update local bucket list

 Last month I wrote a local bucket list- and I have been working on it- accomplished some things- not started many things.  I could add some things- 

Every day I try to do a few things- maybe just 10 minutes a day, but any little bit helps me not turn into mush.  

Every day I try to do these things for at least 10 minutes:

Draw and/or paint

Study a language (Spanish or French)

Read a book

Listen to the Bible in a Year podcast

The things I should tell myself to do every day?

Exercise

Clean the house

Fold the laundry

Organize my office

Work on future lesson plans

Bible study

Well, darling- summer is coming.  Here's what I know about summer when you are a school teacher- those seem to be the sweetest two months of the year.  Even sweeter because you have survived the school year.

I work at a Title 1 school, which means lots of low-income kids- which comes with challenges many people would never consider.  I came in having already considered them- being that I was a low-income kid myself.

Sweet-Hot-Lazy summer- I have never looked so forward to you!  Three weeks left of school.  Three.

Here's an unusual reason I'm looking forward to summer this year.  Pandemic residue.  I guess I didn't really process it at the time, but looking back on the pandemic I realize I was overwhelmed with all of it.  And the more overwhelmed I felt, the more it manifested in the house.  Things started piling up.  Papers, books, clothes, toys- things that need to be sorted and donated and tossed just sat around.  And the more stuff that sat around the more I looked at it and felt like giving up.  I couldn't make decisions about what to do with it.  Even when I did make a choice I couldn't effectively execute the plan.  

Now I'm looking at the mess- an embarrassing mess of stuff and thinking- summer is coming.  I'm going to say, "Thank you for your service, goodbye" to some things all over the house.  I HOPE. I really need to get started now- but I am also lazy.

I would like to take the girls on vacation.  I would love a beach- but a cooler beach- a northern beach. A cold water, warm sand nothing to do beach- but that's not really for kids- it's for me.  The kids want a something to do all the time vacation.  They want to go to Sicily to visit their cousins.  I want to do that too- but then money.  :) 

Here is my updated Bucket list

1. I have not  started a fire without matches or lighter- this seems like a summer activity

2. I have made one self portait. (1/7)

3. 13/24 books read

4. 18/52 blogs written

5. 18/49 pages left in an art journal which I had already started some years ago.

6. 162/300 days in Duolingo

7. Teacher cert- no progress X

8. Write a kid's book  X

9.  Acupuncture X

10.  Embroider Lord's prayer X

11. Baby booties X

12. James Method X