Thanksgiving

My Thanksgiving holiday started on Wednesday. I worked from home in the morning while my car was in the shop getting some work done. Nothing major a couple new tires and some routine maintenance that I had neglected. I now have four new tires and am officially ready for winter!
The afternoon was spent cleaning/picking up around the house and prepping a few food items.  I really like getting ready to host events. I like thinking about which dish is best for each food item and then thinking about the order that each item needs to be cooked, warmed or served.
After a few hours at home I met up with a couple of friends for pedicures and dinner. It has been way too long since my toes were pampered like that!
Bright and early Thursday morning Chris and I were up doing last minute cleaning and prepping for our families. We hosted a 2 pm dinner for Chris' mom, brother, sister and my mom, dad, sister and brother-in-law. It was sure cozy in our little house!
I was so thankful to have a cozy house to share with my family- it was a wonderful day of stories, laughter, games and food. Wherever you are I hope you were also among family, friends and good times.
Happy Thanksgiving!

Mentally Stuffed, Physically starving

Recently I attended a conference in St. Paul. I know I’ve talked a lot about it, but it had a big impact on me!

I started my career as a naturalist by being dropped in the middle of the St. Paul/Minneapolis with a bag of fishing poles, a truck full of activity bins and a weekend of training. Luckily for me, I took to it like a fish in water (ha) and knew from my first successful activity that I was hooked for life.

Flash forward a several years and here I am. No longer in the front-lines but reaping the benefits of being an excellent naturalist.

I’ve been struggling with the transition from front-line naturalist to administrator. At first it was because the responsibilities were so foreign; now it’s because I’ve lost track of the naturalist in my role as an administrator.

Back to the conference: it was bursting with opportunities for me to reconnect with my inner naturalist- but more specifically to the naturalist administrator.  Higher education, training, workshops, networking... I took pages and pages of notes that week. Not just about the sessions I was sitting in, but about things I could do back at work.

Meals were rushed affairs of “What session did you attend? How was it? What did you learn? What are you going to next?” I think a few morsels hit my mouth.  I put meals at conferences and wedding receptions in the same category: tons of talking, not very much eating and I’m always hungry when I get home.

Regardless of hunger, I met new people and feel like I finally got my spark back. I’m seriously evaluating my next step in this field and I suspect it will mean I will finally be heading back to school.

After chatting with a local professor I realized afterwards that someday I want to be the person that people seek out as a resource. I want to be so good at what I do I’m recognized widely for my role in the naturalist field.

For now, I’ll try to be satisfied with filling up mentally at workshops and trainings and one day soon graduate school. I’ll try to remember to pack a snack.

This or that?

This captures my “free time” perfectly. Like everyone my free time is limited but the things I can do, and should do, or endless. When it comes to reading I’m constantly torn between the light and fluffy or the serious and thought provoking. Satisfy my appetite or feed my soul? 


So what am I trying to do on my blog? I’m going to share the world I live in, through all of the unique lenses in my head. 
* I’m a 30-something living in the beautiful city of Minneapolis.  
* I’m the wife of an Iraq war veteran: an amazing man who serves in the Army National Guard.
* I’m a young woman learning to live with Sjogren’s Syndrome.
* I’m a naturalist and environmental educator.


With humor, sarcasm and that thing called common sense I’m going to write about those things and about how they affect my everyday life.


Back to that magazine v book battle... the magazine won today. The book however will win the war and will eventually find a place for itself on my bookshelf while the magazine is set out for recycling.

First snow!

Saturday, Nov 19- 11am

Sunday, Nov 20- 1 pm

Finish your transaction and THEN finish your conversation

I love evaluating customer service. Especially the service cashiers at grocery stores provide. I worked at grocery store throughout college and hopefully I’ve never committed any of these no-nos.  

I was wrapping up at a store this afternoon when a manager called out to the cashier “Charlie, Charlie! What are you still doing here?”  Of course this grabbed Charlie’s attention and he stopped paying me any attention. I counted in my head one, two, three, four... as he waited held my card, receipt and coupons hostage in his hand and held a conversation about what time his shift ended.

...ten, eleven, twelve... Couldn’t he just hand me my things and let me go?.... sixteen, seventeen, eighteen... Shouldn’t the MANAGER know better?... twenty one... Oh hello! You remembered I’m here!

Tight polite smile and I’m outta here. 

Stupid Minnesota nice kept me from saying “HELL-OOO! Can I go now?”

Living with Sjogren’s Syndrome: Part 2

While reacquainting myself with my blog I reviewed some past blog entries. An entry from February 2011 Living with Sjogren’s Syndrome was one of my last posts before I went on my, ahem, sabbatical.  I figured an update was due.

In that entry I explained how my outlook had changed due to my recent diagnosis. I’ve been doing my best to continue to do these things:

• I carefully plan my days to bank extra time and energy for evening dinner or happy hour plans.  I also know I need to schedule down time for myself.

• I work hard at work, use my comp time to go home early when I can and try really hard to leave work at work!

• I eat healthy as much as possible when confronted by bad choices I try to remember how awful I feel after I indulge in something delicious- but bad for me.

• I try to exercise regularly. This is probably the hardest because I feel better when I’ve been exercising regularly.  But, when I feel like crap it’s hard enough to find my work-out clothes much less get out the door!

Regular exercise continues to be challenging and eating healthy is probably the biggest and best variable to predict my energy level. (As I sit here with a giant piece of cake...)

I didn’t realize until very recently that my ability to plan, create lists and prioritize are the skills keeping me afloat in all aspects of my life. Whether it’s work, Thanksgiving dinner or planning my blog posts you can bet I have a list, a timeline and benchmarks to make sure I successfully reach my goal with the least amount of stress.

So I found it ironic that I read that post when right now, I’m incredibly run down and have persistent muscle pain permeating my body. I’ve been feeling pretty down on myself for not feeling well: I should be pushing through this, I should have been eating better and doing a better job of (fill in the blank).

Today I realized I need to add a bullet to that list I made back in February:

• I will acknowledge my bad day, days, week or weeks.  Having a bad day here and there is allowed, understandable and is NOT failure.

It sounds silly but it was a very liberating realization.

Blog Health

Dinner and silent auction at Dodge Nature Center. 11/10/11

I spent the majority of last week at the National Association for Interpretation's annual fall conference. It was in St. Paul and I was very happy that I was able to attend. The hot topic was social media in the field of interpretation.

In case you're confused by the term interpretation. The field of environmental education is filled with park rangers, naturalists, science teachers, and interpreters. I know it's confusing and ask any naturalist (the preferred term of folks in my neck of the woods) they'll do their best to sort it out with you.

Back to social media... it was all over the conference! I attended a session titled WHY BLOG? Officially, I attended this session because I want to start a blog at work. Unofficially, I really enjoy the blog that the presenters author: The IBD Blog.

I learned a lot at this session. A blog needs to say something (preferably in a unique voice) and it should support a mission, vision or achieve some established goals. As a blogger I should know my audience and be consistent. Hmm...

I started my blog when I was a naturalist constantly on-the-move and wanted/needed a way to stay connected with family and friends. That was enough to carry this blog through the years. Once I settled and stopped moving my blog started to falter. (And the guilt started to set in, sorry Jena!)

So here I am. Ready to evaluate my blog:
Unique voice- the many hats I wear give me a unique perspective.
Mission- I don't have one... I'll have to work on that one!
Audience- Family and friends
Consistency- I'm embracing the planner in me and I think I've got this one covered...

So, I haven't been taking very good care of my blog, but let's see if I can nurse this baby back to health!