Did you continue to track your time today? If so, good for you! When I’ve done corporate workshops and have had people track their time, occasionally people have turned in logs with the weekends completely blank. I assume the thinking is that the person just does not want to share his/her weekend with her colleagues (which is fine) although some have been forthright enough about other things that it makes me wonder. Perhaps people assume that time tracking and weekends simply do not go together? But I truly do believe that going “off the clock” requires an initial mindfulness of time. You must know where the time goes in order to transcend the ceaseless ticking (feel free to tweet that).
Anyway, my ceaseless ticking for the past 24 hours…As my post went live last night, clearly the Amtrak wifi worked. We got into the station at 10:30 p.m. I got home by 11:02 only to find that the big boys were still up watching Into The Woods with my husband. Turns out we have a lot of Sondheim fans around here. My husband and I went to talk on the back porch, and that went fine until we heard a child crying. My daughter had wandered downstairs and was very dramatic that she had missed me all day (I don’t really think this thought had occurred to her until that moment) and, worse than that — and I am sure this is the real reason for the waterworks — the boys were watching a movie while she was supposed to be in bed. I agreed that this was unfair, and sent them all packing. I got into bed by 11:45.
11:45-6:45 – slept. I heard the 2-year-old starting to move at 6:45, but my husband had tried the yellow/green clock again, and the 2-year-old also has figured out that he can play and look at books. Whatever it was, he actually didn’t yell loudly until later. I was grateful for this.
6:45-7:45 – I probably dozed half an hour in there.
7:45- 9:15 – various family things, including getting two kids ready for karate
9:15-11:15 – to karate with 10-year-old and 5-year-old. Both had lessons. I got some reading done during the 10-year-old’s lesson while the 5-year-old watched my phone. We then drove home.
11:15-1:30 – more family time, hard to distinguish between it. I came home to find my husband and the two non-karate children had gone to the hardware store and bought new trash cans. This is very exciting, as we inherited ours with the house 6 years ago, and they were broken then. To buy the garbage bins, he had pushed down the backseat of the minivan, revealing a huge mess. So I started cleaning this out while my husband was planting flowers and the 2-year-old was watering the yard and the driveway, and then proceeded to water himself, necessitating a bath. There was some indoor playing in here, and lunches, and the 2-year-old was down for nap around 1:15.
1:30-2:10 – worked
2:10-2:30 – ran on treadmill. Another BTN 1.6 miles, though I did get up to 7.7 mph. I am feeling slightly guilty that I am not running the Rock n Roll Philly Half Marathon tomorrow but…oh well.
2:30-3:45 – went in the pool with the big kids! The temperatures were in the 80s, and so we’d jacked up the heater on the pool in the morning, and it was pretty nice by mid-afternoon. We weren’t entirely sure about buying a home with a pool — things break all the time, and we’ve definitely needed to train the kids on water safety — but it is nice for days like this when it’s hot, but none of the area pools are still open.
3:45 – 2 year old got up. I tried on my new M.M. Lafleur bento box (more on that later) and watched some of the (DVR’d) Texas A&M game.
4:30-6:30 — worked, sort of. My husband took the 10-year-old and 5-year-old to go buy something for the 7-year-old’s birthday (and, as it turned out, the 5-year-old’s, because she was along and magically found things she really needed for her upcoming birthday too…one item of which has already been opened and played with…) We let the 2-year-old watch videos on YouTube, and the 7-year-old was supposed to help him switch videos as a condition of getting to stay home, so I could get some work done. It worked, sometimes. But it was a pretty disjointed two hours of work. 7-year-olds turn out not to be great babysitters.
6:30 -7:10 – decided to give up. Played with the 2-year-old, started dinner, others came home and we got everything ready (salmon, mushrooms, tomato salad).
7:10-8:00 – ate, cleaned up, kids etc.
8- 8:50 – kid showers, snacks, read to the 5-year-old, and now I’m writing this while listening to the 2-year-old howl. I need to go rock him a little I suppose and then hopefully he will go down.
How did your day go?
The thing I’ve found most interesting in your journals is how you handle those dead spaces of random nothingness (dealt with the kids and read or the garbage can/clean out the van/bathe the 2-year-old thing). I homeschool 3 kids and work from home so there is a lot of that on my schedule which drives me crazy. I don’t always want to be hiding from my family in the name of productivity. At the same time, there are certain hours of the day that always seem to be a complete waste (my husband comes home and everyone is tired and randomly talks about their day – sometimes I’m on Facebook during that time, sometimes I knit, sometimes I’m making supper, but it is never a focused conversation yet I feel like I ought to be there). Logging my time this week has helped me get more of a handle on those times – I just record dual activities which helps me better define what I really was doing during those times (just as you supervise the kids and read).
@Tana – yes, the mixed times, particularly on weekends (evenings during the week somewhat too) can be tough to figure out what to do with. I realized this was one of the upsides of the kindle app — I can often get a little farther in the book I’m reading during these fleeting downtimes. But the kids often just wind up getting too much screen time during them. I need to figure out a good system for sending them outside or to the basement and telling them to just deal with it.
I agree on those times of random nothingness! I have at least 2 hours every night that are “prep lunches and clean kitchen”. I don’t feel like I’m doing that for two hours (my kitchen is neither clean nor are my lunches gourmet), but what else is happening then? I was thinking there was a little of this here and there, but seeing it add up over the 7 days was an eye opener! I’m going to write down (smaller increments maybe?) exactly what happens during that time to see if I can pick up and quantify that dual activity. The whole process was definitely an eye opening experience and I’m glad I made it the whole week this time!
@Kristin – “times of random nothingness” – that pretty much sums it up!
Looking forward to hearing about your results with the bento box – I love MM La Fleur’s style and ethos and I LOVE their newsletter – so often it has just the inspiration I need for that particular day. My ordering experience has been hit and miss – their prices are really at (well, beyond) the maximum of what I’m willing to pay for clothes so pieces really have to be perfect for me to keep them. But I have a few dresses and a jacket that I adore and have helped me feel confident and comfortable through many presentations and job interviews lately. Most of the rest of my wardrobe is second-hand/thrift shop/clothes swap.
I failed at the time-tracking challenge again – I never get more than a day or two into it and it always seems to trigger one of those disastrous time-vortex days that prove there’s no such thing as a typical week (this time it included a day of tummy bug and napping) BUT it did give me some ideas for how to set up my week better, and I’ve started tracking again today…
@Lily – I am willing to pay quite a bit for something that I love and that lasts, but I am so often disappointed by clothes. I’d say of this bento box that there is some promise, though I probably wasn’t as clear as I could have been about my style and hence it wasn’t going to be perfect (nor should I expect that). Something as simple as “I haven’t worn a belt in 25 years” would have probably kept them from sending me a belt 🙂