Help Wanted: List-maker seeks schedule

I have a lot of notebooks, and I go back and forth between feeling strengthened by their piles of lists and notes and feeling completely helpless against their enormity, a mountain of expectations. Sometimes when I steal away from home and sit before one or two notebooks or random pieces of paper filled to the margins with ideas, or rough drafts, I feel free, ready to jump right into a task. Like yesterday when I was reviewing some brainstorming notes I made with Alex about some exciting new business plans, my lists lifted me up and got me to work. (I'm so excited to share these with you, but not quite yet. I have to organize the parade first.) And then there's today, where the many, many lists and notes and drafts are staring me down, taunting me, teasing me, and nudging me to get going already.

All things considered, I think this is my brewing time. I've had this process for a long time, where I sit with a project, worry about it for a long while, panic that it isn't done yet, before I realize that I was making progress all along. Working can't always be about action, but requires reflection, a moment to untangle all the moving pieces. Of course a person such as myself sometimes rests too long in this place of reflection and then moves into a place of oh-crap-this-needs-to-get-done-yesterday. (As a lifelong procrastinator, this article was a breath of fresh air, a reminder that my putting things off comes from a place of deep fear about not being perfect. Fuck perfect. And thanks, Kaylie, for passing this along.) This is where my lists and notes come in, reminding me that work does still require action after all. This is also why one of my 100 resolutions includes finding a new way to organize my time (this isn't the first time I've cried out to the internet about how to make the most out of my lists). Reflection isn't effective if all those good ideas are lost before they can be put to good use.

Lest you think I'm beating myself up over not doing enough work, I'm not. As much as I struggle with being perfect and doing perfectly, I know I'm human. I'm just strategizing out loud on blog, working through my ideas in front of your very eyes. You know how the internet is always telling us to stop multitasking and be calm and quiet about everything? How can I not multitask when I'm a working adult with two children, a home, pets, friends, loved ones, a city to explore, and futures to imagine? No, it can't be done. While I'll throw myself into finding a way to structure my days and work time in such a way that will minimize unnecessary stress (and anxiety, since I'm wired that way), I can't ignore the variety of responsibilities I have. I just can't.

But I will try to remember to breathe.

Back to my lists, which really means, back to finding a strategy to get everything done. The best strategy I find is just sitting down to work, but sometimes that's harder than it sounds, because sometimes sitting down to work really means: how do I make sense of all of this? How do I teach and grade and create and support and feed and sweep (mostly I don't sweep) and hopefully get some rest all in this short, short, day? I have lists for my teaching, lists for my doula work, lists for how to fill my kitchen (with really good food, please) and for who needs all new t-shirts (Alyce, because she won't stop growing). Which list to turn to first? How do I combine lists? All of a sudden those notebooks are staring at me again.

Breathe.

So I'm getting to work on one of my resolutions this week: Try out some new time management tips and see what works best (#74). And here is where you come in: can you give a girl a hand and send me your best ideas? Do you have something that works for you? Do you have a favourite blog on the topic? Any words of advice (only friendly ones, please and thank you)? I'm asking for help because it's something I'm getting better at doing, almost at least once a week now. I ask Matt for help on this topic All The Time, but because he's my husband I sometimes only half listen to him (sorry, my darling). Because he's so handsome I can't concentrate! (There you go.)

Here is what I am looking for:

:: A plan that uses lists because I love lists. They help the visual part of my brain do its magic.
:: I'm not looking for an online app or list tool because they don't seem to work for me, even though I spend a lot of time in front of my computer or phone. I need the doodling, random scribbling of an old-fashioned notebook.
:: Something that incorporates big and small deadlines, that might help me learn to calculate how best to break down a task and estimate the time it will take to accomplish it.
:: To schedule or not to schedule: how do we figure out which one works?
:: Encouragement.

I'll be back in the next few days (for real this time) to outline some of my jobs/projects/goals as well as my general responsibilities as I see them. Just in case you thought I lounged at home wondering how to begin my napping business.

Will you help? In return I offer you my mum's Mexican Tortilla Soup recipe, stolen from one of my many notebooks (there's more than just lists in these books). When I visit my mum I ask her to make this for me every time because it feeds my soul, and love of salt and lime.

P.S. Alyce did it again. This time it was a button.
P.P.S. Sorry for swearing, mum.

Be well!

#22 Host a fabulous tea party

This post is part of a new series I'm excited about at Most Days I Win. I've written a list of (mostly) small and manageable resolutions that I'd like to attempt in 2013. I've included things on my list that will continue to inspire me and lead me toward the kind of joy-filled life I've always loved. I'm using this list to commit, again and again, to doing things that make me laugh, make me happy, feelings I hope rub off on other people in the process. You can see the list of my 100 Resolutions Project (in two parts) here and here.

Sometimes all it takes is for a good friend to call and ask what we're up to. That's all it took a few Sundays ago. My friend Susan, having recently heard her daughter, Tori, declare that she'd like to live next door to Alyce, asked if she could visit us in Toronto for the day. Alyce and Tori were in the same junior kindergarten class last year when we were living in Cambridge and they still make moon eyes at each other when we get together. They are smitten and I love it. 

