Kid and Caboodle

I’ve been spending much of the afternoon going through piles of paper throughout the house.  In doing so, I found the following list of tips from an office newsletter:

Successfully Managing the Work/Life Juggling Act

If you have a family, managing work and life can be challenging — and often unpredictable.

Consider the following tips to help you successfully manage the work/life juggling act:

• Make time for fun and relaxation. When you add more leisure to your life, you’ll become a healthier and more effective employee and parent.

• Build and use support systems. People with strong support systems tend to be healthier, happier and better able to tolerate stress.

• Forget perfection. While it’s admirable to put your best efforts into your work and parenting responsibilities, it’s simply impossible to be perfect at everything you do.

• Take care of yourself. It’s easy to focus on your responsibilities to your partner, children and employer and forget about taking care of yourself.

• Be happy. Studies show that happy individuals are successful across different areas, including marriage, friendship, income, work performance, and health.

I’m not exactly sure how one can will oneself to “be happy” — does this newsletter mean “try to think positive”? But otherwise, these tips seem pretty sound.

Hmm, wonder what else I’ll find as I continue decluttering the house ….

Last night I read an essay by David Hochman in which he describes his efforts to stop his “reflexive complaining” and instead find something — no matter how small — for which to be thankful every day for a month. I tried a 30-day “Think Positive” experiment like this about a year and a half ago; perhaps it’s time to take up the habit again. Rather than trying to write every day, though, I think I will just write once a week.

On this first “Thankful Thursday,” I have many, many things that are going well in my life. I have a great family and fantastic friends. Everyone in my immediate family is in good health; my parents, who are in their 70s, are on a trip spanning East Asia and Latin America right now. I have a job I know how to do well that pays me a lot of money and provides great health insurance, gobs of vacation time and sick leave, and intellectual stimulation. Four days a week I work in a sunny corner of the office building that, due to its location, gives me a measure of privacy despite being a cubicle. On Thursdays I get to work from the comfort of my home.

Today, specifically, I am thankful that my sister-in-law has volunteered to host our family for Thanksgiving, thus providing us with a great meal without my having to clean the house or cook anything! (I am bringing homemade chocolate chip-banana bread, though.)

Thanksgiving Dinner 2009: white meat turkey, broccoli salad, green beans, corn pudding, carrot salad, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, dark meat turkey, ham, deviled eggs

This is the last official “think positive” post I’ll be making. This 30-day experiment to find at least one good thing to write about each day has been interesting, but I don’t think it has made a permanent change in my outlook on life. I think it is a healthy attitude to try to find something good in everything, but I also think it is important to acknowledge when things really are beyond saving.

Last weekend was enjoyable. Attended a birthday party for the daughter of a friend on Saturday and got to socialize with some of my college friends. It was nice talking to people who appreciate my personality quirks rather than judging me for them and who understand the challenges of balancing work, family and personal obligations. Saturday I also had dinner with several family members and friends who are part of a football pool. It was very nice to see them; we don’t get together nearly often enough. On Sunday, my husband and his stepfather went boating while my mother-in-law, A.J. and I went to an arts-and-crafts store. We had a grand time going through the bead section — even A.J. picked out several things he liked. One of these days I really should take a beading class …. I think I do fine stringing together artistic combinations of beads, but I don’t know how to finish things off yet.

While I have been figuring out how to do beadwork, my husband has been working on model rockets. He had a frustrating time with some spray paint last week because he couldn’t really control it. So, on Sunday I also bought him some enamel paint and some detail brushes. Things are starting to come together! We’ll be visiting some friends in Charlottesville next weekend. Not sure if the rockets will be ready to launch by then, but it is interesting to see the progress he is making.

Right now I am multitasking. In addition to writing this blog entry, I have been cooking tomorrow night’s dinner (oven barbequed chicken) and doing laundry. I also need to do some writing and editing, but I think I’ll leave that for tomorrow night.  It’s late.

It’s Friday!

