Put on Makeup

Let me preference this whole thing by saying that I do not believe women need to wear makeup. I usually do not. However, on the rare occasion that I do, I feel a little bit more put together and have an easier time taking myself seriously. So, I figured in the name of this grand experiment, I would try to wear it more frequently. 

I'll be honest. I am a bit of a magician when it comes to ladies cosmetics.  I usually start with some light eye makeup and just when I am starting to think, "Hey, I clean up pretty well" I loose all fine motor control. Somehow, one slight mis-stroke with an eyeliner pencil and I go from looking well put together to looking like Kesha... if she had been dragged by wild dogs through a swamp. It's a pretty remarkable transformation.  

Practice. It's all about practice.


Today's other accomplishments:

• Made the bed
• Did a little exercise
• Read a book
• Prepped tomorrow's meals
• Prepped the coffee pot
• Watched a Ted Talk
• Flossed my teeth

Floss My Teeth

A few things to cover this evening:

1) As you may have noticed, this "daily" blog gets updated maybe 4 or 5 times a week. I'd love to give you a viable excuse for the missing time, but other than a developing sense of self discipline, I have none. (Can you tell who's been working on teacher comments this week?)

2) No picture tonight. Sorry. I did not have the energy to take a handful of shots of my dental floss at quirky angles to make it look intriguing, pick the best one, upload it, etc.

3) Nothing would make me happier than to write an insightful, witty post every night. I have to be honest with you though, I can't bring myself to wax poetic over dental floss. Not tonight.



Today's other accomplishments:

• Made the bed
• Did a little exercise
• Read a book
• Prepped tomorrow's meals
• Prepped the coffee pot
• Watched a Ted Talk

Get Out of the House

From the Mary Livingston Ripley Garden

Here's the short version of how I ended up in Virginia: I Googled "Graduate Reading Program near Washington DC". 

I had been to DC a handful of times in my life and loved it. It made sense to go to school just outside the city. I figured it would be great. I'd go in all the time to check out the museums, monuments, speakers, events, etc. 

To date, I have made more trips to New Hampshire and New York than I have to DC since moving to a suburb of Washington DC.  

So this morning I took the train in. Wandered around the Mall. Popped my head into a couple of museums I'd never been to before (Sorry Air and Space. You are still my favorite, but today was not your day). And knocked my homework out of the way by reading on the train home. 

It's not just the city. After work I come right home and I tend not to leave again unless it is for something super glamorous like grocery shopping. Now might be a good time to challenge myself to get out a little more. Not everyday, just more. I don't want to look back at my time here and just think, "Wow. I took some really great naps when I lived there."


Today's other accomplishments:

• Watched a Ted Talk (specifically this one on doing nothing for 10 minutes a day. Wonder if that will make it to the list eventually) 
• Did some homework
• Read a book
• Prepped tomorrow's meals
• Prepped the coffee pot

Watch a TED Talk

  This is actually a post for yesterday. Kind of a lazy Friday. Above is the talk I watched last night.

 Back in 2007, I started living with my then boyfriend, now fiance. Our job schedules were slightly off kilter. He had to leave the house around 7am, and I did not have to be in to work until 10 or 11. Right after he after he left, I would begin a media-heavy morning routine that include The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, NPR and/or Democracy Now, at least one TED Talk and an entire pot of coffee. I became deeply infatuated this "Newsertainment" model. I was downright giddy whenever I saw the same person or concept cross-over from broadcast to broadcast (or maybe that was just the coffee jitters).

I won't say that this block of daily gluttony is something I am striving to regain. I do miss the exposure to new ideas that the TED Talks offered though. At the time, I was a fairly recent college graduate fresh off my first teaching job. I had been wrapped up in studying, discussing, and teaching language arts for so long that I hadn't paid much attention to what was happening outside of the realms of literature and education. These videos sparked an interest in me for topics I had either long neglected  or had never really considered: mainly scientific discoveries, real world math applications, and diverse viewpoints on history and sociology.  It is the spark I am looking to regain. As I jump into a new semester of grad school, I am want to avoid slipping back into the tunnel vision that makes me forget about all the really cool stuff that is happening outside of my own field.



