My new weekend thing is I do chores all Saturday and don't try to skate & chill out all Sunday and don't try to write, so that everything including myself is put back together when the week starts. Then skate Monday and Thursday night & write like I'm serious Tuesday and Wednesday night.
Score: Not bad.
Grocery: meal plan and shop list
I think the key was taking advantage of my established pattern of blearily scrolling through my email and facebook messages as I eat breakfast, and slithering from that into writing up the week's meal plan and shop list. If you want to pick up a new habit, it honestly helps to match cut the behavior with an old habit that's already ingrained. It also helps not to always think in words, by the way. Like if I'm trying to nail that tight turn past the radiators of doom, I know I have to drop my knees, pull in my obliques, set my arms, and dig down with my leg. And in my head, that all shorthands to "bee-yoo-ti-ful!" This is similar to something I read about how to do a flying scissor kick, which boiled down to "just think 'Ninja!' " Not that "bee-yoo-ti-ful" and "Ninja!" aren't words; but you get that this is a blog, right? In your head, it's more like a picture of bee-yoo-ti-ful or Ninja! And kids, I'm not sure that I would try that flying scissor kick without, like, actual instructions. But anyway, about the meal plan, I was matching that early morning in front of computer posture. I mean, why not do the meal plan while you're already shaped like that. Not the least because after I get up and moving, it's hard to get me to sit down again.
Writing is interesting, I should do it more often. I had no idea I had that all in my head. More later, probably.
LATER. ALSO, MORE:
It also works to do something that you can do when you're half-awake, because it wakes up you and then you can deal with stuff that you have to be awake to deal with.
Cleaning: make bed and do dishes
I only clean once a week. When I clean, I'm like a one-man scrubbing bubble. Well, I don't scrub. Well also, I am not a man. I start in the back of the apartment, and clean my way out to the front. It starts with making the bed, I take my ability to make my bed by myself as a token of being a strong, independent woman. When I was married, we always made the bed together; before I was married, I had a twin bed. I had to learn how to make a full bed by myself in a bedroom basically the size of the bed & for me it's roughly like a cage match with a bear, where you have to diaper the bear.
I decided to squeeze in my little housekeeping projects along with chores. There's a longer story about... well actually, I guess it's just about housekeeping unbalanced. I used to housekeep unbalanced the way you always have some little project that needs doing, like building shelves or sewing curtains, and then you move for pete's sake and then you have to build new shelves and sew new curtains, it never ends and nothing else even gets started. Now I'm unbalanced the other way, like I have my upstairs neighbor's number programmed into my phone; so when the pipes freeze, I can text her not to do the dishes until they thaw out or else the dirty dishwater backs up in my sink. But if that happens, I stack the dirty dishes on a towel on the floor & go back to my dreamy business, which is not thawing pipes out. But anyway the point is, I never want to be taken over by Other Business to the extent that I think I'm Joe the Plumber; but taking care of my house that I live in is, a little bit, my business, and maybe I've backed away from it a leetle too much. So Saturday is my day for anything housekeeping, like a lead-lined container for whatever radioactive bee I have in my bonnet. Which this Saturday was finally sewing up the bed coverlet that I started two years ago, as reported on my facebook status:
Poppy Munt is cursing and trying to pin together the top edges of these two sheets all laid out on my tiny living room floor, why can't I buy a duvet cover like everybody else, I only started this project two years ago, who sews together three sides of a duvet cover and leaves the top edge for two years, and yes, I slept under it pinned for two years, so the edge was all effed up and I had to iron it out, I hate ironing, never"again!" it was supposed to say, but I ran out of characters. It turned out, though, and then I finished making the bed, and then I did the dishes —the pipes really only freeze two or three of the very coldest days of the year— and washed two-thirds of the kitchen floor.
Laundry: sort loads
And sorted the laundry.
Cooking: pack lunches
And packed my breakfasts and snacks for the week.
Review & Plan
And did bills, and drew up my next week's plan in my notebook.
My favorite part of "Alice's Restaurant" is when Arlo Guthie says, "I've been singing this song now for twenty five minutes. I could sing it for another twenty five minutes. I'm not proud... or tired."
Actually, I am tired. I'm tired all the time. I don't get enough sleep. I can't stand how much time sleep takes up, and probably short myself two hours every night of the week, and it's the worst of both worlds because I don't get enough sleep done or enough work done.
I thought Sunday was supposed my day just to not be doing anything, to fill my frittering requirement. But based on yesterday, I think a lot of Sunday just goes to pay back that sleep debt. I got up at ten for breakfast, then had a nap on the chaise, and then got up to go back to bed. But you know, I felt pretty okay when I got up and got dressed for practice at one, and had a good practice.
Friday night, by the way, we stayed in and watched Hellraiser 3. Saturday night we went to a barbecue. And Sunday night is Choppers night; but since I had a burger at the barbecue, I had a chili cheese dog from Choppers nom nom nom nom nom.
All of this is for what again: so that everything including myself is put together when the week starts. Then skate Monday and Thursday night & write like I'm serious Tuesday and Wednesday night.
Ninja!
