Light and Momentary

Resolutions for Ordinary Time

I never really start my resolutions in earnest on January 1 -- I usually have Epiphany resolutions instead. This is partially because I usually make food-related resolutions and the Christmas season is the wrong time for austerity. But now -- ho ho! -- let the sprouted lentil burgers begin!

Even though it's the eighth of January I have more musings than firm resolutions. I should make some decisions, because resolving to do All The Things is a good way to do none of them.

Top of the list: tend the body. The brain works better when it's fueled better. I have been hitting the eggnog and chocolates, with the result that small slights are magnified, my absent-mindedness is amplified, and my stupid pants are snug again. My plan is to give up sugar until Valentine's Day, and eat veggies at every lunch and dinner.

Dinner is much on my mind, actually. 2011 was a good year on the self-discipline front, but it still feels s-l-o-w, you know? I have a good morning routine down and I'd like to get an evening routine in place as well. Evening is harder because everybody's more tired and fractious.

I am envisioning 2012 as a year of finishing things. I have a bad habit of buying religious books and then not reading them, and I have several unfinished items on my Kindle. I'd like to knock out some of the book backlog. I also have something crazy like 12 projects on the needles. This year I'd like to finish all the knitting I currently have in the works and keep my knitting-related expenditures <$30. Ideally, I'd also make the sweater I bought yarn for when my neighborhood yarn store closed, but I wont' get carried away. One of my WIPs is an Autumn Rose, which I think is a stunning design but which is very very slow -- 7.5 stitches and 8 rows to the inch.

I've also been wondering what might happen if I spent 15 minutes a day trying to make my home more beautiful. I requested a Pinterest invite for inspiration (because CLEARLY the solution to the lingering ugly spots around my house is for me to spend more time on the internet). How does a person get started on Pinterest?

And one more: I -- heavy, heavy sigh-- am way behind on pictures. The last albumified pictures are from late August 2010. Uuuuuggggghhhhhhhhh, she groaned. I should just buckle down and put in 15 minutes a day on pictures.

Now that I've finished both of the projects I started in 2000 (Dickens and Shakespeare) I need something new to take me into my 50s. Any ideas? My dad suggested Mark Twain but he doesn't speak to my soul like Dickens and Shakespeare and I'm not sure I want to spend ten years on him. Any resolutions of your own you'd like to share?

Part of my evening routine is going to be dealing with personal email, which I allow to pile in a frustratingly consistent manner. Perhaps 2012 will be the year in which I become an email ninja. Kapow! Kerbang! Inbox zero, yet again.

Hurray! It's May!

Look at that -- a rhyming title. Things I am doing this month:

1. Departing Wilkes-Barre
2. Putting in a garden
3. Slapping pictures from July-October of last year into albums
4. Reading two Shakespeare plays, the rest of the sonnets, and one of the longish poems
5. Getting to one daily Mass each week
6. Blogging more often
7. Working on order and flames

More soon about nos. 1 and 7. How about you? Does spring fill you with hope and verve?

First Quarter

It's so easy to decide to make plans, and harder to follow through. I'm going to try to keep posting about my resolutions for 2011 so they don't just vanish into the swamp of good intentions gone awry. My resolutions post is here if you're curious.

I'm hanging in there on the sugar front and doing terribly with the running. I've started having hip pain with running, and I think I need to schedule an appointment with my doctor to talk about the risks of arthritis (my redheaded grandmother, who seems to have shared many of her genes with me, had crippling arthritis in her hips that led to bilateral hip replacement by the time she was in her early sixties and almost three decades of immobility afterward -- not a path I want to head down) versus the benefits of weight-bearing exercise (I have some risk factors for osteoporosis) coupled with the benefits of exercise that I actually accomplish. I mean, I think about heading out for a bike ride or going for a swim or hitting the elliptical, but running is the only form of exercise that I actually show up for consistently. Hm, perhaps I should add that to my SNS list for the week.

