S.A.V.E.R.S

As promised, today I am writing about the miracle morning. It is the routine I have decided to adopt. I honestly think this is the morning routine I was trying to build for myself, but didn't know how.

The miracle morning was created by Hal Elrod. His story is a good one, but not the point of this post. If you are interested, check out his book. (It is free on Amazon for Kindle Unlimited subscribers and there may be a free audio book on YouTube.) In a nutshell, Hal Elrod hit the lowest point in his life and resolved to fix it. He decided to take the six most common recommended habits for bettering oneself and dedicate twn minutes a day to each. Six habits, ten minutes each, means one hour of time to give to yourself. The acronym he came up with for these habits is SAVERS.

The first S is for Silence. Take ten minutes to simply be. Meditate. Focus on your breathing. Pray. Do whatever you like that gives you a quiet ten minutes of peace.

A is for affirmations. Be positive. Be generous and good to yourself. Affirmations aren't a "but" statement. "I'm a good writer, but I need to do more." Create your ideal self and hype yourself up. "I am a writer and there is an audience waiting for my books."

V stands for visualization. This can be where everyone's favorite website, Pinterest, comes in. Look at images that depict the life you want to create. Visualize yourself living that life.

E is for the habit of exercise. You only have ten minutes. Get up and move.

R stands for the habit of reading. Personally, I'm going to read a few self-improvement books, an inspiring memoir or two, and take this time to really study some fiction. If I want to write, I need to be able to dissect what others have done.

The last S, as I said yesterday, is for scribe, the habit that has brought me back to this blog.

Try these habits for yourself. One hour each day, ten minutes per habit. It can't hurt. ;)

Morning routines

So, remember that time I said I would get back to this blog? Yeah, me neither. Which begs the question - why am I back here? Well, whether there are still faithful readers (after this long? Ha!) or, more likely, I'm just shouting into the void, I'm here for the same reason I was ages ago. I'm here for me. Here's the long and short of what brought me back.

The miracle morning.

Okay, so that's the short of what brought me to blow the cobwebs from the corners. I'm staying home right now. After six years in retail and becoming an assistant manager, I quit my job. This was both a long time coming and a good thing. I will have to return to the work force, but that is an obstacle for another blog entry.

Since I am staying home with my sweet daughter, who is almost eleven months old, I knew I needed a routine. So, I made one. It didn't work as well as I wanted. Then, yesterday, I discovered the miracle morning.

This system came from a self-help book called The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. What Mr. Elrod did was find the various self-improvement practices he had heard were the most effective and combine them, ten minutes for each habit, to make a one hour routine. The acronym for the habits is SAVERS. I will write about that tomorrow.

Without completely spoiling tomorrow's blog entry, suffice it to say that the last S in SAVERS stands for Scribe. That, in a word, is why I'm back. I'm claiming my identity as a scribe. What routines do you have in your day?

See y'all tomorrow.

Pregnancy movements

I am 19 weeks, 5 days into my pregnancy and what a roller coaster it has been. My biggest stumbling block so far has been in my first trimester. I had nausea, but never got sick (such a blessing.) Instead, I made my own very special mistake. I stopped taking my ADD medication. Why? Well, I wanted to see if I could do it so that I would know later. The answer, inevitably, was a resounding and overwhelming NO!

I made it ten days completely unmedicated. There was no weaning down because my pills are only one mg. There's nothing to wean down from. Without my meds, as I already knew, my lizard brain takes over. Whatever looks best in the moment is what I do. There were a lot of naps and a whole lot of not focusing on one task for any amount of time. Lots of anxiety too, which was new. So, after ten days, I got back on my medication and things are going much better now. When I told my OB/GYN about my little experiment, she was supportive of both my experimenting and my going back on meds. "If you need them, you need them." Her words.

I had another appointment this week and, as has been the case so far, made it out with a clean bill of health for me and my baby girl. She also didn't give up anything. No face pictures. Legs together. Shifting away from the ultrasound wand the whole time. My husband texted me with "Aw, already so modest!" upon learning of his daughter's stubbornness. I replied back. "Sweetie, if she's taking after you, she probably just thinks the camera is going to steal her soul."That's exactly the kind of thing he would come up with!

An interesting development this week has been feeling her move. I've done a lot of research and seen these first movements described with wonderful imagery. "It feels like popcorn popping." "It feels like a butterfly flapping its wings." Well, I'm not sure what these mothers are feeling, but that's not my daughter at all. When she kicks me, it feels like she's kicking me. It feels exactly what being kicked from inside feels like. It's uncomfortable. Sometimes it just plain hurts.

