Despite the 11,000 things on my to do list, today has been a fairly lazy day so far. We’ve been sitting on the deck talking, reading, watching Casey play, yelling at Casey to get out of the flower beds with her freshly bathed self, and doing somethings online. It’s been really nice. Soon, the sun will climb high enough in the sky to encompass the entire deck in it’s heat and we’ll go inside to be more productive…maybe. One load of laundry is done (2 more wait), the meal planning for next week is done, the grocery list is near complete, now to finish the laundry, go to the grocery store, and clean the house. Oh well.
It’s been a beautiful and moderate morning. It’s been lovely to sit outside the three (then 2 of us when we realized we were getting onto Casey a lot, because she’d been up 3 and a half hours, so it was nap time) and enjoy our coffee and each other’s company. Now, we’ll soon have to rejoin the world of our to do lists.
We talk a lot of blogs in our home, but rarely of this one. We both have readers that where we subscribe to many blogs (ok, I subscribe to several, Adam subscribes to a ton), but we haven’t really discussed the direction of this blog. It’s been rambling so far and includes much of Casey and her growth and antics, but what should it be? We have some examples of people who work full time and have families and still find time to blog many times each week, then we have other examples of people whose full time job is to blog. We’re much more in the former category, but we’re still trying to determine our subject and the direction this will go.
Those of you who know us, know that we are busy and that we have always been busy ever since we started dating. Adam will tell you that it’s because I over schedule us because I can’t say no and try to please everyone (all of which are partially true). I usually say because we (yes both of us) like to be social and like to do a lot of different things. This made us schedule “us weekends” where we don’t make plans with anyone and have a date weekend once a month.
Then, in November, Casey Jayne (if you don’t know how her name was chosen, that’s a story of it’s own) was born and in January she came home to live with us! Since then, busy has been ridiculous! We haven’t seen many of our friends (and really only have seen those who have called and said how about we go do x on date y – hint – if you’d like to see us in the near future this is a good plan) and we have been exhausted. Someone…Casey…likes to wake up at 5am and requires a lot of attention. She has a strict schedule that makes sure she gets enough sleep to play and run around like she likes to (all while hopefully not getting so tired that she gets bitey…or mouthy as her favorite groomer calls it…it sounds nicer that way).
We are very excited that her baby teeth, aka razor sharp needles, are gone, so now those who do see us will notice I don’t have nearly as many scratches on my arms. Instead, she has fairly dull adult teeth, and I have bruises instead., She doesn’t bit like she did, but when she does, she likes to pinch with her front teeth. Most days I think it hurts less now. Also, this is the signal for bed time, so it doesn’t happen all that often.
So, now instead of running around town like chickens with our heads cut off, we run around the house and the yard like chickens with our heads cut off. We go on walks around the neighborhood, we play ball, we throw sticks, and we practice Casey’s training. We new our schedule and life would change drastically when we got a puppy, but I know I didn’t completely grasp just how much change it would be (sounds like some kid advice we got a while back, thanks Meggie #1).
I guess what I’m really trying to say is, we’re busier than ever but in a very different way. Casey is a very playful girl and loves everyone. If we haven’t seen you in a while, we’re just busy and you should call/text/email/facebook and let us know when you’d like to do what with us. We’ll try to work it in. Our schedule is further complicated by Adam’s job transition that requires him to travel for several weeks in May and June for training. Please understand if we just can’t right now and have to push out to August. We’re just busy, and Casey is a little baby (almost 6 months old!) and still has a strict schedule to keep us all sane….well, saner than we she gets off her schedule.
I’ve been telling myself for, oh, since my last blog post that I should blog regularly, whatever that means. I’m not sure if it’s weekly, daily, every other day, or what, but it’s certainly not every few weeks. I’ve started a couple of blogs and quickly forgot each one and I don’t want to do that again (and I thought Adam would post too). So, here I am weeks later, because I feel like I have no time. But tonight I’m making time.
In reality, I understand that I have the same amount of days, hours, and minutes as everyone else. I feel like I cram more things into those hours and minutes than I should, but I’m trying to make the most of it…right? Sometimes my hours are too full for me to appreciate them, like yesterday. I had 3 meetings back to back to back (this was mostly self-inflicted) and I just felt rushed all day. Nothing was wrong, the only thing that didn’t go well is a co-worker lost her phone, it was just rushed and I felt like a rushed mess throughout the day.
A co-worker recently said that things feel much slower here than where she’s from (up north…a huge metro area). I want to go there…where it feels much slower, where I feel much slower.