I'm on track with Mass attendance, though it still seems a little weird to count it. I guess finding a way to track it is part of how you build a habit. I took a break from SNS posts but am getting back into that groove. I have just made an executive decision that this week will be an MMS (Monday Morning Strategizing) kind of week, in the interest of getting to bed at a reasonable hour.

The Crazy Shakespeare Project is not going too badly, though I lost some momentum when January ended. I roped the Reading for Believers ladies into reading The Winter's Tale with me, which was fun. Anybody up for an April Shakespeare play? I'm thinking about Cymbeline or Two Gentlemen of Verona.

OH, I find it hard to stay off the computer for the afternoon/evening. That transition from quiet into loudloudloud is a hard one. I guess that's the point of this exercise, to be honest about where I need a kick in the pants. And I've been faithful about getting off the computer by 11, but 10:30 would be better.

All right! Second quarter, here we come.

 

The Return of Sunday Night Strategizing

All right, I'm back in town after a safe and reasonably sane trip to my parents' house. It's been a couple of months since my last SNS post and I'm ready to get back into the groove. Those posts were great for my productivity and we could certainly use a little productivity around here. This week I am catching up on some of the things I let slide during the sweater craziness. On my list:

• clear off the piled-up desk and dresser
• clean this house
• finish The Winter's Tale, finally
• revise manuscript
• write a first-quarter follow-up post about resolutions

Sunday Night Scrutinizing

Two weeks ago I resolved that I wouldn't goof around on the computer unless the dishes, the laundry, the meal prep, and my prayer life were where they needed to be first. For ten days this was an awesome plan. Things were caught up around here and I was feeling pretty good about it.

And then the habit fought back.

This week has been a real struggle. Part of it is that I hate my own sloth. Part of it is that the toddler sleep thing is kicking my butt from here to Madagascar. Or maybe Ganymede. I'm too disoriented from sleep deprivation to tell exactly where my butt has gone.

Part of it is that I'm not exactly sure how to proceed. I was in the Adoration chapel on Thursday morning, feeling guilty and frustrated about my bad habits, when I had a sudden insight, one of those moments of truth from outside my own head: overemphasizing self-discipline and to-do lists can be a form of idolatry.

The purpose of the Christian life is not to get things done. The purpose of the Christian life is not even to vanquish vices for the sake of vanquishing vices. The purpose of the Christian life is to live in relationship with Jesus.

If I fix my eyes on my to-do list, I can't fix my eyes on Jesus.

It's like I'm teetering between two errors. I can't be the person I'm called to be if sloth is grabbing me by the scruff of the neck. I also can't be the person I'm called to be if I am narrowly focused on efficiency. The computer and the to-do list are both good servants, bad masters.

I'm not making a Sunday Night Strategizing list this week because I have some discerning to do. (Also because last week left me full of discouragement and woe, but that's a secondary issue.) It's been really fun to see other SNS posts popping up here and there, so best wishes to all of you who are taking on your own to-do lists.

Oh, darn it, the 2yo is awake again. If you are a pray-er, please pray for her to sleep and me to have patience. I'm about to lose my mind here. Throwing up this unedited post and saying good night--

Redirecting

I have decided to move my Sunday night strategizing posts to a new spot. If you love them and never want to miss a single one, you can subscribe here. I'll probably post a quick link here as well when a new one is up.

Your Questions Answered, Part 2

Kristin asked specifically about FlyLady and the rosary, both of which are fertile ground for breeding that alarming monster, the Perfectionist-Slacker hybrid. You can recognize it by its giant trailing flagellum (the better to beat you with, my dear) and its nauseous miasma of self-loathing.

