Back to the mothering/working/wifeing mode I try to balance.  First of all, there is really no such thing as balance.  Usually the pendulum swings back and forth so frequently and with such dramatic force I usually end up seasick.  There are phases where I have to fit work into the cracks and my family life takes over and definitely times where I need to fit my family into the cracks and work takes over.

I have the following bits in place that make it feel a little less chaotic.

1. I have resigned myself to the fact that we aren’t going eat super-healthy-home-cooked-meals every night.  I think my frequency is about once a week and as the fates would have it, that is usually the night Jon is cooking.  Otherwise I have employed a variety of tactics over the years from cooking once a month and then freezing, to go to the “Let’s Dish” type places, to having a theme such as we are grilling out or eating cereal this week.  To let’s clear out the cabinets and have surprise meals all week.  One of my favorite meals I came up with recently was scrambled eggs with a little salsa and rice cheese (I am not vegan or anything, we just happened to have this in the house) topped on a pita with a side of chips, raw carrot sticks and apples.  It was done in all of three minutes.  Kids generally ate it. I have learned to put some pretty good marketing spin on stuff around here.

2. I have a nanny and am proud of that fact.   The other deal I made with her, is that while z is sleeping in the afternoon, I really need the floors swept and dishes done.  Talk about being in my happy place when I come home.  But I am also not beating myself up all the time because I have to work.  Usually I only have to work 20 hours a week, but there are weeks where that triples and having an amazing support team in place is completely profound.  I can lean in to Jon, our nanny, my friends, grace with myself.

3. I don’t ever ever expect perfection. Or that if I set out goals for myself, I have complete freedom to not accomplish those goals.

4. I am really good at saying no.  Again, I think I might come across as much more organized and having my crap together than I actually am, therefore get asked a lot to do stuff for organizations, school, etc.  If it doesn’t fit in my life or serve my life goals, then it doesn’t make the cut.  Sometimes though during slow work times when I feel like I have more space I say yes, and then a month later regret it.  So I am definitely still a work in progress.

5. I am content to be a B mom or as Jon puts it a “good-enough” parent.  Maybe when the kids don’t live in the house anymore I can finally be an A mom, but I really don’t think I am ever going to be Betty Crocker, Martha Stewart, or whoever.  I will always look for shortcuts, I will always end up yelling at my kids at some point during the day, I will not always nurture them as much as they need it, if I am feeling crazy I will always allow myself to use the crutch of tv/computer or send them to their room, I will allow myself earplugs and wine and a bit of rocking on the floor in the kitchen sometimes.  I will not usually allow my kids to be in everything they want to be in.  But I will always tell them I love them, and I will always try to give them as many hugs as I can throughout their days, I will always try to give them places and space to run around and be crazy, we will always try to travel with them, I will always try to sit down with them even for a couple of minutes to ask them how their day was and what they did and who is their new bff of the day. I will always try to have good music for them, I will always have clothes they can get filthy, I will always try to speak to their heart.  Try is my new favorite word which holds promise and grace all in three little letters.

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When I first heard futuristic thinking I thought of where my mind goes often, to the sci-fi realm. I imagine we were thinking our future selves and goals, etc but my future self is on a rocket ship.

Anyway, where I see myself from now to 10 years from now is promoting the green tech field, as far as new energy sources, smarter, sustainable cities, people living and depending on each other within a city block, urban farming, sharing gardens and everything with each other. My future self’s life is completely enmeshed with my community.

I want my children to grow up with a love for Christ, a love for community, and to not be brats as well as attain knowledge, have common sense, problem solving skills, well roundedness, and the distinct ability to think they can do anything. So my goals are to make that happen.

I want to still be interested and love and be loved by Jon when our kids leave home. So another goal is to cultivate our marriage.

And I want to be smart, interesting, and drop dead gorgeous. So the final goal is to drink a lot of coffee because I feel all of those things after I had my coffee in the morning.

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Lent arrives and with it brings a solace, a time to draw in and learn again what sacrifice means.  It is redemption time, it is the process leading up to my favorite time of the year.  I love the journey towards Easter each year.  It is a time of newness as we sweep out the old to make way for new growth.  I sometimes hate sweeping out the old.

