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Around the house Health

September 2022

September! … It has warmth, depth, and colour. It glows like old amber.

Patience Strong

Well, even in my very late 40s there’s something about September that makes me think of new starts, new beginnings, new possibilities. And, even for me, it’s been a while since September meant I started a new academic year. It’s fun though now to see how excited Q is for a new school year to begin! So even though it’s still August, today’s post is dedicated to September.

September written on a plain background surrounded by fall leaves

September also reminds me that rest is as important as activity to growth – the trees are starting to drop their leaves, animals foraging in earnest, the sun seems less strong.

I took most of the summer off from everything really – my folks were away a lot, #PandaCat died, we got a new puppy, house stuff was happening etc. – and so I was content to just coast really through July and August and now towards the end of August my brain is getting excited about structure and schedule and habit-forming.

So habits – the last time I did this was in June when I tried to think of a theme to work around. I had all these grand plans but only kept a few going. And in reviewing them now, a couple are still important and so I’m going to start again with them in mind.

SELF focus for September:

❶ schedule – a day

❷ mindfulness – being present

❸ health – menopause

Schedule: I am going figure out what I would like “a day” to look like. Three different days actually: in-office work day, WFH work day, non-work day.

Mindfulness – just something I’m always working on; whether it’s a bit of reading about stoicism, the Calm app, yoga. Something.

Health – read the damn menopause book. That time is creeping up slowly but surely and I really want to be sure I have some sort of idea about what’s going on. We don’t talk about this stuff enough and I need to learn.

Also for health – I had an appointment with a specialist clinic for weight management and my own doc as well. I am waiting for a referral to a sleep study and in the meantime I’m going to start walking more in general and focusing more on my health.

HOME focus for September:

❶ minimalism – organize/declutter

❷ mindfulness – being present – family-sized 😉

We live in a fairly large house. The problem with this of course is that we acquire enough stuff to fill the large house. And then some. This will really probably be the focus every month for HOME but key tasks for September for decluttering:

① Lisa’s Stuff – organize jewellery; what do I want to keep; offer the rest to family / friends and then sell / donate what’s left

② Q’s Stuff – this was going to hopefully be done over the summer but we never quite got there. So we’re still going to work on getting everything out of Q’s rooms and really clean and maybe repaint them etc. We’ll continue to do a bit every day and then hopefully over one of the weekends between now and Thanksgiving we’ll get the big stuff done.

③ Art – hang more of the art I love and offer up the stuff we no longer adore.

And a mindfulness focus too. I’m going to try and encourage us to each pick an activity to do sometime in September together – whether it’s walk in the park or a movie night with popcorn on the pull-out bed. Sort of like a “family date.” Wish me luck 😉

Sunset in part of toronto skyline
A photo from my balcony in early September 2021.
Categories
Around the house Diversions Health Politics Reading

June 2022

And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days.

James Russell Lowell

I seem to always love the idea of planning but then, stress hits and my most well-worn response is avoidance. I plan to get things done and then they don’t and the next thing I know it’s bedtime and well, that’s about it really.

Yesterday (June 4) there was a “Daily Jay” on the Calm app about “time confetti“; about how little things add up to disrupt your plans and goals and break up your day and cause irritation. Prioritizing is definitely not something I am good at – but it’s comforting to know I am not alone and that there are so many external factors influencing this that I have no control over at all. Thankfully my work is one of those places that really is not there when it’s not supposed to be there. I don’t get messages on my personal phone etc. So that’s terrific. Work is also flexible enough that when I need to take breaks during the day, that’s fine, the work day doesn’t have to be precisely 9 to 5 but also understands that work is not all consuming.

white background with lots and lots of little coloured pieces of paper
confetti 😉

Okay – so back to trying to plan, think about what’s important, not necessarily going off on all sorts of new and fun directions. I mean, new and fun directions are great. But I don’t have to follow the path RIGHTNOWTHISVERYINSTANT. I can make a note, and follow up later.

One of the ways I thought I would do this would be to think of big themes for the month and if something pops up that fits into the theme – yippie! and if not, and it looks cool, I can make a note and maybe use that to come up with another month’s theme.

THEMES FOR JUNE

There are some easy ways for my brain to group things and also a few topics I want to learn more about which themselves have lots of subheadings so the big overall groups are:

SELF

OTHERS

HOME

NATURE

SELF focus for June:

❶ schedule – a day

❷ mindfulness – being present

❸ health – menopause

Schedule: I’m trying to figure out what I would like “a day” to look like. Three different days actually: in-office work day, WFH work day, non-work day.

Mindfulness – just something I’m always working on; whether it’s a bit of reading about stoicism, the Calm app, yoga. Something.

