Category: Getting Things Done

Testimonies to the daily grind of getting things done.

Procrastination?

As I mentioned earlier, today I did nothing.

But after reading Julie Leung’s post from today, I realize that I accomplished more than I thought I did. I just made choices.

It is difficult to let go of goals. Each day I am teaching myself to pry my fingers off of my expectations and to hold onto the moment, elusive and ephemeral, the way one would hold a butterfly in the hand. Perhaps one could say I am procrastinating, postponing what I should be doing.

I may not have cleaned the bathroom, swept and mopped, or figured out what I’m making for dinner tomorrow – which were all things on my Outlook task list – but I cranked up the music and danced with Ruthie. And I sat with her and colored for over an hour. And we built a Duplo-tower.

So now my tasks will all appear in RED letters tomorrow because they are not done, but considering that my obsession for Getting Things Done is often the source of my frustration with Ruthie I think the trade off was worth it.

Praise Jesus for grocery carts shaped like cars wherein the child sits facing forward far away from you.

Today at the grocery store Ruthie was fixating on poultry.

“I WANT CHICKEN!” she would say emphatically in the produce section.

Up the cereal isle, “I WANT CHICKEN!”

Down the diaper isle, “I WANT CHICKEN!”

In the frozen section, “I WANT CHICKEN!”

You should have heard her when we actually hit the meat department. There was bouncing and pointing and oh my lord the “I WANT CHICKEN! IT’S OVER THERE!”

In leaving the meat department for the dairy isle there was crying and “I WANT CHICKEN!” through her sobs.

I’m not exactly sure what her deal was — it’s not like I’ve been holding out on her. We live in a very poultry-friendly home.

She paused briefly in the checkout line to exclaim, “I WANT TREAT!” as we passed by the Snickers display, but then resumed the chicken chant all the way home.

He should really teach all young men everywhere how to extract the truth from tired, chubby, stay at home moms

The other day I dropped in to the DMV to renew my driver’s license thanks to the lovely bank teller who informed me that my ID had expired a month ago and I’m sorry very much that I can’t give you twenty of your own dollars because an expired ID renders your existence to the dust of the earth.

At the DMV I was assisted by a very dreamy man who was delicious in every way except that he was wearing a navy blue cardigan sweater and he was working at the DMV.

After changing my address, he looks at me very diplomatically and says in his smooth and dreamy voice, “Height, five-two?”

“Yes,” I said, knowing the question that was coming next.

“Now it says here that you are 120….”

He leaves it hanging open for me to finish the sentence, and just like that I get busted for ten years of lying about my weight on my ID.

“Here’s the thing,” I lean in and lower my voice. “One-twenty is a bit optimistic, but does it really hurt anyone to just leave that on there?”

His smooth and dreamy voice says something about accidents on the highway and police needing to identify bodies, and I interrupt.

“Okay, I get it. How about we just say one-fifty,” I say, as if we’re farmers bartering the price of a cow. “It’s still a little optimistic, but more in the ballpark.”

He smirks, and with that smooth and dreamy voice he says, “Hey, now, you have nothing to worry about, you’re a beautiful woman.”

I nearly forgot I was married, and that he was wearing a cardigan sweater, and I almost offered to buy him a drink.

Today

This morning my neighbor came over to borrow my phone so she could call in sick to work. She had a hangover. While we were chatting in my kitchen, the gate in my yard was open long enough for my dog, Scout, to get out. A fact which I did not realize until about an hour later when I called for her to come and clean up the breakfast crumbs off the floor.

I swore, strapped my kids into their respective high chairs, and ran out the back gate where I immediately saw Scout across the street. She never goes far, she’s too loyal. She came as soon as I called her, and we rejoiced at her safe return by wrestling on the back deck.

It was at this point I realized she had rolled around in another dog’s poop.

I don’t know if all dogs do this, but mine always does whenever she gets the chance. It must be some sort of canine camaraderie thing. Thankfully, she never rolls around in her own poop, because I have plenty of that on hand.

So now my morning was delayed because I had to scrub the dog down with shampoo and water so my house wouldn’t smell like poop.

While Scout dried off on the front porch I took Thomas upstairs to change his diaper and get him dressed.

It was at this point I realized I was too late and he was soaked in pee, literally up to his arm pits.

I should have been leaving the house about the time I realized Scout was missing, but instead I became sidetracked by all these circumstances that were time consuming and frustrating, not to mention disgusting. I didn’t leave until ten minutes past the time I was supposed to be at my destination.

It was at this point I realized how comical my morning had been, and I found myself laughing.

