What I'm Into (April 2014 Edition)

I thought I'd start off with a picture of Spring in Colorado. As I write, it is April 30th and it's snowing.

I really enjoy reading about what Modern Mrs Darcy is into at the end of each month. I don't know why it's taken until April this year to compile my own list, but now I'm excited to do so. I think it's really interesting how each month carries it's own interests and fleeting fancies. Each new month may propel us into new growth and it's worth looking at what captures our attention monthly.

Books
Since I mostly talk about books these days, I'll start with what I'm reading:

World War II is just endlessly fascinating. There are so many facets, details, and vantage points that enlarge the whole World War II experience. This novel is written in first person plural and I can't decide how I feel about it. In some sense, it does give the reader some distance on what was happening in secrecy in New Mexico, but the first person plural makes for a strange and sometimes difficult narrative.

Year of No Sugar is one of those I-did-something-super-duper-hard-for-a-whole-year-and-I'm-going-to-write-about-it memoirs. Let's face it. Sugar is ubiquitous and it's definitely wreaking havoc on society. Type II Diabetes levels are epidemic, but I'm really uncomfortable with ultra-restrictive diets. I'm only half-way through this one and I know I will have way more, probably complicated, thoughts on this when I'm done.

I also just finished reading The Giver. For decades, I deliberately skipped this Newberry winner because I just didn't like the cover. I don't think I even read the back cover to get a sense of the story. I simply dismissed it. What a mistake! I'm really looking forward to the film adaptation, with Meryl Streep, this Summer.

I'm not sure how I feel about this movie logo. I think it gives the sense that it is more sci-fi than it really is.

Watching
Don't judge. I'm watching Dancing With the Stars. Good grief, It's totally cheesy and a certain ice dancer (Meryl Davis) might have some unfair advantage, but it's really a lot of fun and some levity is in order. I'm really enjoying watching Paralympic snowboarder, Amy Purdy and her dance partner, Derek Hough. She's amazing. I mean,  I can barely walk in heels, but she makes dancing with prosthetic legs look almost effortless.

American Idol is coming into the home stretch and yes, I'm still watching because Harry Connick, Jr is a judge. Is it crazy to say that I really only watch to hear what Harry has to say and I don't really care about the singing that much? Yes. It probably is.

Pondering

I discovered that you can Google why a little fat robin keeps smacking into your sliding glass window. This little guy has been driving me crazy for a few weeks with his suicidal behavior. It turns out that he's not suicidal, but very territorial. He sees his reflection in the window and he thinks it's another robin and well, that other robin in the window has to go. After all the years in my house, I've never noticed this behavior by robins. The window smacking is intense and my little robin has turned into an alarm clock.

Summer Project

Last summer, I had to tear down my garden (the Veggie Vault) to make room for the new deck. Gardening at this altitude (8600 feet) is difficult in the best of circumstances. Over several years, I had limited success with carrots, strawberries, kale, tomatoes, etc.(There are pictures of my former Veggie Vault here on my blog, if you're interested). The sad truth is that my little veggies just didn't get enough sun and I would have had to move the garden at some point even if we hadn't rebuilt the deck.

Honestly, I'm just not motivated to get the garden up and running again right now. So, instead of my wallowing in my gardening woes, I've found my new project. Of course, I'm going to need a lot of help from my husband, but I think I've inspired him too. I want to build my own Little Free Library.  It's just a little box, usually shaped like a house, but inside, oh inside, there are books. Neighbors can freely take a book or leave a book. I'm really excited about this an I've been pinning Little Free Libraries on Pinterest. I've printed out some plans, but honestly, I'm more excited about deciding which books I want to put in my little library.

Take a book. Leave a book.

Cooking

The day before Easter, I took a class on how to make French Macarons. They are pretty involved, but oh, they have such deliciously complicated textures and flavors. I made pistachio orange-ginger macarons and I assure you that all of those flavors are exquisite together. Now, these aren't really everyday cookies, but they are beautiful, lovely, delicate, feminine...The colors scream Spring.

Scrolling back through my posts for 2014
After scrolling back through my 2014 posts, I realized there were a few books that I mentioned in various book posts that got sidelined. I had to return Anything That Moves back to the library. Sam was not enchanted with Ella Enchanted. I never really got off the ground while reading The Goldfinch and I'm not sure why I just got side-tracked while reading The Night Circus. It's really good. I also temporarily put down Longbourn. 

I have accepted that I'm a binge-reader. I read a little of everything. I've accepted that I read crazily and greedily.

