have people over

...to meet somewhere else tomorrow. One of the group members has broken her ankle, and won’t be able to make it up my front stairs.

I’m not giving up on this goal, though. I’m going to find someone to invite over soon.

I expected to fail at turning this goal into another challenge goal, but I’ve succeeded. It worked!

Biased expectations are a part of the challenge of this challenge goal, too. I don’t really believe that I can invite a large group of people over, and get my messy house in order, by a month from now. It’s good to notice, examine, and challenge my biased expectations, which are so deeply embedded that most of the time I’m not even aware of them. I just take them for granted as the truth.

...because the people were originally invited to come over to my house this coming Sunday, April 6. I guess it doesn’t really matter. The new date has not been set yet, but it will probably be Sunday, May 4. I don’t think I can make a new challenge goal out of this, but I will try to anyways, after the original time limit of this challenge expires later tonight.

...from April until May, because a friend thought she had volunteered to host the group in April, and I decided I could use some more time to get my house in order.

Tonight I invited my monthly book group to meet at my house next month. I’m hoping it will motivate me to get my house cleaned up, rather than causing me to lose my sanity.

but I feel like I cheated. I had a good friend over for dinner from out of state. The purpose of this goal it to get to know people who I’m only aquainted with right now. So I feel like having a good friend over doesn’t really count. But – as far as the goal was defined I accomplished it – so I’m counting it as done this month.

We didn’t have plans for Superbowl and it was obvious my husband wanted to, so I called the person I thought most likely to have plans and invited them over- knowing full well I’d likely get an invitation in return. It worked :)

and we had a very nice time. Before the guests arrived I had several moments of panic and efforts at positive self talk as I fretted that the house was not ‘guest worthy’. This is how I live, swallow your pride and your desire to appear perfect and show who you really are. I didn’t have time to pick up the piles or to vaccuum or much of anything. They didn’t seem to mind. Now I’m looking forward to doing this again.

I picked up the phone and invited a family over for dinner tonight. Nothing special(spaghetti) but they are planning to come. I can’t believe how long I thought about calling before just picking up the phone – why was that so hard?

Social life has really suffered in the last couple of years as all of our friends have moved away and we’ve added no new ones. My husband has complained about this a number of times over the last year so it’s time to make an effort to change it. I commit to once a month having people over. Probably will be couples from our church who have kids our kids ages, probably for dessert since dinner may be too daunting a task to undertake.