The First Monday Of A New Year

 It's Monday January 4, 2021 and I am fully committed to staying in bed as much today as possible. While others were up before daylight kicking in their new workout regimen or getting kids off to school, we still have one more day and we are taking it.

My life philosophy these days is "Listen." Listen to what your mind and body need, listen to what your family really needs each day, listen to who needs your help or what small thing you can do to make the world a better place today. My attachment to how things "should" be done is a thing of the past after more than a decade of going through some incredibly hard things. 

On FB today I was reminded that 10 years ago today I started getting sick with what was just a sinus infection. That led to an emergency hospital stay, months of hearing loss in one ear and months of recovery. Early January has been the scene of the hardest and worst things that have ever happened to me....all in the past 11 years. So I have learned not to make a lot of big, aggressive plans to kick off the year.

The holidays this year ended up being a lot more "energetic" than I had expected. School is back in session tomorrow and we definitely need today for recovery time. I am encouraging everyone to stay in bed and sleep as much as possible, while also doing a lot of salt water and mouthwash gargling and spritzing a lot of saline nasal spray.

I want to make a great big blender of green/purple smoothie and just live off that for the rest of the week....month... year? I feel like I got at least ten books for Christmas, and while I'm still looking at a book I got last Christmas that I haven't read yet (sigh) I am hoping to make some reading progress today and in the coming weeks. I have had a really hard time reading books the past three years. Just sitting and focusing has been difficult for me. So this book thing could be a big challenge for this year.

I decided on my word of the year for 2021 a few weeks ago. I'll introduce it in a follow up post sometime soon. I have a list of priorities I want to focus on and I am trying to pack more fun into this year. As I look back on the past 10+ years it has been a lot of caregiving and sacrificing and not enough self-care and pleasure and that all fits into what I want to focus on this year. I want to make a vision board.

Oh, I can tell you a little about what I made for my immediate family for Christmas this year. I compiled all the general conference talks of Russell M. Nelson, the current prophet and president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It turned out to be 335 pages! A lot of work to clean up all the copied and pasted files and coding, create a workable layout, etc. I had a copy bound for each of my immediate family and have shared the digital file with friends and extended family. If you would like a digital file copy let me know.

Even thought its almost noon I have been putting off getting something to eat so far today. Part of me wants a platter of super healthy stuff and another part of me just wants a giant hot chocolate with whipped cream and a piece of toast to crawl back into bed with. Not yet sure who will win that battle. I suppose I could do both today some time.

Looking forward to the continued journey in 2021. I have become a real convert to the "slow and steady wins the race" and "small, steady steps to great things" philosophies over the past few years. 2020 was an especially big year for cementing my focus on accomplishing awesome things by small, consistent effort. I'm putting together a list of blog posts to cover all I did and made this past year. Hopefully I'll be here at the blog more often this year. It will all come down to practicality and what is best for me and the family. Hope you are having a wonderful start to 2021 and look forward to connecting with you here. Happy New Year!

Finding Joy During Covid-19 House Arrest

Hi Friends! I'm reaching out to the universe to say "Hello! We miss you!" to all the planet. We are on day two of "stay at home" lockdown here in New Mexico, but school has already been out for two weeks and we have basically been self-quarantining since then except for a few necessary departures from home. 

First thing this morning I took dear Hubs to an emergency endodontist appointment. Having a tooth die during a pandemic, while on lockdown is not a lot of fun. Like you need more problems. Thank goodness for Tylenol with Codeine or I'm not sure what would be happening here.

As I said, Kiddo has been out of school now for two weeks already and now with our latest state lockdown that has added at least another week, not that anyone is feeling very optimistic that the kids will go back to school this year. Kiddo says she's learned her lesson about leaving things like jackets in her locker. I think I may have mentioned that in warning a few times over the past three years but no one was listening to me on that. Ha. Whatever it takes, a mom's gentle, wise warning or a global pandemic. Insert "hands thrown up in the air" emotion here and then "laughing" emoji -- haha.

We are staying busy completing a list of chores, tasks and odd jobs around the house that have needed attention. Progress is slower than I had hoped but we are crossing things off just about every day. Yesterday I fixed three loose tiles on our master bath tub. We've been weeding and trimming up the yard in 15 minutes stretches that really end up being 30 but no one has rebelled yet. Crossing my fingers there is no uprising about it not really being 15 minutes even though I keep selling it as that.

The Man has replaced some electrical plugs this week, fixed a plastic storage cupboard that was knocked over and cracked in a crazy wind, and sorted through a box of shoes in the garage. Progress.

Kiddo has finally caught on to the philosophy The Man and I have been preaching for years that if you tidy your room up in a few minutes every day you don't have to spend a whole Saturday cleaning up a giant mess. If there is to be any silver lining to this crazy March 2020, I'll take a long-term commitment to keeping her room clean. But I'm going to hold back my celebratory dance a little longer to see if things stick.

The one person who thinks having the entire pack at home 24/7 is the greatest thing ever it is our German Shepherd. Everyone taking breaks to play with him throughout the day, people to snuggle with, no one too busy for him or leaving home for long hours. This IS his best life!

Meanwhile for we humans there are a lot of stresses underlying all this and worries for the future. Just managing the daily anxiety for children and adults requires a lot of attention and effort. But there is an interesting lesson I've learned as I've watched social media over the past two weeks. Those who are positive are positive still, those you are happy are finding ways to stay happy and make the best of life. Those who are generally grumpy, negative and sour still are. Attitude really is everything! Doesn't matter what you are going through. Some people act like this is only happening to them and some people are reaching out in every way possible to bless others and share love EVEN THOUGH this IS happening to them. Such a life lesson!

A friend dropped off a brownie mix, some microwave popcorn and some chocolate in the cutest bag on our doorstep yesterday. I have lots of friends texting to see if we need anything while they are out. 

Perhaps my favorite act of service this week was after we heard Monday afternoon that the governor was going to put the state under "stay at home" rules. So we decided to run out and just see if we could grab a few more groceries. As we were getting ready to leave, The Man got the brilliant idea to grab some food for our dear "senior" neighbors so they would not have to go out and expose themselves to the potential health risks of grocery shopping. At the store we each got a cart and tried to divide and conquer on our list.

When we met up again his cart was filled with stuff for the neighbors. In the end he delivered a giant box with tons of fresh produce because the wife is a vegetarian, juice, bread, toilet paper and other goods to them. It was so sweet! He tried to doorbell ditch the box at the porch but their dog started barking and the wife saw him. But I thought that was one of the sweetest, most generous things I have ever seen him do -- and he has always been very generous.

So I say, keep on watching out for each other, friends. Keep looking to the positive people to buoy you up. This is hard and none of us has ever done it before -- so we have to give ourselves a lot of grace and be gentle with ourselves. This is a "figure it out day by day" situation. We can do this! Brave and strong! Resilient. Loving and caring for each other.