Turn, turn, turn

'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,
'Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
'Twill be in the valley of love and delight.
When true simplicity is gain'd,
To bow and to bend we shan't be asham'd,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come round right.

1848 Shaker song. Listen - it is beautiful!



I started Lent with a bucketful of high hopes - all the positive changes I was going to make, all the good things I was going to do... but being human, they have dribbled away and dribbled away until I am left carefully balancing that last teaspoonful and praying that I won't spill it too.

First the dripping trail:

- clean like the Lord is coming to visit: one and a half weeks out of 4. I've kept climbing Mt Washmore (the laundry) though, and the dishes twice a day... let's say 35%.

- exercise every day: it seems worse, but it's really only this week that I've slacked off... started with TOM & high humidity, but coincided with anniversary & birthday celebrations to add to the cumulative blah effect... I'll be generous... 75%

- take advantage of study time... again I was doing reasonably well and then somewhere around the middle of last week I allowed the distractions to creep in and take control of my time again. Comparing what I need to do with what I have actually done... 65%

That gives me a grand score of 58%. PHEW! I just scraped in with a pass... but you know me - scraping in is never satisfactory. I'm an over achiever. I want high distinctions to be happy. I NEED to zoom home with flying colours. Well, the special celebrations (excuses for being naughty) are out of the way and Lent is not over yet. There are still 11 days until Easter - and 11 is my lucky number. Hmmmmmm.

Okay, here's the plan. Start by celebrating 11 successes, then set 11 goals to speed me through the next 11 days. Let's refill the bucket!!!

CELEBRATE SUCCESS:

1. I bought a pair of shorts on special for my gym wear - $11.
2. They only had size 14 & smaller left on the rack. I took a pair of size 14 home without trying them on first - and they fit fine!!! (not that many months ago size 20 was a squeeze!)
3. I found a pair of generic orthotic insoles at Woolworths for $21 and they seem to help the pain when I walk, giving me hope I am on the right track.
4. The jade and pearl jewellery that Yeti bought me for our anniversary arrived and is very beautiful. I shall feel like a queen when I wear it.
5. I found FREEMIND - the mindmap program that I have been raving about. It is revolutionising my note taking and is so much fun to use that it makes me WANT to work.
6. There are clean sheets on the beds.
7. I have only missed saying the rosary on 3 days. If I skipped my exercise, I still did the rosary while I hung the washing or did other tasks.
8. So far so good on the don't weigh yourself commitment. Yup, I gave up my scale for lent lol... I couldn't think of any material thing I was inordinately attached to... then I thought of how often I weigh and measure myself and what a sacrifice it would be NOT TO KNOW!!! So I gave it up. And I don't know... and I'm not going to weigh myself until Easter Sunday - hence the desperate desire to turn this train around and ensure a pleasant surprise when I do :P
9. One of our cats, Sweety Follow (named by Wombat, can't you guess?) was bitten by a red belly black snake. I found him lying paralysed out in the yard. We brought him in and cared for him and thanks be after five days he has fully recovered and is back to being a happy 'uncle' cat playing with his 4 kitten siblings. We have seen two more snakes since - but thankfully the boys seem to make enough noise to keep them away.
10. I have started reading the Magic Pudding to Wombat and he is loving it ( a bit above his comprehension level, but he gets the jokes and the songs are fun to sing).
11. We (I) finished the labryinth! There's a little clearing down in the bush. Last year, Wombat and I collected loose stones and built a double spiral. This month I got more ambitious. We now have a full labyrinth next to our double spiral. Wooohoooooo! The boys seemed to find playing down in the bush every day to be more positive than playing around the house, too. I also counted an hour of rock carrying on my exercise ticker several times lol.

