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Lindsay Metcalf
on May 22 2013 - 06:00 AM
When that tornado siren sounds, I'm in the basement
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mara williams
on May 21 2013 - 06:00 AM
Summer break has this mom on a house upkeep war path.
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It’s a legitimate question this time of year. You know, New Year’s resolution time where we can improve ourselves, fix all the things that need fixing, do new things to improve ourselves and guess what? It’s all in the name of tradition.
And I gotta say, I love it. I mean come on. Any other time throughout the year if we made a laundry list of things wrong with us, or of what we need to add to our lives to make us better people, we’d just feel depressed and pathetic. But give me a holiday, tell me it’s what I’m supposed to do and hey, I’m all about it.
So every year, in the last few days of the old list, I make a new one. I divide my life into sections and then brainstorm what I can change, what I will focus on. Some years, the list is short -- I call those my self-confident years where apparently I think I’m OK.
Then there are the years where my list -- along with my husband’s -- is so long, we have to weed it down just so it’s obtainable. Let’s call those my self-actualization years. (I’d hate to admit that I need a lot of improving.)
Well, in 2008, I sense a lot of self actualizing.
I have mom resolutions, wife ones, work ones and the increasingly unwieldy list of fitness and finance ones.
And my husband has already been through the routine, my moments of sweeping declarations where my excitement and indignation get tangled.
Some examples: Our youngest son will finally get a photo album in his name, which means 16-month-old birth photos will finally go from computer to print. Our oldest son will get organized , which means he will no longer forget his homework (we still don’t have a plan of action for this one). I’ll go to school more often and have lunch with my son and his friends. I’ll drop 25 pounds. I will save hundreds each month at the grocery store. We will become debt-free.
The beauty of these lists is there is no limit. Just empty all your hopes and pie-in-sky ideas onto a piece of paper. Just think of the you you’d love to be in just 12 months. Like I said, my list is a doozy this year.
And unfortunately, I know I won’t accomplish all of them or even stick with some of them past Feb. 1 -- I’m already predicting doomsday for my resolve to limit my Diet Coke consumption. But you know what? Just having the list and knowing I’m working on things makes me feel pretty good.
Any other KC moms make these lists? Please tell me you, too, make sweeping proclamations like a mad woman and then just pray you can at least accomplish one or two before the next list comes around? Any tricks to sticking with a resolution?
My husband and I still haven’t done the weeding of the list for 2008. We do that together and call it our New Year’s Day fun as we shovel in black-eyed peas in the hopes of more money coming our way in the coming year.
Like I said, give me a holiday, tell me it’s what I’m supposed to do and hey, I’m all about it.
That's much like it is at our house-- I love you're line, "...excitement and indignation get tangled." That is so true for me! I want desperately to have hope that things will be easier, but also fear the failure of follow-through. Even with the fear, I still have a HUGE sense of hope this time of year. My husband and I have already gone out, sans kids, and talked about changes. We didn't write them down this time, but just talked. It was great! And I think any time we take a moment to reassess the direction our lives are going, it's good. I guess I feel that, with your diet coke desire, for example, even if you cut from 5 a day (or whatever) to 3, that's progress. Who cares if it doesn't go to 0 yet? Keep making progress, that's my goal.
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