I laughed through tears when I realized I lacked the tension of rage in my chest. I began sobbing when I realized I was rushed, late, AND sidetracked by things out of my control, yet I didn’t lose my temper or take it out on my kids.

I laughed.

I let it go.

I won.

Amped Up

I’m feeling a little crazed these days and it’s largely my own fault.

I scheduled four out of the last five days to start WAY TOO EARLY. This morning I had to leave the house with my two children by 8:30am. Yesterday a maintenance guy was at my door at 8am, and Saturday and Sunday we were out the door by 8:30 and 9:30 respectively. The next two days are the same.

WHAT WAS I THINKING?

I can take the occasional early morning, but this has been exhausting. Rushing tends to make me anxious and distracted, and I do silly things like search my purse for lip gloss while driving down the highway listening to a Pemco commercial about rewarding safe drivers, at which point the coffee mug in my cup holder tips over and dumps hot coffee into my seat which burns my ass and stains my pants.

Rushing this much every morning makes me crash all afternoon while the kids nap, because I’m way to burned out to think anymore, so I end up surfing the internet or staring at the wall or something.

And there’s just way too much to do for that to happen on a regular basis.

This afternoon I took a few minutes to sit in the rocking chair and snuggle with Thomas. I tried to relax as we locked eyes, and as he sucked his thumb his lids grew heavy and he fell asleep in my arms. It was precious. I wanted to cry.

But yet, as I sit here in my quiet house my heart is still racing and I still feel the tight-chested anxiousness I’ve been feeling all week. And my head hurts for all the information swimming around in it, which also makes me a very distracted driver.

I can’t turn it off.

So if it seems like my posts have been distracted and shallow lately, now you know why.

Blah. Blah. Blah.

That’s all I feel like saying tonight.

I’m tired, and I’ve been busy, and I can’t think of anything meaningful to say. My mind is filled with lists and budgets and appointments and plans to the point of squeezing out any contemplation or humor. Through this dry spell I’ve continued fiddling with the sidebar so at least I’m doing something with my website as a point of discipline if nothing else.

Last night I watched the last 20 Minutes of The Karate Kid on cable. I also have a Silly Songs with Larry tune running through my head. I ate six bowls of cereal today, and I finally cleaned all the clutter out of one corner of my basement that I’ve been meaning to get to.

And now I’m falling asleep.

How’s that for wasted space?

The Timer

This is the kind of post that will get me a whole lotta love. Not that I would strategically post nice things about Bryan in order to get something nice in return (because that would not be prudent), but the most significant lesson I’ve learned this month is that affirmation and thankfulness softens the jagged edges of a marriage.

This is also one of those posts that says, You Were Right, without actually having to say it. Out loud. To his face.

If I apologize to Bryan on the internet does it count?

I just finished a laundry cycle of Bryan’s work shirts, which I was able to pull out of the drier while hot and hang them up without ironing.

This is a big deal and worthy of prime real estate on my blog because I fought him long and hard over the timer he bought me so this could happen.

My drier doesn’t have a buzzer, so most of the time I forget about my clothes until hours later when they’re wrinkled and cold. Bryan bought me the timer to remind me when the clothes are dry, a gesture I was not excited about to say the very least.

I’m not sure why I was such a bitch about the timer. Maybe just because it was his idea, and we were fighting a lot at the time, and I was depressed, and it made me feel like I wasn’t Getting It Done.

At any rate, I love the timer.

There, I said it.

Shut up.

This Is What Lazy Parenting Gets Me

You know it’s going to be a bad day when you enter your child’s room first thing in the morning and are greeted by the stench of the Overnight Poop. You know what I’m talking about: the poop that is thinned by the acidic pee that accumulated over a twelve hour night which then seeps into the blankets, the sheets, and onto the pillow your child is sitting upon when she greets you with a cheery, “Morning mom, I POOPED!”

I didn’t help the situation when I allowed Ruthie to drink two full sippy cups of water around ten o’clock last night when she woke up and came into my bed for a snuggle. I pretty much flushed out her system and we had our very own septic flood because of it.

At the time it was happening, when I was listening to her guzzle the water down as if she’d sealed her mouth over the nozzle of an open fire hydrant, I thought How ingenious of her to adapt to her environment by storing up water like a desert camel because her mother fails to hydrate her all day long.

I also thought she smelled like poop, but as I dozed in and out of sleep I decided I was too tired for her to be poopy since her diapers were all the way downstairs and she was OBVIOUSLY comfortable keeping her daddy’s side of the bed warm until he got home so she must not really be poopy or she would have said something.

And then we both fell asleep.

