Friday is the new Monday

A little after school dress-up.

In honour of last night's post about time management, and my desire to create a to-do list that is both manageable and accomplished, I offer you my day's list, in no particular order (which might be part of my problem in the first place, but I digress):

1. Clean entire house. Just kidding. But do clean some of the house because a) the Shabbat deserves a nice clean house, b) Matt invited a guest for dinner, and c) bathrooms don't clean themselves.
2. But seriously: vacuum carpets, clean the bathroom, and wash the kitchen floor.
3. Give Shira a duster and encourage her to clean like the wind!
4. Spend thirty minutes on my course website reading more of my students introductions. There aren't many obligations for my students this first week of classes, but I do expect they'll introduce themselves. It's only polite.
5. Edit a birth story I've written for my first doula clients. I hope they'll find it useful. Have I mentioned already how amazing that was? Oh right, I did that here.
6. Come up with, bake, and (eventually) devour a dessert for tonight's Shabbat dinner. Alyce and Shira always have something special with their Friday night dinners and today I'm going to prepare a few chocolate covered strawberries for them. But I'm still not sure what to make for the grown-ups. Maybe chocolate covered strawberries.
7. Remember to actually prepare the strawberries instead of just talking about them here on this blog. 

And in honour of my renewed optimism, here are a few things that have inspired me this week:

She constantly reminds me that it is ok not to be perfect. Read this (and all her other words) and you'll see what I mean.

This post saved me from having my own meltdown a couple of weeks ago. It is really good to be good to other people.

Because I think it's important to sometimes write just for yourself, instead of the entire internet.

Have you answered this question yet?

What is on your list today?

Because then I start to panic

I'm really glad I captured this moment the other day. There is this magic moment, a particularly stunning convergence of events, where both of my children find a quiet spot to read. It's been happening a lot more lately, even again this morning, where I find the two of them quietly sitting next to an enormous pile of books. It's competitive reading and I strongly encourage it. Alyce is still just learning to read, recognizing words but not quite happy to try sounding things out on her own. No matter, because who needs reading when you can stare at pictures and make up your own stories? Oh my heart. And oh my I get fifteen minutes of quiet time.

The optimism I feel on Mondays tends to have run low by Thursday, and having one fewer child in the house now that school has started doesn't seem to make a difference. It's kind of my own private hell cycle. Everyone struggles with their own schedules and obligations and this one is mine. I love the potential time offers me and I envision crossed-off to-do lists, completed projects, and organized piles, but I often feel overwhelmed in the follow-through. Once I start feeling overwhelmed time feels less like potential and more like panic. Whenever I've spoken to anyone about how to improve my time management or organization I'm usually reminded that I should make lists and then cross those things off the list. Simple math, really. But I'm terrible at math! I need something else, another way of understanding time management. I need your help. I really, really do.

I expect that it would be a good idea to identify the things that stand in my way when it comes to the follow through of my well-intentioned to-do lists. Here are a few offenders: I'm terrible at estimating just how long it takes to accomplish a given task, my reaction to stress is withdrawal instead of action, and my attention span chokes under the chaos of my day, or if we are being honest (and we are, right?) it really just takes me a long time to get started. Give me two hours to work and I'll work exceedingly hard for the second hour. The first hour? Not my best side. I've never been very good at throwing myself into a task without warning. My brain prefers subtlety, a few first soft steps in the direction of work. I've accomplished many things in my life using this approach, but it I'm frustrated by the inefficiency of it all.

When I catch Alyce and Shira reading so effortlessly on their own I see potential. I see time. An opportunity. Now I just want to find a way to make use of that time, even if only for ten minutes. I'm in this strange place in life, where I have so much freedom in determining how I spend my time but so many competing obligations and goals (children, school, two jobs, cooking, home, writing, and our family). This is where I need your help: how do you carve out time in your day? If you write a list each morning, what practical things do you do to accomplish your tasks? Do you have a favourite approach/book/blog you can share with me? I'll be waiting right here, with a sharp pencil and paper.

Seriously, I'm actually waiting.

(Thank you from the bottom of my overwhelmed heart.)

Getting my shit together

I hope my mum doesn't read this post because she hates it when I swear. If only she knew that my first instinct in most situations to swear. I find it to be very effective. Mum, on the other hand, wisely taught me that we can always find a better word, a word less caustic and more becoming of her daughter. Unfortunately, once I left home and joined the big world of college roommates who shopped at the Gap (I had only ever heard of it in movies, but I've since made up for lost time), drank lemon drop martinis, and swore like sailors, I threw her advice to the side. I blame them, yes, but they gave me so many wonderful things, too, that I just can't hold it against them.

So today I'm not talking about organizing my day or my responsibilities as a parent who works at home. No. I'm talking about getting my shit together. My lack of energy over the past year has given way to some terrible habits. I feel like there are pieces of me all over the place. My shit is a mess.
Sorry, mum, but there just isn't any other way of saying it. Please forgive me.