Today's other accomplishments:

• Made the bed
• Read a book
• Prepped tomorrow's meals
• Prepped the coffee pot

Do Some Homework

It took all of two weeks of being in my new grad school to remember one key fact I had overlooked when deciding to go back: I am a terrible student.

Time management has been an issue for me since the dawn of my academic career. As early as 4th grade, I can remember getting up early in the morning to finish my homework, doing it on the bus on the way to school, or simply resigning myself to the fact that I would miss recess to compete it (assuming it got done at all). This continued on through high school, college, and my first graduate program. The irony here is that I would go on to teach whole courses on study skills, including time management. When looking over curriculum, I would often think, "Oh man, I could use this!" (Key word, "could", not "will" or "did").

Last semester I did the majority of my reading on the weekends. I neglected my "on-going" projects until just days before they were due. In the last week before break, I slept about 2 hours out of every 24.

The graded papers and projects I got back were all  in the A range. I would often wonder, if I could write something of that caliber in little time under pressure, what could I do if I actually applied myself consistently?
Maybe this semester, my 35th, we will finally find out.




Today's other accomplishments (all this and a new post by 8:30 am. Gotta love 2 hour delays):

• Made the bed
• Did a little exercise
• Read a book
• Prepped tomorrow's meals
• Prepped the coffee pot

Sort the Laundry When It Comes Out of the Dryer

I have more than two grades of laundry, okay? There's not just clean and dirty- there are many subtle levels. If you hang this outside the window for twenty minutes, it's perfectly fine..."

-Peter Venkman (Bill Murray), Ghostbusters 2

This is not an everyday activity, or even a particularly exciting one for that matter. But, it is a necessary habit to get into.  Usually my M.O. is to leave the laundry in the basket I brought it up in, where it stays for roughly a week as I pull clean (and wrinkled) clothes from it daily. Usually, by the end of the week I put away whatever is leftover, fill the basket with the dirty laundry that takes up about 6 feet of floor space around the basket, and repeat the whole process. Just one of the many things I do to drive myself crazy that I am trying to put an end to. 

Today's other accomplishments:

• Made the bed
• Did a little exercise
• Read a book
• Prepped tomorrow's meals
• Prepped the coffee pot

Prep the Coffee Pot

Let's be honest- every "I barely function until I have  a cup of coffee" joke under the sun already been told and then printed on a T-shirt that sells at that crappy "gift" shop at the mall that is essentially the middle-aged Mom's answer to Spencer's. I'll spare you the frills.

By putting grounds and water in the pot the night before, I make much less noise fumbling through the kitchen while everyone else in the house is asleep. Done and done.

Today's other accomplishments:

• Made the bed
• Did a little exercise
• Read a book
• Prepped tomorrow's meals

Prep tomorrow's meals.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Pesto Chicken and a Southwest Frittata

I don't want you too get too excited here. Cooking will not, at least at this stage of the game, be an everyday activity. Making sure I have food for the next day, however, will be. 

Like most people, Monday through Friday I have a small and/ or rushed breakfast and then have to find something for lunch. When I have no food in the fridge, that means hitting Dunkin Donuts for breakfast. Lunch is purchased at the grocery store across the street form work. It usually consists of some sort of pre-made sandwich from the deli counter. These stops are tough on the wallet when they become a habit, and require me to leave the house early. Lose-lose. The other option is scrounging our kitchen for an eclectic mix of dry goods to throw into a brown paper bag. This is how I started pillaging my roommate's fruit snack supply. They go really nicely with a small can of pineapple chunks and left over Christmas candy.

And so, one of my new mini-resolution is to simply keep myself fed. Pack my lunch the night before. Plan for breakfast. Shop when necessary, not just when I feel like it. 

Today's other accomplishments:

• Made the bed
• Did a little exercise
• Read a book

Read. A Real Book. For Fun.

