progress

There's been a great deal of progress in the Mirjafary household recently toward completing My 30 Before 30....a brief update, if you will...

3. Write a letter to a friend every week for one year.

Letters have been sent weekly and once received I will post to whom I wrote and why.  I've started calling these "love letters to my friends" because that's what they've become!  Sadie asked me what I was doing the other day and I said, "oh Mama's just writing some love notes to her friends..."  To which she replied, "I love my friends MORE, Mama."  Ahh, to live a with a competitive 2 year old.

5.  Make a once a month donation to an organization that could use it.

This month's lucky organization was the St. Vincent de Paul Society, here in Baltimore.  Per their website, "The Mobile Clothing Bank distributes clothing, blankets and personal care items to homeless people at various shelters and other programs in Baltimore City and County, Maryland."  In a household of two girls, such as ours, there is NEVER a shortage of clothing.  In the Baltimore City rowhome CLOSETS of two girls, such as ours, there IS a shortage of space.  So saving clothes forever and ever Amen is just not practical.  I was able to pull together 3 large trash bags full of clothes that we will never miss and unload them to folks who need them a lot more than we do.  And now, for a moment, I have a shred of closet space again.

9. Complete my Masters program.

As of this week I have officially completed 1/2 of my summer semester.  Which means only 6 more weeks of summer semester.  Which means when that's over I have only one class left.  Which is Marketing and Strategy Management in the Global Marketplace.  Which really could be Writing Papers about Purple Fish while Pondering the Discourse of Kangaroos for all I care at this point.  Which means after this summer...one more semester.  Upon which I will be Nasrene M. Mirjafary, MS, MBA. Which makes me very, very happy.

13.  Actually do that damn 30 day shred for 30 days straight.

I started this this morning.  Today = Day 1.  Which means I need to make it to August 11th.  30 days of Jillian Michaels yelling at me every morning for 30 minutes for 30 days straight.  I know some of you may think that's easy peasy...but 1: I am NOT a morning person, yet morning is the only logical time for me to do this every day and 2: 30 days is longer than you think! Without a break!  But it's on the list, so I have to give a try...and if I skip a day, my count of 30 days straight starts over.  That just may be the best motivation yet...

15. Stop biting my nails.

For the record, I know nail biting is a filthy, disgusting, ridiculous habit. I know. I took microbiology, I know how gross and germy fingers are. And guess what? It never phased me. But I'm proud to say that I haven't bitten my nails since my 29th birthday!  I've come close, and I honestly thought this would be the toughest task to accomplish because I bite my nails so mindlessly--I just don't even realize I'm doing it--not to mention they are attached to my body, so it's not like I can just avoid them.  But nevertheless, I'm coming up on three weeks of no nail biting (HUGE for me) and I think it's time I get treated to a real manicure.  The trick I've found (for all you nailbiters out there) is to file them and buff them EVERY SINGLE DAY.  For some reason I'm less likely to bite my nails if I took the extra effort to shine 'em up a bit. 

18. Read or re-read 5 of "the classics."

I'm about midway through To Kill a Mockingbird.  Yes, it's awesome, and I can't get over how much Scout reminds me of another little moxy-filled girl that I know and love.  If I weren't so preoccupied working on #9 I probably would've finished it by now, but that's okay, I'm enjoying it immensely.  I honestly can't even remember having read parts of this book in high school.  I may have just been so busy that I breezed through it, I'm not certain, but I do know I'm very happy it made it's way onto my reading list this year.  Next up is The Great Gatsby!!!!!! (A huge favorite of mine!!!)

20.  Get Sadira 100% potty trained.

I'd say we're about 75% there.  For your own well-being, internet, I'll save you the details. :)

21.  Teach Sadira to read.

My little linguist is successfully sounding out short words.  She can read almost all of the names of the colors...sounding out the letters B-L-U-E and then putting them together to read "blue" and so forth.  She actually ENJOYS this kind of stuff, and will bring me a book and ask me to read with her.  She blows my mind on a daily basis.  I'm not really sure how or where she learns everything she learns, but she's a bit a of a know it all. Last week at dinner I thought Tassie's head was going to spin off when Sadira started telling us, "N is for nest...and nail....and noodle...and B is for boy...and bat...and boobies...and bug....and S IS FOR SADIRA!!"

Yes, you read right..."B is for boobies."  Either my toddler is reading alphabet books written by frat boys, OR she's really understanding the sounds that letters make.  And THAT is pretty amazing to me. :)

23. Do not use a credit card for an entire year.

So far so good! This is actually probably the easiest for me to accomplish because I haven't been using credit cards at all for about 6 months.  I did almost use it once this weekend because the Papa Johns' lady kept keying in my debit card info incorrectly over the phone, but eventually she got it right.  Ya know, after scaring me out of my mind and telling me that three separate cards of mine had declined.  "Are you sure you're typing it in correctly?  Or maybe your machine is broken?" "Nah lady, your card's just declined. "

10 frantic minutes later after checking all of my accounts online, I decide either she wasn't typing the numbers in correctly or the machine was broken.  GRRRR..

Either way, we're another month closer to being debt free!

Oh and as for: 1. Conquer a fear....

It's coming along.  More information to come, so stay tuned.  But every day I drive past Silo Point on my way to work and when I come home...and there it stands...taunting me with all of its 23 stories....