7ToS: OOPS

1. Sign of a good vacation: you lose track of what day it is. We are in Florida, where we go every other year with my mom and sisters for the week between Christmas and New Year's. The weather is truly, epically awful this year (it started raining about 11 this morning and never stopped), but we are managing to have a good time anyway.  And you are getting Seven Things on Saturday instead of Friday because I didn't realize what day it was until it was too late.

2.  There are seventeen of us in a big VRBO house, but it's way calmer than it used to be because our collective youngest kid is now 12. No toddlers waking up at dawn these days, which--predictably enough-- I kind of miss.

3. With the weather so awful, we're all grateful that there are a bunch of fun movies to see. We went to Mary Poppins this afternoon, and we'll probably make it to Aquaman, Bumblebee, and maybe Mary Queen of Scots before we go home. (we saw Spidey-Verse before we left and definite thumbs up). No one has ever accused us of having good taste.

4.The promised "what's not working for me" list: This was much harder to think of than the list of what's working that I posted on Tuesday. In fact, for the "what's working" list I thought of another one. What's really working for me right now is carrying a couple of reusable shopping bags in my purse. I use the standard sized ones from Baggu, which come in great patterns and can be rolled up cylinder-style and stashed vertically in a corner of my bag, but anything you like is better than getting a dozen plastic bags every week at the grocery store. The resuable bags usually hold as much as three plastic bags, so you don't need as many trips to carry your groceries in, either.

(If you need motivation for that one, just Google "pictures of plastic pollution." The results make me slightly sick to my stomach.)

5.OK, so what's not working? I need to do better about getting some cardio into my day. When the weather is better, we frequently go for walks. But in the winter, I get really sluggish. I have a treadmill just a few steps away from my bed, and I'm one of the rare people that doesn't mind treadmilling once I get on it. I have audiobooks and podcasts and music to listen to. It's just the mental hurdle of doing it. If you know me IRL, next time you see me ask me if I'm walking.

6.  Not working: I need to be a better friend. Those of you who only see me every few months may not realize how bad I am about this (or maybe you do). I don't even know how to start. This may be a multi-year project. My temptation is to go to the library and start reading up on it, but in this particular case that may not be the best approach, since diving into books and research is one of the things that keeps me from being a good friend. At a minimum, I need to be more intentional about setting up coffee dates or going for walks or whatever. I've been so antisocial this year that I've mostly just waited until people contact me rather than being proactive.

7. Not working: My stalled project from last year to read books I already own instead of buying new ones. I've already talked about this so much that I don't think I need to say more than that. Or I could say what's not working is the stalled clean-out-the-storeroom under the stairs project. I did pretty well on the rest of the house, but I still haven't tackled the most packed, cluttered space we have.

So maybe I could just categorize those two as "I need to continue to chip away at big projects."

That's all for now. I'm suddenly so tired I can barely keep my eyes open. This vacation thing is exhausting. Have a great weekend.