Thankful Thursday

[dampscribbler]

I'm so thankful that school has begun again. Miss M, now age 7 and in second(!!) grade, is pretty happy with her new teacher and is happy to be hanging out with girlfriends again. She's been much nicer the past few days, and I'm afraid I have to admit that I have been too. I'm glad to be getting back into a routine and catching up on tidying some of the messes that have developed in the house over the past few months. I've told myself I can't clean for more than an hour a day, because in the past I've made myself kind of crazy trying to get lots of things cleaned up "before I start working," and ultimately neither happens to my satisfaction. So I'm trying bits of things -- a bit of writing each day, a bit of cleaning, a bit of errands or appointments out of the house. So far it's going okay, although I'm still neglecting the writing time (old habits die hard, but eventually, with effort and attention, they do change to new habits.) I'm also kind of hoping to start a new reading/writing blog, but that's down the road a piece. First thing is to get to my story and get it on the page and have some fun with it. Once I'm confident that my writing time is somewhat stable and won't be sacrificed, then I may try adding something else to the mix.

And with that, I'm going to go do some errands. I did cleaning, I'll do errands, then writing time until 3:00 when M comes home from school.

Comments

[jeniwrites.livejournal.com]

Ariel Gore, an author/mama who used to publish a magazine called "Hip Mama," once said that the thing about housework is that it never, ever goes away completely. You can spend all day doing it and the next day, there's more to do, especially when you have kids. Keeping that in mind helps put things in perspective a lot of the time (not always, but enough to be able to say "enough; I'm going to write now).

I'm so glad M is having a great start to the school year!

[jelazakazone.livejournal.com]

Right there with you on the happiness about kids being back in school. For me, there is newfound freedom with 7 hours a day all to myself. No interruptions. No distractions. And waaaay too much time to try to cram too much stuff in. I completely overdid it yesterday. Oops. I scaled back a bit today. So far, I don't feel collapse is imminent.

[wordsrmylife.livejournal.com]

Now that sounds like a good day. I like the way you've mixed things up so that something of each gets done.

[dampscribbler.livejournal.com]

So true, Jeni! And yet housework can't go entirely un-done. Finding that place where I can say "enough, it's MY time now!" is tough, but it's one of my priorities to learn how to do that in the next few weeks, because with the coming of Winter the demands get even greater on me and I want to have some limits in place by then.

[dampscribbler.livejournal.com]

Yay! Yes, the urge to "do it all now" is huge, but you'll get over that. Remember that part of "all" is taking some downtime! :)

[dampscribbler.livejournal.com]

Yes, it does sound like a good day, doesn't it? Now, to actually implement that plan on a regular basis! :-)