Category: Unrelated

Define My Day – Week 1

Facebook ads rarely catch my attention these days, but as I was mindlessly scrolling, wondering where my day had gone, I found myself clicking on an ad for Define My Day which boasts ‘small steps, big results’. Isn’t that what we all want? The magic pill? I also wonder what algorithm Facebook used to target me with this ad – likely ‘tired, distracted, mom, ADHD, productivity obsessed’.

After reaching out to Nick, the founder, I told him I wanted to go all in for a month and chronicle it on my blog. He agreed and sent me the planner to get started. The way he recommends to start is to watch all the videos, then on Sunday night work through the monthly plan. Got it. Well, I watched the videos on Saturday and felt TOTALLY overwhelmed. Then life got hectic (gee, maybe I should have BETTER DEFINED MY DAY) and I didn’t really hunker down until Monday night.

Once I got going, it wasn’t as hard as I was making it out to be. DMD has some great tutorials in video or written form, for however you learn best, to get you started. I clearly opted for progress over perfection.

This is my first week and as I mentioned, I did the preplanning. Some of it seemed a little hokie – like my monthly affirmations which I am suppose to say out loud when I wake up and go to bed. I had to fight the urge to write ‘you is kind, you is smart …’. But hey, what is the harm?

The monthly goals are personal, professional, health and relationship which all make sense and were easy. Then I had to decide which books I was going to read this month, which was the most fun part and admittedly the most time consuming.

So here are my WEEK 1 MILESTONES:

Nick also discusses the importance of DAILY DISCIPLINES which includes rest, exercise, eat well, water, read, and positive interaction. I did make some of those my own so they are measurable and this week will strive for 5000 steps, 64oz of water and 20 minutes of reading. His intention for reading is to learning something or educate myself, but Momma needs a break.

I’ll check back in at the end of the week and let you know how it went!

If you want to join along,  DMD is offering a 30% discount for Muddling Momma readers. Visit https://shop.yourdefinedlife.com and use code MUDDLE30 for 30% off your first delivery of any subscription for a single, 3pk, or productivity pack.

 

(You should know, they provided me the journal free of charge, but they don’t get a glowing review based on that. The thoughts are my own.)

I got my GoDaddy renewal notice yesterday and realized it’s been awhile since I blogged. I think it’s because there are some things going on behind the scenes I am not ready to talk about (don’t worry, nothing bad) and I am working a new job that is not only taking up a bunch of my time, but giving me a bit of a creative outlet.

I have lots of ideas stewing in my brain – product reviews, listicals, and just musings of being a working mom and wife with ADHD.

I should also note that I have opened up this post 3 times the past week and have been interrupted to:

  • Print coloring pages of zombie towns (do not tell your kid you can print coloring pages on demand, DO NOT)
  • Watch Captain Underpants (again, thanks Netflix)
  • Find his red tie (not his yellow tie and CERTAINLY not his plaid tie)

This motherhood thing is a struggle right? Between Mikey, S. and our now TWO dogs – I often find myself asking (read: demanding) not to be touched for 10 minutes. But honestly, there is nothing I rather spend my energy on – raising this little boy to be a good man and human being. And being a wife S. deserves and giving these damn dogs their best life.

And what about me? I am living the life I want to live. I am doing work I enjoy and am passionate about. I finding time to read and spend one on one time with S. Life is good right now.

Stay tuned. I’m not ready to give up blogging just yet.

Brave Trails

Hi friends! It’s a yucky day in Maryland and work is crazy busy, but I wanted to take a few minutes to let you know I am raising money for Brave Trails via Facebook for my birthday tomorrow (don’t let that stop you from buying me a present though).

This blog has taken me in some interesting directions like meeting Matt Marr of the Dear Mattie Podcast. You might remember he asked me to be a guest and talk about the 12 For 1 Diaper Drive a few years ago. Well, Matt is someone I deeply admire for so many reasons. One big thing he’s done (and he’s done plenty) is help bring Camp Brave Trails to fruition.

Growing up I went to Camp Mardela and it was such a transformative experience. A lot of my summer memories were made there as well as lifelong friendships. It helped shape who I am today. Camp Brave Trails is a camp specifically for LGBTQ teens to cultivate their leadership skills.

