The Best Laid Plans

Okay, so none of that happened last night, but we did purchase a Yakima dry dock and saddles for our kayak transportation needs (which we'll hopefully use this weekend!) and got to see some good friends afterwards (with whom I hope to spend some time this weekend and with whom we're camping next weekend!). That was nice, although the high I've been on since I passed my exams needs a house-cleaning outlet. I can feel my nerves growing! I may have to clean tonight after my event even though I have to work early tomorrow!

I should have cleaned this morning, but got distracted by A & E, no not the channel (we don't do cable), but the people - first, A joined me upstairs and then E called after A had gone off to work, so I spent much of my early starting morning with them. I did, however, get some things done today, including:

• ordering my birth certificate long distance
• calling several patients that I need to follow up with
• getting all the things collected that I need for my event tonight
• sending several letters that needed to go out in the mail
• picking up dry dog food and raw meat to make fresh dog food
• getting fingerprinted for my licensing application

So, I'm heading off for some prep time at my event location, giving the talk/demo and then heading home as soon as possible. Maybe I shouldn't be drinking coffee these days - I think it just makes the mania stronger.

Sunday Intentions

I'm tired.

I didn't get enough sleep last night. Was out celebrating A's birthday early.

I didn't get enough sleep the night before. Was out helping a friend move (okay, watching A help a friend move) and playing Rock Band.

I am tired, but I'm still setting my intention to get a few things done this evening after work. When I start having Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday off from my market job (in 2 weeks), there is a very real risk that I will start Monday with a thorough house cleaning. Risk, because this is valuable time to get started on clinic projects and board studying and I don't want to be distracted by house work. So, I'm setting my intention to work with A to get our house picked up by Sunday evenings. Not just tonight, but every week.

When I first moved in, A cleaned the house thoroughly every weekend and I kept it picked up through the week, but we've fallen out of that habit and sometimes the dishes get pretty stacked up. No more. My intention for Sunday evenings is to:

• Wash and put away all dishes, clean kitchen
• Pick up bathroom and wipe everything down
• Change sheets and vacuum bedroom
• Pick up and organize office
• Put away clothes (also in office and huge deterrent to working in there!)
• Come up with a general outline for meals for the week
  

I'm hoping that with A's help, this will go fairly quickly and that if we do it every week, each week will require slightly less work. For example, if I put my clothes away every Sunday, there won't be 2 weeks worth of clean and dirty, tried on and discarded clothing to launder and/or put away every time. For that matter, the more things I try on and discard, the more my Goodwill bag should fill up!

I was just depressed to look around my office and see my study materials (which are currently on a folding table set up in an "L" with my desk for spread-out-ability) covered by misc other books, clothing and brick-a-brack, both my desk chair and my comfy chair buried in clothes, and both kitchen sinks full of dirty dishes, despite the 2 loads I ran in the dishwasher on Friday. (Luckily, two full sinks doesn't actually fill up the dishwasher, so empty and reload means done and done quickly tonight!)

This is all part of the Schedule Board Study Time plan - it's partly distraction, but also partly distraction avoidance. Will let you know how it goes.

Pat on the Back

I give myself a little pat on the back today. First, I kept my plans from yesterday and ended up having a nice time chatting with friends. I think I was immediately rewarded for that: A and I stopped by Trader Joe's on the way home and picked up some yummies!

Second, when I woke up early this morning, I was still thinking about my gardening plans - no, nothing I have blogged about, probably ever, but something I've spent a bit of time thinking about this week - and had a bunch of ideas. Yesterday, A was not very receptive to the idea of helping me with the garden. I think (hope!) that it was because he was wiped out at that moment and not that he doesn't want to help ever. (Especially since he talked about doing the gardening if we ever open a BnB, which has been a dream of mine for a while now!)

So, instead of throwing all my early morning gardening plans at A, I kept them to myself and I think that's pat-worthy. It was hard not to bombard him with all my ideas, because in the end, it's actually about simplifying and I just want someone to hear and acknowledge my minor genius.

It's hard in general not to bombard him with my ideas - I am very aware of the areas in our home that could be re-organized or sorted or clutter cleared or cleaned - and I have lots of ideas about how to make our home more beautiful and functional, but I generally keep them to myself. I think when I have weekends off, it'll be easier to spend a short amount of time working on these kinds of projects together instead of trying to do them when we're both tired after work and looking for entertainment.

However, I think I'm going to keep working on this gardening idea - a few shady plants in the back yard, a couple of pots of veggies in the front - nothing too outrageous, but I don't like to see the desolate and untouched garden strip he made for me last year and I want to grow something that I can eat!

Playing Catch Up

I told A not to come over today. He stays with me more often than not, so we both usually assume he's coming over, but today I took a day for quiet and catch up. It seems like I never have enough time... I was going to say enough time to get things done, but it's just generally enough time. Enough time to get things done, enough time spent on my thesis, enough time off, enough time with my dog, enough time to prepare a good meal...

I don't like this so I'm going to change my thinking about it:

I am grateful that every day,

in every way,

there is the perfect amount of time.

