Mineral Spirits and Sten

It's been kind of a reality check since Tuesday night. Sten got into a paint brush soaking in mineral spirits and we had to do the whole ambulance, 911, poison control thing. Very scarey. Puts your life in perspective fast.

I learned a few things about myself. One that I do panic in situations like that. Although I wasn't debilitized, I caled 911 and got all those things done but my brain takes over and starts thinking the worst. This is what I do with stress too. I think I need to have more of a race car mentality where I need to look at where I want to go, not where I don't. I heard someone at virtcamp who did motorcycle racing talk about this and I had heard it before. If you look where you don't want to go, you will go there. If you keep your eyes focused on where you want to go, you will end up there. I think this holds true for other things too. I think your brain is extremely powerful and it does what it sees and needs to do. I think this is directly correlated to attitude and I know sometimes I'm not always good at practicing the "glass half full" attitude.

I also realized how precious my little babies are, how fragile and how much they depend on their parents. I realize how hard it is for me to be so busy and overlook little details, how detrimental one detail could be. I need to keep my mind on the things that are important first and try hard to eliminate the things that fall into the "law of diminishing returns" catetgory. My kids need to be at the top of the list. I've learned I tend to operate in fire fighter mode most of the time and that somehow I need to try to get ahead and concentrate on preventative things I can do to keep the fires from starting. I'm going to try to make some lists of these things. Try to be proactive and not reactive. Not only with my school work in this next term but also with the other parts of my life. I really want to find a way to get into the school districts so I need to spend some time doing that.

That's all for now.