I first subscribed to FlyLady's emails not long after she started sending them, eleven years ago, and I have been an off-and-on subscriber ever since. There are three things I have learned in those eleven years that may be useful (but may also be obvious). First, I have finally figured out that nobody else's program is going to work for me exactly as written. FlyLady and I part company early on, because I don't wear shoes in the house and I have no intention of doing so. (That was the big asterisk in my 2010 FlyLady resolution: "...everything* FlyLady tells me *except about wearing shoes because why would I want lead-contaminated soil and stray bits of dog poop tracked all over my carpet?") My house, my kids, my priorities -- why would she be able to predict exactly how I should keep my life in order?

Second, there are two truths in tension when it comes to FlyLady. I'm almost always glad when I do something she tells me to do. At the same time, I can only do everything she tells me if that's my primary focus. Outings with my kids seem to get pushed aside because I have one more FlyLady task to accomplish and suddenly it's naptime so we can't go out. It's better for me to plan on doing part of the package, perhaps choosing a particular habit to work on, and give myself upfront permission to delete freely.

This leads into #3, which is a hard one for me: running a household with small children is just not easy. There's this misperception that it's only housework, only childcare, and if you weren't a lazy slob you would just get it done. I disagree. Even in a small house there are a zillion things that need doing and entropy is an implacable force. It took me years to admit something that you may find self-evident (or whiny, depending on your POV), but I suspect I am not the only one out there laboring under the weight of a false idea. It's not an easy gig. Don't beat yourself up if you struggle: it's not you, it's the job.

Next up, the rosary. For those of you who aren't Catholic, the rosary is a structured meditation in which a person reflects on events in the lives of Jesus and Mary. A person could sit down for 20 minutes and pray the rosary contemplatively, pondering in turn the mysteries and the related scripture and her intentions and the words of the prayers. A person could also pray the rosary on the run, counting Hail Marys on her fingers while folding laundry and stopping in the middle of a sentence to redirect a contumacious child. Such a person might get to the eighth Hail Mary and say, "Wait, what decade is this supposed to be?"

Honestly, the rosary at my house looks like option B more often than option A. My strength is not contemplation. My strength is showing up. I cannot pretend to offer guidance on how to pray like St. Teresa, but I can tell you that you won't get to ecstatic union if you don't keep showing up. (Let me throw in here that I love Peter Kreeft's little book Prayer for Beginners -- it's just full of good stuff.) If you are trying to get started with the rosary, think of option A as a destination, not a starting point. Contemplation, kind of like keeping house, is harder than I expected it to be. It's reasonable to start small.

If you are trying to fit the rosary in, it may be useful to know that it takes less than three minutes to pray a decade. It may be useful to pray along with a recording so that you are not derailed by a moment of distraction, or so that you can do something mindless with your hands. I often pray the rosary while washing dishes or folding laundry. A person could complain that this diminished attention debases the rosary, though I hope only a really crabby person would think that. I prefer to think that I am sanctifying the housework.

Because a decade of the rosary is quick and composed of familiar prayers, it's fairly easy to do with kids. We almost never sit down to pray five decades, the way a Good Catholic Family^TM might, but one decade I can manage. Instead of launching into an unbroken string of Hail Marys, I usually give them a brief thought to reflect on at the beginning, after the third Hail Mary, and after the seventh Hail Mary. The goal is to combine facts and food for thought, so I might say, "Forty days after his Resurrection Jesus rose up into heaven as his apostles watched," and then, "We honor your authority over heaven and earth," and finally, "We ask for the grace to carry your holy truth into the world" -- just something quick and off the cuff that I hope will help those words from Acts 1 sink into their heads. The kids can all tell you that it takes less than three minutes but it's longer if you interrupt. And you know, maybe if I were a better mother I wouldn't emphasize how fast it's over, but I have to tell you they're almost always willing to cooperate -- in part because it's short.

One last idea, because my word count is creeping up and up, is to pray the rosary with a child who is going to sleep. To teach my children how to go to sleep without nursing, I would rub their backs and pray the rosary quietly. I think it is a lovely peaceful association for them -- my 8yo (who has been weaned for a long time!) still asks me to tuck him in that way.

