I recently found a new blog that I am coming to absolutely adore.  The blog came to my attention through the Outdoor Bloggers Summit, the blogging organization I run.  At first glance, I thought that maybe Henhouse Pottery was a mismatch for our organization, but the more I read, the more I came to see that the writer of the blog, Julia, got it.  She understood how important it was to conserve our resources and protect the natural places we all love.  She also understood that humans need a connection to nature, and she’d set about finding ways to make that connection herself.

One way Julia, her husband Matt and her son Quinn connect with nature is through keeping bees.  I’ve never been a big fan of bees, but I’ve never spent a lot of time up close and personal with them either. Other than shooing them away when they get too close to me, I don’t think I’ve spent more than thirty seconds paying attention to bees.  Apparently, I’ve been missing a lot, at least according to Julia.

She’s written a book, which I was lucky enough to receive through winning a contest she had on her blog, about her family’s first year of beekeeping.   It’s called A Sweet Life, and it’s a terrific story of how one family learned to interact with nature and the lessons they took away from the experience.  The writing is funny and intospective and I walked away from the book with some new ideas, if only the idea that bees were my friend instead of my enemy.

The book is by turns funny and serious.  On one page you get the story of how a bee flew into Julia’s bee suit, or how she got stung.  On another page, you get thoughts like this, referring to a friend who was looking for meaning in a hard time she was currently enduring:

Maybe walking through the fire isn’t meant to change us into someone better… maybe the growth comes because we want it to, in our acceptance of the fact that there will always be a fire to walk through, and that the fire may never have a reason. We can either react to the things we cannot control or grow from the events that make us feel uncomfortable, uncertain, hurt and out of control.

There are a lot of terrific lessons in this book, and a great story.  You wouldn’t think something as simple as a glimpse into the life of a family learning to beekeep would be fascinating, but it is.  Julia has taken a lot of lessons from her journey as a beekeeper and she shares them in this book.  It’s a good read and I highly recommend it.

It shames me to admit this, but I’ve been slacking when it comes to number two on the 40 things list.  I have good intentions, but there just doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day, and work has been quite demanding lately, so on the weekends I just want to make something fast and easy which doesn’t require a lot of thought.  My goal was to expand my eating habits and I still want to do that, so I figured it was a good time to pull out my cookbooks and see what I could find.

One of the things I have never been able to make is roast chicken.  I seem to have a deficient roasting gene or something.  Every time I try to roast a chicken it comes out overcooked and dry or underdone and awful.  I despaired of ever being able to roast a chicken, and then I found a recipe in Betty Crocker’s Healthy Home Cooking: Over 400 Fast and Flavorful Recipes .  Instead of roasting the chicken, you cook it with broth in a Dutch oven.  It comes out moist and flavorful and perfect.  Best of all the recipe is low in sodium and healthy for you.  I love it.

One recipe that I do want to try comes to me from my Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook.  It’s a recipe for Tuna Noodle Casserole.  I do want to start eating more fish, and tuna noodle casserole is a nice comfort food in colder weather,  so I should give it a try before Winter goes away completely.  It sounds yummy and it’s got some extra veggies and stuff that you don’t normally see in tuna noodle casserole.

Mainly I want to start eating healthier again.  I was doing really well for a while, but I’ve been slacking off a bit lately when it comes to vegetables and fruit.  I’m trying to remember to keep those things in my diet, and to plan my meals that vegetables play a bigger part.  I getting better about eating fruit, but I’m still not great about vegetables.  I seem to do best when I make stir frys or other meals in which vegetables play a part.  If I try to have the veggies separately I usually end up leaving them out.  I’m not sure why that is, but it happens quite a lot.

I do promise that Foodie Friday will be a weekly event from here on out.  Even if I don’t talk about a new recipe, I can talk about recipes I like, cookbooks I’ve tried, and what I’m doing to eat a healthier diet.   Hopefully some of what I say here will be useful to others.

I am having so much fun with this project, and apparently I’m on a roll.  For those of you who want to keep track of what is on my list, I’ve created a page called, appropriately enough 40 Things List.   Once I get done with these posts, the entire list will be there.  I’ll also probably write a page about the whole project and how it came to be at some point.  That won’t be today, though.  Today we need to examine the next five things on the list.

List Item 26: Expect more good -  This kind of sounds like list item number 24 and it sort of is, but this is more about an attitude adjustment.  I want to wake up every morning expecting wonderful things from the day.  Most days, my current attitude is somewhere between cautious optimism and existential dread.  I want to feel a sense of excitement and wonder about the terrific things that await me.