I love watching friendships take root because I know, I know, that friends make it possible to stand in the world with your shoulders back, head held high, and laugh all day long. Without my friends I'd feel naked.

Once it was decided that of course! we'd love to Susan and her girls over for the day (she has a second daughter a little older than Shira), we got to work. It was obvious to all of us: tea party. We began setting the table at once. Alyce got to making place cards, Shira chose our tea pot, and I collected fine linens (ironing not required). Alyce had just the day before made a paper flower for Tori and it served as the perfect centrepiece. I quickly made a dish of macaroni and cheese (my superpower is the ability to make mac and cheese blindfolded while hopping on one foot) and was relieved to find the brownie cookies we had made for Shabbat the previous Friday were still available. Sometimes cookies in our house disappear.

It was an amazing tea party, nothing too fancy, but the necessary elements were there. Tea pot filled with grape juice? Check. Good food? Check. A chance to celebrate a random Sunday with a gathering of good friends and a lot of giggles? Tea parties make me think of all the things I loved about childhood: make believe, celebrations, making the ordinary feel a bit more special. My daughters have inherited what seems to be a genetic predisposition to elevate an ordinary table into a place of magic. I watch them set their own Shabbat table throughout the week, adding just the right touches (like dinosaurs) around the usual Shabbat settings such as candles, kiddish cup, and challah board. They just know that there is something special that happens when we gather around a table.

P.S. Alyce has informed me that this technically wasn't a tea party because we did not send out invitations or have fancy food, like cake. I'm not sure where she found these rules, but who am I to argue? So while there might be another tea party in our future, but I'm counting this one, too.

On the important things in life: Planning my first cake for 2013

In the fall I spent every Thursday night sitting in a room reading texts with a bunch of other women. I was part of an amazing class co-taught by a very talented friend of mine, where Jewish and Muslim women gathered each week to read religious texts with each other. Was it a good time? Oh yes, it was.

Is this post really about cake? Yes, I promise. We'll get there.

I've written a little before about my conversion to Judaism, but I haven't written very much about my academic research, because I didn't want to bore you to tears was happy to have a space to write about things other than my interest in feminist theory and religion because for crying out loud the essays I have written. In my early graduate work I studied early Indian and Tibetan Buddhist literature as a way to learn about gender. It was a good time. No, seriously. My later graduate life was consumed by research into the way feminists study religion. All of this is to say that while I've spent many, many years learning about women, religion and studying texts, I've mostly only done this as an outsider, since I myself was not religious.

Since converting to Judaism this has changed. Reading religious texts, especially those that describe and debate religious law, can be very different for me now. I perk up when I read about religious dietary laws because now I keep a kosher kitchen. I want to know more about laws dealing with sexuality because I am a woman in a tradition that divides its believers along gender lines (in many different ways, according to many different traditions).

What made this course all the better, was that it wasn't a class filled only with Jewish women, but a group of Jewish and Muslim women reading together. We read from the Torah and from the Qur'an, from the Talmud and the Hadith. We read texts that prescribed laws about how to eat, who to touch when we are menstruating, and who we ought to marry. Then we talked about it. For a very long time.

Some of us followed our religion's laws closely, some of us didn't. Some of us covered our hair, some of us didn't. We all identified as Jews or Muslims, but none of us were the same. But same or not, we were connected by religions that had a lot to say about women. People write-off religious women too often, both from inside and outside religious traditions; I wish they wouldn't. There are as many different religious women as their are women on the planet. No matter where they fall along the spectrum of religious observance, women make critical choices about how they interpret their religious texts all the time. I loved reading a text and then hearing thirty different interpretations from the women around me. What I found limiting, others found freeing. What I read with great interest, others cared little for. We didn't always agree with other but that's ok. Repeat after me: we don't always have to agree. I'm pretty certain that I'll never cover my hair and I feel very strongly about this, but holy cow do I love learning about why other women do.

I learned so much and met some of the kindest, most engaging women this side of Toronto. We met as a class only for a few months, but, as women do, we are getting together to cook for each other early next month. How could we come and go without sharing a meal? Impossible. So this is where cake comes in. I'm bringing dessert.

It is one of my 100 Resolutions to make more cakes. I usually play it safe with cookies or squares (or brownies or breads or scones), but it's time for cake. The problem is I just can't decide which one. Can you help me? I've narrowed down some possible cake recipes, courtesy of my some of my favourite food bloggers. Which one?

Bittersweet chocolate and pear cake from, of course, The Smitten Kitchen?

Chocolate bundt cake from Sweet Amandine?

This lemon olive oil cake from In Jennie's Kitchen? I do love olive oil.

What about cardamom? Food52 rarely lets me down.

I just can't decide. Please, with your help I can start tabulating votes by sundown. Do you know of another fabulous cake recipe I should look at? Please do share. A large room filled with Jewish and Muslim women depend on it. If you can't share a great cake together, what can you do?

P.S. Happy Monday!

