Eating the Elephant--Volume 4

This week was pretty disappointing as I didn't get anything done in the house and it all looks like a war zone. I had friends in town this week so we went out to eat a couple of nights and I got food poisoning so wasn't able to catch up on the chores. However, I'll keep plugging along.

Goal--Have a Clean Kitchen
There are about two loads of dishes waiting to be done and the counters need to be washed off.

Progress

• Empty the dishwasher and actually put the dishes away when it is finished--I did this most of the week, but fell down at the end of the week.
• As dishes become dirty, load them in the dishwasher and start it when it is full.--Better--but not perfect.
• Wipe up spills as they happen--I didn't do a good job of this..
• Throw garbage away as it happens versus letting the empty boxes and cans sit on the counter.--It seems like everyone else was bad at this as they didn't put a garbage bag in the can and just let it sit there.

Elephant Ears for the Week--I'm going to leave the same elephant ears as they are not ingrained yet.

• Empty the dishwasher and actually put the dishes away when it is finished
• As dishes become dirty, load them in the dishwasher and start it when it is full.
• Wipe up spills as they happen
• Throw garbage away as it happens versus letting the empty boxes and cans sit on the counter

Goal--Always have clothes ready to wear in the morning

Progress

• Put clothes away as soon as the dryer is done--I'm exploring whether this really works for me or if its' better to put them in the hamper and take it upstairs at one time.
• Mend clothes when buttons fall off etc, instead of sitting them aside to do something with later--Didn't do this.
• Put clothes away after work (hamper, hang up jackets, take jewelry off, etc.)--Was pretty good about putting things in the hamper, but I still need practice.

Elephant Ears--I'm going to keep the same ones this week as I didn't do a stellar job.

• Put clothes away as soon as the dryer is done
• Mend clothes when buttons fall off etc, instead of sitting them aside to do something with later
• Put clothes away after work (hamper, hang up jackets, take jewelry off, etc.)

Goal--Clean Living Room

I'm in the process of doing a deep clean on the living room, so some of these are getting taken care of that.

Progress

• Carry dishes into the kitchen when you are done with them--better--but not perfect
• Carry the kids belongings up to their room instead of waiting for them to do it--I left Cat's things sitting. I'm getting really resentful about having to continually put other people's things away.
• Put shoes away instead of kicking them off on the floor--Total loser on this one.
• Throw papers and other trash away instead of piling it up--Not a total loser, but I didn't do a great job on this one.
• Go through mail once a week--I did go through the mail this week and didn't let it pile up.

Elephant Ears--Not enough progress to justify moving on to new habits.

• Carry dishes into the kitchen when you are done with them
• Carry the kids belongings up to their room instead of waiting for them to do it
• Put shoes away instead of kicking them off on the floor
• Throw papers and other trash away instead of piling it up
• Go through mail once a week

Goal--Clean Bathroom

I made less progress in keeping the bathroom clean than in any other area. I'm still awful about throwing my clothes down and not in the hamper and at putting things away.

Progress

• Refill the toilet paper as soon as it is empty--I did this one and did carry morein from the bathroom.
• Put clothes in the hamper instead of on the floor--Loserville on this one
• Put away bottles, jars, etc.--I did an okay job on this one, but not stellar.
• Don't leave books, magazines, etc. in the bathroom--Loserville

Elephant Ears

• Refill the toilet paper as soon as it is empty
• Put clothes in the hamper instead of on the floor
• Put away bottles, jars, etc.
• Don't leave books, magazines, etc. in the bathroom

Goal--Clean Family Room

Progress

• Don't leave my computer bag sitting down stairs. Put it and all the related junk by my desk.--I was a loser at this.
• Carry dishes and food upstairs as soon as I'm done--I was pretty good at this one.
• Pick up garbage (magazines, soda bottles, etc.) as soon as I'm done--There are still coke bottles sitting around that I left out.

Elephant Ears for the week

• Don't leave my computer bag sitting down stairs. Put it and all the related junk by my desk.
  Carry dishes and food upstairs as soon as I'm done
  Pick up garbage (magazines, soda bottles, etc.) as soon as I'm done

Seems like this is the same exact post as last week and in a lot of ways it is. I just need to keep plugging away. I'm thinking about taking a day off of work to get the house cleaned so the work is incremental and not the huge overwhelming task it always seems to be.

