Just being curious.

Where do all these people around me get their time from?

I've never been jealous in my life, but if I were, I would have wished to become one of those people who seem to be at no rush regardless of where they are. Slowly walking down the hall of a Fitness Center, taking their sweet time to take a right turn on an absolutely empty road, walking at a speed of 10 steps a minute at Costco and as if that wasn't enough - stopping to taste each free sample available.

I can't imagine what life with no deadlines feels like. Still just as fulfilling as the one where you dodge around all the time?  Does not being in a rush help at all? Does speeding up through the day make any difference?

I really think one day I should try - for a change - walking sloooowly with a couple of friends of mine towards the gym exit, all three of us in one line in a narrow corridor. Preferably with strollers. Even better - chatting in a high pitched voice to completely block out the steps of the people behind and those excusing themselves trying to pass. The time when I split thinking and doing into two separate processes with two separate timeframes for each - will come! :)  I will be watching peacefully people half-stuck in a Costco egg fridge for more than a minute without looking at the fridge door with homicidal urges.

But today is the one extra day I got this year, - to be spent on achieving something important or catching up. And I neither caught up, nor moved ahead. I still wasted a lot of time dodging around and am still very far behind. All this is very, very personal of course.

Some doctors just know their stuff.

My new ob/gyn is prescribing me a new type of oral contraceptive ("just in case"), and meanwhile is refreshing my memory on its proper use (apparently, again, "just in case"):

-It's important that you take the pill every day...
-Yep.
-... preferably- at the same time every day.
-Yep.
-For example, every evening at dinner.
-Yep.
-So it's best for you to keep the pack in the kitchen: when you cook dinner, and the kids are tired, running around and screaming, and throwing tantrums - you think "Please, God, don't let me have any more kids!", and then you remember to take your pill!

...Too bad she switched to the next subject before I could ask her how on Earth she knew...

My pre-Birthday Grand cleen up brought me 3 new online points of inspiration within a few days!

In particular, 2 blogs and 1 website/Facebook group =)

A few weeks before that I finally put together for myself the reason I would never become a professional blogger or, for this matter, an Instagram-mer (although the feeling that there is something wrong with posting your thoughts and pictures full time had been flown around me for a while). I wouldn't be able to commit to religious posting of sheets of text or pictures online because at some point I would also have to commit to sticking to a certain personality I had developed through my blog and used most often. And my Alter-Ego strongly objects this idea. I would have to translate everything I do, have or feel into the realm of the person my readers or viewers are already familiar with and expect me to be. But at some point the need to constantly these expectation would ruin the genuinely of my self-expression and hold me back on all those ways I want to show my growth, changes and development throughout life.

I notice it more and more often, when bloggers try to maintain not just their writing style, but their life-style and personality so hard - the things they write about finally stop making sense. It shows when bloggers try to appear casual and care-free, positive head to toes, and projecting love and acceptance to everything around, and suddenly switching to depressed wishing he wasn't so lonely and life wasn't so tough - nearly in every other post.

It pops up when a "professional mother" of 5, who has a whole mosaic of Instagram to prove a happy mommy's life with 5 kids born 2 years apart and all doing distance learning at home is possible, with a working husband, without a nanny (ever), a housekeeper, or any other help - forgets herself and starts posting pictures of her with her mother, who's staying over for a couple of months...  Followed by series of pictures of her kids playing with her in-laws, who apparently, flew in right after to take over after her mom...  Topped by a picture of her with a stroller and a list of her time management secrets, where a super-secret tactics of "Plan everything in advance" is followed by an unthinkable "Delegate! My husband takes 1 full day off work every week to take the kids to a park or playground, so I can have some me-time or meet with girlfriends for coffee."  Closing curtain...

This nowadays fashion for being happy and absolutely self-sufficient tends to push people to extremes, which eventually come up as fake and completely not belonging to lives of people with the strengths, values or abilities they claim to have. Or, as one of my Regulation course instructors says, - "When you see an answer that starts with All, Always, Never, Only, Must - it is almost always a false answer". :)

Anyway... The 2 blogs I stumbled upon (or maybe they found me once I was ready and had space for them) - proved to be extremely useful so far, filled less with claims of the writer's ability of Having-It-All in the Land of Rainbows and Unicorns, and more - with precise examples of how they coped with every complex situation and life challenge using resources they had. Some wisdom for me to soak up during my 2am nursing sessions :)

Chinchilla Sr. & I put a start to library classes.

I finally decided to give a try to the kids' story reading in Russian session, and it went way above my expectations!
Instead of having a meeting room full of parents and kids sitting on chairs and listening to a story all the way in the back in complete silence (Dr. Chill. Sitting still. In complete silence. Ha!) we found a small group of toddlers of same age (3 out or 4 were also 2.5 year olds), hanging around a blanket, listening to  "teacher" Librarian and making all sorts of random noises. Apparently we were in some extra luck that morning, because no one of the kids really spoke, so we were all on the same level of stubbornness.

