Feeling off Track

I don't know what's been going on with me lately.  I've finally figured out where I want to be and what I want to be doing, but I feel like I'm totally missing the point.  I'm being sidetracked by things that really are important, but seem to be taking away from my goals.  It seems like I've somehow lost touch with the kind o person I want to be and somehow this stranger has intervened to take it's place.

This past week has been spent largely cleaning and organizing my house.  I've got all the science and nature books put on one shelf.  Another shelf is half history books, half coloring and craft books.  That frees up more room in my daughter's book shelves to keep the books she actually wants.  I'm hoping that will mean she can fit all of her chapter books and everything else.  It's amazing how much space is freed up just by organizing the books.  It helps to have all the books that relate to school in a place where they can all share them.

The living room book shelves started the journey.  I've been cleaning them from top to bottom.  The whole room looks so much nicer without all the crazy clutter, which means once I get all the books up off the floor and into the places they need to go, I can finally feel a bit better about having people over!  It's also nice to be able to find the books I want to read when I want to read them.  I've been doing a decent amount of reading lately.  It's nice to feel like I'm expanding my mind.

The reading I've been doing lately is different too.  I've been focusing on non-fiction reading.  I'm trying to develop a focus on things that relate to my life, spirituality, diet, parenting, and those sorts of topics.  It's been refreshing to sit back and read for a while without feeling guilty about it.  After all, reading isn't a guilty pleasure.  It's expanding my mind and helping to set a good example for my children.  It's a great way to relax too.

Still, in all of this I'm starting to feel like maybe my life is starting to get off track again.  I'm cleaning, reading, and taking care of my home, but what about my spirituality?  What about changing the patterns in my life?  What about becoming the person I want to be?  Am I going to lose some of that in my quest to get my physical surroundings up to par so we can maintain the status quo?  Or does that somehow relate into it all, that being a more "normal" family somehow will help me on my way to accepting my new life as Mommy above all else, putting aside any other labels?

It just feels like maybe I'm losing a part of myself in all of this, that somehow I'm missing something that's incredibly integral to who I am.  I just wish I knew what it was so I could take a step forward and truly embrace that part of my life.  I am who I am.  I just hope I'm not starting to lose sense of that.

New Morning Routine...and Tea

It's morning.  I've been up for a while, which is a shock to most who know me well.  The fact that I'm up before 9am is a minor miracle.  The fact that I'm not cranky and crabby on top of it may make some people who know me who brainwashed me, because this isn't what I'm normally like.  I'm the lazy mom that rolls out of bed last minute and does as little in the possible in the morning, generally because I stay up all night.

Over the past few days I've been experimenting with a new sleep routine.  I don't sleep in anymore.  I'm trying desperately not to let myself get out of bed after 7am.  It's been working out great.  I'm up when my kids get up, and I'm surprisingly not crabby.  Next week I think I may try and bump it earlier by a half hour and then again the week after that so I'll be getting up at 6am.  Then I'll have enough time to do yoga in the morning before the kids wake up.

Yoga is one of those things I used to do in the mornings way back when I still worked at the eyeglass company.  I would have to get up at 5am in order to have time in the morning, and there was barely room.  We were staying with a friend in his living room.  We had an air mattress out and slept on that, but that took up so much room that it was hard to find space to do yoga.  I would have to keep it really quiet because my daughter and her father were asleep.  I would do an hour of yoga, eat a light breakfast, then walk to the station to catch the 7am train.  Every morning I would show up almost two hours early for work or more, but waiting for a later train would leave me a half hour late, so there wasn't much in the way of option there.  I'd spend my time waiting with a good book, eating a horrible breakfast from the fast-food joint in the food court or hanging out at the coffee shop with some tea or hot chocolate.  It wasn't much of a fancy ritual or anything, but it was my ritual each morning, and I loved it.

There's just something about yoga in the morning.  It's invigorating and wakes up the body, sure, but there's something more to it.  It's not just gentle stretching and strengthening.  It's also meditative.  There's something about moving through the poses, focusing on the inner thoughts and the actual feelings and sensations in the body (and in all honesty here, I'm thinking, "My body is SO not flexible enough for that!")  I feel more connected to myself when I do yoga, more present in my own physical form, more aware of everything going on in my own person.  It's wonderful.

