Home Again
Back from Australia as of Sunday night. I had a wonderful trip: ate mangoes and pastizzis, went to the beach, petted koalas and hung out with loving relatives (and one crazy relative but that at least was brief.)
I've been having such trouble readjusting to my old life. Was it really this disorganized and stressful? How did I deal with this?
Part of it, I know, is that Christmas is a very busy time, so things just slid by and didn't get done like they should have in favor of shopping, wrapping, baking and decorating. Plus, I put up my decor slowly over a period of a month whereas now I've come back and it feels like it all needs to be put away at once. But everywhere I turn there's stuff that NEEDS DOING and I feel I have no time to do it. Today I spent 2 hours cleaning the kitchen and it's a disaster because I also cooked. It's like I'm running on a treadmill or something, expending this huge amount of energy and getting nowhere.
There's stuff I want to do, too, and feel as though I should be doing, that I just don't seem to have time for. Like internet research. I've been reading Pelosi's idiotic comments quoted here and there, but I don't want to take the blogger's word for what she meant. I want to go read the Stephanopolous interview for myself and perhaps see if she's commented further or clarified her statement. I don't have time for that. So I feel uninformed, and I hate that feeling. My list of blogs is over 100 posts long in my RSS feed and those are just the four blogs whose writers I trust to look at both sides (Vox Nova, American Scene, New Catholic Politics and Ross Douthat.) I don't even have time to read the bloggers interpretations, let alone the source material.
Or reorganizing/decorating the house. We have a ton of pictures in the basement that could go up on a wall if I could be hacked to do it. The storeroom is a disaster; I can barely fit in there. I have cartons of things to be donated and too much stuff that needs to be boxed up and added to the pile. I know my life would be easier if I had less to pick up and put away, but it takes SO MUCH TIME to organize it I don't know when I'll get it done.
What, you may ask, am I doing with my time? I've been wondering that myself and started keeping track the last couple of days. I have a sheet with 15 minute increments marked down and have been recording my activities. It's a total mix. I run errands and leave the house for playdates or volunteering. I go to Mass. I clean. I cook. I talk on the phone. I take care of the kids. Consistently, though, I get 3 hours of screen time (computer or TV.) Personally, I don't think that's egregious considering it's the ONLY thing I do for myself. I watch LOST and have been enjoying the Australian Open. Dan and I watch Scrubs, Friday Night Lights and the Office together as bonding. That's honestly all the TV I watch. My computer time is my link to the outside world. Like I said, I'm reading blogs, emailing, keeping up on my LJ friendslist and Facebook. Would I give it up if it meant sanity and a clean kitchen floor? That's what I'm pondering.
But I want quality time with my kids that doesn't feel like they're interrupting what I'm supposed to be doing. I know that I'm not going to be a clown or a babysitter. My "job" is not to play with my kids, it's to raise them. That means keeping the house and teaching them responsibility just as much as it means loving them, reading to them and playing games with them.
Still, I want to get back to having Doob Time every day. I was doing so well with my schedule over the summer and then when fall came I was never able to fit it all in in a way that made sense and incorporated everything. Perhaps that's an indication I'm doing too much, and I really DO feel that I'm overworked and over-committed. But I really WANT to do the things I'm doing! I don't want to spend all day folding laundry!
I volunteered to write an article for my Church newsletter about Project Gabriel, which I joined this fall. I want to keep up with that, and do my volunteering with my two ladies in Denver. I want to bake muffins for my friends' birthday and have playdates and coffee dates with them. I just started sewing classes and want to learn how to make clothes; I'm not ridiculously ambitious, but I think I ought to be able to hem pants, repair tears in laundry bags, make a child's Halloween Costume and perhaps some doll clothes or a jumper.
I DON'T want to teach catechism. But I'm locked in for another four months so I may as well suck that up. I don't really want to try and break into the Moms and Tots social group, either. I love the meetings but at this point it's a bit much with all the socials and volunteering. What else am I doing? Oh, St. Vincent de Paul. I feel like I should be able to do that. First of all, it's my only contact with people who aren't young mothers. I do want friends at my stage of life, but I also want friends at different stages, and I have always greatly enjoyed the company of the elderly. Given that the median age of my St.VdeP group is about 58, and that it only requires one day of service per month, I really feel it's something I can handle.
Which leaves me...where?
Schedule. I need a schedule. If I can't fit everything on my schedule then something needs to come OFF the schedule, no matter how much I want to do it. Either that or accept that the mouse is here to stay, because quite honestly I don't have the time to keep the kitchen clean enough to starve the little shit into the trap.
