Damian watched the Spurs @ Cleveland game (game three) with Uncle Bruce and Aunt Deb:

12 June 2007

I’m with the Pipkins at my dad’s lake house in Conroe this week.  Dad and Donna are in Mexico, and we’re house-sitting for them.

Some piccies:

While we were packing to leave, Lily took one of the bags
and began putting toys and books in it. Then she
put her shampoo in a bag (because she saw me put
shampoo in a bag), put on her hat, picked up Baby,
and told us she was “Ready to go!”
10 June 2007

Everybody loves Lindsey.
11 June 2007

Lounging on the porch.
(Lily is, of course, ready should a cocktail party spontaneously begin.)
11 June 2007

We’re having an excellent time. I’m sure Dad and Donna are having an excellent time in Mexico as well. 🙂

Lily making lunch for her horses and her yellow dog.
29 May 2007

So I played around with my microphone yesterday and recorded a bit of my work.  And, let me tell you, I felt goofy.  I felt ridiculous.

So I have to push through this feeling.  I have to just hope that the end product is something enjoyable, something worthy.  Of course, I think that all creative projects are worthy, no matter the final quality.  Just the fact that someone is creating and living gives it worth.

But let’s not get sidetracked in feel-good philosophy, shall we?  Let’s stay focused on the fact that I felt goofy.  In fact, when I just playback the clip and listen to myself, the overwhelming feeling of goofiness washes over me again.

Maybe it’s my feel-good philosophy that will help me get past this bump in the road.  Maybe it is only by realizing the intrinsic value of all creative work that I will be able to actually see this idea through to completion.

This seems like a very good spot for a quote from the inimitable Andrea Scher:

“The first few years were difficult financially and there were times when I felt really lonely and afraid. Every day I had to recommit to my work and my dream. It was tempting to give in to the voices that said, “This is NEVER going to work! Are you crazy?” I felt like quitting a lot of the time… Looking back, I SO honor myself and the courage I had at that time to keep going in the face of very little money and success. It is one of the things I am most proud of.” [The emphasis is mine.]

Now that I have created a test mp3, the next step is to understand RSS.  Here’s the test I created yesterday (you have to click the play button twice):

Daddy covered in kids.
29 April 2007

My house is asleep… everyone is asleep except for me and the cat.

My brain is buzzing.  I’m excited about all the possibilities, all the could-be’s and may-be’s and wanna-be’s.  I’m excited about now and the future and all the happiness that is in my life.

I love having big dreams; it makes for a big life.  Even if you don’t realize all your dreams, having big dreams still creates a big life. 🙂

Damian turned five-months-old yesterday.
We put him in his highchair for the first time
and attempted to feed him rice cereal.
He had nothing to do with the cereal,
but he enjoyed his highchair very much.
03 June 2007

I felt very surburban this weekend. We spent the whole weekend working on our backyard. Mowed, cleaned, trimmed trees, borrowed tools from our neighbors, hung out in the cul-de-sac chatting with our neighbors. The backyard looks absolutely beautiful now. In fact, let me go take a photo.

Woodings Back Garden
04 June 2007

The photos don’t begin to do it justice — how peaceful it is right now to sit on the swing and listen to the birds. And the weird part: we really enjoyed working in the garden this weekend. Truly enjoyed it.

In my late-20s, I told my then-boyfriend, Larry, that if I ever moved to the suburbs, I was going to get a giant tattoo of an eagle to cover my entire back so that everyone knew that even though I lived in the suburbs, I wasn’t of the suburbs. And when we moved out to Round Rock three years ago, it was due to financial constraints. We couldn’t afford a house in Austin, so we had to move to the suburbs. But, in my mind, it was always a temporary thing. We were here only until we could afford to move back into Austin.

But now, I’m starting to like the suburbs, Round Rock in particular. It is still quite conservative for my liberal ways, but I like the way the city is choosing to grow; I like my neighbors; I like my house; I like my quiet street. I like the suburbs.

