Motes and Beams and Stinky Things

Last week our Church-wide "Come Follow Me" study included some of Christ's teachings on judgement from the sermon on the mount (Matthew 7). One of the poignant scriptures on judgment is Matthew 7:3, which says, "And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"

When I was a kid there was a family at Church that didn't have the nicest clothes or the best hygiene. They had a daughter my age, and we were in the same church class year after year. I don't really know what the family's circumstances were, but I liked to steer clear of them (I came from the womb judging others). 

One Sunday, this girl smelled particularly fowl, and she was sitting next to me in class. The odor went beyond lack of bathing - she reeked of poo - so I kept subtly scooting my chair away from her. Then I noticed that the other girls could smell her, too. We started whispering to each other about the stink and shifting our chairs farther and farther away from the girl until she was on one side of the room, and the rest of us were on the other. It didn't matter, though, because the scent overwhelmed the entire room. There was no getting away from it.

After class, we continued whispering about how bad she stunk and how glad we were to finally get out of our classroom. 

As I rode home with my family in our iconic station wagon, I caught the smell again. I thought it must've been permanently embedded in my nostrils. But pretty soon, my siblings started saying, "Ew! What smells like poop?" The drive was full of accusations and blame, and when we arrived home, my dad ordered us all to check our shoes. To my dismay, I found that I had stepped in poop in my church shoes. The smell hadn't been coming from the girl in my class; it had been coming from me! 

The entire time... it was me.

I smelled like poop!

That was quite the life lesson for me (one I'm still learning from), and to this day, whenever there is talk of motes and beams (or whenever I literally smell poop), I remember how important it is to check my own shoes first. 

Favorite Quotes: Atomic Habits

One of my goals in my 40x40 project was to read Atomic Habits by James Clear. I normally move through books pretty fast (2-3 days), but I forced myself to read this one slowly so I could implement some of its recommendations. I started reading it over Thanksgiving and finished it a couple of weeks ago. 

To be honest, the book did not blow my mind. But... that's because I did an internship in school where I co-wrote and beta-tested a workshop on willpower. I've studied a lot of books and research on this topic, and none of it has fixed me! I'm still a Queen of Bad Habits! So I'm not sure what I was expecting to accomplish by reading Atomic Habits, but I did it anyway! And two things I have to say about it are...

1) I may not feel like it "fixed" me, but I still enjoyed the content and think about it a lot as I'm indulging in my bad habits. 

2) I think everyone should read some type of book about habits at some point... be it this one, or another option (such as The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg or The Willpower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal). 

Here are some quotes from Atomic Habits that I liked:

On slow progress

"Complaining about not achieving success despite working hard is like complaining about an ice cube not melting when you heated it from 25 to 31 degrees. Your work was not wasted; it is just being stored. All the action happens at 32 degrees" (p. 21).

"When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it - but all that had gone before." -Jacob Riis (quoted on page 21).

"Can one tiny change transform your life? It's unlikely you would say so. But what if you made another? And another? And another? At some point, you will have to admit that your life was transformed by one small change" (p. 251).

Habits and freedom

"Habits do not restrict freedom. They create it. In fact, the people who don't have their habits handled are often the ones with the least amount of freedom. Without good financial habits, you will always be struggling for the next dollar. Without good health habits, you will always be low on energy... If you're always being forced to make decisions about simple tasks - when should I work out, where do I go to write, when do I pay the bills - then you have less time for freedom. It's only by making the fundamentals of life easier that you can create the mental space needed for free thinking and creativity" (p. 46-47).

Reframing

"The more you think of yourself as worthless, stupid, or ugly, the more you condition yourself to interpret life that way. You get trapped in a thought loop. The same is true for how you think about others. Once you fall into the habit of seeing people as angry, unjust, or selfish, you see those kind of people everywhere" (p. 19).

"Imagine changing just one word: You don't have to. You get to... By simply changing one word, you shift the way you view each event. You transition from seeing these behaviors as burdens and turn them into opportunities" (p. 131)

Sidenote: Let me practice this for a moment...

I get to go to the dentist.

I get to go to presidency meeting.

I get to clean my kitchen.

Never Miss Twice

"A simple rule: never miss twice... The first mistake is never the one that ruins you. It is the spiral of repeated mistakes that follows. Missing once is an accident. Missing twice is the start of a new habit" (p. 201).