I used to read a lot as a kid. I loved it.

 I loved it so much that when I went to college I became an English major. I didn't always read everything that was assigned to me, but balanced a steady diet of classic literature and recreational reading (Harry Potter books were still being churned out every year at that time. Lord of the Rings hit the big screen- meaning if you were a book nerd it was socially required to read as much Tolkien as possible. There was a cool locally owned book store within walking distance of my campus where I spent more time and money than I should have).

After college, I decided I would become an English teacher so I could share my love of reading with children (if you've read much of what I've written, you know it wasn't because of my impeccable mastery of spelling and grammar).

After a few years, I discovered everyone else who majored in English EVER also wanted to become an English teacher and the job market was just a tad over-saturated.  I decided to bring it to the next level and go back to grad school to become a Reading Specialist.

If my career trajectory stays on course, it will literally be my job to talk about reading all day everyday.

"WHOA!" I hear you saying. "You must read SO many books!"

That is where you are, very sadly, mistaken. This semester I spent hours each week with text books and journals, reading about reading. When my brain hurt from that, I escaped to Buzzfeed articles, blogs and whatever New York Times piece was trending on Facebook. The sad truth is, however, in the past five months, I have read two books recreationally. Two, since September.

I'm not saying that online reading doesn't count as "real reading". That's an entire debate that can be tackled elsewhere. But I didn't fall in love with reading sitting behind a monitor. I grew up in house with bookshelves in multiple rooms; where after my mother would read me my own books at bedtime, I would stay awake as long as I could listening to her read to my sister across the hall. Starting in my late teens, one of the only reasons I ever carried a purse is to hold whatever book I was currently reading. I abhor most shopping, but can spend hours in a bookstore.

I miss real books. I want to get back in the habit of reading them on a regular basis.



The above photo is of what is currently on my nightstand. 

Today's other accomplishments:

• Did a little exercise
• Made the bed

Do a (very) Little Exercise

This past fall I turned 30 and immediately realized my arms were starting to jiggle.

Mild terror set in.

Shockingly, the horror of this discovery did not prompt me to do anything about it.

But when the office Christmas party came around and someone *hilariously* brought a Shake Weight to the Yankee Swap... Jackpot.

Tonight was not the first time this came out of the box. After opening it at the Christmas party, a number of my coworkers tested it out. This is, however, the first time I've popped in the DVD and done the 6 minute workout. Yup. The entire 6 minutes. 

Today's other accomplishments:

• Made the bed

Make the Bed.

Yesterday, I got out of bed at 7pm.

No really. 7pm.

I did not go out the night before. I did not have a super stressful week at work. I am sick, but the head cold I have did not really necessitate sleeping in for an entire day.

As I rolled out of bed in the early evening, I reflected back on how I had accomplished absolutely nothing with the day. While my Saturday To-Do lists are usually jam packed with task that never get done, my slacking had sunk to a new level. I can count yesterday's activities on one hand.  Other than napping, I ate, watched some Netfilx, and read.

Clearly, something must be done.

I didn't have a clear cut resolution when the ball dropped earlier this month. Those that I had toyed with were variations on familiar themes: get healthier, be more organized, accomplish more things. These have been my basic goals since childhood. I have a split A/B personality. I can organize my thoughts and plan well, but execution has never been my strong suit. I have made countless personal schedules, 1/5/10 plans, fancy spreadsheet To-Do lists, and inspiring Pinterest boards. Yet here I am, looking sleepily at the clock and telling myself I'll get up in half and hour... if I feel like it.

So I am going to try a new approach. Instead of crafting a new five-part plan to turn my life around from the top-down, I am starting with baby steps. Everyday, I will add one small thing to my daily routine. This morning, I made my bed. Not a huge accomplishment in the grand scheme of things, but a starting point.

"Why the blog?" you ask. Simple: Accountability.

If you need proof of how little I get done until decide I need to blab about each small milestone, start reading here.