Baby Steps

Hello All!

Well, I broke my New Year's Resolution already. Don't remember it? Check it out here. But I'm justifying it because I only broke it at work. Wait, I never say work, I say school. Because I'm a teacher, remember? As any good teacher knows, lesson plans are the key to a successful, organized, and productive classroom. As any teacher also knows, they are the bane of one's existence. They totally stink. The only thing that stinks more is grading. Remember when you were in school and got to grade your neighbors paper? Wasn't that so fun? Well it's not anymore.

Anywayyouprobablydontcareaboutthat, I slacked off during break, and didn't create lesson plans for this week. Fear not, my students were not climbing bookshelves and hanging from the flag pole during the Pledge of Allegience, I pulled myself together around 7am, and arranged some pretty kick-ass activities about Christmas Break and Resolutions.

And because, as any good teacher knows, teaching by example is always helpful to the little kiddos. So I shared my New Year's Resolution. They thought it was boring, and wanted to have resolutions like "remember to feed my fish" instead. Whatever, I guess that's a pretty good one for a 7 year old.

But since I need someone to think my resolutions are smart, or practical, or even logical, I am sharing them with you. My general resolution was to be more organized. That's a giant step for quirky-kind though, so last night (during the Eagles game, yeah that game, the really embarrasing one) I told Dave we were gonna start with baby-steps. (He automatically shares the same New Year's Resolution as me). Presenting Baby Steps:

Almost Quirky Home Renovation List:

January:

1) Order cable box for bedroom (cannot stand not having HGTV in here!!!!)

2) Buy and install new hardware for bedroom set

Yep. That's it. Baby steps people, baby steps.

Maybe in February we'll have a few more items on the list, or a few more major items on the list. But, as any good teacher knows (are you tired of this yet?), you have to instill confidence in a child to encourage them to take risks. This means lots of positive reinforcement, and scaffolding (starting small).

I'll let you know how our January To Do List goes. I'd be too embarrassed to ever admit we didn't get that meager stuff done though, so you'll probably be reading a post the first week of February declaring "Mission Completed", whether we did or not ;)

Do you start off your resolution or goals with baby steps? Surely this can't be a secret only teachers know about ;)

Till Next Time,

A. Quirky

Bad Gemini

(You Want This Magnet)

Darnit. I wish I could get a bigger version of this picture, but I got tired of looking. No surprise there, if you read my magnet. I actually have this magnet somewhere, but I can't find it. Again, no surprise. It's so cheeky, I love it. It basically highlights all my faults, and really most of them are true (that's not easy to admit), especially the ones I circled.

See, Dave and I are both Geminis (our birthdays are 1 day apart), and well, two Geminis in one house can have its disadvantages.

In our day to day lives it's little things like deciding where to eat, or what to to eat, who should drive, what we should watch on tv, and who should take Georgie out. Okay, this is stuff every couple deals with, but where it really messes us up is in the home improvement area.

As I mentioned here, Dave recently moved into his grandmother's house. The house has good bones (Mom Quote), but needs a lot of work. The fact that we have pretty much no money for any major renovations leaves us with lots of small improvements to work on in the meantime. The problem? We cannot even decide what to work on. That's right, forget deciding on a paint color, we can't decide on whether or not to paint!!

Now that would be problem enough. Except sometimes we do decide to do something. And when that happens we do it. We just do it. We don't really research it, we don't really talk it out. We don't explore other options. Dave is worse than I am (sorry hunny!), but it's still that indecisive and flighty quality in both of us that hurts us.

Sometimes it works to our advantage, like the paint color in our bedroom. (More on that later) But most times it doesn't, like remodeling the fireplace. After we tore off the fireplace doors we realized the fireplace wasn't deep enough not to have them. So now we can't have fires, and have hideous gold fireplace doors just hanging out in the hallway.

With all of this comes my New Year's Resolution. Yes, I could stand to use a few pounds, and I should show my sneakers what the outside of my closet looks like. But for the better of humankind, err, Quirkykind, I am going to become more organized.

Here come detailed lists of any and all projects, pros and cons lists, detailed spreadsheets, and budget calculators. We're going to order a bed (no more sleeping on the floor on a mattress), clean the fireplace (you have to do that before you pain it, we discovered), and a new kitchen back splash.

We'll see how it goes.

Happy New Year!

A. Quirky