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