So after paragraph #1 happened my morning derailed and I juggled breakfast and laundry and nursing and laundry and showering and laundry all before 10:00 because we had to be out the door for Ruthie’s first dentist appointment.

As I was grabbing children and shoes and heading to the stroller for our walk to the dentist I realized I was about to pass out from not eating my own breakfast so I channeled my inner Napoleon Dynamite and stuffed a handful of Wheat Thins into the side pocket of my cargo pants.

This was how my day started.

The Non Post

I have not been consistent in my posting lately, which is not to say I have not been writing. I have been in a deep and serious state of mind, yet I have fought against publicizing that to write something witty and entertaining.

This usually makes for bad writing, this constipation of my thoughts, and I am therefore in a creative funk.

Yesterday I wrote about the trainer at my club that I busted eating a candy bar as she walked from her car through the parking lot. That had potential to be funny if I was really into it, but it was crap so I filed it away in my drafts folder to look at later.

I considered writing about the junk mail delivered to me via UPS, as if the importance of ripping open a cardboard envelope would increase my potential to refinance my home. Again, it felt forced.

Even this morning I heard a funny conversation on the radio about the obsession of eating Captain Crunch even as the roof of your mouth is bleeding. THAT made me laugh, but not enough to go with it.

Life has stabilized, allowing me to look deeply into my imperfections without falling apart emotionally or ripping apart my husband and children.

I think I need to go with this, funny or not funny.

This weekend I met a group of women who amazed me – women that I have known to varying degrees before, but in this setting my eyes were opened to a new strength, a new vulnerability, and this gave me tremendous hope for change in my own life.

After many months of waking up each morning vowing to have a better day, promising to suppress my temper, hoping to bring order to my disordered life, I now see my inability to do any of this on my own.

This realization has been freeing.

I don’t know where to go with this from here. Even this morning I feel like bagging my attempts at writing because this seems random and cryptic. Or perhaps I should allow you to hitchhike on my quest to embrace the imperfection of The Draft. Annie Lammott talks in her book, Bird By Bird, about her fear of getting hit by a bus before she had the opportunity to perfect her “shitty first drafts.”

But if I have learned anything from ‘Jack,’ who is LOST on a mysterious island with other crash victims, it’s to allow our fears to well up in us for a moment so they may give us strength to push through.

So here it goes:

One… two… three… four… five….

Spoiled Rotten

Let me just pause and take a moment to acknowledge that I am spoiled rotten.

For all his faults – including, but not limited to, being the occasional ass – Bryan really does go hog wild when it comes to making my life easier (except when he hands me the phone for a long distance call then leaves me in a small enclosed space with a crying baby and a screaming toddler who is jumping on the bed. That’s not easy).

Maybe I just need to read that book about the five love languages that everyone talks about because I may not get foot massages every night, but he provides for me in countless ways that I never knew I needed.

And I’m okay with spending money on me because my man Brings It Home.

Bringing it home is especially useful on this, the day my washing machine decides to go on strike. Despite the fact that I secretly stalk the appliance department at Fry’s for new domestic toys (does that sound dirty?) while Bryan is geeking it out in the video equipment isle, I had nothing to do with this breakdown. She just quit spinning.

I will make the obligatory call to the Sears repair guy, and it will probably just need a belt replaced, but I will forever know that I was THIS close to getting a new machine.

Alive

I have a bug.

A cleaning bug.

I have had so much energy and motivation to Get Things Done that I think it’s driving everyone a little crazy.

There must be some sort of threshold when our babies turn four or five months old where we women suddenly change our hairstyle, go back to the gym, empty out the scary closet, and cook an actual meal for dinner.

I showed up to a birthday dinner with girlfriends a couple years ago when Ruthie was only three months old. These were gals I hadn’t seen for awhile, and they ooh-ed and aaahh-ed over my new haircut. One of them asked how old Ruthie was, and when I told her she said, “Yup. That explains it.”

I think it has to do with routine. Or sleep. Or both.

By three to five months my babies are napping a little more regularly, and sleeping through most of the night. I wake up in the morning recharged, ready to sort through a box of old baby clothes. I can predict with general accuracy when the next nap will occur so I can plan my day accordingly.

I fear that I’m a little over-ambitious these days. I have painting projects on my list, and sewing projects. I need to clean out our storage area, clean out my old office area, and figure out how to make my kitchen pretty until we can afford to remodel it.

I love to purge. I’ve made five trips to the local Salvation Army this month. I even brushed the dog because her fur was cluttering up her body too much. I think she weighs five pounds less, now.

