Drops of Awesome

Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

Dare to Simplify

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I’ve been working hard to simplify my life lately, but not too hard because that could complicate things, but just hard enough. I’ve taken some smart steps like saying no to things I didn’t want to do and getting rid of clutter and then some not-so-smart steps like ignoring my email box, ceasing any kind of quality blogging for days at a time and letting the house get super messy while I take the time to “enjoy life” by spending all day reading.

There’s just too much going on. I have my hand in too many pies. But they all taste SO GOOD! I am over-stimulated most of the time. I don’t like at least 1/3 of the things I’m doing and there are several things I want to do but don’t have time for. For a long time I tried so hard to go overboard with the little details of holidays, birthdays, and celebrations that I got burnt out and now I sometimes forget to do anything at all to mark special days. My to-do list has gotten so long that I’m afraid to look at it. I get a sickish feeling in the pit of my stomach when I see my planner laying on the counter so I just ignore it. At least 4 million trees gave their lives to create the massive piles of paperwork that are stacked all over my house waiting to be attended to.

ENOUGH!

I’ve been thinking “ENOUGH” for a while now but didn’t get up the gumption to actually do anything about it until I was talking to my brain doctor this summer and he suggested that I really focus on trying to say no unless I have a compelling reason to say yes to the various things that are asked of me. He’s a pretty smart guy and has gotten to know me fairly well in the past 3 and a half years since Magoo was born. (If you read the cover story in the NW Living section of the Seattle Times this weekend, you well know that I went a little loopy a few years ago and blog on the advice of my special doctor friend. No matter how open I am about my postpartum experiences, it will always be a bit jarring to see my mental health history in print like that.)

So for the next little while, until I’m as simple as Lenny from Of Mice and Men but far less violent, I am going to set a goal for simplification each week and I’d love some friends to join me. In the spirit of simplification, I don’t have a graphic or a Mr. Linky for this endeavor and the goals will be really small tiny embryonic steps to Lenny-ness.

I’ll post them on Sunday nights and we can all report back the following Sunday. You can leave your thoughts in my comments section or if you post on your blog, let me know.

Dare to Simplify Week 1 — Audio Input
For the week of October 5th I will play only classical music or none at all(besides when I’m working out — I’m just not sure Vivaldi will get my heart rate up enough.). The music will be calming and have no vocals. This includes all music played in my car, house or on my MP3 player.

This may seem like a strange way to start the experiment but I am over-stimulated and overwhelmed by the noise all around me, song lyrics, crazy beats, loud radio DJs and obnoxious political ads. It shouldn’t be that hard to calm down my audio input or even turn it off. I’m curious to see if this helps me feel more peaceful overall.

Care to join me?

Buddy Walk – Help for Downs

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I’ve taken the week off from exercising. I’m nursing a chest cold and have had two extra little friends in the house for the past 2 days. However, if you’re still in peak physical condition or even a bit of peak, you should find out when your local Buddy Walk is taking place and get out and get moving.

Kath is a big supporter of Buddy Walk, an event that promotes the inclusion of people with Down syndrome and raises money for the National Down Syndrome Society. Seattle’s walk is this Sunday. If you can’t walk yourself, take a minute and a few dollars to support another walker.

People-Gawking

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Laylee had plenty of people to watch at the hospital on Tuesday. And she had commentary. What’s the most embarassing thing your child has ever said about another person within earshot?

Read more of our experience at Parenting.com.

Go for Launch

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It was a good day. A little sick. A little crazy. A little tiring. But good. We left the house at 7am and headed into Seattle for an early morning CT scan. I had so built Laylee up about how cool it was to go into a giant tunnel that was like a big camera that she practically jumped up on the table and grinned at the tech as she strapped her head down. When it was all done, she thanked the woman and gushed about how awesome it was and how jealous Magoo would be.

The pictures show everything to have developed normally. Everything’s where it should be and it’s all the right size and apparently the right colors, gray, white or black in the pictures. The good thing is that although her hearing loss is permanent, it doesn’t appear to be degenerative.

