Month: February 2018

Life

Simplify with a shopping embargo

Mary C

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I have a constant reminder to live simply  with a sign that says just that on the wall in my writing room. I should probably move it to the space above my computer so it’s in eyesight when I’m tempted to go online and buy something we don’t need. Buying things we don’t need is the opposite of living a simplified life.

A year ago I decided to use the month of February to get my online (and offline – hey, I’m looking at you Target) shopping habit in line. I made an agreement with my husband, Jim, that we wouldn’t buy any unnecessary items for the month so we were limited to only buying food and toiletries as needed. He is a big Amazon Prime user so having the boxes stop for a month was divine. Not having to deal with the boxes alone was a huge improvement!

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Life

Getting It Together

Mary C

Last week, I mentioned I was going to try to do a video blog (vlog) because scrolling through YouTube, I don’t feel that real life is represented much. In fact it’s probably because I tend to follow people who are vlogging about fashion, home, family, organization and such that I’m not seeing people dealing with such realities as a messy home, forgotten homework and not quite togetherness. Does that make sense?

I was toying with starting my own channel where I would talk about how I’m still in the process of getting it together and while I *wish* to be all together at this point in my life, I’m still a ways off and probably won’t reach the pinnacle of some of the YouTubers I follow. That’s OK because I’m all about progress and not perfection. The things we do during the week to keep the family afloat (laundry, cooking, organizing, transportation, hugs and love) fill up the majority of time and I always have to make time for things I love too which include writing, reading, prowling twitter and sometimes exercising. I honestly don’t think I have time to be a YouTuber.

I did, however, create a quick introductory video and thought I’d upload it. It’s fairly raw since I only used the camera on my computer and I’m no professional when it comes to lighting, editing or design. So it’s a little awkward (at one point I noticed my morning snack was in the corner of the frame and I quickly took it to the kitchen). I was looking around for a tripod (I know we have one somewhere!) so I could use a more professional camera but gave up after a 30 minute search. I created a second video today talking about the frustration of email and how I missed one about family day at Liam’s religion class over the weekend. I wish I could do some quick editing but I will have to look into some software to help me do this.

Here it is! I’m not sure if I’ll be making many more because it has taken me so much time just to do the two videos (without even editing them).

Life

What to do on a snow day

Mary C

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Our corner of the world is having a snow day today! This is also about the time of year we all start grumbling about the cold and the endlessness of winter but I’m pretty happy about it because it will mean much better ski conditions this weekend. We’re at mid-winter and I’ve been wondering whether getting a season pass to ski is a good idea due to the unpredictability of the forecast. So far we’ve only used them twice but my friend assures me we’ll be skiing well into spring because the mountain is north of us in Vermont.

Snow days are a mixed bag around here especially when all of us are home (because I’m no fun and expect everyone to be doing chores since we have an unexpected day free and a messy house!). I worked in the morning but when I came home, Jim and Liam had not moved much (reading and watching TV). I whipped into a frenzy cleaning the kitchen and then announced there would be no more TV today. From there Liam inundated me with “what can I do’s”. He decided to use his wheelies around the house (which I’ve asked him not to do sooooo many times) and I’m running around with bare feet thinking he’s going to run over my toes.

Continue reading “What to do on a snow day” →

Writing

To enroll or not, that is the question

Mary C

writing

For the past couple of years, I’ve taken a few writing classes at an area arts center to improve my skills and expose myself to new styles of writing. It has been a mostly good experience but my last class, while overall I would give it a thumbs up, my schedule was such that I missed half the classes so I was hesitant to sign up for another one this spring. I found one I am extremely interested in called Narrative Nonfiction and it starts tomorrow. Should I enroll? I go back and forth.

I have a couple of vacations and one work trip to California coming up in March and early April which is one reason I’m balking. I found that missing half the classes in my last go around, I didn’t have a great connection with the other participants and while I read a couple of my essays/stories in class, I didn’t get to workshop them like the others. It was still very helpful and I got good feedback (although I didn’t get suggestions on things I should tweak or change). One of my goals for 2018 is to try to get something published (offline) and I think the more I expose myself to these classes, the better chance I will have.

One of my favorite aspects of the last class was to explore and attempt some different writing techniques (like a Wikipedia entry and a metafiction story). Again it was hard because I was missing about every other week so I was always a week off from what we were sharing in class. Our instructor was great and I got a lot from the other people in the class – how they wrote, suggestions everyone made to improve their stories, all the points of view.

I also tried an online novel writing class last summer and it felt like a lot of work because you have to read everyone else’s work and offer suggestions in addition to writing your own. It’s probably because instead of giving the person your feedback in person, you had to type up all your comments and then keep all the different pieces straight from week to week.  I also got a lot out of the class because we had to work on specific writing tasks each week like writing the same chapter using different points of view and found I’m most comfortable writing from first person (which was not how I was writing my novel). I’m not sure I would try an online class again, though.

So I still have another 24 hours to make my decision on whether to take a class this spring. What to do! What to do!

MC

 

 

Musings

How do you solve a problem like football?

Mary C

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Football season is over! Of course, there will be the post-game rehash of what happened, the half-time show and the commercials but the long season of men in tight pants, tossing around a ball is over. Can you tell I’m not a fan? To each his own, I guess, but apparently, I’m in the minority because over 114 million tuned in to the big game yesterday.

I did give football a go many times through the years for the people in my life: family, friends, boyfriends and my husband. I could never understand the game and why each 15 minute quarter seemed to last an hour. Whenever I asked questions during a game I was sushed because you are not permitted to talk during the game due to rules of social propriety unless you are yelling at the players and coaches on TV.

