Doing my minimum 10 words or so today.  There, done!

A New Beginning

I can't believe it's been nearly a year since I was here.  Just over ten months.  The thing is, I really enjoy writing this, when I do it.  And it's easy.  So I have no idea why I just don't.

No matter.  I've been reading a book by Stephen Guise titled Mini Habits:  Smaller Habits, Bigger Results.  It's all about setting what the author calls "stupid small" goals to try and form habits that will turn into something larger.  The idea is to make them so small that you won't resist them and they won't cost you much willpower.  He claims he got into shape by setting a Mini Habit of one push-up a day, and he swears by the method, so I'm willing to give it a try.

I've set four Mini Habits for myself, which is the maximum he recommends at any one time.  He actually encourages people to do two or three, but as per usual I'm impatient.  :)

The first one has to do with starting a nature journal.  I've been wanting to do it since I moved here, and I'm hoping this will start me on that path.  The Mini Habit I will try to cultivate is simply to step outside for thirty seconds each day.  I tried it earlier, and it did make me wish I'd brought the journal with me, so tomorrow that is what I'll do.

The second stupid small habit I'm trying to acquire has to do with writing this blog.  I will achieve success by writing ten words each day, Monday through Thursday.  I can always do more, as I'm dong here, but I must do the minimum.

The third is being more creative in general.  The habit here is to go upstairs where most of my arts and crafts supplies are.  That's it.  I don't have to do anything once I'm there, I can simply turn around and come back downstairs if I so choose.  But most likely I won't.

Lastly, I want to cook more, so I have set myself the minimum goal of gathering the first ingredient.  Again, that's it.  If I choose to not go any further, to put whatever it is back up, I still win.  I'm hoping once I get over the resistance to starting I'll go ahead and make whatever it was I was planning.

According to the book, studies have shown that habits take anywhere from 18 to 254 days to form, depending on the habit, the person, how much they want to form it, and so on.  Much different from the 21 or 30 days most pop-psych books claim.

I guess I'll find out if it works somewhere between three and thirty-six weeks.

Whole Lotta Stuff

I just realized I haven't posted anything here since I had the flu back in January (VERY sick for almost two weeks), followed almost immediately by the packing up of our household.   Since then DH and I have said goodbye to lots and lots of people we love in Ontario, taken the dogs, and moved back to Austin, Texas.  We had to give up the cats, a topic which is almost too painful to even mention.  We're in temporary housing now, waiting to hear on an offer we've made on a house, and are busy reconnecting with people and a city that was very hard to leave in the first place, some fourteen years ago.

I was worried about the puppies and the heat, given their thick winter undercoats, but we've been extremely lucky to actually have Spring here this year.  Temperatures are hovering around 60F (16C), occasionally dipping down to freezing or soaring close to 90F (32C).  The guys have started blowing their winter coats, which is messy, but otherwise seem to be doing okay.  They (and we) participated in the Mighty Texas Dog Walk this past weekend, a charity event to benefit service dogs.  Next weekend, they're going to Snake Aversion Training, to keep them safe from rattlesnakes and copperheads.  Later they will participate in more training involving coral snakes and maybe cottonmouths.

The drive down was mostly a lot of fun, though finding truly pet-friendly hotels on-the-fly was sometimes challenging.  We took time out to visit the Wild Turkey distillery in Kentucky and walk barefoot (in February!) in Northern Texas.  Kai took an extreme dislike to a statue of Abe Lincoln in Cincinnati, and had to bark at it, a lot, every time he stepped outside of the hotel where we were staying.

DH and I, as I mentioned, are reconnecting with family and friends, exploring old haunts and new attractions, and enjoying the food WAY too much.  It's a bit disconcerting that Austin has literally doubled in size since we left, but we're adjusting to it.  We've spent the last month or so searching for a house.  We found one we absolutely loved, but apparently the owner didn't really want to sell, so our offer went ignored.  We've found another house we like almost as much, and should know by tomorrow whether our offer was accepted or not.

