The Grand Finale!!!
Here is my FINAL 3 Best Things for Today: #1 - No more stressing about what to write! As a non writer, this did not come easily for me, I spent way too much time fretting about what I was going to write each day. #2 - The crummy weather this morning forced me to stay in and just relax for awhile; watch TV, put away laundry, iron. Looking forward to watching the Loyola game at my sister's tonight. #3 - Still 2 more days off after today. So glad for the extra day on Monday. My sister's school took back their Monday because of the snow day so my favorite 6 year old is coming for a sleep over tomorrow. His request; the Ball Factory in Naperville and then sushi for lunch. :) Sounds perfect to me! Thank you to Adrienne and Susan for their daily feedback and comments, it was much easier knowing that I was writing for an audience!
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Day 30 - the home stretch. A big part of me is relieved, I have begun to feel like I am really pushing for something interesting to write about! C'mon, the grocery shopping and laundry that is getting done today is thrilling!
Basically, I am trying to think of the best way to convince my husband that we really "need" a new piece of furniture to fill an empty space in our living room. For some reason, this space is consuming my thoughts. I think it is because we have a very small piece of furniture there right now and it just does not fit. We moved last summer so not everything fits exactly the way it did in our last house, which we were in for 16 years. Mostly I want a new cabinet because I do not like all of the kitchen space that our current bar ware is taking up. We rarely use it, so I would much rather just put it somewhere that is out of the way. My husband is more of the "if it isn't broken then don't fix it" mindset (except when it comes to anything golf related for himself) so he occasionally needs a gentle nudge. Truthfully, I would also like to replace the 20+ year old bedroom furniture, but one battle at a time. Since I have spent a lot of time this break reading, today's Top 3 are some of my favorite books. I have so many, so these are just 3 of the many... Add your favorites in the comments, I am always looking for recommendations. #1 - Shadow of the Wind (such a strange book and yet I love it) #2 - Glass Castle (LOVE it! - think it is going to be a movie too) #3 - Winter Garden/ The Nightingale (I believe the firsts book started my WWII historical fiction obsession) Today I spent the day just running around and getting some things done at home that have been on my To-Do list for while. Nothing much to "blog" about, but my mind kept going back to the end of this Writing activity and my own Growth Mindset. I am a big fan of this philosophy and spend part of every early school year talking to my students about hard work and perseverance. Since I work with gifted kiddos, they tend to pick up on ideas and concepts fairly easily and often don't really ever work too hard at school. I like to change that; frustrate them, challenge them, make them work a little harder. The truth though? In real life we are not all "good" at everything, despite how much we work at it. So at what point do we forget growth mindset and just accept the realism? Another truth? I do not really like to write and I am not very good at it... AND I am okay with that. Is it my age? Have I just reached that point where I know my limitations and can acknowledge what I do and do not want to spend time on? When is it healthy to just being okay that you are not good at everything (or many things)? Not all of our students can be the next Michael Jordan or the next Bill Gates and I don't want them to stop trying to be their best, but I also don't want to give the false hope that hard work and perseverance WILL lead to success (who defines that exactly).
Anyways... keeping with my 3 Things theme, here are my 3 things I would have liked to have been good at sometime in my life: #1 - Singing (not even rock star level, I just would like to carry a tune) #2 - Heights/roller coasters/boats - all of these things make me sick #3 - Foreign language (there is a longer story here, but my 4 years of German really did not get me far) My parents are still relatively young, 70ish, but there are many days that I feel like they are 90 and the roles are reversed. Especially anything to do with technology. Yesterday my sister texted me in Texas to inform me that she let it slip that I was taking an Uber home from the airport and now my parents want to pick me up. There is no possible way I could have typed NOOOOOOO any faster or emphatically!!! My parents like to stay in their 10 mile radius comfort zone and any type of highway driving leads to A LOT of frustrations and complaining. I could just picture it... my plane was due to arrive at 10:20. They would get to the airport around 9 and circle around, occasionally stopping so my mom could run inside to see if she could find me. It would take several tries for someone to hear and then answer the ancient flip phone before spending 15 minutes trying to explain exactly where I was. Um... no thank you!!! I really love them, but this was a hard no.
the 3 best things about travelling alone... #1 - Forced me to download and watch a few shows. I am 3.5 episodes into The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and I highly recommend it (unless you are opposed to vulgarity, then you should pass) #2 - It is so easy to get through security and maneuver around when you are not worrying about someone else! #3 - That awesome feeling of coming home. I love to travel, but I also like coming home (plus the cleaning people were just here so it is kind of sparkly right now)! |