Category: Getting Things Done

Testimonies to the daily grind of getting things done.

Where’s My Yellow Brick Road?

It seems my son has inherited the Early Morning gene from Bryan. He wakes up at 6am, perky and ready for the day, which really puts a cramp in my creative process. I write my best stuff in the virgin dark of morning when my mind is refreshed and clear, free from the business, stresses, and failures of the day.

Without this time to do my free-writing I end up posting quip-y things like this conversation that I overheard the other day:

“…and when I realized I had eaten HALF the package of doughnuts as I drove down the road, I started tossing them out the window, one by one.”

“WHY was I not driving behind you???”

Funny? Yes. But not the kind of writing I’ve always dreamed of doing.

I have so many thoughts swirling in my brain, so many stories to tell, but O how to set them free? I used to stay up until the wee hours of the morning, wrapping up my thoughts as Conan filled my screen with his huge, square head and pointy chin.

But Thomas’ Early Morning gene was clashing with my Late Night With Conan O’Brien gene so I redirected myself to fall asleep earlier.

I feel my life balancing out more.

I feel myself moving away from the Bitter About My Circumstances end of the spectrum toward the Accept the Things I Cannot Change end of the spectrum.

Knowledge is power – if I learn I play The Victim when it is difficult to take responsibility, yet I choose to continue blaming Bryan or Ruthie or some uncontrolled circumstances for the unfairness of my life, I move from ignorance to rebellion.

I’ve done rebellion. It did nothing for me but create guilt, stress, and loss of credibility.

Seven months ago I was complaining about the very circumstance I find myself in this morning – Ruthie waking me from my slumber before I’ve had my cup of coffee. I’ve grown up a little since then, and I’ve had my ass kicked a few times.

I’m learning that life is a series of choices I make.

I choose to lose my temper when Ruthie wakes up in the night, or I choose to be patient and soothing. I choose to shoot fiery darts of wrath at Bryan, or I choose to lay low and guard him from the hormonal surge. I choose to attend a women’s retreat, or I choose to attend an equally important tech conference on the same weekend.

I’m learning to make my choices and move on. If it’s good choice, I build on that. If it’s a bad choice I learn from it. If I have to choose between two Best Things, I leave regret behind and enjoy the choice I made.

None of this is easy for me. The women in my family are bad at making choices. I come from a culture of buyer’s remorse and second guessing, of being in one place wishing for another, of wanting things to be different than they are. I waste a lot of energy wishing, wanting, and regretting.

This is not the culture I want to raise my own daughter in.

I’m not sure where I’m going with all of this. I’m trying to spill out a few thoughts as Thomas crawls around on the couch, rolling on a bed of Cherios like Mena Suvari in her roses.

Perhaps I should wrap this up and simply say, I have been writing less because my circumstances have not provided enough opportunity for me to write. And I’m learning to be Okay with that.

Survivor Renton

Who will be the Lone Survivor? During this immunity challenge, castaways must overcome isolation, whining, and illness, all while weaning from Zoloft. Who will be left standing at the end?

Now that our Pink Eye epidemic is over, we have moved on to congested croup-like coughing throughout the day and night. If you don’t know what the croup is, imagine being attacked by a herd of barking seals who slobber on you and cling to you as if the ground is on fire. That, is the croup.

But rather than dwelling on the Closter phobia I am feeling from isolating myself in this house for a third straight week, not even able to see out the windows due to the Miami-like humidity I’m fabricating within these walls, I am trying to take advantage of my circumstances.

For instance, Ruthie and I are working on potty training. Her, that is, not me. Yesterday she wore a pull-up and kept it dry all morning, earning herself a special treat.

I am also organizing every nook and cranny of this house, and am THIS close to painting something.

Hey, we’ve got nothing else to do around here.

In my recent absence from the universe Things have been happening that no one has told me about. I escaped briefly yesterday to buy some groceries, only to find Brad and Angelina all over the checkout line with headlines about pregnancy and marriage.

