SOLSC '23 Day 13: Spring Break list

 

It's day three of Spring Break, and all I've accomplished these past two days is a bit more sleep, washing the bedsheets, grocery shopping, washing and putting up a heavy afghan (it's getting too warm at night to use one), a couple loads of clothes laundry, and a trip to a favorite winery to treat my husband to a birthday lunch.

My to-do list for the next few days:

Send St Patrick's Day cards

Finally put away the Christmas tablecloth and throw blankets

Display spring decorations

Put away winter clothes (I don't like wearing dark colors in spring)

Purge the winter clothes I didn't fit into, or won't fit into by next winter

Put away winter shoes

Find the earrings that fell among the pile of winter shoes

Put away my winter scents (yes, I'm seasonal that way, too)

Find my ring that fell behind my collection of scented body lotions

Clean up piles of books

Find a very important notebook my father gave me several years ago

Find the top of my desk--or at least a corner of it

Find the floor of my bedroom by my bed (see above note about books)

Plant milkweed and basil; buy more plants for my containers

Plan the next couple of weeks

Plan menus for the next couple of months (I'm waaayyy behind on this one)

Plan for the Girl Scout meeting I'll be holding while running a book fair

Shop for refreshments for the teacher book fair preview

Make progress in reading the six books I'm juggling

Pack for a one night trip to see the kids

Remember to breathe, nap, and relax--it's Spring Break! 

SOLSC '23 Day 12: The woodworker/ The teacher

Once upon a time, there was a woodworker who was renowned for her skills in creating beautiful pieces of art and furniture that lasted lifetimes.  People would bring her milled wood, often with nothing more than a request to make something wonderful.  The woodworker would turn the pieces of wood this way and that, noting the unique patterns, knots and whorls.  Her discerning eye helped her envision the final product,  and her nimble hands would work for days, months, sometimes a year before the project would emerge as a finished piece.  

The craftswoman loved her work.  It was a joy to uncover the beauty and potential in a plain, cut piece of wood.  Her renown grew, and soon many people were bringing her wood to carve and cut and shape.  She had many projects going on at the same time, but the woodworker didn't mind.  She loved her work, and went home satisfied each day with her progress.  Her customers didn't mind waiting, either, because they appreciated her skill and attention to detail.

One day, a customer arrived with some hewn logs, the rough bark still attached.  "I don't have the time or money to take this to the mill," the customer said.  "Can you plane and sand these pieces to make something beautiful for me?"  The woodworker hesitated, but because she believed in the beauty of the wood and wanted to satisfy the needs of the customer, she agreed.  Of course, the project took more time than usual, and she had other pieces to finish, too.  Some customers became unhappy with the rate of progress on their projects, but they appreciated her skill, so they still sent work her way.

Word spread that she could finish rough logs before crafting them, and soon more customers were skipping the milling process.  "This adds much more work and time to your project," the woodworker explained, "And I will need to charge more for the extra hours."  "We can't afford that," the customers would say, "but we so appreciate your talent, and we will praise you publicly for your beautiful work.  If you can't handle the challenge, well..."  And the woodworker, worried about her reputation and livelihood, acquiesced, working late into the evenings, trying to keep up with the added load.

Not long after, a customer entered the workshop empty-handed.  "There is a beautiful, old tree on my property that I want to have made into furniture for my home.  Do you think you could cut it down, mill it, and craft the pieces as only you can do?"  

The woodworker hesitated again; she was already tired from doing the milling and craftwork for her current projects.  Just this time, though, she thought to herself.  It is a beautiful tree, and I can create beautiful pieces from it. So she took her axe to the customer's property, chopped down the tree, dragged it back to her workshop, and got to work on the order.

When the city found out that she could cut down the trees as well as craft the pieces, they had a brilliant idea.  Why not have this craftswoman build us a new City Hall, walls and rafters, benches and desks, floors and chairs?

The mayor and city council approached the woodworker with this new request.  She was speechless, and they took it as a sign of her willingness to take on the job.  The mayor handed her an axe and the entire council brought her to the edge of the forest with the trees they wished to use.  Then they left, confident that she would complete the project as requested.

Instead, the woodworker fell to her knees, the axe falling to the ground.  She looked at her hands, calloused and bruised beyond repair, as she brought them to her face and wept.  After her tears were spent, she stood up, dusted herself off, and wandered into the woods, never to be seen again.

Once upon a time, there was a teacher...  

 

SOLSC '23 Day 11: Systems

 

It's the first day of spring break, and I'm thinking about systems, thanks to my most recent attempt at reading Atomic Habits by James Clear.  I think I've started reading this book twice before, and somehow never made it past chapter four.  Maybe because the first three chapters already have me vigorously nodding my head and thinking hard about how I do things.  And can we just give Mr Clear a huge shout-out for summarizing each chapter in bullet points?  I do most of my self-improvement reading at 430a, and my fuzzy pre-dawn brain sparks just a bit brighter when the highlights are reviewed so succinctly.

But back to systems...One of Clear's best quotes has been repeated several times in professional meetings I've attended:

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems."

Oh, how I've harped on the value of routines this school year, how important they are in making students feel safe in a school environment, knowing what to expect each day, especially when life at home may not offer the same comfort.

I need to apply that to my own work, too.  I spent some time cleaning up my office these past few weeks, trying to combine cluttered piles into cohesive work projects (like the piles of books that need to be processed, moved to the same cart).  I've always been pretty good at managing the "storefront" end of the library, the lessons and read-alouds, materials requests and inventory and book fairs.  I need to be better at creating a system of time management that allows me to tackle the behind-the-scenes work--like processing all those books.