So-- I am a half-hearted FlyLady follower, but my house is cleaner than it used to be. And I am hardly a rosary role model, but I can tell you that good things will follow if you just show up.

A sort-of perfectionist's sort-of guide to getting things done

Kristin asked me a couple of specific questions about New Year's resolutions which I promise to answer, but the post I sat down and wrote turned out to be more general. Second installment coming soon!

In college I agonized over writing papers. I wrote mostly longhand, dictionary and thesaurus at my elbow, and it took me FOREVER -- I had to give myself at least an hour per page. Even back then I was struck by the fact that if I just forced myself to write something, anything, I would often come back to it later and say, "Hey, that's better than I thought it was." The important truth hidden there took years to sink in: perfectionism is the enemy of steady progress.

FlyLady bangs on and on about perfectionism and some of it has sunk in for me. In the past I would stare at a kitchen full of dirty dishes and think, "These are going to take forever." I'd procrastinate, thinking about how long it would take to do them all, with a cloud of apprehension building over my head. I'd re-read a children's book. I'd alphabetize my skincare products. I'd think, "Boy, it stinks that I have to wash so many dishes. I should wipe down the stove, too. And mop." Would I get in there and do those things? Reader, I would not.

These days I have finally learned that quick and dirty and DONE is usually better than the alternative, which is why I'm only calling myself a sort-of perfectionist. I was just writing about this recently, about getting off my behind to go into the kitchen and wash 15 minutes' worth of dishes. My husband thinks it is a little silly to set a timer for kitchen chores, but it keeps me moving and gives me an end point, and the inevitable result, 100% of the time, is that I am pleasantly surprised by how much I can accomplish in 15 minutes.

So I have become a big believer in the power of the small chunk, and in January that belief joins forces with my longstanding love of a fresh start. I am usually optimistic about New Year's resolutions, and I think I am getting better at making them keepable. Here are some of my tricks:

• Fuel the machine. If I am not eating well and getting enough sleep, I don't have the motivation to sustain changes. Why bother? The future is bleak enough without setting myself up for further disappointment. This one makes a huge, huge difference in my willingness to move forward.
• Write it down. Vague ideas about how my life could be different will never be implemented if they stay in my head. They may or may not be implemented if they make it onto a piece of paper or this blog, but the odds are vastly higher.
• Make it measurable. Again, vague is the enemy. An inchoate yearning for "better" gets me nowhere. I need a Plan. (I like my Plans to have capital Ps.)
• Be accountable. No one on the internet cares if I balance my checkbook this week or not, but I know that I have put it out there. Sometimes I get my friends involved. Sometimes if it's really important I write down promises to God in my prayer notebook. Telling someone else about my Plans keeps me moving, because I want to think of myself as a woman of my word.
• Give yourself some wiggle room. It might have been a bad idea to post that I was going to pray the whole Office every day. I'd be more likely to hit a more flexible target, like 5 of the hours, 6 days this week. That way, forgetting on Tuesday or getting too overwhelmed on Thursday doesn't mean I've blown the goal.
• Plan something to look forward to. I don't always write the follow-up posts here, because they are less interesting than the lament posts. Remember the Horrible Office? I never wrote the post that said, "Hurray, I cleaned it all up and did a victory dance!" --  but I did! Or remember my sundress goal? I did indeed wear that dress when we went out for my 40th birthday. (But I put a cardigan on top because I don't show that much skin these days except at the pool.)

I was having an attack of perfectionism thinking about this post. If my life were a bed it would have rumpled covers with raggedy edges, I was thinking. Just look at the papers piled on the desk right now! Who am I to tell people how to get stuff done? Then I decided to set a timer for 15 minutes and just write. I needed to go back later and fill in here and there, but this is the result. Imperfect, of course, but I hope it has some useful bits.

