Write about your job

Today, let's write about jobs. Pick any or all of the following topics to write about:

-Describe your current job. What are the best parts and the worst parts of it?

-Start with your first job ever, and make a list of all the jobs you've had.

-When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? Did it change over time?

-What is your dream job? Are you doing it? If not, why not?

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At one point, like a lot of kids, I wanted to be a veterinarian when I grew up. I loved puppies, and I figured holding them all day would be the most fun. During high school, my friend Chris got a job at a vet's office. By that time, I was more jealous of her steady paycheck than the puppy cuddling, but still, I asked her what it was like. Did she love the day-to-day work with animals? She responded, "Well, so far they have me doing stuff like cleaning up messes and holding the animals while they place IVs." Ugh. Fantasy shattered.

I have a lot of dream jobs, but one of them would be to smear paint on canvas all day. I worked on a project earlier this year where I got to make a bunch of colorful canvas backgrounds, and it was incredibly fun and rewarding.

My youngest will be starting school next year, so I'm starting to think about what my next career will be. At one point I made a list of all the things I enjoy doing and would like to do as part of my job. Besides painting, it included making lists, running meetings, big-picture planning, travel, and talking on a microphone. I read the list out loud to my family and asked them what jobs would let me do those things. My dad responded, "Sounds like you want to be a CEO." Ha! Yes, perfect. Please let me know if you are looking for a CEO to begin in fall 2018.

July 4th journal entry: Write about your political views

Happy Independence Day!

Why not use your freedom to take a few minutes and record your political views?

-What political issues are most important to you? Is there a particular issue that sways your vote in one direction or the other?

-Do you identify with one particular political party? Has that changed over time?

-Do your views differ from your family, friends, neighbors, co-workers?

-What are your earliest memories of politics?

-If you  have kids, do you talk with them about politics and current events?

My earliest memories involving political affairs are from the 1984 presidential election. I was eight, and boy in my class drew a picture of Ronald Reagan on one side, looking sweet and kind (like, he practically had the rouged cheeks, except it was a pencil drawing), saying, "I'll lower taxes!" and a picture of Walter Mondale on the other side, craggy and hideous, possibly even smoking a big cigar, saying, "I'll raise taxes!" At the time, I had no opinions on the matter and just thought, "Wow, that Mondale seems like a pretty mean guy." Looking back, it's hilarious to me, and pretty obvious what the boy's parents talked about at the dinner table.

Hot and cold

How about a journal in list form today? You can make it short and sweet, with a few simple bullet points, or elaborate as much as you want. List all the times you've been really, really hot and/or the times you've been really, really cold.

Here are some of the hottest days I remember:

-When I was about 9, my family spent the day at Wet N Wild, a water park in Dallas. My toes got raw from running around barefoot all day and left little blood prints on the hot concrete.
-My wedding day: outdoors, late June in the Chicago suburbs, me wearing a many-layered dress, going inside occasionally to stand over the air conditioner vent that was on the floor
-My college graduation: sitting in the sun for a couple hours, wearing a back polyester cap and gown. So humid.
-The time Matt and Jill and I drove to Summerfest (2003) in Milwaukee to watch a Wilco concert. So many sweaty people stuck to each other.

We got really familiar with that yellow shirted guy and his armpits

-That other time we sweated our butts off at a Wilco show, in 2004 at Stubbs. September is still full summertime HOT in Austin, and the concert space at Stubbs is situated so that not a single breeze can blow. On top of that, they were selling bottled water for like $17 each (okay, maybe $5, but still), and I refused to buy it on principle (that principle being cheapness). Our friends J&A came too, and A got so dehydrated by the end of the show that she passed out. We had to pick her up a couple times and sort of drag her along to avoid her being stepped on by the herd of people moving toward the exit. I remember thinking at the time, "They probably all think that our friend is super drunk."

