For years I've wanted a routine that I follow faithfully with rare exceptions. I'm still reading my Strengths Finder book. I see people I know in the book and sometimes tell them what strengths I think that they have. I went to bed at nine last night, but then got up to send an email. That was impulsive and I'm not sure if sending it last night was a better idea than waiting until this morning. I haven't gotten much cleaning done although I did throw in some laundry yesterday. I haven't been as good about making to do lists as I would like so I jotted down a couple of tasks on my neon colored notepad. I have to get over the idea that this paper is expensive and use it because that's what I have. Sometimes I let silly things like that interfere with activities that would help me.
Unsurprisingly I don't feel the greatest although I ate better yesterday than I did before. I tend to be very good about drinking water during the morning and slack as the day goes on so now I'm trying to think of ways to get more water in later on in my day. I try to keep it out on the counter as out of sight equals out of mind for me. One thing I did yesterday was make dip to go with my veggies. My brother-in-law makes a lot of dips and I find that I eat more veggies when I have something to dip them into. Things like that are the small habits in life that can really add up and make a difference. I'm still reading my Anger-Free book which reminds me that I would like to start going through my books again and make some decisions about what I'm going to keep.
I thought about a different way to organize my closet space yesterday, but I'm not sure if this idea will work as well in real life as it does in my head. Another thing I would like to address is the west side of our house as it needs landscaping. I was going to send my mom an email asking if she had any thoughts or plants she wanted to donate to the cause. It's really not fair to make our neighbors look at the boring side of the house and it would be fun for the girls to plant some flowers or at least I think it would be something of an adventure for them. My mom and their other grandmother are gifted gardeners. I enjoy indoor plants, but never really got into gardening outdoors. I was kind of mad at myself for throwing away some plants with scale, but my mom told me there's almost nothing she's found that gets rid of it and I would rather let those plants go than have others get infected.
I'm making a distinction between big clutter and little clutter here at home. There are a few areas, the sun porch and garage come to mind, where there is big clutter. Most of the rest of the house looks messy because there are papers, books, a game, odds and ends, and miscellaneous who knows what just laying around. The Strengths Finder book mentioned that people who are strong in a certain area will not perform well in a cluttered environment and that's certainly true of myself. Part of the problem is we don't have places for some of these things and another problem is we've made some big life changes so there is an accompanying disorder as we settle into new routines and households where either mom or dad is in control of a specific habitat.
I'm not feeling especially inspired today. It's nice to be up early, but I'm still tired so I may go lie back down for a while. I missed a text late last night asking if Jane could come and hang out with me as she had a very rough day yesterday. There weren't any details, just that information so I sent a text back asking what went wrong and letting her know that she was more than welcome anytime. While the text was upsetting, I'm glad that the lines of communication are open to that extent. Sometimes eating junk and staying up late catches up with people. She tends to be very sensitive and I'm not really surprised that a trip to Great America didn't go well for her although I'm glad that she went as sometimes I feel she's too much of a homebody. There's nothing wrong with staying at home, but the screen time skyrockets and fresh air is good for people.