That's the last ten weeks or so in a nutshell.  I'll post pictures of the house if we get it, otherwise it's back to the drawing board.

Wish us luck!

Spring at Last

Spring is busy springing here in Southern Ontario.  We’re actually getting a few days above freezing here and there, even if there is still snow on the ground about half the time.  And we’re actually starting to see more rain than snow, which is a great thing for rain lovers such as DH and me.  As for the animals, Kai, who absolutely LOVES to play in mud puddles, is thrilled, while Lance, who adores snow, is not so happy.  (I won’t mention how hard it is to keep our white-tile kitchen floor clean in this season, LOL!)  Dale and Audrey, being indoor cats, couldn’t care less either way.  :)

Another sign of spring:  Kai’s blowing his coat out, so we’re brushing out another whole dog’s worth of fur every evening.  And there’s STILL fur all over the house, and literally falling off of him in tufts!  It will pass, though.  Lance went through the same thing last year about this time, and now he’s got a beautiful, silky, adult coat.  Come June or so, Kai will also have lost the last of his wool-like puppy fur. 

And I really do like the combination of almost-warm days and still-chilly nights.

I Like Ice In My Drinks, Not On My Driveway

I need help, Dear Readers.  Due to the stormy winter weather over the past few days, the pavement which makes up our longer-than-normal driveway and the "parking pad" in front of our garage is now for all intents and purposes an ice-skating rink.  The only thing giving it any traction at all is the thin dusting of snow on top of it.  And we have no idea what to do about it.

We don't like using salt or ice-melt due to environmental reasons, but even if we were willing to do so in this instance, we can't 'cause the puppies play on the parking pad and eat the snow around it.  (I don't know why, but they seem to prefer eating snow to drinking water.  Maybe they're hot.)  And our resident rabbits hop across pad and driveway constantly.  "Pet-safe" ice melt quite frankly doesn't work very well, and is prohibitively expensive for such a large area besides.  And I'm not sure how "safe" it would be in such large amounts.  On top of all this, the ice is too thin for our ice breaker tool to get any kind of bite, so we can't remove it manually, either.

Do any of you who grew up in real winters have any advice?  Native Canadians?  American Yankees?  Russians?  Swedes?  Mongolians?  Is there any way to get it off before the Spring thaw, or do we just need to give up and buy ourselves (and the dogs) ice skates?

This Texas girl and her South Carolina/Florida husband are stumped.

Holiday Blahs

Sorry I haven't written in a while, but I've had fairly little to write about.  Unless you count being cold, cold, cold after our furnace went out and the subsequent replacement of said furnace.  Not really interesting stuff.

I was talking to my mother yesterday, and she has about a gazillion activities planned for the next couple of weeks.  Me?  I don't have a one.  Nor am I upset about that--I just can't seem to get into the holiday spirit this year.  (I think it was the whole furnace problem that really put a damper on things, and maybe feeling down for US Thanksgiving started it.)

At any rate, we haven't decorated, not at all.  We haven't put the tree up or made our library-turned-ritual-room seasonally appropriate or put the wreaths up.  We certainly haven't put up holiday lights.  Even our altar sits bare and unadorned.  And with every day that passes, the very idea of doing any of it grows more futile.

We're playing with the idea of camping for Yule.  I'm really wondering about it after being cold all last week, but DH is really excited by the notion.  If we do, it means we won't have not-decorated the house in vain--we won't be here to have enjoyed the decorations anyway!

That thought actually does cheer me!

Getting My Life in Order

I have a list of way too many things that I want to learn about, or do, or learn to do.  This is different from my "Things to Do This Life" list, although a few of the items (like snowboarding) are on both.  This list is about things that I want to learn more about, like animal husbandry, or that I want to incorporate into a near-daily practice, like meditation.

