Mid-October Musings

I didn't realize that the official ides of October have come and gone until this morning. I've been elbow deep in projects as of late, and have done a terrible job of tracking time. But rather than focus on what I haven't done or been paying attention to, I thought I'd take a minute to celebrate the good things that have been filling my radar the last couple weeks.

• Enjoying the Glorious Colors of Fall. That photo above/right is not our property (because I suck at photography), but it may as well be - it is abundantly gorgeous here. For all the stupid laws and ungodly taxes, I am blessed every day to live in the kind of place that most people have to try to vacation to.
  
  
• Bedding Down the Garden. For the first time in my life, I actually got a garden properly bedded down at the end of the growing season! We ripped out the bedraggled remains of our tomato plants and pumpkin vines, tilled up the soil, then layered down compost, cardboard, and dried leaves. It was definitely a learning experience and I'll be more prepared next year, but I'm delighted to have done it (after years of thinking about it and not following through).
  
  
• Planting tulip and daffodil bulbs. We planted a handful a couple years ago, but the spot we tried turned out not to be a good one; most didn't reappear this year, and none bloomed. So I grabbed a few packages from Lowes in September, and made time this past week to get them in the ground. I tried three new locations in the yard. Hopefully at least one will prove ideal for them, and I can get more and expand them next year. Spring comes late here, and I'm always more than eager for color, so I would love to eventually have a mass of lovely spring flowers.
  
•  Shifting schedules and routines. I think I shared the Maker Schedule vs. Manager Schedule concept on here before. It is something I've been thinking about and playing with since I left grant writing, but what it looks like on a week-to-week basis has continued to change. Over the summer, fresh produce and house projects took precedence in my schedule. With the days turning colder and darker, and the menu leaning away from all-fresh-all-the-time, indoor and business projects have started to predominate. I feel as if I get a little more insight each week into how to make various actions, routines, and setups work for me, but every day still feels like a work in progress in some ways. 
  
  
• Prepping for winter. Winter isn't my favorite season, but I try to enjoy the process of preparing for the change of seasons. Pulling out the rug for the living room floor, scouring the closets for where I randomly put the last few insulated winter curtains, and rotating quilts - it's a good exercise in gratitude and awareness as long as I don't let myself get stressed about the cold to come and everything I thought I'd get done in the summer and Fall but haven't! We had our first snow this past weekend, and that very much brought the reality of the coming winter home!

What are you enjoying this month?

Gretchen Rubin's “Power Hour” Re-imagined

I've discovered through trial and error that I much prefer reading Modern Mrs. Darcy talk about MMD explained how she'd re-imagined Rubin's weekly “Power Hour”.

Gretchen Rubin's work to actually reading it myself. One such post from last month really tickled my brain;

Rubin regularly designates an hour to knock out “tasks that are important but not urgent”. Those random things that pile up and can take literally months (or even years!) to do because we don't want to deal with the hassle and keeping finding reasons to put them off, even though we'd be much better off with them completed. Rubin used the example of taking clothing to be donated to a drop-off center. It doesn't actually take that long, and we're much better off without the clutter, but the energy investment of engaging with people and making time to veer off our usual routines can make it feel like a much bigger deal than it is.

MMD considered that idea, then adapted it to her current life situation – and I love the result! Instead of being overwhelmed with random small tasks cluttering her plate, she found that her biggest challenge was making time for larger tasks or projects related to things she wanted to learn/master but found it hard to carve out time for amidst a busy schedule. So she decided to try scheduling herself a Power Hour each week dedicated to pursuing a skill she wanted to learn.

That approach really got me thinking. If you dedicated one hour per week to something, by the end of the year you'd have invested 52 hours in learning and practicing it. As Josh Kaufman points out in his awesome TED talk, it may take 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to become a world-class Master of any given subject, but you can get more than functionally adept at something in as little as 20 hours!

Since functional adeptness is all most of us are shooting for in most areas anyway, in one dedicated hour a week is more than enough to add two new skills to your repertoire! As someone who has a lot of fascinating things I'd like to get into, that's an incredibly promising thought! I haven't settled on which skills exactly I want to focus on yet, but I'm determined to make up my mind and start experimenting with the re-envisioned Power Hour plan in November.

Would you consider adding this type of Power Hour to your schedule? If so, what would you like to learn?

Mandatory Kitchen Upgrade

I spent a LOT of time in the kitchen in August and early September. I didn't mind, but it was rough on my furry supervisors. Kitchens are dangerous places, full of knives and hot water and noisy appliances like mixers and blenders. God knows you can't leave humans unsupervised somewhere like that! But, of course, if you try to sit on Mommy's toes while she works you have other problems. Food scraps get dropped on your head (which is not fun unless it happens to be sausage or gravy or something), you get tripped over, and it's not uncommon to find the floor you're trying to nap on either chilly or damp until Mommy gets around to cleaning it. 
 
Arthas eventually decided to work around this mess using Geostrategic Napping positions. He'd nap on the end of our bed, or in the sunlight in front of the door where he had clear diagonal line of site to me moving around the kitchen. As long as I was visible whenever he rolled an eye open, we were good. 

Nenya has somewhat less faith in me, and insisted upon closer management. After I dropped yet another tomato peel on her sweet head and both of us nearly died for the dozenth time due to her insistence on being directly underfoot, we improvised a solution. Behold, the Nenya cupboard!  

With the mixing bowls evicted and her own personal quilt lining the bottom, she gave this new arrangement her seal of approval. I liked it so much that we're discussing creating a proper puppy cave in the corner of the kitchen when we eventually redo the kitchen. No one wants to deal with losing things in weirdly shaped corner cabinets anyway, right?

Turns out it's not an usual idea - Pinterest has lots of suggestions, like the one below. There's also a particularly adorable version for those of you with kitties.

