Second Half Win

Better and Better: One resolution DONE!

2012-01-27T08:35:00.000-08:00

I am sock-cessful!

I've spent much of the week fighting off a cold and feel much better now! Zinc and plenty of rest seem to have knocked this out sooner than usual. All that rest afforded me the opportunity to lay on the couch and knit, so the result thus far is this:

Definitely needs blocking, but it fits!!

It's not been blocked or washed yet, but it's a real sock! I've unfortunately knitted ladders into it at the needle margins and need to figure out how to not make that happen on its mate or future socks. The worst of the ladders ended up on the underside where it won't show. I am so delighted to have made a real sock! They work up so very quickly, the light yarn is pleasant to work, and I can't wait to finish the mate and start on another pair.

Another blogger I read and respect had an interesting and astute definition for crafts: "Time consuming activity where the output is less than the input." It's a near-perfect summary of my take on crafts as well and explains as well as anything why I don't make scrapbooks (I also get cranky when we use nouns as verbs, so in my world we create scrapbooks rather than scrapbooking, except for that we don't) or any of the other popular crafts. I do love handwork, though, as long as the product is something I can wear or use, or give to someone to wear or use. In my mind, that's more along the lines of an artistic creation; the output is far more than the input, and one has something made by one's own hands that is as good or usually better than factory-produced goods.

My pictures, though, remain in neatly ordered boxes by year, and there they shall always remain. I've often been a bit mystified by women who take up making scrapbooks and quickly become overwhelmed and even guilty -- how many times have you heard, "I'm so behind on my scrapbooking!" How does one get ahead, or keep up? Most disturbing of all are mothers who create scrapbooking moments: requiring their children to dress in a certain way and pose for photos that will appear as a theme in the scrapbooks. We were at a park a few months ago with children playing as usual, except for one mother and her children; they arrived, she had them pose as if playing on various play equipment but screeched if they touched the dirt, and then they filed back into their minivan, photos accomplished. Is that really a memory?

I'll eat my words eventually here, since I have a keepsake scrapbook-y album from my grandmother that is falling apart and needs to be redone. I have a new album and paper that won't disintegrate, and I need to carefully remove her cards and keepsakes and put them gently into a new space. This was the last thing my very dear grandmother passed along to me before she died a few years ago, and I need to take good care of it. There are no photos, no twee captions, no stickers or die-cuts -- just cards and notes from well-wishers and heartbreaking condolences from when she lost a baby. She passed this along to me after we had the same experience, and it connected us even more. For that, I'll be respectfully, lovingly renovating this priceless treasure she entrusted to me.

Beyond that, I'll be continuing to spread my photos out on a table to look at them, and will otherwise continue the useful pursuit of knitting to satisfy my need for handwork. I'm getting better and better at socks!

I love the stripes!

Winter Walk

2012-01-20T08:30:00.000-08:00

It's been a busy week. My Spanish class is in full swing, I've volunteered to be Membership Chair in the restructured PTA at the school my son is now attending, I had several events this week for the families-with-gifted-children group I'm vice-president of, and this sentence is getting as long as the week. Anyway, I put the to-do list aside this morning and took a nice, long walk with our dog Ivy around the lake in our neighborhood. I put my phone in my pocket for safety, but remembered to snap a few pictures along the way.

A path through the woods

Creek running out to the lake

Rocky creek

Beautiful winter day. Wishing you peace for the weekend.

Know Peace

2012-01-16T05:46:00.000-08:00

Dr. King giving the "I Have a Dream" speech

Inspired. A true leader. Enlightened. Right. He was right. We are all interconnected, and to deny the rights of one denigrates the rights of all.

If you ever can, please consider visiting the national historic site, including Dr. King's memorial, in his old neighborhood, Sweet Auburn, near downtown Atlanta. You can sit in his church where he gathered strength for the civil rights movement, walk through his home, and pray at his tomb. It is hallowed ground. You will leave a different and better individual for having experienced it.

...And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. So I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man.

Martin Luther King Jr., Speech in Memphis, April 3, 1968, the day before King was assassinated

Sock Start

2012-01-11T04:32:00.000-08:00

If you recall my 2012 intentions, I'm to learn how to knit socks this year, and I think I'm off to a good start.

Knitting gear. The blue yarn is the next sock project.