Don't Put Up a Zero

"...'bad' workouts are often the most important ones. Sluggish days and bad workouts maintain the compound gains you accrued from previous good days. Simply doing something - ten squats, five sprints, a push-up, anything really - is huge. Don't put up a zero. Don't let losses eat into your compounding... it's not always about what happens during the workout. It's about being the type of person who doesn't miss workouts. It's easy to train when you feel good, but it's crucial to show up when you don't feel like it - even if you do less than you hope. Going to the gym for five minutes may not improve your performance, but it reaffirms your identity" (p. 201-202).

Countdown on a Tuesday

Ten Things I Did Over the Weekend:

1. Took Zoe and Eva to see Bluey on stage

2. Visited the treadmill

3. Went to Costco

4. Played Ark Nova 4 times (lost 3 times)

5. Taught Zoe how to play Savannah Park

6. Went to church

7. Took down the Valentine’s decorations and put up the St. Patrick’s Day decorations 

8. Got my hair trimmed

9. Took Daisy to two thrift stores and came out empty handed!

10. Went to Book Club

Nine Things I Need to Put Away in my Kitchen:

1. Board games

2. The vacuum

3. A 10 lb sack of potatoes

4. A leftover Valentine's decoration 

5. The Instant Pot

6. The electric griddle

7. An open package of Saltines

8. A bag of St. Patrick's Day junk from Hobby Lobby

9. A can of Pam

Eight Things I Ate Over the Weekend:

1. Red Robin

2. Steak

3. Scrambled eggs

4. Sweet potatoes

5. Dove chocolate

6. German pancakes

7. Cereal

8. Stew

For the record, I am fully interested in what people eat. It has never bothered me when people post food photos. Post the food! All the food! Tell me everything! I'm here for you and your food.

Seven Things to Celebrate:

1. I’m 51 days soda sober

2. The chickens have started laying eggs again (we give them a break during the winter)

3. Scotty fixed our broken air fryer (he took it apart and found the reset button)

4. I have studied the scriptures every day this year so far (I know a lot of people live this way, but I don't. This is a huge triumph for me)

6. My new dishwasher is still bringing me joy (in fact, I have a nasty load in there right now that I'm so excited to examine post-wash)

7. When I need something from the store, I can send Nicky (this just occurred to me yesterday when I had a few things I needed for dinner and was dreading going to the store)

Six Things I Don’t Want to Do:

1. Refill my salt shaker

2. Go to the dermatologist 

3. Clean… anything…

4. Go to Young Women

5. Be a parent

Five Sounds I Don't Like:

1. Anything coming from someone else's phone

2. The traditional alarm clock sound

3. Repetitive tapping noises

4. Hiccups

5. The beat of David Guetta's "Titanium" (Does this song bother anyone else's ears? I have to change the station anytime it comes on because the pulsing legitimately causes discomfort in my inner ear).

Four Things I Don't Prefer in Books:

1. Retellings

2. Lengthy scenes spent on ships or boats

3. Magical realism

4. Mythology

Three Things I’d Wish for if I Found a Genie Today:

1. Energy

2. Perfect hair

3. Zoe and Eva’s room to clean itself

Two Things Social Media Keeps Showing Me:

1. Hairless cats

2. Girls making fun of early 2000’s trends and basically every other thing about my life 

One Thing I wish Everyone Would Do:

1. Stop at red lights

I was so sad this show got canceled (The Time Traveler's Wife on HBO)

An Incomplete List of Awkward Situations (Special Treadmill Edition)

I've been to the gym a few times recently. Just to dabble. I hate exercising. And I especially hate exercising in public. But apparently it's good for me. So whatever. 

I dare say that the gym has more potential than most other places on earth for awkward situations, save for public restrooms and doctors' offices. I think I could could write a dozen blog posts about awkward situations at the gym and a dozen more about all the weird people at the gym. 

(Seriously with the Gym People! Where do these personalities come from?)

(Now we're all wondering if we're "Gym People," aren't we?)

Behold the awkwardness:

When you're going a snail's pace on the treadmill next to someone who's going really fast, but you have your incline set at 10, and you wanna yell, "Yeah, I see you going all fast and stuff on your flat ground. Look at my incline! LOOK AT IT! I'm hiking, Fella! HIKING!"

When you're a dancer at heart, and you want your pace to match the beat of the music you're listening to, but you can't make it work, and you feel like crazy person.

But then...