All of that ended the first time when I broke my elbow.  After three months of not being able to do much of anything followed by almost a year of being unable to do yoga because I didn't have the strength, I got out of the habit.  It's so easy to get lazy about things, even when it's something enjoyable.  I tried on a couple of occasions to get back into it, but I never really did.  I've heard that it takes 21 days to make a new habit, good or bad, and I've never been able to last out that three week period before.  After a couple of days I'm making excuses about not having enough time for yoga, which is largely true when I get up to a house full of bustling activities, everyone already doing their own things for the day.  There's no peaceful, quiet time for me to focus on yoga.  Even if I shut myself in my room, the kids come in demanding this or that.  They don't exactly make it easy.  Besides, once the day is rolling, it's often easy to drop things off the schedule when things get hectic, and it's all too easy to make excuses of being too busy or tired.

Of course, getting up before the kids is a ritual in the making.  It's going to involve cleaning my living room so I can have a space to do yoga.  It will mean getting my yoga  mat out of the closet.  I'll have to start waking up consistently about an hour earlier each day.  It's going to take some time to get there, but I have a goal.  From there it's keeping up with it for 21 days so it becomes habit, and hopefully after that it will be so much easier to get up to in the morning.  That's going to be my first goal, last out 21 days of daily yoga.

On another note, nothing says morning like tea.  Tea and yoga kind of go hand-in-hand.  Most of the people I know who do yoga are also big tea drinkers.  It's probably got to do with yoga and tea both being healthy for you, so one would imagine that would be a good combination.  It's a great way to wake up in the morning, and truth be told, I like it better than coffee.  I've never been much of a coffee drinker anyway.  That's what I'm doing this morning.  Sitting at my computer, drinking some tea.  My cabinet is full of tea.  I've got so much tea it's almost shocking, considering most of it's never even been touched.  It's time I made tea a part of my morning ritual too.  It's probably a lot healthier for me than most of my other morning routines!  At least I can say it's good for me!

All in all, I think I'm taking a positive step forward in my life.  Most mornings I've woken up crabby, just wanting to be left alone only to be ambushed by children that want my attention, and haven't been getting it since I've been sleeping.  Even having someone else get up with the kids in the morning doesn't seem to stop the madness when I finally get up.  Now I'm less cranky in the morning, more focused, and much happier.  I don't know if it's the quality of sleep I've been getting or if it's got to do with the much quieter pace in the morning, but I'm feeling so much more approachable.  It leaves me with a couple of hours to get myself collected in the morning too.  I can spend some time on the computer, reading a book, or even just sitting to meditate by myself for a while before my day needs to get rolling.  It leaves me to feel less rushed when I finally do have to get up and go do something.  I guess, in a way, I feel so much more balanced, and I'm continuing to follow that path.

Happiness Is a Houseplant

Most of my friend's houses are pretty barren.  They've got furnishings, sure.  They may have toys for their kids, pets, video games.  They've got plenty of noise with televisions or radios playing.  The homes have a lot of stuff, and sometimes even a lot of life, but they're still barren.  They're still kind of, well, lacking.

When I was a kid we used to spend a lot of time outdoors whenever we could.  In the winter it was much more challenging, but come spring there were plenty of things to do outside.  My mother helped us keep our own garden.  She would clip roses for us off the rose bush climbing up our porch.  We would disappear into the forsythia bushes and pretend to be bunnies from Jim Henson's Bunny Picnic.  The summer would bring trips to the beach or the reservoir, summer camp, and bike rides.  The fall would bring camping trips with our Girl Scout troop at Camp Cedar Hill and tons of Halloween adventures.  As I got older just going for a walk was plenty of reason to go out and get fresh air.  The world was so vibrant, green, and bright.  It was truly beautiful.

When I was little I remember not having many house plants.  My mom would certainly try.  We'd get poinsettia nearly every Christmas, but they wouldn't survive for long after the season was over.  I never knew if it was simply because they weren't a long-lived plant or because they just weren't getting the right care.  At one point we went over to Christmas cactus, but they didn't fare well either.  They were forgotten and dried up.  I brought them back from near death three times, but eventually I just stopped trying.  I even remember an ivy plant that grew in a goose planter.  It was pretty small and the neck curled around to it's back where the plant was potted.  I think I remember my mom loving ivy, but even that didn't last long.  We seemed to have no luck with house plants.  I just figured it's because we were so much better with plants that lived outside.

