Seven Quick Takes: Tempus Fugit Edition

1. Tomorrow, friends, I am posting my BIG list (that's the Butt-In-Gear list -- things I am going to do before I turn 40). I created it on the 19th of March and I've been procrastinating about posting its whereabouts. It's like once I post it on the internet, I have to do it or else look silly.

I hate looking silly. One could argue that it is worse to be silly, whether or not the internet knows it, than to look silly to a bunch of mostly strangers on the internet, but LA LA LA I'm not going to think about that right now.

2. Elizabeth Foss just posted that she never wastes time. Oh, I wish I never wasted time. Why I am I more willing to get behind on folding laundry than to get behind on RSS feeds?

I think one of the tasks on my list needs to be to teach my children to fold laundry to my specifications. Cheerfully. I need to get better at delegating.

3. Today there is no school and I am going to recruit my children to help with some cleaning and organizing. Goals: finish the reorganization of the dining room and the play room. Also, make some progress on the grant I am writing. Also, do some prep work for the two parties we're having this weekend. And write some thank-you notes and work on finishing up some Cub Scout stuff. And maybe warp the space-time continuum because I have trouble with manageable to-do lists.

4. The baby is in a really needy stage. Really really really needy: sick, teething, taking off her diaper at every opportunity. She is a triple handful this week and I only have two hands.

Maybe I could get an extra hand or two grafted on.

Or maybe I could accept that I'm not going to get a whole lot done until that last molar is through and the green snot faucet dries up.

5. I think the RSVP is a lost art. For the two parties this weekend I've received a total of six RSVPs, including two from the grandparents. I have no idea how many gift bags to make up for tomorrow. We might have two guests or we might have twelve.

6. The second party is for Joe's First Communion. Darling Joe -- I keep thinking about the day he was born. He keeps reminding me that he wants to go to confession tomorrow. "I want my soul and my body to be clean for my First Communion," he says. Can do, sweetie. He's come a long way -- here are two posts from the old blog about taking Joe to Mass as a 2- and 3-year-old. He was an octuple handful in those days. (That deacon's homily was probably my most embarrassing moment as a mother. So far, at least.)

7. Baby just climbed into my lap and fell asleep. How about that? Time to get to work.

More quick takes here.

Comments

[Maria]

I just heard a song called "If Mama Had Four Hands". We can all relate!

[mary]

Thanks for the links to Joe's preschool days. It's funny, I was thinking of the preacher post this past Sunday when my J-man was a holy terror at church and wound up getting hauled out of there. It's all a good reminder that taking little kids to church is not always a picnic in the park but we all soldier on. Somehow. And I have to say that I've gotten a LOT more tolerant of other people's kids!!!

[bearing]

Jamie, never believe anyone who blogs that they don't waste time.

I'm not saying you should consider them liars, but it is bad for your happiness to believe them. In one ear and out the other.

[Melanie B]

What bearing said. I had the same reaction to Elizabeth's piece and then I realized she was probably writing as much to encourage herself to remember those insights she'd gained during her fight with cancer not necessarily because she always lives up to them. I think many of us fall into the trap of sometimes writing what we want to be the case, or what our idealized self knows to be true but our fallen self often forgets.

To set the record straight, then, I'll confess to also being more willing to get behind on folding laundry than to get behind on RSS feeds.

Though to be fair, I think it is much easier for me to get stuck in that particular rut when I have a needy baby. Ben is also super needy right now. He's cutting six teeth, I think. And all the kids have the snotty noses. The thing is I can make progress on the RSS feeds with one hand while nursing the baby. The same most definitely cannot be said for the laundry.

[Arwen]

It's funny, Jamie - I read that post of Elizabeth's, and I took "I don't waste time" to mean not that she is productive in every moment, but that she appreciates every moment. You know, the way that people on their deathbeds wish they hadn't wasted time, and had spent less time at the office and more with their families, or whatever.

I have no idea what Elizabeth meant, but that's how I read it. And I like that interpretation of "don't waste time" so much better. I think a perfectly productive life would not be a particularly rewarding one.

Of course, here I am leaving blog comments with two unfolded loads of laundry hiding behind the couch. So it was already clear which side of that debate I'd fall on. :)

[Lissa]

Actually, Jamie, I quite appreciate your priorities. I figure folded laundry doesn't last long---in my house it doesn't always survive the trip down the hall to the kids' rooms, if they are the ones putting it away---but the food for thought I get from my feed reader stays with me, gives me something to chew on, for much longer than those clean clothes stay clean.

(And true, Scott handles most of the laundry-folding around here, but the premise applies to my household jobs too.)

[Lissa]

And now I'm thinking: that makes it sound like I neglect my home duties to read blogs all day. I don't, of course I don't. You know what I mean, right? I could have neater closets, tidier drawers. For like ten minutes, because that's how long they would last before little people tornadoed them again. So, you know, priorities. Clean toilets, happy kids, clean kitchen, food for thought, weeded garden, roughly in that order, and then waaaay behind those comes matching the socks in the basket and straightening all the 4yo's drawers AGAIN, so she can unstraighten them the following morning. Something like that.