When the beat matches your pace exactly, and something amazing is happening physically and musically, and you look around to see if anyone notices, but they have no clue… because ear buds…, and you're just left experiencing the magic alone while everyone carries on ignorantly.

When you have the overwhelming urge to treadmill dance, and it takes everything you've got to hold back, but you wonder what would happen if you tried one spin. Just. One. Spin...

When you start walking on a treadmill that has a lumpy belt, and you think, "Crap! This belt is lumpy!" but you don't want to do the walk of shame where you picked a bad machine and have to leave it for another one, so you just pretend you knew it was lumpy all along, and that you're okay with it. 

When the overstimulating TV's across the wall show the earthquake in Syria, the shooting in Michigan, the toxic train derailment in Ohio, and a lady in skunk costume playing "Let's Make a Deal."

When the beat drops on your playlist, and you MUST RUN, so you increase the speed only to discover a few minutes later that the "decrease speed" button on that machine doesn't work, so you're left running way past your physical limitations while you decide whether it would be safer to jump off the machine or push the stop button. 

When you weren't planning on running, but the music makes you do it, and you realize you don't have "the girls" properly secured, and you've put on a lot of extra weight since you last ran, so "the girls" are quite large.

When the Black-Eyed Peas sing, "Runnin' runnin' and runnin' runnin," and you're like, "Fergie! I can't! The "decrease speed" button doesn't work!" 

Me playing it safe after button incident

When you keep feeling a loose hair brush against your arm, so you swipe at it every thirty seconds and can never find it, but you don't give up for your entire workout!

When you're trying to wipe off your machine for the next person, and the motion sensor on the towel dispenser can't see you, but it can see everyone else so you have to ask another human to help you get a towel. 

When you go to the store after the gym, and you want everyone to notice your post-gym glow (because surely you lost thirty pounds), but you catch a glimpse of your reflection, and you look like you just crawled out of the dumpster behind Krispy Kreme. 

It’s Been a Long Day (and ten other random facts)

Fact #1: I'm currently in a funk. I think winter has gotten to me. I usually do okay during the winter (it's summer when I struggle - I'm just a backwards kind of person, I guess), but right now, I have a serious case of the "blahs" and the "don't wannas." I just want to sleep all day, shut everyone out of my life, watch animal videos online, and eat crap. 

I'm not doing those things. But I want to. 

(Except maybe the animal video thing. I've been excessive in my viewing lately).

Fact #2: Yesterday I dragged myself outside to walk around the block. I hated every second of it. 

Stupid sunshine.

Stupid fresh air.

Fact #3: The horn on my van, to my detriment, only honks mean. This is so frustrating because there are times when I need to do a little, "Beep! Beep! Light's green!" to the person in front of me. Any time I try to "Beep! Beep" all friendly-like, my horn goes, "HOOOOOONK!!! MOVE OUT OF THE WAY, YOU *!#$-ing *#@$! *&@^!"  

Pardon my language, but that's exactly what my horn said to some poor man this morning on the way to school, and of course, it turned out that he was also going to my kids' school, so I took a different route so when we arrived, he would (hopefully) think I was a different lady who happened to be in the exact same kind of van that swore at him only moments prior. 

I so wanted to get out of my car and knock on his window and explain that I wasn't trying to honk mean, but I have done that before (in the middle of an intersection at a red light), and people don't really respond well. I guess being honked at and then having someone knock on your window unexpectedly can be quite terrifying, and therefore, belongs on an Incomplete List of Awkward Situations on a blog somewhere. 

Fact #4: In 2021, Zoe became captivated with Groundhog Day. For the past two years, she has insisted on dressing up like a groundhog for school. This worked very well because both years, she was wearing masks to school, so I just glued some buck teeth and a little nose to her mask and made her a groundhog hat. 

A few days before Groundhog Day this year, she started talking about it again. I'd kind of forgotten that she has Groundhog Day expectations (I'm just glad I had a couple of days to prepare).

On February 1st, I made a paper groundhog and taped it to the window of the van to surprise Zoe when I picked her up from school. 

That night, I made groundhog desserts and tucked Zoe into bed while she chanted, "Phil! Phil! Phil!"

Then on the morning of Groundhog Day, we colored groundhog hats and watched the Groundhog Day announcement... six more weeks of winter.