I’ve watched a lot of their promos videos and read lots about Brave Trails and I realized as a straight cis female I didn’t need a place to fit in. I fit in almost everywhere. But for LGBTQ teens – they need some safe spaces and Brave Trails not only offers that, but more. They do the regular camp activities like archery, skits and campfires but they also do social justice, learn about self acceptance and fundraising for causes close to their heart. In short – Brave Trails is shaping our future leaders and damn if we don’t need a little hope for future leadership these days. 

Other good news – Brave Trails is not only going to be doing 2 week long sessions in California, but they are coming to Maryland for a week! If you have a chance, like them on Facebook and look at how happy those kids are.

If you’d like to donate, here’s how: http://www.bravetrails.org/donate-here/

So far my birthday fundraiser has raised enough money to sponsor a day of leader training. Leaders training leaders – I like that. And I will leave you with a picture of me during my Camp Mardela years.  It basically sums up camp – bucket hats, jorts, gimp bracelets and rosy cheeks.

Hello, It’s Me

Hello, it’s me.

If I am being honest I think about blogging and Muddling Momma every day. Mostly on my way to work, or on the way home from work and in the shower. But I haven’t posted in ages. I think the main reason is I am not sure what I want this blog to be. I originally started here as a way to share my infertility journey. That morphed (thankfully) into life as a pregnant person. Then into life of a new mom. And most recently, life as a mom in general. I am obviously still a mom, but I am not sure I want to share every detail of my son’s life. I carefully curated a lot of stuff on this blog with him in mind. Who knows what kids will be doing in 10 years when he is 14, perhaps blogging will be a thing of a past, but I don’t want his high school baseball/math club/DnD club/band members stumbling on this and finding out he pooped in the bathtub (he didn’t, FYI). I share enough of the funny stuff on Facebook.

But I am not ready to give up the idea of blogging. I am hoping to have another baby soon. I started working again full time in an executive level position, I am preparing to travel for the first time since Mike was born. I am stumbling on cool products for him, me, and families in general. We are exploring Maryland and I want to share that.

But let’s face it. I’m tired. Parents get that. So I might not post daily, weekly – hopefully monthly. But I am excited to produce new content that is useful. Stay tuned, and thanks for hanging in with me through this season of life.

Radio Silence

I’m still here. I honestly have lost some motivation to blog lately. I think about it daily, but when push comes to shove, I don’t feel like I have much to say. Things have gone a little sideways with my career – I have been unemployed since Halloween, but I am hopeful that after the holidays the interviews will pick up. In the meantime I have been making sugar scrubs and there has been a bunch of local interest in them for gifts. I even opened an Etsy shop!

We moved into our new home – our first home! And we are looking forward to celebrating the holidays here. It feels like a mansion compared to our previous rentals. We are planning on growing our family in the new year with the help of Shady Grove again. I am not excited to start the infertility process again, but we’ve learned the end result is well worth the hassle.

I’ll be back in a few weeks when I am out of my funk. We’ve all been there. In the meantime, my kid is beyond adorable …

 

Since You’ve Been Gone

Whoa, it’s been a hot minute hasn’t it. I am finding that after the 12 For 1 Diaper Drive I tend to take a break from blogging. It’s not really planned, but it tends to go that way. Which is a shame since we’ve had a lot of fun the past month! I’ll catch you up.

Mike had his first screening for Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy and tested just fine with no restrictions. This was great news to confirm, but we already had a feeling he was just fine.

Mikey started his 2nd year of preschool at the same place he was last year and over the summer. His favorite color is red and he wants to be an astronaut.

I started a temp job in Annapolis and this is my view – fingers crossed it goes permanent in a few weeks.

We took our first family vacation (where we didn’t stay with family) to Ocean City. Mike loved the beach!

He wasn’t too keen on the rides, but did jump on the boats for a spin.

Did I mention we stayed in a hotel? Mike loved letting either Mommy or Daddy sleep in ‘his bed’.

Oh yeah, #12for1 raced passed the 15K goal and went right to 22K diapers. No biggie 😉

Thoughts on Women’s Day from Sonjara’s CEO

Reposted with permission from Sonjara’s blog. I’ve worked for Sonjara off and on for a few years and have always admired Siobhan Green, the Co-Owner and CEO. I thought it was important to share her thoughts on Women’s Day. 