Here are some of the symptoms: twice in the last week I have gone to the trouble of arranging to borrow my grandfather's car (Matt takes our only car to work) so that I could run important errands, like Shira's two-year check up, and twice I have forgotten to take the car seat out from our car to use in the borrowed one. The first time I had to cancel our plans, the second I was able to find one to borrow at the very last minute (thanks, Aunt Jo, again). This is an easy one to solve: prepare your day the night before. Easy, right? Not so much. When you feel overwhelmed by everything and you're moving at the pace of a slug, preparing the night before seems unimaginable. With long days spent at home, often working in circles (hence, needing to get my shit together), I resist planning for the next day with great determination. It doesn't make sense: the next day will be easier if I take some time to plan beforehand. I get it.

Matt will often try to encourage me to plan ahead. Around dinnertime he'll ask me, so what are your plans for tomorrow? Is there anything I can do to help? Yes, he's that supportive. But in an annoying way. He is so incredibly good at organizing his time and preparing in advance, and no matter how much I complain, I'm jealous. If you were to ask Matt what time he'll be leaving for work the next day he would tell you that since he has to stop for gas he'll be leaving at 5:19 am. I can honestly declare that I have never in my life planned my departure down to a minute. Now, I'm not beating myself up about not being just like Matt. We all have our strengths, and one of mine is spontaneity, and the ability to be really present in a given moment (because my mind isn't busy planning and keeping myself on schedule). I couldn't give this up about myself even if I wanted to, and I don't. But I would like to make my life a bit easier, and I know making a habit of planning my day the night before, getting paperwork and lunches and meeting times together, will do just that.

Here's another symptom: I spend my day wandering around the house. I'm not a lazy person, even with my low energy, but the disorder of my days, sometimes due to lack of planning, other times the result of feeling like so much of my life is in flux, makes me feel as though I have one hundred things to do and I can't seem to get started on even one of them. I'm not sure where to begin, so I wander from room to room, picking up toys, washing dishes, checking an email, responding to a student, reading one page of a cookbook. Rinse and repeat. Some of this disorder is simply a reality of working from home. There are schedules for the girls (school, naps, a million snack breaks), deadlines to meet, cleaning to do, and all of these things happen in little bits throughout the day. I  can't always decide to spend the next two hours doing a particular task because I will be interrupted roughly one thousand times by Alyce and Shira. Working at home means flexibility (which is wonderful), but it also means that I do much of my work at inopportune times. Lately this flexibility has felt oppressive, hence the need to get my shit together.

So what do I do? I have a pretty good idea. I need to sit back and consider all of the tasks I need to get done, think about my time, and separate my day as best as I can. I can't do everything, no matter how hard I try. And sometimes, just sometimes, I need to say no to making an impromptu batch of muffins because I know it will mess up the schedule I have set for myself, and no matter how good those rhubarb and strawberry muffins will taste (which will be made tomorrow, as per my schedule), I need to wait. One of my tasks this weekend is to outline all of my responsibilities and think, really think, what I need to do to incorporate these into my day. I'll get back to you with what I learn.

A lot of what I'm thinking about lately has to do with wanting to feel excited about my days. I can't always love everything I do, but I owe it to myself, and to my family, to live my life a bit lighter. Andrea Scher wrote a post last week asking, Do you know what it feels like to lose your sparkle? That's how I feel, like I've lost my sparkle. I'm usually sparkly, and I miss that. Getting my shit together is going to help me get it back.

The photos today are from my last 24 hours on Instagram. You can follow me there @mostdaysiwin.

When they form a gang

Find the rest at here. Thank you Amber Dusick, for illustrating my life.

Our routines since we all returned to Canada have been all over the place. Our home routines have always seemed a bit different than most, but that's mostly because our lives were shaped by both the freedoms and limitations of academic life. Matt could stay home with them in the morning while I worked, then we'd switch places in the afternoon. It was a gift to be able to work around an academic schedule, where our work could be slipped in between classes and other obligations (at times it was also a curse, as anyone who works from home can tell you). Things are much the same now, though we don't have actual jobs to work around yet. But like before, we take turns giving the other one space to get some work done, whether it's looking for jobs, working part-time, or simply getting some well-earned alone time. Things will change a bit now that I'm staying home with them more often.

But I'm straying from my actual point here, and it is this: whatever the routine, Matt and I each spend a lot of time alone with both kids during the week, and I'm fairly certain the two of them plan out how best to gang up on the one of us. I expect that it's usually Alyce doing the scheming, but I should really give Shira more credit (because I'm pretty sure her wild pleas for attention are often just about distracting me from the goings on in the next room). However the plans are hatched, it has become evident that the two have learned to work together, as a team, to make us run harder, faster, and in more circles, around the games they play. Sometimes it's truly irritating, but mostly it's just hilarious.

But don't tell them I said that.

Any of you more seasoned parents more than one child have any advice for me?