Attempting some consistency and commitment here so jumping back into the Oh Hey, Friday linkup with Karli at September FARM. 

So here goes and happy Friday everyone! 

1. These prints from Oh So Lovely are lovely and I'm a bit obsessed with the one up top. Audrey posted them as free prints in the last week or so and I know I'm eventually going to print and frame a few, especially the one up top and maybe this one too, especially since it's Emerson. Have I ever mentioned how much I love Emerson? No? Well, I do. 

2. It's Friday. People, I'm not sure I've been so happy to see Friday any time in the recent past. This week, short as it was, just about killed me. We're down people at work, so I'm picking up all kinds of extra tasks, which I don't mind doing, but oh my gosh I am exhausted. This might sound ridiculous, but have you ever had a solid week of having to manage about 6 billion things at once, make rapid fire decisions and try to keep up the appearance of being calm and collected? Well, all that thinking is just plain exhausting. Seriously, right now my brain hurts and the week isn't quite done yet. I've got about six stories to write today, plus whatever else comes up. Every day/week at work usually makes me tired with all the critical thinking, but this is a new level of scattered and tired. As I write this, with a cup of coffee in hand, I'm struggling to keep my eyes open already. Guys, it's not even 9 a.m.

3. I managed two runs this week, getting back toward my older running routine and I'm feeling good about it. Tired, but good. I'll hit the trails again this weekend, bringing me close to my goal of running every other day and then to start actually adding distance or speed. The cooler temps and lovely mornings really helped me stick with it, I mean, who wouldn't want to run when it looks like this. 

4. Our road is under major construction and it's becoming more and more of an obstacle course to get to town and back every day. It's not like in town where there's about 16 different ways to get home. There is only one road to our house. There are no cut throughs to other roads anywhere near by. The state ended up not detouring, which was great for us, since that would have essentially trapped us or forced an hour long detour on a gravel road (which is super unpleasant in my little Corolla). I refuse to be one of those people that constantly whines about construction when I acknowledge that the repairs are warranted and will be nice when completed, but it is tough to never know what the traffic pattern will be like, dodge heavy equipment and drive through mud/loose gravel/construction debris on what is usually a 70 mile per hour road. Sitting at the temporary traffic light that is relocated almost every day and then having my driveway blocked by trucks (that happened yesterday) makes every day a new challenge, but so it goes. I swear I spend more time at this mobile traffic light than any light in town. 

5. Maybe it's because I'm so tired or maybe I'm frustrated with the state of media these days, but I'm actually a little excited for a few of the new shows this fall. Of course, they all have strong female characters in positions of power, but I'm hoping they actually turn out to be good and offer some intelligent entertainment. I'm especially looking forward to Madame Secretary on CBS and State of Affairs on NBC. That and I'm kind over watching the bajillion seasons and spinoffs of Stargate that M has had me watching all year. It never ends folks, never!

And since I forgot to mention it sooner, did you catch me over on Nina's blog? She's the sweetest, go check her out!

How was your week? What are you looking forward to this fall?

Remember once upon a time when I was doing Five Things on Fridays? Well, this week I came across Karli Bell's Oh Hey, Friday linkup at September Farm. Since it's basically the same thing I was doing on my own, I decided to give it a whirl. 

1. The ice is going in at the rink! WAHOO! If I understand right, it's the earliest we've ever started the season and even though it's more work, it's really fun to be involved. I spent 5ish hours at the rink Tuesday night helping paint the ice and ended up with a face full of ice paint, which is really just chalk, but it was a lot of fun. I was back last night just to take some photos since I run the rink's Facebook page and am building the new website. It's going to be a busy season, but hopefully a great one!

2. Changes in journalism are still coming, but there are aspects of it that I'm actually excited about it. We'll see how things shake out, but I'm feeling much, much better than I was a week ago about the entire situation. 

3. We're headed to Kalispell/Whitefish tonight for the airshow this weekend. So excited to meet up with some of our friends out there, get back to the Kalispell Brewing Company, check out the ice rink there and you know, hang out with a fighter pilot (who I will be interviewing again). Hopefully the weather will be stunning like it has been the last few days and it will be a good weekend of fun.

4. I got invited to an invite only military reporting conference in D.C. the few days before the conference hosted by the military reporting association that I serve on the board for. So that was great news this week and gives me more days of professional development training with my military reporter colleagues from around the country. Because I'm a total nerd, I'm really excited about it. 

5. This chickens have stopped laying eggs. I guess because of the days getting shorter, or the season starting to change or I don't know. According to a Google search, it sounds pretty normal, but no eggs for the last two weeks. They should start laying again in the near future though. In the meantime, my tomato plants are exploding and I am looking forward to lots and lots of salsa making! 

And just for fun since it was #NationalDogDay and I miss the pups who are at daycare for the long weekend while we're out of town, here's Grover-pup, making a pillow out of my stack of books.

More to come later this week, I'm slowly catching up on all things blog and there's lot going on over here at the minifarm! Happy Friday everyone!

On Friday, I did what I'm calling a journalism good deed. 

I've been working with the journalism club at a local college and one of the students reached out to me a few weeks ago for help on a story she was interested in. 

She'd done some reporting for a class and she was looking for a place to get it published in Montana. 

I came up with the genius idea to pitch the story to my editor as well as having the student work on the story with one of our seasoned reporters. That way we know we have a solid story and she gets experience and a byline.

To me, it's an opportunity for mentorship. It's a chance for her to test out journalism in real life, develop solid reporting skills and have a newsroom full of support as she works on her story. Thankfully, my boss went for it and I'm looking forward to watching her learn and develop as a journalist.

To me, this is missing from so many collegiate journalism programs and professional newsrooms. One of the new kids at a competing station asked me the other day how I find stories. That makes my head hurt on so many levels. First, even those most kind hearted journalists don't tell their competition how they do their job. Second, if they aren't learning how to get stories in journalism school, WHAT ARE THEY LEARNING? 


Side note, I do not have a journalism degree. I learned most everything I know about reporting from my mentors, internships and actual experience. Someone once told me to get a degree in whatever you want to write about, and that proved to be practical advice. I got my bachelors in political science and am working on my masters in international relations, with a focus on national security.


Technology and social media and digital platforms are all great. They all enhance news reporting. But I don't think there will ever come a day that any of that will replace good ole fashioned reporting, critical thinking, the ability to gather information and distill it down to the most important facts, while also providing context so the reader has the slightest idea why they should care. 

When I was in college, I reached out to local journalists and so many of them took the time to let me shadow them, ask questions and the ability to learn in a real newsroom. They played a huge part in making me the journalist I am today, so whenever a student asks for my help, I'm more than happy to give advice or become a mentor. 

I hear so often from working professionals that they don't have time to mentor. We're all busy. None of us are so busy that we can't help grow the next crop of worker bees who will be working with us or for us in the future. I'd rather spend a few hours working with a student journalist now than spend far more time dealing with an untrained reporter on the payroll in my newsroom.

If I'm being totally honest, I probably wouldn't go out on a limb for every single student journalist who asked for my help, but in this particular student, I see so much of myself. Everything she's putting into her campus newspaper, her studies, traveling, her initiative in asking me for help. So many of the things I see in her are the things people saw in me as a student journalist.

Most of my experience is in a newsroom, but mentorship applies in all professions. I was lucky enough to have great mentors throughout my early years in journalism and I call many of them colleagues now. 

Here's the thing, we can all do some serious good in this world by mentoring. 

There's a good chance all of us are in a position to mentor from time to time and if you ever had a great mentor or wish you had one, then please, please, please be that person for some up and coming rockstar in your profession. The world will thank you.

I am not a perfect journalist, or professional, my any means. But I am the product of a lot of really good journalists who took the time to teach me and instill in me a deeply held belief that being good at my job was about more than me. People reading the news counted on me to be more than good at my job. It's up to me to pass on that knowledge and that understanding of what it means to be a journalist.

A few tips on choosing a mentor:

+ Look for someone you admire. I once read an article in the paper where I interned in college about my governor's press secretary. She was a former reporter and I seriously wanted to be her. So I emailed her. She went on to work in Congress and I met her for tea once, in the office of the Speaker of the House. I still bounce ideas off her or ask for advice on how to be a big girl in a crazy world. I hit the mentor jackpot with her. All of that happened because I asked. 

+ Find someone good at whatever it is you want to do. As an intern, I looked for the reporters everyone seemed to respect, then I followed them around. I asked editors to edit me and tell me how to do it better. When I figured out I wanted to write about the military, I followed all of the best on Twitter, read their work, interacted with them. Seek out those who have mastered your craft, learn from them.

+ Ask someone willing to invest time in you. Sometimes, the person you think it the bees knees at their job just isn't going to make a great mentor. They're either too busy, too focused on their own work or just not a good personality match. It happens. Don't waste your energy trying to get them to care about you. Move on to someone else who's just as qualified and also willing to spend some time with you. 

A few tips on being a mentor:

+ Look for someone you think has a chance at being awesome. If someone asks you to be their mentor but clearly isn't willing to put in the time or effort to learn, don't waste your time. Look for someone with drive, energy, excitement, passion and who shows you some initiative.

+ When someone with all those traits you're looking for materializes and says 'hey, can you help me out?" Take that opportunity. Reward the whippersnappers with all those go-getter skills we always say we wish more people had. Those kids that sit around waiting for a Pulitzer to just arrive at their doorstep, no, they do not get a cookie.

+ Pick someone you believe in. We are all busy. We're all doing more with less. We're all tired and stressed. Don't commit to every single kid who happens to be in the same room as you. But when that one kid catches your attention and makes you think there's still hope for your profession, go all in. Believe it that person, be their cheering section, their teacher, their sounding board. Help them become that person you want to work with. 

Did you have great mentors? Do you try to be a mentor whenever you have a chance?

After months of work craziness, with no end in sight, I popped in the first disc of The Newsroom. Again. 

It's fiction, yes, but in that fictional journalism fantasy world lives a journalist who through some major blunders starts speaking truth to power and to stupid. 

This is one of my favorite quotes from the show:  “I’m too old to be governed by fear of dumb people,” said Charlie Skinner, president of the fictional news division. 

Some things have been weighing on my lately and honestly, truthfully, making me rageful. 

I'm a reporter. Nothing I write will make everyone happy. That's not my job. My job is to gather facts and put them in context to help people make sense of their world, vote, etc. 

In my work, I've conditioned myself to use as few adjectives as possible. It's not my place to insert my opinions, my thoughts, my perspectives and biases into news stories. These are the kinds of things I worry about constantly. It's why I struggle so much with writing about what I really think about a lot of things here on the blog. It's like a tectonic shift has to happen in my brain. 

It's not just a job, it's a duty and a responsibility to readers to give them information they need and write as close a version to the truth as I possibly can. There's no doubt that my industry is struggling and some reporters don't hold themselves to same high standards, but here's the thing. People write insanely awful comments on news stories. About reporters. About news organizations. About people in the stories. 

As Americans, they're entitled to their opinions and have the right to voice them, but I would ask that you, the news consumer, try a little harder. I'm a journalist. That comes with being hung up on, yelled at, called a racist, liberal, commie, idiot who can't spell and worse. Is it awful that people treat other people like that? Yes. Did I know that's what I was signing up for? Mostly. And you learn to deal with it. You focus on the calls, letters and comments from older ladies in the community who thank you for telling them about events they can no longer get to. From the families who thank you for how you handled stories about their service member killed in combat. From the woman active in many community groups who thanks you for making sense of some complicated issues. Those calls are few and far between, but those are the people I work for and try to keep in mind when I'm losing my mind in the weeds of the nonsense. 

You kids out there in blogger land tend to be more thoughtful commenters and a more pleasant lot, but for the sake of educating the masses, let's review. 

+ Read the story before demanding information on a news organizations Facebook page. Not just the headline. Really, reading is the key here folks. We work hard to get the information for you, but we put it in the newspaper. Journalists are not your personal Magic 8 Ball. 

+ Before chewing out a news reporter for not writing about something, do just a cursory search of the site to ensure they haven't already written about it 16 times in the last month. If we consistently fail to report things, go ahead, chew us out. 

+ Please, for the love of all things, learn the very basics of government. I'm not saying you need to understand federal, state and local budgets and all the complicated systems involved, because it really can be hard, but if you think a president can overturn a Supreme Court decision, we have a problem. 

+ Read stories from multiple news organizations. Develop some media literacy. That requires not accepting everything a single news source tells you is absolute. Read them all, learn to spot stories that include inflammatory quotes from people who aren't credible. Read a lot.  And read critically. I don't mean reading and then sending a nasty-gram to a reporter. I mean reading and actually thinking about what you're reading. 

+ If you have a question, ask it. By all means, if something in my story didn't make sense to you, call me to talk about it. But don't yell. Don't call me names. I am perfectly happy to have a civil conversation with you about the information I have gathered and if I've missed something, I'll certainly look into it. 

+ Stop saying the media has gone to hell and can't do news when all you read are awful crime stories and celebrity gossip. We know what you're reading. We know what you click on. You, media consumer, looked for entertainment and got it. Demand high quality news and when we give it to you, read it. 

Again, I watched the entire first season of The Newsroom in about three days and have made long speeches to M about the state of the media and our society that seems to have become okay with not being informed. As a journalist, I want to demand more of us, I do. Trust me, I am tougher on my industry than most non-journalists could be. And I actively work to improve it. I'm on boards and work with student journalists to help those coming after me to be better. But I need help from news users. 

It stresses me out in ways I cannot even put into words that so many media consumers are so entrenched in their political cocoons and apparently too good to actually read the news before harassing us with the same questions about the same restaurant that we told you was coming to town, we're sorry it's not built yet, we're not in construction. 

Have your political opinions, but can we please, please, please raise the level of informed debate? Can we have adult conversations about things affecting our communities, our nation, the world? 

How do you consume news? Do you think quality news is still valuable today?

There are plenty of moments that lead you to think about how your life has changed. 

But few cause the sudden Oh.My.Goodness. moment quite like cleaning out a crate full of baby chickens.

Scooping the shredded paper by hand, there was a moment when it hit me that this is a far cry from the life I left in D.C. just 15 months ago. A life I thought I wanted. 

There was a brief time as a kid  growing up in Texas that I thought I wanted to grow up, marry a cowboy and live on a ranch. 

After that 7-year-old fantasy fizzled out, I never gave much thought to the rural life again.

At least not until college.

I found myself reading an article in The Economist during my senior year that included the fact that 10 of the 20 poorest counties in the U.S. were in Montana. For some reason, that said to me that Montana would be full of journalistic opportunity and minimal competition for those reporting jobs. 

I applied and was offered an interview at a paper in a small town where the top story was Bear Chases Man Up Tree. I also called the paper near the military base just to say, Can I meet you and maybe one day you'll hire me? (Fun fact, that's the same paper where I work now.)

But then things happened and I took a job in Alabama, where I didn't know a soul.

That's where I got into running and military reporting and the Southern lifestyle and where I met M.

Those years were full of learning and growing. And I got there because I let go of the life I'd planned.

M and I went our separate ways for a time and I headed back to Virginia, where I didn't have a job when I decided to make the move. Somehow we found our way back to each other and here I am, gardening on acres and raising chickens in Montana. 

As a kid, I wanted to be a prima ballerina. Then a lawyer. Then a marine biologist. President for a hot second, then a teacher. It was eighth grade when I fell in love with journalism. In high school, I had a list of internships and jobs I wanted to go for. They included the Washington Post and New York Times, as well as possibly doing public relations for the Philadelphia Flyers or the New York Rangers. 

Clearly things have changed, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Honestly, I think the life I imagine and plan changes so often that I've stopped planning the big picture. Instead, I pick out the things I want to accomplish and think about the kind of person I want to be and life sort of fills in around that. 

All of that had me thinking of how to find the life waiting for you.

Figure out what you're passionate about. Follow those things. I got lucky and figured out my love for journalism by the time I was in high school and focused most of my energies on that. Along the way, I found lots of other things, but at my core, I've always loved bringing people together and creating positive things. That passion has inspired much of my work and built my network of friends.

Trust your gut. There have been plenty of scary life changes for me when I could have chickened out, but I've conditioned myself to trust that gut feeling of Go For It and also conditioned myself to follow through.

When opportunity knocks, answer the door. In trusting your gut, you'll be able to sort through all of the opportunities to come your way and focus on the ones that are right for you, but when that moment comes, seize it. 

Look back and smile about the good times, but keep moving forward. There's any number of shoulda, coulda, wouldas and moments we might have done a little differently if given a do-over, but that's all past now. Learn from it, accept it, trust that it got you where you're going. 

Bears are something to fear, packing a U-Haul and giving it a go, isn't. The unknown puts me on edge sometimes, but all that mental conditioning for trusting my gut and knowing things will work out helps me march forward boldly. 

Action is often the cure for overwhelm and feeling paralyzed by how big your goals are. Want to accomplish something great? Start now. Baby steps will get you everywhere. 

Five Things

1. Feeling my motivation and super productive mode kicking in. 

2. Finally deciding on and ordering a necklace from Dogeared Jewelry. And getting a $180 coat for $30.

3. Still loving my haircut a week later. And how much quicker morning routines are after you chop six inches or so.

4. Interviewing a general who said "thank you for being accurate and fair."

5. Dreaming big on my rink event, asking the radio station to get involved. They said yes.

What would be included in your five things? How do you get to the life meant for you?

It’s highly unlikely that anyone would ever call me a mushy-gushy, lovey dovey romantic. 

Fancy chocolates and expensive flowers are not my thing. I’d rather grow my own flowers, or buy some at the farmers market to brighten up the house. 

Valentine’s Day is really not my thing. 

A single day is not enough for all the love in the world. There truly is a lot of love to go around and I just wish we all spent a little more time sharing that love, myself included. 

Even though it’s not even a top 5 holiday in my book, love deserves a mention. And since it’s been a year and one month since I moved to Montana to live with M, just over two years since we started dating again and it's Grover's 4th birthday, I suppose now is as good a time as any. 

 14 Things I Love

+ This verse. My aunt read it during my uncle’s wedding and I can’t say I truly understood all of it until Grover came into my life and then even deeper still when M reappeared in my life.

+ M. I am not especially patient, or always kind. Neither is he. But somehow we’ve formed a team that can handle house buying, garden planning, chicken raising, job changing, adventure seeking, renovating and more. A friend once wrote about marriage and advised to “never go to be angry.” I won’t say I’m always successful with that, but I never walk out the door or go to sleep without saying “I love you.” He often brings out the best in me, challenges me and at the end of every day, says "I love you."

+ Grover. It might sound silly but I honestly think this dog showed me my capacity to love. He infuriates me some times, but I feel like part of me is missing when I'm away from him for very long. I become nothing less than a sloppy mess of tears when he's hurt or when he decides it's a good idea to run away for awhile. He's my running buddy, my guard dog, my best bud and the sweetest bundle of love that I get to come home to every night.

+ Family. The people you fight with and can't wait to get away from when you're a kid and as soon as you move away, you can't wait to get back. We're spread all over the country, mostly thanks to military life, but we're never really far apart.

+ Friends. The very best people. There for you at your worst and will celebrate your best. A girl's true treasures are her friends. Little bits of my heart are with friends all over the globe. They help you become you are. 

+ Travel. My view on life and the world is hugely influenced by my time spent abroad. It gives you a chance to explore other cultures, places and ways of life. It also lets you lose yourself and find yourself. You become stronger, smarter, bolder and yet more aware of yourself and you learn to get by come what may. Travel changes you, usually for the better.

+ Work. Finding a pursuit worthy of your passions and skills is no small feat and greater still when you can give back through your work. As a journalist, I get to meet amazing people, learn how government works, connect people and resources, welcome home heroes and learn something about everything. Plus, I get to have inside jokes with governors and generals and have a chat with an astronaut played by Tom Hanks in the movie. Journalism isn't a job, it's a way of life and I love it.

+ These songs. A small compilation of some of my favorites on going big and loving deeply. Plus, some of them get me dancing like a lunatic around the house.

+ Skating. There's something about gliding across ice at full speed, jumping, spinning and feeling incredibly free. The sport has changed during my years off the ice, but the feeling of lacing on the skates and stepping onto the ice is the same.

+ Blogging friends. It's amazing how the internet can bring some lovely people into your life. They inspire, motivate, encourage and make you think. They give you awesome playlists, recipes, organization tricks and just make the world feel like a nice place. A few of my favorites: Alicia, Eileen, Erika, Kate, Jamie, Melyssa, Megan, Sarah, Emily, Rachel, Jessica, Christina, Julie and Stacey. In just a month, I'll be #shufflin through an 8K with Alicia and Eileen and I am stoked. 

+ Peppermint. Without fail, peppermint anything (okay, almost anything) lifts my spirits and science says peppermint is a genuine mood booster.

+ Montana. This place is gorgeous. I will forever love my mighty, mighty Commonwealth (aka Virginia) but Montana, you really are something.

+ Our house. It's a work in progress, but most days I love the house that we are turning into a home. 

+ Books. I have too many really, but a good book goes a long way to improving my writing, my day and sometimes my world view. I finally made it into the local library and I love it.

Who/what do you love? Do you do anything special for Valentine's Day?

The new year rang in full of promise and potential. Then January dropped like a ton of bricks. 

January wasn't bad necessarily, but it was heavy. 

The first month of the year has long been my least favorite month. Maybe because it's cold and dreary, though in Montana, skies stay blue more days than not. Maybe it's coming down from the holiday high or realizing just how much you have to accomplish in the coming year. 

This January solidified its place in my month rankings.

Fresh off the holidays, lots of bad news started coming out of the Air Force base I report on. It hasn't stopped. 

What makes it harder, is my beat has been thrust into the national spotlight and I'm legitimately competing with the Pentagon press corps. It's a pace I'm used to after living in D.C., but it's still a bizarre feeling to have the national attention turn to the place you write about every day.

+ The whole situation has reminded me how hard work matters, how knowing the subject you write about and treating those people with respect all the time pays huge dividends when things go sideways. 

Winter itself is constant struggle for me. I finally ordered snow boots and have somewhat adjusted to the cold, but driving through the snow and sheets of ice that covered our roads the last week sends me into high stress mode. I've walked into the house actually sharing from the stress and fear that I'm going to slide off the road into a ditch or frozen river and lose my wits. As much as I want to go home at the end of what have been long and exhausting work days, I get to the car and dread the 15 or so miles of road.

+ Be patient with yourself. I am not, by any means, an awesome winter driver, but I've improved over the last year. M tells me not to worry, it's all fine, but I have come to a place where I can recognize my fear, accept it and determine whether it's the kind of fear to power through or the kind of fear to take seriously and make M pick me up (something I have not yet had to do, but I'm not above it). I have always been the girl to mind over matter my way through things, even when it might have been a tad reckless, in retrospect, but winter in Montana is teaching me that nature always wins. Just accept it.

And there was loss. My uncle and a dear friend. That's life I suppose and though I cried more than I care to admit these last few weeks, those kinds of losses always remind you just how precious life is and to cherish those you love. 

Though January is still my least favorite month and was so heavy, there were great moments too. 

Projects are in motion, I was asked out of the blue to do a freelance assignment for my favorite travel magazine, chickens are coming soon, seed starting and garden prep is underway and the closet purge has begun in earnest. I started running again and working out focused on strengthening my skating legs and prepping for a jog through Chi-town with Alicia and Eileen.

+ Even when life is heavy, keep going. Excellence is a habit that can be cultivated during the good times and the mediocre times to get you through the hard times. This month was hard for me, but in all honestly, I have a great life and was dealt a card no harder than a stranger I might pass on the street. Accept the bad things, allow yourself a good cry and steer yourself back toward all the good things in life. 

Knowing that January is never my favorite helps me get through since I already know it always gets better. The month was blow after blow, but I'm still here and it's February now. When all else fails, laugh whenever possible and just breathe. 

I always love hearing from you and though I'm behind on responding to comments, your kind words, encouragement and support these past few weeks meant more than I can say. 

Do you suffer the winter blues? How do you beat them?

Last week's wishes were ambitious. Honestly, I didn't make much progress on anything other than just getting through the week. 

I didn't get far with Montana Bloggers, though I did get things going on SPJ, the journalism society. Our kick-off happy hour is tonight in Great Falls and there will be similar events in Missoula, Kalispell and Bozeman throughout the next week. It feels like things are really starting to come together on this front and that warms my heart and gets me motivating to keep building. 

Mudroom work didn't really happen either, though we did pick up more supplies for the project. Hopefully, we'll get started on that some time this week. Rink progress did happen, but not as much as I wanted to. It remains on the to-do list this week.

Running happened a few times, in between snow, high winds and plain ole cold. Having Alicia and Eileen as a cheering squad really is amazing. Running the 8K Shamrock Shuffle with these two lovely ladies is going to be a great day.

So this week, with Melyssa at The Nectar Collective, my wishes are continuations of last week plus a few more: 

+ Get onions and a few other veggies started indoors. They'll take the longest, so we need to get a move on. We bought $47 worth of seeds at the farm and ranch store last night. We still need to order the right varieties for cucumbers and a few other things. I'm determined to attempt some berries, so that requires a trip to the nursery. 

+ Make the supplies list for the baby chickens and get everything we need to prepare for their arrival. 

+ Calm the heck down and just accomplish what I can each day, then go home to cuddle with the puppies and M. Do I want to move mountains? Yes. But I can't do it in a day and being kind to myself while attempting to move those mountains is the only way they're actually going to move. 

I'm excited about all these things, I just need to remember to sleep and keep up with the day to day, like making lunch, doing dishes, taking care of the dogs and hanging up clothes. 

What are your wishes for the week? Do you find setting weekly goals works to move you closer to the big goals? How do you balance taking on everything while also maintaining a healthy level of self care?

Last week was the first full week back after the holidays and it got busy at work. Not the most hectic work week I've ever had, but after all those days off and the slow holiday weeks, it was a struggle. 

For the last few days we've had hurricane force winds in Montana, causing destruction all over. Mid-day Monday, it was in the 50s with and wind gust were reported in the surrounding counties at 100 mph. The photo is from our drive back from Billings on Sunday with a solid wood door hanging out the back of our car. It had been on the roof. 

Wind was suspected as the cause of a train derailment near the capital city. By the time I left work, the temperature had dropped 20 degrees and it was snowing. No one said anything about snow, but guys, it was still snowing when we went to bed last night.

Wacky weather and busy work week aside, the monthly goals I set last week are all moving forward. 

Pretty sure I only missed breakfast one day last week and that was partly due to a cold coming on and just not feeling like eating. The closet purge continues. An entire post will be dedicated to that soon. Montana bloggers and the state journalism chapter are coming along and we're down a few walls here at the homestead.

So now, Weekly Wishes, inspired by Melyssa at The Nectar Collective.

+ Get out for a run. The last time I ran was Thanksgiving. The weather, work, life has slowed my running routine and I want it back. Insanity is great, but rough on my joints and it's just not the same, flailing around in the basement. And now, thanks to Eileen and Alicia, I have a running goal to work toward. In the form of an 8K on March 30. Here's to hoping the weather gives me a chance to make this one happen. 

+ More chicken planning. We're hoping to pick up our new baby chickens next month or so, meaning I have got to get a move on planning and prepping for the fluff babies.

+ Nail down a date for the kickoff/launch event for SPJ. Excited to get the ball rolling on this and it's a top notch group that's assembled to make this happen for journalism in Montana.

Last week got busy with breaking news and city meetings that went long, very long, and late, other projects, house work and crazy winds. No joke, while we were driving back from Billings with an interior door strapped to the roof (that we later moved into the car), 90+ mph winds were tipping semi trucks, collapsing tanks at the refinery and otherwise causing havoc all over Montana.

So the to-list I created last weekend, didn't get much action and I was feeling stressed out and behind but, today is another day, the start of another week and it's go time.

There's always so much to do. Much of it mundane and not fun, like laundry, cleaning, organizing my mess of a desk. But getting that done makes room for the things I want to do and those things deserve to get done whenever the inspirations strikes, well, hopefully, because eventually, time will run out.

One of those things is Five Things! Each Monday, I list out five things that made me happy in the last week or that I'm looking forward to.

1. Our weekend trip to Billings for an order pick-up at Lowe's. (Yes, we know there's one in Helena.) M ordered insulation and mortar for our mudroom tile. One was in and we thought we'd have to go back for the other, but both were ready to go. And our major score was a solid wood door that is exactly the style I always tell M I love had been returned and had been marked down from $257 to $75. We were going to come back for it Sunday morning but it was gone from the cart we'd seen it on. As we were headed to the checkout line, we found it on another cart...marked down to $5. Yeah, we bought the door.

2. Breaking news all over the place last week, even if the Associated Press did best me on one. Just one.

3. Attending an executive meeting for a local nonprofit aimed at fitness, outdoor activity and healthy eating as a guest promoting the skating club and came away with loads of ideas and definite encouragement and support from the group.

4. While in Billings, we stopped in World Market and M let me buy five bottles of wine. All on sale of course. Back at the hotel, I was doing something and he turned the channel straight to the national figure skating championships and watched it with me. 

5. M came bursting out of the bathroom, frantically telling me to come quick (giving me a near panic attack) all to say, "Is this a gray hair?" Yup, M has his first gray hairs. "I'm going to be a silver fox."

What's on your "Do It Now" list? Mine is currently under construction and coming here soon.