This year I decided to embark on a fruit and vegetable fast for lent to try to sweep out the old.  The old habits are killer, such as caffeine, sugar, wine.  I like those old habits, they make me feel as if I am smarter, happier, and prettier.  The lack of them have made me crabby with my husband and kids.  And being halfway through the lent season, my dreams have turned towards Easter morning and my favorite things about Easter.

Here are a few of my favorite things:

1. Cadbury Eggs
2. Easter baskets (I have already gotten most of the stuff for the kids baskets, I couldn’t help myself)
3. Sunrise services (Since having kids, not made it to most of these)
4. Hardboiled Eggs
5. Easter afternoon cookout with neighbors
6. The Greek traditional game of hitting the ends of a hardboiled egg with another person to see whose egg breaks
7. Chocolate
8. Wine
9. A lamb cake (pound cake with coconut frosting) my mom makes every year
10. Leg o lamb roast for dinner
11. Knowing Christ rose
12. Being with people I love
13. Jellybeans
14. Deviled Eggs
15. Lent is over
16. Pretty, new dresses for my girls
17. Pretty, new dress for me
18. Stations of the Resurrection at church
19. Baptism on Easter morning
20. Seeing my kids “get it” when we read the Easter Story

The journey is important, as well as the story, and perhaps my favorite part of Easter is weaving our family’s story into the bigger epic novel that Easter represents.  And teaching our kids how to write their own story, giving them the language and experiences so that they can pass Easter and all of it’s glory down to their kids.

I wrote this blog post while participating in the SocialMoms and Hop blogging program, for a gift card worth $25. For more information on how you can participate, click here.

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we had pizza, doritos, root beer, popcorn and a movie…  and then a dance/wrestling party.  and now i can hear the trains in the distance and the beautiful sound of nothing.  all five little ones are recharging their batteries for fun craziness tomorrow.  so perhaps i am loving well…

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My world has been laser focused down to 2 guys and 2 girls.  One of those guys being much much more important than all the others.  How do I love them well?  How do I love myself well?  I have a sneaky suspicion that there will be a continuation of my journey from last month.

I am slightly stymied as to what this looks like and what this means.  Loving someone else well in some ways means a slight or rather drastic death to self.  So let me set some goals so I can see what that looks like at the end of the month.

1. Choosing to take an interest (genuine) in something Jon is interested in.

2. Speaking other’s love languages to them, rather than expecting them to know mine.

3. Being gentle, yet firm with myself and diving deeper to discover how big the iceberg really is.

PS. To kick things off this month, we watched Eclipse together.  I am impressed Jon hung in there with me.  He always knows how to love me better than I do him.

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1. I am undisciplined enough to stick with a budget.  It is always so interesting to me when I put something out there like this and commit to trying to stick with a budget what inevitably happens.  The first, and most exciting result of this statement was that, in fact, I set up our money software and did, to my surprise, check it everyday and try to keep things in line.  What was interesting is that we had next to no money come in.  So it always amuses me when this happens.  But the point really was to get the junk of never knowing out of my head and into a place of awareness.

2. I am undisciplined enough to intentionally decide what I put into my mouth.  Now this was a shocker.  I was intending to just track what I was eating and try to exercise.  What, in fact, came of this was something entirely different.  I discovered I was treating food as my savior, my solace, my boredom fixer.  I discovered that I was trying to make my food behave, and feeding my stomach when I had heart and head hunger.  I discovered a much darker place inside of me than I had known existed before and it is a much bigger journey than I had ever imagined.  I am taking the first steps and it is good…

3. I am undisciplined enough to attend to my spiritual life.  This is a shedding of the scales of my cynicism.  I am working on this.

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I heard a quote this morning that is summing up what this month looks like for me:

“If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” ~Vincent Van Gogh

What self-care means to me this month is getting the junk out of my head.  The voices say the following statements and I am choosing to look at them and see perhaps if I can become a painter.

1. I am undisciplined enough to stick with a budget

2. I am undisciplined enough to intentionally decide what I put into my mouth

3. I am undisciplined enough to attend to my spiritual life

In addition to typical self-care exercises I will be participating in this month (massage, hair done, date night, etc)  I will be saying to myself: I can stick to a budget for 21 days, I can do a food log for 21 days, & I can do a study for 21 days.  I did an experiment yesterday.  All of the above takes approximately 30 mins a day.  30 minutes a day in exchange for the amount of junk and baggage to be out of my head is astounding.  I will let you know how it goes.  As a side note I have lots of support in all three of these, Jon, Melana, & my neighborhood girls.  I have found that it is rawther dangerous and prone to failure to embark on these adventures without close intentional support.  So thanks all.

