Starting a New Conversation

Haven't heard from me in a while, eh? I'm still around. I have a few musings about life in my household rattling around in my head. Bear with me until I can capture those. In the meantime, I invite you to join me in a new conversation. If you've ever wondered about what it takes to be satisfied in life, if the thought of counting what you have and watching what happens when you reach "enough" interests you: join me. We'll be talking about the in's and out's of living a life of contentment over at:
http://countingtoenough.blogspot.com/

Older Model Car (or "Trapped")

I watched the movie Little Miss Sunshine last week. It was kind of weird and quirky, but touching too. It actually left me feeling a little off-kilter. But I connected with one aspect of that family's life and that's this: their cranky old VW bus.

I don't have a VW of any kind. And some might not even call my twelve-year-old Chevy "old". But in winter weather it certainly gets cranky. This morning, I found myself feeling a lot like the Hoover family as I sat trapped in my car...in my garage. You see, my little Prizm has this habit of freezing shut, where it's impossible to get the doors open. But I've found a workaround to that. I simply use the remote start and let it run a little bit to thaw out.

It also has the habit of getting frozen open, as in the driver's side door won't latch when it's too cold. For that quirk, I move the car into the empty spot in the garage after DH leaves for work.

This exceptionally cold morning, I decided to get a head start on dealing with the car's issues, so it would be ready by 7:30am when my daughter needed to get to the junior high (I figured I'd be a nice mom and drive her most of the way down there). I hit the remote start. It chugged for a moment and then stopped. I shuffled down the drive and grabbed our newspaper, then tried again. With a groan, the engine turned over and then roared to a start.

I went in and ate my breakfast while letting it warm up for five minutes. Then I bundled up and headed out to the car. It took a hard pull, but the door opened. And when I pulled it shut, it actually latched. I cheered to myself briefly before pulling the car into the garage.

Then I went to get out. The handle barely moved and the door didn't budge. I tried again. Nothing. So I leaned across to the passenger door and pulled on the manual lock. It stuck. I pulled harder. Nothing. Now I was beginning to get irked. Climbing into the back seat, I yanked on the back door lock. It opened! Then I pulled on the handle. It moved, but the door was frozen shut.

At this point I wondered what to do. I didn't have my cell phone on me because I was only driving from my driveway into the garage. But I could honk the horn and maybe my kids would come out to help me. Or I could sit it out and wait for the car to thaw in the garage.

Finally I rolled down the back window and tried opening the door from the outside. This time it opened. I was free!

I guess I should be thankful. My Prizm doesn't have a broken clutch that requires it to have a running start. And the horn doesn't stick in an incessant whining toot. Plus, none of the doors have fallen off...yet. Still, I can feel the pain of Olive Hoover's family driving around in their old pile of metal. Yup, life with an older car is certainly an adventure. We'll just leave it at that.

Cheering for a Big Fat Zero!

Anyone remember back more than a year ago when I said I was going to try and get my email inbox to zero? Even I thought it was going to be a stretch. And I was right, it was a stretch. But here's the thing - without stretching, we can't grow.

I've been reading a lot lately on ways to promote contentment in your life. The latest is Rest: Living in Sabbath Simplicity by Keri Wyatt Kent. In it she talks about the need to stretch beyond our current abilities in order to grow (and in that growth, I think we experience a sense of contentment). Our muscles grow stronger by being pushed just beyond their limits. Same with our emotional capacity. Kent defines quite well how this really applies to every area of our lives. So in my case, it was a stretch to aim for zero email messages in my inbox.

Guess what? I got there today. That's right, I was able to respond to the two messages left from yesterday and that left me with none. And like Kent suggests, the stretch has caused me to grow. It has caused me to change one of my procrastinator habits of letting messages sit until I feel good and ready to respond to them. When your inbox is slowly creeping toward empty, there's less volume to support the excuse that "there's too much to do it now". In fact, the quest to get that inbox depleted worked as a sort of carrot dangling before me. I was willing to stay in my seat and work hard at typing a good response now, rather than waiting.

I've also grown in my ability to make decisions more rapidly, at least in this area. For indecisive me, that's a big step. I now decide on a response, send it, then file or delete. It's much easier to sort through dozens of emails efficiently when you can do that.

So will I keep it at zero? No. I don't think I can do that on a day-to-day basis. But in the past few months (other than during vacation), it's rarely crept above 25. And now that it's at zero, I'm guessing I can keep it even lower than that. My goal from here on out is to zero it out by Friday each week.

Now I've got to set myself another stretch goal. Hmmm...any suggestions?