Sunday Night Strategizing, Week 1

So you know how I was going to post this on another blog? I'll have to do that next time. Tried to whip out a quick post and realized that I had some serious housecleaning to do requiring some technical help. Next week.

A spontaneous trip to Chicago means I am cranking this out at the last minute, because my resolution to stay off the computer after 10:30 and my resolution to make a plan for each week are just about to go head to head. Speedily, then:

• I have this crazy idea that I'm going to aim to pray the whole Office during January. I'm going to try it this week and see if it's really really crazy or only slightly crazy.
• Paper SMACKDOWN coming this week to a desk near you. Or maybe not near you. Near me, at any rate. Watch for exciting checkbook balancing!
• Kristin asked some really good questions in a comment on my last post, and I am going to get back in the posting groove with a post in response.
• Titus Andronicus is going DOWN.

The good thing about writing a to-do last at the very last minute is that you can't make it too long. See you later!

Seven Quick Takes for a Saturday: Resolution Edition

1. It's the time of year for reflecting, and I can't help but think that 2010 was a productive year. I finished the PhD, decluttered my house, got all my pictures into albums (through July) got into shape (sort of. I am pretty slugly at the moment), and finished the novels of Dickens. Wheeee! It makes me say, What next?? I didn't hit my New Year's resolutions from last year, but I was aiming pretty high. Each one, it turns out, bore its own fruit, and so I'm enthusiastic about aiming high again.

2. I read a couple of really helpful books this year about discipline, change, and time use: Switch and 168 Hours. I was kind of lukewarm about 168 Hours at first, but I have continued to think about it. Laura Vanderkam is exactly right: you live your life one hour at a time, and it's easy to let the hours slip away. I was dithering about how much to tell you about Switch, and my dithering paid off -- take a look at this thorough post over at Bearing. I found it useful to think in terms of the Rider/Elephant/Path framework. Erin will tell you all about it, but it boils down to the reality that willpower is finite and you can't just will your way through change.

3. One example of how this worked for me recently is the laundry situation. I have been writing online about my laundry backlog for as long as I have been writing online, which is kind of sad, but this summer it dawned on me that I needed to get my Elephant on the team. Instead of taking baskets of clean laundry up to the guest room, where they would mysteriously not fold themselves yet again, I started leaving them in the living room. I can deal with one basket of laundry in the living room, or perhaps two if I am unusually busy, but more than that makes me intolerably twitchy -- twitchy enough that I fold it, as a matter of fact. Huzzah! (I am sure there are many of you who would frown on having a basket of unfolded laundry in the living room, but I have to tell you it beats the heck out of the Laundry Andes that used to bury the guest bed.)

So. The actual resolutions--

4. Body. First on the list is sugar, again, though I continue to struggle with how emphatically to eschew sugar in a culture that celebrates everything with sugar. I think I'll try giving up all solitary, non-celebratory sugar. I'll have a slice of my kids' birthday cakes, but I won't keep eating cake alone after they go to bed. (This might be delusional, given my history. We shall see.) I'm also planning to run 500 miles this year, or do an equivalent amount of other exercise if my aged joints give me trouble.

5. Soul. This year I am aiming to get to Mass a hundred times, although it is a little weird to count one's Mass attendance. I am also planning to talk regularly to my spiritual director about my internet usage, which continues to be a problem for me. Those Sunday Night Strategizing posts have been a fantastic self-discipline tool for me, so I'll keep them up. (I also feel a little weird about posting them here, because I think they are simultaneously boring and very personal. I'm going to scoot them over to their own blog, one I've had set up for a while, and see how that works. I'll link to them for those of you who've found them helpful, but you won't have to read them if you're tired of my to-do lists. Although-- anyone tired of my to-do lists probably stopped reading this post a couple of paragraphs ago.)

6. Mind. Remember my frustrating Shakespeare project? I am seizing the bull by the horns, resolving to finish the works of Shakespeare this year. This is ambitious, because I have 16 (or 17? must go and count when I finish this post) plays plus most of the poetry to read, but I'm going to give it a shot.

