Well, here I go again with the very irregular posting. See why blog consistently for 6 months is one of my Things? It will take some real effort.

Granted, I do have a few good reasons for not being on top of my Things lately. I picked up some side work and it’s been gratifying but also time consuming. Add to that the fact that I’m still not at 100% energy and self-wise so evenings are spent mostly vegging out, regrouping my spoons for the next day, and going to bed not long after my one-year-old. (If you don’t get the spoons reference, read this excellent post about the Spoon Theory.) So there just hasn’t been a lot of leftover energy, or spoons, for my Forty-Two Things. And I’m okay with that because I gave myself permission to be very bad at this whole thing.

Thankfully, I’m still several years away from 42, but I did have a birthday in March, bringing me one year closer to my self-imposed deadline. I’d planned on doing a big “State of the Things” post around my birthday and repeat it each year but that didn’t happen either.  Still, I have done some more things toward my Things.

I made another recipe from the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook – Maple Bacon Biscuits. My first time to make biscuits. They ended up flatter than I’d have liked, almost like cookies in texture, but they tasted amazing. I shared them with my in-laws and got rave reviews.

I’ve read some more books from Read or Rid. I discovered the work of Rainbow Rowell and I love her. I haven’t read her most popular book, Eleanor and Park, yet because it looks like it might have too many feels, but Carry On, Fangirl, and Attachments were all wonderful.

I technically have joined a book club, but I haven’t actually been to a meeting yet. I have read the books though. I am determined to go by next month’s meeting. For the last two months, I’ve been geared up to force myself to socialize (knowing I’ll have fun once I get there), but the weather has been crazy on the day of. Houstonians don’t know how to drive in the rain and so I haven’t wanted to make the 40 minute drive (more in rush hour traffic) in a flash flood. And it’s hard to drum up the energy to do much of anything mid-week. I wish it was a weekend book club. But I know that going will be good for me. I can feel it in my bones.

I’ve done some more work on my story that I plan on submitting for publication. I took the comments from Laurie Notaro (!!! Still can’t believe I’m getting feedback from one of my favorite writers!!!) and I’m working on incorporating them and getting a final draft ready to send out. That’s the scary part. I feel like the story is funny though.

And I’m planning my next Thing to tackle. I’m trying to decide between Praying in Color for a month and making the bed. I’ll probably start with making the bed because that takes the least energy. And I’m wondering if it will change my outlook on the day, or my outlook on going to bed at night. I still say I don’t really get the point of making the bed every day. Is there a benefit apart from aesthetics? That’s what I aim to find out. Or maybe like Anne Lamott says, to paraphrase very loosely, caring for the outside of things is one way that we can care for our insides. I have idea what book that comes from but I’m 99.999% sure she said something very close to that.

That pretty much wraps up where I stand now on the project. Since I last wrote a post, my daughter turned one year old and now, one month later, she’s nearly a full-fledged toddler. She’s walking; she’s into everything; she’s communicating; she seems to understand what we’re saying to her. To think of how much she’s changed from this time last year…it blows my mind. And every single day she’s learning something new. She’s a little sponge and it’s almost scary to watch her soak up everything her father and I do. What a responsibility. She’s a pretty fantastic kid and motherhood is not what I expected at all — for better and worse. I will have to save thoughts on that for another post though.