COME ON, PEOPLE, you KNOW I fall behind in my gossip when I’m not working out at the gym! You are supposed to give me a HEADS UP on these things! Spill it. What’s going on?

THROW ME A FREAKIN’ BONE – I CAN’T EVEN SEE OUT MY WINDOWS!

I’m not making a new year’s resolution. Really. I’m not.

I DO see the new year as a time of fresh starts, do-overs, and resets. But by the time January 1st rolls around I am thanking the good Lord Almighty that the holidays are over and I can finally have my life back. This return to Normal usually allows for some tweaking, you know what I mean?

Yes, you do. You know exactly what I mean. While you’re thinking about Normal and all that entails you think to yourself, I haven’t been to the gym for awhile, Maybe I should try to get back there a couple times a week now that I have my life back. And there it is: something new and refreshing added to your routine sometime around the vicinity of January 1st.

But to call it a ‘resolution?’ That’s just so absolute, so firm, so lacking in any sort of back door escape. The only way out of a resolution is to fail.

Back in The Day I associated my Fresh Starts with the fall. It was crisp, and cool, and I had fresh, virgin, spiral notebooks and new shoes, and with the new school year came a new schedule and a new routine and life was innocent and simple once again.

Life is complicated, now. I fuck up so much more, and when I do, so much more is at stake. I don’t have the same beginnings and endings that I did when school started and finals and term papers consumed my life. I had summers to look forward to, and spring breaks, and Christmas – periods of time without responsibility or work. Now, the days and months and years just blur together for me so all I have left is that godforsaken New Year’s Resolution.

So in honor of January, and in keeping with the More Clarity to Jen vibes that have been coming my way, here are a few of my Fresh Starts:

1. I will brush my teeth at least once a day.
2. I will give Ruthie the opportunity to potty train instead of saying, ‘not right now, bitch, I’m too lazy to get off my ass’ when she asks to go pee.
3. I will stop eating chocolate (HA! HA! Just kidding! I just threw that one in there to see if you were paying attention).
4. I will resume my club membership and go at least twice a week.
5. I will try to eat something besides cereal (this may be a stretch, but we’ll give it a whirl).

Very profound, don’t you think?

I Feel As If History Is Repeating Itself, and Other Thoughts on the New Year.

Last year when New Year’s Eve fell on a Friday, and most businesses were closed that day, our furnace crapped out on us Thursday night around dinner time. We were left with no heat in our home over a long holiday weekend, which also happened to be the coldest weekend of the winter that year.

This year on Thursday night Bryan overshot a parking curb in the church parking lot and punctured a hole in the oil pan, which drained all the oil from the car. And, in keeping with tradition, by the time we had the car towed to a mechanic they were too busy to get to it before Monday.

And much like the coincidence of having no heat on the coldest day of the year, I was left with no car during a weekend in which Bryan attended a conference from 9am until after 10pm each night, leaving me alone with two small children and the voices in my head.

I often go days without leaving the house, but there is something about knowing I CAN’T leave the house EVEN IF I WANTED TO that makes me crazy. By the time Sunday rolled around and my kids were still hanging on to their pink-eye contagions, I voted myself Most Likely to Go Insane and went to church alone while Bryan stayed home with the kids.

However, aside from the morning I woke up on the wrong side of the bed and dropped the F-Bomb when Ruthie woke up at the same time I did (leaving me with no alone time for the coffee and Zoloft to kick in), I think I fared on the side of having a better attitude than in the past.

I think expensive therapy and reality checks from friends go a long way to put my life into perspective, and I take them both very seriously.

When a therapist informs you that you have a tendency to fall into Victim mode when things don’t go your way, and when a friend reminds you she NEVER has a car and she lives across the hall from drug dealers who run a meth lab out of their apartment, you could either become pissy and bitter, or you could pull your head out of your ass and recognize there is more to this universe than yourself.

I am learning to embrace Option B.

Options B doesn’t come easily to me. It’s much easier for me to complain about how bad I’ve got it and how unfair my life is. Sometimes I wonder why my friends even keep me around, I get so bitchy. They say it’s because I make them laugh, but I think it’s because I have cable t.v.