Tomorrow we have two social activities planned — a birthday party for a friend’s daughter, and our annual dinner with the rest of the football pool (the “Shedd’s Spread League,” so named because we glued an empty margarine tub to the top of a block of wood as a trophy).  It will be very nice to get together with friends and family.

I think I need to start cleaning my living room, though!

Today my son persuaded one of his classmates to try a grilled cheese sandwich for the first time in his life. A.J. told him that “cheese is really tasty,” and the kid took him at his word. I find it almost unfathomable that a child living in the United States has never had cheese before, but I guess his parents only expose him to Chinese food. A.J. says his classmate does drink milk at school and doesn’t get sick afterward, so it’s not a matter of lactose intolerance or milk allergies; he just really has never had cheese before. A.J., you’ve opened up a new world for your friend!

Tonight I’ve been rereading one of my favorite books, Patricia McKillip’s The Changeling Sea. It’s a children’s book, but it is a wonderful little story. I love Patricia McKillip’s writing in general; reading her books is like having a beautiful, strange dream. I’m never quite sure what’s going to happen in one of her stories, but I don’t mind because her writing is so beautiful.

On a more serious note, today I picked up a copy of a book about Osama bin Laden’s family. As Sun Tzu says, to win a war, one must know one’s enemy as well as oneself.

Even though it is spring, a.k.a. allergy season, I seem to be doing ok. I haven’t had any major rashes, sneezing, itchy eyes, etc. I am pleasantly surprised. Of course, I haven’t been going outside much, either; in fact, my supervisor gently scolded me today for not taking a lunch break and enjoying the weather today. We’ll see how I do tomorrow, when I’m in the sunroom telecommuting with all the windows open and people are mowing their lawns ….

Today I was invited out to lunch with some former co-workers, one of whom is retired. It was very nice to take a break from work and to catch up on our lives. We had lunch at Full Kee, in Chinatown, which is one of the few restaurants in town that serve authentic Chinese cuisine. No “crab rangoon” or “chop suey” here! You can get some of the standard Americanized foods, like beef with snow peas, but you also can get various frog dishes, congee with preserved egg, pig skin-and-duck blood soup, or other delicacies. I rarely take a lunch break since work is so busy, so it was doubly nice to get away today. And the weather was good, too!

Yesterday I put together my first beading project — a necklace for the young daughter of a friend. Although I used the wrong type of thread so can’t knot it properly, I think the end result is attractive. Considering how young the girl is, it is probably better that I not make the necklace a set length anyway; if for some reason she wants to continue wearing it as she grows, she would need to be able to continue adjusting it. Since the beads are not secured tightly on the thread, they also can be taken off and sewn onto a book bag, blouse, or some other object if desired.

I had an entertaining train operator during my evening commute. As we were leaving L’Enfant Plaza, he said, “The next stop is in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Now leaving the District. Say, ‘bye-bye.’” That woke me up!

Last week I ordered some waterproof windbreakers for my parents. My father had admired a jacket I had worn often during our Taiwan trip and asked me to get him one. I asked him whether or not he wanted me to give him one as a birthday present in August, but he said he wanted one right away since he does a lot of gardening these days. So, I ordered him one, and threw in one for my mother at the same time. My mother called me this evening to thank me for them. She said that they had arrived that afternoon and that she and my father were eager to try them out; they were thinking of going for a walk that evening even though it was drizzling. I guess they really like the windbreakers!

It looks like it’s going to be a lazy Sunday at home. Originally we were going to go boating this afternoon, so we did laundry and other chores yesterday. But right now it is raining very hard, with occasional gusts of wind and rumbles of thunder, so we won’t be able to go out after all. What shall we do with our free time?

A.J. is happily sitting in his pajamas playing video games. My husband has announced plans to work on his model rocket. I am having a cup of hot chocolate and planning to make a trip to the art store. I want to get some beading supplies, spray paint for my husband’s rocket, a box to hold A.J.’s toy cars, and some “gold stars.”

Today I did my state taxes and edited two travel stories my father asked me to review. I also spent time with the mother of one of A.J.’s classmates, went to dinner with my family at Noodles and Company, and got to take a nap! It was a productive, social and relaxing day.