Saturday, September 28, 2013

The craziness of life

I suppose everyone has a level of stress that they reach when they know they've reached their limit.  I hit that limit a couple of weeks ago.  I can always tell by the dull ache in my chest and inability to sleep all night.  I normally fall asleep within 1-5 minutes (not kidding) and sleep all the way through until the alarm goes off.  Not when heavy stress sets in.  Can't fall asleep right away, thoughts start racing, wake up off and on and then the alarm goes off and I feel like a large, heavy log laying on the bed. 

Here's just a small bit of some of that week's events.  Sarah had 3 doctor appointments.  I had 2.  Josh misplaced his wallet at a friend's house and 3 people frantically searched for that for a few days until Eric took Josh there himself and HE found it!  Here's a picture of my calendar which obviously doesn't even list the normal daily things...


When I actually post a picture of it and look at it, it doesn't look as bad as it felt.  Of course, in a busy family, many things are going on all the time and don't get written down.  This particular week I also felt like I was sitting in the van way more than normal which makes me crazy.  

It's really helpful to write things down.  When things get to be too much, write everything down!  Every. Single. Thing.  Once you get it on paper it feels like it's out of your head if only for a little while and provides some much needed peace.  For the past almost two years I had been managing (or so I thought) to keep organized relying solely on my phone.  I used the notes, calendar, Errands app and others.  After this week I realized that I just needed to go back to what works and get a planner.  I went to CVS before the week was up and thankfully they had a few left (and 50% off!).  I'm trying to get Eric to do this also...

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Photography club

I went out on a limb and joined a photography club.  The Michiana Digital Photography Excursionists.  I called Gene's camera store to see if they could tell me a good place to go and shoot the sunrise and the lady recommended this group.  I signed up that night.  They meet once a month sometimes to shoot or sometimes to look at everyone's pictures from the last meeting. 

We went to the East Race and spent about an hour there.  Everyone uploads their shots to the website and we all comment on each other's photos.  It was really fun.  I met some nice people and it's a good lesson in not judging a book by it's cover ;)  We made a list for a fall scavenger hunt to do before the next meeting and at that meeting we will critique everyone's scavenger hunt photos.  I need to get busy on that...

A few shots from the East Race...





This last one has a watermark because I entered it in a contest and the watermark was required.  It got a few votes :)


Tuesday, September 17, 2013

It's been a while...

It's been almost three weeks since the last post!  I think that's a record here.  I have thought of quite a few things I would like to have posted, but...no time.  More on that later.

I attended a talk tonight, after an Altar Rosary Society meeting, at the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture.  Every fall they have a Catholic literature series with talks given weekly.  This year the topic is Children's Literature and tonight's talk was about the Harry Potter series.  The speaker is a philosophy professor at Notre Dame and a homeschool dad.  It was in a good-sized lecture hall and was very well attended. 

I'll not write too much about it because it wouldn't be nearly as meaningful as how it was spoken.  Mr. O'Callaghan started out discussing some of the most well known philosophers (Socrates, Aristotle, Nietzsche, and Descartes to name a few) and their individual philosophies of life.  Then he eased into how this all relates to the Harry Potter novels.  Whether it was intentional by the author or not the story from beginning to end is a Christian allegory.  No matter what your religion is, no matter what Dumbledore's background story is, no matter what your philosophy of life is, no matter what Rowling's faith life is, if you have eyes to see (as O'Callaghan says), there is an incredible amount of Christian meaning. 

On a side note, one of the daughters of the speaker recited an excerpt from one of the novels at a Catholic Homeschool Talent Show a couple of years ago and was booed by some in the mostly Catholic audience. 

Mr. O'Callaghan stated that when he started reading the novels after their children received them as gifts, it was to make sure they were appropriate for them to be reading.  He had heard from other parents already that the books were about evil, witchcraft and sorcery.  After reading them, he decided that he wasn't just going to let the children read the novels, he was going to make them!   They are full of powerful philosophical and religious messages!

I could go on and on.  I want to end by mentioning that I talked with a couple of other mothers afterwards in the parking lot and one of them made the correlation of the message of the books to being a stay at home mom.  We are not of the will-to-power philosophy, but we believe that sacrificial love is what leads to true happiness.  Love is everything.

I will try to post the talk here when I receive it...