7. Family. Here my plan is to stay off the internet between the end of school and the end of dinner clean-up, and after 10:30. I also want to pray more explicitly for my kids, instead of just vaguely lifting them up.

More quick takes here.

Ouchie ouchie ouch and the speediest of strategizing

Why am I saying ouch? Because I am being stabbed in the behind with figurative knitting needles. I am so behind on Christmas knitting that I should not do anything with my fingers after the kids' bedtime except knit like fury.

I told the boys they could each pick out something and I'd knit it for Christmas, but I hurt my arm somehow and it just hasn't been getting better. Remember when I was doing that 100 push-ups thing over the summer? I think I hurt a tendon or something, and then it flared up when I was doing all that stupid twisted rib. It's been weeks since I could lift my arm above shoulder height comfortably. I stopped knitting for a while to see if that seemed to change things. Maybe, sort of, it might have helped a little bit? But not very much, and now Christmas is coming at me like a freight train.

If I had planned to knit teacher gifts or something, I would be crossing them off off my list faster than you could say "possible repetitive strain injury." But instead I told my CHILDREN that I would YES INDEED make them something especially for Christmas. Good thing Christmas is twelve days long or I'd be in a heap of trouble.

Briefly briefly I am harnessing the magic get-things-done power of the internet to say that I have Plans for work this week. (1) My co-author gave me the green light to submit our manuscript, and I am BY GOLLY pushing the button this week, just as soon as I stop obsessing about its little imperfections. Also on the docket: (2) more stats, (3) more training students in morphology analysis, (4) generating more results for my nifty vocab tool. Not on the list: knitting during work hours. Ahem.

Sunday Night Strategizing, Vol. 8

Oh my goodness, I am feeling like I have a million zillion things to do. Got to eat the elephant one bite at a time, I guess. This week's menu:

Sunday Night Strategizing, Vol. 7

Oh, you guys, my outlook on life is about a zillion times cheerier than it was last night. Perhaps two zillion. Good things from today: more sunshine than the forecast led me to believe we would have, a solo run, some outdoor playtime with the kids during which the boy who insisted he could not ride a two-wheeled bike finally got rolling, a reasonably successful trip to Mass with Stella*, and a marvelous concert by the campus women's choruses. SO much fun.

*It was the Life Teen Mass and she was happily jamming along with the band. She was headbanging so enthusiastically that I thought she might concuss herself on the next pew, but she did not. You know you've been in a tough stretch when "no skull fracture" = "a good Mass with kids."

I mostly hit my goals for this week, with a relapse on the sugar front last night when self-pity sparked a raid on the kids' Halloween candy. I wouldn't want to stand up in front of a group and recite the Sacred Heart prayer, but we can get through it together. And I didn't get that job application submitted. Turns out the date they'd posted was not a hard deadline, which was good since I only had a paragraph of my cover letter written by Friday afternoon.

This week I am keeping my goals modest, because (a) when I am feeling like the Voice of Gloom it's hard to get things done and (b) I'm traveling during part of this week to present my dissertation at a conference. I hope I remember what it said. :-)

• Get to a weekday Mass and spend some time on Lectio Divina at least once.
• Be diligent about getting to bed on time and about treating this mysterious and vexing arm pain. Run twice, disregarding discouragement re: geriatric pace. Keep slogging along the anti-Gloom path: fish oil/SAD light/no sugar.
• Settle on a new book to read to the younger boys. (Treasure Island was a big hit with my 8yo -- high five! He wants to read Kidnapped next, but I think Kidnapped is much weaker. I suppose we can try it.)
• Work: Finish that job application by Tuesday morning at the very latest. Start chapter 9 in the multivariate book. Review dissertation findings. (Oh! Also: find a blouse to wear for the presentation.)
Home: Clean house. (I am taking a break from the basement.)