I read this great post by Finslippy over the weekend. It was a very well written post about the frustration of trying to get anything done while raising a preschooler, about how everything about you seems to get sucked into the vortex of toddler land, and about how easy it is to become bitter and resentful under those circumstances.

I could have written that post, yet in reading those words as expressed by someone outside of myself, I felt icky that I could have written that post.

At any rate, as I felt the stress coming on this weekend and was on the edge of grouching out at my kids, I did that praying thing Christians are supposed to do, and I tried to take myself less seriously. In this way I feel as if I’ve turned over a new leaf. Not like a new year’s resolution, but more like a shift in perspective.

The other day I woke up feeling different, less overwhelmed, more in control of my emotions. I weaned Thomas over our vacation, which came with a dose of regret and sadness, but I wonder if it ushered in a change in hormonal balance. I feel as if new and wonderful things are in store for me this year. I feel hope that my old self is still in here somewhere. I feel strong for the battle to attack my demons.

Happy New Year, friend and stranger. I wish you hope and peace.

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

I can’t recall the last time I rented a car on a vacation before, since my vacations usually involve visiting family members who seem to have extra cars lying around. However, on this most recent visit to Southern California to visit family, we couldn’t figure out who had a big enough vehicle to pick us up from the airport so my mother-in-law offered to rent us a mini-van for the week.

Hallelujah.

God bless Alamo, because they sent me out to their car lot and said to me, “pick one!” So I skipped down the row marked ‘vans’ and chose me a Dodge Grand Caravan, which was not as exciting as I was anticipating. I thought I would have more choices on models, but it was really only a decision between the black, white, or silver Dodge. Still, it was fun to have someone plunk me in the middle of a car lot and say, “Pick one!” and for just a moment imagine I was pickin’ me a new Cadillac Escalade.

Once in the car (after my handsome baggage handler loaded our mountain of luggage – which is another story), Ruthie announced we were on our way to Uncle Bad’s house, which is a fairly accurate description of my brother-in-law, Brad’s, personality.

Ruthie had been announcing each phase of our trip as it occurred, beginning with the tragic tears of sorrow as she watched her car seat ride away on the conveyor belt toward the belly of the plane. “I WANT MY CAR SEAT!” she sobbed, as she watched it disappear. But soon, the tragic loss of the car seat was forgotten as she saw airplanes out the window of the terminal and began chanting, “I WANNA GO ON A BOAT!” over and over again, even as I tried to explain we were actually flying in an AIRPLANE.

Once in CA we (and by ‘we’ I mean Bryan, the handsome baggage handler) loaded and unloaded our mountain of luggage no less than five times as we made our way from the baggage terminal, onto a shuttle, to the car rental building which was NOT onsite at the terminal as I had been told on the phone.

By the time we got to the rental lot and the guy said, “Pick one!” I turned to Bryan to see if he wanted to pick and he growled, “JUST DO IT, ALREADY!” as he wiped the sweat from his forehead.

In the future, when I think of all the times I get stuck running around after children while he obliviously buries his head in a book, I will remember how I DIDN’T have to load and unload four pieces of luggage, a car seat, and two carry-ons no less than five times in one day.

…and THEN he told me to run home and change because my ankles were exposed.

This morning I stopped into my locally owned and family operated hardware store to pick up some supplies for a weekend project I’ll be undertaking sometime in the next month. When I asked A Guy to point me in the right direction, this was the comical exchange that followed:

Me: I’m looking for grout to repair some corroded areas in my shower.

Him: Do you know what color he wants?

Me: [smirking] I think it’s gray.

Him: Sanded or non-sanded?

Me: Hmmm, I’m not sure…

Him: Well you could always buy one box of each. Is there any way you can get a hold of the guy to ask him which one he wants?

Me: [smirking and trying to not laugh at the absurdity of such an assumption] I’m pretty sure the grout that’s already in there is rough.

Him: Then he’ll want sanded.

