Seven Quick Takes

1. I use NFP dot com is live! I am super excited about this project because A) I think more women need to be aware of the ways that artificial contraception is not only NOT HELPING but HURTING them, and that there are better, more natural ways to avoid having 5 million babies if you really don’t want to do that and 2) I love Katie‘s passion and sense of humor and I know that IuseNFP.com will be a great resource for women who are new to fertility awareness and maybe don’t want to hear a lot of religious mumbo-jumbo. Go check it out!

Oh, and be sure to like IuseNFP on Facebook!

2. On a related note, I just found out that I can use the money from my flexible spending account to purchase a fertility monitor. This is totally awesome because it looks like we’re going to have money left over at the end of the year, and if we don’t spend it, we lose it, and I just didn’t care to stockpile dozens of bottles of contact lens solution. I am convinced that I never want to be on “the pill” ever again, and I’m not ready to think about being “done” having kids. I have tried charting my fertility signs as instructed by Taking Charge of Your Fertility but I’m not particularly good at it, so I decided to check out some “lazy” options for NFP; namely, the Lady-Comp.

Isn’t it cuuuuute???

One of my friends has been using it for three or four years now to avoid pregnancy and totally loves it. I love the idea that it does all the “charting” for me and I get to buy it with pre-tax dollars. I’ll keep y’all posted on how happy I am with my purchase, because I know you’re just dying to find out.

3. I think I may finally have stumbled upon a housekeeping plan that will save my sanity. I think I might have mentioned before that I am not someone who enjoys keeping house or who is particularly GOOD at it. In theory, I ought to be, since I’ve read all the books and websites that everyone recommends to slobs (yes, I’m aware of FlyLady, and The Unclutterer, and I love love love The Messies Manual). The thing is that many of these clutter management and cleaning methods advocate doing something about messes as soon as you see them, you know, a little here, a little there, and that just does not work for me. What happens when I try to do “a little here, a little there,” is that I end up puttering around all day every day fighting a neverending battle, resenting my home, my stuff, and my family.

Because I’m a smart person, I realized that this is just no good.

So I’m allocating all major housekeeping duties to Saturday during the day, and I’m not allowed to do those things (laundry, scrubbing toilets, mopping floors, dusting) during the rest of the week. Because I’m giving myself “permission” to be “lazy” on weeknights when I come home from work, I’m also creating an urgency to really get everything done in the alloted time.

I’m not sure this will make sense to anyone else, but it actually does work for me. When I give myself a hard deadline to do something, I do it. But when I have nebulous goals like, “Oh, I would like to get the house clean sometime this week,” it just won’t happen. And then I feel bad about myself and my house looks like crap. Of course, I’ll have to do some daily chores, like making the bed and washing the dishes, and I’ll clean up major messes as they occur (like last night, when my son pooped in the tub!) but for the most part I’m giving myself permission to leave housecleaning for housecleaning DAY. And then I can enjoy myself and my family the rest of the week.

Yeah, I’m a smart person, because it only took me about a decade of domestic frustration to figure this out.

4. Oh, hey, did I mention that I’m pregnant? Because I am

5. That was kind of mean, wasn’t it, just dropping that in the middle of a Friday Quick Takes post? I actually started writing a deep and meaningful pregnancy annoucement post yesterday but it was getting boring so I stopped and now it’s Friday and I want to make sure I get my Quick Takes posted but I couldn’t hold on to the secret any longer. I am super excited about having another baby, but also super anxious. I may likely deal with my anxiety by blogging about it. At least I hope I will, because I think that doing more creative stuff, like writing and art-ing, might actually help me prepare for the birth… and for being mommy to another brand-new person. So excited!

6. So now the rest of the content in this post may actually seem not-so-unrelated. I’m thinking about what we’ll do after having Baby #2 so we can avoid a swift addition of Baby #3, hence the desire to purchase a lazy-NFP-o-meter. (I know that having two children in swift succession would not be the end of the world, but I also know that my husband may have a heart attack if I announce that I’m knocked up while our youngest is still in the fourth trimester.) I also know that I need to stop the insanity that is my current housekeeping routine before we add another exceptionally needy member to the family.

7. And now to round of the random-but-not-randomness of this post, I present you with my last quick take, this great article from New York Times Magazine entitled “Ina May and the Battle for at-Home Births.” Like many natural birth crazies, I’m a total Ina May fangirl. If only we lived in Tennessee so I could give birth at the Farm. Maybe someday

Okay, that’s it, y’all. Go see Jen for more quick takes!

About these ads