• Finish Christmas letter. Address some envelopes every day. Finish a knitted gift. Order remaining extended family gifts. Decide whether to bake something in the Christmas cake/Christmas pudding family.

SNS: lessons learned and vol. 6

Posting goals continues to be hugely motivating for me. I'm surprised, though I shouldn't be, that I'm learning more about setting good goals as I go along. For instance: I need to limit the number of things I resolve to work on every day. One or two of those and I'm fine. This week I think I had five of them, and five is too many. Another surprise-that-shouldn't-be-surprising is how much fun it is to work hard at something and get it done. If you haven't seen it, take a look at this New Yorker article on procrastination.

Verdict for this week: that skirt remains unseamed and the "every day I will..." stuff was a little raggedy. But the basement! You should see how much less disastrous the basement looks. It's positively non-scary now. (Notice I do not call it "tidy" or "attractive." "Non-ankle-breaking" is about as enthusiastic as I can be at this point.)

Up next:

• Try Lectio Divina again and get to a couple of weekday Masses. Get that Sacred Heart prayer learned.
• Plan a couple of runs and something social with a friend. Persevere on the sugar front (success this week, and the first week is the hardest!). Stick with the SAD light and the fish oil; 'tis the season to be squally.
• Finish Treasure Island. Post a white-board reminder about chore charts, and follow up with the kids at least every other day.
• At home: put in another 90 minutes in the basement over the course of the week. Figure out whether the washer fix is something I can do and call the repairman if it is beyond me. Try the lasagna layer thing in the garden.
• At work: submit a job application for next year. Run numbers for manuscript #2. Finish odds and ends for ms #1.
• For Christmas: order cards. Buy stamps. Start letter. Figure out extended family gifts and think about the December birthdays.

Sunday Night Strategizing, Vol. 5

Have you noticed that my lists have been getting longer? This is the hazard of list-making for me: it is such an effective strategy that I overuse it.

Sunday Night Strategizing, Vol. 4

All last week I kept noticing the difference in my productivity: posted goals = more resolve. Aim at nothing and you will hit it, and all that. So. Back at it.

1. Schedule a meeting with potential spiritual director. Try a weekday Mass with kids. Be diligent about after-dinner prayer.
2. Try a gentle run. (Apparently it's just the same old (benign) thing that's going on with my heart, though I am supposed to follow up with an electrophysiologist.) Make a Naptime Plan. Build some purposeful relaxation into each day, either making music or worthwhile reading -- keeping a watchful eye on the zoned-out computer drifting. Blog about twenty-year-old regrets re: the St. Teresa statue and the burning question of whether Dr. Sears is trying to foment the mama wars.
3. Cheerfully plan and execute one birthday celebration and four Halloween costumes. Try a family gym night with low expectations. Read daily, however briefly, with the three youngest.
4. Home: move forsythia bush. Finish another Christmas present. Clean house. Sort out The Dreaded Back Steps, with before-and-after pix.
   Work: revise ms. Draft intro, however roughly, for paper #2; integrate new results into dataset. Follow up with legal office about study idea. Finish Chapter 7 in the multivariate book. Figure out how to introduce research assistants to Vlad.

...and still more Sunday night strategizing

You guys, this is working so well for me. I hope it's not too boring for you and I encourage you to give it a whirl. Two weeks in a row I've knocked all the stuff off my list. Going for three in a row, with some recurring goals...

1. Persevere with the nightly Sacred Heart prayer. Get to a weekday Mass.
2. Invite some friends over for coffee and knitting. Do some gentle exercise at least three times. (I have been advised not to run for the time being because of this annoying but probably benign heart stuff. Grumble. Tests coming up.) Blog a couple of times about non-list-related stuff.
3. Embark for Treasure Island with the bigger kids. (We just met Long John Silver -- he still sends shivers down my spine!) Make time daily to read with Petely. Finish a Christmas present. Print out chore charts and get them laminated.
4. At work: Sort out vexing benefits situation, as far as it lies in my power to do so. Get an ID card, finally. Identify groups for new study and get some quick and dirty numbers to compare them. Revise manuscript and send to reader. Make a big dent in Chapter 7. (The book is getting harder so finishing the chapter would be optimistic.) Keep reading book on qualitative research.
   At home: Clean this grubby house. Read up on what to do with a vegetable garden over the winter. Empty inbox and deal with disheartening pile of paper on desk.