Ann Budd's Getting Started Knitting Socks has served as my text in getting me up and running. I'm not a new knitter; I have made sweaters that I still wear, so I felt fairly confident starting socks, and I've used the lapful of double-pointed needles to make baby sweater sleeves.

Caroline's baby sweater, hand-knitted by me, before blocking

Still, I cast on 64 stitches as instructed, and I had to unravel at least three times before I remembered how to work double-pointed needles. A normal cast-on with a slip stitch and knit-on doesn't work well with socks, either; I had to learn how to do a long-tail cast-on. And take it out a few times, and do it over.

I'm knitting with four needles and fingering-weight wool/cotton/nylon blend yarn.

Then I remembered a breath of fresh air and sensibility on my bookshelf: Elizabeth Zimmermann. Do you know her? I have her Knitting Without Tears at the ready, whenever the directions get too hairy, or the chart stops making sense, or the approach of the heel makes me think I'd prefer to knit legwarmers (which are inexplicably back in fashion, by the way). Elizabeth Zimmermann sets it all right again with her no-nonsense advice to beginning knitters, or knitters beginning a new type of knitting. She dismisses the intricacies of intarsia and instills confidence, teaches an easier way to turn a sock heel, provides adaptable patterns for all sorts of sweaters, and advises the new knitter to knit on with confidence through all crisis.

I read her bit on socks and felt ready to begin anew. A bit of internet looking turned up Interweave Press' e-magazine Sockupied, which looks very intriguing, and I think I'll reward myself with a download once I've got a successful sock. I like that the e-mag is interactive, with videos showing how to do things that still photography doesn't always quite capture. Ann Budd is a regular contributor, as well as other sock designers, when I'm ready to branch out from K2-P2 and can turn a heel in my sleep.

I'm also a little delighted to see that the yarn I selected is self-striping, and is making diagonal candy-cane stripes as the pattern emerges:

Self-striping yarn is so much fun! Pink and gray heathered stripes are starting to show.

I just hope they fit so I can wear them out.

Right

2012-01-09T04:24:00.000-08:00

In Unitarian Universalism, our first (of seven) principles is the inherent dignity and worth of every person, and the second is justice, equity, and compassion in human relations. So it was entirely appropriate that this weekend's Sunday service at my church focused on the civil rights movement, as we get close to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday next weekend. Almost every Sunday in church I get choked up about something, but this time went way beyond choked up.

One of our ministers is also a social worker, like me. She has a gentle but direct way of bringing up things that are not always comfortable to discuss, but must be, especially in a faith community that is called to change the world for the better. Sunday, she told the story of Viola Liuzzo, a 39-year-old white mother of five killed at point-blank range for driving a young black fellow civil rights worker in Montgomery. She lived an interesting life that led up to her answering Dr. King's call for people to come to Selma and march to Montgomery. Thousands of people were too busy, or too scared, or too disconnected to go, but she went. And she was murdered by white supremacists.

I had read and heard about the march from Selma to Montgomery almost my entire life. I grew up in Washington, DC and stood on the spot where Dr. King delivered his speech. I went to college in Auburn, Alabama and had classmates who were co-enrolled at Tuskegee University. Some of my teachers, and later, my clients, participated in the march. The scorch marks of the civil rights movement are still on the earth and the people, decades after the action.

Very soon after we were married, my husband lost his grant funding and quickly found another job in Jackson, Mississippi. I stayed behind in Alabama, working and getting ready to sell our house. We agreed that he would come home one weekend, and I'd go over there the next, for the summer until the house sold. The first summer Friday, I headed west on a gorgeous evening with all the windows open, through the fertile Black Belt of Alabama (so called for the rich cotton-growing soil, not the people), the gentle rolling hills and open fields of ripening cotton stretching for miles after I-85 ended and US-80 started. The sun was setting, all was well.

And then this:

Just right there, right in front of me, driving my car through Selma, this loomed in front of me. I almost drove off the road. This image was in all my history textbooks and some of my nightmares after I learned what happened that awful Sunday. I quite literally had to pull the car over and stop the tears to be able to drive over this bridge. Seeing it in living color felt like a slap in the face. This is the bridge on March 7, 1965, where police officers attacked peaceful marchers on their way from Selma to Montgomery. There is an eeriness there, a calmness and yet an energy that is hard to describe, just being in that place.

I grew up in a place where a lot of our nation's significant history happened. I walked through the homes of the founders of our nation and appreciated them and what they did. But I have never felt history as deeply and viscerally as I did that day. This place looks the same, except that there are no crowds, no teargas, no screaming. You can still feel it, though.

