Fan mail Friday

I'm back, just in time for Fan Mail Friday.

As in, I thought I ought to share with you some things I've been a fan of, recently.  Writers of whom I am a fan.  Good way to do a bit of updating on things I wrote about a while back, while sharing how much I've learned.  These are always people way smarter than me (thank goodness!), and I love to learn from them.  Here is a peek at some of those smart people I've been admiring.

Oil on not-so-troubled waters.

Back in January, I wrote about my quest to get rid of disposable spray oil cans.  Kimberlie recommended the Misto sprayer (Advantages: reusable, fun to pump; Disadvantages:  $12).  I futzed around for a while, trying to find a way not to spend that $12, and finally caved in/gave up/shelled out/came around.  I've been enjoying the whoom-whoom-whoom action of pumping it up.  Jealously guarding it from my sons, in fact.  And my muffins have been obligingly sliding right out of their tins. But then I ran across this post from Natures Nurture, who -- faced with the same situation that had stumped me -- figured out how to get a regular spray bottle working well with oil by adding this secret ingredient:   water.

I am in awe.  And a dozen dollars in the hole, apparently.  

Mommy dollars and chore charts

C-son and J-son and N-son are all earning Mommy Dollars, and they all have BoMama accounts.  But keeping accounts straight has been getting less-and-less straightforward.  With three sons, there's a bit of -- shall we say -- "rambunctiousness" at bedtimes.  Sometimes we count up how much money we've earned during the day each day; more often, we do not.  

So imagine my delight when I saw this lovely video, in which a nine-year-old boy saves up enough for an iPad.  It's not the iPad that wowed me, though; it was his chore chart.  I realized I could use charts, not to assign chores, but to keep track of which ones I should eventually pay for.  Our lives are getting straightened out again.  

General busy-ness

Did I mention that April can be a hectic time for a professor?  I think I just might have said something like that, perhaps.  (Did I?)   Now that my semester is over and the summer is here, I'll never be hectic again, of course.  But still, my recent posts on my "rich and full" life prompted a lovely email from my alter-ego on the opposite coast. I read the first blog post below out loud to my husband, and I'm just glad we didn't pee our beds, we were laughing so hard (probably at ourselves, really). 

Just a quick note for other things I've been reading on the subject, that I thought you might be interested in. 
Erica at NW Edible life (who actually lives right down the road from me) recently wrote about the cult of busy. 
 http://www.nwedible.com/2012/03/escaping-the-cult-of-busy.html
I've found myself referring back to the post more than once.  

She also linked to someone else's interesting ramble on Slow Time vs. Fast Time, something I'd not thought about as I tend to try to treat everything like Fast Time. 
http://sharonastyk.com/2012/04/12/sweet-time/

And that's a peek at my end-of-semester reading list.  It's nice to be back again!