Author: roberts77

It’s Camping Day, It’s Camping Day!

roberts77 Uncategorized

Always something going on here, Last Saturday my son left for Boy Scout Camp, Friday my daughter and I leave for Girl Scout camp. I never really saw myself as a camper, but now, I can hardly wait. We joined scouts when the kids were in elementary school and it has been one of the best things for our family, both together and separately as our kids learn independent skills.

They are both 15, but when I say it is time to pack, they ask what’s my number? Which means how many days of items do I need. (7days= 7 shirts, pants etc)

They know how to pack for camp, and can go away for a week, on their own. The first time they did this I was so nervous, but the look of pride when they came back, and all the new skills they could now do on their own, and the growth they shared at the end of that week, priceless.

tourist lying in camping tent near shore
Photo by Brady Knoll on Pexels.com

Updates

roberts77 Uncategorized ,

Here’s the plan, 6/1 I plan to Launch the site on all my social media platforms

The week of 5/25, I plan to do a soft launch, to my friends and family.

To do list, finish the Camaro backstory, and add a plans page

Next, I want to continue my website classes, and tweek the site. Ongoing

In the midst of all this, the school year is coming to an end, my son is off to boy scout camp, my daughter and I are going to girls scout camp, I have a girls weekend in Memphis planned, and a little foot surgery. Still have to work and that is just June.

cars ahead on road
Photo by Taras Makarenko on Pexels.com

Getting Things Done

roberts77 Uncategorized , ,

One project I have been working on this year, is working through the book Getting Things Done, by David Allen. I have been able to move this website forward by implementing the strategies in this book. I was happy to understand that I already had some of these practices in my bag of tricks, like if it will take less then 2 minutes do it then and get it out of the way.

So today, I am looking at the cliff notes version of the program, and it is the 6 level model for reviewing your work.

50K Feet- Life

mountains and clouds outside of an airplane window
Photo by Dan Gold on Pexels.com

40K Feet- Vision 3- 5 years

30k Feet- 1-2 year goals

20-ft- areas of responsibility

10ft current projects

Runway- Current Actions

Today I am looking at 50K ft- Life what do I want my life to look like

The first thing that comes to mind is Easy. I want things to be easier, not a big chore to do one thing or another.

I’d like my car to be finished so I can spend my retirement traveling to car shows

I’d like my family to be happy and healthy

More Vacations, and maybe a pool.

What does your 50K Ft view look like?

Happy Mother’s Day!

roberts77 Uncategorized , ,
Happy Mother’s Day!

I hope everyone had a great day. The family fixed me breakfast and gave me cards. My husband took them to the store for gifts, gave them a spending limit, and told them to get something they thought I would like. I love this! My daughter got me a necklace, with a mother of pearl charm, for relaxation, and my son got me a bumper for my apple watch, very thoughtful. This experiment gave them a money lesson, working with a limit, and got them to think about me and what I might like, want, or need. I got to see how they think as well. My daughter and I have been working on relaxation and managing emotions, so this fits right in. My son loves technology, and he explained how easy it is to break the apple watch’s face, which would protect it. Very practical. My husband got me a beautiful bouquet of Tulips, which are my favorite flower. I also don’t remind them of mother’s day. I feel like they should remember, and TV and Hallmark send out enough reminders.

My sister-in-law has a different approach. She reminds the family Mother’s Day is coming and picks out some items and puts them in the amazon cart to pick from. She got a beautiful set of Turkish Lamp’s. Either approach is great. We both had a great day. We met up later in the afternoon with all the kids, played outside, and grilled out. It was a beautiful day.

We also asked the kids what their favorite memory of mom was. My son commented how he enjoyed the activity we had just completed yesterday, going through some old pictures to find some of the Camaro ( to be posted soon). Not sure if he felt on the spot, which was the first thing he could think of, or if it was true. Later that day, he took pictures of our day, and he said we might want to look back on these later. {insert love and pride here}

My daughter said she remembers when she was little how I had gone away for work and how happy she was when I came back home. {insert mom guilt here} She did not appear to be saying this some kind of guilt trip, but more to the fact that she likes it when I come back home. Why am I always psychoanalyzing what my kids say, and what it means, and how will this impact them when they are thirty????

As for me, my favorite memories of them, other than the day they were born, of course, The day we picked Bailey up from her first Summer Girls Scout Camp. This was a completely different kid; she was bold, independent self-assured as she took me around and showed us all the stuff she did all by herself for the week. For Gunner, when we went camping on our own and took charge of the weekend, he told me what he wanted to do and managed all the camping equipment and fire cooking. He did not need me to take care of him, and we had a great time.

Who’s my audience?

roberts77 Camaro, Uncategorized , , , ,

As you might have noticed, my topics are a little scattered, like my brain. Are we a car site, a mommy blog, a working blog, what? Well, all of the above and then some. Like most women these days, I am not just one thing. So I am hoping to attract other like-minded people to my site. Car lovers, please follow my car stories and how I figure out how to get that done while doing everything else. Moms, please follow along with the antics I have in my family, and maybe you will relate my car project to a project in your life. And maybe, there is another woman out there like me, trying to get her car done and raise a family too. Let’s see…

Early Morning Call

roberts77 Uncategorized

One of my best friends called me early this morning. She does not usually call so early, so I answered. She needed to vent about how here cleaning lady had moved all her stuff. 🙂

I can definitely see why that would be frustrating, but I also remember the days, when she was her own cleaning lady. Laugh that shit off. Gotta run the cats are tearing up my house….