In church, the following poem was read about the civil rights movement and the lives lost in fighting for what are basic human freedoms. In the poem, everyone who died for this freedom gets back up and marches alongside the living for the cause. The two readers were in tears throughout, and by the end, so were we all. I have a great deal of pride in belonging to a church that sent half its ministers to Selma to participate in that march (Rev. James Reeb was a UU minister), and who works now on civil rights issues involving nationality, sexuality, and gender. Bless everyone who answered Dr. King's call to march to Montgomery, and may we never tire of working to ensure that everyone has the right to be free.

March to Montgomery. The first six blocks to the bridge were peaceful.

THE ROAD FROM SELMA

What are you reading?

2012-01-05T04:35:00.000-08:00

That delightful tower is my reading list for 2012, and I also have a number of books loaded on to my Nook to tackle in this new year. Ulysses takes up the most real estate, other than the 501 Verbs, which I will not be reading cover-to-cover. This rather daunting pile is split into "read now" for January, "read soon" on a nearby small tabletop, and "read this year" on an easily accessible shelf in my library. A couple of the Spanish ones are workbooks, and there's even a cookbook in there.

I also went to Barnes & Noble today and used my Christmas gift card, so add a paleo diet book and another cookbook to the pile!

I gave sock knitting a first try last night, and although Ann Budd is most reassuring in Getting Started Knitting Socks, holy cats, it's not that easy. I'm wearing a sweater I knitted myself with a fairly complex cable pattern, so I think of myself as at least an intermediate knitter. I am using the four-needle method, which I have used before to do baby sweater arms, and I don't remember it being quite this fiddly. I will keep at it, but may need to find a different yarn for my first attempt. I'll post my first completed sock, and let's hope it's still winter by then!

So I settled in with a bit of Walden to calm the nerves after three unravelings. What a lovely book, and how well he manages to put things both bluntly and beautifully at once. I could commonplace nearly the whole thing, which sort of ruins the concept of commonplacing, but there really are that many memorable, necessary things to take away from it. And I'm only on page 37.

These books won't read themselves, so I'm off-- hope your New Year is off to an excellent start!

Resolved

2012-01-03T04:16:00.000-08:00

It's 2012! I spent the first two days of 2012 enjoying the rest of the holiday vacation with my children, since they go back to school and our time is far more spoken for. I had some delicious Lebanese food and made a pizza entirely from scratch for New Year's Day dinner -- even the mozzarella from scratch! I took a few pictures we can look at later in the week.

Right now, I'm getting together action plans for my resolutions for 2012. I accomplished five of the ten I set for 2011, and I think I can do a whole lot better this year! Ready?

1. Continue learning and starting to converse in Spanish
--My class starts again next week, I read a weekly paper now, and have some home workbooks to
keep me learning until class starts. I also participate in a monthly bilingual cooking group where I make
an effort to converse in Spanish, even though it's not easy.

2. Learn to knit socks.
--This one is a bit silly, because I can knit sweaters with all kinds of complex patterns, but I've never tried
socks. I have a book, I have some yarn, I have the needles, and Downton Abbey comes on again next
week. It's time to knit the socks.

3. Finish Desiderata tapestry.
--I spent a lot of my free time in the '90s doing very intricate embroidery. It started in college with cross stitch and progressed to really serious stuff, much of which is still hanging variously on the walls in my home. This past decade has been more about children, and not so much about free time to do embroidery. Still, I have this beautiful Desiderata tapestry I'd like to finish this year. It's been undone longer than I can even recall to be embarrassed. I can work it in when I'm sick of sock knitting, I guess.

4. Read Ulysses.
--I've had it on the bookshelf for years and it's my own Moby Dick of books to conquer. I had a friend promise to read it with me a few years ago, but the friend and the promise dropped away. I'm ready to go it alone. I read over 80 books a year, many of them difficult, and there is no reason I can't buckle down and get something out of Joyce's lengthy masterpiece. Said of it: a terribly difficult climb, but the view from the top is incomparable. I will let you know!

5. Finish Walden.
--Really rather embarrassed to be a good Unitarian Universalist and not have most of this memorized by now. One of the quotes that defines me is "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and to see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not yet lived." I read that quote as a bored, jaded, typical teenager and it went through me like a bolt of lightning. And there is a whole book of this -- why haven't I read it yet? I start today.