I had been blocked for a long while on doing any of them because of one of my many bad reactions to stress.  When I start to feel overwhelmed about the amount of things I have to do, I shut down and can't do any of them.  I couldn't decide on which part of the list to focus, or on which item I should tackle first.  I felt like I didn't have time to do them all, so I did none of them.

I finally decided I needed to approach the list as I would numerous projects at a job, since simply trying to decide which one I WANTED to do first wasn't working.  I needed to prioritize them according to importance, time constraints and so on.  I assigned them all to categories, like Spirituality and Fitness, then assigned weight to those categories.  Most of the items fit into multiple categories, but that was okay--it made it even easier to weigh them.

The item that came to the top of the list surprised me--Learning to Use a Compass.  It fit into 8 of my 11 categories! (At the bottom of the list?  Sorting pre-digital photos and old cooking magazines.)

Now that I have a clear plan for these "tasks", I feel I can get a better handle on all kinds of things I've been avoiding (from simple things like putting freshly laundered, FOLDED clothes into drawers, to bigger things like sorting my entire closet-dresser-guest closet system). 

And maybe, just maybe, stepping a tiny bit closer to that elusive balance I seek.

Klutz

As those of you who know me personally are aware, I am the clumsiest person on the planet.  If any of you who don't know me play role-playing games, think of me as having a dexterity of about 10-20% under average.  Never mind walking across a flat surface--I have fallen and semi-seriously hurt myself just standing still.

I can't remember if the last injury was when I fell down the stairs and broke the rice maker or when I slipped on a discarded straw while getting into a bus seat, but the most current one happened today in my kitchen.  This is not entirely my fault.  I don't know what moron chose the tile for our kitchen, the tile which we couldn't afford to replace when we re-did the kitchen, but it is so slippery when wet that even sure-footed, athletic types have fallen on it.  Even the DOGS, on their four legs, fall on it.

Moving on--I was refilling the DWD (dog watering device), which with two Shilohs has to be done almost daily, and I didn't notice the very small puddle of water under my right Croc.  Two steps later, down I go.  Now, I COULD have stayed on my feet, but it would have meant putting all my weight on Lance's ribs.  In the split second I decided that was a bad idea, I realized that I was surrounded by two large puppies, and had no where else to conveniently put my foot.  So I over-reached, knocked over a kitchen chair (with the camera bag on it, no less), and fell smack on my knees.  Ouch.

As I sat on the floor, trying to recover, and trying not to cry (I'm a huge crybaby.), Lance came over, as he always does in these instances, to try and comfort me.  He puts his enormous head against me and just lets me lean on him.  And it works, too.  It's VERY comforting, and usually makes me feel a lot better. (While the noble Lance did this, the super-mischievous Kai took the opportunity to bite my hair, bite my clothing, and bite my hand.  I swear we should have named that dog Loki.)

Luckily, I wasn't too badly hurt.  Just two scraped-up and bruised knees.  Oh, and a bruised shoulder from where I hit the kitchen chair.  Still, it could have been worse, especially as I was home alone at the time.

Sigh.  It's time for more analgesics. 

Wetlands, Wine, and Wednesdays

Wednesdays are a weird but wonderful day for us.  Because of the cost of driving to work, my DH works from home most Wednesdays.  It doesn't seem like it would add up to much, but considering he has to take a long toll-road to work, it really does.  I don't care about the reason, though.  I just enjoy having him home an extra day a week, even if he is working.  :)

The not so wonderful part of Wednesdays is that DH also has TWO weekly evening teleconference calls, one at 8:30 and one at 9:30, lasting a woeful hour each.  This fact does have a whopping silver lining, however:  instead of getting off at 6:30 and getting home at 8:00 or later, he stops working about 5:30 and we have a few wonderful hours before he has to go "back to work."  It gives us a chance to do all kinds of wonderful things that we wouldn't otherwise get to do on weekdays, especially in the winter, when it's dark by the time he gets home the other four days of the week.

What kinds of wonderful things, you ask.  Well, this afternoon we took Lance to the dog park, after which we walked a couple of blocks to the small wetlands behind our house to take our 365 Project photos before coming home to have dinner with a glass of wine. 

