Setting Intentions
March 2023 Slice of Life challenge
Last year I was sad to see the Slice end. It being the start of the COVID shut downs, I found solace in the routine of writing a blog post each day. To be real, I had NOTHING else to do. It was something to accomplish each day when there was barely anything else I was responsible for.
This year is different. With a year of so many changes and restarts and more to come, I am glad to remove one thing off of my to-do list. So farewell Slice. See you next year.
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My youngest daughter decided to clean and organize her room. I appreciate her all-of-the-sudden motivation to make her room more livable, but what I do not appreciate is the pile of cast-away things in my hallway. She throws everything she no longer wants in the hallway outside of her room and it becomes my job to manage.
If this cleaning and organizing was done on my time I'd be less annoyed because I would be prepared for the packing up, listing/selling and donating all of the items. Instead I came home from teaching two yoga classes to find piles of stuff to deal with instead of checking out and relaxing. It took me a couple of hours to sift through things and then carry it all down to the garage. Then I spent another hour or two posting things online for sale. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing more satisfying than a good purge and it helps me meet my goal to be accomplished this spring break. However, it came in an unexpected and unplanned way. Now I need to not get side tracked again so that I can get to the things I actually have planned to accomplish. Yesterday I flanked my day in the yoga studio. I started my day with my regular 8am hot mix class and ended it by teaching two classes. A couple of weeks ago I was talking about how I missed teaching and then the opportunity to sub two yoga classes dropped in my lap.
It's always a bit nerve wracking to sub a class. My aim is not to teach too differently than the teacher I am subbing for. This time there was added pressure because the owner and two other yoga teachers were students in my class. It's hard not to feel like you are being evaluated under those circumstances. I ended up not letting my nerves get the best of me and taught a really great first class. The second class I taught was restorative yoga which isn't my forte but I think it went okay too. Today I am a bit sore from a day of yoga yesterday. All I plan to do today is walk the dogs and take it easy. My back is feeling about a 70%, a solid C-, so I do not want to exasperate it. We are dog-sitting a goldendoodle puppy for the week. We already have a labradoodle puppy just under 2 years old so what's another puppy in the house?
The first night the two dogs filled it with peeing upon meeting in the doorway, wrestling on the living room couch and pooping on my kitchen accent rug. My girls were loving playing with both dogs. This all occurred way past midnight. I was the only one who cared about trying to get to sleep, which wasn't too easy to do with all the dog excitement in the house. Day two the dogs have calmed down a lot. There is more napping under the kitchen table and on the couch with and occasional wrestle when they find the energy. Both dogs love to be near people and will follow us if we decide to switch locations in the house. I do not mind the double cuddles. The rest of my family thinks this Is a trial run for us to decide to get a second dog. For me I am finding that I don't need an extra life to take care of and clean up after. But dogs are cute, fun and show us tons of love so they may try to trick me into getting another one. I will need to stay strong on this one though. I think a week long visit from another beautiful dog is all I need for now. Often, I'm in pain. I've been experiencing periodic pain in my lower back and my wrist. Thankfully, I haven't had the back and wrist pain simultaneously but both come and go as they please it seems. The pain arrives suddenly, gets worse and sticks around for a week or so.
It turns my normal life routine upside down. I have to trade my usual workout for sitting on my butt or lying down in bed not to exasperate the pain. I can't even take my dog for a walk when the backpain is present. It comes in and takes my mood and smashes it way low down. It makes working hard to do. I have to act and do normal things while no one around me even knows the pain that I am currently battling. Being in pain is a very lonely place to be. No one feels how you feel. Your pain cannot be seen. No one can help ease your pain. You have to sit in it, alone until it decides to slowly dissipate. It's not a very fun place to be to all alone. Until one day you realize the pain is no longer plaguing you. Where did it go? Will it come back? When will it come back? Please don't come back, Back to my normal life routine. Until ... Spring break is next week. Since our family has no formal plans to travel anywhere I have been thinking about how I might fill my week. I have two goals. I want to feel accomplished each day AND indulge in relaxation and self-care.
My ideas of what to do to help me feel accomplished:
Here are ideas to fulfil my relaxation and self-care requirements:
The things on my list to feel accomplished are things I can do any time but I’m usually too busy with work to want to spend any of my extra minutes doing those chores when I really need to take a break. Being able to have the extra time and nothing to work around will make me feel content crossing those items off my list. I’m lucky to have so many indulgent relaxing things on my self-care list. I am looking forward to getting to them all. How would you spend a week to yourself? It's the end of an era. This is my last week of teaching remotely. There are many things I will be thrilled to say goodbye to and others I will miss. For instance, today will be the last day I will have a quiet morning getting ready for work. My daughters only go into school two days a week and on the three days they stay home they get to sleep in a bit later. There sleep in time is when I get to enjoy a quiet house while I get myself ready for work.
