Making Your Bed: A Metaphor for Life

We’ve all been there. We just can’t get it together. We wake up late, throw some clothes on, and leave the house without making our beds.  As the school year nears its end, I confess that I find it harder and harder to wake up in the morning, which makes it challenging to complete my morning routine, including making my bed. Making your bed can be so much more than the act of physically making your bed. 

 

Last September, we podcasted about our daily choices, including “brushing your teeth or taking a shower.” I find that among the choices that I have to make in the morning to avoid running late for work is the choice of making my bed or not. Do I make that choice? I admit, not always. Some days, I just throw the top sheet over the bed and call it “made.” On other days, I take my time to make all the sheets straight, fix my pillows, and smooth out all the wrinkles in the bed. Those are the good days. The days I wake up and have time to do everything I want to accomplish in the mornings, which includes relaxing and having a cup of coffee (rarely happens). As I sleep later and later, I’m lucky even to get fully dressed as I run out the door. Sometimes, the act of physically making my bed is daunting.

Aside from physically making your bed, the concept itself can apply to the consequences of life choices. If you’ve ever heard the phrase, “you’ve made your bed, now lie in it,” this may be due to the fact that you made some sort of choice that didn’t have the best consequence.

Think of your life as a bed. What kind of bed do you have? The type of bed you currently sleep in says a lot about you, and not just how the bed looks and feels, but the appearance. What color comforter do you have? Do you even have one? I currently don’t. I find that it’s easier to wash a quilt over a comforter. Do you decorate your bed? Do you make your bed every day? What kind of pillows do you like? I personally like backrest pillows, but I most recently discovered the most amazing pillows, Memory Foam Cluster pillows, from Walmart that haven’t gone flat since I bought my first one two years ago. I have since replaced all my pillows with that particular pillow.

I have slept on many different types of beds in my life, and they often reflected the different financial situations I was experiencing at the time. For example:

• The first real bed (not a crib) I ever had was a bed that was purchased by my parents. We went to Golden’s Furniture (a place that doesn’t exist anymore), and I looked at all the beds. Eventually, I chose a canopy bed of princess-like quality. The bed was white with pink flowers and a pink canopy. I slept in that same bed and never asked to change it until I moved out of my parent’s house at 18. That bed represented the comfort I had at home and my childhood as an only child and youngest grandchild – the “princess” of the family. As I grew up, the bed didn’t grow with me, and I never asked for a bigger or less-youthful bed.
• After living in a series of dorm rooms, Christen and I moved into our first real apartment, and I chose not to bring the “princess” bed from my room at my parents’ house. Instead, I opted for the cheaper, cooler, college-like futon that I could easily move from bed to couch depending on how much room I wanted in my small apartment bedroom. That bed represented freedom to choose. I bought the bed myself with money from my job at Braum’s, an ice cream shop I worked at while I attended college. That bed also represented the financial instability of a college student on their own. After six months, the bed broke, and I started sleeping on the floor on top of the mattress. I named the bed my “magic carpet” and it was actually quite comfortable after I stacked layers of blankets and comforters on top.
• When I moved to my very own apartment, my parents asked me what I wanted for my birthday/Christmas and I told them I wanted a real bed because I was finally tired of sleeping on the floor. I didn’t want my childhood bed, but a real, comfortable bed. My parents and I went bed shopping. We ended up at a place that also doesn’t exist anymore called Mattress Outfitters. The salesman didn’t see my mom coming that day. After a couple of hours of my dad and meI laying on every bed in the store, we left with a brand-new bed about half the price that it was originally priced for, a mattress protector, and a bed frame my mom talked the salesman into giving us for free. I had never slept on anything so comfortable. The bed felt amazing and I felt like I had upgraded in life (with the help of my parents, of course). The bed represented coming back into the fold. At that point in my life, I had dropped out of college for a couple of years and was working at Dillard’s, selling shoes. My grandmother talked me into going back to college, so I moved to a tiny two-room apartment across the street from the University of North Texas and started taking classes that fall. I kept that bed through the rest of college and my first teaching job.
• The next bed I slept on was the most uncomfortable couch in my grandmother’s living room. A few years after I graduated college, my mother had a series of strokes and became very ill. I was substitute teaching and living in the most expensive apartment I’d ever lived in, struggling to pay the bills. I quit my job and put everything I owned in storage to move in with my grandmother and take care of my mom. I spent two and a half months sleeping in hospital chairs, hospital couches, and, sometimes, my car, driving back and forth from the hospital to my grandmother's house (an hour away). I slept on the couch for about six months before my cousins helped me clean out my grandmother’s sewing room enough to take my bed out of storage. The couch represented a disruption in my life that eventually was overcome. After I was able to move into my grandmother’s sewing room and my mom was able to somewhat take care of herself, I found a local teaching job.
• When my ex-husband and I got our first house, we bought a used king-sized bed that wasn’t very comfortable. I had always thought that you finally made it in life if you could afford a king-size bed. I traded in my comfortable, small bed, for an uncomfortable king-size one. This bed represented my first marriage. It was something that I thought I wanted, but I sacrificed my comfort and peace for it. The bed was difficult to maintain and move during the many moves I endured in that marriage. When I moved after my divorce, I left that bed on the side of the road. That also meant I didn’t have a bed moving into my post-divorce apartment, the first apartment I had lived in since my mom had her strokes eight years before.
• This brings me to my current bed. It’s not the most comfortable bed that I’ve slept in, but it represents the uncomfortable moments that I went through to get to this bed. It also represents freedom from the struggles I had gone through to get to this bed. I had finally made a bed that I was comfortable lying in. After my divorce, I had no credit. It took me months to find an apartment that would accept me for who I was and the money that I independently made. I had barely any furniture to place in that apartment (I still don’t) and I was driving my grandmother’s car. My uncle offered me the brand new bed that he bought to place in my mom’s old room. My grandmother had recently moved to the nursing home and didn’t have a use for the bed. I jumped at this opportunity because I could barely afford to move into a new place much less buy a new bed.

