Astonishing Fact

In spite of the (random, unplanned and completely hysterical (at least to Hat and moi)) Day of Hundreds of Comments and all it entailed, I got a ton accomplished yesterday. Accomplished in that "Finally, this is no longer hanging over my head" sort of accomplished.

Which is proof that I am not as addicted to my computer as I think I am.

Who am I kidding.

'Course I am.

But I am obviously functional.

No interventions, please.

I like my sweet little bloggery addiction.

Add Your Own Soundtrack

I am feeling really overwhelmed right now.

So far this week I've spent the majority of my time doing things that have been important and necessary but not always actually things I've wanted to do. Like school meetings and research. I'm getting way behind on household stuff and website stuff and there are grapes that need to be harvested but there's no sense in doing that until I have time to turn them into jelly and uh, yeah, a quick check of the calendar says that ain't going to be any time soon.

Plus, I'm sick of fundraising and school has just started.

We always have to do fundraising. There's about a $2500 gap between what we pay in tuition and what it actually costs to educate a student. Which means each family has a modest fundraising obligation over the course of the year. The first fundraiser, which The Child won't even be participating in, is this weekend. But she's still fundraising for it and so far has received nearly half of what we need to honor our obligation. She so rocks.

But on top of that, there's fundraising for the 8th grade trip to DC. And the people in leadership on this are starting to really get on my nerves, for a variety of incredibly valid reasons that I won't bore you with. Except to say that I'm this close to telling them that I'll get her to DC one way or the other and they can leave me the frak alone for the rest of the year.

I could rant about something else related to school but I won't. Because it's boring. It amounts to sideline thumb twiddlers complaining about things in which they are unwilling to personally invest. Know what I say to that? Shut the frak up.

But it does kinda make a person ask the question, "Why am I bothering with this?"

Oh right. Because I love my child and I love her school.

On a brighter note, I got to see my baby yesterday. Let's all ooh and ahh at him, shall we?


And my niece Molly, who cracks me up daily, posted this video of her dancing. It was shot before (or after, I forget) a play she was in. Someone put on a song she loves and she started goofing. It makes me laugh. Even without sound.



Now I'm going to grab my timer and see if I can't accomplish something useful.

And the Winner Is

It's been a good week for The Child.

They've been celebrating "Literacy Week" at school, with all sorts of fun events. The kids spent May logging the number of minutes they read each day. The Child's class won a pizza party for having the most minutes as a class and she was in a 3-way tie for the top readers. The reward for that accomplishment was having lunch with a real honest-to-goodness author. (Who's name I never did get. Oh well). The Child was tres excited about that.

Each class decorated their classroom door to showcase a particular author. 3 of us from the Parent Association board were the judges. The 7th grade, having read The Hobbit earlier in the year, went for Tolkien, turning their door into a quite fine hobbit hole: very green door, a "brass knob" in the center and all. They then copied the opening sentences into various languages (demonstrating the universal appeal of the book), had a bio of the author and a picture of a hobbit that you could see through the window. Superfantastic.

Today was character day and as you can see, she went as Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter books. (She's not sad in that photo; she's trying to look serious). She called just now to tell me that the class won the door competition (the other judges apparently agreed with moi) and that she also won the prize for best costume in her class.

Sometimes it is really nice to be rewarded for your efforts, no?

Groovy as all that was, she's anticipating an even better weekend. The Best Friend is coming to town for some family celebrations and we get to have her over-night on Saturday. The Best Friend, you'll remember, doesn't live in Seattle anymore so visits are far and few between. When I told The Child she actually started to cry, that's how much she loves and misses BF. The fact that The Spouse and I are terribly, terribly fond of her is just an added bonus.

Plus, The Child will now be highly motivated to clean her room. Score.

Determination

I've been pulling together some stuff to submit to a local parenting magazine. At first I was really excited. I'm a parent and I can write. Then I started putting it off. I realized that it owes to the great Poetry Submission Debacle of 1980.

It's not so much an actual fear of rejection. That goes with the territory. There isn't a writer worth his or her salt that hasn't been rejected. J.K. Rowling springs to mind and she ended up doing ok for herself. No, it's more to do with being rejected cruelly, being told that I did it all wrong. I hate being wrong.

But then, last night, I was inspired by two things. First, The Spouse was talking about some reality show, "On the Lot" I think it's called. There's been a lot of buzz about it in the indie film community, with which he's connected, and his whole thing is that is not how you earn your chops. You get a gig, you do your best and try to be a reasonable person and then you get hired on something else. You have to be willing to be a grunt, you have to be willing to learn and eventually you manage to get somewhere.

As an example he cited our friend Norbert, who works in LA half of the year. Norbert doesn't go down to the union hall to see what's available. He calls the people he knows to see what they're doing and they hire him because he has a good reputation in the industry. That's how it works.

It made me think about how sparse my actual writing cred is but obviously, the only way to get more stuff on the resume is to work it. So there you go.

And then, because I'm still in mourning for "Gilmore girls" and don't yet know what to do with myself of a Tuesday evening, I watched most of the finale of "Dancing with the Stars". It's a really annoying program, btw, but I knew Apolo Ono was in the finals and I ♥ him.