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Musings

A crazy idea

Mary C

I am forever trying to get my act together. You’d think by 50 I’d have things well under control, but instead I find myself still messing things up several times a week and this morning’s was a doozy.

Liam is playing basketball over the winter so he’s had to miss Sunday school for the past few weeks because his games have been on Sunday morning. I was very excited we didn’t have a game this weekend and while Jim ran him over to church, I got back in bed with a cup of tea and a book – sounds heavenly, right? I still had to shower before we went to collect him before mass and I kept telling myself just one more chapter.

Then Jim came in and announced there was a family activity during his class today where we were all supposed to make Valentine’s together. Jim had thrown on jeans and a sweatshirt and didn’t stay with him because he also needed to shower before mass. I was upset because I could picture him at a table all by himself in a corner sulking that we did’t love him as much as the other kids parents. I pictured him in many years hence describing to a therapist the various ways we had let him down through the childhood and I hightailed it to the shower and was ready in an astounding 15 minutes, makeup and all. I managed to get there with 20 minutes left in class but I could tell he was sad.

I’m sure I have an unread (or worse, an unread and deleted email) from the organizer because we always get reminders when something special is going on. I usually make time to read these because I am trying to be more organized but sometimes my email gets so overwhelming I just delete a bunch without reading – most of it is junk.

I really don’t know how to get it all together and that’s where my crazy idea comes in. Last week I had the idea to start a vlog about “getting it together”, but I’m not really sure there would be any interest in it. I myself love to follow several vlogs but they are run by extremely put together people. By all appearances they have perfect homes, cleaning routines, flawless makeup, healthy diets and excercise schedules and just all around good organizational skills. I was thinking of something more realistic for the rest of us who might not have it all together.

I did end up shooting a five minute video to introduce it last week, but I’m not sure how to even edit and publish such a thing. These people all have good camera presence and editing skills and I am just so raw. What do you think? Would you watch such a thing? It might be kind of like looking at a trainwreck!

I’ll have to think on it some more.

MC

Life

Organizing the family for the slopes

Mary C

Today is turning into one of “those” days. When things keep going amiss. Typically we ski every Saturday once the snow starts coming but it’s been hit or miss this year with it either being too cold (below 0 plus windchill) or too warm (60 degrees and rain). This week is cold but if you dress right it should be OK.

One of our biggest challenges is getting out of the house “on time” by 7:30 because it’s a two hour drive to the mountain. In years past, we’ve skiied at a place within an hour’s drive so it was not a big deal if we didn’t get out of the house until after eight. But getting out of the house never happened without a meltdown (I won’t name names), missing gear (once I forgot to pack Liam’s snowpants – expensive mistake) and threats of calling the whole thing off (again, no names).

So this year I vowed to be different. Organization would be key. Making sure we had every bit of gear and then some. Extra gloves, warm socks and baclavas. Ski pants (dry), boots, poles and skiis. And then there’s the food which is a very big part of the whole enterprise (unless you want to spend a fortune in the lodge cafe which we prefer not to do). The must have things like paper plates, plastic ware, knife and ciutting board (for the fruit and cheese). Paper towels, crackers, chips, etc, etc.

In years past I’d throw random things in reusable shopping bags, but we really upped our game and got the Scout BJ carrier bag which fits everything quite nicely. It tends to be pretty heavy but we have most everything someone in the group needs.

I packed everything yesterday and since there wasn’t skiing last night, I didn’t have to contend with the extra step of drying out our clothes, gloves and other gear. That was a huge help. And yet, at 7:20 a.m. no one was near ready to go and we almost reverted back to our behavior of past years. Truthfully, I’m the biggest problem here because I have very little patience in the morning, especially since I did most of the orgazational work. Can you sympathize with me on that?

Eventually, i told myself to relax since it’s not like we were under mandate to leave the house at 7:30 and then all was good. We made it to the mountain just a few minutes after our friends and had a wonderful day on and off the slopes.

As a side note, I thought I’d try daily blogging in February to get back into a writing rhythm.

Hope your day was great!

Liam and I after a day of skiing

MC

Writing

Catching up

Mary C

I wanted a coffee in the worst way this morning. Part of my healthier eating routine is to forgo coffee due to the cream and sugar I use but since I had a bowl of ice cream last night, I’m pretty sure I’m not doing so well with it. So I thought I’d just cheat a little and have that coffee but someone has my back because we are nearly out of cream and the expiration date on it is tomorrow. I bought this cream before I gave up coffee (around Christmas) so I’m not about to drink something that’s about to go off. Tea it is.

And so every time I sit down to write on my day off, I’m greeted by this face. You can imagine this presents a bit of a problem. He is puzzled why I’m not going to play with him all day instead of doing boring human things.

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All I had to do was give him a treat and he happily goes to the kitchen to gnaw away on it. If only life was so simple for all of us.

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Writing

30 drafts!

Mary C

Egad! Thirty drafts in my folder. I haven’t posted here in nearly two weeks but I have so many uncompleted thoughts in my drafts. I don’t know what the issue is but I’m profusely embarrassed or at least somewhat disheartened that I’ve put writing on the back burner again.

In early January, I spent about 20 minutes on my resolutions. I wrote them in a brand new fancy notebook with a brand new fancy pen and then haven’t looked at them again. I know somewhere in there is a promise to write more. Especially on Fridays when I’m off from work. I did manage to do this two weeks ago and got started on a new novel that came rushing out of me faster than I could type it. I spent a couple of hours just hammering out the words. I reread them and thought this could really go somewhere and then the next day I thought it was complete shite! That was also the day I locked myself out of the house.

Continue reading “30 drafts!” →