Objects de' Bliss

Decluttering is all the rage and according to the experts will solve everything from money woes to depression. However, some of the experts go a little to far and believe that you should dump everything that you're not using right this moment with no room in life for the sentimental. One of the decluttering books I've read says that keeping sentimental objects keeps you stuck in the past reliving old memories instead of making new ones. The same book advises tossing out all your photos because they're also keeping you stuck in the past.

Decluttering I get as there is nothing better than walking into a clean and well organized house. However, I firmly believe that there is room in life for sentimental tchotchkes that make you remember who you were, where you've been, and who you've shared your life with. Sitting on my mantle right now are two Oscars that I purchased in Denmark several years ago. To some folks, they might just be useless souveniers, but to me they are a reminder of how much I want to be a screenwriter and of that fun and funky trip when I just decided to drive from Bremen Germany to Denmark for a day just because I thought it might be cool. Looking at those little trinkets, I'm reminded of driving around looking for the castle, calling one of my best friends to tell her I was in Denmark, and of how all the stores downtown were closed, but the mall was open.

My desk is full of trinkets that some might call useless doodads, but every one of them has meaning for me. There's the wooden plate that says "Making a Life Comes Before Making a Living." I purchased that the week after my dad died at a little store in Iowa and it serves as a reminder to slow down and enjoy life instead of being in fast pursuit of the a buck. There's another one on my desk that says Life is about moments and not milestones. They both serve as a reminder that I only get one life to lead and I had better make the most of it. The wooden Buddha on my desk was purchased in China. I'd gone into this little curiosity shop (China is full of them) and found this handcarved Buddha that had amazingly good energy. The price started out around $20, but we negotiated it down to $9. Buddha is a reminder that there are good things in the world and that I need to have patience and grace.

The artwork on my walls is also full of meaning and memory. The paper scrolls of the seasons were purchased at the Humble Administrator's Garden in China. At the time, I didn't know where I would put them because I lived in an ordinary ranch house. However, two years later, we purchased a split level that had the perfect place to hang those scrolls. Over my desk hang prints of Mt. Fuji that I purchased at Mt. Fuji over 15 years ago. In Japan, they are just cheap throw away souveniers, but they look beautiful when hung in a group and when I look at them, I remember watching the sunrise on top (okay at the base camp) of Fuji.

My objects de' bliss don't cause me to live in the past and spend all my time reliving old memories, they remind me that there have been good times in life and there will be again and they inspire me to go out and create more happy memories.

More Bliss

Writing is in my blood, my mom writes, my dad wrote, my daughter writes, my aunts wrote, well you get the picture. It is what I do and I am at my happiest when I am sitting at a keyboard playing with words. I also LOVE to see my words in print and to see how they look when they are put out there for public consumption. Maybe that makes me narcissistic, but that's okay.

The first time I had a story published at the Champaign News Gazette, I stood at the grocery store the day it was to be published and waited for the driver to arrive with the newspapers. Once I had it in my hot little hands, I rifled through it until I saw what the editor had done with my story. There is something about a byline that brings me pure bliss because I know that other people are reading and absorbing what I've read.

Over the years I've written for a number of publications, but have never been able to break into the big glossies that sit on the newsstand or inhabit the check out counters. I've sent of pitches, but haven't been able to catch anyone's eye. The Internet is changing that as some of the glossies are soliciting input from their readers to fill the pages of their online magazines. More, one of my favorite magazines, is one of the magazines that is reaching out to readers and asking for input. Two weeks ago, I submitted a story about finding bliss through blogging to More and they published it on their site. Being published online isn't as big of a thrill as seeing my name in the pages of a magazine, but it is still pretty cool to see my name somewhere that isn't my site. More.com is also featuring an article of mine about Patrick Swayze on the front page.

More.com had a link to a site called Divine Caroline and digging into their site, I found out that they also look for submissions for members and I posted a story about stealing back moments of your life.

Everyone reading this probably thinks I am totally self absorbed, but I'm not posting so all of you can rush off and read my writing and tell me how wonderful I am. I'm writing because writing is bliss and because it becomes even more blissful when I know that others are reading the words I've put down on the page (or screen) and hopefully being positively impacted.

What brings you bliss?

Righteousness of Hope

The band on my wrist proclaims me number 42568. What would it be like to be reduced to a number? The survivors of Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau, and the 15,000 other concentration camps created by the Nazis before and during World War II know all too well what it is like to be dehumanized to a number tattooed on their arm.