Sonjara was founded as a way to keep one woman – me – in the workforce, while also allowing my husband and I to raise our children the way we wanted to. As a result, we created a workplace with values focusing on supporting the whole person – embracing their gender, age, race, ethnicity, and outside responsibilities (such as parenting or school). Using what we call “radical flexibility”, we focus on productivity as our true measurement of performance.

I never wanted to be an entrepreneur when thinking about career goals. Dedicated to international development, I always saw myself as an employee – for non-profits or government providing ICT4D [Information and Communications Technologies for Development] services. But life intervened. My former company, while having wonderful policies, was unable to overrule the decisions of my direct boss when it came to work-life balance, especially related to having a newborn. Without really thinking it through, I quit and my boss panicked. Ultimately my boss hired me as a freelancer until he found a replacement and Sonjara was born.

A few years after I founded Sonjara, my husband Andy was able to join the company full-time and then we started hiring employees. We dedicated ourselves to providing policies and a culture that addressed many of the challenges faced today by women and men who are caregivers. While initially thinking these policies would help primarily women, who still are the primary caregivers of small children, we also found men were even more in need of work options with flexible hours and location and an understanding culture of parenting responsibilities. We then realized that everyone needed and benefited from what we now call “radical flexibility”.

Primarily virtual, Sonjara allows people high levels of control over their personal productivity, by managing where and when they work and giving them a lot of autonomy in how they get their work done. With modern cloud based systems, it is easier now than ever before to support flexibility while maintaining productivity, security and quality. While we see this approach as common sense, it also has the benefit of overcoming many traditional barriers faced by women – and others – in the workplace. At Sonjara, we also are passionate about supporting female entrepreneurs, female IT experts, and female leaders as well as making sure male and female entrepreneurs, IT experts and leaders are aware of unintended biases they may be unwittingly party to. We include gender in our user analyses, evaluation metrics, and design perspectives, and try to make sure data is disaggregated by gender. We try to keep up to date on the latest news on ICTs and gender, and how it intersects with race, class, age, and other factors so that we are not exacerbating existing inequalities by ignoring these differences.

We at Sonjara have decided to not stop our work on this day, but rather to double down on our work to improve the lives of women – our employees, our clients, and our beneficiaries around the world. We salute all those who promote gender equality around the world.

I wish you a Happy Women’s Day!

The One Thing You Need in Your Kitchen


 

I will be honest, I don’t make money off my blog. It would be nice, but I am too tired to figure it out. However, some companies reach out to me (or vice versa) for product reviews and if I feel like my ‘audience’ (all 4 of you, hi mom) would find value in it, I green light it.

When Brieftons wanted to send me a chopper/grater/slicer/mixer do-hickey my initial reaction was a eye roll. I have a very expensive, heavy and large blender/mixer/chopper thing we got as a wedding gift that I use once a year at best and is too expensive to get rid of. Our kitchen space is limited and I bet it’s a pain in the ass to clean. BUT. I am currently obsessed with chopped salads and they are pretty labor intensive. So what the hell. Send me your magic machine! 

Guys? Buy this. I am all in. It basically has three core pieces – the bowl (with a divider), the top with the rip cord and another top with a slot to put the right ‘slicer’ in. This makes it super easy to clean and store.  But … this is only about $25. It can’t do everything it claims that easily. So for the sake of my blog, I decided to try. I needed to clean out the pantry and had a box of key lime bars (oh DARN) so I made them. The mixer part of this thing is worth the money alone. It totally gives in to how lazy I am. I put all the ingredients (4 eggs, 1/4 water and the mix) into the bowl, put the mixer attachments in, secure to top, pull the ripcord a few times and voila! Perfectly mixed.

Next was veggie prep and it totally exceeded my expectations! It was SO easy to switch out the slicer plates, clean the bowl and get my chopped salad pieces done quickly. I was spending $3 on pre-chopped onions to save time, but I bought a $0.67 onion this week and chopped it in 2 minutes.

The only negative I can come up with is the ‘safety food holder’ which you stick on your veggies (or whatever) to protect your hand while slicing. It didn’t stay in the veggies well enough to be efficient. But otherwise it fits my criteria for being awesome – cheap, efficient, space saving and money saving.

