Spring Cleaning

The future is still undecided, and we’re only making rough outlines of various possible plans – but at least we’re starting to think about the next steps and starting to move forward. Finally, we’re going to see what other possibilities there are. I have no idea where this road will take us, but I’m excited to find out.

The first step is to prep the house to be sold. We’ve been lugging so much junk with us every time we move – so we’re going to try and trim down as much as possible. I have no idea what to expect as far as how long it will take to sell the house – the market is so weird right now. We were spoiled in the past. The two houses we’ve owned, we were able to sell within a day of putting it on the market. I’m sure that won’t happen a third time (it would be nice – but I’m not delusional). Once the house is sold, we’ll see what happens next.

Control Freak with No Control

A number of years ago, I was stressing about a few particular things going on in my life and a friend of mine gave me this little lecture about trying to focus on the actual things I had control over. He drew a diagram with two circles – one inside the other. The inside circle was me and what I had control over. The outside circle was everything – all the things I was worried about. The area of where the circles overlapped – those represented things I could actually do something about. Anything outside of that were things I had no control over. I think this was taken from a book – discussing “circle of influence / circle of concern”. I of course remember it as “circle of control” because I’m an admitted control freak. So this is what I remember it looking like:

The problem however, is that sometimes in my life, I feel that blue circle in the middle is really really small. And that just about drives me nuts. Makes me depressed. Frustrated. Resentful. Sometimes it seems like what I actually have control over are inconsequential things like – what will we have for dinner. Things that really don’t affect my life on the whole. This is what it feels like right now:

There’s probably disastrous ways to change the shift – but… yeah – they’re disastrous. To shift priorities in my life, I gave up some control of it. It was a choice I made. I don’t regret it. But that doesn’t change the fact that things are not so great right now. I keep trying to dream like I described in my last post but even that has become hard at times. The difficulty is that I need to come up with the idea – and then make other people act on it – as I am not the one in control so I can’t do it myself. THIS is why I am a control freak. Trying to influence people to act on my dream – I’m “nagging” them or “stressing them out”. I just want to move forward.

Why dreaming is important

You have to dream. If you don’t dream you can never learn what it is you want, you can never define your goals. You have to open up your mind to what may seem impossible. You have to be willing to believe that good things can come your way.

The fact of the matter is that most of the time, reality sucks. There’s bills to pay, risks threatening on your every turn. If all you do is focus on reality, you will never move forward. If all you do is focus on the problems that might come up, you will never improve your existence. If you are thrilled with the way things are, then maybe this is okay. Stagnation in itself is not a problem. But if you are not happy, then you have to make change. Life it too short to live it in fear of what might happen, or protecting what you have because you’re afraid to take a risk.

I’m not saying throw caution to the wind and jump off a bridge – but calculated risks need to be taken. I do not believe in a higher power, but that doesn’t stop me from believing that somehow things will work out. Somehow, I’ll find a way to fix the problems that might come up. The reward is worth the risk, and the problems that come up can be dealt with if/when they are a reality.

When you dream, you leave the risks out of the picture, you forget reality, and suddenly you can picture what it is that will make you happy. While you may never acheive that dream to the smallest detail, and things will never be perfect, you need that dream to help define a goal and give you the direction you need to head to.

You also need to continue to dream as you work towards acheiving your goal. By doing so, you allow yourself to adjust your course and fine tune your goal or change directions if you need to. (Sometimes the grass may just seem greener on the other side, and if so, once you start realizing that – change your course).

Because we are human, we are all too aware of the possibility of our own demise. Some completely ignore it – some live in fear of it and by doing so have trouble truly living. There is a happy medium in there somewhere. That is why dreams are so wonderful. Explore the impossible in your dream. Ignore reality just for the moment. You have to know what’s on the other side before you can plot the course to get there.

Faint heart never won fair lady.

Happy Mother’s Day!

R

One of my favorite pictures of all time. This one too:

Oh yeah, this one too 😀

They are the best Mother’s Day gift. 😀 Even though they look different now, a big girl and boy – they’ll always be like this in my mind.

Spring Cleaning Inspiration

Nothing like watching an epsiode of Hoarders to inspire some spring cleaning! LOL! The kids playroom – previously such a disaster you couldn’t walk in the room – is now looking rather nice. And despite the kids fears that I was going to throw away all their toys – there’s still plenty left to play with – they don’t miss the ones I tossed. (Usually broken toys, or ones that involved numerous (missing) pieces). It feels so good to PURGE! I’d love to just keep throwing stuff out.