My son and I visited the Illinois Holocaust Museum today and took a trip through one of the darkest periods of human existence. Although the killing of Jews is the most widely known of Hitler's atrocities, he began his killing spree by "euthanizing" between 200,000 and 250,000 mentally and physically handicapped individuals. In his quest for the perfect Aryan race, Hitler also forcibly sterilized up to 400,000 individuals considered "feeble minded" and unfit to reproduce.

Listening to the Holocaust survivors tell their stories both in person and via video, the atrocities stepped out of the pages of history books and became real. We heard about families crowded into the ghettos and children forced to scavenge food for their family, we heard about children watching their parents being taken to the gas chambers, and we heard stories of heroism, survival, and grace.

One of the most moving videos for me was listening to a survivor tell about questioning a fellow inmate who was praying and asking him what in the world he was praying for in the midst of the death and the horror. The gentleman nodded towards the guards and said he was thanking God that he hadn't made him like them. There were stories of hope as inmates revolted against their captors at Treblinka, Sobibor, and Auschwitz-Birkenau and the residents of the the ghettos fought back.

Many non-Jews turned a blind eye to the violence and the death, but there were a few who chose to live righteously and do the right thing. Two of these were diplomats who defied their governments to issue visas for Jews to help them escape. Chiune Sugihara was a Japanese diplomat serving in Lithuania who saved up to 10,000 people by issuing papers allowing them to travel to Japan. Even when told by his superiors to stop issuing such visas, he continued because he believed it was the right thing to do. Similarly, Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg issued papers to Jews in Hungary that allowed them to escape with their lives. Both Sugihara and Wallenberg, along with approximately 20,000 others, were recognized by the Yad Vashem as Righteous among Nations for their work to save Jews during the Holocaust.

Many of the Holocaust survivors in Skokie, buried their memories of the Holocaust after the war as they tried to fit in and become Americans. That changed in 1976 when a neo-Nazi group petioned to march in Skokie, home to approximately 10,000 Holocaust survivors. The survivors realized that they had to step forward and tell their story. Since that time, they've worked tirelessly to educate humanity about what happened to them and what is still happening in places like Darfur and Rwanda.

Despite the horror of the Holocaust, genocide has not stopped and we continue to have people who think exterminating an entire culture is acceptable. Genocide, Holocaust, and terror are not blissful subjects, but they are things that we have the power to stop if we speak with one voice.

Autumnal Bliss

There's a crisp, clean scent in the air and the days are getting shorter. Today's the Autumnal Equinox and although to many people that means the first day of Autumn, to me it will always be the middle of Autumn. Scientifically, the Autumnal Equinox means that day and night are exactly equal and that starting tomorrow the hours of daylight will start shrinking as the hours of night expand. However, from a blissful point of view, the Autumnal Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere means that there's a touch of magick in the air as the days count down toward Halloween.

Autumn is the time when the leaves spring forth in brilliant color as a last hurrah before they fall from the trees and turn a dusty brown. The colors are magnificent oranges, reds, and yellows. People journey hundreds of miles to see the magick of fall. It's not only the harvest that brings a smile to people's face, it's also all the blissful food that is available: crisp apples, pumpkins for pie, grains, and other wonderful foods that make this a time of feasting.

In ancient days, the feasting of autumn was soon to be followed by the scarcity of the long cold days of winter. The ancients knew they had to eat while the eating was good because soon the fresh food would be gone and there was no guarantee that they would be able to put enough aside to last through the long, cold, dark days to come.

Living in Northern Illinois, we are surrounded by the beauty of nature and today the trees are starting to turn beautiful colors. When I go for walks, I see the reds and yellows of the trees in the neighborhood and the fallen leaves are blanketing the walk. It's dark when I wake up in the morning, which makes the thought of burrowing under the covers and sleeping a few more hours very appealing. Soon it will be dark when I leave for work in the morning and dark when I return home at night.

However, unlike the ancients, I know that soon it will be Halloween, and then the Solstice when once again the days will start getting longer and longer as the earth turns toward the sun. I am able to celebrate the coming days of darkness as a time of turning inward, a time of reflection, and a time to prepare for the coming year.

My hope is that your fall is every bit as blissful as mine as I celebrate apple cider, pumpkin pie, and all the treats that the autumn brings.

Painful Bliss

Someone posted two very painful comments on my blog today that were personal attacks generated by something someone close to me had posted on a public message board. One of the comments was that I should kill myself and then the world should have bliss. My initial reaction was to curl up and cry both because someone would make such a painful and fairly random attack and because someone I loved had put personal information that could be used to hurt me on a public forum. My loved one's intent was not to hurt my feelings and I’m sure that he had no clue that the comment would get back to me, but it is still very painful.