I really am getting old. 🙂

Papa and Nan bought Lily
her newest Fabulous Outfit.
Lily liked it very much;
she wore it for three days straight
after she received it.
Memorial Weekend in Conroe
26 May 2007

I don’t have a lot to write about (thus the recent lack of posts), but I have lots of cute pictures.  I haven’t sent out a family email recently either.  Lack of time and lack of energy are the culprits.  I’ve not been “on” this week.

David O., the very nice personal trainer at Lifetime Fitness who did our body assessment, keeps asking for me to write a book about a good marriage.  He commented that Matt and I have a really good relationship after six years of marriage and he wanted to know the secret.

So that will be my first podcast effort — the book that David O. requested.  It won’t be nonfiction.  I don’t have the credentials to write a nonfiction book on marital bliss, nor do I have the experience.  Maybe after fifty years of marriage I will feel that I have the qualified experience, but not after only six years.  But I can write a short, sweet, hopefully entertaining fictional story.  It will be a fun writing exercise.

Two chronological life notes: 1) We had a lovely time over Memorial Weekend at my dad’s house.  It had been awhile since we were all together — we hadn’t seen Dad, Donna, Ben or Shelly since Christmas — so we really enjoyed being with the family. 2) Deb and her crew are stopping by today.  We didn’t manage to clean the whole house, but it is partially clean. 🙂

I hope I’m on again soon.  I don’t manage very well when I’m feeling antisocial and irritable.

Lani and the kids
19 May 2007

When you have two preschool children, time becomes your most precious commodity.  They are both asleep right now, and I think, “Do I balance the check register?  Do I clean the kitchen?  Do I write a blog entry?  Do I chop vegetables for tonight’s dinner?”  There’s too much to do and way too little time.  In the past few years, spare time has become something to be treated with reverence and gratitude.

And I have too many projects I want to do.  This is what is in “Japanese Schoolgirl Watch” in the June issue of Wired:

The Nintendo Life Coach
Gals in Japan are using Nintendo DS to do way more than play with Mario. A flood of femme-focused self-help software now runs on the touchscreen handheld. Female Power Emergency Up! DS promises to “Change your destiny in three months!” by measuring skills in love, fashion, beauty, diet, and fortune-telling(?!), then challenging girls to increase their scores.

Well, I tell you what, that got my mind buzzing.  I would LOVE to write some silly and yet oddly compelling little program like that!  I showed it to Matt and said, “What about an RSS feed self-help game that people could play on their cellphones?”

So… yet another project.  Yes.  But yet another super-fun project!

However, in the real world of children, bills, and a messy house, I have Deb and carloads of teenagers visiting next Friday. (I’m really really looking forward to it.  Deb and her entourage of brilliant, exuberant, wonderful teenagers is always fun to have for a visit.)  And I want my house to be clean for their visit.  So that mundane, not-so-fun project is my current project.

But I am constantly sidetracked.  So I’m trying to tell myself, in the voice of Gold Five from Star Wars, “Stay on target.”  Or maybe the voice of Will Farrell as Mugatu in Zoolander, “Do not be distracted by the beautiful celebrities.”

If I stay focused, surely I can clean a single house in a week… surely.

Just in case you don’t have the voice of Gold Five or Mugatu in your head, I’m posting the mp3s. Then, when you are trying to stay focused, you’ll be able to play back these encouraging words from your memory (you have to click the play button twice):

Gold Five:
[audio:http://www.angelsdesk.com/angel/audio/target.mp3]

Mugatu:
[audio:http://www.angelsdesk.com/angel/audio/celebrities.mp3]

Another cute sequence of photos —
this time of Daddy and the kiddos
playing on the bed.
19 May 2007

Yesterday evening I read up on how to create a podcast. It turns out, it’s ridiculously easy. So now I just need to write and create.