What does all of this say about me? My current bed is pretty basic, but I have spent almost two years making it into the most comfortable bed I’ve ever been in. After my divorce, I decluttered my existence where only the basics of who I am exist and that includes my bed. I opt for a simple quilt in aesthetically pleasing colors. Underneath, I alternate between a micro plush blanket and a sherpa blanket, depending on the temperatures outside. I cover my bed with the most comfortable and colorful pillows of various shapes and sizes. Do I always make my bed? It depends on my time and mood, but I can tell you that I feel better when I get into a freshly made bed at night. My cats even prefer a freshly made bed with clean sheets. So, I do like to take that time in the morning.

Making your bed and lying in it has meant many different things to me over the years. I love my current bed and have no problem lying in it. Can that bed be improved? I work on improving it every day, little by little. 

I want to hear from our readers. Do you make your bed every day? Are you comfortable with the bed you are lying in? What are some things you can do to improve your current situation? Comment below!

How I Filled My Cup

Filling my cup. What an interesting concept, this metaphor. As an English teacher, I am obsessed with words but what does this metaphor mean? It can be taken in a few ways. I have always thought of myself as a “glass half full” person – an optimist. I might be depleting something, but at least there is something left. Let’s call the “something” in the glass “energy”. Let’s also say that the “cup” in this situation is you, the reader. Is your energy half full or half empty? What are some ways that you can fill your cup with life-sustaining energy without overfilling it?

First, you need to sit back and decide what kind of energy your cup already has in it. Let’s back up. What even is “energy?” If you are not a metaphysical or “meta” person, you might not be fully aware of the energies surrounding us or our life force. In different cultures, the source of life, or life force, takes on different identities such as “Chi” or “Qi” in Chinese culture, and “Mana” in Hawaiian culture. This energy is, of course, different than scientific energy (kinetic, potential, mechanical, etc.). In Chinese culture, there are two types of energy: positive energy and negative energy. I’m going to go a step further and say there are different types of positive and negative energies. It is all in how you present yourself to the world.

A friend of mine has been recently struggling with a negative influence in her life. She asked me why she attracts such negative people. I told her that it was the energy she gives out into the world. In the past, I have called her “friend goals” because everyone wants to be her friend. She is the most positive person I know. Her cup is overflowing with positive energy, and she spreads it freely out into the world. People line up to drink from her “positive cup.” I know this because I have the same problem. I’ve learned to combat it over the years, but I often wondered why I felt so down and drained. It was because I was attracting the same type of people in my life (friends, relationships, family, etc) that wanted a drink of my positive energy.

Three years ago, I decided that I needed to make a major life change, and I continued to do so as I shed physical weight and the mental weight of the unrealistic expectations of toxic people. The more I did these things, the more I realized that I had a lifetime of negativity fighting for my positivity and that included negative expectations I had of myself. The first thing I did was quit my job and then I moved to a new town. I thought that physically distancing myself from all the toxic energy would help, and it did for a while, but I had to do more than that. My cup was drained of positive energy.  The negative people in my life were suddenly making themselves known, and my cup began to fill with their negative energy. I started doing things in my life that I wouldn’t normally do, such as calling in sick to work and spending money carelessly.

