A month of life lessons;-)

I can't believe a month has gone by since I last posted. It had been my dear hope that when I posted again I would open with the words that a new baby was on the way, but such is not the case. I also felt a bit hypocritical posting about frugality as we went through the very expensive IVF process. We are blessed that we can afford this route, in part due to years of being frugal, though, so maybe it's all connected and we are not giving up hope yet on that much longed for third child.

In other areas, life could not be better. I am LOVING the writing process, and will have the second draft ready for a line edit within about two weeks now. The phrase writing is rewriting is the truth!!! Writing/revising really is a skill, so I expect I will have to work very hard to finally get it right, but when I'm working, the hours just flow by, so I know there's something very good in that.

My pact with Greg to spend nothing except on food and necessities till January 1, 2011, has been broken about eight times, mostly on garden items. But that is still a lot less than it otherwise would have been, with far fewer trips to the thrift stores and garage sales. I've tried to use the extra time to declutter and have probably brought over 600 items to donate in the past few months, clothes, toys, books, household stuff, decorations, magazines, etc. I've done with several closets, which was a great feeling. Part of me is appalled at all the time I had to have spent buying those 600 items, not to mention the costs. I read recently about a movement among some parents to limit the number of toys their kids own to twenty. When I think how much tidier my house/closets/basement would be with just twenty toys, it has real appeal. But I also know that I wouldn't be satisfied with 20 plants in the garden, so can I impose that sort of retriction on the kids?

Greg turned 42 on Sunday, and we had a little celebration. I realized I had shared almost two decades of birthdays with him, and how blessed I am to go through life with such a wonderful person.

I finished reading the Happiness Project, which I loved, loved, loved. The author took a year to see if she could make her already good life even happier and brought her impressive research skills (she'd clerked for the Supreme Court) to the subject and found a myriad of ways to do so. I must have tabbed fifty pages before I got an overdue notice from the library.

Good wishes to a happy day! Eileen