The next time I have a baby (IF I have another baby), I need to be reminded of this threshold. Bryan needs to be reminded of this threshold. We need to just throw Order to the wind and embrace the chaos so we don’t drive each other crazy again.

I feel like my old self again, and I’m remembering how much fun my life is.

When I was a kid, whenever we drove through a tunnel it would get dark and I would roll down the windows of the car and scream until we hit daylight again.

I’ve come back into that daylight.

Close Calls and Other Lessons In Grace

The other night a friend of mine told me a story about a “terrifying yet amazing thing” that happened to her toddler. After not hearing from him for awhile (we all know what happens when a toddler is too quiet) she stuck her head out the back door to see what he was up to. He was standing in their fenced-in back yard pointing at the gap between the fence and the house.

“No, Isaac,” she said. “Come away from there.”

The gap was big enough for him to fit through, and my friend’s husband had been meaning to close it off.

Just then her doorbell rang. It was a neighbor inquiring whether there was a little boy who lived in this house. The man had seen a young toddler walking down the shoulder of the road in front of the house next door, and wanted to be sure he was safe.

Just then, my friend’s son, Isaac, came trotting around the corner.

“Yup, that’s him,” said the man.

Horrified, my friend realized she had stuck her head in the yard just as her son had returned from his streetside adventure.

I think all parents have near-miss stories like this one.

The potential for this incident to end in tragedy was not lost on my friend, but she expressed how faithful God is to watch over our children even when we can’t or don’t. She would not allow herself to dwell on the possibilities, nor would she allow her husband to beat himself up over not having fixed the gap sooner.

God had shown them grace, and they did not take it for granted: the gap was fixed immediately.

I was impressed by this take on things. She had started the story off by saying, “I need to tell you something really scary that happened to Isaac, but it was also really cool.”

I was intrigued.

As it turned out, the Really Cool part was the ability to recognize the presence of Grace in a preventable circumstance.

It made me think about me and Bryan, and all the bickering we’ve been doing lately. I played out the scene in my mind as it would have happened had the same thing happened to us. I dare say neither of us would be so gracious.

Bryan would have blamed me for not having some sort of system in place to make sure Things Get Done around the house.

I would have blamed Bryan for not having time to Get Things Done around the house.

Neither of us, I believe, would have been able to let go of the fact that the gap SHOULD HAVE BEEN FIXED a long time ago.

Neither of us, I’m certain, would have been gushing on about how amazing it is that God protects our children when we should be perfectly capable to do it ourselves.

This is how we struggle. How do we show each other grace – how do we recognize God’s grace? – without sacrificing the need to be good stewards of the things God has given us?

Bryan and I are pretty hard on each other. I know I feel the heavy hand of high expectations, and I dish out a pretty good dose of justification. Just the other day after reporting the nail polish incident to him at work, his first question was, “Where did she get the nail polish?”

Because of our struggles lately, this was a loaded question. In my mind it implied so many things: Why was the nail polish on the dining room table anyway? Why did you let so much time go by without checking on Ruthie? Why weren’t you able to make the salad during the kids’ nap time? Don’t you think you’re taking on too much by babysitting someone else’s toddler?

Bryan may have thought these things, and he may not have. But history begged the possibility of both the questioning and the track record prompting the questions.

In the end, what I long for is graciousness: the ability to give it freely, and the ability to see it when it’s given freely to me.

Scam

I feel violated.

I was nearly the victim of an internet scam, but thanks to the cynical, distrusting, believe-the-worst-about-everyone-until-proven-they-are-actually-nice nature of my personality, I prevailed.

I received an email from Ebay stating if I didn’t update my account information my account would be suspended after ten days.

I ignored it.

Ten days later I received a follow-up email stating they were about to suspend my account unless I update my account information.

I nibbled a little on the hook.

I clicked on the link they provided, entered my login and password to my Ebay account, and up popped a form requesting my credit card number as a verification of my identity.

I read through the whole form, only to discover they not only requested my credit card number, but also the three-digit security code on the back of the card, plus the friggin’ PIN NUMBER to my ATM!

DO THEY REALLY THINK I’M THAT STUPID???

I feel victimized. I feel shame. I need a shower.

Sleep Deprived

I used to wake up every morning at 6am, enjoy a quiet cup of coffee with my husband, then spend a couple hours working on the computer before my daughter woke up.

Now she wakes me up around 4:30 or 5:00 each morning with her obnoxiously cheery “Hi, Mamma!”

I can’t even begin to describe how grouchy I am when I have to engage before my morning cup of coffee.