On the nightstand right now:

All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenting //Jennifer Senior
The Devil Wears Prada // Lauren Weisberger
Dear Mr. Knightley  //Katherine Reay
Reading in the Wild: The Book Whisperer's Keys to Cultivating Lifelong Reading Habits // Donalyn Miller
When Women Were Birds // Terry Tempest Williams

There's more to come on these books, I'm sure, well,  unless they get side-lined for something else or I have to return them to the library!

That's what I'm into in April.

There should be gold medals for speed watching the Olympics

Meryl Davis and Charlie White win Ice Dancing Gold!

Are you  watching the Olympics? I am. Lots of it. I blame my recent exhaustion on watching the Olympics every night. I will fully admit that I can watch maybe three luge runs before they all look the same. Without the excitement in the announcer's voice, I would never be able to tell you that this luge run is .087 of a second faster than the last luger.

I'll watch a couple of Skeleton runs and think about who these crazy  people are who decide to slide head first at nearly 80 miles an hour! I watch speed skating and slope style snow boarding! I do a lot of speed watching, but I always stop and settle in for the figure skating. All of it.

I used to hate ice dancing. It was weird, over-the-top, theatrical, and there were no jumps. I wanted to see Axels not Twizzles. I mean, seriously. Twizzles? This year, I liked the ice dancing the best. I hadn't realized that ice dancing had changed over the last decade. (The last Winter Games I watched were the 2002 Salt Lake Games where figure skating was fraught with cheating and scandal. Remember the double gold medal in pairs figure skating? The French judge?)

I think the reason that I'm watching so much of the Olympics is that I missed everything from both Torino and Vancouver.This was the period where we didn't have network TV. We watched everything via Netflix streaming and movies from the library. I didn't feel deprived, but it turns out that I've missed a lot. So, when Paul added Aereo  this year giving us the opportunity to watch TV online, I was enthusiastic. Very enthusiastic!

My husband did not anticipate my enormous enthusiasm for the return of network TV to my house. I've never been a TV person and I'm still not, but I'm happy to be back to engage the culture in real time.

Next up? The Oscars!!!

Concrete Goals

I spent most of January pondering how I am going to make 2014 better than 2013. I wrote a post about resolutions in January, but it wasn't very concrete and largely, I took all of January to gain some clarity on what I want to accomplish this year. I also spent time thinking about what I'm into right now.

Organization

This is really my area of expertise. It's a crazy gift. I wouldn't characterize myself as having awesome spacial skills when it comes to maps, but when it comes to organizing the home, I'm amazing. Yep. That doesn't sound humble at all and it isn't. If they gave out gold medals for organizing closets and spaces, I'd win every time. Call me. I'll help you with any organizing project.

For some reason, when it comes to organizing, my spacial skills really kick in. My mind can mentally assess, re-arrange, purge, and visualize the final product in a few short minutes.

We began the year in crazy purge mode. I've found that whenever I feel overwhelmed in any capacity, the first thing I want to do is lighten my load of stuff. We have seven people in our house and as much as things are donated and tossed constantly, it never seems to make much difference (at least in my mind). I started reading Clutter Free With Kids on my Kindle recently. Honestly, I've read all the books on living simply and reducing clutter. I know most of the tricks, but sometimes you need to read the advice again because you just get motivated. Once your'e motivated, you'll realize that you'll be happier setting limits with stuff.

Here's the deal: Your kids, despite what they think, are just plain happier with less stuff. A while back, I read the book Simplicity Parenting and that book changed the way I saw how the accumulation of stuff related to parenting.

This week, I spent some time in the bedroom that currently has four children. I put on Mickey Mouse for the Littles (Tess, Liam, and James). I then proceeded to be ruthless in their bedroom. I threw away broken toys. I put things that never really held their interest in a donation box. I made sure not to throw away treasures, but with less stuff around, it's easier for my children to find their treasures.

The thing is that purging is an on-going process. I'm always re-evaluating whether we need to keep something. This process helps me not get too attached to anything.

Staying organized in my small loud home is definitely a concrete goal for 2014. That's really the kicker, isn't it? Keeping things organized once you've done the work. It will be an on-going adventure and hopefully, I will teach my children not to hold onto things too tightly.

Habits

I need to pay attention to everything I do to live well and intentionally. I realized that a nebulous goal can only take you so far.

