How much of your day is spent thinking about the weather? I have decided this could be one of the greatest life sucks of all time.

Living in Missouri, you truly experience all the seasons – sometimes in a single day! As we move toward spring, we continue to get a tease of the warm, only to be followed by another cold front bringing in snow and ice. For those who continued to state how long it had been since we had a bad winter, 2019 is making a bold statement for you to remember.

Spending time thinking about the actual weather may be a waste of time, since you cannot control what Mother Nature brings us. But when thinking about the weather we bring to the room or to our families, I am reminded that I need to dwell on my own weather more often.

Do I want people to think of me as a storm – unpredictable and erupting when least expected? Do people see a rain cloud above me when I walk in the room as gloom approaches? Or am I that ray of sunshine, shining my light with positivity to those I meet? And do I care as much about the weather I bring home each night as that starting my day at the office?

We sometimes bring our worst to the people we love the most, unless we take time to choose our weather.

Anticipation. Isn’t it interesting that this word not only makes us think of events we are excited for and believe will bring us happiness/pleasure, but also includes those events which bring anxiety. And isn’t this an accurate definition for this word? Most of the the life events we most anticipate are exciting, typically happy, but also cause anxiety, which I do not consider such a great feeling. Can we achieve the anticipation without the anxiety?

As a part of my daily calendar, I strive to write down three events I am excited about and three items I am grateful for. Even though I don’t always take time to complete this section, I enjoy looking back at what I anticipated about my month, week, and even day. As I look at the month of March, one event continues to stand out.

Later this month, I will travel to NYC to present at the National Afterschool Association annual conference. I was selected as one of the intensive leadership session presenters. I am STOKED! But also starting to get anxious as I think about a city I have never traveled to, the large potential audience, and the potential opportunities that await. This leads me to wonder, when does good anticipation turn into dreadful anxiety?

I am doing all I can to be prepared and insure an excellent performance. I am also focusing on the excitement of a new city, lots of potential opportunities, and potentially a large crowd who are taking time for my workshop to assist them in bettering their skills & helping their staff. What do you do to focus on anticipation and stop the anxiety creep?

Today I took my middle son to his pulmonology appointment. These are typically biannual check-ups, but after a decrease in his lung function in January, he needed a quicker follow up. W has had asthma since he was two, and while it is typically well controlled, his lung function was not improving, as it should as he grows.

What we needed to know from this check -up was if it was an issue with his body or with W not correctly taking his medicine. Our great doctor, provided him with a star chart to track his morning and evening meds. This is not new to us, as I have tried all sorts of charts and bribery to get him to take his medicine. But this time, the promise of a $10 Walmart card was the magic motivation. He missed his medicine less than five times over the past two months. And his improved lung function, which was well over the normal rate for his size, was evidence that he had in fact taken his inhaler much more since the last appointment.

This slice also made me wonder about myself. I have tried blogging over the past year and a half, but had only been successful in setting up the blog and posting one or two times. Now, with this challenge, I have made the time over the past four days.

What’s my motivation?

I am reminded of how much I like to write.

My sister challenged me to do it, and I can’t let her down.

And I am really enjoying reading the slices of others’ lives.

So, thank you, Fellow Slicers, for your magic motivation.

This winter has made me acutely aware of one group of workers who make my life better each day, even though I rarely think about it, but to complain. This winter has been especially harsh with many winter storms, which have left inches of snow or ice covering everything in their paths. Each time one of these storms come across the country, our departments of transportation do all they can to keep our highways and streets safe. We often do not think about the nights, weekends, and time each of those DOT workers are spending away from their families. If you have the opportunity in the future, thank these workers who keep our highways drive-able and the snow at bay as much as they possibly can.

When you think about travel, do you get excited, dreadful, or anxious? Or does it depend on the situation? This weekend, I was not exactly excited about the ten plus hours in the car, but soon learned time really does fly when you are having fun.