Me: Thanks. Uh… oh, never mind.

I’m Never Leaving This House Again. Ever.

We’re finally back from ‘vacation,’ which I put in quotations because Ruthie woke up between 5:00 and 6:00 am every morning and I did about 25 loads of laundry due to all the puking on me, on couches, on blankets, in beds, and on rugs.

While spending time with family we haven’t seen in two years was fun, I have to say this was probably the most stressful trip I’ve ever taken.

And I’ve spent three months in the jungle before, so that’s saying a lot.

I thought about writing a list of all the horrific things that happened while we were gone, but I couldn’t figure out a way to make it work and not sound like I was complaining. We really did have a good time despite the stress, and the weather was sunny and in the 80’s.

The only reason I would describe the litany of events is simply so you will take me seriously when I say IT WAS A REALLY STRESSFUL TRIP, and not just write me off as a whiney mom. But even if I did describe everything to you, I really don’t think you would believe me. I think you would probably assume I was exaggerating for drama, but I assure you that last week needed no extra drama inserted.

I will say this, though: the trip ended in style as Thomas barfed all over me on the airplane, and as his puke oozed down my neck and into the cleavage of my womanhood, and soaked into the hair on the nape of my neck, Bryan and I had nothing left in us but laughter for the absurdity of such an act.

God bless flight attendants, every last one of you.

Bon Voyage

Well, I just finished 8 loads of laundry in preparation for our trip to California tomorrow. Yuk.

The good news is, our Christmas weather will look like this:

CA weather

Sadly, for those of you here in Seattle, your weather will look like this:

untitled

You may not hear from me for awhile. My in-laws live in a time and place without computers. Since I have a secret love affair with my Starbucks internet account, I may say a brief hello here and there.

Peace to you and Merry Christmas, too.

The Post About Poop

Sadly, when you raise a child from the time he or she is a baby, the subject matter of your conversations often revolve around poop.

I wish I could say I was NOT one of those parents, but that I was a cool and hip mom with manicured nails and a regular bridge game where we talked about politics. But alas, I have fallen into the UNcool mom category where I discuss my children’s poop regularly with others.

It starts at the hospital, really. We wait on pins and needles for the icky black tar-like substance to turn creamy and yellowish green. Then when solid foods come we laugh at the whole, undigested raisins that come out and we run into the other room to show the dad how funny the poop looks.

Moms compare notes on pooping schedules. As in, Mine poops every afternoon following her nap, or Mine poops every morning after breakfast. Ruthie usually poops after her coffee kicks in.

Then there’s the toddler phase. Last week Ruthie swallowed a penny, and when it came out the other end we all celebrated and Ruthie told everyone she met that she found a penny in her poop.

Now that I have a boy coming through the ranks of poopdome, I find myself quite tired of poop. Thomas wakes up almost every morning with poop oozing from his diaper and down his leg and up his back. His poop is nasty. I recognize that poop, by definition, is nasty, but Thomas’ poop is DOUBLE DUTCH nasty.

I just want a vacation from poop. That’s all.

They Say It’s the Little Things That Hurt the Most

I just finished addressing all my Christmas cards. This year I went low maintenance and BOUGHT cards, rather than made them. Life is too short to be Martha Stewart.

It was sad coming to mom’s card, after having addressed envelopes to The Smith Family, or Mr. & Mrs. Smith. I didn’t know how to address hers. It just seemed foreign to say ‘Marge Pearson’ on the envelope of her Christmas card, yet ‘Pearson Family’ sounded awkward, as did ‘The Pearsons.’ Maybe I should have written ‘Mrs. Gordon Pearson.’

I don’t know.

Seems like any which way I write it he’s still not REALLY on the envelope.

The Tongue, it is for speaking.

Who knew that simply communicating could be so useful.

I’m feeling a little melancholy about Christmas this year and haven’t been too excited about shopping or decorating. This is highly unusual for me, so I figured I would regret it down the road if I ignored Christmas this year.

I began feeling bitter at the thought that Bryan might wait around for me to do something, instead of just being excited about it himself and getting me into it.