I used to be excited to see my daughter come bursting through the door to the kitchen in the morning. She would always strike a certain pose as she slammed the door shut behind her, and it reminded me of Christopher Reeve’s Superman. Now when I see her eyes peering at me just over the mattress of my bed I get a seething clench of dread in my chest. Not the kind of warm fuzzies we mothers want to have about our children.

I am a mean person when I am sleep deprived – a point which my two-year-old has not yet clued into, but would benefit greatly from knowing.

These days when I consume my morning cup of coffee, I am standing in the middle of my kitchen with squinty eyes watching cable news — or Barney, depending on which one of us has the stronger will that morning – while Ruthie eats her bowl of cereal and I periodically shush her for trying to talk to me.

Disoriented, I have vague memories of silence, of birds chirping, of that still in the air as the sun begins to rise. I wonder what the heck I was thinking, spending those precious mornings doing something so stupid as paying bills or returning emails when I could have been writing, or reading, or sleeping for crying out loud.

I now believe that an organized life is overrated. I do what I can, but if you come to my house and find balls of dog hair floating across the hardwood floors and dirty dishes in my sink you won’t see a look of apology on my face, because that means I had a nap today, which means I won’t bite your nose off when you try to talk to me.

How to Survive the I-Don’t-Give-a-Fuck Blues

My life has become so overwhelming that I just don’t give a fuck anymore. I’m not talking about the suicidal version of not giving a fuck, I’m more of the version where you don’t shower for days, the laundry is piled up on the spare bed, and household budgeting is reduced to crossing your fingers and hoping there’s money in the account whenever you swipe the debit card.

I watch my two year old daughter as she plays, and if it doesn’t involve tormenting the dog by hiding her chew toys in out of reach places, it usually involves some sort of domestic work. Ruthie loves to sweep, and if she was about five pounds heavier she would love to push the vacuum around, too. She’ll spend oodles of time caring for her doll, laying her down on a clean blanket, lifting her legs in the air, wiping the doll’s ass, and she’ll even attempt to put a real diaper on it. Don’t even get me started on her obsession with cleaning surfaces with a wash cloth – she will intentionally spill water just so she can clean it up.

It’s funny how, at two years old, we loved to do these things. Tea parties were fun and we got dressed up in our white gloves and garden hats.

At what point does this all become a horribly dreaded chore? When does the joy become divorced from the task? Does Bree find any more pleasure in her daily grind than Lynette, or does she simply suppress the dread more cleverly?

I never meant for life to be so complicated. Was I just being naive? Is complication inevitable? Have I allowed too much to enter my life or is this the way it’s supposed to be?

I really felt that as a single person I was pretty non-romantic about the way life would be with a husband and kids. The extent of my fantasy was that my kids would sit quietly in the family room as we watched some brainy show on t.v. like Nova or Frontline, and we would have long and interesting conversations about the Milky Way Galaxy or the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. One season of King of the Hill and Celebrity Poker Showdown nipped that dream in the bud.

So instead of the tea party and white glove dream, I over-multi-task my day in order to get it all done to the point where I scream at my kids, they cry, and my daughter learns to say, “Mommy, sit! Mommy, sit!” And even THAT annoys me.

I just want it to stop. If it’s not possible to lay in bed all day with the covers over my head, then how do I get motivated to get up in the morning? How do I face the piles of paperwork and laundry and dishes and blah blah blah? If I choose to lower my standards and just let some things slide, will I be a Christian who sucks?

The Christian Culture says to “let go and let God,” that we find joy in our work because we are doing so unto the Lord, that serving my husband and children is a role I need to cherish. I know there are verses for all that.

But what the fuck does that mean when I can’t get out of bed?

Am I a Christian who sucks if my husband can’t find any clean underwear? Am I a Christian who sucks if the unopened mail is stacking up on the dining room table? Am I a Christian who sucks if I don’t get the dishwasher emptied until four in the afternoon?

Do I need to repent? Does anyone have a users manual that will tell me HOW to “let go and let God” and make it all happen?

I’m not asking for bon bons and soap opras, but there has got to be a way to do the things that need to be done while still enjoying my life and my daughter. Currently I feel as if I have to make a choice between nurturing my daughter and getting things done. Any parent who’s been there knows how demanding a two-year-old can be, and as I read more on the subject of raising toddlers, the more I feel comforted that I’m not alone.

As of late, if given the choice between resting or getting something done when I have both the kids napping at the same time, I choose REST. I put my feet up, grab a book, and if the gods are smiling on me I get to snooze for 20 minutes.

Does that make me a lazy Christian who sucks? To which I say, I don’t give a fuck.