A year and a half ago, after my ex-husband and I separated, I started on a journey of self-reflection. There were still so many wrong things in my life that I needed to change physically and mentally. My cup began to fill again with positive energy, and it attracted positive people in my life once again. I reconnected with old friends and family that I hadn’t seen for years. I even started doing the things that I loved again, which led me to write this blog and start a podcast with my friends.

Things I did to fill my cup with positivity and bring my life back into balance:

• I started writing again: Writing is my favorite pastime over anything else. I started writing (and reading) at a young age. When I was in sixth grade, I wrote my first book. I published my first poem when I was 17 years old. Last year, Christen convinced me to start creative journaling, and it went from there. Now I have truly adopted a concept I teach in my classroom, which is to write every day.

• I tried new things: When I started writing again, I started exploring the area near my house (amid the pandemic, of course) and I began ordering from new restaurants that I wouldn’t normally have tried. I also started writing restaurant reviews on Instagram. When restrictions eased up, I started trying new coffee shops, and I began to develop a small following. In January, I implemented a “22 coffee moments in 2022” challenge on my Instagram Ms.Garvin.Writes.

• I reconnected with my spirituality: In 2014, my mom had a series of strokes, and I gave up my job and everything I knew to move in with her and take care of her. Until my marriage separation, I had become a caretaker of others and not for myself. Aside from writing, I also put my spiritual pursuits on the backburner. Recently, I started studying them again. I had never lost my spirituality and my interest in the metaphysical, but it had become dormant as I began to live my life for other people.

• I unpacked: I moved to my current place last summer. As I was moving, I realized that I hadn’t opened any of the boxes since I moved in with my mom in early 2015. I hadn’t seen my things in six years. I had moved so much in that time that I started to leave things in boxes and never unpacked. I decided that I was going to unpack ALL of my boxes. That was cathartic. I laughed and I cried at all of the memories I had missed.

• I got rid of the excess: After I unpacked every single box that I had carried with me from place to place, I began to declutter. I had so many things that I didn’t need or want, such as kitchen gadgets I would never use or books I would never read. I had boxes of mail from years before. If you have never decluttered before, it is the most uplifting feeling.

• I started self-care routines: I have written before about losing weight and losing clothes to mold damage. As I replaced my damaged and oversized wardrobe, I began to buy clothes that fit properly. In addition to my new body confidence, I started a skincare routine, and I started wearing makeup that interested me.

• I started counseling: This was a big turning point for me because I hadn’t fully worked through the death of my parents. When I began the divorce process, the stress in my life came to a peak, and I began to have almost daily panic attacks. I had used the excuse in the past that mental healthcare was unaffordable and that I didn’t need it. I suddenly realized that my cup was empty. I needed to talk to somebody about the things that had been going on in my life. Someone that didn’t know and wouldn't judge me. We all need that sometimes. 

All life has to have balance. In a perfect world, your cup would be filled with an adequate amount of everything you need, and it would have the right balance of positive and negative energy. We have to actively work to keep that balance, or we spiral out of control. It is an everyday struggle for me not to give in to the negative influences that drain my cup. The best advice I can give is to find the things that make you happy and work for them. Fill your cup with that. If something is draining your cup, detox it from your life.
I want to hear from my readers: What has been draining your cup lately? Comment here or continue the conversation in our Facebook group, MMC Chat.

Say Hello to HelloFresh

A few years ago, if you had asked me to tell you how to eat healthy on a budget, I would have laughed in your face. Hi, this is Cindy again, and oddly enough, that’s exactly what I’m here to do! This week we’ve been talking about several different ways to eat healthy on a budget, and I’m here with more info about one I mentioned in the podcast on Wednesday.

For me, one of the biggest obstacles to eating healthy is often the time it takes to prepare a healthy meal. How many times have you come home from work and thought to yourself, “What am I going to make for dinner?” only to decide that you’re too tired to cook, or you’ve still got work to finish, and you just don’t want to spend the time figuring it out and then cooking it. Admit it, it’s a lot faster and often cheaper to order that pizza, or slide through the drive-thru at Taco Bell or McDonalds. I mean, “Dollar Menu”...right?

The answer to that dilemma is always “plan ahead”, but even that takes time. I used to spend at least an hour every Sunday planning out my grocery list for the week; I had to look through the pantry and freezer to decide what’s there that needed to get used before it went bad, and compare it to my recipes to see what I could make out of it. And then once I had my list, I had to go to the store to get the supplies. That could take an hour or more, and more often than not, involved multiple stores! I won’t even mention what happens when I can’t find an ingredient (COVID shortages are real!). Wow! That’s making me tired just thinking about it. It sure makes that pizza sound pretty good right now.