Health – read the damn menopause book. That time is creeping up slowly but surely and I really want to be sure I have some sort of idea about what’s going on. We don’t talk about this stuff enough and I need to learn.

Also move more. I have an appointment with a specialist about weight management and stuff also.

OTHERS focus for June:

❶ reading – neurodiversity

❷ support – volunteering? politics?

The idea here is to not lose myself in my own little bubble. The Ontario election annoyed me to no end – the lowest turn out in years, maybe ever? WTAF?!? The cons killed people during the pandemic no less than if they had pulled a trigger on a gun and you will not be able to convince me otherwise. And they were rewarded with another majority? @#(P YPVDLI but rather than retreat to the safety of my world with only my people in it I want to do more.

Concrete tasks here:

① deliver egg cartons to the food bank

② bring black take out containers to the farmers’ market for re-use

③ chat with Laura about how to _do something_ about the politics stuff that’s frustrating me

④ read this: recommended by a friend:

Picture of book titled NeuroTribes

HOME focus for June:

❶ minimalism – organize/declutter

We live in a fairly large house. The problem with this of course is that we acquire enough stuff to fill the large house. And then some. This will really probably be the focus every month for HOME but key tasks for June:

① Lisa’s Stuff – organize jewellery; what do I want to keep; offer the rest to family / friends and then sell / donate what’s left

② Q’s Stuff – a big goal for the entire summer is to get everything out of Q’s rooms and really clean and maybe repaint them etc. So we’ve got to start whittling his stuff down too

③ Art – hang more of the art I love and offer up the stuff we no longer adore. This has already started which is great.

NATURE focus for June:

❶ birds – pigeons

❷ tree – northern red oak

Y’all know I’m weird right? I wanna learn more about birds and trees but I keep going off on all sorts of tangents and, while fun, it’s really not sinking in. So, thanks to a random chat with the wonderful Abby, I fixated on pigeons for June. I know nothing about pigeons but they’re everywhere. So I’m gonna learn about pigeons.

A stack of four books about pigeons
Sometimes I wonder what the librarians might be thinking…

Same with trees. There are a bazillion trees out there. So overwhelming to know where to start. But we just planted Tom in the fall – Tom is the name we gave to our northern red oak (Quercus rubra) – so that seemed like a good place to start.

Tom – June 5 taken from the balcony
Categories
Around the house Diversions

A week of mugs

I was trying to think of how to separate the days – if you don’t know we’re not only not going into the office but we’re also not at home. The bathrooms in our house are being renovated and it’s basically impossible to live there so we’re all (two adults, one 9-year-old and two cats) living with my parents in a 2-bedroom condo. Toby, Q and I moved out of our house on January 5. We were in a rental for 9 or 10 weeks, then we moved in here.

Then Covid-19 hit.

So I wanted a fun way to separate the days. So I started sharing my mom’s ginormous collection of mugs on FB and instagram 🙂 So here’s the first week of photos:

Do you remember Dominions? Now they’re all called Metro. They started in Toronto in 1919 and were bought and sold a bunch of times it seems. Anyway, this mug was made for Dominions.

Sweet bunny!

The mug on the left reminds me so much of my dad – it’s silly and actually looks a little like him. And comes with a mustache protector. The one on the right is creepy I think. My folks got it in PEI – I think it was meant to look like my dad too but I don’t think so lol

My mom and dad used to give out “loot bags” after their big parties – this would have been filled with chocolate and candy canes and I am sure I tied metres and metres of ribbon around them at the time. (my mom’s name is kinda blacked out – it’s a long-standing joke between her and I; she’s fine, still my mom, still married to my dad, since 1968!)

Just a lovely music mug

A souvenir mug from the PanAm games – when 10s of 1,000s of visitors came to Toronto. Sigh.
Categories
Around the house

Little bursts of productivity

cleaning – decluttering – before and after

Have you ever thought to clean something that you have never cleaned before? I mean, I’m pretty sure there is infinite number of things you can clean and maybe it’s just me but have you ever thought to clean your front door light? Obviously, if you have a front door light

We had a small local company come by and paint the window and door frames, railings and balcony pillars at the front of the house. The difference is amazing. It was getting pretty bad before:

rusty rail

eek!

And the after:

rust free! Or at least nicely painted over 😉

So, one of my thoughts for the weekend was to try and clean two random things. After all this other work at the front of the house, and buying those new LED bulbs I thought I’d ask Toby to take apart the porch light and I would clean it.

BEFORE:

I don’t think it’s ever been taken apart before and there was some doubt about our ability to re-assemble it lol

left = before / right = after cleaning with soap, water and elbow grease

With me assisting by holding the glass so it didn’t fall, Toby managed to get the lantern re-assembled!

AFTER:

So much better!

So much brighter!

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