Right before bed last night, I was trying to remember 2014 before it slipped away. For me, it was hard to get back further than our fall family crisis. The aftermath of that felt like it had sucked up so much recent oxygen. But thankfully N has a better memory than I.
I started off the year writing daily in preparation for a new paper. I did well for 2-3 months which should have established a habit, but then I got depressed in March while tapering off my winter antidepressant (for the 2nd time). That threw a wrench in a lot of things. I had also up until then been extremely consistent with my weightlifting which had moved from a gym into my garage. Both writing and lifting fell off, writing more than lifting.
About that time, I also agreed to begin leading the women's ministry at our church. That was really exciting in many ways and allowed me to exercise some of my gifts that had lay dormant for a while. In particular, I enjoyed developing a mission statement for the ministry and some thoughts on undergirding pillars to guide making choices. I also enjoyed mentoring my team that led various parts of the ministry.
In the late spring, our daughter was diagnosed with some mild developmental delays which was honestly, shocking to me. I think as a newbie parent, I never suspected a thing about our oldest. But we have a good pediatrician and a good preschool teacher. So we went off to speech and occupational therapy. That took up most of what was supposed to be a laid back summer. During the less laid back summer, our son decided to potty train himself which was a GODsend. Love it.
Despite falling off the writing wagon, I was able to pull together a conference paper and traveled with the kids to the Pacific Northwest in August to escape the late summer heat and deliver the talk. It was great! The kids also got to see their older 2nd cousins and loved it. They continue to ask to return to hangout with them.
A few weeks after our return, our oldest started kindergarten, eek! She attends a half-day afternoon session while our son attends a morning preschool a few times a week. Our minivan is getting a workout. But kindergarten has been better than we anticipated. Specifically, she loves her daily dose of PE and her main language arts/math teacher is delightful and attentive to making accommodations where L needs it and providing extra challenges too. I was generally the freaked out mom sending her first to kindergarten, but our family crisis came the second week of school and effectively squashed my brain space to fret about that. This is probably better for everyone. Now that life is slightly more stable, I'd like to meet with her teacher about 1st grade. We'll see. As a reference point, our dear L read Charlotte's Web yesterday. I can't keep up, but hopefully her teachers can.
While I don't really want to discuss our family crisis, here are a few random highlights from the fall. In September, I started attending a small women's group. I think they call it mentoring. I call it my Jesus group where we encourage one another to allow Jesus to be the center of our authentic (read messy) lives. Love that time; love those ladies. Also in September, one of N's college friends came out to visit us, and it was great to be able to reconnect with him.
Our family minivan lost its AC over the summer (bad timing), but we muddled through and looked to replace the 14-year-old van by April 2015. We were able to get a great, nay superb deal, on a 6-year-old, low-mileage van in October. I feel like the Beverly Hillbillies driving this enormous van with all its bells and whistles. The kids still don't know it has a DVD player with two screens that fold out of the ceiling.
In November, N's project released to the public, Halo: Master Chief Collection. The project was panned soundly by critics, but the ship should right itself soon and fanbois around the world can rejoice.
In mid-December, my mom came to visit for the holidays which was great for us, although my dad is alone overseas while she's here. However, they say they are moving back to the states next year. I'll believe it when I see it.
On a more sobering note, I had my severest episode of depression to date a few weeks ago. After talking with a psychiatrist, I'm moving off an antidepressant to a mood stabilizer. The transition has not been particularly smooth, but I am generally hopeful that we'll land on something that will help me avoid another debilitating episode like that one.
At the end of 2014, I'd say I was weary but hopeful, and perhaps most of all grateful for the way God gently teaches me His sufficiency in all things.
Showing posts with label annual review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label annual review. Show all posts
Thursday, January 1, 2015
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Cool Tools of 2013
--Camelbak water bottles: I wish there were plain ones without the weird graphics, but after having my son shatter several cheap water bottles, this is the one that has survived. The nibs got shredded every time he teethed, but I found the replacement easy to order online at Amazon. Now that he has all his teeth, his nib has remained intact. Over the same amount of time, our older child only wore out 1 nib.
--Real pipe cleaners: These have cotten bristles with some stiffer plastic? ones too. Clean the gross crevasses of kid things very well. Particularly the aforementioned Camelbak nibs.
--Kitchen timer: I know I've praised the kitchen time in previous years for kitchen things, but now we have an owl shaped one for the kids. We sometimes dole out "toy time" when both kids want the same item. 5 minutes each, for example. All too frequently, the first kid doesn't even play with the toy for the full time allotted, but at least the screaming stops. Other times, we give the toy itself time out and neither kids can play with the toy for a bit. I love my timers.
--Emergent Task Planner: I occasionally follow David Seah's productivity blog and found this there. I printout a week's worth of pages on Sunday and line up my calendar for the week. The big win for this thing is that I use it to keep track of what I can do in the nooks and crannies of time I have.
--MyFitnessPal: This year I tried this and the LiveStrong food tracker. I ended up mostly using MyFitnessPal, but I can't say I have a strong feeling between the two. Generally speaking, I found food tracking to be useful for hitting my protein goals for the day. But then again, I like data.
--Sanitaire Vacuum: Can't remember if I blogged this one already, but it's an inexpensive industrial canister vacuum for hard surfaces and low pile carpet which describes the most trafficked parts of our house. Works great particularly for this great price point of under $100. Not super awesome on regular carpet, but we don't have that much of that and we have lots of kitchen/living room cruft. And it is stellar there. Easy to change out the bag and an add on HEPA filter is available which we use.
--Google Calendar Reminders: N taught me this year that events added to Google Calendar can be set up to send an email a certain amount of time before the event. I check my email more than gcal, so this helps me make sure I get certain things done each week like restarting the sourdough. We've also started to use this to make sure to do other things quarterly or semiannually like calling the HVAC people for an AC checkup or changing the air filter periodically.
--WorksheetWorks.com: Alorithmically creates new worksheets in many school subjects. L is only able to do the simplest ones, but she likes doing them, and it's simple enough to print them out. Nice if your kids likes to "play" school. Probably would also be good for elementary schoolers who need more practice on certain topics.
--Local Library: This is the best place to deal with children's books. Children's books are hit and miss in quality. The library is a first line of defense against terrible books. Even then, the library sometimes gets sucked into having bad books. Fortunately, it was a collective taxpayer burden, and you can return the offending book. On the downside, if your kid falls in love with a book, eventually after all the renewals are used up, you have to return the book or buy your own copy. Hopefully, in the next year, I'll be able to go to the library with the kids again. Currently, it's too much to manage two kids in the kids' book section.
--Real pipe cleaners: These have cotten bristles with some stiffer plastic? ones too. Clean the gross crevasses of kid things very well. Particularly the aforementioned Camelbak nibs.
--Kitchen timer: I know I've praised the kitchen time in previous years for kitchen things, but now we have an owl shaped one for the kids. We sometimes dole out "toy time" when both kids want the same item. 5 minutes each, for example. All too frequently, the first kid doesn't even play with the toy for the full time allotted, but at least the screaming stops. Other times, we give the toy itself time out and neither kids can play with the toy for a bit. I love my timers.
--Emergent Task Planner: I occasionally follow David Seah's productivity blog and found this there. I printout a week's worth of pages on Sunday and line up my calendar for the week. The big win for this thing is that I use it to keep track of what I can do in the nooks and crannies of time I have.
--MyFitnessPal: This year I tried this and the LiveStrong food tracker. I ended up mostly using MyFitnessPal, but I can't say I have a strong feeling between the two. Generally speaking, I found food tracking to be useful for hitting my protein goals for the day. But then again, I like data.
