New Year's Resolutions

With the new year just around the corner, I'm armed with new planning pages and resolve. This year, I plan to conquer time. Ambitious? Indeed.

The key part (for me) is finding the discipline to go to bed at a decent time. It's a vicious cycle that's contingent on the time I get to sleep. The later I stay awake, the later I want to sleep the next morning. The later I sleep, the more I scramble to get the kids out the door (picture me yelling: "Let's go! Let's go! Let's go!"). The morning usually sets the tone for the day, and thus my productivity: at the gym, at work, at home.

My new year's resolution is to go to bed each night at a decent time. We'll see how that goes.

I'm reading a new book by Dr. Gary Smalley entitled: Great Parents, Lousy Lovers. It's talking about building a margin into your life. He uses the metaphor that each activity is like blowing air into a balloon. The more activity, the more the balloon gets fills. Rest is like letting some air out. Downtime is important. That means, I'll need limit my daily tasks/activities to create realistic outcomes.

So, this 2011, I endeavor to conquer time by going to bed earlier and creating some wider time margins in my daily schedule.

Also, I'm conducting an informal survey about household chores. Send to your friends and family. I'm interested to see the results. http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/maniacalmother

The War on Toys & Clutter

Some days I feel like I just can’t seem to get ahead. I trade out work time for my morning workout. I sacrifice time with the kids to work. Any gains I might make on laundry or cleaning the house seem to evaporate by 1pm. I quarantine the kids to one room so I can work on the rest of the house – room by room – but return to the occupied room being a total disaster. The punishment for one child sends them upstairs – mid-tantrum – and then THAT leads to a potty accident with me cleaning up pee off the floor.

All the interruptions of the day leave me feeling unproductive and overwhelmed because today’s tasks just got added to tomorrow’s list…which still has items from last month.

I expressed this frustration to my sweet, kind husband who empathized with the situation. I explained that the worst part of all was all the never ending War on Toys & Clutter that seemed to be in the midst of a hostile takeover. I was losing ground fast, and I somehow needed to find higher ground. He said that I was exactly right.

He, like most men, used a football analogy to show he understood my plight. "We start at 1st and 10. After a couple of plays, we end up at 3rd and long. But we ALWAYS get the first down. ALWAYS." His confidence at achieving this mystical first down was almost convincing...if I didn't already feel like my half-hearted clean-up attempts around the house didn't feel like punting. And besides, if we ALWAYS get the first down, then where in the WORLD was the end zone? I needed a Hail Mary pass to win the game.

In an effort to regain control, I spent the better part of my afternoon designing a chore chart (complete with pictures since we're not fully at that reading stage yet) in hopes of INSPIRING my children to WANT to clean.

I'll keep you posted on my progress - or lack of it.

Working from home is not all sugarplum fairies.

Trust me. Working from home is not all sugarplum fairies. It requires the discipline of a consumate multi-tasker, listmaker and the sheer determination to be productive in the face of sheer chaos. It's a harried balance between keeping the house just slightly cleaner than a total disaster area, resisiting the urge to plaster the kids in front of the tv and still attempting to locate educational/nurturing activities for the kids to do while simultaneously negotiating real-time business deals and writing compelling grants for worthwhile non-profits. This is not for the weak-minded or easily-distracted.

Today, for instance, I was attempting to negotiate details with various hotels for an upcoming conference I'm coordinating, and had left the children unsupervised, when my daughter bursts into the room - sobbing. Between gulps and tears, she tells me she's "sorry and it was an accident."

Turns out she kickd a hole in the glass french doors of our master bedroom.

It's days like these that leave me bewildered. But soon after I'd cleaned up the mess, I was cuddling and snuggling with the kids again.

Days like this must be measured in positives. After all, today WAS a victory.
1. No one was hurt. She could have some serious cuts to her leg. My son (who was on the other side of the glass) had no injuries.
2. Instead of trying to hide what happened, she immediately confessed.
3. Hopefully, they learned a lesson.