Of having to begin again. My hope was that the 101 in 1001 project would keep me motivated and moving forward. While I do still think of it often, like an old friend from college [or kindergarten], I don’t focus as I should and have fallen quite off the wagon with my daily, weekly, and monthly goals.
Before the end of the week, I’ll refocus. Regroup.
And restart.
Ugh.
~sheila
The Mission:
Complete 101 preset tasks in a period of 1001 days.
The Criteria:
Tasks must be specific (ie. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and stretching (ie. represent some amount of work on my part).
Why 1001 Days?
Many people have created lists in the past – frequently simple goals such as New Year’s resolutions. The key to beating procrastination is to set a deadline that is realistic. 1001 Days (about 2.75 years) is a better period of time than a year, because it allows you several seasons to complete the tasks, which is better for organizing and timing some tasks such as overseas trips or outdoor activities.
The Start Date:
12/31/2012
The End Date:
9/28/2015
Update:
2/28/2013
Goals in progress are italicized, goals completed are bolded
++MUCH still needs to be quantified – to be completed by 3/28/13
101 in 1001
Blog:
- Photograph all cemeteries in Madison County
- House tour [after deep clean/org]
- 365
- DITL
- Blog at least 3x/week
- Create feature schedule
- Increase readership/comments
- Top 10 lists [1/mo]
- Video blog
Business:
- Soap
- Dread falls
- New marketing materials
- Redesign website
- Spirit paintings
- Ritual kits on Etsy
- Add pagan department
- Add x items/mo
Community:
- RAKs
- Handiwork Ministry
- Complement employees via managers
- Volunteer x __ hours
Creativity:
- Quilts
- Etsy for Ravynn
- Vagabond
- Genealogy
- External hard drive
- Scrapbooks
- Grandma & Grandpa project
- Finish outstanding projects
Education:
- 150 documentaries
- 50 documentaries to see before you die
- Golf lessons
- Painting
- Swimming
- Veg crockpot cookbook
Enlightenment:
- Postcrossing
- Oscar winners for best film 1969-now
- Trip by train
- The Secret
- Modern Library Top 100
- Letter to me
- 50 Questions
- Ghost Tour
- Yoga
- Affirmations
- Cultivate friendships
- Cultivate relationships with kids
Family:
- Paper birthday cards
- Camping
- Family photo shoots
Kickstarter for Alek Find another site…
Finances:
- Increase income by __%
- Save 4mo emergency fund
- $0 debt [outside of mortgage]
- Fill/use safe deposit box
- 1/mo shopping
- Reduce food bill by 50%
Health by adding:
- Run 1 mi without stopping
- Walk 1001 total miles
- Join a gym
- Supplement schedule
- Water daily
- 10,000 crunches
- Cardio workouts
- Get/use a juicer
Heath by subtracting
- Reduce sugars
- Cleanse/detox
- No soda/1 mo
- Replace whites with browns
- No snooze
- No fast food
- To goal weight [by 10#]
Home/inside:
- Natural/homemade cleaning products
- Cleaning schedule
- Inventory non-perishables
- Address book
- Calendar
- Canning
- Frames
- Death row painting
- Scan old family photos
Home/outside:
- Garden
- Compost
- Fruit trees
- Hammock
- Bat house
- Rain barrel
- Outside space
Spirituality:
- Witchy books
- Tattoo
- BOS
- Org family ritual kits
- 8 sabbats + esbats
- Spells
- Tarot
Vanity:
- Skin care routine
- Makeup 6x/week
- Nails pretty
- Day spa
- Purge closet
- Create/refine “style”
One of my goals for the 101 in 1001 Project is to complete the 365 Project – to snap one photo a day for 365 days. I’d started this last year and did very well, but fell off track when Eric took the camera to Burning Man in August.
Here we are. Starting again.
022/365 – Sunday, 17 February 2013
This is what a temp of 104.2 looks like 
Nurse Circe to the rescue.
023/365 – Monday, 18 February 2013
Cilantro for the evening festivities of making paneer
024/365 – Tuesday, 19 February 2013
Happy Birthday sweet baby Pip!
025/365 – Wednesday, 20 February 2013
The book report poster – Edgar & Ellen Under Town
026/365 – Thursday, 21 February 2013
The day’s mail! Two from Moscow 
027/365 – Friday, 22 February 2013
Morning snuggles.
028/365 – Saturday, 23 February 2013
Adjudication. We were busy. I admit, I did not take a photo today, but I’m sharing one sent to me by Ana Hunter. Her daughter is dancing with Alek.
I go through phases with the Oscars. Either I watch every moment from the very first mention of the red carpet hours before the actual event or I read about the awards the next morning over my coffee. Typically my interest level is directly related to how much I love the movies up for awards. This year… I don’t believe I’ve seen more than a handful of the movies and have little interest in watching many of the others. My family is, quite honestly, disgusted with my apathy toward Argo, Les Mis, and Life of Pi… They are likewise disturbed by my great need to own Lincoln and Django without seeing more than a brief preview.