Tonight Adam is out to have dinner with a friend, and Casey and I are home. Normally, I’d be rushing to make dinner so we could eat, then Adam would rush through the dishes so we could get Casey out, then we’d rush through something else to do something else, then one of us will just give up and go to sleep.
Eventually, one day, maybe, I’m going to learn to quit rushing. Hopefully, that will be about the same time that I stop complaining that I have no time and learn to prioritize appropriately. Rather than doing every little thing that “needs” to be done, I have to figure out what needs to be done and do that, and learn to say “no” what doesn’t need to be done.
How do you determine what needs to be done? How did you determine when and how to say “no”, especially to yourself?
Adam suggested that I write this post about our accomplishments this week, and I was thinking about writing about vacations. I’m so glad we’re on the same page!
We took this past week off work for our vacation. I’m not sure about him, but for me, the week prior was filled with co-workers asking me where we were going on vacation and funny looks when I said we were staying home to get some things done. We both work full time (and sometimes more) and we have a 4 month old puppy, so there’s not much free time…or when there is we collapse on the couch in exhaustion. With this lack of free time comes a long list of to do’s. Since we decided we weren’t taking what became a ridiculously excessive road trip this summer, we decided to take a week to work at home while Casey – the puppy – is at “boarding school” as I like to call it, with Nashville K9. For a couple of weeks prior, we wrote the list of things we wanted to accomplish while we were off work and puppyless. Now that it’s Sunday afternoon and we go back to work tomorrow, we’re as done as we’re getting for this week.
This week we have:
replaced an outside light fixture with a motion sensor floodlight
installed a bug zapper
fixed the back door latch (Casey’s going to be mad she can’t throw herself into it to open the door anymore)
watered the lawn with weed killer
round-uped the flower beds (the things what are not supposed to be there that is)
scrapped peeling painted, primed, and painted the back door frame
extended two downspouts (to prevent pooling water in the yard)
sanded, primed, and painted the kitchen chairs (ok, 1 chair needs a 3rd coat, it’ll happen tomorrow)
painted our “R” and prepped it for hanging (thanks MG#3 and Pop!)
bought and installed a wasp trap
changed the batteries in our smoke detectors (yes, we know we’re a little late)
fixed the wall in the hall bathroom and replaced the shower curtain rod with one that screws into the wall (aka ensured we won’t have to do this again because the tension rod slipped down and peeled the paint)
selected and printed pictures, purchased frames, and hung a picture collage in the kitchen
bought and installed (yes, there are screws involved) a shoe organizer
bought and put together deck furniture
re-arranged our kitchen cork board (since it still had Christmas cards where they were put when the arrived)
cleaned out Casey’s toys to get rid of things that are too small now (Doug’s pile is now larger, but is looking somewhat girlie)
installed a printer
organized both of our desks
ran the speaker wire under the molding (rather than across the floor)
set up blog page and started blogging
Now, this is a huge list and I’m sure I’ve forgotten something, as we did work for a week on this! We do still have a pretty big list to tackle, as this was about half of what we had down, but we made huge progress! We did hit a bit of a stall when Adam’s shoulder decided it didn’t want to play any more after scrapping the door frame and crouching under the console table to put the speaker wire under the molding, but I persevered and almost got the kitchen chairs painted (almost 3 years later, yes, this week was necessary because we do like to procrastinate). Adam’s better today and currently tinkering the the garage. We also decided that we should try to strip the legs of the kitchen table rather than painting them because the wood is really pretty, and worse case scenario – we’ll paint them to match the chairs (which were previously painted, several times, and from two different sets).
We’ll have more projects to come and more pictures to show soon. Casey comes home from boarding school next weekend, so we’ll have some things to say about her being home and her training then.
So, that is what we decided is our vacation this time around. What is a vacation? I think of it as something relaxing, calming, and restful, whether it’s at home or somewhere else. I did find that painting chairs, the door frame, and the R was nice, and we slept in and rested when we felt like it and didn’t get stressed that we weren’t going to get everything done (we knew that going in and started our “this isn’t going to get done this week” list on Wednesday). Because we have some of these projects done, and others further along, we’ll hopefully be less stressed over them later and not so overwhelmed by our list. That was our goal, and I think we’ve accomplished it!
I do miss the puppy though, I’ve been ready for her to come home for several days but – one more week until she does and a Willow House party between now and then! (Saturday, 2pm, our house, rsvp please)
