about that then because I lost my planner, not a book, and a pile of papers that was also in the drawer, but no glasses. They said they only had a list in their location and hadn’t actually ever seen anything but the list – and this other service would call me tomorrow or the next day to set up shipping and payment information.
So I still don’t have my planner. *sigh* This week ahead is going to be rough.
Lisa Holcomb 