List Item 27: Stop looking for reasons why – I’ve spent a lot of my life searching for reasons for all the bad things that happened to me in my life.   I guess I thought if I knew the reason I could get closure on certain events in my pass and I could understand how to avoid such problems in the future. The rational part of me knows that such thinking isn’t rational, and this year I want to just live my life and stop trying to understand why things happen.

List Item 28: Ask for and accept help – I’ve always looked at asking for help as a sign of weakness.  That’s probably what led to me sitting in a hospital room scared and alone last year.  I tend to feel that the safest way to be is alone, and the safest thing to do is everything myself.  This year I want to learn to rely on others and to trust that they’ll be there for me when I need them.  I figure if I start asking for help with small things eventually I can work up to the big stuff.

List Item 29: Discuss religion with experts – I consider myself a spiritual person, but I don’t consider myself religious.  While I have seen a lot of good done in the name of religion, and seen it provide comfort and hope, I also think that a lot of bigotry and hatred is fostered by religion.   This year I’d like to discuss different religions with people who are deeply immersed in them and try to find out why religion is a comfort and a support for many people.

List Item 30:  Catch the Christmas spirit – Christmas has never been my favorite time of year.  When I was a kid it was usually a time of stress, fights and drunkenness.  I guess over the years, and probably in self defense, I’ve come to dread Christmas.  This year I want to find the joy that other people seem to take in the season, or I at least want to learn to fake it.  I don’t like feeling like I’m spoiling other people’s enjoyment of the season by being a Scrooge.

Well, that’s almost it.  10 more to go, or two more posts, and the list will be complete.

This list has been so much fun to create so far, and every time I sit down to write one of these posts I discover more things that I want to do and more areas I want to improve.  I really getting excited about how full of change and new discoveries my 40th year is going to be.

List Item 16: Start a Garden – I bought my first house last August and I finally have a yard and a deck.  I will probably start a container garden, just to try things out, but I’m really excited about being able to grow my own vegetables.  It will be healthier and I’ll save money on produce.

List Item 17: Try 1 New Form of Exercise a Month – I’m the Queen of Routine and I tend to do the same things over and over again because they’re comfortable.  This year I want to stretch myself, both literally and figuratively.  The new form of exercise I try can be something entirely new, like swimming or biking, or it can be a new exercise tape.  The form really doesn’t matter, what matters is that I’m going outside my comfort zone.

List Item 18: Meet my Neighbors – I moved into the condo complex where I now live in August.  If I were a “hail fellow well met” kind of girl I would have met all my neighbors in the first week.  I am not, alas, that sort of person.  My goal for the year is to meet the neighbors and at least get to know them well enough to call them by name and pass casual conversation if I see them around.  I’m not looking for best friends forever, I just want to feel a part of the neighborhood.

List Item 19:  Clean Out the Closets -  I tend to be a bit of  packrat.  I hold on to things in case I might need them someday.  One of my goals for this year is to get rid of stuff I don’t need or use, but which someone else probably would need or use.  There are a lot of people out there who need help right now.  It seem selfish to stockpile perfectly good stuff that I don’t need or use.

List Item 20: Volunteer 12 hours a quarter – I feel strongly about volunteering and I know it is something that could benefit both me and my community.  The problem is that I work a lot of hours and I have projects, like this blog, that I do in my spare time.  Finding time to volunteer is a bit of a problem.  12 hours a quarter, however, is only 4 hours a month.  That seems like enough time to be able to do something meaningful, without being so much time that it will cause stress.

Well, with this list I’m halfway to the finish line.  I find my first 20 things really exciting.  I can’t wait to see what will show up on the second half of the list.

For those who missed the other parts of the list, you can find them in these posts:

The First Five Things

The Second Five Things

The Third Five Things

Today I bring you the third group of five things on my 40 things list.  At the end of this post I’ll have 15 things on my list.  It’s been fun to create the list this way.  I had a basic idea of some of the things I wanted to do, but writing these posts has helped me clarify what is going on the list and why.  I’m enjoying watching the list grow, and I hope you are too.

List Item 11: Take a Class Each Season – Our local community college puts out a catalog of enrichment classes every season and every season I look at the catalog and find three or four classes I’d like to take, but I somehow never do.  This year I want to take advantage of this great opportunity.

List Item 12: Write 3 Freelance Pieces for Payment – Part of my job is writing and I get paid to write, but most of the stuff I enjoy writing I’m currently writing for free.  I want to expand my writing career and my goal is eventually to have writing be the way I support myself without being dependant on any on company.  This year I’d like to get paid, and paid well, for three pieces I write.  The piece can be a blog post, and article or a script for a video, I’m not picky about that.

List Item 13: Achieve my Fitness and Weight Loss Goals – In 2008 I lost about 50 pounds after a health crisis.  I’m proud of that achievement, but I’m not yet where I want to be when it comes to my weight and my fitness level.  My goal in my 40th year is to achieve a healthy weight and an appropriate fitness level.