More Sunday Night Strategizing

Do you know, I got everything on last week's list done except for scheduling the eighth-grader's  parent-teacher conferences. His school was only scheduling sixth grade conferences last week, so I'll have to try again later this month. Here's this week's plan, again based on the 5 Ps from Holly Pierlot's book:

1. Plan something fun for this week's feasts: St. Francis! St. Bruno! Our Lady of the Rosary! Put the Sacred Heart prayer on the dining room white board and pray it every evening after dinner.
2. Find some time for adult conversation with friends x 2. Blog a couple of times about non-list-related stuff.
3. Schedule an evening babysitter for a night this week.
4. Pick Treasure Island back up with the bigger kids. Make time daily to read with Petely. Start Christmas knitting for oldest and youngest.
5. At work: draft study proposal and work through Chapter 6 in the multivariate book. Look again at goals for the year. Find conference hotel.
   At home: send sympathy card + customer service letters x 3. Put in irises and other bulbs and weed the horrible west bed. [NB: Please send out posse armed with machetes if no post follows in the next couple of days. It used to be a jungle but now it's beyond that. I need a new noun to describe the jungliness of the west bed. I know I need to get in there and hack but I fear the anacondas.]

Sunday Night Strategizing

Hey, I have an idea. I think I am going to post some goals for the week on Sunday nights. I have written frequently about how motivating I find it to get my to-do list out of my head and onto the web, and so I think I'll make it a regular thing. Want to join me? I am using Holly Pierlot's Ps to guide my list-making, but do your own thing.

Here's my plan:

1. Finish the St. Therese novena and get ready for the enthronement of the Sacred Heart (about which more soon).
2. Make that doctor's appointment to discuss my unruly heart.
3. Finish those socks and schedule parent-teacher conferences x 4.
4. Article draft to co-author for review by Wednesday; finish chapter 5 in multivariate stats book.

Goo goo g'joob

Today it's been four weeks since my fortieth birthday and I have slumped. Slumpity slumpity slump, like a lazy walrus soaking up the August sun. In the cornfields. A Midwestern kind of walrus.

My list of stuff to get done by July 19 was a little too ambitious, and I was glad not to have it hanging over my head for the past four weeks. HOWEVER. Things fall apart rapidly when I impersonate a Midwestern walrus, not least because my children complain that those whiskers tickle and my husband dislikes the way that the tusks get in his way when he is kissing me. There's the PAPER. The LAUNDRY. The GENERALLY UNRELENTING nature of managing a home occupied by five children.

One of the big successes of the spring for me was getting consistent about doing the morning tasks promptly every morning. I also have other task lists for myself (Flylady would call them routines but I'm riding a wave of anti-Flylady sentiment at the moment) and I am going to work on getting those done more consistently. If I fold a basket of laundry every day, it doesn't pile up. If I deal with a little bit of paper every day, the sight of my desk doesn't make me curl into a heap of blubbering blubber. (Sing it to the tune of Beautiful Dreamer, all you Judy Blume fans.) It's a cinch by the inch but hard by the yard, as somebody's grandpa once intoned.

The hardest part for me is the evenings. I am tired by the time dinner is on the table, and I cannot always muster the discipline to get those evening tasks done swiftly. But hey-- if I can get into the groove of getting the bathrooms wiped down six mornings a week, surely I can get into the groove of working with the boys to get the kitchen cleaned promptly after dinner. Right?