6. Stabilize weight through healthy fat-loss eating and exercise.
--I am about 20 pounds north of where I look best. Unfortunately for me, I look just fine from the front (my mirror view) and rather portly from the back, which I hardly ever have to see, so it's been easy enough to give myself a pass as a pound or two crept on here and there. I'm 40 now, and it counts for my health as much as for my vanity to get rid of this stuff. How to do it? After my son was born, I was extremely successful with the South Beach Diet, and I've since discovered the fantastic teachings of the Metabolic Effect team who combine similar eating habits with rest-based heavy weight training to get this midlife metabolism back under control. I used to be able to eat a few cookies for a snack with no consequences, and those days are sadly over. See ya, refined sugar and other simple carbs. Your memories are with me on the scale!!

7. Implement strength training program to stabilize metabolism.
--Metabolic Effect has this one all ready to go for me. It's a matter of going against my night owliness and getting up at 5:30am to exercise before the day gets going -- it's a huge hassle to go back, change clothes, exercise, shower, and get put back together during the day. I've done it many times, but I have a lot better ways to spend daylight hours than doing pre-breakfast tasks over. Up and at 'em!

8. Move accounts out of SunTrust.
--We're about done with big banking. They lost an envelope of our deposits from two summers ago, and miraculously found it, two years after it would have been very helpful. That and the non-consumer-friendly policies being both loudly and quietly put in place make it a better idea for us to bank somewhere we can count on. This resolution should get done sooner rather than later; it's a matter of doing some investigation and then some paperwork.

9. Find a career-based volunteer opportunity.
--One reason I left my job last year was the lack of congruence with my social work skills. I have some time I can devote weekly to the right volunteer opportunity, both to give back and to network a little in my field of aging services and social work. All the faces have changed and I'd like to at least see if this area is still a good fit for my interests and skills, without committing to a job just yet. I have lots of possibilities and need to do some research, then start connecting.

Are you still here? Thanks for reading! I'll be posting updates on how I'm doing with these from time to time. I take resolutions seriously. I keep a daily journal (just a few lines a day) and have resolutions right in the front to see frequently, so I'm not going to be forgetting these. Do you set resolutions? Social work teaches that you have to set goals and then outline how to get there -- and there's my road map in writing. I wish you the best in mapping out your year, too!

Fare thee well, 2011

2011-12-31T08:37:00.000-08:00

Not a bad year, all in all. Not perfect, but I have 2009 as an epic bad year to which all past and future years must be compared, and 2011 was not at all bad. I even kept some of my resolutions -- but not all; I'll put mine in writing and share away next week.

A poem by a great favorite to end the year:

Inventory

Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.

Four be the things I’d been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.

Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.

Dorothy Parker

I wish you all the best -- and sufficient champagne-- going into an exciting New Year!

Not That Commonplace, Actually

2011-12-30T04:22:00.000-08:00

My little commonplace book. Isn't it pretty?

So have you ever heard of commonplace books? Once upon a time, when we the people were a lot more literate and studious and didn't have electricity, we read and made notes on what we read. Many people kept commonplace books, or notebooks with quotes or their impressions of what they read, often organized by topic, so that they could refer back to what impressed them the most rather than having to re-read a primary source, especially if it were borrowed from the library or a friend. It was a way to keep the book with you, or at least the parts that made a difference to you.

I can't remember when I first heard about commonplacing. Surely in my extensive primary education, especially in the history courses, it was mentioned as something that was done by the most erudite and learned. The first commonplace book I read for myself was dear E.M. Forster's, he of A Room With A View, Howard's End, A Passage to India, and more lovely Edwardian-ness. I loved him so much as an author that I wanted to read more, and he left a commonplace book that was eventually published. Sadly, his personal life was wracked with depression, and much of what he noted was to drive him further into isolation and despair. But what fantastic personal insight into the man's inner world!

Historically and certainly for Forster, commonplacing was encouraged as part of an excellent education by one's better instructors as a way to self-educate for life. Students kept commonplace books that were regularly checked and annotated by teachers; parents made notes in them to improve their children's minds and spirits, and people kept them for life as a sort of second intellectual diary.