When I got out on my own I tried a couple times to have houseplants.  For a while when I lived with my two male room mates and our small collection of cats in Sutton I had a small African violet plant that sat in the kitchen window.  I made sure to pick the most hopeless looking plant.  I told them it was because I was a miracle worker at bringing plants to life, but in truth it was because I was afraid it wouldn't last.  I would feel a lot less bad about killing a plant that was already dying than I would about killing a plant that was so vibrant and full of life.  I was pretty well a miracle worker for plants, much like my mother could be, but plants take dedication and care.  They need to be watered.  They're harder to care for than pets as far as I'm concerned because pets come and bother you when they're in need, but plants never do.  They sit there and silently suffer until they wither and die.  It's just their way.  Many don't need constant and daily care either, so they are that much easier to forget about.  My little violet thrived for quite some time, but it was the move out of that place that killed it.

A few years later, after the birth of my daughter, we got another African violet that also lived in our kitchen.  We lived in a beautiful, sunny third story apartment in Cambridge.  I didn't pick it out.  My fiancee at the time had decided it would be the perfect housewarming gift for us.  Our room mate didn't much care for the plant, but I adored it.  It was the perfect addition to our little home.  Unfortunately, that room mate brought with him a plague of bed bugs, so we had to leave, leaving much of our prized possessions behind.  As much as I didn't think the bugs would infest my house plant, but it wouldn't have survived the house we were staying in while my husband went into the military.  African violets aren't terribly known for thriving in a house that's kept at a standard temperature of about fifty to sixty degrees.  I left the plant with my room mate who promised to care for it.

When we moved to Texas I tried several times to keep a house plant.  In our first home we had a couple of kalanchoe plants, but they didn't make it.  I picked up a couple more after our first move, but they suffered the same fate.  I know I could have thriving kalanchoe plants.  When I was in biotech in high school my kalanchoe plant and my African violet were my babies.  Those were the plants I used for my particular projects, growing plants in culture.  They all did very well until their final transfer into soil in which they got infected with mold.  I guess I didn't get enough of the agar off when I transplanted them.  I was beginning to think I just couldn't raise house plants.  Maybe, much like things seemed with my mom, I would be better to have an outdoor garden.

Recently I decided it was time to try again.  Much of the reason I didn't have successful houseplants in the past was all of the other distractions I had in my life.  How could I remember to water a plant every couple of days when I could barely see the house under all the clutter?  How could I properly care for a plant if I was so wrapped up in all the things I needed to get done?  Then again, I'd have a bad tendency to put my blinkers on and go.  I'd focus on what I needed to do and forget about everything else.  It meant my poor plants got overlooked in the bustle of it all.

Off I went to the local garden center of Walmart.  I know they don't sell the highest quality plants, but I was just looking for a cheap house plant.  I wasn't looking for something fancy, and they were having a lot of sales.  I was certain I could just run in, pick something up, and go about my day.  It was harder than I thought it would be.  I live in a fourplex that faces west.  There aren't many windows, which is sad because I love rooms with lots of light.  This presented a challenge because most of my favorite plants required full sun.  I finally decided I would just pick a plant to put outside on our front porch, that way I could have some flowers with some color, even if I couldn't find any good ones to put up in my house.  I found a nice partial sun plant for our west facing front porch, then went on to pick out some pansies for our living room and a hanging ivy plant for our dining room near the window.  Plans changed when we decided to get it a nicer planter, which was too big for our small ivy plant, so I splurged and got two more ivy plants to hang it over the bar top between our living room and dining room.  It was a wonderful choice as our ivy is perfectly placed there.  The finishing touch was a small "lucky bamboo" plant I stumbled upon while looking to pick up the second and third ivy plants for our planters.  I gave that to my partner because he's not very good with green things.  He doesn't have the dedication to care for a plant.

As I was looking at my ivy, I had seriously considered a different plant instead.  As I walked up on the spider plants I remembered my grandmother's kitchen.  They had spider plants hanging between all the windows.  I remember sitting in their kitchen with the sun streaming in, looking at the spider plant babies that were jumping down from the mother plant.  I thought they were the strangest looking plants ever.  I remembered the kids in the environmental class in my high school growing up spider plant babies hydroponically.  Spider plants hold fond memories for me.  They're almost as dear to me as African violets and kalanchoe.  The only reason I didn't go with a spider plant was the cost.  The ivy was cheaper.  Since then I've decided that we need to get two spider plants, one to hang on either side of the window in our dining room.