Fun fun fun. I love to make things. Fun fun fun. 🙂

Lily and Uncle Steve playing with bubbles
at Logan’s Birthday Party.
(All the pictures were so cute,
I had a hard time picking one.
So I decided to post the whole sequence.)
19 May 2007

So Matt and I have been going to the gym for a month and a half now.  Before we started going, we read all the information they gave us about how to work out effectively and what to expect.  In the Lifetime Fitness book “LeanSource,” it says:

When starting an exercise program, it is extremely important to have realistic expectations.  Depending upon your initial fitness level, you should expect the following changes as you continue with your exercise program:

• From 1 to 8 Weeks — Look to feel better and have more energy.
• From 2 t0 6 Months — Lose size and inches while becoming leaner. Clothes begin to fit more loosely.  You are gaining muscle and losing fat.
• After 6 Months — Start losing weight quite rapidly.

After reading this, my mind had been programmed.  “Okay.  Expect no physical changes for the first two months.”  It had taken me five years to get into such an unfit shape, so I was just happy that it would take only a year to get back into decent shape.  I thought it was going to take longer.  So the above timeline was already accelerated as far as I was concerned.

But then Matt and I saw physical changes in just a month.  Nothing that other people would notice, just subtle things like our muscles were becoming more defined and our clothes were hanging from our bodies differently.

We also definitely noticed the “feel better and have more energy” part.  It was so nice to not feel sluggish.  I have been sluggish for years, and it has been so pleasant to feel that wash off of me. 

At first, I was still patient.  I enjoyed and appreciated the changes.  I was happy to see progress.  But then, as I saw more progress with each passing week, my patience became greed.  “I want more!  I want more and I want it now!  I want all the weight gone and I want to have all the energy in the world!”

I was telling Matt about this shift in my thinking, and I asked him if he thought the same thing happened with money.  At first, you want money for reasonable things like a nice house and savings for retirement and the children’s educations.  But as more money comes your way, you become greedy, and now you think in your head that it’s okay to buy a $5000 dress — something that you never would have considered before.

Greed is a weird thing.  I don’t consider myself a greedy person, but it came upon me quite naturally.  I became greedy simply because I had tasted something really pleasant, and I wanted more and more, and I wanted it immediately.

I’ve calmed my mind down since this realization.  But whereas it took no effort to become greedy, it did take effort to make myself patient and content in the present again.  I’ll be fit in time, and in the meantime, I’ll enjoy the journey. 🙂

Damian having fun developing his motor skills.
08 May 2007

Something interesting and very pleasant happened this morning.  It was educational for me as well.

Every morning I get up about an hour or so before the kids.  I check email and the weather, read the blogs of my friends and family, occasionally blog myself, make a cup of tea, and then swing outside on the back porch and listen to the birds greet the morning.  It’s a quiet and peaceful ritual that I enjoy very much.

Well, today while I was reading my email, I received a reply from an email I had sent over a year ago.  I had gone to the UT anime club to pick something up, and while there, I didn’t say “hi” to Thai, the president of the anime club, even though I passed right by him.  This was my shyness hard at work.  Thai is a good guy and I’ve always liked him, but since we are just passing acquaintances, I was too shy to say anything.

I felt terrible about that.  I felt rude and mean, so when I got home, I wrote him an email apologizing for being rude and explaining that it was just because I am quite shy.  I never heard anything back, so I assumed that Thai either didn’t remember me or just brushed over the email without concern.

Well, he wrote back this morning, apologizing for being so very late with his reply.  He told me not to worry about it.  It was a lovely and kind email and made me happy.

It also made me realize that we don’t know all the ripples we send out into the world.  When we say a kind word or apologize for something we did or do something nice for someone, we don’t always receive any kind of acknowledgement for our act.  That doesn’t mean that it wasn’t appreciated or that it didn’t make the person feel happy.  Just because Thai didn’t write back, that didn’t mean that he didn’t appreciate the apology and email.

And when I realized this — when I realized that ripples I send out into the world can make people smile or feel a little less burdened in the day even though I’m unaware of it — it made me really happy.

So here’s to kindness and shyness and all the happy ripples that you can create in this life.

And thanks, Thai, for the lovely email and for the lovely lesson in life.