7 Quick takes: Edition 1

1. Remember last week I posted "Quick takes: trial run?"  This week, I'm participating for real, and will link my post to Jennifer Fulwiler at Conversion Diary.  For family readers, this basically just means that I'm connecting my blog to another one with a link, so that more people can come check out my ramblings :)

2. While we're on the topic of Jen and her fabulous blog, you should all take a minute and offer a prayer for her.  She is dealing with some complicated medical issues (blood clotting disorder + pregnancy), culminated with some procedures & her scheduled induction in the next few days.  She has a remarkable story of conversion from atheism to Catholicism, and shares some amazing insights on her blog, so I guess that is to say that her health affects not only her personal & family life, but her ability to share the faith with thousands of people online.  Say a prayer!

3. It was (finally) a sunny, warm(ish?) day here in New York yesterday, so I packed up Anna in her stroller and did all of the walking errands that I could think of doing.  We walked by my old office, so I stopped in to say hello.  Needless to say, everyone was really excited to see Anna, and at least pretended like they were glad I was there too.  In light of my recent job title crisis, it was reassuring that being in the office did not make me wish I were there instead of home with Anna.  There were a lot of personnel issues around the time that I left (related to me in that they caused me a lot of stress, but not specifically involving me), and it was really nice to see that they have been resolved, and there was a peace and camaraderie among the staff that definitely did not exist previously.  Even so, don't want to go back :)

4. Despite #3, I'm still working out the kinks of this new position.  Perhaps other stay-at-home moms can relate - I find that many days I am simultaneously bored, yet daunted by my to-do list (and I don't just mean to-do's that I dread....things that I genuinely am excited to work on).  Justin calls it "stagflation" due to some {very loose} similarities to the economic theory of the same name.  I'm thinking it is might be the fact that there's no specific timeline on anything I do and no direct consequences of putting things off another day.  I'm  thinking schedules & goals will be the ticket to kicking this feeling completely.  (I can't help it, the strategic planning part of my brain requires action plans to solve even the smallest of issues.).

5. The post I wanted to put up yesterday (before the dead camera battery issue) relates to my latest plan to finally tackle the projects that have been put off for way too long.  More coming soon on that - but there's definitely been a lot of the "now why didn't I do this sooner?" feelings around here.

photo credit Liz & Ryan

6. In terms of things I put off, hanging things on the walls seems to be top of my list.  Sometimes I have significant decision paralysis.  Other times, I just.....don't do things?  Case in point, for more than two years, I have known that I wanted to print the above wedding photo for a certain spot in the living room.  I think it was part of the decision process in painting this room green.  I'm going to try to get on that sooner rather than later.

7. It's another sunny day, which brings with it more inspiration to work on projects - Justin says I'm solar powered.  The camera is charging, so check back soon for the results :)  Until then, hop over to Jen's blog to check out some other great Quick Takes.