It’s pollen season, also known as Spring, which lasts approximately 10 days here in Georgia. I would call it summer, except for the light green dust settling on all outdoor surfaces.
So we are enjoying summer treats, like popcicles. It turns out that Noah prefers vegetables.
Noah also gives new meaning to the term “popcicle toes.”
I have been thinking recently about goals and dreams and plans and missions and all of that, in various contexts, Then I stumbled upon this meme on a personal finance website: List 101 things you want to do in the next 1001 days.
Here’s the idea: Everyone needs goals. Our lives are more successful, more satisfying, we are more engaged in them, etc, when we have goals towards which we are actually working.
Most of us think of a bunch around New Years and drift away from them by mid-February. Some of us take another, narrower stab at them for Lent. (I think my money mindfulness is getting easier, by the way!)
But many goals take longer than just a few months, some even longer than a year or two. But you can make significant progress on any goal within 2 years and almost 9 months.
For example, 1001 days from today is Wednesday, December 23, 2009.
I thought when I first read this that it would be great to play this game, and I started writing goals. I thought I was doing great getting to 101, and that most of mine were at least semi-reasonable in the 1001 day timeframe. But I was organizing them in clusters, so I wasn’t sure exactly how many I had.
I popped over to SuperViva to enter them in my “Life List” and discovered that, in fact, I’d only managed to come up with 43. Hmmm. More than doubling that and staying within the 1001 day time frame was just not realistic.
Then I noticed an interesting link, Ted Leonsis 101 Goals. Now, it happens that Susie of SuperViva and I both formerly worked for Ted Leonsis, but somehow I had previously missed the fact that he has a famous list of 101 life goals (77 of which it looks like he has achieved), which he wrote at 25.
101 life goals looks a lot more exciting to me than padding my next 1001 days list with hollow goals like cleaning the bathroom or the garage. Not that these are not worthy tasks that I need to work on — I’m just not sure I want to call them goals. (The garage, maybe. But not the bathroom.)
Anyway, I’m now working on that list and I’ll share it when I get it into good shape. And I’ll designate some portion of the list to tackle in the first 1001 and 101 days.
If you want to play too, check out SuperViva for ideas and community and structure, and also Triplux, which lists people who are doing 101 in 1001 and provides this guidance:
The Criteria:
Tasks must be specific (ie. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and stretching (ie. represent some amount of work on my part).Some common goal setting tips:
1. Be decisive. Know exactly what you want, why you want it, and how you plan to achieve it.2. Stay Focussed. Any goal requires sustained focus from beginning to end. Constantly evaluate your progress.
3. Welcome Failure. Frequently, very little is learned from a venture that did not experience failure in some form. Failure presents the opportunity to learn and makes the success more worthy.
4. Write down your goals. It clarifies your thinking and reinforces your commitment.
5. Keep your goals in sight. Review them frequently, and ensure that they are always at the forefront of your thinking.
JD, on whose blog I found this idea, also recommends:
I encourage you to make a list of your own dreams. What would you like to accomplish in the next few years? Even if you don’t list 101 things, you could surely list a dozen. Make that list. Print it out. Post it someplace prominent so that you’re reminded of your goals daily.
What, you might ask, has this got to do with cloth diapering?
Before Noah was born, I planned to use a mix of cloth and disposable diapers. I felt bad about the landfills full of disposable diapers, but I knew I was too lazy to use cloth exclusively.
I ordered some fancy high-tech cloth diapers from the Internet, and one day a few weeks after Noah was born, I gave them a try.
Within 20 minutes, he had one of those horrible breastfed baby, every 3-4 days, toxic poopsplosions.
Bye-bye cloth diapering. At least for now.
A month or so later, I tried again.
Astonishingly, the exact same thing happened.
Well, motherhood has made me smarter. I know a pattern when I see it, and that pattern was over.
But during our recent bouts of thrush, the diaper rash has been awful. Combine that with having a bigger boy who drinks a lot of very watery “Jooooose!” in the evening, and who (knock on wood) doesn’t really poop overnight.
I started inserting the absorbent inserts for my fancy pocket diapers into Noah’s disposable diapers at night. And they worked! Until the morning after sushi, when we didn’t change him as soon as usual, so I found myself washing seaweed poop out of the cotton insert.
“Hey wait!” My brain slowly realized. If I had the fleece part touching the poop, like it’s designed to do, this would be much easier.
So we are now using cloth diapers at night. And have been (mostly) for the last ~3 weeks. I think this is a good balance for us, and I’m feeling good about my goal to be a reasonably environmentally responsible family.
I know that some of you are huge cloth diaper experts. Right now, we have 6 wonderalls with a variety of inserts.