On the other hand, here are some of the coldest days:

-My freshman year at BYU, for extra credit in my political science class, I did exit polling during the fall 1994 election. A team of three or four of us drove out to the small town of Magna, Utah and asked people to fill out paper surveys as they exited the polling station in a school. We took turns warming up in the vestibule, and every so often, we had to go to a pay phone and call in the data we had gathered.
-When I said goodbye to my parents as Matt and I moved from Illinois to Texas; it was about five degrees outside at 6am, and my tears froze on my cheeks.
-When we rented a room from an old lady in Vernazza, Italy. We asked her how to turn on the heat, and she was like, "Yeah, there's no heat. You'll be fine." But in Italian and an improvised sort of sign language, so maybe there actually was heat and we missed the message. Even though it was April, it was really cold, especially after I took a bath in that tiny tub where I couldn't even extend my legs, and Matt had to pour a bowl of cold water over my head to rinse my hair. Then I got under the covers and shivered.

But, but...

It's day two of my journaling challenge, and as soon as I posted day one yesterday, I started thinking of all the reasons someone might not want to do it.

"I'm not a good artist."
No problem. I was inspired to start this by looking at art journal pages, and some of my pages will be covered with paint splotches and pen doodles. But if you don't feel artistic, just write things down.

"I'm not a good writer."
Also no problem. Think of it this way: would you love to have a month's worth of journal entries from a parent or grandparent? Of course you would! Would you care if they were written in a polished, publish-ready manner? I doubt it. You'd love having the content regardless.

"I don't have time."
Five minutes a day. Four sentences a day. One page a day. Pick a realistic goal, and give it a try.

"I'll be on vacation for part of July."
Bring your journal with you. Or write your notes in a private blog. Or set a daily alarm, jot down a few thoughts on a notes page on your phone, then transfer to an actual journal when you get back. (You should probably actually do this part, because how likely are you to pass down your old phone to your children along with other keepsakes?)

Have I convinced you to do it? I hope so. The challenge for day two is to write about a time (or times) when you missed an opportunity. Did you talk yourself out of something that you later regretted? Did you wait too long, and then your chance was gone?

I just missed my chance to see a musical called In the Heights, created by Lin-Manuel Miranda, the insanely talented guy who also did Hamilton. It was in Austin for most of June, and when I realized that, I thought, "Ooh, I'd love to see that show! Maybe for our anniversary. Oh, wait, Matt doesn't really love musicals. Maybe I'll go alone. Or with a friend. Maybe toward the end of the month."

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

I wish that I had made a decision and booked it right away, because by the time I realized that it was wrapping up, the tickets were all sold out. Boo.

Another time that I waited too long was in high school. We were at my friend Bryan's house, and they had a rope swing in a tall tree in their backyard. You had to climb onto the shed and swing out, and I was too scared to take the leap. I stood there on the shed, letting other people go in front of me, and when it was time to go, I sat in the car thinking, "I wish I'd done it. I'll bet it was really fun."

Fast forward to a couple years ago at my sister's house. They also had a tree swing, a huge one that looked both fun and terrifyng. As my nieces and nephews took their turns swinging, I thought of that day at Bryan's and decided that I didn't want to have the same regret. I climbed the rickety ladder and put my foot through the loop, then let go before I had a chance to think any more about it.

You can consider this a metaphor about taking risks and living life to the fullest if you like, but I'm trying to say, quite literally, do it. Book the musical today, and if lots of people have successfully ridden the swing ahead of you and the tree branch looks pretty strong, jump on there and have a swing.

Journaling my July

I just got this book from the library, and I love it!

It's literally a thousand different art journal pages. I've been thinking forever about doing a month of journal writing, so as I sat perusing these beautiful pages, I decided to start it today. Some days will be written, some days will be art in my notebook, and some will be both. Some days I'll spend five minutes on it, and some days (if my kids sleep in past 6:30am or fall asleep before 9:30pm) I'll spend a bit more time.

If you want to join me, just keep checking in here for prompts and encouragement. The challenge for today is to write (or draw, paint, collage, etc.) a snapshot of your life. Where did you go today? What shows are you watching? What did you eat? What are you working on? Looking forward to? That sort of thing.