After spring break we all will be going back full time. I will have five days of frenzied mornings where everyone in the house is trying to get themselves ready and out the door in time for school/work. No more silence as my girls sleep in. Instead my oldest will awake before I do and make enough noise with doors, drawers and a whirlwind of throwing brushes and clothes around so she can look just right for her classmates. My youngest will wake with her anti-morning attitude as she stomps around generally pissed-off that she is awake. This pandemic wasn't all bad. It gave me a few extra quiet, peaceful mornings each week. I want to express my gratitude to the universe for giving them to me. I am going to miss them. My daughter has been talking about quitting gymnastics. We recently found out she has a cyst in her hand that is causing her pain. The doctor won't remove it unless we exhaust the least invasive options. Bracing it and taking it easy has reduced her pain so at our last doctor's visit he sent us on our way to watch and see what happens.
A week has passed since seeing the doctor and she is in pain again. I am not sure if she talking about quitting because she is in pain and is nervous about a possible surgery or if she is really done with the sport. She has been moving up a level each of the 5 years she has participated and this is the year where many girls decide to hand up their leotards because moving to the next level the skills become scarier and the practice time in the gym multiplies. My daughter has no other activities in her life right now except school, limited Girls Scouts and gymnastics. If she were to quit gymnastics she would have over 16 hours a week to fill. She keeps citing reasons to quit that are not even applicable to the present moment. For instance, she's in 5th grade now and says next year in 6th grade there will be too much homework and school will be so much harder she won't have time for gymnastics. I want her to really know what she is quitting gymnastics for. I want her to have a plan for these 16 hours a week and what she will fill them with. I have a gut feeling that she wants to give up because of her injury and I want her to make a decision to quit after she perseveres and gets to the other side of this injury. I don't want it to be the reason she gives up. How much of this is me guiding her to make what I think is the right decision and how much is her making this decision for herself? Because if I am honest I am crushed that she wants to give up. I will be losing something that I have enjoyed too. I have watched her participate in a sport that helped her excell physically and grow mentally. She has accomplished so much in the last 5 years and I don't want us both to lose that. Is there anything worse than having your mind set on eating something delicious and then going to the cabinet or the refrigerator only to find that it's gone? Learning that the ice cream or chocolate bar or restaurant leftovers is missing, no where to be found.
I grew up in a house where no food was safe. I had an athletic 6 foot 3 inch 200 plus lbs. brother who would eat anything at anytime with abandon. He never had one ounce of care as to whether it was the last one or belonged to someone else in the house. There were times when I would go out for lunch or dinner with friends and bring home my leftovers. I'd be so excited to eat them the next day only to find the container missing from the fridge. It wouldn't even detour him if my name or a few choice words were written on the container. He would eat it anyway. He would drink the majority of the cases of Pepsi before I would enjoy one can. He would eat entire boxes of granola bars right out of the grocery bags as they were being carried into our kitchen from the car. Nothing was safe. When I became an adult with my own place, my own kitchen and no brother I realized I was extremely protective of my food. My husband learned quickly not to eat anything without asking if it was mine first. But now that I have two daughters, 11 and 14 years old, I am back to having my hopes crushed again. I was planning on having a piece of delicious buttered toast this morning, The bread was there last night. This morning , no bread to be found. I hang my head in disappointment with plans to stop at the bakery for more bread. My buttered toast will have to wait until tomorrow. As I pulled into my parking spot this morning I heard the radio blasting loudly in the minivan parked next to me. I'm not talking about just loud music playing but rather I heard two hosts of a morning radio show bantering back and forth. It got me thinking, who still listens to the radio? And yes of course the person next to me in the minivan does but I'd like to know who in terms of how many people still regularly listen to morning radio or other radio shows for that matter?
Of course, I blast the occasional loud music, maybe something from my phone or maybe something from an old CD (Yes I'm still rocking a CD player in my 2009 Toyota Camry.), but never a radio show. On my commute I am mostly entertained by podcasts. I regularly listen to several different podcasts hosted by comedians or podcasts that follow murder cases or ones with biohacking topics that I enjoy. I like that I can pick podcasts by specific topics or interests of mine. It feels like I am filling my driving time educating myself. I also appreciate that podcasts allow me to fast-forward through all the ads. However, most of the time the ads are targeted to the listeners and I am sometimes interested in what they have to offer. You can't do that with a radio show. You're forced to listen to ads that may or may not apply to your interests. And who knows how long it will be before your show returns again after a commercial break? I know I don't get traffic and weather or current events from my podcasts but I think I prefer it that way. What do you prefer radio shows or podcasts?? |
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March 2022
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