Five Loaves

SNS: Second week of the semester

1. Prayer: Tuesday Mass, nightly compline.

2. Keep going with the veggies/no sugar combination. Finish the pink projects, update the Rav notebook, sort the pictures cubby into chronological folders. Exercise twice.

3. Pray about the way that the most difficult parent-child relationship infects the others -- maybe try lower expectations for the one child?

4. Give four lectures, draft short opening sections for new paper, firm up assignments/readings, think about potential guest speakers. Put in an hour making things more beautiful and better organized.

SNS for a new semester

1. Get to Mass on Tuesday.

2. Eat no sugar; eat five servings of veggies daily. Exercise three times.

3. Introduce new evening routine to kids.

4. Ai yi yi, classes are starting. Give three lectures to the best of my ability. Write co-authors about manuscript decision. Read guidelines for new submission. Empty inbox and clean out purse.

Advent SNS

1. Get to daily Mass x 2.

2. Finish Coriolanus. Email friends re: scheduling our cookie exchange.

3. Figure out a bday gift for Elwood.

4. Stay off the computer in the afternoons.

5. Work: finish cover letter and submit job application! Draft assignment and final.

Home: Year-end giving, purchase gifts to be mailed, put in an hour organizing the basement.

It's back: Sunday Night Strategizing

1. Get to confession and a daily Mass.
2. Exercise twice and read at least two acts of Coriolanus.
3. Begin a novena for my husband.
4. Just say no to recreational computer time between 3:30 and 7:30 (and all but the most pressing work tasks too). Read a chapter a day of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe to Pete. Finish Joe's sock; make some progress on Stella's bday sweater; order yarn for Marty's socks. Don't kill the sullen teen.
5. Draft cover letter for job search. Finish grading. Edit exam. Schedule optional clinical classes. Draft quiz. Take a load of stuff to Goodwill. Buy a secondhand chair.

Back to Sunday Night Strategizing

The Plan:

1. Get to a daily Mass.
2. Exercise twice. Pick up a Shakespeare play.
3. Find a sitter for Saturday night.
4. Avoid the computer when the kids are home and awake.
5. Clean house. Put in some work on pictures. Work tasks: finish drafting exam and get feedback on it. Read ahead for next week's lecture. Draft role-play activity. Rough out module #1 for online course. Work a little every day on paper in progress.

Week of April 3

Sanity: Go for a gentle run x2, to see if hip pain persists when the running is slow. Get outside daily. Get together with a friend or two. Read up on asparagus crowns. Read Cymbeline.

Kids: Find clothes for the gang for confirmation Mass. Change karate schedule. Work on Parvuli Dei.

Home: Kick a big dent in tax prep. Go through the papers in the "attend-to-this" cubby.

Work: Get a revised version of the breastfeeding ms to my co-author by Tuesday. Write up three papers for the lit review in the ms on funky vocab. Post about where the work time goes.

Sunday Night Strategizing Returns

It's back!

Loaf #1: Make every effort to connect with spiritual director this week. Aim for praying Compline each night. (Oh! I forgot! Rebecca asked about the Liturgy of the Hours and I didn't respond. Sorry, Rebecca! I'll try to get to that.)

Loaf #2: Get back into the Pilates groove. Get together with a friend or friends. Blog a few times.

Loaf #3: Fit in some one-on-one time, with a conversation that's not focused on things we need to do.

Loaf #4: Avoid the computer when the kids are home and awake. Get the bigger kids to confession.

Loaf #5A: Clean house. Figure out the next step for getting pictures in albums and take it.

Loaf #5B: Keep track of hours worked. Finish structural equation modeling chapter #4. Obtain numbers for new transcripts tomorrow and write about them on Tuesday. Check on student analyses. Write up progress/goals.

Sunday Night Strategizing, Week 3

Hi! Welcome to my shiny new blog! I actually set it up in 2007 for a very similar purpose and let it sit idle for 4 years. This week's goals are mostly recycled, because I'm focusing on getting into a better groove with work.

1. Get to a weekday Mass. Keep rolling with the Office, aiming for 4 of the hours on each of six days. Discussion questions posted by tomorrow for online book group.
2. Keep plugging on Shakespeare, one act per day. Make time for blogging and updating Ravelry notebook. Run twice and get to an exercise class with Alex.
3. Daily reading for the youngest three, nightly tuck-ins for the oldest two, specific daily intercessions for the whole gang. Staying off the computer between 3 and the completion of dinner dishes has been a great plan, so I'll keep that going.
4. Home: Clean out the "needs attention" cubby in the desk and rescue some of the torn books from their sad pitiful pile. Stay off the computer unless laundry, dinner, and meal prep are where they ought to be.
   Work: Put in 20 focused hours of work. Firm up numbers for the vocab paper; continue to explore dissertation data with new techniques. Read chapter 2 in the structural equation modeling book. Tidy up papers from last semester. Get in touch with local contacts about possibilites for next year. Select participants for morphological analysis study.

That's a lot of work goals, but I've been in kind of a funk with work and I think flinging myself into it is probably just what I need. We'll see how it goes. More next week...

Sunday Night Strategizing, Week 2

Prayer: Try again to do more of the Office, aiming for 5 of the hours on each of 6 days. Get to a daily Mass. Type up discussion questions for my online book group by tomorrow. Misled by masstimes.org into showing up for a nonexistent Saturday morning Mass; otherwise successful.

Person: Finish the first two parts of the Henry the Sixth trilogy. Run three times even if it's brief. Stay away from sugar. Blog about the CCD dilemma and the unexpected parallels between Shakespeare and the Coen Brothers. Introduce this new blog. Done, substituting a spinning class for one run.

Parent: Read daily to each of the three youngest kids. Stay off the computer between the end of school and the end of the dinner dishes. Tuck in the two oldest boys nightly and pray specifically for each kid daily. Help with thank-you notes. Get Cub Scout popcorn out of the house, finally. Having trouble reading to the 8yo consistently (and missed one day with the 2yo), but that was the only hiccup.

Provider (home): Clean house. Get kids to activities on time, having fed them a reasonable dinner first. Don't play on the computer unless laundry, dishes, and meal prep are under control. Purge email inbox. Mail Amazon returns. Huzzah!

Provider (work): Get a manuscript draft out for review by Friday. Get started with SAS, using new techniques with dissertation data. Read a chapter in the structural equation modeling book. Organize backlog of papers from fall semester. Some unexpected responsibilities dropped in my lap, meaning that the article draft and the backlogged papers didn't happen. But they were worthwhile responsibilities, so I'll recycle those goals.