I want to get a few more super-easy pocket/all-in-ones, but that are cuter and more fun than the basic white I have now. And I want to get a bunch more inserts. The big fat cotton babies inserts with the snaps are pretty much unwieldy. I kinda like the hemp babies, but he drenched through 2 last night.
Do you have any specific recommendations for lazy moms with a big hard-drinking boy?
You know you are in The South when you call to make your annual NPR pledge and the man taking your call, after taking your name, asks if you prefer “Miss” or “Mrs.”
I can’t remember my last moment of feminist shock, in a day to day interaction. I thought that whole marital status title business was just…settled. On a form, you pick the one you want, and if someone doesn’t know, they use Ms. Or none.
I wish I’d had the presence of mind to say “Doctor” or “Senator” but I think my stunned sputtering and eventual, “I prefer Ms., actually,” probably did communicate my feelings.
Also the email I sent to the station, in which I asked, “Is my money more valuable to you if I am in a legally recognized relationship, or not?”
It would have been different if I’d been somewhere else, or calling somewhere else, at least a little bit. At the grocery store, or any retail shop, I don’t really care if people call me “Mrs.” And they almost never call me “Miss” anymore.
And if I were calling Concerned Women for America, Ladies Against Women, or even the Republican party, I wouldn’t have been so taken aback. But NPR? Does Linda Wertheimer know about this? Do we need Cokie Roberts to stage an intervention? Susan Stamburg, what should I do?
Yesterday night, Anne Lamott came and spoke at our church. It was co-sponsored by our local feminist bookstore. (I love that about our church.)
Lamott is, right now, my favorite writer. We read her book Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son’s First Year when I was pregnant. Right now, I’m inhaling her book on writing, Bird by Bird. I’m only sad that I didn’t read it sooner.
Seriously! When I was working on my book, I was a wet mess. I made Jill go away for weekends at a time. I was convinced I was an idiot. I played stupid mind games with myself about how long I was allowed to read/eat/clean before I had to go back to writing and how long I had to write before I was allowed to go back to eating/reading/cleaning. It was totally torturous.
I thought that meant I wasn’t cut out to be a writer.
No, says Lamott. That’s pretty much how it is for everyone she knows. Her advice is more support and encouragement than anything else, but it’s funny and effective. At least so far. I’m only about 2/3 of the way through.
I haven’t tackled any of her books on faith, but she said something that really spoke to me during her talk. She said, “The opposite of faith isn’t doubt, it’s certainty.” She has a wonderful way of being about what she has faith in, and that she totally gets that it’s kind of incredible to believe it, but she does. It seems like the kind of book on religion that I could handle.
Speaking of books, I did buy 2 at the reading. I pretended to myself that I wasn’t going to, before we got there, but I really knew I probably would. Then I convinced myself before the reading that I was only going to buy the current book, but during the reading, I realized I had to buy Bird by Bird.
At the post-reading reception, our pastor and our friend Margaret recommended it effusively. Margaret credits it with surviving her PhD dissertation, and Gary thinks it should be required reading for all writing students. (Reno, are you listening?)
In case you were worried, Noah is still cute:
The last few days have been spectacularly beautiful. All of the flowering trees have burst into bloom.
I love this time of year, but it makes me sad at the same time.
Whenever I see a flower or tree I don’t know, or a dogwood or tulip tree, I think of my Gran’mama. I also think about her when I’m walking with Noah and telling him what different flowers are.
I used to call her when I spotted an unfamiliar flower. “It’s a creamy yellow, with a little bit of green, and the blossoms look like they’re floating,” I’d tell her. And she’d tell me what kind of tree it was.
I don’t remember exactly when I couldn’t call her for things like that any more. Maybe 5 or 6 years ago? Her brain kept working most of the way to the end of her life, but the last couple of years were less solid. There were still good moments, they just weren’t what they had been. And she didn’t always remember them later.
(That’s how it was when she found out that I was engaged to Jill, maybe a month or so before she died. She was in the hospital, sleeping. I sat with her, holding the side of the hospital bed. When she woke up, she smiled at me and croaked, “What’s that on your finger?” It was my engagement ring. Someone, my mom or maybe my aunt, had already told her. The question was her invitation/acknowledgment. She hoped I would be happy and warned me (again) to keep our money separate. That was a favorite warning of hers, regarding marriage.)
Gran’mama had the most amazing backyard, when I was a little girl. It was full of brick paths that intersected so you could run around in circles and figure 8s until you couldn’t breathe, without getting bored.
Even better than the backyard, my grandparents had a greenhouse. I’m pretty sure my gran’papa built it onto their house — the door was through the master bedroom. I wasn’t allowed in there by myself, and when I was allowed in, I wasn’t allowed to touch anything. But I still loved it.