You can find the cake print for sale here.

#11 Take Alyce ice-skating

This post is part of a new series I'm excited about at Most Days I Win. I've written a list of (mostly) small and manageable resolutions that I'd like to attempt in 2013. I've included things on my list that will continue to inspire me and lead me toward the kind of joy-filled life I've always loved. I'm using this list to commit, again and again, to doing things that make me laugh, make me happy, feelings I hope rub off on other people in the process. You can see the list of my 100 Resolutions Project (in two parts) here and here.

Can I tell you how much fun it was to kick off my Resolutions Project with ice-skating? I had decided to steal Alyce away for a surprise date this past weekend, just the two of us, and I wanted to make it a surprise.

I kept my secret for an entire two hours.

When I spilled the beans her face almost broke in half on account of her excitement and she asked a zillion questions, including, but not limited to: could she wear ice-skates? (Yes.) Will I skate with her? (I'll do my best.) What happens if I fall down? (You get back up.) Could her skates be pink? (We can only hope.) The next day we headed to Dufferin Grove Park, one of my new favourite Toronto destinations. There we found free outdoor skating, $2 skate rentals, and hot chocolate for fifty cents. Fifty cents? I know. (They also host an organic farmer's market each week, so I'm thinking of moving in.) If you're looking for other City of Toronto outdoor rinks (some with skate rentals), you can find a list here.

Alyce was glorious. And her skates were pink. Don't let that sad face above fool you. She was just exasperated because she had to wait around until I got my skates on, clearly a tragedy. But then she looked like this:

Alyce had never been on skates before, and had certainly never experienced a Canadian outdoor rink. There were hockey players next to us, a figure skater practicing with her coach, and a collection of happy-faced novices with rosy cheeks and laced up skates. Taking Alyce skating for the first time was one of those parenting moments you remind yourself about when you're having a particularly rough day. It was golden. A perfectionist already, I was a little worried she might be too hard on herself, something akin to the struggle she feels when her drawings don't look "right." (Nothing makes me sadder than Alyce tearing up because she thinks her unicorn picture looks stupid. It is always a spectacular unicorn.) I prepared myself for mixed feelings from her, a combination of too much excitement and disappointment with not immediately skating like an Olympic athlete. I would have understood both reactions.

Alyce took to the ice holding one of those magical walker-type skating aids. Since I had only been on skates one time in the past twenty years, I could have used one myself. Thankfully for everyone around us I had enough nostalgia-fueled skill to skate enough that I could keep up her my five year old. Alyce never looked back, except to declare to me how much fun she was having. We skated for about an hour and she fell about every 90 seconds for the first half of that. But eventually she found her pace, even managing to tackle what she called "Figure Eights" (what you and I would probably call a circle), all while holding on to her walker. She tried to skate without the walker a few times, but quickly returned to the walker without shame. Skating with Alyce was joyful, even if my feet hurt because I don't actually know how to lace up a pair of figure skates.

One down, ninety-nine to go. It was a great place to start.

Have you written a list yet? Will you share it with us?

Be well!

My resolutions project

This Monday comes after a bit of an emotional week for me. My grandmother has been very sick, but she seems to be on the mend now, thankyouthankyou. You know how you sometimes wait until after a traumatic event before you start to cry? It's as though your body needs all the adrenaline and energy you can muster to get you through something hard or terrifying--an accident, a terrible argument, a confrontation at work--and then, only then, are your guards released and you really begin to feel your own reaction. It was like this with my grandmother. My mum has always been close to her mother and has remained deeply involved in her parents' lives, so I'm used to being there, in the middle of things, when stress levels rise. I've written before about how much my grandmother means to me, but it wasn't until now, until after the worst of it, that I've realized just how frightened I was at the thought of losing her.

My grandmother is doing well this week, back at home (with extra help), and so very grateful to be out of the hospital. My grandfather is equally relieved to have his wife back at home. Spirits have been lightened and as scared as I was, I'm optimistic. I feel like the worst is behind us and it's time to celebrate by getting back to the rest of my world. Holy cow, you guys, did you realize that it's the third week of January? Why didn't you tell me it was moving so quickly? Can you give me head's up next time?

But I have a plan. 

I wrote those resolutions  (and these) last week, quite of few of them if you remember. I mentioned a few times that I created this extensive list with the goal of taking small, manageable steps toward the life I love. These aren't gargantuan goals that require me to give up everything I love, or adopt a new life philosophy. I can still schedule in plenty of time to lounge on the couch watching Girls (yay!) this winter. I'm excited about all the cooking and sharing of food that's included in my list. Less excited about the dentist. Either way I've decided to work this list into my everyday life and I'm going to incorporate my progress for you here each week. There are 100 resolutions on my list and I'm going to attempt to tackle two each week (give or take a handful). I am entering this project with the understanding that I can interpret and re-interpret my list as time goes on. This list will require some commitment but it isn't intended to serve as some kind of resolution boot camp. 

I've printed off my resolutions and I'm all set to go. In between my regular posts (and my two jobs), I'll let you know how things are going. What projects are you working on this week?