Building a Website

roberts77 Uncategorized , ,
Building a Website

Today, I got a todo list for building this site, I got an email (robin@purplecamaro.com), I played with some graphics for a logo, very exciting.

I let the kids stay home from school today. With Covid, if they have the sniffles they can’t go to school. Something we have yet to identify is blooming here in FL, so we all have it. Gunner said, he could not go back to sleep, and I was dragging myself around to drive him to school, so I suggested he come to the beach with me this morning to do yoga. It was nice to spend some time with him this morning. Can’t do it all the time, but sometimes a mental health day is a good thing.

Women cause blindness in Men

roberts77 Uncategorized , ,

As I was aimlessly scrolling through Instagram reels, (sucked into the time vortex) I noticed that in 2021, in the age of equality among men and women, many women still have the same complaints about men. The famous, “Give us a back rub, only a Back rub”, reel. Or my husband doesn’t see the dirty dishes in the sink, or all the other chores around the house. My husband is stay at home Dad, he is a great husband and father, and he will do anything I ask him to do. But that is just that, I have to ask. Arrrgh so annoying, the old do I want to be right or do I want to be happy debate.

My husband has always asserted a line, that I don’t agree with, but I am beginning to believe to be true, “that is what mom’s do.” I am not saying its right, but I understand.” Let me explain.

When the twins were babies, they had a crib in the room with us. They would cry and wake up in the middle of the night. I would look over at my husband, sound asleep as if nothing was happening. I would wake him up and ask him to help and he would do so with out argument, and exclaim, “wow I did not hear them.” How is this possible?! they are a foot from your head! He explained that this happend with his first wife as well, the kids would cry in the middle of the night, and before he could wake up enough to understand what was happening, she was up with a bottle and back to bed. So he got a customed to sleeping through it, (Thanks First wife.)

I travel sometimes for work. So while I am out of the house, he has to get up with the kids, and clean the house and cook dinner. He does a great job at it, I come home the house is clean, kids are fed and living. Not the way I would do things, but I had to get over that. When I am not home, he can hear the kids cry and see the chores that need to get done, but when I am home, he can no longer hear the children or see dirt. Fascinating. My mear presence makes dirt and sound inconceivable to him. If only I had something that could do that for me.

Happiness

roberts77 Uncategorized ,

This morning on my bike ride I was listening to ‘Go Ask Ali’ podcast, by Ali Wentworth. She was talking with Arthur Brooks, about the study of happiness. This topic is something I have been working on my whole life. The reason I went to school for Psychology, and what I am working for every day in my own life. The thought that I took with me today from this podcast, is that happiness and unhappiness are not opposites, but separate buckets. Meaning to work to improve happiness by lessening unhappiness doesn’t work, but instead, to work on improving happiness.

Think of them as instead of yin and yang or a teeter-totter, but more a bar graph. Happiness could be equal to unhappiness, happiness could be double unhappiness. or you could have zero unhappiness and also zero happiness. (Insert light bulb here)

This got me thinking about all kinds of things, but mostly the lifelong search for happiness. Not that I was unhappy, but to the point above, I was focusing on gathering happiness to offset the unhappiness, but it doesn’t work like that.

This topic is especially important to me nowadays, as my daughter is battling depression, as many teenagers are during these crazy times. How do I teach her about managing her own happiness, something that at almost 50 years of age I am still learning? But that is it, right? Happiness is an ongoing journey, it is not an item to check off the to-do list. Ah, I reached Happiness, check, and now I will live here the rest of my life. No, it is a trail with hills and valleys, and twists and turns and it is our responsibility to find the happiness in the twists, as much as the downslopes.

And what looked like happiness to me at her age, 15, looks very different than happiness at 50. At 15, I wanted to graduate high school, have friends, have a boyfriend, move out and make my own rules, (ROFL) go to college, get married, and have babies. But I had no idea all the work that came with those items that I thought would bring me happiness.

While I am happy to have achieved all of those things, that is not happiness to me now. Happiness looks much smaller. Seeing my children happy, in the smallest of moments, talking to my husband on the patio over a cup of coffee, yoga at the beach, a morning bike ride.

I’m off to the patio for coffee and happiness. What will make you happy today?

Breakfast on the Beach

roberts77 Uncategorized

Today, the family got out at 6:30 am, on a Saturday and had breakfast on the beach. We brought our camping stove, and supplies, our in-laws across the street brought some supplies, and we headed out. It was a great morning. The weather was just perfect, a little overcast, so it did not get too hot and we got there in time for the sunrise.

My husband and his brother had breakfast on the beach often when they were teens. Their mom would go out at like 5:30 in the morning, down off of Dania beach, and secure picnic tables, and get the coals going. The guys remembered it as a good time, and we had wanted to recreate this for our kids for some time and finally got a chance to. I felt a moment where I was truly relaxed happy and present, I was enjoying the sunrise and watching the kids frolic in the surf, well, frolic as much as teenagers do. I reminded myself that while they grumble now, they will remember this fondly. I had forgotten about all my “to do’s and should do’s and was at peace. I had forgotten all about Covid for a second too, as no one on the beach had masks. Until I walked into the bathroom, and this lady came in with a mask, and I was like oh now, I had forgotten something. but continued back up the beach to peace. A really great morning.

Wordpress Social Share Plugin powered by Ultimatelysocial