And now the TO DO list:

1. Take your iron tonic twice a day.
2. Find your water bottle counter - or make a new one if necessary - and DRINK your water.
3. Exercise for at least 30 minutes EVERY day - the free gym trial is coming up... this should be easy!
4. 10 minutes of parenting reading each day.
5. Keep saying the rosary.
6. Clean your desk - give your workspace a fresh SPARKle.
7. Declutter - find 11 items to throw away and 11 items to give away.
8. At least 2 days of processed food detox - starting today.
9. At least 30 minutes each day of solid study.
10. At least one small item off your cleaning list each day.
11. Eat clean until Easter - no more treats! That includes letting Wombat and the others finish the birthday cake lol. One slice is enough for you. (Don't complain - you shouldn't have gulped down spoonfuls of frosting just because you made too much. The boys were sensible enough not to take your offer - what made you think you needed to overload your system with margarine, icing sugar and cocoa??? It also includes jellybeans and block chocolate. NO MORE UNTIL EASTER - you hear me???) [Sorry for shouting... just need to make sure the lecture sank in... see what kind of a nagging mother I am? but my inner child is getting too spoilt lately... 11 days of no indulging - and all tantrums will be ignored.]

There... that should do it! I was going to post a pic of the labyrinth but my graphics program froze... I'll do a photo entry some time next week instead :D

I'm off to listen to my favourite turn-me-around song again :) Hope you liked it!

PS. just reading through this and noticed the interesting psychological point that i celebrate "MY" success but then I tell myself what "YOU" will do. I'm not going to rewrite it, but next time, I must remember to commit myself and say "I WILL" instead of hiding behind the fiction of an external authority telling me what to do (ie thus avoiding personal responsibility for my choices).

Out for the duration

The boys aren't that sick, just enough to be demanding extra attention (there's a voice in my ear right now - "Mummy, you have to make lots of cars. Lots and lots of lego cars!")...

and my home journal planning is finished & being put into practice, so the housecleaning has started and is going well (yesterday I washed the velvet curtains in the loungeroom - for the first time in two years!!!)...

and Munchkin is getting more mobile (I was filling Wombat's bath last night, sure that Munchkin was still snoozing soundly in my bed... he heard the water running - loves his bath - and tried to crawl out to us landing nose first on the wooden floor OUCH!)...

and I have to re-enroll at the College of Law this month, which means getting all my notes in order...

and Wombat's birthday is coming up, so any computer time is vanishing into the search for perfect presents (for a little boy already so spoilt by eBay that he expects something new every other day)...

and the posts I wanted to write are piling up behind me in an avalanche of "shoulds"...

and the doctor tells me my insulin resistance and blood pressure are too high as a result of the extra weight I am still carrying from the pregnancies...

and I have decided to go back to drinking full cream milk as breastmilk is still an important part of Munchkin's diet and he is very obviously craving fats to build that growing brain. I was cutting all fat out of my diet in the hope that my body would burn some of the extra I was carrying to feed Munchkin, but it's just not working that way, and I refuse to compromise his development. The change is obvious - he is instantly sleeping for longer periods and is more settled. I used to notice the same thing with Wombat whenever I started drinking lite milk while feeding him. I was just being stubborn about it, but oh well... I have cut out all sugar from my diet, and the only other answer is more exercise... which takes time I would otherwise spend at the computer....

so I am declaring a time out :D I won't be writing or opening my Google Reader, so please excuse my absence. I'll probably be back after Easter. In the meantime, I will still try to keep up with my daily photos at Fleeting Reality - I am taking photos every day, and just getting them up onto the internet when I can squeeze in a few moments for myself, so they tend to appear in clumps rather than one at a time - yay for being able to backdate posts!

See you soon... I'll miss you... but a mama's gotta do what a mama's gotta do!!!

Beaded Medicine Bag and a dose of self pity

I haven't finished any new projects this week. I have been working with a new material, and it is very difficult to sew. I shall show the results when I get something I am happy with.

In the meantime, here is one of my favourite items, finished a few years ago: a beaded medicine or amulet bag.


It is just the right size to store a small keepsake - I use mine to hold a little turquoise stone given to me by a friend, which has the word 'SUCCESS' carved into it.