I added a Habit tracker app to my phone. I don't know why I never considered this before. Modern Mrs Darcy says you get what you measure. That means paying attention. Happiness guru, Gretchen Rubin has had me thinking seriously about how our habits add or detract from our overall happiness.

My doctors have told me avoid gluten for years. So far, I've been obstinate and rebellious. Aside from my general thyroid issues, I have no real difficulties with gluten. So, the whole gluten thing has just made me angry for so many years.

 So, I added the MyChain app to my phone to give up gluten for a month to see if it really makes a difference. Every day that I avoid gluten, I add a link to my chain. The whole goal is to avoid breaking the chain. So, in some ways, it's like a game. I realized that I could not rely on my own will to avoid gluten, but a simple app on my phone has me finally obeying my doctors. Clearly, I needed something outside of myself to comply. I'll have to investigate that further, but that's a subject for another day. I think this app will be useful for other habits I'd like to change as well.


The Return of TV to my home

This isn't really a goal to watch more TV, but I have to say since we've been without TV for about six years, I'm happy to have the return of network TV to my house in 2014. It's just time to re-enter TV land for a while.

When we moved into our home at the end of 2005, we had an antenna that served us well. We got the major networks with a few extras like TLC where I indulged in countless episodes of What Not to Wear. Then, a snow storm knocked that antenna off the house and I deemed it way too dangerous to consider putting it back. We decided that we'd live without TV for a while. We definitely weren't going to pay for Dish or cable.  I'm not anti-TV, but I'm definitely in the category of less screens, more books. We added Netflix streaming and well, we weren't deprived, but when it came to the Oscars, Golden Globes, Olympics, etc., I was constantly asking my best friend to tape things for me and honestly, I hate missing some of these collective cultural events.

I bought a new TV for my husband for his December birthday/Christmas. We added Aereo which lets us have access to the major networks again. I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to the Oscars and the Olympics this year.

I'm also watching a show of which I don't usually have interest. I'm watching American Idol. Even if we had TV in the last few years, I'm not sure that I'd have watched, but I'm watching now and it's because of this guy:

I love Harry Connick, Jr. I must have at least twelve of his albums. In fact, one of the first CDs I ever bought was the soundtrack from When Harry Met Sally. He's smart, funny, and well, honest to these aspiring singers. I'm excited about Wednesdays nights and it's a show in which we can include our oldest son. He wasn't very interested in it at first, but I think even he's caught my Harry Connick, Jr. enthusiasm.

Clothing

I want to dress better. I don't think I dress badly, but I definitely dress boring. I've had a uniform of sorts for years. It's jeans, long sleeve (usually deep teal) shirt, and black vest. I've been wearing my Dansko clogs for at least 8 years. I'm not giving up my Danskos, but I do need some sprucing up.

I don't really like clothes shopping and out of desperation, if I need something, I end up at Kohl's or the Eddie Bauer Outlet, and sometimes even Salvation Army. I tend to choose the same styles over and over just in different colors.

I pay incredible attention to color and I choose colors carefully. I even had my colors done a couple of years ago. Yes, I'm a Baroque Winter. My color palette is replete with deep jewel tones. Sapphires, Rubies, Emeralds. The colors are inspiring, but my clothing choices, sadly, are not.

So, this year, I'm going to try StitchFix. This is an online styling service. You mean I don't have to go out and shop? Somebody else will do it for me? Fabulous. Sign me up. I'll keep you posted.

Weekends

Weekends have been largely a time when everyone sleeps in and catches up on sleep and then we get up to catch up on work around the house. This year, I want to have more leisure time with the family. We already work hard around here and work isn't everything. We need family time and more of it. Our time with Luke is dwindling quickly. He's a freshman and his high school years are going to slip by rapidly. I want everyone to have good memories while we're still all together.

Books I can't wait to read

At the heart of setting definable goals is living intentionally. I'm always thinking about how my time is limited. I have to set boundaries and priorities. I stink at this. I think I can do everything. I want to do everything, but just like I want to set limits with our physical stuff, I need to set limits elsewhere and paradoxically, it might mean a fuller life after all?

Survival mode is where I found myself when I brought my twins boys home from the hospital in October of 2010 and sadly where I stayed since. They're three now and I now need to phase survival mode out of our family identity.

There's a theme here, right? It's time to get back to living well for my whole family.

Then there is this:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/ariellecalderon/books-to-read-before-they-hit-theaters-this-year

I'd like to have a sort-of movie club this year with some of my movie/book loving friends. That means more reading, more books, and more movies too.

It's going to be a full year and I'm ready.