Taking up the challenge

One of the blogs I follow is written by a mum of five boys and one girl. She wrote a book called "How Do You Tuck in a Superhero" (I wrote about it here). This week she's begun a ten minute Tuesday challenge, where you write for ten minutes without stopping and publish it on your blog, if you have one. I usually write here for longer than ten minutes each day, but to set a timer and just write sounds like an interesting challenge. So, here I go.


Today started like most Wednesdays during school time. We ate breakfast at the usual time (7.15), but the only person who had to be at school at the usual time was David. The school has a slow start on Wednesdays, the kids start an hour later. The boys love to play at this time. And today especially so, because our son's just received birthday presents, including a cool Lego game called Heroica.

The challenge for me is getting them to do their jobs before they start playing. Especially our eldest who has more jobs than his brothers on Wednesday. He washes up the breakfast dishes (usual weekday job) but also washes all the towels.

I've discovered that I'm much better at cleaning when there are other people around. When everyone is at school I'd much rather be doing jobs that I find hard to manage when they're here, like writing or editing.

So, earlier this year I decided to make Wednesday morning my weekly housework morning. It is when I clean both our toilets and vacuum as much of the house as I can. Occasionally other jobs poke their heads in there too, like cleaning out the turtle's tank. It seems to be working well. The dust bunnies on the stairs aren't bugging me so much and the toilets, when cleaned weekly, don't smell as much :-)

I'm not the best housekeeper, but I figure, I do all the important things (like keeping our family fed and clothed).

Then at 9.45 I had an editorial meeting with the Executive Editor of Japan Harvest. This is a weekly meeting when we talk about anything pertaining to the magazine. This used to be a long meeting (up to two hours), but as I've grown to understand my role better and our roles have become better defined, the meeting time has come down to an hour or less.

Now I would usually be headed off to the gym, but as the Orthopaedic specialist said to stay away from the heavy exercise, I'm not doing that at the moment. Which is a problem that I don't like. It means that I have less energy than usual (and the fact that summer is lingering on hasn't helped that). So, perhaps I'd better go and do some more pushups and sit-ups.

Yes, I've been building up my strength with these two upper body exercises, though my "wrestling" son doesn't thing that my modified pushups are even worthy of counting as real exercise. But they've got to count for something, surely? And my stamina has increased. I can now do 20 sit ups (with my feet under the lounge! I can't do even one without something to hold my feet).


Okay, that's my 10 minutes up. What do ya reckon? Any other bloggers out there keen to take up the challenge?