Fact #5: In addition to being in a funk, I am also in a reading rut. They might go hand in hand. Every now and then, I go through a phase where everything I'm reading is uninteresting. I can't focus, and I end up plowing through several books in a row that I can't recount. When this happens, the best thing for me to do is walk away from all of the books I have in progress and have a time-out. I made that decision this morning and sent my audiobook and my e-book back into the library vortex. 

I now have a clean slate! But I musn't rush to fill it. The books will find me again when it's time. 

Fact #6: I am still in love with my new dishwasher. Winter blues aside, hedonic adaptation has not set in yet on the existence of this new appliance in my life. 

Fact #7: I’m having a good hair day today. Unfortunately, good hair doesn’t seem to ever last past the stoop of my front door. If I leave the house, I’ll go with false confidence and end up seeing a disheveled mess in the reflection of a store window. Why is hair so unfair?

Fact #8: Sometimes I wish I could be someone else for a while and then meet myself to see what I'm like. I want to have the opportunity to view myself from an outside perspective. I want to see how I present myself to other people and how it differs from how I see myself. Would I like me? Because here's the thing...  I don't see myself as particularly likable. 

Now, don't go feeling like you need to convince me that I'm likable. I'm not fishing for flattery here. I am likable... to an extent. In fact, I've made some acquaintances lately who really, really like me. 

Seriously. They think I'm great.

But in the back of my mind, I'm going, "I hope they never get to know me well."

Because, in reality, I'm a difficult person. I'm ornery and easily annoyed. I have really high expectations of other people. I'm super critical, I don't work well with others, and I treat people like they're stupid. 

Ouch, right?

And if you get to know me intimately, you have to deal with that side of me. Depending on the circumstances, that might be the first side of me you get to know. I feel like the Britt spectrum starts and ends with a difficult individual, and the sweet spot is in the middle where you know me just enough to see the good parts but not enough to see my nasty side. 

Fact #9: Nothing stresses me out quite like a recipe that says "salt and pepper to taste." It’s too much responsibility. Just give me a recommendation, please! 

Fact #10: I just stress-ate three pieces of toast. Maybe my dreams from Fact #1 are going to come true!

An Incomplete List of Awkward Situations (special high school dance chaperoning edition)

When you show up to chaperone the high school dance, and all of the school doors are locked.

When you can’t hear anything over the music, and you have to speak improvisational sign language to everyone all night.

When your chaperoning station is right by a set of bathrooms that are locked, so you spend all night telling kids they need to go pee upstairs, except none of them can hear you, so you use the aforementioned sign language to say “PEE! UPSTAIRS!” every five minutes for three and a half hours.

When your chaperoning station is below some stairs and you can see up all the girls’ thigh-length dresses whenever they walk down them.

When you spend all night handling teenagers’ phones and taking photos for them, and you have no idea what kinds of diseases you’re being exposed to.

When you make all the kids from church pose for photos with you.

When a girl comes running toward the locked bathrooms holding her dress in place after a wardrobe malfunction, and you have to sign “UPSTAIRS!”

When the same drunk cowgirl tries to go to the locked bathroom with a different person every fifteen minutes.

When a girl asks you to hold her purse, and you think she means while she’s getting her picture taken, but then she leaves and runs off into the crowd, and you’re left there holding her purse wondering if it’s like the airport where you need to report unattended luggage, and you find yourself making a plan to throw yourself on the purse to save the children in the event that a bomb goes off. 

When you realize you’re married to Galdalf.

“You shall not pass!”

When the school police and administrators take off down a hallway together, and you start wondering about that purse again. 

When (after a bunch of really, really awful songs) Whitney Houston comes on, but you can’t “Dance with Somebody” because you promised your kid you wouldn’t embarrass him. 

When you smell that a girl has really bad B.O. and you just want so badly to help her out, but there’s nothing you can do.

When your kid hugs you and his boutonnière pin stabs you in the nipple.

When the last song ends and the lights come on, and you’re like “Alright! Who’s gonna say the closing prayer?”

I Tried

Now that all my free birthday food has been redeemed, I’m trying to be a little bit healthier. Nothing crazy - just backing off from excessive sugar and deep fried foods and trying to eat smaller portions (cause Friends, this girl can eat. Let me tell you). 

Yesterday Scotty and I went to Red Robin to redeem a free (but non-birthday) meal (gosh, how I love free food). I decided to make a healthier choice and have a teriyaki chicken sandwich (my usual at Red Robin) with salad instead of fries. It takes a lot for me to go for salad over fries, but yesterday it actually sounded really good. 