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We choose to adapt to what we want to do with our life and who we want to be rather than what we should be doing.  Be it family time, sustainability, less commuting time, travel time, home schooling, skiing.  Hmm…. always my fav.  Anyway, we are choosing to drive less expensive cars, live in smaller houses, remodel by going to places that recycle cabinets, etc.  We are less willing to settle for the “more more more” that we are being sold, and go with “less less less” in favor of relationship and intentionality.

It looks like a hybrid life of partial telecommuting, adapting degrees we received to something done via freelancing on our own time, on our own terms.  I hear politicians saying our country is going the way of socialism and communism.  It’s so funny to me when I see the American independent spirit alive and well, and thriving.  And blowing the walls off the boxes we saw our grandparents and parents put themselves in.  Saying, perhaps that box isn’t the right fit for me.  And why should I use a box anyway, when so many other options are available.

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So shopping it is.  Simplicity, organization, budgeting, sustainability. Unknowingly I am addressing all of this in my life.  It’s funny when one asks for the core issue, how sometimes it is actually revealed.  Shopping for me is shiny, happy, invigorating, a competition, a game.  Target is my drug, deals are my pride.

So I stopped it.  I stopped dreaming “researching” for the next greatest deal.  What I didn’t expect was the big void of space in my head, the massive amount of time I had left over.  I was too busy and overwhelmed, and discovered some of it was from “trying to save money” by finding deals.  I am a very frugal shopper, but like I said before, deals are like liquid ecstasy to me.

So it is done for at least 40 days.  Have I said how much I love the season of lent.  It is by far my favorite time of the year.  Creating voids in my life that can be filled up with Christ and the sacrifice he made for me, and my family, and our world.  My sacrifice, if you can even call it that, feels divinely inspired.

So it has been a week & 1/2 of no shopping, no on-line window shopping, no dreaming about what I want.  I have found myself kind of looking around at various times with nothing to do.  Wait, check that, plenty to do, but nothing that I really want to do.  So it is reading the daily emails from The Journey, thanks Michael, and letting myself be kind of at loose ends.  Sitting in that void and getting familiar with it, letting the echoes be loud and uncomfortable.

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I know at some point I said that part of this blog is going to be about my rather large obsession with science fiction literature, tv, & movies.  At times it is slightly embarrassing.  But in the interest of full disclosure, er, rather at least partial disclosure.  New obsession Caprica.  Jon and I watched Battlestar Galactica this past year and thoroughly enjoyed it.  About as much as Deep Space 9 from about 4 years before.

A couple of reasons I love sci-fi is a bit of a peek into what is coming in the future.  What we can “imagine” and what “is” used to have a significantly larger time frame from point of conception to reality.  Now though, so many of the building blocks are in place, that everything will be on a much faster trajectory.  For example, remember the Jetsons, how they would talk to everyone on the big screen, video chatting, “skyping” dare we say.  Now it is such a common occurrence that we don’t really marvel about it as much as we probably should.  My point with that example is that it was significantly longer from conception to common household use than for example, the Minority Report concept of 3D holographic screens, using hand gestures to control what is going on right in from of the user.  I have talked with 4 different people in the past 2 weeks that have either already seen that, or the technology is almost ready to be released, or are in the process of developing it.  The precursor to that, of course, is the iPhone, iPod Touch, and of course now the iPad (I shiver every-time I hear that name, with revulsion).  They really needed to hire Erin and I to help them come up with a different name.  Honestly.

What got me started on this whole rant is that in Caprica they have a sheet of paper that acts as their interaction into/with the virtual world.  They can fold it up and put it in their back pockets, unfold it and use it as their interactive tool to access the information they want.  I love it.  I can’t wait to see something like that fully developed.  In fact, is already happening.

I know a lot of people get scared with how fast technology is going.  I am a mixed bag of excitement and dread.  Then I try the zen approach and figure it’s coming is rather inevitable and how I can I work with it and within it.  Would love to hear about your current infatuation.  And also how you deal with the fast speed of technology.

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