Here are some before and after pictures if you don’t believe me. And forgive the carrot picture. All I had handy was baby carrots. It looks so sad!

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, the legal stuff. Yes, I got this product for free to try. No they didn’t pay me for a positive review, they can’t afford that. No, if you buy it off Amazon I don’t get paid. But I should. 

 

The Christmas Boot

I was talking to my Mom the other night about our lack of Christmas decorations. I feel like we talk about this every year, but I was really able to pinpoint what was missing – the warmth I felt of Christmas at my house growing up. I felt like things were special and different and cozy. I love my house, but it doesn’t feel cozy at Christmas time.

christmas

After sharing this with my Mom she was, of course, happy I had that feeling and memory of Christmas’ growing up. But she also mentioned how in the early years she thought her Christmas decor was haphazard and mismatched. I disagreed with her and brought up some of my favorite items. Obviously the toy train set that we had under the tree, the collection of stuffed animals, and my Mom’s snowglobe collection she kept on the record player on homemade ‘lifts’. But what I most remember was The Boot.

I don’t know why I didn’t find it odd at the time, but it was a small glass Santa boot that had perfume in it at one time. It’s just one of those things that sticks with you. It took some Googling to find a picture to jog Mom’s memory, but then it all came flooding back; the big wax carolers and especially the wax sleigh. Mom remembers being so proud to have purchased those as a young wife and started her Christmas decor. Of course, the boot and other Avon treasure are long gone now and her decorating tastes have changed.

boot-test

But today, a package from EBay arrived on my step and it was a vintage Avon box with, you guessed it, a Santa boot filled with perfume. I might classify my Christmas decor style as ‘kitschy’ or ‘whimsy’, but that boot will always have a place on my mantle.

You never know what your kids will remember!

Dear Mike: Election Edition

Dear Mike –

You and I had an eventful morning! We headed over to our polling place to vote for the next President of the United States. We waited in line for over an hour and you were SO patient! I know at 3 years old you don’t have much of a clue what is going on, but this election is a really big deal. It’s the first time a female was on the ballot AND the first time a man with no political or military experience was on the ballot.  I didn’t think it would bother me, but I told Geema today – I am just feeling out of sorts.

I am so happy I have been able to take you to vote since you were born, even the midterm elections! It’s our right as Americans and one I don’t ever want you to take for granted. I want you to grow up watching the debates, asking questions about the issues and making an informed decision even if it is different than my decision. But for now I am thankful you are only 3 and you didn’t have to witness the nastiness that went on for the past 20 months. BUT if you were old enough to see what is going on, I would use this opportunity to talk to you about some heavy issues Donald Trump has brought forward.

 

{Locker Room Talk} Baby, I have never been in a locker room full of men, but from what I hear – the ‘locker room talk’ excuse is crap.  I know Daddy agrees. Real men do not about women as objects, they don’t call them names and  they certainly don’t stand for anyone else to speak that way either.  In our house BOYS WILL NOT BE BOYS. They will be kind people.

{Consent} Guess what? If someone, anyone, says stop – you stop. I don’t care if you are waving to them or engaging in intercourse. No means no all the time. You keep your hands to yourself. And we expect you to stand up for anyone who isn’t able to consent. This is going to be an ongoing conversation in our home.

{Bully Goat} We have been reading Llama Llama and the Bully Goat recently and that’s what Trump is – a bully goat. He likes to call people names, and make fun of them. He tells his supporters to do bad things to Clinton and wants to keep people out of our country because of the color of their skin. He says things about women that I can’t even bring myself to write, things that literally makes my mouth drop open. He is a bully goat. we don’t want you to EVER be a bully goat and we want to respect everyone regardless of their ethnicity, orientation or the color shoes they wear on Thursdays. We also hope you won’t stand to see other people being bully goats.

we-need-not-think-alike-to-love-alike

The polls aren’t closed yet Bug, but Daddy and I are going to stay up late and see who wins this election – who will be our leader for the next four years. We are hopeful we wake up tomorrow with a President we will be proud of. We don’t have to think alike to love alike. And just like generations before me have said about my generation, I hope your generation is the one to get it right.

I’ll eat you up, I love you so –

Momma xoxo