It is relatively simple to make. I love beadweaving and made several of these bags (the others were all given away as gifts) a few years ago. Unfortunately, beadweaving is not a craft I can practice with Wombat around... one bump and beads go everywhere!


I love the colours of this bag - a mix of my favourite blues and greens, with accent beads of peacock irridescence on a purple base. The bag hangs on the wall in front of me, and it makes me happy to look at it.



I've just wasted more time than I can possibly afford searching the net for a tutorial to link to - it would have been quicker to write one myself, but now I am out of time.

I am getting depressed about my procrastination levels lately, and when I start to feel low, it seems to get worse - I stop doing all the things that make me feel good - like exercising, taking care of myself & dressing warmly, getting my work finished. Instead I sit here and drift the hours away doing nothing - which only makes me feel so much worse. This morning I didn't even make myself a cup of tea.

As the panic builds up in front of this onsite school I must attend, instead of attacking the work and preparing properly, the stress seems to paralyse me. I feel like curling up into a ball & crying (tears are not far below the surface today) or staring at a spot on the wall. I know that all I need to do is shake myself and concentrate on the next task, babystepping myself through to the finish and I don't understand why I keep handicapping myself like this. The stress and depression will build up into despair and I will make myself sick. I know I can't afford to get sick, can't afford to take a break, and that makes the stress worse, so I procrastinate and get no work done - which means all my efforts in getting up so early are for nothing. I should have stayed in bed and rested.

This self-sabotaging funk is what the quote at the top of my sidebar is all about.

What would it matter if blogs went unread, the internet went unsearched, entries went unwritten? I would still be 6 units behind on my property-law study, and I would still have an assignment due tomorrow which hasn't been started - I haven't even opened the reading for it.

I was doing so well, feeling really proud of myself for coping, and now all my priorities have become twisted around again. I had such good intentions this morning but they went nowhere.

Time to start making a brand new ending again, because this road I am paving at the moment sure feels like it's leading me to hell. Does anyone know what I mean?

Water, water everywhere

I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry about this one.

It's nearly as awful as the Aussie model/triathlete who was out jogging with her baby on a hill above the Torrens river in Adelaide. She stopped to answer her phone and turned away to write a number on her thigh. When she turned back, the baby was gone. Being a celebrity-type, her first thought was to run around screaming "My baby's been stolen." It was a while before anyone bothered to look down the hill and see the pram floating in the water. The baby died later in hospital.
[story]

Yeti (my husband-like person) claims that my generation has a habit of dissembling. It's never our fault, always someone else's. Being considerably older, he can get away with making such sweeping generalisations (he makes different and equally cogent criticisms of his own generation, but that's another story) . I guess he's not the only one who has noticed this trend, as I was amused to read this in the Driver's Handbook (while studying for my final driver's licence test):

And when people make insurance claims after crashes, they generally avoid taking the blame. The experts call this ‘external attribution’ – where you attribute blame or the reason that things happen to things outside of yourself. As you might have guessed, ‘internal attribution’ is when you assign blame or the reason that things happen to yourself. The healthiest situation is where you can recognise the things that are due to you and what you do and the things that aren’t. Research suggests that people who can honestly recognise what is their fault and what is others’ are safer drivers.

It’s tough to accept that some things are down to you.

Tough is not the word, when you think of that little boy's mother. I can't help wondering - did she see what really happened and then automatically invent a way for it not to be her fault, or was she really that clueless? Either way it's going to be bloody difficult to live with...

Leonardo's favourite stuffed toy lion sat atop his white coffin, next to a bunch of white roses, while songs played at the service included The Lion Sleeps Tonight.

But the story which prompted me to write tonight involves a different kind of tragic stupidy, and it would be very hard to attribute blame to the ones who will suffer as a result.

Apparently a mother with three children died from water intoxication after trying to see how much she could drink without peeing. The reason? She was participating in a radio contest to win a Nintendo Wii.
[story]

Who is to blame for that senseless waste of human life? And how will those three kids deal with a lifetime of 'internal attribution' - believing that it was their fault. After all, she was doing it for them... wasn't she?

:(