Tonight, I've been playing catch up and it's been nice. Here's some of what I've accomplished tonight:

• Took down massage table and reclaimed my living room
• Started the laundry - which is silly because I've had a full load of towels in the washing machine all weeks, but just never started it!
• Vacuumed the livingroom and bathroom - both of which needed it badly and now my house looks 10x cleaner
• Talked to my good friend Jeff
• Talked to my good friend E
• Prepared and enjoyed a delicious dinner
• Poured the bulk spices into new glass jars, labelled them and put them in the cupboard, clearing up 1 more foot of counter space
• Cleaned out the refridgerator - no, I'm never going to eat that funky old tofu
• Drank the remaining kombucha from yesterday
• Came up with a new supplement plan - instead of trying to force myself to take 30-40 pills everyday, when I know I won't do it, I made a plan to take 4-5 a day. Not only is this more realistic, but I feel like it's healthier, too!
• Realized that I don't want really want to just watch crappy movies every evening, but would prefer to read during evenings in.
• Made a list of upcoming fun events and adventures that I will see everyday
• Contacted prospective business partners
• Responsibly replied to my business partner
• Walked the dog (twice)
• Took the recycling out
• Made the dog a blog (I know that one is for fun and doesn't really count, but it is still something I did tonight that has some meaning for me!)

Whew, I can't believe I got all that done! And with the perfect amount of time to spare for reading another chapter before going to bed.

Computer Maintenance for the Un-Savvy

So I tried to maintain my computer tonight and almost blew it up. My boyfriend is a computer whiz, so he was able to fix what I broke, but we started off the evening thinking I might have to buy a new computer!

It started with me deleting the "guest" account he had created for himself on my computer - you know, when you start up your computer and you select the use icon from the front page and enter your password. That account had been painfully slow and really unusable anyways, so I got rid of it. Then I decided to defragment my C:// - after the analysis, the computer reported that it needed to defragment, but didn't have enough memory to do it properly.

So I decided to delete Norton Internet Security software which I'm no longer using. That un-installation was taking a long time, so I left it while I went to work, thinking I would start the defrag when I got home since I had company coming and wouldn't be on the computer anyways. When I got home, the computer was frozen in the middle of the un-install, same place it had gotten hung up before. Unfortunately, I forced an End Program through Task Manager and then couldn't restart the uninstall and started getting messages that my computer was dangerously low on memory. We later learned that lots of people have this problem and the Norton is a bitch to remove. Removing your Norton program using SymNRT helped though.

Before we did that or found that, we cleared up a ton of space (from 60 MB available to about 3GB) using CCleaner and deleting some duplicated or unnecessary programs from my hard drive. After all that, we ran Spybot and Ad-Aware which found NOTHING! Previously, while running on my Norton subscription with automatic live updates, both programs had found critical objects that required attention. So, in addition to being a pain in the ass to remove and almost shutting me down, Norton wasn't even providing the same level of security I now have with AVG, a free Internet security program. I can't recommend AVG more glowingly - it automatically updates and scans the computer EVERY DAY.

So, from now on, cross my heart, it's a weekly computer maintenance day with the following tasks in order of operations:

• Backup all
• CCleaner
• Check for unwanted/unneeded programs and delete
• Clean up unneeded documents and files
• Spybot and AdAware
• Defragment
• Restart several times
• Backup all

And, as part of the beauty of the Internet, you may start to see some things posted here as a place for safe-keeping. Oh, how I love and hate technology.

Good Housekeeping

I'm not the greatest of housekeepers. I keep things tidy and like everything to be in its assigned place, but I'm not that good at the actual cleaning part. Luckily for me, E was a great housekeeper. She cleaned the bathrooms and the floor at the Dollhouse, while I kept the kitchen spic and span. Now that I'm living alone, it's a different story. I cleaned the toilet the other day for the first time and realized I haven't cleaned a toilet for months. That was weird. An exercise in remembering what self-sufficiency really means. But I also learned that vacuum cleaners work just as well on tile as they do on carpet. My vacuum has a hose and attachments and I think that cleaned the floor better than any broom would have done.

I also learned a little something new about housekeeping while at a friend's house the other day. On her coffee table was a copy of Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House. I paged through the sections on bedroom decor (sexual art not necessarily best), the use of stimulating beverages (when to serve coffee, tea or alcohol) and liability (when one could reasonably be expected to pay damages for injury), but carried away on this handy advice:
upon rising in the morning, turn down the sheets and open the window to air the bed.

Both A and E are bed makers, so I've grudgingly fallen into the habit of at least pulling the bedding up over the bed so as to have a slightly less rumply bed to come back to in the evening, but no more. I've aired the bed for the past several days and I find my bed so much more appealing now. I actually leave the bed turned all the way down (with the sheets and blankets folded back) until it's time for bed. The sheets are then cool and fresh every time I climb between them. I guess that's a lesson in listening to my own instincts.

Beautiful Day

Today is such a beautiful day and my aim is to make today my day of no swearing. It's on my list of 101 goals. I'm feeling today like anything is possible and remembering that any large task has to start with small steps.

After this weekend, my house is clean, my relationship is stable and I feel significantly less stressed. I'm going to use that to my advantage and continue 'cleaning house' all week.

Accomplishment!

Somehow when one has procrastinated for hours-days-weeks-months, just getting started can turn everything around. "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Last night I took a step - a tiny, itty-bitty, baby step towards the large amount of work that needs to be completed in the next four weeks, but a step that helps me see the possibility of getting through this tough period.

I was also able to get this step completed while taking care of my dog and my home, seeing my friend in from out of town and spending quality time with my beloved. Usually getting any homework done means locking myself away from everyone, even my sweet dependant little doggie and letting my house fall into a state of intense filth. As any other master-procrastinator knows, cleaning house is a great way to procrastinate. I suppose any non-deadline, but still essential task can be used as an excuse. I actually wrote "clean garage" and "spring cleaning" on my to-do list - that's how bad I didn't want to do my homework!

To set myself up for success and ride the wave of momentum, I plan on taking the next step tonight. I'm hoping to do some research and write two case papers this evening. Definitely a possibility. I read that people with debt find some level of accountability in blogging about their debt - maybe I'll find some accountability by blogging about my assignments...after graduation, when my student loans come due, then I'll have to start blogging about debt!