--Sanitaire Vacuum: Can't remember if I blogged this one already, but it's an inexpensive industrial canister vacuum for hard surfaces and low pile carpet which describes the most trafficked parts of our house. Works great particularly for this great price point of under $100. Not super awesome on regular carpet, but we don't have that much of that and we have lots of kitchen/living room cruft. And it is stellar there. Easy to change out the bag and an add on HEPA filter is available which we use.
--Google Calendar Reminders: N taught me this year that events added to Google Calendar can be set up to send an email a certain amount of time before the event. I check my email more than gcal, so this helps me make sure I get certain things done each week like restarting the sourdough. We've also started to use this to make sure to do other things quarterly or semiannually like calling the HVAC people for an AC checkup or changing the air filter periodically.
--WorksheetWorks.com: Alorithmically creates new worksheets in many school subjects. L is only able to do the simplest ones, but she likes doing them, and it's simple enough to print them out. Nice if your kids likes to "play" school. Probably would also be good for elementary schoolers who need more practice on certain topics.
--Local Library: This is the best place to deal with children's books. Children's books are hit and miss in quality. The library is a first line of defense against terrible books. Even then, the library sometimes gets sucked into having bad books. Fortunately, it was a collective taxpayer burden, and you can return the offending book. On the downside, if your kid falls in love with a book, eventually after all the renewals are used up, you have to return the book or buy your own copy. Hopefully, in the next year, I'll be able to go to the library with the kids again. Currently, it's too much to manage two kids in the kids' book section.
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Thanksgiving: From life to death and the in between
This year has been so dramatic; it's really nice to wind down the year with a deeper realization of how much I have to be grateful for. Somewhat chronologically, here's my list:
--In the early part of the year, I was working my way through another episode of depression which we treated as seasonal affective disorder and changed up my meds. The new meds had bad side effects, but I did eventually adapt. Between them and a new therapist, the ship was righted. The transition back on the same medication this fall was much smoother and I'm doing way better than I was doing this time last year. I am thankful that depression is not my sword of Damocles.
--Our daughter learned to read before I expected her to. This freaked me out. I'm thankful I've since gotten over it.
--Our son was so severely underweight that he was tested for what seemed like everything under the sun, including cystic fibrosis -- twice. All the tests were negative! Shortly after testing, despite a negative celiac test, we removed gluten from his diet and he has since gained about a pound a month and is back on the growth chart. What an amazing relief! Praise God!
--I picked up a small contract position with Zoobean.com this year as a book curator. I select the best of the children's picture books I come across adding them to the Zoobean library and tagging them so they can go out in personalized book subscriptions for kids. This has been super fun and provides a little "egg money". I'm thankful my new interest in literacy has found a new (non-academic) outlet.
--Speaking of interest in literacy, I'm thankful my paper on mother-infant book interactions has been published. Actually, I only kind of care that it's been published. I'm more thankful that my husband supported my researching and writing a new paper.
--I am thankful for my in-laws. We had a great visit to their neck of the woods this summer. Then, when I decided to go ahead with shoulder surgery, my mother-in-law came to our place for 2 weeks and ran the house while I sat around in a drug-induced daze. They are also wonderful with the kids. One thing I really enjoy is that they regularly send postcards to the kids.
--We bought investment property this year. This was not part of the "plan", but we are thankful for good renters.
--In addition to unexpected surgery and unexpected property buying, my dad had an unexpected cancer diagnosis this summer. A large throat mass became a whatzit, became a we're taking it out anyways, became well, that was cancer. It was a hard period of just not knowing what was going on and having different doctors say different things, but on the other side of it all, we are so thankful this was caught early and currently does not require any chemo or radiation, just periodic scans.
--So my dad's thing was a reminder of the nearness of death. This summer, our daughter's namesake, a former missionary and a mentor of mine, passed away. I'm so thankful that in the past few years she's included our house in her epic road trips. It was a real privilege to have her in our lives.
--And just so we don't wallow in death, a life story! Our dear nephew was added to our family this year. He came 8 weeks early and scared the tar out of an already frazzled family. Thankfully, he was everything you could hope for for a preemie. He was born at a sizable weight with well-developed lungs. He was never in a scary situation during his hospital stay and was sent home before his actual due date. He makes great faces and is super cute.
