February’s focus was Decluttering — check out my past posts if you missed the start of the challenge and how I turned the challenge into a game 😉
I knew going into it that it wouldn’t be easy and it would most likely stretch into March. I wasn’t wrong. We had high hopes of decluttering and painting my daughter’s room for her birthday, but we underestimated just how tough it would be to do that, given our busy schedules and energy.
I wasn’t expecting to have an easy January, especially doing a challenge that’s really not in my wheelhouse.
Oh sure, I can eat. And you may even be surprised that I took a few semesters of home ec in high school and can follow a recipe. Unlike Moira and David Rose, I actually know what “fold in the cheese” means!
But I really, really don’t like to cook. It’s not my favorite way to spend time. This has been such a weird phenomenon for me because I really do enjoy delicious food with lots of variety. But unless I can find it in the freezer section or it doesn’t involve a whole lot of prep and juggling multiple preparations at once, I’m not interested.
When I picked the words Relax & Reflect for this month’s focus, I had a feeling “Relax” would somehow be harder than it sounds and I was right. By the middle of the month, our whole house was passing around one of the five colds our 4-year-old brought home from school this year and my plan to keep a lot of white space on the calendar turned out for the best.
I wrote about this in the mid-month entry, but one way I found to relax was when I picked up my childhood hobby of making friendship bracelets again. I’ve found it to be incredibly relaxing and a nice way to stim while watching TV or talking with Mark. I get into such a rhythm and it’s so funny how the muscle memory came right back.
I took this photo the other day in the hospital while waiting for my mom to get back from an MRI. She had a seizure the last week of November after a mini-stroke/TIA a few weeks earlier. Her health has been up in-the-air and, to be honest, it’s been a really difficult time.
Like last month, I’m still sitting in what I now call my little Kitchen nook to get the sunlight first thing in the morning to help my mental health, but with so much that seems out of my control right now, the overwhelm has meant a few more dark days. I’m using flowery language a bit. I’ve had days where everything is just f*cking terrible and feel like they kick my ass.
I took this photo this morning with no makeup, no filter, and with hair that I slept on when it was wet. I’ve been trying to get morning sunlight to keep my mental health on the up-and-up as the days get shorter. I like to make some tea and open the back door to watch the sunrise. It’s actually a nicer habit I find than sitting in front of my HappyLight, which I still love, but gives me a headache some mornings and it’s been hard to remember to use it, honestly.
I’ve been in a weird rut lately.
My son has his second cold this month. Ah, the joys of finally sending him to school, only for his schedule to be even more out of whack with unexpected sick days, on top of living in a pandemic where he has to be cleared by his doctor and multiple COVID tests to be able to return to school. Luckily, his tests came back negative and that’s a relief by itself.