Over the summer, our church's student minister gave a sermon about how we Unitarian Universalists can find comfort in hard times. Since we draw from a number of sources, we don't have only one sacred book -- we have potentially any or all on which we can draw for inspiration, motivation, and comfort. She held up a small four-by-six book in which she had been writing quotes for years, and she used this book when ministering to the sick and dying, and when she herself needed help. I immediately recognized her book as a commonplace book. Shortly after, I went and found myself one about the same size, and started putting a lifetime of excerpts and quotes into this one place for future reference.

I did a little research on commonplacing to inform my own practice, and should your interest also be piqued, here is a little of what I found, much of which links to other places of great interest:

http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/reading/commonplace.html

http://notesaboutnotes.com/Notes/CommonplaceBook.html

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/5637

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonplace_book

Then I found the personal motherlode of commonplace books: Thomas Jefferson kept a literary commonplace book, and it's been annotated and published. I could not have been more thrilled about the existence of anything -- if I could go back in time to meet someone, see someone, be someone, it would be Thomas Jefferson. I have a lot more to say about him, but suffice it to mention now that he's at the top of my admiration list. Of course he kept a commonplace book, but how divine that it's been studied and published!

I have not wanted a book this much in a long time, and I love books.

And that my own copy of this treasure was under my Christmas tree this year makes it even more delightful. I am medulla-deep in it so far, enthralled with the intellectual landscape of Jefferson as a young man.

If you draw inspiration and intellectual stimulation from your reading as I do, you might consider keeping a little notebook and pen at your elbow to jot down those passages that truly move you. It is powerful to leaf back through and see them, from many sources, all in one place. It's a very old practice with a great deal of merit even in today's information age, and perhaps especially now, when information comes and goes so quickly.

Still Giving Thanks

2011-12-29T07:03:00.000-08:00

Caroline writes her thank-you after perusing the list. She's an early reader, too, and writes better than I did at her age.

'Tis the time of year when we give thanks. No, not the November eating holiday, but the post-Christmas thanks-giving to which I was rigorously subjected in childhood and to which my children also adhere: the writing of thank-you notes to family and friends who were generous enough with their thoughts, time, and resources to send a Christmas remembrance to them.

My own mother was adamant about thank-you notes. We received stationery on gift-giving occasions from her so that there were no excuses, and before we were permitted to play with the toy, read the book, or spend the money, a note to the giver had to be duly dispatched. Although my brother and I rolled our eyes and complained at the great effort, it ingrained a habit in us that we have passed along to our own respective children, to take a few short moments to connect with the giver in thanks. As we grew, it would have felt odd to use something given to us without having written our notes. My ever-efficient brother got to a point where he'd write his notes before Christmas dinner was served.

It doesn't take much. My 4-year old daughter writes only the basics: dear Aunt and Uncle, thank you for the gift, love Caroline. My 9-year old son has been instructed to write a real thank-you note, which has a salutation, a thanks for the gift, something nice about the gift, and well wishes for the giver along with his closing. It only takes him a few minutes to dash off a note, and over the past few years, he's gotten quite good at it, even with handling a diplomatic situation in which the giver meant well but the gift was entirely not to his taste.

Over the past few years, I've had relatives compliment me for having my children write these thank-yous, and I personally think it's a sad commentary on modern times that more children are not compelled to thank those who are generous to them, with more than an email or a phone call. Of course a written note is a nod to days gone by -- but so are many gestures of thoughtfulness, and that is why we preserve them.

Have you written your thank-you notes?

First Half Lookback: School Days

2011-12-28T10:34:00.000-08:00

Almost time to close out the year I turned 40. I've been thinking a little about how I define myself, and that could be a (very boring) series of posts. It has always been very interesting to me how one's environment shapes the person one becomes.

When I had just started first grade, my parents made the executive decision to move our family out of Fayetteville, North Carolina, which had the disparaging nickname of "Fayette-nam." The war was wrapping up, the troops were coming back, and it was a place of chaos and discouragement. Our little neighborhood was nice enough, tucked just south of Ft. Bragg, and my father had a good job with the US Army Corps of Engineers, having served in the south of Vietnam before I was born. He got an offer to work with Ft Belvoir in Northern Virginia, and a quick comparison of the NC school system and the Fairfax County offerings made it a fairly easy decision.

Market House in downtown Fayetteville.