Luckily, budget-friendly can also be time-friendly. My favorite time and budget-friendly option right now is HelloFresh. This is a paid meal service with some excellent healthy options and hearty portions. All of the food comes right to your door, complete with the recipe to prepare a delicious meal. You pick the food, you pick the days and the portions, and they deliver sanity. Seriously. 

Stuffed Bell Peppers with Couscous is one of our favorites

What makes this service healthy is the choices. HelloFresh offers your choice of at least 25 different meal options every week, many of which are low calorie, carb-smart, and even vegetarian. The portions are appropriately sized and quite filling. And best of all it is mostly fresh ingredients—not canned veggies or processed meats — just good food. 

I signed up for HelloFresh (no, this is not a paid endorsement) at a Pinners Conference in 2019. I was curious and thought I’d give it a try. The food looked delicious, the prep work looked easy, and the price was right -- the average plan costs about $10/person per meal. I didn’t think hubby would like it much, but, hey, he wasn’t the one spending all his time sweating over the hot stove.

I was blown away by my first box. The ingredients were fresh and portioned to the exact amount I needed (no measuring), the instructions were simple and straight-forward (no figuring out whether to cook the veggies first or last), and the food was delicious. The meals were also scalable; I could add a third plate by slightly increasing a few ingredients or adding another side. This proved helpful when my niece was home for dinner once per week, since I had only ordered meals for two people for most nights.

I started with three meals a week for two people, and it took a huge burden off my shoulders when it came to cooking meals. Hubby stepped in to help me one night early on, and we discovered that we actually enjoyed cooking these meals together. The instructions are so precise and well written that we can work together effortlessly without stepping on each other’s toes, and the time together in the kitchen has been a great way for us to unwind after work and share the stories of our day without unloading on each other. Now it’s a ritual to cook our HelloFresh together, and then we cook on other nights by turns (and we still do take out), so neither of us feels like the burden of meals is on one person’s shoulders. And because we plan our meals in advance (up to 6 weeks!), we've eliminated a lot of the planning and shopping time that used to bog me down.

HelloFresh is also eco-friendly.  According to their website, the carbon footprint of HelloFresh meals is 25% lower than meals cooked at home with store-bought groceries. Most of the packaging is recyclable, and everything is shipped “carbon-offset”. Oh, and there’s less food waste -- none of that buying a whole package of celery to make one meal only to have it go to waste in my fridge because I didn’t need it for anything else. If the recipe calls for two scallions, they send me two scallions, not a whole bunch.

Another great thing about this service is it is really easy to customize to my needs. I can increase or decrease my meals whenever I want. I can put them on hold, or even cancel them completely -- there are no commitments. These days we’re down to two meals a week for four people, having switched our plan to accommodate the revolving door of a niece, my mother, and a friend that have stayed with us the last two years. These meals for four run me about $80 plus tax, and it is totally worth the time and sanity it brought back to my life. My son, Steven, took me up on the offer of a free box early on, and he loved it so much, he’s been a subscriber for almost two years, too. He’s single, so he orders 3 meals for two people every week, which allows him to cook one night then have leftovers the next, all week long, so he only does one carry-out night a week. For a single person, that’s awesome! And even better, the simple instructions and great recipes have actually helped him learn to cook. Heck, even my husband and I, both highly experienced cooks, have learned a cool thing or two.

But really, my biggest take away from this experience has been this — time is money, and for someone who is self-employed like me, every minute I spend in the kitchen is time I’m not working on my business or doing something I truly love. My time is really valuable to me. If I can still eat healthy without spending more than I would spend on traditional meals, then I’m all for it. 

If you think you might be interested in trying HelloFresh (or one of the other meal delivery services), I encourage you to give it a try. HelloFresh offers a wide variety of meal options, including vegetarian, low-carb, and low-calorie foods, all for the same price, and you get to choose every single meal they send you.  You can also choose to up-level a meal or two for a set fee, but I’ve found the regular choices to be quite sufficient.

Have you tried HelloFresh or another meal service? Share your experience in the comments!
And if you’d like a recommendation or two, head on over to the Facebook group to continue the conversation!

SMART Goals for Everyone

This week on our podcast we are continuing our discussion about goals. Having goals, I think, is an important aspect of life. My goal setting and organizing can be attributed to my mother and my best friend Christen, who pushes me to broaden my goal horizons. I also believe goal setting is an important aspect of teaching and I try to convey that to my students as much as possible. 