Life Update

I‘m totally uninspired to write a deep reflective post about anything in particular in my life. We’re just going through the days. So here’s a random scattering of things going on in my life at the moment…

Freelance work has kept me pretty busy – not as busy as it was a few weeks ago (that much busy would have killed me if it kept up!) Still – it’s been hectic enough that eating healthy has taken a back seat. Many dinners have crept up before I could get a handle on things and we’d end up ordering out. Expensive and unhealthy. I finally broke down and signed my saturday morning away to make a bunch of meals through Dream Dinners. I was at first not looking forward to it – but it didn’t take long (about an hour and a half start to finish to prep 12 dinners) and now we have 3 meals a week for the next month ready to go. All relatively healthy (Well at least it’s better and cheaper than the takeout we’ve been getting!)

I’m still waiting on an evaluation to resolve the other issue I discussed. Just a little more info on it: Rachel’s grades have been terrible this year. It’s weird because she’s really very bright, her reading level is well above her grade level – but she has never done as well as I thought she could. But this year is by far the worst. I’m honestly wondering if they’ll let her move to 5th grade. Unfortunately I wasn’t aware of how bad it was until parent teacher conferences a few weeks ago. (Long story – but yeah, I was totally kept out of the loop and I’m REALLY pissed about it. At this point, really how much can we do to get her grades up??!!) Some things in particular that I’ve been seeing have really made me wonder about whether or not she has ADHD. (Not the hyperactivity – but the inattentive type) She’s extremely disorganized. She does really sloppy work and just rushes through it to get it done quick – so she makes a ton of careless mistakes. If you call her on it and make her go back, she’s often able to see her errors. Part of the reason for her bad grades is because she is constantly losing the papers she needs to work on or turn in. When I stand over her shoulder and make her do her homework, she doesn’t really fight me on it – but it is a bit of a struggle to keep her on task. It’s easier when I make lists for her for everything. Including what she needs to do to get ready in the morning – otherwise she’d forget really basic things like brushing her hair or teeth! (And my telling her to go and do it isn’t enough. It’s like if a bird flies by the window, she’s on another track and she won’t do what she was supposed to) Even the religious school teacher said she’ll call on Rachel in class when they’re having a class discussion and it’s like Rachel was checked out the whole time. So now I’m just waiting to see a specialist to have her evaluated. I hesitated to bring it up on the blog because I know there’s all sorts of hype about ADHD – how they’re “diagnosing all kids with it and just dumping drugs on them” or something. Or how people blame TV and video games for the rise in ADHD. (I think they recently proved that to have no effect anyway) I don’t want to hear about how if we change our eating habits and eat all whole foods, etc. how it will cure her. I have started giving her Omega-3 supplements – which I did see some reliable data on how it can improve kids with ADHD, but I’m not convinced that it’s having any kind of a noticeable impact. I’m going to keep it up because I still think it’s probably a good thing for the kids to have – but it’s not a cure for ADHD. All I want right now is a diagnosis. I don’t want to hear how she has to “try harder” and this is all her fault. The level of disorganization, and the level of how much she seems to have trouble with the work that involves a certain level of sustained mental effort – I really don’t think it’s her not trying. And to be honest, I’ve had my suspicions about her since Kindergarten – but of course no one would evalute her for ADHD then! I just want an evaluation, and then we’ll have a plan of action. Whether it be medication or not (I don’t think she’s severe so maybe it’s just a matter of therapy to help her) – I can’t get help until I know and have proof of what the problem is.

=deep breath=

Anyway – moving on… Passover really took a backseat this year. In the past, my parents have come out for some part of it and we’ve had a seder with them – but they couldn’t make it out this year. They do have a big seder at the new Synagogue we’re a part of now, but Zachary is such a spaz that I didn’t want to deal with bringing him. (And it would have had to be me and the kids alone, because Sam wouldn’t have been able to make it out of work in time for the seder).

Sam doesn’t really do the Easter thing with the exception of the candy. LOL! His mom sent the kids a big care package of chocolate and jelly beans – we were able to hold them off until today and now they’re all in a sugar coma.

Speaking of Sam – his job is really unstable right now. I have no idea how this year is going to play out, but it doesn’t look good. Oy.

Anyway – our plans for the day: we’re going to see that new animated movie “How to train a dragon”. (Speaking of movies, we finally got a babysitter and got out to see Avatar last week. Awesome movie!!! I’m so glad we were able to see it before it left the theaters. I’m definitely going to get the blu-ray of that when it comes out too.)

So about the babysitter – after the fiasco with the last babysitter (found out she was lying about a whole bunch of things and had basically “permanently borrowed” someone’s car. That someone showed up on OUR doorstep to collect said car from her… OY!!!) – we hadn’t been able to find anyone and I finally caved in and signed up for a membership with SitterCity.com. SO GLAD I did. We’ve now found this girl, she actually lives really close to us – maybe 2 minutes away, IF that. So far the kids haven’t scared her away yet and as far as we can tell she doesn’t seem to have any serious mental defects like the last one. LOL!