The pregnancy is going well. I'm looking forward to future developments and am so excited to meet my daughter. Even if she kicks the hell out of my insides between now and then.

A test entry

I am not actually writing this blog. Instead, I am on my new cell phone, a Samsung Note 5 I believe and I am writing this blog using the speech to text feature.

At the moment, I am walking along in our lovely Texas weather and on my way to work for the day. I work a 6 hour shift today and then this evening Joshua is going to pick me up and we're going to go game. We've been gaming on and off for about the past three years or so I think with another couple. Most of our games have been in Dungeons & Dragons but we've recently switched over to the GURPS system. Our current campaign is a group of paladins which are warriors who get their powers from whatever deity they choose to pray to. It's been a lot of fun partially because this is the first time in three years of gaming together that my husband and I have been at the table both as players. In the past, one or the other of us (usually him) has been acting as the dungeon master who runs the game for the players. So this is been a very fun switch in our normal routine.

There isn't a whole lot else going on. I'm proud to say that I finally got my chores into a routine that I can keep up with. The house is finally clean to a level that I'm able to maintain it with only mild difficulty. It may not sound like much, but for me the fact that I can maintain the cleanliness of the house for the first time since we've been together is huge. I know that my husband gets anxious when the house is too messy whereas I get anxious when it's too clean. I think we found a nice balance we can strike. And honestly it just feels good knowing that everything is where it's supposed to be and it feels even better knowing that I'm the one that got it there.

I'll see about posting some photos tomorrow.

Seeking changes

My current project is really one I have been dragging my feet on and I need to stop. Now that Joshua and I have the house in our names, the next goal is improving our credit and getting us both into careers instead of just jobs. This plan pretty much means I'm trying to find something new. This is not news. I've been looking for something other than retail for a while.

Joshua keeps making suggestions that I'm sure I could do, but they all involve one thing. Nursing? I need a degree. Teaching? I need a degree. I worry that nursing is not going to stay the booming career path it seems to be now. As for teaching, the schedule would be great, but I know the pay isn't and I'm not looking to relocate.

I told him today that the simplest option, as far as a fast start and immediate money, would be setting the house up as an at home daycare. Getting certified through the state isn't difficult, but getting clients in a teeny town like Blanket could be a challenge. The other option, as has always been there, is writing and self-publishing, but even that isn't guaranteed money. I've looked into work from home jobs and, for most of them, our internet is too slow. My experience is almost all customer service, so I'm largely stuck applying for customer service positions. And now I'm through fussing and ready to start researching. I'm sure if I look hard enough and work hard enough, I can find something that lets me work from home, get the benefits I need (even if this means paying out of pocket), and ensures I make the amount I need to. There's got to be something out there.

A potato tradition

Joshua and I have a tradition and that tradition revolves around potatoes. Yes, that most humble starchy root vegetable is a cause for celebration at our house and here's why.

Over a year ago, on April 8, 2016, we officially moved in to our house. It was, as my previous blog entry states, a mess. And adding all the boxes of our (read: mostly my) belongings on top of everything already there was...a little much. So, we're in the house, we've been packing and moving and driving back and forth all weekend long with little more than the briefest breaks for meals. We had been working so hard. Finally, it was around nine pm and we had brought the very last load of belongings: the pets. Once the animals were relocated, that was it. We were done. I had Chip, our lab/chow mix, in my car with Andy, our tabby cat, and Franklin, our red eared slider, safe in carriers in the backseat. Joshua had Bruno, our Rhodesian Ridgeback, in his truck, with a cat carrier full of chickens in the bed. This was it. This was the last step.

We unloaded, got the animals settled, and poured ourselves into chairs at the tiny green kitchen table I'd bought for my little apartment two years back. Then, we realized neither of us had eaten for hours. Okay, what is there? Answer: nothing. With the move, we didn't know how long it would take to get utilities run, so we ate all we could and passed the rest around before the move. Very little refrigerated food. Everything canned is in a box and the can opener is in another box. Nothing is open in this town of 400 this late at night. Neither of us want to go anywhere, not just cause we (read: I) don't want to leave the animals alone. We've got to figure this out.

Finally, we found two potatoes, some butter in the fridge, two bottles of water, and the salt shaker. I popped the spuds in the microwave (because the electricity was hooked up) and started them cooking while Joshua dug for silverware and dug out another plate. Ten minutes later, we had a very simple meal: baked potatoes with butter and salt and water. We relaxed, unwound, and just took in everything that had happened in the last seventy-two hours. We had uprooted our entire lives and relocated to a house that we were buying. It was all a little wild in that moment. There was no going back to our old house. We were home.