I found a great pleasure this year in watching the red carpet with Ravynn and Whisper and choosing our favorite dresses. Here are our top 5 favorites. In order, no less…
#5. Amy Adams
#4. Charlize Theron
#3. Reese Witherspoon
#2. Stacy Keibler
#1. Kristin Chenoweth
No, I wouldn’t WEAR all of them, but they are beautiful.
Whisper Mania
Ten years ago, my sweet Whisper Mania joined our family. Eric and Jordan came to to the delivery room with me. Alek and Ravynn stayed with Grandma. We’d been scheduled for induction at 6am. The nursing staff didn’t believe me when I told them labor had already started, so I just let them do what they’d planned and allowed them to marvel at how well everything was going.
I’m nice like that. It was kind of a bonus that they left me alone for the six minutes between the start of active labor and her birth.
She’s been a lovely last child. Like the rest of them, she’s come with her own unique set of challenges, but also her unique set of blessings. She brings us an incredible amount of joy.
But…
The coming of her 10th birthday is throwing this mama into a bit of a freak out. My BABY is about to be in a double-digit age bracket. Babies aren’t 10. Little kids aren’t 10. Big kids who are almost teenagers are 10.
Overdramatic? Maybe, but it feels valid. And a little painful.
Whisper agreed that if we allow her to turn 10, she’ll stop there for awhile. How sweet of her.
She’s nice like that, but I suspect the draw of 11 will be too strong to resist.
Sadly, I don’t have as much time as I’d like to read other blogs. There are a few that I wouldn’t dream of missing – even if I do play catch up every 2 or three days. I wanted to take this time to award them the “I Love This Blog” Award and encourage them to keep going!!
Kids Running Wild was created by my cousin, Rhonda. We had tons of sleepovers when we were little and she played piano at my wedding, but we hadn’t talked for years before we found each other on Facebook. While I’m not a runner [and don't expect I ever will be], I love the tips she gives for getting and keeping kids active. I’m also a big fan of her feature, “What I Ate Wednesday.”
Kate SeRine is a friend I’ve known for many years. She worked with Eric and then a few years later, we all worked together for a different employer. My kids call her aunt and her kids call me aunt. We’re family. I love so much to watch her success and to KNOW how deserved every bit of it is. I’ve read the first book in her Transplanted Tales series and I highly recommend it. Looking forward to reading the rest of the series [and anything else she sends our way].
b’longa’b is another cousin of mine. I met her only a few times in our young lives, but we connected really over [you guessed it] Facebook. We did have a chance to meet for lunch once – that lunch lasted over 7 hours because of how much we had to say to each other. Her blog is an extension of that conversation. I laugh, I empathize, and most of all I learn about her and about ME.
One of my goals for the 101 in 1001 Project is to complete the 365 Project – to snap one photo a day for 365 days. I’d started this last year and did very well, but fell off track when Eric took the camera to Burning Man in August.
Here we are. Starting again.
015/365 – Sunday, 10 February 2013
To be fair, someone else took this picture, but the camera was on its way to Ohio for Houston Ballet auditions.
016/365 – Monday, 11 February 2013
A Valentine from Whisper
017/365 – Tuesday, 12 February 2013
Ravynn stealing MY soy milk!!
018/365 – Wednesday, 13 February 2013
I am sick. I need nothing but tea
019/365 – Thursday, 14 February 2013
Ravynn did her hair and dressed in red for Valentine’s Day
020/365 – Friday, 15 February 2013
Home for a sick day, I put on thick socks. When Whisper got home she joined me.
021/365 – Saturday, 16 February 2013
Pierogie!! Ravynn was a wonderful help.
Out and about in Anderson, we’ll still run into people who recognize us from Wife Swap. While that surprises me [Teen Mom is also filmed in Anderson and Amber could sit on me and I still couldn't know her], I’m more surprised that they feel they know us from a 60 minute episode – 15 or so minutes that were devoted to commercials, and 20 or so that were spent with the other family. This leaves 20-25 minutes of screen time to develop a complete view of total strangers.
Initially I had planned a series of blog posts describing the WS experience in detail, but it became monotonous. “You saw X; Y is reality. The reason they misled you is Z.” I’ll still write them if there is interest, but I’m afraid it will come off as whiny, begging people to “Don’t judge us.” Truth is, we’re not afraid of being judged. At least for what is true. We do not like – as much as any other person – to be judged over gossip and assumptions.
“But,” you’ll say, “we saw you force your children to dance and we saw your son have long hair because you wouldn’t allow him to cut it. We saw you drag your kids into situations where they would be made fun of. We saw you sitting on the sofa being lazy while your kids did all the work.”
