You love me good

First, some good news. Graham's fever broke overnight and he is on his way to good health again!

Last night he and I were chatting, and I told him, "Graham, I love you SO much." He replied, "Yeah, you love me good." That's pretty much my parenting goal: to make sure my children feel I love them good.
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Had a dream last night that I was picking up dirty dishes from around the house. How impoverished my inner life must be. I weep.
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Now for some entropy-fighting talk. Zach discovered a new product called OmniFocus and I think it's great. It's based on the Getting Things Done approach and helps you manage the multitude of tasks rattling around in our mental to-do lists.

How is this useful to someone who dreams about cleaning up dirty dishes? Well, right now I have half a dozen projects in the pipeline, and numerous single-item tasks that defy categorization (or maybe I just haven't assigned them to a project yet... another to do item, I suppose). One of my projects is to generate some doula work for the spring. So under that umbrella are items like put out my business cards at the local coffee shop (errand) and update my website (computer). One of the cool features of the system is that you can add items while you're in another application. For example, I came across a cool-looking nonprofit online recently (Train a Midwife) and I wanted to look into it further, but I was in the middle of something else. I sent the link to my OmniFocus inbox, and voila! I didn't have to waste mental energy trying to remember to check it out, and I didn't forget about it either. It's like having a second brain that takes care of all the detritus rattling around in this one, freeing me up to focus on more important and interesting stuff. Oh, and it lets me make infinite lists. I love to make lists.

Bonus Post!

I'm reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. I love it. Ms. Kingsolver is one of those people who shames me with her productivity, managing a mini-farm, a family, and -- oh yeah -- a fabulous writing career. But in spite of my shame, I'm inspired. I've been slowly but steadily growing interested in living a life that is more in touch with the natural world ever since Graham was born, and eating locally is a big part of that. I realize that for most of my life I've been completely out of touch with what I eat, not knowing where it comes from, whether it's in season, or whether if, it's an animal, it lived a decent life. I'm ready to make some drastic changes in the next few years, especially when it comes to growing my food. I keep telling Zach that I want some "lay-and" -- I'm thinking Wimberley.

The Slow Food movement has been mentioned several times in the book, and it's something that appeals to me a lot. I admit that the first time I heard of it I assumed it was a group of psychos who wanted us to literally cook slowly. I had, and have, a lot to learn.

In other news, Graham has a nasty mystery illness. Fever since Wednesday, but he acted normal until Thursday evening, when his fever spiked to 103 and he went to bed at 5:30. It's been up and down today... long periods of cheer, aside from stir-craziness. Hopefully he will be well soon.

First Post

This won't be momentous. Hobbinski has mentioned several times that he wants me to blog. Also, my mother is reading Zach's blog, and it's only fair that we should both be cyber-stalked by her. And, you know, posterity and all that. So, here it is.