I started implementing this in the classroom back when I taught seniors because I believe you have to have goals when you exit high school. I always tell the kids that goals and plans change. Most kids get overwhelmed because they think they have to know what they want RIGHT NOW but that’s not the case. In high school, I wanted to be a veterinarian. I loved (and still love) animals and science. However, as I took journalism and English classes in college, my plans changed and I knew I wanted to be a writer, and later an English teacher. So, what you want right now, will change as life experiences set in. 

At the beginning of the year, I ask the students to tell me what their future goals are and ask them how they plan to achieve them. Since I teach 8th and 9th graders, most of them don’t know how to set goals or have never been asked what their goals are at this age. There is a strategy called SMART goals that I like to teach my students every January after we pick our One Little Word for the year. 

What are SMART Goals?

SMART is an acronym that you can use to guide your goal setting. Its criteria are commonly attributed to Peter Drucker's Management by Objectives concept. The first known use of the term occurs in the November 1981 issue of Management Review by George T. Doran. Since then, Professor Robert S. Rubin (Saint Louis University) wrote about SMART in an article for The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Doran explained that SMART has come to mean different things to different people.

SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound

How can we use this?

(S)pecific

Write down a clear and SPECIFIC goal that you want to achieve. When thinking about this, answer the five “W” questions:

• What do I want to accomplish?
• Why is this important?
• Who is involved?
• Where is it located?
• When do I need this goal accomplished?

(M)easurable 

Your goal must have some data/statistics to track it. For example, you can use your PowerSheets to track your goals. You can make a goal-setting notebook. In my classes, students have goal charts glued in their class notebooks. Ask yourself these questions:

• How much?
• How many?
• How will I know when my goal is accomplished?

(A)chievable

Your goal must be achievable, for example, drink 44 ounces of water per day, or, n a student’s case, make an “A” in English class. Your goal should stretch your abilities but also be something that you can easily work toward. Ask yourself these questions:

• How can I accomplish this goal?
• How realistic is this goal?

(R)elevant

Your smart goal must have a relevant purpose to advance your quality of life. Your goal should be realistic. This is a goal that matters to you and no one else. Ask yourself these questions to figure out if your goal is relevant:

• Is it the right time for this?
• Does this goal seem worthwhile?

(T)ime bound

This should be a goal that you can achieve in a certain amount of time. You don’t want to set a SMART goal twenty years in the future. You will need a workable target date for your goal. Ask yourself these questions?

• When will this be accomplished?
• Where will I be six weeks from now?
• Where will I be six months from now?
• What can I do today to work towards my goal?

How do I apply this in my classroom? 

At the beginning of the semester, as I stated before, students pick their One Little Word to drive their year. Next, students think of one goal they want to achieve by the end of the school year. The goal can be, make all “A’s” for the semester, get better at a certain sport, or even get up the courage to resolve a problem they have with a friend. They have a goal worksheet that they put in their notebooks that tracks their progress. First, they have to answer a series of questions like I mentioned above that follows the SMART guidelines. I like to check in with my students periodically throughout the year and let them reflect on how they are reaching their goals. Do they need to take a step back and reevaluate?

How do I apply this in my life?

I have long-term and short-term goals like everyone else. For example, I want to finish grad school. That is a long-term goal, and it will take me a few years to complete. A short term goal I recently had was to get my cholesterol down. My doctor contacted me and told me it was on the high side. I thought to myself, “okay, how can I accomplish this?”

• Specific: Get my cholesterol down within six months.
• Measurable: Incorporate more servings of fruits and vegetables each meal.
• Achievable: Hold myself accountable and keep track of the food that I consume.
• Relevant: This is relevant because I want to be healthy.
• Time bound: The doctor wanted to see me again in six months.

One way I accomplished this SMART goal was by doing research on the calorie counts of certain foods that I like and lower calorie substitutes. For example, I replaced my milk consumption with almond milk and oat milk and I began to eat less red meat and more chicken. I began meal prep and measured out my fruit and vegetable consumption. I kept a daily log of what I ate and I did all of this for six months. My doctor recently called me and congratulated me on the significant amount I lowered my cholesterol in six months by setting measurable goals, making smart choices, and sticking to those choices. Did I have a cheat day in the last six months? Of course, I did but those days became few and far between when I rediscovered my love for vegetables.

Using SMART goals works for my students and it helped me lower my cholesterol. What is one measurable goal that you wish to set for yourself in the future? Let me know below. Also, head on over to our Facebook page to continue the conversation in our Facebook group.