He and his adorable partner Julieanne won, which means that now he has a shiny disco ball trophy to put next to his bronze, silver and gold Olympic medals. That in itself is a little silly, I know. But here's the thing: this is a 25 year old kid (just had his birthday yesterday, in fact) who has already accomplished some significant things. He could probably rest on his endorsements for the rest of his life. But he entered this silly competition, for whatever reasons, and then he put everything he had into it. He listened to and learned from his professional partner. He took the judges critique to heart and every week, from what I understand, he worked hard to be the best he could be. He was consistently described last night, by judges, other competitors and people who know him as "determined".

After winning he was asked how he felt and replied, "I feel amazing! You put your mind to something, you give 100 percent, sacrifice and dedication, anything is possible.”

It's such a basic formula that it seems naive but coming from someone who has proven the formula time and again, it had weight. And I thought, "100%. What would that look like?" Because, people, to be perfectly honest, I'm not sure that I've even managed 50%.

So there you go. I'm going to ship that stuff off and look for other stuff and keep plugging and who knows? Maybe I'll get a frakkin' disco ball myself someday.

15 Minutes of Accomplishment

Assuming, well, assuming all sorts of things, today might actually be "normal". It's been a long time.

"Normal" means getting up early for coffee and prayer (check), unloading the dishwasher (check), getting The Child off to school without incident (check). So far so good.

Now what it means is getting something accomplished. There's a lot that hasn't been normal lately, with the weather changing routines and all that. This has only compounded the struggle with my own little devil, the one named "Procrastination". Here's an example of how it gets me. Say I need to pungle some bills (which I do). That usually also requires entering stuff into Quicken, possibly reconciling the checkbook, adjusting my cash flow projections...all of which take time. Usually too much time, because I procrastinate. I procrastinate even when I know there is money to pay the bills, although I know part of this is a hold-over from the days when I didn't have money and every bill paying session was accompanied by a clenched stomach, dry mouth and shaking hands. The other part of it is just that because I put it off there is always a ton to do and I feel overwhelmed so I just don't do it at all. Which means that there is even more on the pile the next time I think to tackle it.

Or take editing that liturgy book. I finished the manuscript last January. I've done very little on the editing. Because it's a big job. It's going to involve some re-writing. I don't enjoy that so much. So I put it off. And I also put it off because I think that if I can't devote a couple of hours to it then I shouldn't bother at all. Which is why the job isn't close to being completed.

I've mentioned Flylady before. I've adopted a lot of her common sense principles to good effect but one of the things I haven't heeded as much is her "15 minute" rule, to whit "You can do anything for 15 minutes". More than that, she emphasizes that once you've logged your 15 minutes, you're done. She encourages people to not stress if the whole project isn't completed right away. Which makes particular sense when you're talking about something like paperwork or ironing or some other quotidian task that's still going to be there tomorrow no matter what.

So I'm going to focus on that 15 minute thing...dedicating little chunks of time to projects that don't necessarily thrill me to the marrow but can't be ignored forever. Doing certain things every day for 15 minutes (like book-keeping) will necessarily result in having less to do over time. As for bigger projects, well, yes, the first thing my little devil voice said was, "You can't get a book done by only editing for 15 minutes a day". To which I replied, "15 minutes is a damn sight more time than I'm spending right now". What's the old joke...how do you eat a whale...one bite at a time. (Hopefully cream sauce is involved).

For additional incentive, The Neighbor and I have adopted a new ritual of sharing our daily accomplishments when we have our evening glass o' wine. Because we both have a tendency to focus on what we didn't do. This way, we celebrate what we have done, however small or insignificant it may be. And because we know we are going to be sharing it with someone else, it prods both of us to make sure we actually have something to share. Yay us.

So as long as a blizzard doesn't start or The Child isn't suddenly taken ill or The Dog doesn't run away from home, I may be able to have a "normal" day. And get something done.

On the 9th Day of Christmas I'm Still Wishing for a Dumpster

Gina suggested that I need an "easy" button. What I need is a dumpster. Also, I need the other people in this house to frakkin' deal with their garbage when they generate it. You know, like recycle newspapers and empty envelopes. And hello? There's a garbage can under the kitchen sink. The counter is actually not the place for our detritus, people.

"Ooh," you say. "You're so gonna get it...The Spouse reads your blog".

Yeah, well, he's not the only one generating messes. I'm just saying. It's a little house. It doesn't take much to send things swirling into madness. ("Our house, in the middle of the street". JP played that yesterday on "Here's the 80s". Have we promoted our new blog enough yet? No? 'K. We'll keep reminding you).
But everything is going to be ok. Really. I actually got quite a lot accomplished yesterday, which includes dealing with our family room, which had become pretty much just a junk room. It is just neat as a pin now. And if it was a woman it would also weigh about 20 pounds less than she did yesterday.

Here's something completely random that I figured out. Most of you people are reading this blog while you're at work. Aren't you? I knew it. The ol' site meter showed at least a fifth of my audience disappeared during the holidays but it's steadily picking up again. Just thought I'd mention that. It's a little odd to me, only because I'm totally addicted to the internets and no matter where I am or what I'm doing, I have to find a wireless connection and check my email, that sort of thing. Yes, it's a sickness. We've already discussed this.

Speaking of sickness, I woke up this morning with a hangover. A blogging hangover. Specifically, a video blogging hangover. JP and I put up a lot of videos yesterday. We were driven by some sort of need to lay a foundation before we started doing the whole "weekend video extravaganza" thing. Why? Don't know. But we ended up posting something like 50 videos yesterday. And had 2 production meetings. Yet I still cleaned 3 rooms, did laundry, cooked dinner and all that other stuff. Amazing. How do I do it? And without a dumpster no less.