 


















Where does your house need a dedicated pet space?

Quick Recipes Roundup

With as busy as the last couple months have been, I haven't done much in the way of experimental cooking. I've mostly relied an old stand-bys, or simple one-dish meals based on whatever CSA produce needs to get used up first. I have had cause to pull out a few new recipes, though, and thought I'd share.

Photo Credit

Tomato, Onion & Cucumber Salad
A friend introduced us to this, and my husband loves it. It's a fantastic way to use up that one random cucumber we always seem to get in our CSA!

Zucchini Fritters
I am incapable of making these properly stick together in lovely fritter shapes, but they are quite healthy and taste great... even when served in what I euphemistically call "explosion style"... aka piled on a plate! 

Pan Fried Sardines
From the Well Fed 2 cookbook, these are fast and amazing. I can never keep the sardines together, and they usually end up being little chunks rather than whole, but they are the epitome of comfort food. I like to throw them over garlicky sauteed kale, but they'd go well with just about anything. Since sardines are shelf-stable and relatively inexpensive, this has become one of my always-on-hand back-up meals.

Paleo Maple Carrot Cake
I confess to being terribly skeptical when I saw the book My Paleo Patisserie, but this recipe made me a total convert! I'm not doing wheat these days, but wanted to be able to eat the birthday cake I was making - and this was perfect! It uses only almond flour, and was much faster to put together than it looked like it would be! Tip: if you don't have the six inch cake pans called for, just make this in two regular 9 inch rounds or as cupcakes!

What's cooking in your kitchen?

Decorating for Fall

I'm pretty sure that my sister got about 98% of the decorating genes. Not only does she have an eye for it, she loves it. While I enjoy appreciating other people's decor, I haven't really been the type to put a lot of effort into my own. I can't stand clutter, and dislike the idea of having to store a bazillion totes of holiday decor year-round.

During our recent trip, however, we picked up some wonderful Fall-scented candles that we found for an excellent price. Finding myself with a few spare minutes and inspired by reigniting the wood stove and the luxury of having candles again, I decided there was no help for it. I'd have to do a few simple Fall decorating touches. 

Thanks to Pinterest, I've been pleased to discover decor options that require very little time and no storage which is perfect for me! I opted to go with Printable Apothecary Labels, since I've always got a variety of bottles and jars around for other purposes, and Printable Book Covers since of course I've got lots of books, too!

Tip: Milk makes an excellent, non-toxic and easy-to-remove paste for applying paper labels to glass surfaces.

The pictures aren't great, but I'm very happy with how these turned out. Hopefully we'll carve a few pumpkins for the front porch steps before the month is out, as well. 

What's your preferred style of decorating?

Best News Article

Photo Credit

I generally try to keep the news at arms' length. Spending too much time with uniformly depressing news articles causes my natural hermit-like tendencies to flare, and I end up wishing for a zombie apocolypse to come at cleanse the world. Not really constructive. 

I do try to skim through the headlines most days, though, just to make sure that if the world happens to catch fire or something I'll be in the know. On rare occasions, this results in finding something wonderful - a story that actually improves my faith in humanity!

Last week, for example, I ran into one of the best stories I can remember ever seeing in the news and I simply have to share it with you: Grandmother with an AK-47 Saves Cops Attacked by a Street Gang.

I have no idea how a 79 year old woman has been able to keep an AK-47 in California (which is nearly as restrictive as NY when it comes to gun legislation). But I am thrilled to see someone putting gangs in their place. I know it's too much to hope that legislators anywhere will see this and recognize the potential for cleaning up America's crime through appropriately arming responsible homeowners and supporting their rights to defend themselves and their property, but I am nonetheless delighted that someone did it and got credit for it rather than punished for it. 

Hope this story gives your faith in humanity a boost as well!

Book Review Roundup

Over the last couple months, I've racked up a lot of hours either on the road or in the kitchen. As much as possible, I've been stuffing those hours with audiobooks since reading time has otherwise been fairly rare. There have been some great finds, and a few duds, and I thought I'd take a minute to share about them in case anyone is looking to stock up on reading material before the cold weather properly sets in! 

Fiction

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett

This is hysterical in a dry, British humor sort of way. The misadventures of two long-time friends, one an angel and the other a demon, seeking to avert the apocalypse because they rather enjoy living on earth. The plan seems to be working... until they lose the Antichrist.

Conversion by Katherine Howe

You know a book is good when you can almost feel the character's headaches, panic, and exhaustion because the story has sucked you in so deeply it's like you're actually there beside them. 

The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton

Beautiful and complex, like all of Morton's works. The ending was superb. 

The Distant Hours by Kate Morton

Lush and enchanting, with a tragic undertone. A very good read. 

The House at Riverton by Kate Morton

My least favorite of her books so far, I think, but still quite good. 

The Apple Orchard by Susan Wiggs

Beautifully written and intriguing. Fair warning: it's the first book in an as-yet unfinished series, and the second book isn't as good as the first. As a read-alone, though, it's great!

Non-Ficton

Toxic Charity by Robert Lupton

This book should be required reading by anyone and everyone who gives to charity, volunteers with charities, or works with the non-profit, development, municipal management, government or church sectors of life. 

A Disease CalledChildhood: Why ADHD Became an American Epidemic by Marilyn Wedge

A very well done exploration of the social, physical and nutritional aspects of how and why the rates of ADHD have skyrocketed, and what we can do about it.

Books to Avoid

The Misfit Economy (Sounds promising, but doesn't deliver.)

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (Ditto) 

Five Questions of Christmas  (Seems like an interesting idea, but had serious issues with flow/cohesiveness and didn't really relate to Christmas.)

What have you been reading?