Did you?
Really?
I know you saw Alek say we forced him to go to dance class. But, you didn’t see the discussion about how he didn’t like the alternate class the producers found for him when his real studio chose not to allow cameras inside. He was concerned that showing him in class with his sisters – both younger and with less skill – would make him look bad. He did not appreciate that waste of time. And he was very vocal about that on several occasions.
I know you saw Alek’s long hair and you heard his, “yeah!” when Stacy told hm he’d be getting it cut. Did you know he’d been growing it out for several years with the intent of donating it to Pantene’s Beautiful Lengths project? Did you know Rule Change was his first realization that it was officially long enough to cut and donate? And we’d made the offer to wait to cut it so it could be incorporated into rule change.
You were told we dress up the kids and parade them about town so that people will see them, judge them, and make fun of them and that we don’t care. Did you know our kids dress how they want, within reason? Did you know we don’t change for other people because we live our lives for us and not for them? I had a great discussion with my swap husband, Ed, about this. It’s one of the things we strongly agreed on. Looks are important to both families. The main difference is that they dress to define themselves based on what other people think of their appearance and we dress to define ourselves based on what we think of our appearance. Did you know that one of the first things the producers did before filming was remove any bit of clothing that did not fit into the got aesthetic as they defined it?
You’ve been told I’m lazy and make my kids clean and feed themselves while I sit on the sofa playing on the computer. You even saw that, right? But you didn’t see the producers and directors scold me for pouring milk and sitting down to eat with my kids. And it wasn’t made very clear that my job was freelance editing and that I run an at-home business from my laptop. In addition, helping them to be able and prepared is quite the opposite of lazy parenting. I’d go so far as to suggest that doing everything for your kids is the lazier version of parenting.
No one would know that without talking to us.
And I’ll be honest. I watch Dance Moms and Survivor and I struggle to remember that what I see may be just as cleverly edited as our WS episode. I know it. I lived it. This reminds me to be more patient with people who don’t have the background I’ve been exposed to.
If there is something you want to know about, please just ask one of us.
We’d be happy to talk to you.
This installment of the home tour is LONG overdue as I cannot manage to keep my room clean long enough to photograph it. I set a very bad example for my children. Really.
If you missed Part 1 or Part 2, click the links.
The view from the door. The paint looks much darker without the flash, but without the flash, this really does look like a cave.
Basically the view from the door.
Skull and candle on the dresser at the foot of the bed. Not a real skull, I promise And a vanilla-scented candle, inspiring me to work on making my own.
A close-up of the dresser at the foot of the bed.
The bookshelf that is rarely ever organized. Sadly it works as a storage unit most of the time. Today, it’s relatively cleaned out.
Full bookshelf
The top. Ignore the cobwebs; I can’t reach that corner.
One of the gargoyles that keeps us safe as we sleep.
Mama’s Teddy Scares and part of my collection of Peter Pan items. Here you see the stack of printer paper that’s found a temporary home…
My Teddy Scares.
Small cabinet that holds most of my mani/pedi stuff. Eric will set books on the top that he thinks I should read.
Tiny cabinet.
It photographs much more cluttered than it really is. Jewelry boxes and candles take up most of the space. There’s also a coaster since I was having tea as I was cleaning and a sticker that has since moved out to my sewing area.
The long dresser.
Big box full of the chunkier jewelry, smaller box holding overflow jewelry, the thinnest box holds treasures from my Mother and Aunt Lois. The ladybug cup was painted by one of my kids for Mother’s day and holds earrings.
Detail. Jewelry and Buddha.
Closeup of a birthday card I received from one of my good friends a couple years ago and a wax tart melter.
Full moon and wicked wax.
Ravynn made me a ring holder during a ceramics unit in school. D12 becasue they make me happy. The bottom of a vase holding pretty rocks, hair sticks, and a tiara.
Rings!
More candles, a box full of nail polish and the profile of an origami penguin that Ravynn made.
Tall dresser.
Next… the living room.
I do love to get mail. And I dream of traveling. Ravynn and Whisper at least share these interests with me. We were very excited to find the Postcrossing website. Several years ago, we got really into it, but fell away from the sending and receiving when we took up other projects. Finding a stack of Indiana postcards, as well as some stamps I may as well use, I decided to hop back in.
Sheila’s mailbox
» Sent: 41 postcards
» Traveling: 9 postcards out of 9
» Sent distance: 298,873 km (185,711 miles)
» Received distance: 250,565 km (155,694 miles)
I’ve added a Postcrossing tab to the top of the blog page. Check it out to see what we’ve received so far [it's a work in progress]. If you want to send us a postcard from your town or from a vacation, let me know.
Looking forward to a full mailbox again