--In these uncertain times, we joined the many families across the country that received no pay in October although our situation wasn't directly caused my the government shutdown it did coincide with that. During his "furlough", N looked for an found another job for better pay and a shorter commute. How about them apples? No pay is no pay and that was stressful, but we're so thankful for the quick resolution to that issue. So far N has liked the new job, and we're getting back into that work-groove after having daddy home with us for 5 weeks. I am also thankful N's work has nothing to do with healthcare.gov. Those must be some frustrated programmers.
--I should update on this in its own post, but shoulder surgery appears to be a success. I've been out of the sling for 2 months and I can do everything I want with it--household chores like laundry, mom chores like tickling and hugging, sleeping on it, and lifting weights. A good outcome was never guaranteed, so we're thankful that things have knit back together nicely.
I am not a naturally thankful person. I'm a naturally anxious person. Even in the list above, I have my what-ifs and but-that-could-changes, but if the drama of this year has taught me anything, it has taught me to bet on Jesus. I want to predict the worst possible outcome and rage against the "unfairness". But time after time, when I choose to trust, I see and tangibly experience that God is in control and can be counted on. Things don't go according to my plan, but that doesn't mean there isn't goodness to be found and life to be thankful for.
--In the early part of the year, I was working my way through another episode of depression which we treated as seasonal affective disorder and changed up my meds. The new meds had bad side effects, but I did eventually adapt. Between them and a new therapist, the ship was righted. The transition back on the same medication this fall was much smoother and I'm doing way better than I was doing this time last year. I am thankful that depression is not my sword of Damocles.
--Our daughter learned to read before I expected her to. This freaked me out. I'm thankful I've since gotten over it.
--Our son was so severely underweight that he was tested for what seemed like everything under the sun, including cystic fibrosis -- twice. All the tests were negative! Shortly after testing, despite a negative celiac test, we removed gluten from his diet and he has since gained about a pound a month and is back on the growth chart. What an amazing relief! Praise God!
--I picked up a small contract position with Zoobean.com this year as a book curator. I select the best of the children's picture books I come across adding them to the Zoobean library and tagging them so they can go out in personalized book subscriptions for kids. This has been super fun and provides a little "egg money". I'm thankful my new interest in literacy has found a new (non-academic) outlet.
--Speaking of interest in literacy, I'm thankful my paper on mother-infant book interactions has been published. Actually, I only kind of care that it's been published. I'm more thankful that my husband supported my researching and writing a new paper.
--I am thankful for my in-laws. We had a great visit to their neck of the woods this summer. Then, when I decided to go ahead with shoulder surgery, my mother-in-law came to our place for 2 weeks and ran the house while I sat around in a drug-induced daze. They are also wonderful with the kids. One thing I really enjoy is that they regularly send postcards to the kids.
--We bought investment property this year. This was not part of the "plan", but we are thankful for good renters.
--In addition to unexpected surgery and unexpected property buying, my dad had an unexpected cancer diagnosis this summer. A large throat mass became a whatzit, became a we're taking it out anyways, became well, that was cancer. It was a hard period of just not knowing what was going on and having different doctors say different things, but on the other side of it all, we are so thankful this was caught early and currently does not require any chemo or radiation, just periodic scans.
--So my dad's thing was a reminder of the nearness of death. This summer, our daughter's namesake, a former missionary and a mentor of mine, passed away. I'm so thankful that in the past few years she's included our house in her epic road trips. It was a real privilege to have her in our lives.
--And just so we don't wallow in death, a life story! Our dear nephew was added to our family this year. He came 8 weeks early and scared the tar out of an already frazzled family. Thankfully, he was everything you could hope for for a preemie. He was born at a sizable weight with well-developed lungs. He was never in a scary situation during his hospital stay and was sent home before his actual due date. He makes great faces and is super cute.
