Monday, May 1, 2017

Forward progress

Nothing very interesting happened last week, or at least nothing that I thought to take pictures of. BUT, after my "poor me" post last weekend I got some great advice both here and on my Facebook. I tried a few things this weekend and it made a notable difference in the Sunday rage.

Social media (and the associate black hole of time): I took Facebook and Blogger off my phone. I'm not saying this in the self-righteous, I don't do social media way. I still love to check in with my friends, show off pictures of my kids, and watch ridiculous videos. However, given that I don't have access to my phone 40 hours out of the week, it's really easy for me to get sucked into the ether when I do finally get to catch up. That leads to a compulsive cycle of clicking through FB, Instagram, and Blogger and then back again and before you know it, twelve hours has passed. By making it slightly more inconvenient to check in, I've cut down my screen time by at least a million percent. I kept Instagram on because I do love being able to post pictures and I find IG to be the least timesucking mesmerizing media.

Time limits: This one was huge. I gave myself permission to spend x amount of time on chores. And then be done. It was so liberating to allow myself to stop before the house was spotless, the checkbook was balanced, the blog was written, the laundry was completely done, and all the dinners and lunches had been prepped for the week. I cleaned some, I worked some, and I sat on my porch drinking a beer. All about the balance. I also set time limits for my kids, obviously and out loud, so that everyone knew that we were picking up and cleaning for an hour and then we were done. That's not to say that I've let the house fall into squalor. I've tried to consistently enforce an after-dinner chore every day so that things don't build up through the week. The kids have responded well and my house has remained tolerably hygienic.

Intention: A great friend from work shared an article with me (that of course I can't find now to link to) about setting your intention for the weekend. The biggest takeaway I got was the idea that you needed to know what you wanted out of your weekend. Was I looking for a productive weekend, a restorative weekend, or a weekend of reconnection? Knowing what I wanted helped me prioritize what I planned. This is important because I like to do all. the. things. This weekend I wanted to reconnect so I made sure I prioritized spending time with C and the heathens.

All in all I think it worked. I definitely feel like the weekend was time well spent, and I went into the week much more relaxed than last week. Obviously it's not perfect, but I think I'm headed in the right direction.

With all that being said, here are a random smattering of our shenanigans this weekend. Eli has become a grown-up who apparently spends a lot of time away from us which kind of breaks my heart and has given me a terrible case of baby fever. Friday night I dropped him off in a sea of middle schoolers at a training event that went until 9:30. Am I the only one who still puts their 5th graders to bed at 8:30? That seemed ragingly late but maybe I really am the meanest mom ever. While he was there, C and I took the girls to see Boss Baby.
This is how I manage kid movies that might suck


Saturday morning we dropped Mr. Independent off at Boy Scout Campboree and shit you not, he didn't even turn around to wave good-bye when he jumped out of the car. I took this ninja shot and you can tell just how thrilled he was by it.





The kids' school had their PTO carnival, so we took the girls and set them loose to run amok. I feel like it's always 1 million degrees on Carnival Day, making it all the more awesome and sticky. 


Saturday night we babysat three friends so there was even more amokking. Poor Scout had to spend the night on the leash because she's a jerk with shitty manners. 


Sunday I did my absolute best to avoid grading the 21 20 (WTF?!) page papers that my students turned in last week and needed to be done by Friday. If you've got to grade papers, this is the way to do it. Also, Course Developers, please stop assigning novels to be turned in the last week of class.  

And then Sunday night, mindful of the pending doldrums, I used my best negotiating skills to "convince" the girls to brush my hair and read to me in exchange for an extra 20 minutes before bedtime. Suckers! 

1 comment:

  1. I know that I need to take FB off my phone. And yet.

    I find that my hormones really impact my weekends. Like, there's one every cycle that just sucks.

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