BMBR: Under the Whispering Door by T.J. Klune

 A lovely romance story where even death can't get in the way of personal growth and the love that arises from it. 

As usual, TJ Klune masterfully weaves his tale in such a way that you feel like you are right there in the teashop, and that you know the characters personally.

Wallace, a man no one loves, and whose death brings this story to mind (and a quick verification search lead to this one), dies alone, at work, and finds love after death. 

Not as depressing a story as it sounds, and is in fact quite beautiful.

The moral remains, though: there is more to life than your work, and if not, at least don't be an asshole about it.

Planner Prompt Week 42: Reflect on a time you were relaxed.

 This week's planner prompt is to reflect on a time that you truly felt relaxed and at peace. What contributed to that feeling? How can you bring that feeling into your everyday life?

Well, it was probably when I was well rested and had a massage and chiropractor visit on the same day. Any day where I don't have to clean the house. Days where I feel like I've accomplished my to-do list. Oh, I went for a hike last weekend, just me and my dog. No whining kids. No other people around. The first 3.5km were great. Quiet, peaceful. The last 2km I may have been a bit whiny (seriously, how many uphills can there possibly be at the end of a hike?), but the feeling of accomplishment afterwards was worth it.

Every day, though? I could see myself trying to check off more daily tasks. Not all of them, but pick one that will be satisfying to complete each day, even if it's just walking the dog. Maybe I'll put myself in a time-out for five minutes each day.

Or maybe I'll just take a moment to sit in the car for a minute before driving (it is warm-up-the-car weather right now), and eat a chocolate that no one knows about.

WWW: You Are an Astronaut. Describe Your Perfect Day.

I have had the most perfect day. 

We have just left a suitable planet. Uninhabited, but habitable. Air so clean, no one passes out from lack of oxygen, or an abundance of smog. Water so pure, you can actually drink it. I wanted to stay, truly. But, circumstances made that impossible.

Those circumstances being orders, of course.

It wasn't the take-off into space that made this the perfect day. Nor was it the last meal of real food on the ground. 

It's that feeling you get when you look back at the planet you've just left behind, and you realize just how small you are. And how lucky you are, to see just how insignificant you are. How many people get to realize that? How many people get to look into the vast

Timed: Will publish as is when the timer goes off.

Timed Entries

I never have time to write, so therefore never have time to blog. 

Due to unforeseen circumstances and a rare avoidance of going back to bed for an hour, I have time this morning. I washed up, got 1/4 dressed, and climbed back in bed but with my laptop and a cup of tea, all because I thought, maybe I'll read. 

Which led to the thought, maybe I should write. It is Wednesday Writer's Workshop day after all. Writing takes me forever, so then I thought, well, we could set a timer. And if the timer goes off before the story is done? Then that's where it ends, my friends. And that's where it gets published.

So, with twenty-two minutes left on the clock, here I am, sipping my tea and coming up with a plan. I think all WWW (Wednesday Writer's Workshop) entries will be timed from now on. They could get five minutes, and they might get forty. Depends on the day.

I will do the same for other entries too, but some entries will have the luxury of not being published until they're done (multiple timed sessions). A huge block for me has been time, and the perceived absence of it. I need to let go of the idea that if I don't have an hour or two, then I don't have time to write. Micro sessions. Set the habit. At least I'll be writing. 

I'll label them appropriately. If I have the time...

I'm going to head into the land of Drafts. There's something about an Astronaut sitting in there. Maybe I'll finish the story, and maybe I won't. But it will get published at the zero mark. Thirteen minutes left.

Planner Prompt Week 25: Pause before Work

 Firstly, no, you didn't miss weeks 11-24. I did. 

But this week's prompt was incredibly apt.

"Before starting work each day, pause and take three conscious deep breaths in and out."

    -Saint Belford 2024 week 5.

It's one of the last weeks of school and the kids have had something going on every. single. day., or I have, and my husband went on his annual fishing trip.

I appreciate DH every day, and his annual trips away make me appreciate him even more. He does all the grocery shopping, mows the lawn, and keeps the children alive after school. I had a week full of getting up at 4:30 to hit the gym, making my lunches, getting the kids out the door (they can help with breakfast, and while they are capable of making their own lunches, at this point they grab a granola bar from the pantry and we all pretend like that's amazing), PAC meetings and year-end potlucks, grocery shopping between work and said meetings and mowing a horrendously overgrown lawn after said potluck, work, more gym, more stuff, and eventually washing the don't-put-me-in-the-dishwasher dishes stop getting washed, and then you have to stop in the school in the a.m. to do stuff before work, and I don't even know if this sentence is grammatically correct, nor do I care it's been that busy, so believe me when I say that I actually used the word "frazzled" when someone at work asked me how I was that day.

Then I went to note something in the pre-weekly spread of my planner, and there it was. The best advice for this week if I ever saw it.

I Need to Start Writing Down My Random Thoughts

 Because I've had quite a few good ones, and now they're gone. 

And, not just singular random thoughts, but thoughts that lead to other thoughts and then it's just a big random train, and I'm grinning and possibly giggling, and my kids, who are in the car with me, are like, "what are you smiling about?" and I'm like, how do I possibly explain this without coming off as a crazy person?

When we're driving somewhere, my husband often asks me what I'm thinking about. 

I'm daydreaming, obviously, but do I tell him that I'm daydreaming about how I'm a character in Supernatural, but the character is actually my character that will be in a book one day, and she's just been inserted into an episode (an episode that doesn't exist by the way), or maybe Sam and Dean have been inserted into a chapter of her book? And oh look, the trees along the highway are all pretty and gold!

Yeah, Sam and Dean have messed up royally and now my character has to save their asses. Actually, someone else messed up a spell, but they still need help saving the day.

What I say, of course, is that I'm thinking about how much I enjoy hanging out with the kids.

Planner Prompt 2024 Week 10: Savings Tracker

 This week it is suggested that if we are not currently using our Savings Curator (Saint Belford's Curation planner has a hefty section devoted to saving money, including an expense / earnings tracker, with sections on problem solving how to get more money coming in), then we could use the monthly expense tracker to track online purchases.

I love this planner so very much. This right here is one of the best things about it. Not the Savings Curator, specifically, but the fact that the creators know that you aren't going to jump in and use all the features to their full extent right from January first. No, because that would be a great way to set yourself up for failure.

Instead, suggestions weeks in on how to use part of a section help build those little habits a bit at a time. My cat is being so cute right now.

I personally am using the savings curator to track a debt payment, so really I'm only using the first page of it (it has a progress bar).

I could use the monthly bit for tracking budgets for recurring expenses, but I already have a lovely little budget in Excel that tells me what all my regular bills are, and is my paycheque enough to cover them etc.

What I could use the monthly part for, though, is planning out the random "bigger" monthly expenses.

For example, I have a couple hundred dollars each month for things like clothes, shoes, etc. So I could map out who gets new clothes or sporting goods when in the year. It's not budget friendly when I need to replace my bras and get new hikers at the same time that my kids sign up for hockey at the same time that my husband needs five new shirts and so on. We need to take turns.