Then I realized how ridiculous it was for me to become bitter about a hypothetical situation that hadn’t even come to fruition. Yet.

Then I realized that (duh) the best way to head off this hypothetical situation was to just TALK to Bryan about how I was feeling (thank you, Jenny, for pointing out the obvious to me – Have you ever thought of talking to him? She asked. She knows me well, that I would rather steep in the bitterness of unmet expectations than communicate my feelings).

So I IM’d Bryan at work and said, I’m depressed and not really into Christmas this year, but I know I’ll regret that decision later so I really need you to be into it this year for my sake.

Know what he said?

He said, Let’s get a tree tonight, then.

I so love him.

And I’m a dork.

The Life Cycle of a Procrastinator

Bryan says my procrastination turns him into the enemy, that it defeats our missional purpose as a family.

This got me thinking about the life cycle of my procrastination. Since Bryan is so into Pattern Recognition as a way of life, I thought he would appreciate the following confession:

    1. I feel overwhelmed by something
    2. My fear paralyzes me and I do nothing
    3. I feel guilty about dropping the ball, and I hide the problem from Bryan
    4. When Bryan discovers the problem, he confronts me, and I react in bitterness
    5. And it makes me feel like a failure
    6. And I become angry
    7. And blame circumstances or other people without taking responsibility for myself
    8. Which causes me to throw things in the general vicinity of Bryan

So… if admitting you have a problem is half the battle, NOW what do I do?

Why Did I Do That?

I didn’t do much of any consequence today. Or maybe it just feels like I didn’t because the one thing I DID do knocked me out for the rest of the day.

I went to Costco.

At lunch time.

With both my children in tow.

Which wouldn’t have been a problem had I thought to bring snacks.

I should start a category titled “Things That Annoy Me” like dooce has, because my first entry would read: People who block traffic in the middle of the parking lot waiting for you to load your two children and three hundred dollars worth of warehouse sized boxes into your car by yourself in the rain while they sit patiently inside their car sipping coffee and do not offer to help the 5’2” lady with the twisted spine of stress.

Can Someone Please, Just Make It Stop.

Look at me go.

I just figured out how to change the font, making it easier to read. Plus I updated my Blog Pile list a little.

I needed something mundane and technical to focus on to calm the crazies in my head. It seems to have done the trick since the anxiety has left and I’m breathing normal again.

A doctor once told me that I carry my stress in the muscles in my upper back, and that if the stress became too great the muscles would actually pull my spine out of alignment.

I’ve been to the chiropractor three days a week lately, so you do the math.

Ah, what is depression by default vs. depression by choice… that seems to be the question of the hour. One implies a hormonal death spiral, the other a mood based on circumstance.

How does one know? How does one know when to just buck up, cheer up, and shut up?

Does a hormonal death spiral see a milestone? Does it see the light at the end of the tunnel? Will a good chuckle shake it off? I really want to know.

While I appreciate the IDEA behind this Recipe for Peace, does it work if you’re baking the Crazy Cake? Vining writes…

Worn down by each day’s responsibilities and worries, I longed to be enveloped in the “peace of God”—that deep serenity of soul where calm and joy grow. But I had to admit, in the many years I’d been a Christian, I couldn’t say that peace had characterized my life. Was this “peace” the Bible spoke of just some cold, distant theological doctrine, or something I could actually experience now?

I am overwhelmed and filled with chaos in my mind.

Scott Berkun best describes how I feel in this post about the Data Death Spiral. He says it begins like this…

The spiral begins with ignorance. Leaders confuse the collection of research with thought. People who throw more data (not better) at problems are rewarded and others follow. Soon no idea can be suggested without a data armory. Meetings are data battlegrounds. Or worse, data massacres. When someone says “Morale is low. People are crying in the halls. We must do something.” another says “but where is your data?” and the conversation ends.

I had a very cathartic experience reading both of these essays.

One gave me insight into where I might find Peace, and the other helped me understand myself and the struggle within my mind.