--In these uncertain times, we joined the many families across the country that received no pay in October although our situation wasn't directly caused my the government shutdown it did coincide with that. During his "furlough", N looked for an found another job for better pay and a shorter commute. How about them apples? No pay is no pay and that was stressful, but we're so thankful for the quick resolution to that issue. So far N has liked the new job, and we're getting back into that work-groove after having daddy home with us for 5 weeks. I am also thankful N's work has nothing to do with healthcare.gov. Those must be some frustrated programmers.
--I should update on this in its own post, but shoulder surgery appears to be a success. I've been out of the sling for 2 months and I can do everything I want with it--household chores like laundry, mom chores like tickling and hugging, sleeping on it, and lifting weights. A good outcome was never guaranteed, so we're thankful that things have knit back together nicely.
I am not a naturally thankful person. I'm a naturally anxious person. Even in the list above, I have my what-ifs and but-that-could-changes, but if the drama of this year has taught me anything, it has taught me to bet on Jesus. I want to predict the worst possible outcome and rage against the "unfairness". But time after time, when I choose to trust, I see and tangibly experience that God is in control and can be counted on. Things don't go according to my plan, but that doesn't mean there isn't goodness to be found and life to be thankful for.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Top tools of 2010
Happy New Year!!
This is an incomplete list of tools that were new and handy for me in 2010. By new, I mean that we got them last Christmas or this year, not that they are new to the world, just new to our world. And handy is as described
Microfiber cloths -- 36 pack from costco for ~$15 from the automotive section; among my peeves about cleaning, rinsing is probably one of the highest peeves. And for mopping this is definitely true. By having a giant pile of these cloths, I forego rinsing and just dump the dirty cloth in the laundry machine. Particularly useful for mopping since I have about 250 sq ft of tile to mop and I do it by standing on two cloths and "skating" around the tile.
Electric kettle -- Christmas present from 09; great for coffee which is its primary use, but also has been great lately since my mother-in-law uses it to make tea, wilk, hot lemonade, and to fill her water bottle.
12 cup French press -- we previously could only make one mug of coffee at a time. Now we can make up to 3. On weekends when we both want coffee, this simplifies things greatly instead of making a mug's worth, cleaning the press, and then making the second mug.
Summer baby gate -- one of the few gates that stretches 10 feet. Keeps L away from my husband's TV/sound system/gaming systems. Sturdy enough. We bought different 2" screws to go into studs and modded it so the door isn't in the middle section but on one end.
Diaper liners -- L's been in cloth diapers since she was 5 m.o. but I didn't bother to buy diaper liners til this Sept nearly a year later. What an idiot I am. The liners are flushable and hold the poo so it just plops out into the toilet and flushes away. SO much easier than scraping loose poo out. Also reduces the gross out factor which really bothered N. Worth every penny and I cut them in half since they are too big and I run them through the laundry if they are poo-ed on.
Text messaging -- N and I welcomed ourselves to the 21st C by learning to use text messaging. Long story short, very useful for short communications particularly for me because I'm now frequently not by my computer, but I can have my phone on me. (We used to do a lot with IM.)
Kitchen timer -- both the microwave and the oven have timers on them, but on a busy morning those can be unwieldy. Having a separate, digital timer on the fridge has been super handy for lots of things -- steeping coffee, reheating pizza slices in the toaster oven, keeping track of bread rising, reminders to check things on the stove, etc.
Neilmed -- It's for rinsing the sinuses with saline. Mother-in-law gave us a bottle in Feb, but we didn't start using it til fall. Has made a noticeable improvement for me with allergies. If I visit a cat-hair infested place, I can come home and rinse out my sinuses and be in good shape pretty quickly. Trying it out with the current cedar allergies, but results are inconclusive -- I'm still kinda miserable.
Plastic scraper -- I saw these scrapers in a kitchen store and modded a plastic lid from some disposable container to that basic shape. Very handy for cleaning out leftover dough that would otherwise get stuck in a sponge.
