Revisiting the List and the Awesomeness of the Universe

I've been meaning to revisit my Mondo Beyondo List of dreams to see what's happened since I wrote it up.  Also, I'm sure some of the things I wrote down are no longer things I'm interested in.  So here's a little progress update on the awesomeness of the Universe.

T holding a part of the Universe

• Live in a nice house in Dublin (Ireland), with our dogs

Well, sort of.  We're going on vacation to Ireland for 3 weeks, sans dogs, unfortunately.  But we should see if we like it first, right?

• Expand our house to have a separate room for Trillian to do school work, a bigger craft room for me, a luxurious soaking tub, a welding/torch space for me and TJ, enough storage for everything

I'll probably have to break this one down into parts, but after vacation we're going to call someone for an estimate on how we can expand our house to get the craft room, a guest room and some storage. 

• Go through our house top to bottom and organize it. Get rid of everything we don't need or use or love.

In progress.  Anyone need an old XBOX/DDR pad?  How about a 20 year old subwoofer?

• Organize *all* my email Inboxes and be able to keep up

After reading Laura Vanderkam's 168 Hours, I'm not sure this is a priority, except at work.  So GMail will likely be delightfully overflowing for a while.

• Organize all of our photos. Make albums.

Making progress.  I'm about halfway through 2010 and 2011.  Sigh.  But getting there!

• Have just a few really sharp high quality knives (instead of a ton of dull ones)

Done!!  We "donated" all of our extra knives and the knife block that was taking up space to my parents' place here which is an improvement for both of us.  Now we have about 6 knives that we use *all the time* on a magnetic wall rack.  I can't tell you how happy this makes me.  Weird, huh?

Spend 3-4 weeks per year traveling somewhere interesting

In a week, we'll be leaving for Ireland.  Dream vacation, since I was a kid.  Woot!

• Spend one weekend in a (local) fancy hotel all by myself.

Done, Mama Weekend Away was a big success in January!

• Minimize commitments and stay home, but still have some time to myself during the week

Work in progress.  Writing this one down made me do better at looking at our calendar as a whole, so that I don't overcommit us.  Life has been a lot more chill.  I also stopped taking custom orders in my Etsy shop and stopped wasting time on Facebook and both of those has done wonders for my stress level and available time.

• Make money on blogging, papercrafting, other projects @ home

Not much to speak of here, but I am making *tiny* money on my blog again.  Enough to pay for the domain name, and maybe a Starbucks chai or two.  That's progress though.

• Stop having that panicky stressed feeling most of the time

Done.  Not sure exactly how, but we worked this out and life is good.

• Stop focusing/worrying about money

Also done.  Much more zen about money, which is good since we're down to 0.65 of an income :)

• Help people get what they want out of work-life balance. Be a great example.

Not sure if I'm achieving anything here but I've talked to several people at work interested in working part-time or on a flexible schedule.  I may also be interviewed (anonymously) for a work-life balance article in the next week (not sure of the publication).

• Get cards or papercrafts published in a magazine

Well, not quite papercrafty, but my Hooray necklace is going to be featured in the June 2012 issue of Bead Trends magazine, also run by the Cards Magazine people.  It's a baby step, right?

• Learn to take great photos and document our lives

I started Project Life this year and am nearly "caught up".  At least we're in the same month I left off.  I'm loving this exercise because not only does it "force" me to do a little craftiness every week, but it also reminds me to take pictures of us hanging out, even if we're not doing anything particularly special. 

• Enjoy my marriage to the fullest
• Stop keeping score

These are related, and again, a work in progress.  But life is good.

• Send T to the best school for her, regardless of cost

The new preschool is working out well despite my propensity to worry about things that don't really matter.  She is so excited to go there, and her teachers are excited and happy to see her.  What more can I ask?

• *Want* to live a healthy life and eat right, exercise etc. Not have it be a chore.

I wish I could check this off and say "Done!", but I can't.  However, my mindset is different.  It's not a chore.  Eating right is a gift to myself and when I'm mindful about it, it's easy.  But I still have to work hard at it.  I suspect I always will.

• Speak fluent Spanish

We're nowhere near fluent, but T and I are enjoying our Spanish class together.  She got to practice at a local Mexican restaurant, where our waiter was thrilled to find out she knows a few words of Spanish.  She loved it too!

• Have a quail parade of awesome kids

Maybe not quite a quail parade yet, but we're awaiting the arrival of Baby X' (read as Baby X Prime) in October.  Or, as T will tell you "my mama has a baby in her tummy!".  Woot!  Sometimes the Universe really does have its own plan!