Then we met with an audiologist again for another rousing game of put-the-block-in-the-bucket-when-you-hear-a-beep. Super fun! Laylee loves that game even more now that we’ve read the book Oliver Gets Hearing Aids a couple hundred times. Her results were the same. It’s frustrating to sit in the booth and hear the beeps and see her staring straight ahead concentrating, straining to hear but not getting it until the volume has been turned up several times. I just want to wave or give her a sign, text message her, anything to help her win this particular game.

The truth is that it could be a lot worse. She is fully functional with a little trouble hearing some sounds and some volumes. She would get along fine without any help but will do even better with some understanding and in a few weeks some hearing aids. We took the molds today for a pink sparkly pair which should be ready in a few weeks. Very fashion fabulous.

In the 5 hours we were there, we also met with a geneticist, a therapist who hooked us up with a state specialist to help with school stuff, a couple of other doctors, and a cafeteria lady who sold us some un-naturally brightly-colored ice cream. The consensus is that Laylee’s a precious peach who probably inherited her hearing loss from Dan, also precious but somewhat of a culprit in this instance, and that it’s bound to remain stable if we don’t drop her on her head or start taking her to Rage Against the Machine concerts fortnightly.

It’s good. We’re blessed. Our insurance is with one of the few companies that will cover the entire expense of the hearing aids and tests, so far amounting to several thousand dollars. She’s happy, we’re calmer and everything’s gonna be alright.

Please Sir – Buy My Wares

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Things have been a little wild around here, me with my head cold, Dan with his stomach flu and the kids with the freedom to run wild through the house. Being the least sick of the two of us, it’s fallen on me to buck up and take care of things which I’ve been doing to an extent. Dan seems to still be living and partially hydrated and I distinctly remember washing at least 2 dishes today and at least looking at the laundry.

Being mostly home-bound, I decided that today was a good day to get my Etsy shop up and running. I’ve been making stuff for a while now and selling and giving it to friends and family but I think it’s time I got my act together and offered it to you good citizens of the interweb.

My most urgent seller right now is the Halloween Boo Bag. It’s perfect for all your Halloween panhandling needs. When you take your kids from door to door begging for food this October, you should do it in style with one of these adorable cotton treat bags. Each bag is made of 100% cotton and tinged with cuteness harvested directly from Magoo’s cheeks.

Tomorrow is Laylee’s big long appointment at Seattle Children’s. She’ll start the day off with a CT Scan and then we’ll be meeting with doctors, audiologists and geneticists to determine what’s the deal with her hearing loss and to find out what our options are. We’ve been waiting for months for this appointment. Wish us luck. A prayer or two couldn’t hurt.

Brainiversity – Giveaway

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brainiversity

***And the winners are Shaye and CBS! Congrats.***

I often feel that my brain is going to mush. I’ve tried reading Tolstoy, playing Sudoku, taking extended adult naps, brushing my teeth with my non-dominant hand and many other remedies for getting my brain in shape and improving my memory.

None of these were as much fun as playing Brainiversity, a new brain fitness game from Brighter Minds Media. Full of fun little brain stimulating activities, it gets you thinking on your feet and then tracks your progress as you complete daily quizzes.

I was excited about my progress as I continued to improve my scores from day to day. The excitement wore off JUST a titch when Laylee got on my computer to play by clicking on things randomly since she can’t read or do math and earned basically the same score as I had worked my way up to.

I’ll just chalk it up to the fact that she’s likely a child of unparalleled and even freakish genius, not that I am a moron who’s brain is in a state of rapid decay. Hopefully even if the latter is true, I’ll be able to reverse the effects by keeping up my daily brain-ercises.

If you’d like to keep your brain agile enough to help your kids with their homework, leave a comment on this post and I’ll enter you to win one of two copies of the PC-compatible version of the game. I’ll draw a winner on Wednesday at 10pm PST.

Click to Read My Product Review Policy

If Wishes Were Work Ethic

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Sometimes I really wish I were good at laundry. The problem is — I don’t wish it enough to actually make it happen. I’ve known quality laundresses in my day (yes they’ve all been female). I’ve observed them and I’m pretty sure I could become one of them if I really put my mind and my back into it.

