All is well, or, irrelevantish newsy bits

Tell you what, this Getting Sh*t Handled stuff really makes a difference.

My parents (Hi Mom! Hi Dad!) and brother (Hi Benjamin!) were up from California for Thanksgiving, and a lovely time was had by all. Except that I readily forget how to handle housecleaning stress and food-prep stress and children going insane when surrounded by beloved relatives stress, and so I was in a cranky-ass mood Thursday morning (Clean that! Sweep that! Pick that crap up NOW before it goes in the trash!) and then again on Friday (when I think I may have given my mom a turn by drinking three glasses of wine before 2 p.m.... Mom, I swear I'm not a budding alcoholic, honest. You just saw me on a bad day.) and then again on Saturday evening (rage, rage against the badness of the minis).

So by Sunday, I was pretty much useless. Which manifested itself as feeling cold--I think because I react to feeling cold by putting on jammies and snuggling up under a stack of blankets, not by anything actually warming like performing brisk exercise. And cranky. But nothing eating homemade pizza and watching a couple of Simpsons episodes en famille couldn't cure, or at least lessen temporarily.

Yesterday: a little better. Blogged, albeit uncharacteristically briefly. Gave the children an official homeschooling assignment: writing, in their best handwriting, a few of their favorite animals from the stellar book One Small Square: African Savanna, then drawing a picture of said small square packed with a bunch of critters. But, once again, nothing major accomplished. (I did do yoga for fifteen minutes, though. Until my hip was bugging me too much and I had to quit. Have I old-lady-griped at you yet about my stupid hip and its stupid bursitis? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Consider it mentioned, and I'll never mention it again.)

So today: had to make up for things undone. And with my brand NEW timer-on-a-string around my neck (plus my "Wheaties: Breakfast of Champions" ball cap... I looked like a psychotic gym teacher), I started setting times and Getting Sh*t Handled.

Fifteen minutes. Kitchen clean, including hand-wiping the floor--necessary because I broke the Swiffer handle in an orgiastic outburst of power-mopping the other day.

Ten minutes. Toilet dosed with bowl cleanser, sink wiped out, dining room table cleared off, glass tabletop cleaned, amaryllis watered (thanks, Benjamin!), miscellaneous books and Legos put away, living room generally tidied, toilet scrubbed out and wiped down, hands well scrubbed, sink wiped out again 'cause I just re-messed it up.

Twenty minutes. To-do list reviewed and all sorts of fine things added to it. Now I just need to go back and add some time estimates to it (I'm trying to fight procrastination the Julie Morgenstern way).

Five minutes. Responded to a fellow about his Craigslist ad looking for people to blog about games. Hey, we play a lot of games! Heard back from him already, and he sounds enthusiastic... cool. Looking forward to blogging about the intersection of gaming and home education.

Plus, managed to carve out about an hour and a half total in which to finish To Say Nothing of the Dog, the very funny Connie Willis book which my book group will be discussing tonight. And download some OpenOffice templates for the hospice newsletter I appear to have volunteered to put together. And print out some new calendar pages for my planner. And go into the boys' room and enthusiastically admire their latest Lego project: a 3-D portrait of Harry Potter. (Must take pictures.)

So, the moral is: over-busy and hyper-verbose is better than depressed. Right? And I'm making progress ever onwards and upwards and shouldn't go tiptoeing about waiting for the inevitable post-energy burst crash. Right? Right?

Comments

[Amy Sorensen]

Dang...your post reminded me that I forgot to pick up that very book at the library two weeks ago when it finally came up my turn. Sigh. I love Connie Willis---Doomsday is one of my favorite books ever, and I think that Bellweather was a funny one, too.

I so know the way you are feeling. When I am up and energetic and positive and motivated I wonder why I can't just STAY that way. Life would be much easier. But, alas, it never lasts, so I've just determined to get as much done during the UP days as I can. I'm totally impressed with how much you got accomplished in so short a time.

And now I've got that hymn stuck in my head....hmmmmm hmmmm, etc.

[Helena]

Hey, I just finished re-reading Doomsday Book. And then I re-read The Dark is Rising right after that. I must have been in a Christmas mood or something. (I liked Doomsday even better this time around--somehow the future chapters weren't as annoying, though I still wanted to throttle Gilchrist. I didn't enjoy Dark is Rising so much this time, though, and I'm not sure why.)

That's a lot of stuff! Way to go!

[Helena]

Oh, my favorite bit in To Say Nothing of the Dog was where it says that the reason the Victorians were so repressed was because they couldn't move without knocking something over. Ha!

[Mimi]

Helena (hi!) recommended the "Domesday Book" to me, I have it on my Wish list at PBS.

Hugs about Thanksgiving. I hate performance anxiety.

[Angie Pedersen]

Ha - this post makes me think of one of my favorite quotes (that I swear I'm going to make into a tshirt or wall hanging or something someday...):

Happiness is often the result of being too busy to be miserable.

Story of my life. ;)

[azureavian]

how funny, i just finished To Say Nothing of The Dog yesterday. i think maybe the second time i've read it. read Domesday Book right before it.