I learned to read at age two. Possibly I was more intelligent than an average toddler, but more likely it was my added advantage of a severe hearing disability: I could not hear well enough to communicate reliably, so that gave me plenty of time and brainspace to learn written communication earlier than most. My hearing was mostly corrected later, but in the interim I was a voracious reader, which made my preschool teachers thin-lipped as they taught my peers their alphabet. My first-grade teacher in North Carolina said, "oh, that's wonderful!" when my mother met with her to tell her about our impending move. Rather than participate in the curriculum in that room, I spent many hours each school day teaching a Vietnamese-American child in my class how to sound out letters in English.

So off we went to Northern Virginia. The schools there were and are rigorous; packed with the children of the nation's overachievers. I suddenly had classrooms full of intellectual peers and no more easy A's! Elementary was full of multilingual, well-traveled and well-cultured classmates; I recall a theological discussion in fourth grade that hasn't been topped since. Our house was zoned for me to attend Lake Braddock Secondary from 7th grade through 12th grade.

They've upgraded it a good bit since I graduated in 1989.

Now I was part of a cast of thousands! LB had around 5,000 students and I graduated with just over 1,000 of them. My grades were fine; I took GT and AP courses when available, and in any other school, I would have perhaps been a top student. But not at Lake Braddock. You want to play soccer? You'll be on Mia Hamm's team. Rather try track? Run fast, because Allen Johnson, another Olympic gold medalist is already over that hurdle. Maybe you'd rather pursue music. Drummer Greg Eklund of Everclear is front-and-center. Basketball, then? You'll have to get a spot on Hubert Davis' team. Also countless top attorneys, political analysts, a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, all the members of The Dismemberment Plan, actors, literati and glitterati from and of all over the globe. The parents were politicians, chiefs of staff, astronauts, war heroes, lobbyists, lawyers, writers, pundits. And darned good parents.

Here's Allen. Not just an Olympic gold medalist x2, but smart and a good guy as well.

These were amazing classmates. We all sort of pushed each other to do and be better at everything, and because everyone else was doing it, it didn't seem like anyone was really getting ahead of anyone else.

That's me in the blonde hair, graduating right ahead of yet another NHS student.

Just a sliver of the Class of '89, on our way to bigger and better things.

So in a rather stark way, this explains my drive to be accomplished along with my lack of competitiveness about it. To this day, I'm surprised to be good at anything. I'm also no good at being a spectator -- I like to be part of the production. It was a pleasure and a privilege to be part of a learning community that had such high standards, and those eminent people uncovered the drive in me to make this "second half" even better than the first. Thank you, LB cast of thousands!

Well, hello!

2011-12-21T13:08:00.000-08:00

Here I go again with writing a blog! I used to write MyDailyMail until my midlife crisis three years ago, and among many things I discovered about myself, I learned that it's really hard for me not to write. It was fun a few years back to be part of the outfit-a-day community and to share bits of my life with other bloggers.

Then my husband lost his career job in the 2009 economic upheaval, I had some serious health issues, and I more or less dropped my basket as far as normal life was concerned. Fortunately, I kept my wits about me enough to cushion the blow for my two dear children, who did not realize that much, if anything, was wrong, except for that Daddy was home all the time. Eventually, he found an OK job (health insurance again) and then a pretty good job, and then a second international job. I worked part-time while the children were in grade school and morning preschool so we could supplement our income. I left that position earlier this year to take a Spanish class, in order to get a better social work job when I decide to re-enter the job market. Where we live, Spanish is an important second language, and I've enjoyed learning it this past semester. I miss going to work, but the job was well beneath my skill set, and I was able to pinpoint what I need to be marketable after almost a decade out of the social work scene.

I'm healthy now, but I'm north of 40 as of this year -- so my focus on health has changed from barely noticeable to "time to step it up." 2012 is going to see a lot of changes for me: I need to lose a good 15 pounds by improving my diet, I'd like to get comfortable speaking my second language, we have a lot of work to do on the house, and my daughter will start kindergarten, giving me a green light to use some daytime hours to go back to my career.

I have a lot to look forward to in 2012, and sharing some of it with you is part of that. I am delighted to be writing again. This blog will be sort of awful at first, but bear with me as I learn the Blogger platform again, and we'll be off and running in no time.

Oh, the title: I'm definitely going for a second half win in this life. I was raised on Kentucky basketball, went to college at Auburn to learn football and social work, finished grad school at UNC-Chapel Hill, and we're season ticket holders for our local NASL soccer team -- I love a great second-half win even more than a steady lead. Watch me go for it!