Lent, Personal Progress, and Adoption
I’ve surprised myself at how well I’ve done at not checking in on work after I leave the office. I can’t say I haven’t been tempted, though — I have. I did finally give in last night… we might have a technical person coming out to visit today and I hadn’t heard anything about the timing by the time I left on Friday, so I checked the email subject lines on my Blackberry to see if I had any email about it. I didn’t read any email, which was good, but I promised I wouldn’t check into anything, so I get a FAIL for yesterday. All in all, it’s felt pretty good to not be tied to work, although there are moments where I start getting anxious because I don’t know what’s happening or what will be greeting me the next day. I work with labs in Australia, Canada and Germany, and have customers in Korea — so things actually do happen in the evening and overnight that I need to respond to.
I’ve been keeping on my FlyLady sink shining and “swish & swipe” habits really well! John even noticed that I’m shining my sink every night and has started putting his dishes on the counter next to it so that it’s still empty and shiny when I wake up. Today is the 11th work day in a row that I’ve been in the office before 7am, which is another habit that I’d like to keep going because I get so much more done when I can get home at a descent hour. One thing that I need to do a lot better about is packing lunches. I get up early, and I lay my clothes out the night before so I can get out as quickly as possible, but I’m not doing so great at lunches. I can only pack the non-perishible items at night because our lunch bags won’t fit in the refrigerator. I had wanted to get away from packing leftovers because cooking larger dinner meals means more $$ spent at the grocery store, but I don’t know how good sandwiches would be after sitting in the fridge overnight. Then I get up in the morning and feel too rushed to make them fresh; so we’re back into the leftovers habit. Need to break that cycle.
We finally have news on the adoption front, and that news is: no news. Specifically, the agency hasn’t heard back from Korea about our medical pre-approval, so they are going to check in with them. But, they are going to send us the homestudy paperwork to start on while we’re waiting. We can’t submit the homestudy application until we’ve met our weightloss goals (if we can go to Korea), but we can at least start compiling all of the records that we’ll need, so that feels like progress. We’ve also done a lot of heavy thought and calculating and have decided to pay off the truck and motorcycle early so that we can get rid of those payments and start saving up for the adoption costs. We had thought about taking an adoption loan (yes, there really is such a thing), but would like to pay in cash if we can make it work. We’re going to have to work together to really clamp down on the budget, which could be painful. In the end, though, we’ve gotta do what we’ve gotta do.
Reinventing Lent
I’ve got some more snow storm photos and updates to post, but I’m a little behind… I’ll catch up, I promise!
Our church is doing a “reinventing lent” thing again this year, where those of us who are participating are making some sort of positive change for Lent, whether it’s giving something up or adding a new habit. Our pastor is blogging about it as he goes along; you can read about it here: Lent at Seneca Creek.
I had initially decided to get back to some of my FlyLady routines for lent — hoping that the initial commitment of just 40 days would get me back on track for a longer period. Our lives are so crazy that I keep missing the little things; so shining my sink daily and doing the “Swish & Swipe” every single day seemed like a pretty good habit to renew. I’m not sure why our lives are so much crazier than everyone else’s. Sometimes I wonder if it’s because we don’t have kids — everyone seems to assume that we can always drop everything instantly because we don’t have them. However, I think (and my boss told me this morning that he agrees) that we might actually be busier without kids because people do assume that we don’t have anything to do and then book us for 10,000,000 events and tasks that they would never approach us with if we have kids, because they would assume that we couldn’t do a single one of them… because we have kids. It’s a vicious cycle.
Back on subject….
So, with our lives being completely crazy and owned by everyone but us, I thought I would use Lent to get back to the basics and get my home in order. Ok, ok — I’m not living in CHAOS (Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome) yet, and by many standards my house probably looks pretty good, but I need to be keeping it up as a habit, not a “OMG the kitchen floor looks awful!!!” quick fix. So back to the basics I go with forty days of “Swish & Swipe” and shining my sink.
And then……my very dear (and honest) friend Diane brought up a good point after some discussion last night at our small group bible study. The thing that might make the biggest improvement in my life (and my stress levels) right now would be learning to leave work at work. I get every other Friday off, and yet I spend the whole day checking my work email and answering questions over Sametime because I feel bad that people might have to wait until Monday (ZOMG!!) to get their issues resolved. At first I tried explaining to her that that’s why I check in on my days off and in the evenings — it’s not for me, it’s for them. But she brought up a good point: I obviously can’t change this habit for me because I just don’t have the self-preservation bone in me… but can I change it for God? I’m not even sure now that she said those exact words — but that’s what it sounded like in my soul. And we had just had a sermon that morning about identifying our Goliath (the thing that controls us)…… and doing something about it.
How could I let my work be my Goliath and control such of my life to the point that I can’t put it down or say “no”. Could work be my crack cocaine? It very well might be. So (starting today), I’m also going to leave work at work for Lent. A couple of ground rules though — I do sometimes have to do conference calls with other countries in the evenings due to the time difference, and if I leave early I do have to make the time up in the evenings or on a Friday. But with those exceptions, I am not going to work at home — no checking email or logging in to Sametime – unless it is prearranged and necessary. No checking in before bedtime, no checking my email before I go in to the office in the morning. Work stays at work.
It’s not going to be easy, because I’ve formed a lot of bad habits (like *needing* to check my email before I head in to the office in the morning because I’d rather prepare for the crap sandwich sitting on my desk than be surprised by it). But if I can do this, then I could spend that time I would be working by doing other things — like reading my bible, praying, or shining my sink. And maybe I can carry *that* beyond Lent, and affect a much more positive change in my life than just getting my home back in order.
So here goes nuthin’…..
Snoverkill 2010 (Part 3)
We watched snow and blowing snow all day long. The “snow dunes” as I’m calling them are getting pretty high. We decided to go a bit old school. With all of the wind, we’ve got a lot of drafts through our windows and doors, and we have a lot of uncovered windows. So we hung blankets, tablecloths and towels over the sliding glass door in the kitchen and the bay window in the dining room to see if they made a difference. Indeed they did — the tempature in the house has risen by 2 degrees in the first hour we’ve had them up, and it feels like it’s getting even warmer. Time to start turning the heaters down. We’ve decided that we’re going to get some heavy curtains to hang on the windows sometime soon to help with our energy bill.
We didn’t run by the store on the way home Monday night because it was late and I was convinced there wouldn’t be anything there to get, so we’re without milk, orange juice, bread, deli meat, and fresh veggies. Looks like I’m cooking out of my freezer for the next couple of days. Tonight will be an indoor barbeque with bbq chicken thighs and legs, macaroni salad, french fries, and dill pickles that I canned over the summer. I think I’m going to do a pork roast with brown rice and corn kernels tomorrow. Lunches will be leftovers.
I’ve been a bit nervous that all of the snow will collapse either our deck or the swimming pool. The deck has a nearly flat aluminum roof, and the swimming pool is one large rectangle. So far we haven’t lost either, but I’m keeping an eye on them. Thaw time is going to bring some major flooding to this area; hopefully we’ll be spared. John’s working in the basement on the airplane now, and I’m getting my favorite computer game started while I’m waiting for dinner to finish.
I hear that we’re in for some more snow on Monday and Tuesday. That means the grocery store will be INSANE this weekend. I just can’t win.
Snoverkill 2010 (Part 2)
This says it all:
