Sunday, June 12, 2011

Professional Development

Homemaking is monotonous;  it just is.  There have been many times during my two and a half years of staying home full-time that I have said to my husband, "All I do is feed people."  By the time I have cleaned up breakfast, someone is asking for food.  A typical day kind of looks like this:  eat, clean-up, eat, clean-up, eat, clean-up, naps, eat, clean-up, eat, clean-up, eat, clean-up, bedtime.  Throw in some laundry, cleaning up poop and pee, reading books, playing Legos, and explaining for the 19th time why we don't watch Star Wars videos all day and you have a decent glimpse into my life.  Keeping people alive by providing for their basic needs gets pretty repetitive.  At times, the monotony of homemaking has pretty nearly driven me crazy.

One thing I loved when I was teaching was that I was always learning.  I was in a constant mode of professional development:  taking classes, reading, writing, talking with other teachers, and trying things out in my classroom.  There are many things about teaching that are the same day-to-day, but when you when you are immersed in a culture of learning, the day-to-day life is still invigorating.  As a teacher, it was my goal to always be learning, always experimenting in my classroom, always refining my craft.  Funny how I never continued that when my profession changed from teaching to full-time homemaking.

My mindset about homemaking changed a number of months ago.  I don't know what happened, but one day I decided to approach homemaking as I had approached teaching...it was time for some professional development.  I started picking topics, studying up on them, and trying things out in my classroom home.  And, what do you know...homemaking did not seem so monotonous to me anymore.  I still feed kids a lot.  I still clean up from all of the eating...a lot.  I still have a constant stream of laundry and deal with more poop than I might like, but I am in the mindset of professional development and that makes a huge difference for me.  My current, self-proclaimed professional development topics are Nutrition and Herbs/Nutritional Supplements.  I have always, for some reason, wanted to be a hippie.  I think my dream is being realized.

Some books I'm into right now (All checked out from our local library!):

Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day:  Seriously, it takes five minutes.  Maybe less.  I love these recipes because I know EXACTLY what is in our bread.  The last recipe I tried used spelt flour.  It's even fun to say it.  SPELT.  See?  Fun.  The authors of this book have a website and blog on which you can find recipes.  

Real Food: What to Eat and Why:  Eat butter, you say?  You don't have to tell me twice.  You've probably heard before "if you can't pronouce it, you probably shouldn't eat it."   Well, it's true. I am working to gradually remove the fake things from our diet.  Yes...even Diet Coke.  **gasp**

Rosemary Gladstar's Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health:  A wonderful guide for learning about various herbs and how they are used. 

Prescription for Nutritional Healing:  Lots of handy charts...perfect for this mathematical mind.

Prescription or Poison?:  The way I work is to find something, get excited about it, and immediately go out and do it.  I am really glad that I did not go out and buy pounds of St. John's Wort (good for anxiety and depression).  I am learning that you have to be really careful with herbs and supplements.  This book has been a great reference.

So, I'm getting all professionally developed over here.  Do I bake bread and grind herbs and eat perfectly every day?  Absolutely not.  But, it is fun to learn and try out new things.

A recent hippie purchase.  No, not THAT hippie purchase.   Spirulina and tea.


What have you been learning about recently?

3 comments:

  1. Good for you! Yes, being a SAHM can be monotonous. It's cool that you found a new interest in it!

    I've been learning, but not anything about being a Mom. ha. I'm kind of burned out in that arena. Or perhaps I'm just not that into "mom" things.

    Also, thanks for specifying what kind of hippie purchase that was... ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. April, I am all for learning things that are not Mom-related. :) I am really curious what it is...

    ReplyDelete
  3. it is helpful when you give yourself a "mom project" to work on! And figuring out healthy things for your family to eat is a good one.

    ReplyDelete