I need to apply this at home even more.  I need systems to deal with decluttering, exercise, money management and home-care.  I need to keep up with what works, and phase out what doesn't.  Maybe then, my spring cleaning during spring break will actually last past this season, and I really will get to retire in six years with good systems in place!

SOLSC '23 Day 10: The cramp

 

I swear I took my magnesium supplement last night, and drank eight glasses of water yesterday.  I even had a banana at lunch.

The cramp didn't care.

There I was, in that first dip of deep sleep that comes an hour after my head hits the pillow, when the outside of my left ankle spasmed into a hard, breathtakingly excruciating knot.  The pain quickly traveled up my calf before I jumped out of bed.  When this happens, it doesn't matter which way I turn my foot or leg; every movement just makes the knot worse.  Pressure from standing sometimes does the trick, but not this time.  I hobbled to the bathroom, whimpering as my calf seized up, cursing the interruption to my much-needed sleep.  

My foot now up on the toilet seat, I can feel the hard knot in my calf, and try to massage it away with a modicum of success.  The spasms stopped, but I could feel the tension still there in my ankle.  I carefully made my way back to bed, spending precious minutes of what should be sleep trying to find a position that wouldn't trigger a full-on cramp again. 

At some point I must have drifted off.  The memory of the pain was front and center as my alarm blared, exhausting and prompting another twenty minutes of sleep.  And the cramp?  Nowhere to be seen this morning.  I danced to the radio in the dim light of the living room, sending it even further away.  

You may have taken my night, cramp, but you're not ruining my day! 

SOLSC '23 Day 9: Chocolate cake for breakfast

                                                 o         o         o

                                                 l          l          l

My husband baked me a

chocolate cake for my

birthday, and since it's 

only the two of us, I've 

been eating it every day since for

breakfast

and it's

making

me 

sick now.

Like blowing out those birthday candles, I've figured out 

how to extinguish a love for chocolate cake.

SOLSC '23 Day 8: To plan, or not to plan

 

I am a planner.  I think it comes with the territory--hello, teacher planning periods?  Year-at-a-glance curricula?  Spiral reviews and testing season?  My library gig involves even more planning--book fairs, author visits, inventory.

The planning has long bled over into my personal life, too.  Paper calendars and spiral agendas are almost always at hand.  I have stickers, color coded goals, and morning routines mapped out week by week.  It doesn't take much digging into my psyche to find a hidden need to control, document, make sense of my life.  (Also a need to write something down if I have to remember it--too many drawers are open in my brain's filing cabinets most days.)  Not that I accomplish everything I set out to do, but checking off what does get done is validating.

That sense of control is false, of course.  The extremely premature birth of my firstborn three decades ago was a shocking reminder of that, one that kept me from touching any kind of planner for over a year.  Instead, I documented her medical victories in the tiniest print in her baby book that wasn't meant to accommodate an extra three months out of the womb, living day to day based on doctors' prognoses.

The planning bug didn't go away, though, especially as we added another child with more appointments to keep and two working parents' jobs to juggle.  The kitchen calendar was front and center, but so was my weekly agenda, mapped out each Sunday to make sure we got to the dentist and t-ball practice, then teacher conferences and band performances.  Getting another degree in the midst of all that necessitated homework planning, too.

The kids are now grown, so you'd think the planning has pared down.  Instead, I've gotten a bit ridiculous with it all.  I have a quarterly goal setting planner, a personalized weekly/ monthly planner, and just started a bullet journal to keep track of my healthcare journey.  (I really need to catch up in that last one.)   I thought I was simply honing my skills when I read a passage from Brene Brown's The Gifts of Imperfection that hit me so hard I had to reread it several times. She writes that instead of dealing with the discomfort and pain in life, we

"... make it go away.  We do that by numbing and taking the edge off the pain with whatever provides the quickest relief.  We can anesthetize with a whole bunch of stuff, including alcohol, drugs, food, sex, relationships, money, work, caretaking, gambling, staying busy, affairs, chaos, shopping, planning, perfectionism, constant change, and the Internet." (p.70) 

Did you catch that?  "Planning" was part of that list.  It made me start thinking about my ratio of time spent planning vs doing, the goals that I tend to repeat over and over, steps dutifully color-coded and outlined in my customized planner but never completed.  Am I just throwing seeds around hoping they'll grow, instead of doing the real work of tilling and amending the soil and getting to the roots of the whats and whys of my behavior?  

Time to do some more digging...

SOLSC '23 Day 7: It's in the cards

The circulation desk was transformed into party central yesterday.  My generous assistant continued the week-long green theme with a green plastic tablecloth, green flowers, a green birthday balloon, and a giant gift bag full of green relaxation gifts--pajamas, a robe, eye mask, and more.  And there was sliced pound cake--every flavor imaginable, enough to share with the entire campus.

My tech support teacher and instructional team treated me to lunch in the library with stories and laughter.

I couldn't have been better celebrated at work.

And then a music class came in from down the hall and sang "Happy Birthday" to me, leaving me with a stack of handmade cards.  

And another class dropped off cards.  And another.  By midday, I had a small stack of pencil and crayon drawings and birthday wishes, with the most inventive spellings of librarian. There was love in every card.

First mission accomplished.  Now to move on to changing a common message in those cards--"Thanks for letting us check out your books."  It may be my library program, but it's our library, our books, and how lucky we are to share this space and these stories together.