Summer Goals

It hasn’t quite hit me yet – that the usual, daily grind has been postponed for a couple of months. Part of it has to do with my current misery – I’ve been coughing and sick for a couple of days now, coming to a head last night when I came down with a low fever and spent most of my evening huddled beneath blankets and binge-watching HBO. Tonight, I’m at least upright, and this time it’s binge-watching Hulu, but still – I’m not poolside, or even gardenside, by any means.

When I have unbooked time, I habitually create goals. Sometimes it’s just vacuuming and laundry, others it’s plant a whole garden. With two and a half months ahead of me, let’s see what I can do with the time and willpower I have.

1. Grow food!

With the homestead shopping spree still remaining that – shopping, not purchasing – we have piles of seedlings in our window sill with no destination. If we plant now, we’ll move without our seedlings (I joke that’s the only way to find “the” house – by planting the garden, we’ll jinx ourselves into finding the “one” the next day). We had hoped to have a plan by now, but to be honest, there isn’t one. I’m thinking we’ll go ahead and resort to what we did four years ago at our last house – a patio garden! It’s hardly sustainable, and goes against almost all of our hopes and dreams for improving soil, but growing in pots does provide homes for our seedlings and food for our table.

2. Finish my certificate.

For the last two summers, I’ve been working on levels I and II towards my Kodaly methodology certification – each level is offered for 5 hours graduate credit at Wichita State with a two week, ultra-intense course in the beginning of June. Since getting my level I, I have found a wonderful and satisfying new path with my teaching – a child-centered approach that uses folk songs from our student’s cultural traditions, all while enhancing their music literacy abilities to the fullest. This year will be my last of three levels to complete – which will bring me not only my status up to “Kodaly-certified teacher” but also my master’s degree status to “15 hours completed” – and this fall I’ll start in on the rest of my coursework to finish a master’s.

3. Buy a @#$^ house already!

Can you tell I’m feeling frustrated? I heard an NPR report that said in this past quarter of housing sales, houses have sold faster than they ever had in a decade. I can’t tell you how many houses we’ve looked at or gotten ready to look at only to arrive and find out an offer (or 3) was already on the house. It’s exhausting. It’s tiring. We’re at the point where we are happy to get a house with a big backyard just so we can build equity with something, but even that has been hard to find! It’s really stressing me out, so that means I probably ought to…

4. Take a yoga class or learn to meditate.

This school year, especially the last few months, have been stressful. I’m ashamed to admit how often I’ve broken down in tears or how often my husband has gotten some kind of exhausted or facepalm emoji through text the last couple of months. I. Need. A. Break. I’ve barely had time for myself, none for my friends or family, much less patience for any of the aforementioned. I’m going to start with some organizing to help me feel in order and then just some plain old sleep. It’s wonderful how therapeutic being in the garden can be, so as soon as I feel up for some exposure to allergens I’ll head out to the garden to weed and explore with the kitties.

Longterm, it would not be a bad plan for my mental health to establish a yoga or meditation routine. Even YouTube has some fabulous guides and gurus, and quite honestly I just need to step up and recognize how much I need this and do it already!

5. Get some thorough work done on my long-term planning.

In order to know what to teach, you need to have an end goal for your students – what do you want them to know when they leave your classroom at the end of your school year together? From there, when do you want to teach those goals, and how? With what resources or focuses? I want to take time to develop my concept plans and long-term planning, now that I’m entering my fourth year of teaching. My first several years were about experimenting, surviving, trying new things, and seeing what fits – how long it takes to teach a concept, that sort of thing. Now that I feel like I have the handle of it, it’s time to think broader, more deeply, and with more effectiveness.

 

Most of all, I want to spend time with myself, my friends, my family, and to relax. After all, it is summer.

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One Year

My goodness, have these past several weeks been a whirlwind. I apologize for the radio silence – we’ve been deep in the excitement and trepidation of homestead shopping, and it’s meant a lot of focus, stress, and intense amount of communication in our family as we count down the days to combining my mother-in-law and my husband and I into one big family moving into a home together. Without wanting to speak too soon, we are cautiously optimistic on a home that we put an offer on at the beginning of the week – there are a lot of pieces that have to fall into place (potential flood insurance, inspection, appraisal, stressful amounts of cash), so trust me, you’ll know when it’s a done deal because the three of us will be doing back-flips. In the meantime, I wanted to take a quiet moment to document a thought that has been pretty central this week.

On the eve of our first anniversary, my husband and I got this darling card from my grandparents (HI GUYS!). It made me stop my whirlwind in the kitchen this evening, pause, and take a moment to consider how much we’ve really relied on each other and grown together over the past year. Like every couple, we’ve faced a lot of ups and downs and faced some stressful times (vacations can be stressful, but man, we handled it like pros – no shrieking children, crowded buffets, or sunburns could tear us apart!) and through every situation we’ve come out the other side relieved to have been through it together and wouldn’t exchange it for any other person. I’ve come to think of our relationship like my foundation, my home, and when stress or problems invade I retreat back to my comfort zone, which usually consists of my husband, our cats, and a fuzzy blanket on the couch. (Oh yes, don’t forget the glass of wine.)

We’ve also done so much growing in learning what we want our goals for our homestead to be and what each of our roles will be going forward – Evan jokingly says that while he’s the thinker, I’m the do-er. If you couldn’t tell from my blog already, I take DIY projects and run with them, and I spend a lot of time making sure our home runs efficiently and cleanly. Evan takes care of the growing and plant concerns (herbs and flowers are my projects), doing the digging and harvesting, and researching the best ways to be sustainable and reach our goals. We complement each other quite well, though it’s taken over six years to find that balance and we’re still not perfect.

Stepping back to the card from my grandparents, I most resonated with it because it was “us” – one year together, throughout the seasons, each one bringing new challenges, new stresses, and new rewards. Each season is different – fall brings the start of school and preserving food, winter the quiet boredom of the homestead but excitement in planning for the future garden, spring with busy schedules, summer with the promise of growth and worry of future success in the coming school year or the harvest. But through it all, he’s still my partner, my friend, the person without which I can’t imagine embarking on this journey. Here’s to year two!