To be good at laundry, you have to be a meticulous gatherer. Like a sheepherding dog, you must constantly be yipping at the heels of the dirty clothes piles and at the heels of the people who create them. Sometimes the people yip back but the clothes rarely do and they need to be gathered. Relentlessly. Possibly day and night. The gathering never ceases.

You then have to be a transportation engineer. This is crucial. Once you gather the laundry you have to find the motivation to actually get it down to the room where the washing of the laundry occurs. I’ve thought about putting in a laundry chute to make this a little more fun, that or a dumbwaiter like Webster used to ride in. I could put the whole basket in a dumbwaiter and even jump in there myself if I were feeling particularly lazy, which I never do. I just like to have contingency plans in place.

At this point in my laundry career I just tend to throw the clothes over the banister while looking at my kids and saying, “You know that only mommy gets to throw things or people down the stairs, right?” They see right through my hypocrisy but have yet to question it openly.

Then comes the sorting. To be good at laundry you need to know not only color names but also color/social groups and not every pink shirt belongs in the same group. The color/social groups as I see them are Whites, Volatile Colors, Benign Colors, Magoo’s Underwear, Light Linens, Dark Linens, Nasty Linens and Nobody Cares.

Laylee likes to sort and so does Magoo. One of my children is better at sorting than the other. Hint — It’s the one who does not need an entire laundry category for her underwear. I like them to help when I’m feeling all Mary-Poppinsy and wanting to sing songs and whistle tunes and teach them lessons about life. But let’s be honest, it’s easier to sort myself and this is probably my favorite part of laundry.

I’m also passable at step three, removing lima beans, pens, crayons, lipstick, chapstick, glue stick, pretty much any stick, coins, bobby pins, bowling balls and living creatures from pockets before putting the clothes in the washer.

Next is the part I never do but always wish I had but then never do again because it takes a little something called effort. Pre-treating. The name is misleading because doing this is not a treat. It’s not even foreplay to a treat. It’s just a pain in the glute.

I have a couple of natural stain removers that I like now, Charlie’s All Purpose Cleaner which was suggested by Kath and the Ecover with the built-in brush. They’re both good for different kinds of stains. That being said, I still hate looking for stains and putting the soap on the clothes. There are too many spots and grime and goo everywhere. My kids attract stains like… like…slime on a couple of kids and it drives me crazy. Usually when I’m pre-treating I want to put down the clothes and just go wrap my kids from head to foot in saran wrap with tiny holes for breathing and visibility.

The next part I’ve probably done 8.5 times in my adult life. It’s probably the most important. The next step to being a good laundress is checking the clothes for remaining stains between the washer and dryer so the stains won’t be forever set in. I find this so discouraging because half the stains become camouflaged with the rest of the clothing item when wet. So even if I decide to go crazy and actually do this step, I miss half the stains anyway and my kids end up going to school looking like schlumperly orphans by the second time they wear an outfit out of the house.

Alas, I believe my mom had a special laundry force that allowed her to see these stains with the aura emanating from her fingertips. I can assure you that the aura is not hereditary. Neither is her knack for finding good deals on clothes. Luckily, although she is not available to wash all my children’s clothes, she is willing to act as my personal shopper, keeping new inexpensive raiment coming so that once a week they can wear something that is not stained until it is.

Never Boring

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I guess it depends on your definition of boring. Here’s a little snapshot of my life:

Word on the street is that these dolls barely escaped when a fire began raging in the wooden prison where they were being held captive.
barely escaped

Some people find rocks in their dryer. I just found a lima bean in my washing machine.

This morning I dropped Laylee off at the front door of her school, the kids’ favorite song YMCA blaring on my car radio. She looked so proud to have such a hip fly mom. I bawled as I pulled away knowing it won’t be long now until she’s no longer proud of her mom blaring disco tunes from the tinny speakers in her dorky old car. Yes. YMCA brought me to tears.

I also cried as I talked to my spinning instructor this morning asking her to check my form because if something doesn’t change, I’m going to need to drop the class due to raging joint pain. Real tears. To a woman of steel. Who hugged me right there in the gym and told me that in the past 5 years she dropped down from 230 lbs and she knows where I’m coming from. Next class she’ll be biking right next to me checking my form.