It smelled warm and moist and alive. It was full of breathtakingly beautiful orchids, which my grandparents sold to florist shops. Sometimes they would show us something interesting, unusual, or just beautiful.
So, spring.
It has been HARD this week to not stop and get coffee, or donuts, or a bagel. Wednesday and Thursday were the hardest. I constructed elaborate rationalizations as I approached the store where I would stop for donuts, the drive through bagel place, and worst of all, the elevator stop where I could step into starbucks in seconds.
But I held steady. I didn’t cave. I made a commitment and I stuck to it.
I’ve been thinking a lot about another money thing this week: taxes. Jill and I met with a “tax guy” for the first time together, a couple of weeks ago. While there are some details he still needs, he walked us through the basics, and it looks like I will be getting a ridiculous refund. We’re talking a big ass, interest free, loan to Uncle Sam.
So I need to change the number of exemptions I claim. I upped that number when I returned to work after Noah was born, but not enough apparently.
Jerry, the tax guy, ballparked the number I should be taking at triple what I currently take. Not quite comfortable with that, yesterday I increased it by 150% instead. And I did that after spending a few minutes with this extremely cool calculator that lets you see how payroll adjustments affect your take-home pay.
That calculator is awesome if you are at all interested in things like that — you can see what happens with more or fewer exemptions, by increasing or decreasing your contribution to your 401k/403b, what a raise would really be worth, and if you’re bitter like me, about being taxed on the imputed income of the value of your partner’s health insurance, what your paycheck would look like if your marriage were recognized by the federal government.
In my case, every two weeks, I would be bringing home an additional $111 dollars. Not chump change.
That’s without making any changes at all except to eliminate the “imputed income” related to my insurance.
(Note about the calculator: Add your state taxes to the “miscellaneous after tax deductions” to make the numbers match your paystubs, or at least come close.)
The lovely people at the Woodhull Institute added a 1-day version of Katie Orenstein’s Opinion Writing class on Sunday June 10, and I am taking it.
I can’t tell you how excited I am about this, although I think I tried when I first mentioned it.
Here’s the deal: The class is $300 per person if you are member of the general public, or $225 if you are a Member of the Woodhull Institute, which you can join for $100. So for an extra $25, you can support an organization dedicated to “ethical leadership training and professional development for women.” And which brings these kinds of classes, as well as leadership development programs, to women around the US.
So do what I did. Join, and then register for the class. That $100 should be tax deductible since the Woodhull Institute is a non-profit organization.
My friend Brandi is taking the class too.
I know some of you lovely and brilliant women are in NYC. Can you come play with us too? (Incidentally, if the course is too expensive for you, check out what they say about providing scholarships!)
First, Nina of Queercents and one of the Personal Finance editors at Blogher, posted an interview called “Ten Money Questions” with me. Nina is doing a series of these interviews, and they’re pretty interesting — go check them out!
I am so ready for Noah to go back to school tomorrow. It has been a LONG five days. (Two sick days, one school closed day, the weekend.) He is soooooo fussy right now! I hope it’s teeth coming in, as we’re still at two, and if teething fussy looks worse than this, I am going to lose it.
Not that we haven’t had fun. Today, Noah’s friend Liam came over so the mommies could watch basketball. That plan didn’t work quite as well as we hoped, and the boys were both fussy until we took them outside to run up and down the neighbor’s driveway. And try to eat rocks.
Yesterday, I went to another one of those consignment sales and bought another $23.01 worth of summer clothing: Approximately a dozen items, including 3 suitable for church shirts. I was talked down from a baby backback that really wouldn’t have worked for a boy like Noah, even though it was $3.50.
Which brings me to my money mindfulness update. I think I’m doing pretty well. I’ve held steady on the starbucks and the books, and on the Internet and even on more cute cheap toys at the consignment sales. I’m pretty proud of myself, and I’m surprised by how hard it’s been. The Internet and starbucks have been the hardest.
The coolest update I have is to yesterday’s post!
Katie Orenstein found it on LesbianFamily.org and left a comment, excited to have me (and any of my co-authors who are interested) take her Op-Ed writing course!
I know it’s the weekend so many of you may not be reading until Monday, but I’m going to make some “I was talking to you” shout outs anyway.
Here are the first ten people who popped into my mind in no particular order when I was thinking about bloggers who I think would write great op-eds on a variety of issues:
I know that’s more than 10. And off the top of my head, there are 3 I didn’t list because I assume they already have: Polly from LesbianDad, Jessamyn of Librarian.net and Laura of Derivative Work.
Ok, I have to stop before I just go copy my RSS reader.
PLEASE KNOW, if you wish your blog was on this list, I meant to include it, I just had to stop typing and go clean the kitchen and get ready for my week. You’re totally good enough, and you don’t need to wait for the class any more than I do.
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