Reviewing goals and growth in 2018

   Happy New Year’s Eve! Yay, this year is over!

   For 2018, I had taken a challenge from the Happier podcast and made “18 Goals for 2018.” That sounds daunting, but it wasn’t that hard to think of that many things I would like to change and/or experience. I even kept that blog post as an open window on my phone so I could check it every month or two when I started to feel restless. I probably should have checked it more often, and even better, planned specific goals that I wanted to target each month or developed steps for making things a habit, but the basement renovation took up a lot more of my time and mental energy than I wanted it to. (So did the kids!) But without reviewing the list, I’d say we got a lot done this year, and I was quite happy with our progress.
   But for the record:

   1.  Have 1 date night per month. Success! We probably hit 10/12 for this one. In the world of parenting, that means we hit a homerun.

Us on a date night for Josh's birthday in July. I'm eating poutine!

   2.  Have 1 Carrie Day per month. Fail! I did it for January through May, but then the basement renovation got in full swing, plus Josh has to mow both lawns all summer, AND he tends to have a heavier work schedule because other people are taking off on vacation and he’s the one who fills in for them, so I didn’t want to take him away from responsibilities when he did have off work. Big mistake. Josh helped turn December around with a two-night trip away with the kids. For 2019, I’m making this a priority, lawns be buggered.

   3.  Buy a new watch. Success! I spent a long time on it, and when I ordered it and it came, it felt bigger than I expected because my wrists are small, but I like it. I don’t wear it every day because so much of time is washing my hands and cooking, but I wear it when I want, especially when I’m teaching, and I love it!

   4.  Try a new exercise class. Success! I kind of cheated here. My barre instructor told us she was going to miss a class one week but that her friend Bethany would teach in her place. I waffled over it, but went because I thought it would be a less intimidating way to try it out. Well, Bethany came the next week and had no intention of teaching barre class. She immediately told us that she would be teaching her “Butts and Guts” class, and it KILLED me. Or maybe half of it did. But I survived, and crossed this off my list.

   5.  Simplify our junk and sell our unused stuff. Meh. I think we’re 75% of the way there. We sold furniture, our DSL camera, and our old radiators that we weren’t going to use in the basement. We still have to clear out the office and the attic, but then we should be done.

   6.  Clean out all our closets. Success for me! Josh and the kids were gone for a day and the first thing I did, to kill time for an hour before my barre class, was to organize my closet. I got rid of a handful of pieces of clothing that I don’t really like, old empty shopping bags, and organized Christmas gifts that I had bought but not wrapped yet. I also cleaned out Knox’s closet, which had all my craft stuff and our old VHS tapes (dumped them in the trash without reading labels so there would be no time for second thoughts). Josh still needs to do his closet, and he needs to do Rye’s closet, because that’s where he keeps his overflow stuff.

   7.   Remodel the basement! Success! We are 95% done, and should be at 100 percent in two weeks! I already posted that the project was done here, but there was this last back room, the mud room as we’re calling it, that still needed to be finished. Scott came back a week and a half before Christmas and got it restructured, drywall up, and mudded, and half the wood floor down, but took a break for the holidays. Once he’s done, the electrician will come back and finish off the outlets and can lights and that room (the old laundry room for those who remember) will be as beautiful as the rest of the basement, minus an awkward bulkhead that had to be put in to conceal a waste drain line.

   8.  Give a purpose to our back porch room. Success! This is also at 90%! I started painting after Thanksgiving, and it’s a beautiful peachy-pink color called “Perfection” (if you’re choosing between “Apricot Ice” and “Perfection,” wouldn’t you choose “Perfection?”). Scott also got the wood floor in, and now all it needs is floor trim and window trim, and then I can finally move my desk in there! I am SOOOOOO excited about this!

   9.   Teach Rye to read. Success! He’s at the stage we’re he’s reading small groups of words here and there, and does great reading the lessons in his “Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons” book, but he’s still really resistant to read actual books. I know that’s because of confidence, and teacher friends keep telling us not to push too hard, let him go at his own pace.