FOR THE LOVE, the TEARS! Followed by the Elaine-esque spasmodic dancing in my house after my kids were out the door for school. I haven’t had a personal dance party like that since college. If I don’t have my period soon, I think my hormones may implode.

Tech Vader at the Gym

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Well I just wouldn’t be me if I didn’t take my techie nerdesty into the gym. I find that the more technological equipment I can strap to my person, the better I feel about the whole workout experience.

It started with tunes. I find it nearly impossible to work out without a good mix of sweatastic jams. And the mix has to be perfect. I spend weeks tweaking the mix, adding songs, deleting them, taking them for test runs and then adding and deleting some more from my MP3 player. Just when I think I’ve found the perfect mix, I get bored with it and start the whole process over again.

When I’m in my spinning class, the instructor picks the music and I actually don’t mind it. I think of her songs as stationary biking songs and my music as everything else music. And she does a pretty good job, serving as both freakishly awesome teacherly person and DJ simultaneously. On International Talk Like a Pirate Day, I greeted her in Piratese and asked that she conduct the day’s class in a manner befitting the occasion. Glad that I had reminded her of the holiday, she pulled from her CD wallet a disc entitled “Pirate Mix.” I kid you not. The first song was from the soundtrack of that one Johnny Depp pirate movie. The name escapes me… And we all let loose with a hearty “Arrrr Mateys!” and when the going got rough, we suggested that our instructor walk the plank if she felt so inclined.

Tunes ARRRRRR important. I keep my MP3 player strapped to my arm with a black band. It’s a cheap 1 gigger but I’m dreaming of the new Zune. Am I the only one who loves the Zune in all its hotness? Also, I ask you all why you are not downloading all of your music from the Zune site. It’s cheaper than iTunes and comes in a more versatile format, playable on all kinds of devices. If you have iTunes software, it will convert your Zune files into iPod-accessible format in a jiffy so you can play your songs anywhere.

Next in my oh-so-important Darth Vader-like arsenal of life-sustaining workout devices is my heart monitor. I lerve it so greatly. With that strap around my chest and that watch on my wrist I can always see how fast my heart is going so I know if I’m getting a decent workout or not. There are times when I look around the gym and feel like an over-sized mollusk, schlumping my way along on the treadmill and then I look at my heart rate monitor and see that I’m actually getting quite a nice workout. So I take heart and keep on keepin’ on. When I’m stronger and have shed a few layers of myself, there will be time for running like a gazelle. For now, I’ll settle for mollusk if it’s getting me where I need to be.

Truly I used to get so frustrated with my speed compared to everyone else around me. Now I just compare my speed today with my speed yesterday. It’s been 3 weeks and I already have to work much harder to keep my heart rate where it needs to be for a good cardio workout. It’s encouraging and the monitor helps me notice the teeny little baby steps I’m making.

A word of advice — if you’re going to get a heart rate monitor, spend the extra money and get one with a chest strap that keeps constant track of your heart rate. Attempting to save money, I originally bought one for $40 at Target that required me to stop moving and put my free hand on the watch to make a complete circuit in order for it to read my pulse. It was a big waste of money and really frustrating to use. Strangely enough, I found a decent Reebok chest strap monitor on Woot a few months later for $19.95. It works great and I love it.

The third piece of equipment that really keeps me going is my pedometer. I’d used one in the past and didn’t know what the big deal was with counting steps. Mine wasn’t accurate and I forgot to keep track so I could compare my activity levels from day to day. The one I have now, a $30 model from Omron, rests in my pocket or clips onto my belt and keeps really accurate track of how much I’m moving. It has a digital display that calculates number of steps, number of aerobic steps and distance traveled based on me entering the average length of my stride. It keeps track of 7 days worth of data at any one time, resetting itself automatically at midnight. I wear it to work out and try to beat my step record from the previous day.

Then I continue to wear it throughout the day, trying to log as many steps as possible. I have chosen to walk 2 or more miles to meetings just so I can see a higher number on the pedometer. The moral of the story is, if I make fitness a game, I’m much more likely to get on board and stay there.