List Item 14: Create a Budget and Stick To It – I’m pretty good at handling my money, but I think I could be better.  This year I want to look at the ways I use my money and figure out if I could be using it more wisely.  I’d like to increase my savings and start planning more for retirement.

List Item 15: Get a Professional Photograph Taken – I don’t photograph well.  While I think I’m a reasonably attractive person,  pictures of my are almost always uniformly awful.  I almost have a phobia about being photographed, and will never release pictures of myself unless absolutely necessary.   This year I’d like a picture I can be proud to share with others.

So, that’s the third list of five things, which means my next post will put me at the halfway mark.  If you missed the first two posts in the series,  here are the first five things and the second five things.

You may, those five of you who read this blog anyway, have noticed that posts have been a little light around here lately.   The problem has not so much been time to write, it’s been inclination to write.  Somehow, without my planning it this way, this blog has become a little bit of a time capsule.  I seem to spend a lot of time going back and analyzing the past.  In one sense this is great, because it has helped me figure out a lot of the reasons I do the things I do.  In another sense it’s not so great, because if I’m analyzing why I do what I do, I’m not actually doing.

I’ve known that for a while, but couldn’t figure out what to do about it, hence my extended silence here.  I found the answer to my dilemma yesterday.

I spent yesterday with my sister and her family.  My sister and I have a checkered relationship.  We’re two very different people and we have not always been close or gotten along well.  As we’ve gotten older, I’ve loosened up a bit and she’s grown up a bit and we’ve learned to appreciate our differences.   One of our main differences is this.  My sister has the confidence of ten lions, and has never met a fear she wouldn’t face.  I’m prety much the opposite.  I want to control everything so nothing bad will happen.  I’ve written blog posts about how well that’s been working for me so far.

As I talked to my sister about her adventures and watched her family, a loving husband and three beautiful kids, I realized that taking chances had worked out for her more often than not.  That isn’t to say that she hasn’t had her share of heartache and disappointment but, overall, she’s gotten the life she wanted.  I can’t say the same for myself.  There’s a lot of things I want that I don’t have, and I think what’s holding me back is fear.  It is rapidly becoming obvious that I need to change that.  Thus the 40 things challenge was born.

I will be 40 on February 5 of 2009.  Given that 2009 will be my 40 year, I’m setting myself a challenge.  During that year I’m going to do 40 things.  They’ll either be things that I’ve talked about doing, or things I’ve been too scared to do, or maybe some things that I haven’t even thought of yet.  The idea is to explore my options and to face my fears.  The goal is to make sure that life I have when I turn 41 is different than the life I had when I turned 40.

From now until the end of 2008 I’ll be making my list.  I’d love to have some suggestions as to what should be on the list.  I have some areas I want to explore, but it would be wonderful to have some input from others.  Please keep in mind this is about expanding my life, not endangering it.  I won’t be climbing a mountain or skydiving.  I’m also not interested, particularly in working on my professional life.  That’s chugging along fine.  What I need to do is work on my personal life, relationships and simply having fun.  Those are the areas I want my 40 things to impact.

So, that’s the plan, in a very brief nutshell.  From now until the end of the year I’ll be making my list and discussing my plan here.  I’ll also need to decide whether I should start on January 1 or on my birthday which is in February.  January would make more sense, but starting on my birthday has a nice kind of symmetry to it.   If anyone has any thoughts on that, I’d love to hear those too.

One of the other blogs for which I write, A Frugal Housewife, has started something called Kick the Habit Monday.  The idea is to pick a habit that you want to break and commit to getting rid of that habit.   You can read more about how the whole things works on that blog.

I have spent part of my day today pondering which habit I should commit to breaking.  I have several habits that I think it would be helpful to break, but there was one that really stood out to me.  A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on this blog about my habit of procrastinating.  I pointed out that procrastination was a way of delaying good things in my life and a way of avoiding tasks that probably wouldn’t be that difficult if I did them right away.

I know procrastination is not helpful and it’s a habit I’ve wanted to be rid of for a long time.  Kick the Habit Monday seems like a good time to start working on changing my ways.

This Wednesday I want to talk about something for which I have been really grateful lately, my health.  After all the issues I had earlier in the year, it may sound odd to say I’m grateful for my health, but I am. It took me almost 40 years but I’ve finally come to comprehend how valuable my health is to me.  I’ve also come to understand that there are a lot of people battling much worse problems than anything that I face.  I’m be very churlish if I were anything but grateful for how lucky I am. .

