It’s been about eight weeks since my last check-in, and I’ve got about eight weeks to go in my goal year, so it’s time for another self-assessment. Now that I’m done going on vacation for a while, I should be able to get back to work in the areas that need some attention.

Goal #1 – Body: As of this morning, I weighed 150 pounds. That’s twenty pounds less than last year at this time, but still ten pounds away from goal. Looking at my weight log, I see I haven’t really made any progress since before Thanksgiving. I’ve been up a little, then down a little– over and over. A part of me says maybe that’s a sign that this is the weight I’m meant to be, but I still want to try for 140. Without the challenge of eating on the road every other week, I should be able to get some losing momentum going again. On the exercise front, things have not been going well at all. Mr. Karen and I have been taking turns being sick, so the only workout I’ve managed in weeks is a 5-minute stretch routine. (Yes, I went ahead and put it on my exercise log just so I’d have something to report.) I’m hopeful that being home more will help with that, too, since I won’t be on airplanes getting exposed to all sorts of germs.

Goal #2 – Mind: I’m still on track to meet this goal with room to spare. The book log tells the tale.

Goal #3 – Quilts: I’ve finished five quilts of the seven I aim to make this year. I have definite plans for the next two projects and am hoping I can finish one this month and one next month. If I only get one done, I’ll count the group baby quilt I contributed to toward meeting this goal. That’s acceptable.

Goal #4 – Home: The cleaning and straightening part of this goal really fell by the wayside these past couple months. Between vacations, we did pretty much just the bare minimum– clothes, dishes, and guinea pig cage. I really need to get back to following the 3 x 5 card system I set up. We have made some progress on the decorating front, though. We followed up on our successful paint choosing experience by picking out blinds for all the windows upstairs and ordering them. We ended up with Levelor Cirrus cellular shades, white for the office and bathroom, plummy purple for the our bedroom, and dark blue (what I call navy, but not as dark as what Mr. Karen calls navy) for the guest bedroom. They came in last week and Mr. Karen put them all up before we left for Toronto. After we got back, we tested their privacy level by having Mr. Karen go outside at night while I stayed inside and went from room to room turning on the lights and waving my body parts around at various distances from the closed blinds while he reported on the walkie talkie (well, FRS radio) what he could see from outside. Not much, it turned out, which was a relief, since I would have hated to spend that much money on blinds that I’d then have to cover with curtains. I do still need to settle on valances, but that can wait until after we paint.

So let’s see– two goals (mind and quilts) look like a lock; two (body and work) could go either way, and one (home) is almost surely not going to get done to a level I can call success. In school, that kind of performance would have had me blushing with shame, but now I’m pretty pleased with maybe being able to do 80% of what I set out to do.