Family reunion by the numbers

Square footage of my house: 1500

Bedrooms: 3 plus a small office

Number of people that usually live here: 5

Number of people that lived here last week: 22

(Full disclosure, 7 of us slept at my very generous friend's house)

Hours the cousins spent riding bikes, scooters, and big wheels: a lot

Mosquito bites acquired in the process: soooo many

Kids refreshed with overpriced slushies and mesmerized by a minions movie across the street from the Alamo: 11

Adorableness of my grandma, on a scale from 1-10: 10

Times a cousin accidentally went into the wrong house and was captured on the neighbor's security camera: 1

June birthdays celebrated: 4 (and the one whose birthday actually occurred during the reunion jokingly asked for a meat cake, because she's one of those high protein, low sugar types)

Hours these two lasted at the swimming hole before taking a nap: 1

Photos we took at the Cathedral of Junk: probably like 100

Water events: 5 (swimming pool x2, swimming hole, splash pad, and sprinkler jumping)

Amount of food sorted when we volunteered at the Central Texas Food Bank: enough for almost 9,000 meals

Half gallons of Blue Bell ice cream consumed over the week: 13 (fairly stingy portions for the kids and bonus scoops for the adults once the kids were in bed)

Adults: 10

Kids: 12, including adorable, squishy baby C

Minutes that adorable, squishy baby C wasn't being held or doted upon: almost none

Trips to the store to buy more pillows: 2 (I was not prepared in this department, but recall that I had stocked up on Blue Bell. Priorities.)

Times we ran the dishwasher: innumerable

It was such an awesome week, and the only downsides are the sugar withdrawals I'm currently suffering and the cousin fun time withdrawals that my kids are currently suffering.

Oh, I almost forgot!

Times I successfully shot the moon (no trump) while playing Moon with Matt and Jill: 1

In the background you can see Jill snapping a photo of her cards, in order to show me later what a terrible hand she had to defend against my moon shooters. Ha!

A list of things I never thought I'd do before the Cubs won the World Series

1. Allow, nay, encourage my children to stay up past 11 on a school night to watch a sporting event.
2. Get in my car and intentionally tune the radio to a sports station.
3. Suggest baby names for my brother's just-about-to-be-born baby girl, all based on Cubs names.
4. Decide that Zobie Maddon Hardy is actually a pretty awesome name and wish for one hot second that I could have a baby girl and name her that.
5. Wear the same lucky shirt for several days in row.
6. Consider wearing said shirt another few days (until November 8).
7. Wake up happy and eager to start the new day after four hours of sleep.
8. Paint my car windows with declarations of love for a sports team.

Thursday morning I woke up with a smile on my face and decided that we should show our Cubs excitement all over town, or at least in the school carpool lane. I quickly googled how to make DIY window paint and got busy. I figured that my kids would be either delighted or embarrassed when they saw our painted windows, and I was a little surprised to find that I actually didn't care which it was. I guess I'm entering that phase of parenting where I kind of enjoy soliciting eye rolls from my kids. They often think I'm sort of a dork anyway, so why not lean in to it?
I used a simple recipe of equal parts pulverized sidewalk chalk and dish soap. If you decide to try this yourself, let me give you two suggestions. I was in a hurry to paint the car before I woke the boys for school, so I didn't grind it up into a fine enough powder. My chalk paint was kind of gritty and didn't go on very smoothly. On top of that, it was a very warm, humid morning. The paint never fully dried on the windows and sort of dripped down like that bloody-looking font people use on Halloween party invitations and horror movie posters. So it's not ideal for an unseasonally warm November day just hours away from a giant thunderstorm. Go figure.
I found another recipe that uses powdered tempera paint. I'll try that one next year.

One more note. There were a lot of jokers at my house on Thursday.

Matt: So, what are you guys gonna do today?
Sarah: Party like it's 1908.
Matt: In 1908, you probably wouldn't know who won the game for like three days.
Sarah: (stink eye)
Matt: Or are you gonna go down to the Western Union office and listen for the Morse code?

Alec: Why do you keep writing "holy cow"?
Sarah: It's what Harry Caray used to say. He was a Cubs announcer back when I was a kid.
Alec: Like in 1908?