It's been a quick February

Not only is February a trying month for me in terms of winter dragging on, low light, etc, but it is a short month (although longer this year!), and so it has been a challenge for me to make progress on my month's goals. The combination of fewer work days to accumulate my monthly-needed hours and fewer days period to complete tasks is like a double whammy... So I suspect most of my February items will be transferred over to March, not really a problem, as none of them were time-critical or anything, and the most important (taxes!) I finished off during a stellar 2 hour nap from Little M this past weekend.

I've done really well this month on some of my personal & our family 2012 goals - lots of rowing (gotta crank it up for March's 5000m per day challenge!), lots of quality time with Little M, planning our (belated & childless!) honeymoon, saving money for our financial goals, and there have even been 2 viewings of our for-sale rental house (even with a renter in there, granted she's keeping the place looking even better than our staging was - we're so lucky to have her!). I've also been feeling really good about how my daily to-do list is structured, and I've been really content with how our days have been flowing because of it. So really, I'm doing good on keeping up on daily and even weekly things, and making great progress on yearly and even season things, but not doing as hot on monthly things. Whether it was an overambitious February goals list, or whether I need to re-evaluate how I transfer items from my month list to my week list to my daily list, I think I'll be doing things a bit differently in March :)

I'm still just as glad I finally made my household notebook this year, because I'm definitely way more organized, productive, and calm because of it!  And heck, getting those taxes done and out the door in February is weeks and weeks ahead of the near-to-deadline-scramble of the last 2 years, so really all I can do is be very content with getting the most daunting and important item crossed off the month's list! Here's looking forward to a March that involves no tax prep work, lots of seed starting (more on that later in the week, I picked up a bunch more seed packets Friday!), and a journal article coming out from my thesis work!

My new seed starting set up

I remember about a year ago reading a post on YouGrowGirl with really great instructions for building a shelf lighting system. At the time I had just found the old shop light in the garage, and although I would have loved to have heating pads and multiple lights all together in a shelving system, I just didn't have the money to invest in one, and so I just filed that idea away in my brain for later use. Fast forward about a year, and while browsing through Home Depot one day, my husband pointed out some metal shelving units that he had been thinking would be perfect for on the sunporch for my plants, for drying garden produce, or for seed starting.

I agreed, and a little thought started growing in my head. I remembered the post on YouGrowGirl, and remembered the Christmas money from my parents I still hadn't spent. After looking some things up, I ended up ordering a metal shelving unit from Amazon. It shipped really quickly, and just a couple of days later, I was setting my unit up! How exciting to have so much more space, and pretty space at that, to set up my plants!

I haven't started my seeds yet, and still have some more varieties to buy, but in the meantime, I've been enjoying using the shelving unit to house my varied collection of herbs, flowers, succulents, and cacti. I likely will drop some of the shelves down a bit lower to get the seed starting shelf a little lower since I'm on the shorter side, but other than that, this is likely how it will look for the foreseeable future.

Our very first egg!

Friday afternoon I came home from work early, and spent some time with my family before the weekend (around here, weekends mean two 12 hour shifts for my husband, so very little family time). After Little M's nap, we headed outside. First I went over to the chicken coop to give them some food and see how they were doing.

I was leaning over in the coop, giving them some food, and I was thinking about how the white golf balls I've had out in their nest boxes, to encourage them to lay, and lay in the right spot, were going to look rather odd next to a brown egg, since most of our hens will lay brown eggs. As I straightened up, my gaze passed across a spot on the far wall that had been hidden by chicken bodies moments before as they rushed to the food. I did a double take. A pale brown egg was sitting there, on the floor, amidst the chicken feet as they rushed by it here and there. I quickly went further in to the coop and picked it up. It was a bit dirty, but whole!

These darn chickens should (could) have been laying at least a month ago, if not two. We weren't supplementing with light or heat, though, wanting them to make it on their own to weed out any breeds (we've been trying 8) that weren't able to take the cold temperatures we get here in the winter. So although I've been not-so-patiently waiting for quite some time, I knew they would start laying once the days started to lengthen. I've been saying 'any day now', for weeks!

On Sunday I found another egg, laid in a slightly lower traffic area of the coop. It looks the same as the first one, so I figure only one girl has started laying. If I get an egg every other day for a little while until the others start, I'll be perfectly happy! I guess the next couple weeks will tell whether they start slowly or whether we quickly get overwhelmed with the number of eggs thirteen hens lay on a daily and weekly basis!

I wish I knew which of our thirteen girls it was laying already, but since 12 of those are brown egg layers, I suspect I'll need a few more eggs to see the range of color variations to start pegging eggs to girls, if it's even possible then! At least the Americauna girl's eggs will be easy to tell apart, and hopefully that will make it easy to selectively incubate them if any of our hens go broody, since Rooster Cogburn is also an Americauna, so that is the one breed we have that we could possibly get pure-bred offspring from this year.

Oh Spring, I'm so happy you are on your way!

(Of course, within an hour of finding that egg, the snow started, and by bedtime we were up to 4 inches of damp new fluffy snow!)

Why a short To Do list works for me

Like it or not, I am a goal oriented, productivity driven person, whether the goal is getting the kitchen cleaned, or having fun coloring with Little M. When I have a To Do list, I'm happier, more content, even calmer.

It took me a while, upon becoming a mother, to learn to put fun Little M oriented items on my To Do list, and while sometimes I wish I could be the mother that plays all day with her kids, that just doesn't make me happy. I want Little M to grow up with us doing fun things, with me taking the time to play with her, to read to her, to build barns for her animal cars, to make bubbles in the bathtub, but also to grow up knowing how to do all the practical things around the house that keep our household running.

The way that works for me right now so that we do things for her and things for me and things for the household, is to plan things out in advance. That isn't to say that there isn't flexibility, because, being a mother to a 2 year old, I have to be flexible! But I have my ten items I aim to do, and some of them are for the household - feed/water/shavings for the chickens, bringing in some firewood, cleaning the bathroom sink. Some of them are for me - writing one of my manuscripts, walking with dogs in the woods. And some of them are for her - coloring, bubble baths.

I don't always get all 10 items done, but depending on whether I have written mostly big items or mostly small items, sometimes I get more done. The key is that I can look back at the day, and not be looking at an unmanageably, impossibly long To Do list where really I only got a couple things done because M had a short nap, 4 poopy diapers, the chicken water took 3 kettle-fulls of boiling water to completely de-ice, etc.

When I have my short To Do list all nicely laid out, I know by the crossed off items, just at a glance, whether I got some or most of my 10 items done. And I have now learned to let that be a judge of whether I had a productive good day or not. Having just 10 items means I don't rush around from task to task. I can try to stop and enjoy the little things when they appear. Like Little M sleeping so sweetly in her toddler bed, growing up way too fast. Or my rosemary plant beginning to grow tender, leggy new shoots and leaves again, an early sign that the longest days of winter are passing, and that spring will soon be just around the corner.

For me, right now in my life, this system is working. It's helping as I try to find peace in my often too-busy days, feel good about the things I accomplish, move closer to my goals, and enjoy the moments with my family that matter. Isn't it amazing what a simple to do list can do for you? :)

**my ten item To Do list is inspired by Tsh of Simple Mom, and her book Organized Simplicity**