The "teacher" started over by asking the kids their names and ages (to be shown on fingers), and then to point at their ears-noses-eyes-teeth-necks, and go through some more physical, mental and vocal stretching before getting on to the actual story reading. The story du jour was a tale of Masha I Medved', in a beautiful book with picture cut outs on the page, and cardboard figures of the characters to go with. The kids were kept engaged on every page of the story:

- Once upon a time there were... (The teacher shows the cardboard figures of the Old Man and an Old Woman).
- A  Grandpa and Grandma! (the dialog was conducted with the oldest boy in the group who actually did talk).
- That's right! Now raise hands those of you who have a Grandma and a Grandpa!
- ... (moms, me included, raise hands of their lucky kids)
- That's great! Now, for your grandparents you are a... (facing a boy)
- ... eeeh.... Vnuk!
- That's right! And you would be... (facing girls). You are Vnuchka (since girls did not reply). And you are, for your grandparents... (facing Chill)
- Ai-ai!! (*the curtain falls*)

The story was followed by taking pictures in a Hoberman Sphere, playing dominoes and finding animals on a farm poster. Dr. Chill was multi-tasking by running around from one protected electrical outlet to another and opening and closing the covers on them, one at a time. Finally, the teacher said she had something for this young engineer  and took out a whole... tool box full of plastic tools!
- Sweet! - Said Dr. Chill... in a non-verbal way, grabbed a screwdriver, run to the wall and stuck it in the electric outlet.

...For the next weekend, I've been told to bring my youngest one along too.

29

To tell the truth, every year the mere thought of how quickly time flies by becomes more and more scary to me. I have a feeling I don't have time to do anything - anything at all - substantial! Just as I accomplish something - I mentally move is from the category of "Oh, if only!.." to "Well, that wasn't too bad. Can't believe I  wasted so much time on this!" and continue to gnaw myself on the idea of not accomplishing enough. Again.

 Nevertheless... Since this time a year ago I improved my life by:

1. Having Chinchilla Jr! That's by far the most significant event of the past year. My little-little one is such a darling, smart, kind, curious boy, and we all couldn't love him more and be more grateful for such a wonderful new member of our family!
   The 12 hours (or so) it took to deliver Dr.Chill Jr was a whole different story and an experience worth living through to later make it fall under Ce qui ne nous tue pas nous rend plus fort(c). Making a birth plan is indeed a waste of time (that's why I never had any this time), whenever I go to the hospital "for a quick check" might mean I will return home in 2 days and with a baby(happened both times), and... I am a very lucky person indeed! (a statement proved by my life over and over again).
2. Completing all necessary education requirements for the licensing and passing FAR.
3. Building up experience on tax and valuation prep. Helps a lot in defining my direction further on...
4. Maintaining good relationship with Chinchilla Sr. and Von Zobel. One of my goals for 2015 was to organize monthly date nights out with Von Zobel. To my great surprise, we were able to make this happen (God bless younger sisters!), even around the birth day of Chinchilla Jr. - a few days before, and end of the following month.
5. Having read 30 new books. Not quite 50, as initially planned, but - still acceptable, given how little time I had for leisure reading and little-side-project reading. Oh, and yes, - most of those books were actually audiobooks I listen to in my car while driving.
6. Following through the Grand-Maintenance project of the roof, window screens, some window replacement, stucco replacement, garage and entrance door repainting, as well as Grand-Remodeling of the master bathroom and floor replacement in the Jack-and-Jill and Liz's bathrooms. The latter cannot even be counted as one of my big projects as I had to coordinate it about 3 hours after delivering Dr Chill Jr  and miss the first couple of days of work as I was still in the hospital. Bottom line - done with house remodeling and refurbishing projects for now. For a while.
7. Getting back into shape after having 2nd child, and on the whole - have a healthy and fit 2nd pregnancy. Took hell lot of time, energy, money and effort on my part, but was well worth it.
8. Having completed my first online course in Universite de Geneve. Studying right at this  university gave my some... unexplainable feeling :)
9. Meeting a few great new people. Some of them are cool to hang around with, others must have entered my life to give me a magic kick to move forward faster :) I guess keeping all old connections and not losing any friends could also go under this line item.
10. Beginning of Life Coach studies - as coming from another goals of 2015. Definitely was not a priority for the year, however a start was put.

A counter-intuitive way to win over the job-interviewers, impress them and get invited for the next one

is to show up to a large corporation (TM)'s interview completely sick: with voice almost gone, pink teary eyes, swollen nose and shaking from side to side even when seating on a chair. It is essential though to talk non-stop, use excessive body language and gestures energetic enough to turn over the round table at any moment, and loudly wheeze an apology, emphasize that you're slightly under the weather today.
Apparently, large corporations are naturally attracted to candidates who show up the drive of a locomotive even at the worst of their condition, and are able to show up and perform even sick like hell (sadly, both seem to be true).

***

On a side note - after 1.5 year (give or take) I resumed my blood donation, and discovered that:
a) donating blood while breastfeeding is ok, and does not stress body badly enough to cut off milk supply :)
b) exchanging a pint of blood for a pint of... beer is a fun and fair experience. I don't think I'll be able to put the beer coupon to use any time soon, but hope Von Zobel will;
c) Bonfils (at least at Highlands Ranch location) has some amazing employees. I already forgot what it was like, but it feels nicer than having a blood work at a physician's/ob/gyn office: you get help with adjusting the seat the way you want it, can ask for a bottle of water at any moment (that will be opened for you), can get a cookie (I didn't ask for any, but saw other donors do :)), get a Bonfils shirt,  but the best part of it is how professionally they actually stick in the needle. This time it took 3 people 3 (three) attempts each to get the vein, and I already pushed myself into the seat as hard as I could thinking of how blue the inside of my elbow will look like in 2 days, but... nothing except from a few traces from needle pokes. Not a small bruise. Simply amazing!