30 Days, By the Numbers

And so it begins...

My dear friend Holly is a for-real writer, and when I say "for real," I mean, she's not only excellent, extensively trained, has been recognized and received accolades for her excellence in journalism, but she also is creative enough to think of this 30 Day Blog Challenge.

However, being an untrained, hardly recognized and rarely accoladed writer, it is a very intimidating challenge to not only write one blog entry per day for 30 days, but to come up with a catchy theme.

Last year, my theme was "Life on Our Farm."

Pretty catchy, huh?

Don't answer that.

Anyway, after realizing that my theme was due to her, and it was late October, which meant November was quickly approaching so I should probably come up with something maybe a little more catchy that just "Life on Our Farm," I remembered a really creative Christmas card we received one year. My friend Andrea---who not only taught with me, sang at our wedding, and was my roommate for a short time my first year of teaching (when she may or may not have had to live with me while I trained for marathons, dated a series of LAME dudes, and had to listen to my woes of the first year of teaching)--had a year in review, by the numbers Christmas Card. It kept her information concise, meaningful, and in her good math-teacher way, showed that NUMBERS ARE EVERYWHERE.

So here we are, Blog Challenge 2013-By the Numbers.

Number 1 is obvious, and that this challenge is 1 Lofty Goal for me as of late.

I have been struggling to find the time-gumption-creativity-balance lately. Not that there's nothing to write about in agriculture, I am just in the process of redefining my life as a part-time employee (who hasn't been to work in four days because of sick kids and Halloween parties), mother of children who demand my attention in different ways (Jack is currently winging toys at the TV while playing the harmonica, while Anna is reading a Percy Jackson book and asking what some words mean by shouting them from the other room, Josie is writing her birthday party guest list (Guess what the 27th topic will be??) and Amelia is begging to paint her fingernails, and it's before 7:30 in the morning...see why complete thoughts and grammar are not my forte today??), and the wife of someone who thinks I'm conspiring against him by organizing his office and mud room...when all I want to do is be able to Swiffer off the dead fly bodies and chaff from the flat surfaces without losing grain tickets and my sanity.

So, this couldn't have come a better time, right?

So Day Number 1 is 1 Lofty Goal.
I'm up for the challenge.
I can do this.
We always find things to talk about, don't we, friends?

So here's to 30 Days, By the Numbers. I ask for your grace during this time of creative muscle straining, and please check out Holly's blog for the rest of us suckers who are trying to keep up!

Happy Reading!