My husband, he gives me fresh perspective.

I just ordered my new homeschool planner for the upcoming school year.

Which, now that we've been going mostly year-round, it will really be used all summer and then the next school year.  :-)  Big whoop, right?  Who cares, it's just a planner?  

You have no idea how I agonized over spending the $20 on this planner.  I liked the one I bought last year, but I felt like I didn't need everything in it.  I don't do Semester Report Cards, or keep an itemized Holiday List for everyone I get/make a present for.  So, some of the planner seemed quite useless to me.  Then I felt guilty over buying something that wasn't 100% practically perfect in practically every way.   (The Mary Poppins in me is coming out.)

I have spent literally hours, pouring over websites, trying to find free printables/downloads I could use instead of buying a new planner.  I researched several different planners, debated making my own template and just printing out what I would need.  Yet, nothing seemed to quite work as well as the parts of my current notebook that I did like.   

Finally, I brought this up to Dan-o, who asked, just a few seconds into my Great Debate, "So, how much does it cost?"

"Well, it's on pre-release sale right now, so it's only $20."  

"Ok."

"Ok, what?"

"Ok, just buy it."

"But, I don't use some of the pages."

"So?  It's gonna take us days to duplicate that format on Excel and you're gonna print out at least $20 worth of our ink and paper if you make your own planner, right?"

"Well...yeah."

"So, just buy theirs."

Sigh.  

Reminds me of the time I was having a huge issue with my new Day/Night moisturizing creams.  I had bought a fancy, schmancy set and the lids came in sparking gold and silver.  However, I was a little distressed because they'd put the silver lid on the Day cream and the gold lid on the Night cream.   In my OCD world, that clearly didn't make sense.  The gold should've been for the Day, duh, sunlight??  Obviously, the silvery moon color should've been on the Night.  I grumbled to Dan one night that this was making me lose precious seconds every night because I kept grabbing the wrong jar.   

He nonchalantly said, "Well, switch the lids."   I literally stopped and gaped, mouth open, at him because that thought had never crossed my mind!  

Are you laughing hysterically?  It's ok.  The joke around our house is that Mommy never thinks outside the box.  It's pretty funny at times.  

Want one more concrete example of how I struggle to think creatively?   One time Dan and I were at a workshop in the Marine Corps, and the instructor put up this handy dandy creative thinking puzzle on the board.   We were to connect the 9 dots with 4 lines without taking our pencil off the paper.   I racked my brain and could not solve that puzzle.  (I noticed Dan did, though.)  After a few minutes, the instructor gave us the answer on the board.  I heard a few people say, "Oh, I get it."  

But, I was the only one who exclaimed, out-loud, "You can't do it that way!"   

He stopped and looked at me, knowingly, "Why not?"

"Because you went outside the box!"    

As you can imagine, everyone snickered at my expense because the entire point of the exercise was to show us that we need to think outside the box, and that there really hadn't been a box there in the first place!  

So, pray for me friends.  The ability to think creatively and adapt & overcome is going to be greatly needed over the next few months!