I'm now starting to understand the benefits of having plants in the house.  It's kind of nice to see something green and alive in the house.  The whole house, as much as it still looks like your average poor family's house in a neighborhood that isn't the best, looks a little less low class now.  The front porch has transformed from looking like somewhere we simply store our recycling with an old beat up outdoor love seat and a couple camp chairs.  It still doesn't look that classy, but it's a step up.  When our kitchen and dining room are clean the ivy and small bamboo make a world of difference.  Plants are known to be calming and are thought to lower blood pressure, which is also wonderful.  On top of that, they purify the air you breathe and provide more oxygen.  It may sound strange, but the house has seemed a whole lot less stuffy since we've introduced plant life into the house.

Now that I have a couple of plants, I'm starting to wonder if this is becoming a new addiction for me.  I have to admit, just the act of doing the rounds to check on all the plants is so incredibly calming.  We've had these plants for at least a couple of weeks now, and the whole process of caring for them has been wonderful.  I've already been thinking about putting plants up to frame our dining room window as well as our living room window.  I'm more excited about saving up for new plants in the house than nearly any other item of decor, such as curtains.  It's amazing how something as passed over as plants can make such a drastic change in mental perspective.

Going to other friend's houses I'm starting to notice that void.  When I see a house that doesn't have any plants it seems empty.  It seems like something is missing.  The whole house seems so much more dead and stale.  Yes, I've got house plants now and I'm never going back.

Winter Blahs

Winter used to be my favorite season, but recently it's also been one of those seasons that makes me feel, well, pretty blah.  Part of it is missing the weather back home.  I know everyone in Mass is piled under mountains of snow right now, but I'd prefer that to this frozen, snowless place.  I actually like snow, as much of a hassle as it can be.  There's something refreshing about a snow storm, and seeing the dead earth frosted over with white.  You just don't get that in Texas!

Because of the cold temperatures we've been having, I haven't had much of a chance to go outside and get some fresh air in the past couple of days.  My classes yesterday were canceled as the store closed early.  Tonight they may be canceled because of the blackouts hitting across town.  That makes it kind of difficult to get outside and do pretty much anything.  Being cooped up makes me even more depressed and crazy, so what's a girl to do?

Today I'm determined to beat the winter blahs.  I'm going to kick back with good food, some hot chocolate, or maybe some tea, and watch some videos for work related stuff.  I might even do something crazy like play the Wii.  It's a great chance to play Twilight Princess or Final Fantasy: Crystal Bearers.  I know, it's not exactly good for me stuff, but I find the puzzles pretty engaging.  That's one thing I love about games on the Wii.  Then there's always sudoku on Brain Age 2 for the DS.  There's nothing wrong with keeping your mind fit, right?  I may be taking the day to sit around and not do terribly much, but at least I'm doing something good for me.

I think that's one thing everyone seems to forget about healthy living.  Living healthy doesn't mean eating healthy and staying active every single day.  There's always room for a chill day here and there, and it helps to balance out physical stimulation with plenty of mental stimulation.  We work so hard on eating balanced diets to maintain our own health, but we don't look at how other aspects of our lives balance out.  Sure, physical activity is healthy and great for the body, but without stimulating the mind you can easily live out a stereotype.  Physically fit and active people aren't known for being particularly brilliant.  Still, a strong and healthy mind can research more efficiently, something essential for anyone who wants to live a healthier lifestyle as data is constantly changing, think more clearly, and make more intelligent decisions.  Keeping our mind active means having a better ability to think quick.

What about video games?  They're just mindless entertainment, right?  Well, some games truly are.  Some games are just about killing the bad guy with no sense of strategy or memorizing the combination of buttons for that really cool move.  Yes, memorizing a combination will help the memory, but that's not what I'm talking about.  Puzzle games keep you stimulated and active.  Games with complex story lines and things to figure out often keep players thinking, which is good for training the mind.  Puzzle games are the perfect example of this.

Even those "mindless" games have their place and use.  Sometimes it's nice just to kick back and relax, especially when life is stressful.  Playing something mindless can be just what it takes to release the stress from a long and tiring day.  It can be a way to take your mind off of things to come back to it later with more clarity.  Yes, meditation is also a way to do this, but not everyone genuinely enjoys meditation.  Video games and "mindless" diversions can also become a social activity, something that meditation really isn't, fulfilling the human need for social interaction.

Cold days like these are perfect for kicking back and relaxing.  We always used to say we were sitting at home, trying to stay warm.  Personally, I think of it more like having a low-key day.  I can focus on working on my computer, doing some relaxing things, maybe even curling up with a book or my knitting later on.  I might even be really daring and take a nap!