Perfectly wonderful.

Ready for Summer

We moved our 'office' down to the basement yesterday, or at least enough of it to work for the next few months. It's SO much cooler down there, and we think it will save us tons of money on AC costs. We've meant to do it for the last couple of years, and not gotten around to it, but this weekend we decided to just do it. We moved the printer, the external hard drive, my laptop, and a few supplies. As soon as Don gets a docking station from his office for his work laptop, we'll be moving the monitors and keyboard down, too. Of course, for the last few days the weather's been too cool around here to worry about air conditioning. . . :)

Not that I would ever, EVER complain about cool weather, mind you! I spent this afternoon sitting outside reading, needing a jacket, but reluctant to go get one because I was enjoying being cold so much!

Productive Long Weekend

Well, we didn't actually get any hiking done (in part thanks to heavier rainfall than predicted on Saturday), but it was a good weekend anyway. We vegged, got some chores done, got the canoe photographed so we can actually list it, spent a lot of time at the dog park (Lance's pano seems to have cleared up, and he seems to be back to being his previously happy-with-the-world self.), got a month's worth of meat smoked (Less cooking inside! Yay!) and, best of all, got the backyard arranged more to our liking.

That latter item doesn't SEEM like it would be important, seeing as we've been living in this house over 5 years and plan to put it on the market in September, but it is. You see, we needed to sell the house two years and a half years ago, and put it on the market just as the market fell to rock bottom. Sigh. So we've kind of been in limbo for the past two years, not wanting to spend any more money on the house, not wanting to start any new gardening projects, etc. Not to mention that the house isn't really set up for an outside deck/patio anyway, seeing as the driveway wraps around the left side, and there are no doors on the back or right side. Walking across the driveway to get to the yard has never been particularly appealing, so we dragged our feet doing anything about it before we needed to sell it, too. (Overall, though, it's a good thing it didn't sell then, as our lifestyle and desires have changed so much since we found Wicca.)

At any rate, we broke down and bought some patio furniture, moved things around so we'd have a relatively flat spot to set it on, and now have a little tiny patio at the back! Very exciting!

From An EeeBee Life

And we found a place for the puppy's wading pool (No, he's not spoiled, why?)where it won't kill the grass. Also a good thing!



(He still fits in it, but just! Still, he's all but through growing, so it should last him and his soon-to-show-up little brother or sister through the summer.)

Midnight Snacks

I remember when, once upon a time, the term "midnight snack" meant that after I had been asleep for  awhile, I would wake up hungry, get up, and go have something to snack on.  Ah, the good old days.

I was wondering, as I snacked before going to bed around midnight, when did we get so busy that we can't for the life of us get to bed at a decent hour?  Decent, of course, meaning any time which will result in eight hours sleep. 

Sounds like a pleasant dream, doesn't it? 

Alas, Poor Tofu

NOTE TO SELF:  Don't close the refrigerator door when you've forgotten to close the cover to the butter holder. 

The cover survived, albeit covered in cat hair (ick!), and the eggs did not break, surprisingly enough.  The tofu, however, in its own SEALED package, did not fair near so well--package exploded, tofu leaped out, floor got all gross (double ick), toast and coffee got cold while I cleaned it up. . . Sigh.  At least none of it got on the shelves!  And I was able to get the cover back onto the compartment without breaking either!  Yay!

Towards a Clean House

Yesterday, there didn't seem to be enough hours in the day to do everything I needed/wanted to do online. Today, there doesn't seem to be ANYTHING to do, and I'm bored! I'm so bored I'm even thinking of going and doing dishes!

On a related note, yesterday, I joined Flylady.net. I'm desperate to make my home be clean and to make it STAY clean. I've gotten to the point where I'll do ANYTHING!

School is Back in Session

Off to run a few errands, after which I will return, finish my BOS, and start my new school career in earnest.