TJ Hirst

Ingenuity: n. 1. Inventive skill or imagination; cleverness. 2. Imaginative and clever design or construction.

Our home sits on unique triangular-shaped, one-acre lot with a steep hill and undeveloped forest. We chose it because we could position the house up high to take in the views but also enjoy the trees. We built the home right at the front of that pie shape and left the woods natural.

When we were at my parent’s farm, Grandpa loved showing us his planned projects to improve their property. We also took a short hike through a state park that everyone loved.

When we returned home, I wondered aloud with my 11-year-old son, NH, if he wanted to build a hiking trail through our forest to a fire pit/campsite and make a nature loop back to the house.

He’s nurturing that idea as his own summer project with research on the Internet, sketches and notes the site plan, and initial marking of where the trail will go. I love to see his mind catch hold of this idea and know that he is old enough and skilled enough to carry it through with our help. Now, he’s the leader on this one, and we will post his progress along the way.

Try-It With-Me Tuesday, an interactive weekly time and place to foster connections that challenge and encourage the process to become a well-rounded person.

Today is the day to report progress and results for the June Reading Challenge and the other Try It With Me Tuesday Challenges for the month. They included:

Read food labels this month to be more aware of servings size and nutritional value.

Write down everything you eat for one week.

Eat at least 5 fruits and vegetables per day for one week.

Did you try them with me? If so, leave a comment below about the one(s) you tried and tell me how it changed your eating habits. If you would like to write a post on your own website about what you did, you can include your link in the comments or send it to me, and I will publish it for you.

Read food labels this month to be more aware of serving size and nutritional value.

This part of the challenge educated me. I was in denial about how much and what I actually eat. My awareness prompted me to seek out new foods and foods I used to eat but gave up to accommodate family eating plans. Keeping an eye on nutrition facts also changed what I ate when eating out. During the week that I was on vacation I discovered smaller a la carte items like wraps with veggies to replace “the meal” or “basket” options on the menu. Ironically, reading toward better eating showed me that the foods I need most are those that are not pre-packaged with easy labels but whole foods that don’t come in a box.

Write down everything I eat for one week.

Keeping a food journal for one week and then recording my servings of fruits and vegetables the following week steered me toward proper serving sizes and amounts. Recording held me accountable to myself. I also identified the patterns of why I eat. For instance, the weekend days of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday needed a whole note page to themselves, rather than just the half pages for Monday-Thursday.

I must be a social eater. Peer influence, especially in a family, to change what you eat is tough. However, my children decided to modify our butter usage and change to Smart Balance. And I let everyone know that I am eating for me, now, and not for them. Consequently the important change I have made is to eat when I am hungry.

Eat at least 5 fruits and vegetables per day for one week.

I needed this “requirement” on myself to eat better foods, not just cut out junk foods, as the last challenge of the month. It was the one that most changed what I eat. It was easier because my children used the worksheets I printed from Dole’s website and tried this challenge with me.

We drastically changed what we ate, especially by choosing fruits and vegetables for our snacks over crackers or packaged snacks.

Thanks to a comment from my friend Alison about V8 Fusion, I started drinking V8 juice again, which I love, but stopped buying because no one drank it but me. My current afternoon snack is now a serving of V8 juice, which is an easy way to get 2 servings of vegetables.

Well, my goals this month have been mostly to receive a healthy education and motivation to eat better than ever. In the past I have reduced my food intake but never started with a shift in lifestyle thinking. That’s what I needed after fifteen years of shopping and cooking for the needs of a family. This has been about changing my meal-planning and shopping and cooking habits as much as anything. Fortunately, I do feel the support of my children and my husband and that’s going to make the biggest difference for me in long-term success.

Join in by trying the challenges with me, commenting, linking, or suggesting a challenge. If you want to write a post on your blog about what happened when you took the challenge, I will publish your link. Just link to my website in your post and send me your link. Feel free to use the TIWMT image in your post.

Michelle’s feet swelled overnight on the first day of the Breast Cancer 3-Day Walk. In the morning she could barely fit into her second pair of shoes, New Balance cross trainers. If only she had thought to bring extra shoes to wear to the showers for some relief. She walked another 20 miles that day with her toes squeezed together in those too-tight shoes. A long toenail cut into another toe. And somewhere along the route through the city streets of Minneapolis, blood seeped through the mesh and covered the top of her shoes.

Years earlier Michelle made a goal for herself in a women’s health class at college. The instructor asked each student to set a 3-month goal, a 1-year goal, and a 5-year goal. At the same time, she sought to know her mother who had died from breast cancer when Michelle was 10 and learn more about herself in the process.

She kept asking herself, “My mom died so long ago. Why does it still affect me now?” Her answer, “Because she had been gone so long, I needed to find her. In finding her, I was finding myself.”

Her 3-month goal was to train for and run in the 5k Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in her community. “I wanted to make a connection with this disease that took her life and do something physically constructive,” she said. She also ran the 5k the next year and then discovered the Breast Cancer 3-Day walk.

Her mom became sick at a young age and died at 36. Michelle was approaching that age, herself, when she committed to participate in the 3-Day. Even though she struggled to raise the $2000 to participate and find someone to walk with her, she persevered—in the fund raising and in her heartfelt desire to connect with her mom.

Michelle worried she wouldn’t have the right equipment. She had a good pair of New Balance shoes that fit comfortably. But she needed two pairs. At a local department store, she bought a second pair—cross-training shoes by Rykä. In hindsight, she wished she had purchased shoes a ½ size bigger than she needed.