I have to admit that I started questioning myself after reading these comments because there was just enough truth in them to make me feel bad about myself. I started questioning my motives, my self worth, and everything about myself. I started feeling distinctly unlovable and as if there was no one in the world that cared about me.

That got old really quick and I realized that I had a choice at this moment in time: I could choose to let what some random person who didn’t know me impact me and shake me to my very core or I could choose to shake it off and feel compassion for someone with such obviously low self esteem. I realized that the person I was dealing with was obviously a troll who got some kind of pleasure out of attacking someone he/she doesn’t even know via the Internet. What kind of sick and twisted upbringing did this person have that they believe it is acceptable to randomly attack others? How much self loathing does this person have that the only way for him/her to feel good about themselves is to attack other people?

I choose to take my lesson from the gentleman in the concentration camp who in the midst of such horror and pain chose to thank god for not making him like the concentration camp guards who enjoyed inflicting pain on other people. I give thanks and count my blissings that I am a compassionate and loving person who believes in working towards betting the world instead of attacking other people. It is really hard to show compassion in the face of such an attack, but I have a choice and I choose to show compassion both toward the person who posted the attack and on the person who posted personal information online.

However, despite my compassionate bliss, I am not above posting a picture of the nasty little person who did this and I will not open up myself to such public attacks again and have chosen to turn on comment moderation so I will be reviewing all comments before they are posted.

Butterfly Bliss--Volume 4

For those of you who haven’t read about my butterfly challenge, I’m following the lead of one of the bloggers I greatly admire, Charley Forness at Scribe for the Tribe, and trying to make small changes every week in the hopes that the small changes will add up to bigger changes in my life. The original challenge article is here. This weekly check in will include a report on last week’s progress and on my goals for next week.

Goal--Lose 30 lbs by 12/31/2009

Progress

• Walk at least 20 minutes three times a week-- Did a great job at this. Walked once while Cat had her Sax lesson, once to the post office, and once to the flea market with Sean.


• Drink two bottles (aluminum ones) of water a day--I drank two bottles two days and one bottle two days. I have a long way to go to get where I want on this one.

Butterflies for this week (Based on my progress from last week, I'll keep the same goals)

• Walk at least 20 minutes three times a week


• Drink two bottles of water a day

Goal--Have Sean's tuition and the taxes paid by 12/31/2009

Progress

• Cook dinner at home six nights a week to save money.--Great job on this one. We only ate out one night.
• Pack my lunch four days a week--I packed lunch twice, my boss bought lunch one day, and I ate at home twice. Not bad, but still not a habit
• Not buy any magazines--I did buy a Woman's World magazine, but resisted the urge to buy several more.

Butterflies for the week

• Cook dinner at home six nights a week to save money.
• Pack my lunch four days a week.
• Not buy any magazines

Goal--Build my online presence

Progress

• Post five book reviews at Amazon—Done. However, I've decided to drop this as a butterfly for now as it takes too much time and I think the payoff will be less than some of my other activities.
• Get Listed on three blog sites—Done.
• Write two articles for online sites--This is a duplicate of one in the next section, so I will report on it there.

Butterflies for the Week

• Get listed on three more blog sites
• Post an article on More
• Post an article on Divine Caroline
• Find two more places to post articles (just have to find them, not post)

Goal--Build KUDOS Power

I'm scaling back on this one because there are not enough hours in the day to do everything I want / Need to do. Unfortunately, I'm going to have to build KUDOS Power a lot slower than I had hoped.

Progress

• Write three articles for KPI--Done
• Write three articles for KPO--NOt done. I just didn't have time
• Write an article for More--Done. Death of a Hearthtrob is currently on their front page.
• Write an article for Divine Caroline--Done
• Rewrite The Portable Coach--Spent significant time on this. It is about 25 percent of the way done and I plan to get it finished this week.
  

Butterflies for the Week

• Write three articles for KPI
• Rewrite The Portable Coach
• Follow up with my contact at Westinghouse
  

Goal--Build better relationships with my family

Progress

• One dinner or activity with John this week—We went shopping. It wasn't as great an activity as I would have liked, but it was something.
• One dinner or activity with Cat this week—We went out to sushi this week.
• One dinner or activity with Sean--Sean and I went to the Maxwell Street Market
  

Butterflies for the week

• One dinner or activity with John this week


• One dinner or activity with Cat this week


• One Dinner or activity with Sean

Wish me luck this week. I’ll check back in next Sunday.