Categories
Diversions

Getting ready for the end of days….

It’s not as macabre as it sounds, I promise!

I always have this thing about not really getting into “spring cleaning” but there is something about the end of the year that gets me a bit excited about the possibilities of the new year.

Even this year. The second year of the damn pandemic.

I wallowed in my own misery for a bunch of December and now I feel like turning my mind to the future.

I ended up with a cross-stitching journal and planner (from The Black Needle Society‘s November “resolution” box) and a Reconciliation day planner (from Colouring It Forward) and I love my little notebook so I am going into the year planning on using all three!

Here are some of the pages from the stitching journal:

I love the trackers!

I will use this to keep track of the details for my stitching projects! I have only a couple of things that are truly WIPs to finish off; I have a few more things that need “finishing” (framing, or being made into a pillow or something!). I’d like to get one of the things in the “finishing” pile done a month. Otherwise my plan for January:

– start a full coverage piece

– start, and keep up with, the temp tracker from Climbing Goat Designs

– start a small piece

– start a kit

The Reconciliation day planner is also pretty nifty – the daily pages are undated so if you miss a day, or just have a “rest day”, then there is no wasted pages!

It begins with messages from Elder John Sinclair, Diana Frost and a bit about the artist Ashley Barclay. It also lists all the “statutory holidays” as well as other important Indigenous dates such as:

– February 10 – Moose Hide Day

– April 28 – International Dance Day

– June 8 – World Oceans Day

– September 30 – National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

I love the space for gratitude – and also the reminder to actually DO something

The suggestions are great as well. Others include attending a cultural event, consider stereotypes, follow up with political representatives about the Calls to Action etc.

And there are Q&A pages:

Others are on women and ceremony, land acknowledgements, why men wear braids, Indigenous education etc.

And finally my own little planner. This has whatever the hell I end up putting in it. Like birthdays, and habit tracking, and notes from reading or listening to podcasts. That sort of thing. Like one of my habit trackers from last year:

So there we have it. My starting to plan for 2022! Yippie. What type of planning do you do? Do you set goals – short, medium, long? easy, medium, hard? For different things (i.e. reading, movies, moving?)

Categories
Diversions Family

C is for March

I seem to have run out of steam a little in March. No reading to speak of – although I did catch up on my newspapers and magazines (mostly The Atlantic). I had a trial subscription to Texture that was going to expire at the end of March so I did a fair bit of poking around on there and then concluded I wasn’t going to miss it when the trial was over so that was good to know.

There was lego of course! The Curiosity Rover 🙂 it fits nicely with my Saturn V rocket.

Oh and Chicago too:

mostly sorted…

And I finished up a cross-stitch that I have to put some final touches on and then send out to a good friend’s daughter to remind her that there is always an adventure to be had:

adventure awaits

And if I really want to stretch it, I got a hair cut 😉

less hair; more grey

Q fell asleep while waiting…

Categories
Diversions Family Get Crafty

Happy Monday – weekend craziness

Happy Monday all! We had a wonderful, warm weekend – but the kind of weekend that feels like you need a weekend to recover from it!

Friday was all nostalgia, as I went back to high school! I took a slightly longer route to get there so I could walk down the street I used to live on and see the house I spent the first 13 or 14 years of my life in. It seems like they added a nice deck to the back but the front looked a lot like it did 35 years ago.

On the street where I lived

I was on the left even as a child

I went and found my grad photos (yes, photos, I actually kinda love saying “when did I graduate? Oh, 1992. And ’93” lol)

Grad ’92

Grad ’93 – Harry Potter specs long before HP 😉

It’s such a great entrance too!

Saturday involved getting Q to drama class and me cross-stitching while waiting around. Then hockey school and a pit stop for ice cream afterwards

First he ate his

then he ate mine

Toby took Q off to gymnastics in the afternoon and then, with my folks in charge of Q for the night, Toby and I went off to the west end for a pub night for the high school. So lovely to see everyone that I did see but I missed a lot of people too because, well, I was volunteering Sunday morning!

Sunday is usually the day we have nothing so that we can recover from the week and the usual Saturday madness but instead I volunteered with EGALE running some water tables at the Scotibank Toronto Waterfront Marathon and then headed out to the wilds of Etobicoke to help my mom, an uncle, and a couple of cousins work in my babcia’s garden. Whew. 

I’m hoping for less craziness this weekend but I dunno!

 

NOTE: yea, I know, this went up on Tuesday but only because I couldn’t get the photos to upload on the blog. The very helpful admin for my host fixed it all overnight for me – well overnight for me, day time for him, he’s in the UK.

Categories
Diversions Health

Running update – 8 weeks till my next half and other babbling.

I’ve got to figure out what motivates me. Really. I am still at the point where running seems like a chore. Where eating well, well, isn’t much fun either. So I thought I’d stop for a second and lay out my plan for the next couple of weeks and see how well I stick to it.

Monday: 6.5 km – start easy; finish faster
Tuesday: 10 km – start easy; fast 5k; finish easy
Wednesday: cross-training or rest
Thursday: 5 km – easy
Friday: 5 km – start easy; finish faster
Saturday: rest
Sunday: 13 km – easy

Sounds good I think. Should be about 40 km for the week. But as I haven’t run very much for the last two weeks 40km would be great for me right now 🙂

Other March goals:
-there are three shelves I want to put up in various spots in the house (cubby shelf in the treadmill room; rod shelf near my craft area and the other rod shelf near the washer and dryer)

-finish the pond cross-stitching picture I’m making for Q

-start knitting again – maybe make up some of the vegetables again for Q’s kitchen

-blog more regularly!

It snowed again today so it’s not looking much like spring but it’s lighter later and later every day. Spring is surely on its way….