I’m grateful that my heart, which didn’t even start out fresh from the factory, is responding well to the new medications.  I can proudly say that my heart is healthy and functions perfectly.  At my last cardiologist appointment, Cute Cardiologist said he’d never seen a heart respond so well.  After two surgeries and various medications, my heart is still hanging in there and doing what it’s supposed to do.  Who wouldn’t be grateful for that?

I also grateful that, after years of neglecting my body, I am still able to lose weight and get in shape.  I can run and jump and sweat and get stronger.  I can stand when I want and sit when I want and walk under my own power.  I know, for some people, having that ability just for the day would be the stuff of dreams.  I’m working to never take that ability for granted.

I’m also grateful that my brain is sharp and healthy.  I’ve always been a person who lived half in her thoughts.  Having a brain that can comprehend complex ideas, that can imagine great things and that can be by turns witty, wise and sarcastic is a wonderful thing.  My brain allows me to read at warp speed, to learn new things and to appreciate the beauty around me.  I know, for some people, the brain doesn’t work that way.  I’m grateful that mine does.

I’ve also come to treasure all my senses.  Today I took the office dog out for a potty break.  It was a lovely Fall day, not to warm and not too cold.  I could feel the warm sun on my back and a gentle cool breeze on my skin.  I could see the green grass and the green trees and the clear blue sky.  I could smell the freshly mowed grass that lay around me.  I could hear the chirping of the birds.  It was one brief prefect moment, and I was able to enjoy it all.

Sometimes it’s the simple things that we take for granted that we need to treasure most of all.  On this Wednesday, I pledge to do all I can to protect my health and to stay healthy.  I’m grateful to have the opportunity to do that.

For most of my life I’ve been my own worst enemy.  I know this about myself, and yet I still allow things to happen that I should really know to avoid.  It’s very frustrating.

Take my health for instance.  My heartbeat has been regular, I’ve been feeling healthy.  I made it through a pretty strenuous move last Saturday with no problems at all.  Yet today, my heartbeat is up a little and I’m freaked.  It isn’t even up that much, and I know part of the reason it’s up is that I’m concerned because it’s up and I’m stressing myself out.  I  know this, and yet I keep winding myself tighter and tighter.  The more I tell myself to relax, the more tense I get.  It’s really quite ridiculous.

Then there’s the matter of the old apartment.  I had some furniture left over there that I didn’t want.  I got rid of the sofa and loveseat and single bed without incident.  Now all I have left is a table and chairs.  I had thought the Salvation Army or Goodwill would take them.  They would, as long as I can deliver them, which I can’t do as I have no way to transport them.  What I should have done was had the table and chairs brought to the new place as a precaution.  I, however, was so confident I could get rid of them that I chose not to do that.  Now, it appears I’m stuck.

I don’t understand why I feel the need to treat myself badly at times, but I’d really like it to stop.  I have finally learned to love myself and I’d like to express that by treating myself well at all times, not just when the mood strikes me.  After all, I wouldn’t accept this kind of treatment from anyone else who claimed to love me, why will I accept it from myself.

So, here’s my new resolution.  I’m going to treat myself with kindness and love.  I’m going to stop procrastinating when it comes to doing things that will benefit me.  I’m going to ask for help when I need it and I’m going to reach out to others more.

After all, we only get one life.  I should really put some effort into building that life into one I really want.

How do you learn to trust people?

Maybe that’s a ridiculous question and maybe there’s no answer to it, but I really wish someone could give me a list to follow or some kind of magic elixir that would help me trust people.  I’m struggling with this right now and I don’t know how to fix it.

The simple answer seems to be to just decide to trust people knowing that some people will be untrustworthy.  I wish it were that easy, but it doesn’t seem to be that way, at least not for me.  I expect people to leave me so I leave them first.  I’m afraid people will hurt me, so to protect myself, I hurt them first.  It’s an unintentional hurt, but I know I’ve hurt people all the same. 

What I’ve come to understand is that my reluctance to trust doesn’t stem from other people, it stems from me.  Deep down in some dark corner of my mind, there lurks the thought that I’m not enough.  I think that I, my feelings, my wants, my needs, won’t matter to others,  and so I tend to push them away before they can prove me right.   I put up the barriers and then I blame everyone else for not trying to get past them.   

In the end I know that, before I can place my trust in anyone else, I have to place my trust in myself.  If I believe I’m a person of value, than I have to believe that other people will see that too.   If I start reaching out past my barriers, I have to believe that other people will reach back.   I also have some amends to make.  Regardless of the circumstances, or why I did what I did, I know I’ve hurt some people, and that makes me sad.    I want to start trying to fix some of that hurt, if it is possible to do so. 

I still wish there was a magic spell or something that would make this all easier.  I guess I’ll just have to keep telling myself learning to trust both myself and others will make my life better.

And then I just have to trust that’s true.