Completed: #37. Plant berries or fruit trees

TreeMobile delivered and helped us plant the grapes and the raspberries.

They aren't looking like much yet, but:

The above will be strawberries.

All of these stalks are raspberries.

This will be Himrod (yellow seedless) grape.

I hope to learn enough about fruit propagation to take viable plants with us when we finally move out of here.

Original goal list posted here

Progress: #5. Go greener

I'm trying to spawn white button mushrooms from white button mushrooms in spent coffee grounds.

I also made a nice stir fry of everything but what I needed.

Apparently they are quite finicky, so wish me luck!

I'd love to fry them up with freshly harvested spruce tips come June.



Original goal list posted here

Progress: #42. Do more public speaking & #13. Do more advocacy for ASD

My dear friend, colleague, and department head Kelly and I were selected to present at Peel's Teacher-Led Conference last night.

We focused on the links between Person-Centered Planning, Inclusive Education and Growth Mindset, especially centering on ASD, our regional program, and establishing a continuum between the way we treat staff and students in a school building.

Here is an image-by-image version of each slide we presented -- though it is without context, I think there is still some good in here. We also made some positive networking connections, I'd say.

Original goal list posted here

Completed #19. Get married

I've never felt so wholly overwhelmed by love. 

I think the great thing about getting married in our mid-late 30s is this really comfortable familial aspect. We are thrilled to let the kids run about the floor and create the sort of beautiful chaos I'll remember most: hollering their own brand of unbridled love in real time, spinning about in tiny tuxes and dresses and PJs, unbound by gender or social convention, making friends simply by chasing and hugging and laughing and dancing. This is a large echo of the kind of love by which I surround myself. The night is packed in earlier than 20-something wedding romps of alcohol and hook-ups. Just well wishes, good times, good friends, and conversation -- in the end, dulling the music to sit and chat with the last table of Geoff's friends, who welcome me in like their own.

Our ceremony is our unique blend of pure joy, awkwardness, and eschewing pomp and circumstance. Photos are just silly walks and beautiful moments, captured by my little sister - who calms me down and lifts me up more than words. 

Speeches are our one real chance to speak and be heard, where and when it matters.

This is a collapse of space and time, where your most important worlds take small seconds aside, to collide - and to recognize the pure energy of a meant-to-be;

and the advisory chorus is right when they say it goes by too quickly --

but in that moment, it is a quiet everything of love and gratitude;

and that is why I will never understand when the material overrides the intangible of the day.

I've said it time and again, but: My life, in terms of trauma, is no private privileged access anymore. I'll tell you just about everything, so I'm really no fun to gossip about. However, access to my sacred good, in the form of family and friends I hold dearest to my heart - well, that - that, and I think you're something special. Thank you, all, for being that kind of special.

All photos ©Savanna B

Original goal list posted here

Completed: #27. Do yoga for 30 days straight

30/30: Did you think I'd do it, friends? I did. And I did.

Biggest changes I've noticed:

1. Flexibility. I realize my degree of current flexibility would be someone else's inflexibility, but those that know me are pretty amazed at how quickly this has improved. I've never, in my life, been this close to being able to touch my toes. I think I realized the problem is not just my hamstrings and disproportionately long legs - but the tightness of my lower back, which has been improving.

2. Mood. I'm just less angry. A very minimal amount of Facebook rant posts would attest.


I'm not about to quit, but I won't be documenting daily.


Oh also I got married.
More on that later.

Original goal list posted here

Progress: #27. Do yoga for 30 days straight

29/30: I think something important is happening today, right? I got up early. I did this one, which was mostly good, except for falling down while trying to do crow. Oops.

Original goal list posted here

Progress #27. Do yoga for 30 days straight

28/30: I'm aliiiiive. Feeling much better today (yay!)

I decided I needed something short, core activating, and active. 

This was it.

Original goal list posted here