   10.  Write for fun. Fail! I did not do any personal writing this year, except for this blog, which I’m pretty happy with. I try to post monthly, and achieved 11 with this one. That’s actually not too bad.

   11.  Pursue publishing. Fail! I did nothing in this direction. But a friend of mine who wants to be a publisher really enjoyed my first children’s book and is still planning to help me.  

   12.  Lead my book club through a book. Fail! I led my fair share of book club sessions as a substitute, but I didn’t choose a book and lead it. And I’m perfectly OK with that.

   13.  Keep up with my relationships that rely on letters. Fail! I didn’t do any of this. And it’s not like I called those people more either. I had a pretty out-of-touch year. And when you see the other people don’t put in any effort either, it starts to make you think maybe it’s time just to let that relationship go, or just be what it is and not make it more.  

   14.  Ride a bike. Meh. I rode a bike once, on a two-night trip Josh and I took to Easton. I really wanted to take my own bike but it was too complicated, and the inn did have bikes you could borrow. We totally staked our claim on the bikes first thing that morning and it was fun riding down the old rail trail in town. But I wish I had done it more than once for the whole year.

   15.  Start having regular family dinners. Meh. I’d give us a “B” on this. We did get Josh’s family together for a “Second Sunday” dinner on the months when we had no other holiday that would have gotten us together that month. But the communication wasn’t so good on these. I think people totally forgot about them after our family vacation in September. Maybe there’s a better way to do this.

   16.  Take a class in something. Fail! I just didn’t take time to research what was out there, and honestly, I just like learning things so it wouldn’t have mattered too much what it actually was. The intention was to take some sort of creative class, because I've learned how to crochet, do stained glass, and make homemade soap via classes. On the other hand, I did crochet 3 baby blankets this year, so that was good, and when Josh took the kids away for two nights in December, I made these cross-stitch on wood ornaments from kits I got at Jo-Ann Fabrics. They were fun and cute.

    17.  Use my Instant Pot once a week. Meh. I didn’t use it to make dinner once a week every week, but I did get in a pretty good routine of making homemade yogurt once a week. It doesn’t use the pressure cooking feature, but it does keep it at the perfect temperature consistently for 12 hours, and since I eat yogurt for breakfast 5 days a week, I’m probably getting yogurt for 1/10^th of the cost of stores. Plus there’s the pride of being able to say I’m making my own yogurt.

   18.  Be more present. Meh. I’ve decided this is not something I want to do. A lot of times, the current situation is tiring, repetitive, frustrating, infuriating…you get the picture. What’s wrong with looking ahead to better things?

   Okay, for those keeping score, that was 7 successes, 6 failures and 5 mehs. But the 7 successes were pretty big ones. Of the failures, only 3 would I put on a list for next year (monthly Carrie Days, writing for fun more, and taking a class in something), and the mehs are half things that I’d like to pursue more and half that I don’t really care about.

  

   Now I need to start thinking of goals for 2019. I’m giving myself to Jan. 19 to complete my list. What are some of your goals for 2019? I’d love to hear some more ideas!

Holiday blues

I have not been feeling the Christmas spirit this year.

It started pretty far back. Two weeks before Thanksgiving (which I hosted for the first time ever, quite successfully, I might add), I was already telling Josh that we didn’t need to worry about getting our Christmas tree during Thanksgiving weekend. Josh was kind of stunned. Growing up, my family ALWAYS got our Christmas tree Thanksgiving weekend, on Black Friday, if I remember correctly, and I am always so antsy to get our Christmas tree as soon as Thanksgiving has passed. It’s my favorite Christmas tradition, closely followed by baking oodles of Christmas cookies and putting them in my grandmother’s cookie tins. And while Josh and I usually worked on Black Friday before we had the kids, we would be at the tree farm on Thanksgiving Saturday by 10 a.m. to beat all the other slackers (in my opinion, or early birds, in Josh’s opinion) to pick out our tree. 