The problem is… the Universe wouldn’t allow it. 

When the server came to take our order, she brought out a basket of hot fries and plunked it down on the table right in front of me. I had to eat them! I didn’t want to hurt her feelings! I’m not going to be personally responsible for a Red Robin employee crying herself to sleep after her shift because I wouldn’t eat her fries!

I still stuck with my original plan and ordered the chicken sandwich with a salad, but after a few fries, my palate was no longer prepped for salad. There’s no going back.

To make things all the more exciting, when my food came out, they brought me the Banzai burger instead of the chicken sandwich. I debated whether I should say anything, but ultimately, I like the burger just as well. It’s a few more calories, but I’m not calorie-obsessed, and I figured if I like the food either way, I might as well eat what’s in front of me rather than wait for them to make my meal again. 

Half-way through my burger, the server came to the table and said, “I realized I brought you the wrong food!” and she plunked a whole, hot, fresh teriyaki chicken sandwich down in front of me.

So I went from teriyaki chicken sandwich and side salad to fries, Banzai burger, teriyaki chicken sandwich, and side salad. Frankly, with the way things were going, I’m surprised a Coke didn’t fall into my mouth while I was there. It would have been just my luck, being that I’m 35 days soda sober.

Currently {February 2023 Edition}

 Reading:

I have had a huge influx of books with cartoony book covers on hold come in all at once. It started with Lessons in Chemistry, then came The Chicken Sisters and How Not to Die Alone. Then came Starfish and Finlay Donovan is Killing It. It's too much. Too much, I say! Boy, was I glad when The Christie Affair and This Tender Land came in to break it up. 

Wearing: black leggings and a black sweatshirt to match my soul.

Annoyed by: being awake at 4:00 every morning and then finally falling back asleep right when it’s time to get up for the day (I’ve been doing this since August for some reason).

Struggling with: Zoe and Eva. Those two are going to challenge me for life. Nothing makes me want to throw my hands in the air and say, "I give up!" quite like those two. 

Watching:

It's time for another screening of Lost in the Brittish household. Scotty and I have brought Nicky into the fold. We can't wait for him to see what's in the hatch (we're just a few episodes away)! Daisy watched an episode with us the other night, and she couldn't stop talking about it. I'm one proud mama.

Singing: "Rasputin" by Boney M.

Building: a bird puzzle.

Looking forward to: a lunch date with the hubs today. There will be coupons. 

Cooking: Honey Lime Tilapia… if I stick with the meal plan for the week after the aforementioned lunch date.

Listening to:

Eating: lots of eggs. Ask me why… 

Because, look!

Tired of: buying five things at the grocery store and having it come to $70.

Playing:

These are the new games we’ve added to our rotation so far this year. We’ve managed to cut our Ark Nova time down from four hours to about two and a half when it’s just Scotty and me playing. Ever improving! 

Frustrated by: brain fog. I’m having a hard time focusing lately. It comes and goes, but right now, it’s in full force. 

Enjoying: Nicky being able to drive. What a huge life-change this has been! Other than his tire blowing yesterday.

It’s hard to see with the lighting, but look closely! We don't know what the heck happened! It just, like… fell apart!

Wanting: perfect recall and the ability to teleport. Is there an app for that?

Laughing about: falling out of my bed the other night. I don’t know how it happened, but suddenly I was sliding off the side of the mattress in slow motion, and I started frantically grabbing at the bedding as if it could save me. 

Happy about: our new dishwasher. I try to not let my happiness hinge too much on material possessions, but it has seriously improved the quality of my life. 

Curious about: a conversation I overheard the other day between a husband and wife, and I'm just dying to know what was going on. Oh, to be a fly on the wall! I just want to hang out at other people's houses and observe them all day. People fascinate (and confuse) me.

Buying: food and gas. And even though I just bought food and gas, there’s always a need for more food and gas.

Feeling: sluggish, unmotivated, annoyed, and selfish. 

Missing: having a working DVD player in the van. It’s been dead for a few years. 

Procrastinating: making eye doctor appointments for my kids who can't see anything.

Grateful for: a van with working doors. One of the doors froze shut the other night, and it wouldn’t open for most of the next day, and I remembered my last van and some of the problems the doors had, and it made me so grateful for every working part of my current van!

And when the door finally opened again, I rejoiced!