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Dear Adventurers, there’s no more guesswork about it—sometime during this challenge I’m going to give birth to my child. It could happen in the zero week, it could happen in the third. It doesn’t seem like the time to make challenges, but I fear if I take a month off I may get swept away and never return…. As much as I want to lie around (and likely will do so quite often), I still need to take care of myself, my gardens, and my home and hearth. Adventures… well, they’ll be more of the “exploring new experiences” variety than “exploring new locations”—at least for this challenge. Most tasks are stated in the “before” timeframe. What happens “after” is yet to be determined, but there will likely be spillover. Note: I tend to find life unpredictable, and I’ve found a lot of success in the “spirit” of a goal rather than the cold, hard, and often arbitrary, metrics. As such, for each goal I put down, I’ll put down example tasks that fulfill it, but I will remain open to new and altered ideas that fit the spirit of the goal. Keep on Wandering: This has certainly been a struggle of late, I don’t expect it to improve before. I will continue to get in as much daily movement as I can without overdoing it. This includes short walks, local errands, caring for the house, and other light physical activities. And I will rest when I need to rest and not feel guilty about it. Home and Hearth: Compile a list of one-time home tasks that need doing. Create a list of regular maintenance tasks to keep the house comfortable and functional Create a household task calendar based on this list 15 minute daily tidies Cooking: bettering and expanding my menu Decorating/the photo project Inviting people over/fostering community Alter all of my household plans to incorporate a baby when reality hits me Tend My Gardens: Protecting My Psychic Landscape: There are outer worlds and inner worlds. Psychic landscape (or sometimes psychic space) is how I view my inner world. Sometimes, I let it get too cluttered with rampant-growing bindweed from the outside world. Sometimes I’m better at controlling this. I want to be consistently better. Journaling/developing nonfic projects Revisit my fiction project, brainstorm, add to it Reading Minimizing screen time (including computer, internet, TV, etc.) In the outer world, my “garden," is more literal. We don’t have much gardening space available to us in our London home, but we have some: a left-to-wild edging around our back patio (which, sadly, gets no light), and a shared garden (ornamentals) with a neighbor. I prefer growing food to flowers, but in past 2 years I have enjoyed being able to take cuttings for the table in the spring/summer. (Also, we have a tar seepage issue in our area that doesn’t thrill me about trying to grow edibles straight in the ground.) But I miss growing edibles, so I’m focused on creating an edibles garden on our tiny balcony, which gets the most sunlight. I have seedlings for strawberries, sweet peppers, mint, parsley, and basil already going that need continued nurturing and eventual transplanting into pots. We already have a flourishing batch of rosemary, and a bay tree that somehow keeps on going despite our neglect. I can’t do much about taming the patio or shared garden until “after” as I’m just not bendy enough I’d like to get another batch of seedlings going, particularly with the strawberries Pick out pots from our pile on the patio Acquire potting soil (I don’t drive; will probably have to order it) Begin transplanting the seedlings to pots and acclimating (“hardening”) them to the outside world Once I have those sorted, I will decide if there’s room on the balcony for more Consider fairy lights for the patio to make it more magical to sit in in the evening Check in and storytelling: Check-ins once or twice per week, experiment with narration. If I vanish for longer you can guess why…. This is a really long post for a token challenge >_>