Grrrrrr.
I've been having such trouble readjusting to my old life. Was it really this disorganized and stressful? How did I deal with this?
Part of it, I know, is that Christmas is a very busy time, so things just slid by and didn't get done like they should have in favor of shopping, wrapping, baking and decorating. Plus, I put up my decor slowly over a period of a month whereas now I've come back and it feels like it all needs to be put away at once. But everywhere I turn there's stuff that NEEDS DOING and I feel I have no time to do it. Today I spent 2 hours cleaning the kitchen and it's a disaster because I also cooked. It's like I'm running on a treadmill or something, expending this huge amount of energy and getting nowhere.
There's stuff I want to do, too, and feel as though I should be doing, that I just don't seem to have time for. Like internet research. I've been reading Pelosi's idiotic comments quoted here and there, but I don't want to take the blogger's word for what she meant. I want to go read the Stephanopolous interview for myself and perhaps see if she's commented further or clarified her statement. I don't have time for that. So I feel uninformed, and I hate that feeling. My list of blogs is over 100 posts long in my RSS feed and those are just the four blogs whose writers I trust to look at both sides (Vox Nova, American Scene, New Catholic Politics and Ross Douthat.) I don't even have time to read the bloggers interpretations, let alone the source material.
Or reorganizing/decorating the house. We have a ton of pictures in the basement that could go up on a wall if I could be hacked to do it. The storeroom is a disaster; I can barely fit in there. I have cartons of things to be donated and too much stuff that needs to be boxed up and added to the pile. I know my life would be easier if I had less to pick up and put away, but it takes SO MUCH TIME to organize it I don't know when I'll get it done.
What, you may ask, am I doing with my time? I've been wondering that myself and started keeping track the last couple of days. I have a sheet with 15 minute increments marked down and have been recording my activities. It's a total mix. I run errands and leave the house for playdates or volunteering. I go to Mass. I clean. I cook. I talk on the phone. I take care of the kids. Consistently, though, I get 3 hours of screen time (computer or TV.) Personally, I don't think that's egregious considering it's the ONLY thing I do for myself. I watch LOST and have been enjoying the Australian Open. Dan and I watch Scrubs, Friday Night Lights and the Office together as bonding. That's honestly all the TV I watch. My computer time is my link to the outside world. Like I said, I'm reading blogs, emailing, keeping up on my LJ friendslist and Facebook. Would I give it up if it meant sanity and a clean kitchen floor? That's what I'm pondering.
But I want quality time with my kids that doesn't feel like they're interrupting what I'm supposed to be doing. I know that I'm not going to be a clown or a babysitter. My "job" is not to play with my kids, it's to raise them. That means keeping the house and teaching them responsibility just as much as it means loving them, reading to them and playing games with them.
Still, I want to get back to having Doob Time every day. I was doing so well with my schedule over the summer and then when fall came I was never able to fit it all in in a way that made sense and incorporated everything. Perhaps that's an indication I'm doing too much, and I really DO feel that I'm overworked and over-committed. But I really WANT to do the things I'm doing! I don't want to spend all day folding laundry!
I volunteered to write an article for my Church newsletter about Project Gabriel, which I joined this fall. I want to keep up with that, and do my volunteering with my two ladies in Denver. I want to bake muffins for my friends' birthday and have playdates and coffee dates with them. I just started sewing classes and want to learn how to make clothes; I'm not ridiculously ambitious, but I think I ought to be able to hem pants, repair tears in laundry bags, make a child's Halloween Costume and perhaps some doll clothes or a jumper.
I DON'T want to teach catechism. But I'm locked in for another four months so I may as well suck that up. I don't really want to try and break into the Moms and Tots social group, either. I love the meetings but at this point it's a bit much with all the socials and volunteering. What else am I doing? Oh, St. Vincent de Paul. I feel like I should be able to do that. First of all, it's my only contact with people who aren't young mothers. I do want friends at my stage of life, but I also want friends at different stages, and I have always greatly enjoyed the company of the elderly. Given that the median age of my St.VdeP group is about 58, and that it only requires one day of service per month, I really feel it's something I can handle.
Which leaves me...where?
Schedule. I need a schedule. If I can't fit everything on my schedule then something needs to come OFF the schedule, no matter how much I want to do it. Either that or accept that the mouse is here to stay, because quite honestly I don't have the time to keep the kitchen clean enough to starve the little shit into the trap.
Grrrrrr.