The time spent with my older sister driving to Oklahoma reminded me of the many days we drove the twenty minutes to school. Most of those days contained the typical teenage sister squabbling. She always took too much time in front of the mirror, and I could have cared less about my appearance or dress and preferred to roll out of bed at the very last minute. This weekend, we truly enjoyed the ride as we reminisced many memories and dreamt up plans for our little sister’s wedding.

The time in the car with my two sisters, mom, mom’s bestie, and my little sister’s MIL-to-be, brought many long forgotten times to light. Oh, what you can learn from other people’s memories! The process of two families coming together is really quite a miracle. When both of those families have split into four families, everything becomes a bit more interesting! When you are contained to a car, you can learn so much.

The biggest takeaway from this trip is the reminder that whatever the attitude, we often meet our own expectations. So this weekend, whatever you have on your agenda, challenge yourself to shift your attitude. Ten hours in a car or road trip for making memories – it all depends on your perspective.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. 

This is one of my favorite lines from the song Closing Time by Semisonic. Not only was this song used in my high school graduation, but it also reminds me that with every beginning, something else is ending.

This has been a key theme the past few days as my little sister picks out ‘the dress’, other dresses, flowers, decor, and all that is necessary these days for a wedding. As her life as a single comes to an end, we are looking at the new beginning with a brother-in-law and uncle entering our life.

So what is coming to an end? For those of us who are married, can you even remember what it was like before? It makes me think about what I sometimes miss from my single life. Here are a few:

• Not sharing a bathroom or closet
• Never having to choose which holidays will be with my family and which I will miss
• Any mess in the house is MY mess, not someone else’s that I am expected to clean up
• Total control of the remote and watching whatever I want, whenever I want
• Cereal for supper

These are fairly trivial when I think of all that is gained. So, even though we will now share my sister with her new family, we also get to share her new husband. And we cannot wait for this new beginning to begin.

• a yoga master?
• an old-time beam balance weighing out gold?
• a gymnast on a beam?
• spinning a basketball on your finger?

Balance can be a tricky word because depending what visual comes to your mind will determine how well you judge yourself, and sometimes others, at the way you spend your time and therefore how you spend your life. So with these various images of balance, my questions is:

Is my balance and your balance the same?

I have given up on the life/work balance in terms of the beam balance with one side going up and when the other goes down. There is simply no possible way to spend equal amounts of time with my family or other ‘relaxing/non-work’ activities as I spend at work/doing work. For a very long time, I thought, and even more people told me, that the more I worked, the less I loved/cared for my husband & kids. People may or may not say this directly to you, but imply it all the time. What I have come to find is that there is truth about the amount of time we spend in what ever the activity and the results we get. What we focus more on, we typically get more of. However, I don’t believe the goal is to focus on keeping track of time. The goal is for balance.

This kind of balance that I seek is what we see from those of us who strive to master the art of yoga. When I started yoga, I could barely stand in the warrior pose (a relatively easy pose with both feet on the ground and arms outstretched). As I continued on with the practice of yoga, I learned that when I focused on trying to balance, I typically fall. But when I focus on breathing and stretching, I can usually achieve the pose. I believe our life balance is similar. Focusing on how well I blend a variety of activities throughout my day and not allowing a single activity to take over my life should really be the goal. Focusing not as much on the quantity of time spent with loved ones, but the quality of what is happening during that time. There are many families who spend a ton of time together each week, but what are they doing: running from activity to activity with earbuds in and phones in front of their faces – how can we make that time useful to help us achieve the blend and balance we need?

In the end, it is hard to know if we are spending ‘enough’ time with the ones we love. Many friends whose children are now grown often tell me I will miss this life stage (another blog on that statement to come). I used to completely scoff at the idea, wishing my kids were grown or at least older than the current crisis. As my boys have grown, I have realized that each day is an end to some part of their childhood. To combat this losing battle, I must take advantage of the time I have with them each day,  instead of focusing on spending ‘enough’ time. So this morning, this afternoon, this evening,  focus on connecting to your loved ones. Be silly and make your kids laugh (for my boys that would be anything dealing with toilets or bodily functions). Hold hands with your husband. Take time to sit with grandma and just look at the clouds. You never regret those moments and these are what truly make your life blend all the sweeter.