This year, on April 10th (scheduling prevented the tradition beginning on the anniversary date of the 8th as it should have) we recreated that meal and began our tradition. Every year, we will have baked potatoes and water. One half of each potato will be exactly as it was that first night: butter, salt, nothing else. For the other half, one topping will be added each year to represent how far we've come. This year, we added cheese.

Does your family celebrate any unique traditions? Where did those traditions come from?

Back to writing

And it feels so good!

Yesterday, I went over some of the "broad stroke" changes that have happened in my life. Today's entry will be another one bringing my readers up to speed. (Are any of you still out there?) Even if I'm doing nothing more than shouting into the void, I'm going to try and keep doing it. Here goes.

As I've said, my husband and I are buying a house in Blanket, Texas. The house used to belong to my step-dad's cousin and was built in 1904. When we got it - there's no way to be really nice about this - the place was a mess. We spent the first month getting two rooms cleared out. Not functional or fully set up. Just getting the trash out, setting aside important paperwork, and getting things swept and clean. At one point, we hauled a literal ton of trash out to the local landfill. And only two items in that ton were furniture. When this happened, our king sized bed was still set up in the dining room - the only room with enough empty space to put it.

After we got the rooms set up to bare functionality we started feeling the struggle of being home owners. First, the plumbing went out. Joshua spent almost a month getting new lines run just to the bathroom. Then, we had to replace siding. It is so difficult to find even original looking siding when the design you need isn't made anymore. We had to have it specially ordered. All the while, we were still taking baby steps on getting the house in order. Clearing trash out of the yard, mowing til the mower broke, pulling old carpet from one of the bedrooms and peeling up the old tile in the kitchen.

The list of projects and work we have done goes on and on. We've been in the house for over a year and we finally have it in our names. As of right now, our remaining big projects are: running electricity to the attic and living room (the rest of the house has been successfully re-wired), painting the nursery, painting the dining room, painting the exterior, replacing two windows in the attic, getting the bathroom sink to work (this may never happen short of a full replacement), and removing a wall between the pantry and the living room. I'm sure there's something on that list I'm forgetting and that's without all the stuff that needs done outside.

All in all, I'm proud of the work we have done. We have a decent looking, hot in the summer and cold in the winter,  two bedroom house with an attic. Given time, we plan on adding a wrap-around porch to the front and possibly converting the attic into a master bedroom and a library/gaming room. Photos to come. Maybe. If I remember. For my next entry: a tradition about potatoes.

So many changes - and a reboot

So much has changed since I was last in this little corner of the web. Let's run down the list.

I'm very happily married to the love of my life. We've been together almost four years and our second wedding anniversary is next month.

We are in the process of buying a house in Blanket, Texas. The town is exactly as small as you'd imagine - maybe smaller. ;)

We got the house transferred to our names this week So excited!

And...the big one.

WE'RE PREGNANT!

I'm fifteen weeks along. This is my first pregnancy and we're having a little girl. She is due to join us in late September of this year.

My plans now are to revive this blog and get back to writing. Starting CPR now.

Foundations

Well, a lot has changed in the last two days and I am so excited! My husband and I are working on buying a house. I also got my own car! The car isn't much to look at, but no vehicle I've owned has ever been very fancy. The house needs a lot of work. It'll be a few months of cleaning before we can move in, but I am so excited! More updates coming soon with, hopefully, details on the cleaning and setup and renovation.

Too many ideas

I have been writing more often in this blog, my new blog, and some fiction ideas. As far as the blogs, I am not sure which I want to focus on yet, so I will be copying posts between the two until I decide which to stick with. The fiction writing is what I want to talk about tonight.

I'm working on a few scenes, adapted and stretched out from D&D sessions my husband and I have been playing. These scenes are a lot of fun to write because they were moments that spoke to me during the game. They are also challenging for many reasons. Firstly, I have to come up with character appearances and setting because those are things we don't always elaborate on around the gaming table. Because no details were given in the moment, I have to provide them out of nowhere. This isn't always my strongest suit. The second challenge is keeping to the source material without using the source material. I need to describe and tweak, for example, the effects of D&D spells without naming them because I don't want to get sued. I currently have no plans to publish any of these small scenes, but see no reason not to plan for it either.

Then, there are the random ideas floating around. I have about half a dozen of these and some of them have been sitting untouched and unstarted for months. One idea I got tonight has some potential because I took some storytelling aspects that I like reading and decided to put them in a story. I haven't settled in to write it yet, but that's tomorrow's goal. 

I've also been teaching myself some new languages (Spanish and French) on Duolingo. Things are going slowly, but moving along well. What new venture are you trying? How do you make a decision when there are too many options?