Category: Life

Life

Finding inspiration in the Last Lecture

Mary C

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Today’s daily prompt brings to mind many different uses of the word lecture. But the one that immediately popped into my mind was the amazing and inspiring Last Lecture of Randy Pausch recorded in September 2007. Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and was given a death sentence in the form of pancreatic cancer just a month prior to this lecture. The doctor had given him 3-6 months to live and he eventually succumbed to cancer in July of the following year.

The subject of his lecture was a simple premise: Achieve your childhood dreams. No, he didn’t talk about his looming death, his unfulfilled dreams, his regrets or hopes for his family’s future. He talked about his childhood dreams, from a somewhat simple goal of winning the “big” stuffed animal at amusement parks to the big one of working in animation at Disney. He details how he made these dreams come true (maybe not in the way he expected) and why our childhood dreams are important.

To date, there are over 18 million views of his lecture and if you haven’t seen it or are looking for inspiration about living life, please take a look and enjoy.

It got me thinking about my own childhood dreams which were: owning a horse, traveling to England, writing a book, owning a convertible (like Nancy Drew), going on a cruise (Love Boat anyone?) and becoming an Olympic gymnast. Some of these things are not going to happen (the Olympic dream has long since set sail) and some have already been achieved (London, convertible, cruise) and my dream of owning a horse has been eclipsed in knowing how much work it involves! That leaves one goal left on the table which is to write a book. It’s something I have worked on from time to time but has never gotten far off the ground.

What were your childhood dreams and how many did you see come to fruition? What’s left that you still want to do?

MC

Life

Monday Morning Blues

Mary C

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I want to go back to bed. Instead, I’m at work in our redesigned department, a line of desks against a wall, all exactly the same. It looks so robotic, so office-like. Of course, I do work in an office. I’m waiting for our IT folks to bring the phones and computers while I’m pretending this new floor plan isn’t happening.

My old desk was against a row of windows where I had a front-row view of a major road (there were often fender benders directly in front of us – none causing grave damage as far as I could tell). Now I’m looking at nothing but a vibrant blue partition. I need to look on the positive side of all this so let’s conjure up some good thoughts.

Continue reading “Monday Morning Blues” →

Life

Blogging from Bed

Mary C

I don’t have any inspiring words tonight except for these: listen to your body. Mine is beat tired after two days of skiing but I insist a blog must be written in keeping with my promise to myself to try to blog every day in February.

The snow was exceptionally rough today. Me, a friend and our 11 year olds took the lift and I was feeling quite excited so I suggested grabbing the next lift to the top (you have to ski a ways to get to it). There was a bit of miscommunication and I lost them 5 minutes into our run. I was lagging behind and fell (the snow was dense and ungroomed – not that I need a reason to fall) and by the time I righted myself they were gone and hadn’t noticed I was no longer with them.

I went to the bottom instead of the other lift and waited a while to see if we could reconnect. I decided to go back up and try to catch them at the other lift. Again, they were nowhere to be found. I looked up and the mountain had no visibilty at the top but since it had been my idea to go up I decided to take the lift on my own (well with a fellow skier/stranger) and by the time we were halfway up I knew it was a very bad idea. It was fairly treacherous and I managed to make it down with one wipeout and a couple falls which I considered to be a success! I skied right back to the lodge and decided to read for the rest of the afternoon.

My body is beat up and so here I am blogging in bed with the Olympics, a snoring husband and snoozing cat as company.

Hope you had a great day.

MC

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!

Continue reading “Simplify with a shopping embargo” →

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” →

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

Life

Oops

Mary C

Do you know that moment that happens so fast. Like the blink of an eye? That’s the moment I realized I shut the door behind me. Locked. Keys inside. I was rushing around at the last minute as I needed to be somewhere soon. I was savoring a book I’d bought for Liam and I couldn’t put it down. It’s called The Giver. Jonas was turning twelve and he had just had the Stirrings. What was going to happen next? I looked at the clock and knew I’d have to rush to make it in time.

What is it they say when you make plans that dissolve in an instant?

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Usually it’s God’s way of telling you to slow down, right? Or maybe this time He was telling me – you’re going to slow. You want to lay around reading a book when you should be getting ready for your meeting? I’m going to lock you out of your house in the dead of winter while you can think that one over. Ha.

Continue reading “Oops” →

Life

Teach me to run

Mary C

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I have been toying with the idea of becoming a runner in 2018. It’s a lofty goal because for the last 50 years I have absolutely abhorred the idea of running. The first memory I have of running dates back to about fifth-grade gym class when our teacher asked what everyone’s dream destination was. Do you know what’s coming? Well, we didn’t. Everyone yelled Florida, home of sunshine and Mickey Mouse. What came out of his mouth next was horrifying and chilling: OK, you’re going to run there. What?!

His brilliant idea was to find out how many miles to your dream destination (nearly 1400) and then over the course of the next several weeks (years!) we would run there mile by mile in a loop that encircled the playground and sports field next to our school. It’s amazing how many of us decided our dream destination was Hague, NY a nine-mile distance that seemed more reasonable, if not as enticing.

Continue reading “Teach me to run” →

Life

Making a plan for dinner

Mary C

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I’m going to have to pass on undulate guys. My brain is just not clicking today.  What I want to talk about instead is meal planning. This is something I used to do several years ago and I thought since I’m trying to cut back on foods that are overly processed and sugary, this would be the best way to go about it.

Back in the early days of motherhood and when I was planning to go back to work after maternity leave, I knew it was time to get organized. Liam was turning one at the time and as I think back now, those were the easy days of juggling family calendars. But I knew meal planning was going to be important if I wanted to get a meal on the table every most nights.

Continue reading “Making a plan for dinner” →