The organizers made sure the walk was as comfortable as possible, providing encouragement and nourishment at stations along the way and in the tent camps at night. The food satisfied. And the volunteers served it with humor and positive comments that kept her going. Survivors shared their stories to motivate walkers.

The walk itself was not the challenge. The challenge came for Michelle in walking through the pain in her feet, aggravated by her shoes. Organizers had encouraged walkers to bring Vaseline, apparently to use between their toes. Michelle thought her Chapstick was what she needed, and she developed blisters underneath her toenails. “My feet hurt so bad. If I stopped, I wondered if I would be able to start again.”

Michelle put on her Rykä shoes on the third morning of the walk. They widened at the top around the toes, giving her the extra space she needed to complete the final day of the 60-mile walk. Having never found someone to join her in the walk, she walked on her own. She met interesting women along the way. Some with a connection to places she had lived. Others with stories of their own. All there for the same cause.

“It’s a strange thing; that disease had already taken her life,” Michelle said about her mom. “In walking, I wasn’t going to fund medicine to help her get better. But I felt a physical need to work some of that emotion out, to let out some of those hard and sad feelings.”

The last 20 miles wound through the old avenues of St. Paul, past neighborhoods of large, beautiful older homes and through parks with ponds or lakes. She completed her 3-Day 60-mile walk at the Minnesota State Capital building. “Physically, I could have kept walking, if my feet would have allowed it.”

Even at the end, the pain continued. Michelle’s feet burned and tingled. All the participants waited for every last person to finish walking. Waiting for the others prolonged it. She later lost several toenails, which she even considered selling on eBay to raise more money to benefit breast cancer research.

Healing came. The walk was a stepping stone to later experiences when she felt her mom close. “I felt that I was growing more whole as a person, which is how I see her.”

She still owns and wears the Rykä shoes that she wore to the finish line, even though she has worn a hole through the bottom. “If I could ever find another pair of shoes like those ones, I’d buy a bunch of them.”

This post is an entry in the Scribbit May Write-Away Contest.

In the middle of my perennial garden bed, I sat between the weeds and the flowers, not knowing the difference. Sometimes perennials or wildflowers that aren’t in bloom can look a lot like weeds. I was a young mom and a young gardener inheriting a garden from previous owners.

Meanwhile, my neighbor across the street cleared and prepared her beds for an herb and vegetable garden. I craved turning over my own soil to plant new seeds or plants. I ripped at the plants that looked like weeds to me. Yet, as I proceeded, I felt a quiet urge to wait patiently and watch the garden, to not even pull the weeds. My nurturing instinct was louder than my impulsiveness, and I backed off the garden bed.

In that everyday gardening experience I became not only a more patient gardener but a more patient mother, working slowly and carefully in both realms.

My everyday realms are ordinary, but they are a microcosm to larger realms. Considering and connecting, comparing and contrasting everyday experiences to each other and to the larger world reveals truth. The grass is always greener somewhere else until light illuminates our own.

This is the 100^th post at tjhirst.com. In celebration, I reveal a new look and a new tagline, Illuminate Everyday. My husband, Paul, created this original web design to reflect my writing goals.

To illuminate is to provide or brighten with light, to make understandable, clarify, to enlighten. I am still seeking and finding what inspires, but the process to seek and find creative, intellectual or spiritual inspiration is not an anxious perusal of all the available resources the world over.

Inspiration comes when I illuminate the everyday people, circumstances and situations in my own realm and consider the truths that exist right around me. My writing is a creative process that “elevates the everyday rather than denigrates it,” as my husband says. My goal on this website is to share that process and what I discover.

Try-It-With-Me Tuesday, an interactive weekly time and place to foster connections that challenge and encourage the process to become a well-rounded person.

The April Reading Challenge was to memorize something you have read that inspires you, and today is the time to tell how you did. What did you memorize? Did you complete your goal? What did you learn in the process?

My goal was to memorize The Family: A Proclamation to the World. My reason for this mental challenge to memorize was to create a mental tool for myself. I can replace negative, anxious or wandering thoughts at any time and in any place with inspiring words.

Originally I made this goal at the beginning of the year as personal gift to myself for Mother’s Day. But I could see that I was not progressing in my goal so I made it the April Reading Challenge. Like many personal goals, it is easy to set it aside our own commitments when other choices or responsibilities arise. That happened to me, especially in the last week of my goal.

So how did I do? Better than I expected—I am 95% complete with my goal. I can recite the nine paragraphs or 29 sentences of this document today with only six or seven corrections or prompts. That is far enough that I will have 100% completely memorized on Mother’s Day.

Trying to Memorize is a process. I write the document on note cards and study them one at a time. Then, when I think I know each card, I study the document as a whole and try to say it from beginning to end.

Moving from the note cards to the document was a difficult but important shift in the process. I wanted to keep the small sub-goals of memorizing individual paragraphs. I lacked confidence that I was ready to recite the whole. But once I changed to recitation rather than just memorization, I achieved more success.

When the final week of my goal collided with other reading, writing and teaching assignments, the recitation didn’t add to that stress—it minimized it.

One of those added stresses was a CT scan on my sinuses. Ironically, it was while this machine created a diagnostic image of my head that I knew my true purpose of finding inspiration in any moment was fulfilled.

Did you Try It With Me? Tell about it in a comment below. If you would rather write about it in a post on your own website, leave a link to it here or send it to me and I will publish it.

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Next week’s Try-It-With-Me Tuesday will be my 101st post! Celebrate with me May 6, when I will announce the May Reading Challenge.