But this year we were hosting two events during Thanksgiving weekend, and attending another one in between those two, and trying to fit the tree in there seemed too ambitious. So we got the tree the next weekend, but we still weren’t in a hurry to decorate it. We didn’t bring our Christmas CDs down from storage until Friday. We haven’t watched any Christmas movies. I didn’t bake any cookies until Saturday when I had a party to take them to. (We ended up not going to two Christmas parties this weekend because of a stomach bug.) And I’m still only halfway done my shopping with a week left until Christmas.

And then there are Christmas cards. Last year Josh said that he doesn’t like sending out photo Christmas cards with just the kids’ pictures because he wants us all to be on there as a family. He said he was willing to pay for a family portrait session, but I wasn’t feeling it this year (I’m extremely non-photogenic even when I DO feel like I can naturally smile) and he didn’t bring it up so it fell to the wayside. In fact, I decided I didn’t want to send any Christmas cards at all, because I don’t feel like writing in them, and I make a point to write an actual individual message to each recipient. Remember, before Christmas cards were personal photos, they had WORDS that communicated MESSAGES to the people we sent them to? As a words person, that part is kind of important to me.

I felt like all I could write this year was “We’re still alive. Love, The Knauers.” But then our cat Pansy died, so I felt like I’d have to make it “We’re still alive (except Pansy). Love, The Knauers.” But that’s not really the cheery sentiment people want to see in a Christmas card. Although if I received a card like that, I would probably laugh out loud.

I’ve just been “glum” lately. I’m choosing that word because it sounds like gum that you’ve already stepped in. I might not seem bad to you, because I’m extremely goal-oriented and able to accomplish many things even in depression. I believe strongly in forward motion. In fake-it-till-you-make-it. In “And this too shall pass.” But as many a person has expressed before, those things don’t seem to work during the holidays.

A friend suggested I might need a Carrie Day to take a break, and I admitted I had not had a Carrie Day since May. Sure, there were a couple of days where I asked Josh if he could watch the kids while I went for a pedicure or ran more than two errands at once, and he said “take your time, enjoy yourself,” but every time I leave the house, I feel there’s a stopwatch counting down how long I’ve been gone. I’m wondering if Josh is getting the kids down for nap on time, and predicting the hell that will be experienced around 5:30 p.m. if they don’t actually get a nap.

I had a mini break-down some time before Thanksgiving, and I told Josh that during my next Carrie Day, should I ever have one, I planned to drive to West Virginia for the day because I feel like I need to be THAT far away in order to not feel pressured to come home. Josh is amazing. He seriously told me to take Thanksgiving Sunday and go book myself a night in a hotel, in West Virginia if need be, and not come back until I was ready Monday. But I couldn’t do that at the holidays. Not to mention that most businesses are closed Sundays and Mondays so I would probably be eating meals in a Burger King and looking through windows of cute shops that I can't go in. I thought about doing something close to home by myself, this wreath-decorating class at a local winery I enjoy, but I didn’t want to do it enough to commit.

And so this weekend I broke down again. Josh offered me a Carrie Day—even better, a two-night trip that he and the kids are going to take without me to his mom so I can just BE. This feels much more acceptable than me taking a trip somewhere by myself (though that might be a 2019 goal, I just need some time to give myself permission for it). I already had three social events planned during that time, but I will be completely in control of my schedule, my comings and goings, my ratio of seeing other people to being alone. If Josh doesn't get the kids down for nap, it will be his hell to experience, not mine. I will be able to live like no one is waiting to interrupt my every thought or task. And like Carrie Bradshaw said in an episode of “Sex in the City,” if I want to stand at the kitchen counter looking at fashion magazines eating jelly on saltines, I can. Though my preference is ice cream for breakfast and watching a movie any time I want, even if I only watch part of it. I can play music as loud as I want in the car, and no two year old is going to tell me “I don’t like this song.” No five year old is going to have a 45-minute fight with me about not wanting to drink his milk. And practically, I can get out all the stocking stuffers I’ve bought and see if the stockings are going to be full or not. And wrap presents while watching “Pride and Prejudice” and not need to be done by the time nap time is over.

I thought I was going to review my “18 for 2018” list in this post, but I’m going to save that for later. I hope you’re having a better than "just alive" holiday, and if not, know you’re not alone.