A Day of Grace: Birthday

My mother made me this beautiful strawberry shortcake and made taco salad for my birthday. My sister and her family and my nana came over to celebrate. It was very nice.

I tried to come up with a list of 34 things I want to do before my next birthday, but there isn’t that much I want to do. It comes down to something (I think) I’ve expressed on the blog before – about how happy (satisfied) I am with life in general at this point. I’m exactly where I’ve always wanted to be. There are issues – my husband’s current unemployment – but otherwise I’m pretty content where I’m at right now. Is that bad? I don’t feel like I’m in a rut. I’m continually adding more aspects to our life – cooking more healthy meals, growing more stuff.

I started a list. Some are good goals; some I’ve been doing anyway and just adding more of.

1. Read 2 personal development books a month. This probably won’t happen, though I have been reading and listening to more non fiction podcasts. I’ll do a separate post on some of those.

2. Keep walking. This I’ve been doing pretty well with. I’m up early most mornings. I walk during Grace’s soccer practice.

3. Finish my t-shirt quilt. This is likely to happen, especially if I get back into my sewing room soon.

4. Finish Scott’s t-shirt quilt. Again, likely to happen. I have everything planned for his, I just have to go in there and cut and sew.

5. Learn . . . This is still blank. What do I want to learn this year? Not sure. Most things are just going to be an extension of what I’m already doing.

6-10. 5 instances of going out of my comfort zone to help someone else. I haven’t done this yet. I’ve had several instances where I needed to and I thought later about what I should have done and felt ashamed, but this is definitely something I need to work on.

11. Clear out my blog roll – done.

12. Use Twitter more often and more effectively. I’ve set this program to tweet when I update my blog. I've started following more people from podcasts and letting them know when I listen and that I like their stuff. I’m retweeting more science stuff and more funny stuff. I want to do more local stuff, but I feel weird somehow. We’ll see. I like Twitter a lot. I get a lot of news from Twitter, both local and from Huffington Post.

13. More vegetables and less take out. I still do shops, but I’ve been frequenting the Farmer’s Market and cooking the vegetables. So far nothing has gone bad from nonuse. I’ll post more about that later too.

14. Go outside and play more. I took Grace to the park this week and climbed and played with her. She has more fun with other kids and there isn’t much to do one you’ve climbed up a few times, but I did. I like to lay outside on a blanket and listen to podcasts to soak up the sun, but that isn’t playing with my kid or exercising.

15. Keep up with my compost, grow the things, weed the beds. When I keep up with my watering, I’ve been growing some great jalapenos. I just bought some broccoli plants and a squash.

I love broccoli and squash. I’d love to start some seeds this year and keep up with them. I have a compost pile in a bin that I need to dump out and mix up. Mosquitos are bad outside though.

and then my list just stops. Do I dare add keeping up with cleaning the house? I hate doing that. Sappy feely stuff about supporting and making my husband feel loved? Do I need to formalize that?

Goalz – I haz some.