Kitchen Aid -- anniversary gift from my husband; I learned to make sourdough bread this year and have been making 2 loaves a week for most of the year. Hand kneading is laborious and the little one always seemed to want some TLC in the middle of it. The kitchen aid mixer with dough hook has definitely streamlined the process. However, at it's very high price; seems like it will be years before it gets paid off. Feel I should use it more, but I'm not much of a baker aside from these breads.
--
None of the links are affiliate links, I get nada, but thought they'd be helpful.
I realize that this post is not about Jesus and was not written in the morning over coffee, but there are coffee related tools in the list. Hopefully, that counts enough.
This is an incomplete list of tools that were new and handy for me in 2010. By new, I mean that we got them last Christmas or this year, not that they are new to the world, just new to our world. And handy is as described
Microfiber cloths -- 36 pack from costco for ~$15 from the automotive section; among my peeves about cleaning, rinsing is probably one of the highest peeves. And for mopping this is definitely true. By having a giant pile of these cloths, I forego rinsing and just dump the dirty cloth in the laundry machine. Particularly useful for mopping since I have about 250 sq ft of tile to mop and I do it by standing on two cloths and "skating" around the tile.
Electric kettle -- Christmas present from 09; great for coffee which is its primary use, but also has been great lately since my mother-in-law uses it to make tea, wilk, hot lemonade, and to fill her water bottle.
12 cup French press -- we previously could only make one mug of coffee at a time. Now we can make up to 3. On weekends when we both want coffee, this simplifies things greatly instead of making a mug's worth, cleaning the press, and then making the second mug.
Summer baby gate -- one of the few gates that stretches 10 feet. Keeps L away from my husband's TV/sound system/gaming systems. Sturdy enough. We bought different 2" screws to go into studs and modded it so the door isn't in the middle section but on one end.
Diaper liners -- L's been in cloth diapers since she was 5 m.o. but I didn't bother to buy diaper liners til this Sept nearly a year later. What an idiot I am. The liners are flushable and hold the poo so it just plops out into the toilet and flushes away. SO much easier than scraping loose poo out. Also reduces the gross out factor which really bothered N. Worth every penny and I cut them in half since they are too big and I run them through the laundry if they are poo-ed on.
Text messaging -- N and I welcomed ourselves to the 21st C by learning to use text messaging. Long story short, very useful for short communications particularly for me because I'm now frequently not by my computer, but I can have my phone on me. (We used to do a lot with IM.)
Kitchen timer -- both the microwave and the oven have timers on them, but on a busy morning those can be unwieldy. Having a separate, digital timer on the fridge has been super handy for lots of things -- steeping coffee, reheating pizza slices in the toaster oven, keeping track of bread rising, reminders to check things on the stove, etc.
Neilmed -- It's for rinsing the sinuses with saline. Mother-in-law gave us a bottle in Feb, but we didn't start using it til fall. Has made a noticeable improvement for me with allergies. If I visit a cat-hair infested place, I can come home and rinse out my sinuses and be in good shape pretty quickly. Trying it out with the current cedar allergies, but results are inconclusive -- I'm still kinda miserable.
Plastic scraper -- I saw these scrapers in a kitchen store and modded a plastic lid from some disposable container to that basic shape. Very handy for cleaning out leftover dough that would otherwise get stuck in a sponge.
Kitchen Aid -- anniversary gift from my husband; I learned to make sourdough bread this year and have been making 2 loaves a week for most of the year. Hand kneading is laborious and the little one always seemed to want some TLC in the middle of it. The kitchen aid mixer with dough hook has definitely streamlined the process. However, at it's very high price; seems like it will be years before it gets paid off. Feel I should use it more, but I'm not much of a baker aside from these breads.
--
None of the links are affiliate links, I get nada, but thought they'd be helpful.
I realize that this post is not about Jesus and was not written in the morning over coffee, but there are coffee related tools in the list. Hopefully, that counts enough.
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