If you’re tracking time this week, did you stick around for Day 2? I hope so! I think time tracking becomes easier the longer you do it, as long as you remember to do it. If you had trouble remembering, you might try setting an alarm for a few times tomorrow to jot down your entries. That said, if you forget a few hours, just approximate as you can. It’s better to keep going with a few hours blank than to stop completely.
After I published my blog post yesterday I did indeed spend 30 minutes (really more like 45) on my puzzle. Then I practiced the piano for 15 minutes. So my Golden Hours intentions happened! Gold star for me. At 8:30 p.m. on the dot I started the bedtime routine for my youngest. We read and while I did wind up back in his room while he fell asleep (after I shut the house, started the dishwasher, etc.) he was out by 9:15 p.m. This is a victory. I read my magazine (Good Housekeeping) for 45 minutes — finding an interesting article about a renovated farm house near here. I feel close to anyone who has done extensive renovations of a historic property in this area! I followed this person in Instagram, which led to a bit of scrolling but I did get back to reading pretty soon. I said goodnight to the big kids at 10, got ready for bed, and was in bed myself at 10:30. I woke up at midnight and got quickly back to sleep, but then I woke up again around 4:45 a.m. for unknown reasons.
This time I could not go back down. I lay in bed for 30 minutes before getting up for good at 5:15 a.m. I worked for an hour on various things — though distracted because I received a text that B was sick and out for the day.
Today’s logistics were going to be impossible with one driver. And since my husband was gone, I only had one driver. So…I reworked the schedule and figured out that by canceling/rescheduling my 16-year-old’s dentist appointment, I could get everyone else where they needed to go. I also needed to lean on my 14-year-old to meet her little brother at the bus stop and watch him for an hour. I got this sorted out, then at 6:20 a.m. went up to shower and dress. At 6:40 I woke the 14-year-old and the 10-year-old at 6:50. No one was moving fast and I wound up yelling up at 7:05 for everyone to get down and eat. We made it into the van at 7:13 and down to the bus stop by 7:15 (pick-up is 7:19 but sometimes it’s early). I came back, got the 16-year-old up at 7:25, got breakfast for the 6-year-old who woke up and then let him watch videos while I worked for the next hour and 15 minutes more or less.
The 6-year-old and I got in the car at 8:50 and I drove him to school. I then drove to CVS to get some kid prescriptions. Non-efficient: CVS then texted me two hours later that another one was ready. Sigh. Anyway, I was home at 9:30 and worked until 11:30. The second hour of that was on notes for Golden Hours, my book manuscript that is due in October.
At 11:30 I started having trouble concentrating and I wound up cleaning my office. I ordered a salad for lunch as a little treat but it arrived without the dressing. So I then searched online for how to make a comparable dressing, which involved jalapeños. I ate lunch while doing my puzzle and was really having trouble getting back to work so I thought maybe I’d try a quick nap. I went up, and went to take my contacts out and WHOA. I had washed my hands but not well enough because it was basically like pouring hot sauce in my eyes. After a few minutes of tears I fell asleep for about 15 minutes until a truck started backing loudly down my street. I lay there for a bit, and got up.
Fortunately the small nap between the jalapenos and the backing up truck had revived me. I worked from 1:30-2:30 p.m. on Golden Hours, got a snack and did more work until 3:25 (welcoming the middle schoolers home in here). Then I took the 10-year-old to his pottery class, dropped him off and went to my dentist appointment at 4 (the 16-year-old was supposed to be after me and he was supposed to be picked up early from an activity he needed to go to at least for a while, but then I had no one to get him). I happily received photo evidence that the 14-year-old had retrieved the 6-year-old at around 4:08. Phew! I was in the dentist chair — no cavities — to 4:40, at which point I drove to the high school and got my son. We were home at 5:05. I just hung out until the piano/alto sax teacher came at 5:15 for the first lesson (6-year-old/piano). Leaving the 16-year-old as the adult in charge, I went to pick up the 10-year-old at pottery (he loves it) and got dinner for the little kids. Then I made guacamole with my daughter and chicken fajitas. I ate with the big kids during the 10-year-old’s trombone lesson (6:30-7 — that’s a different teacher).
I thought dinner was nice but the one fly in the ointment was that my daughter desperately wanted a different brand of tortilla chips than we had in the pantry. I encouraged her to make her own, and so she fried tortillas in oil and added salt and they were *amazing* but she didn’t think they were crunchy enough. So, because I am a pushover, when the trombone lesson ended, I got in the car and drove to the local grocery store (7:05-7:25) and bought tortilla chips and sundry other things.
I came home and was ready to execute on my Golden Hours intention for tonight: running. It didn’t fit in during the day, but I knew I wouldn’t do much from, say, 7:35-8:05 p.m. So I ran and walked on the treadmill while listening to the Best Laid Plans podcast.
Now it is 8:20 p.m. and I am writing this. I need to hit post in the next 10 minutes to start the bedtime process, but at least I got my run in! If the little guy is asleep on time I plan to read The Economist or one of my books from the library.
In some ways this was a frustrating day, but amid all this running around I did work for 2 hours on an important-but-not-urgent project. With a book project I just need to put in the time over the long haul. Not just on my best days but even on a day like this. I’m giving myself a pat on the back for doing it.
Log:
7 puzzle
7:30 puzzle, piano practice
8 piano, puzzle, texts
8:30 H stories, shut house
9 H story, sit w/H, read mag
9:30 read mag in bed, kids
10 ready bed, in bed
10:30 sleep
12:00 up
4:45 up, lie in bed
5 5:15 get up- B message!
5:30 work
6 work, shower
6:30 dress, kids up, clean
7 eat, kids, bus, S up/H
7:30 H piano, work
8 work (pod notes)
8:30 work, drive H
9 drop H, CVS, home
9:30 work (week’s worth)
10 work (email/etc.)
10:30 work (Golden Hours)
11 work (Golden Hours)
11:30 clean office
12 clean, lunch – make dressing
12:30 eat + puzzle, try nap
1 nap? up
1:30 work (email + golden hours)
2 work (golden hours)
2:30 snack, work
3 work, kids, ready, drive A
3:30 drop A pottery, to dentist
4 dentist appointment
4:30 dentist, to S at Harriton
5 home, wait, H lesson,
5:30 go get A, home, cook
6 kid dinners, cook
6:30 (A lesson) eat w/S, R
7 to McCaffreys, home
7:30 change, run (2.0)
8 walk, work
These kinds of days are so not fun but wow I’ve had similar ones! Also, after a few too many jalapeno incidents like the one you had, I now ALWAYS wear gloves while chopping or handling any kind of hot pepper. Hope your week gets less complicated!
@Elisa – yeah, I’m thinking gloves might be a good addition to any future hot pepper chopping. That was not pleasant at all!
It was good to see how much I actually worked on “core” activities today–in my case, course preparation for teaching. Close to 5 hours!
@SHH – wow, 5 is a lot! Good for you.
It probably would’ve been slightly less without the time-tracking, though still significant.
What a great post, thank you for your honesty, especially about your nap. I viscerally felt the frustration that comes with a lack of sleep, lack of childcare, and the need to take care of so many logistics. And thank you for being so specific about your Golden Hours activities, it helps generate more ideas!
@Lana – yep, it has been a frustrating week in many ways so far, but I’m getting done what I need to do. And I have some ideas for weekend relaxation for sure.