Saturday
Saturday held another cross country meet. The second-last one for the season. The alarm went off at 5.30 as David was one of the drivers getting runners to the meet and I was riding with him. This season we've had the joy of having our two boys run in the first and last race at most meets! No arriving late or leaving early!
It drizzled on and off and was quite cold, more than 10C colder than last Tuesday when I was wearing shorts! So I was layered up. I copped the usual flack from my teenagers, but it was my comfort I cared about, not their opinions of my fashion.
We had the fun of cheering CAJ's high school boys on to great success. It was their regional finals and the top 15 got medals. One third of those medals went to our boys and gave us the team award! Notable when you realise that the schools that came second and third have student bodies more than twice the size of our school.
But I came home very tired and still had grocery shopping to do and an evening meal to cook. I think that was the night that my Kindle fell out of my hands onto the floor while I was reading in bed and David suggested I should call it quits for the day.
Sunday
Sunday was church as usual in the morning and resting for a couple of hours after lunch, but for some reason I wasn't able to nap.
The upcoming fortnight is extra busy. This week is CAJ's giant bazaar, Thrift Shop where I volunteer for four and a half very intense days.
Preparing at home for that time means getting all the stuff that we're intending to sell with price tags on them (which we write by hand and include our PTA number so that we can get a percentage of the sale price returned to us as income).
For me it also means making sure my menu for the coming week is light on work for me because two nights I won't be here at that time and the other three nights I'll be very tired. And it also means that I'm working hard on Monday and Tuesday to make sure that as far as I can predict, I'm able to take a few days off from my editing jobs. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
On Sunday I spent time baking for these coming couple of weeks (snacks for our family as well as Thrift Shop volunteers) before heating up our usual left-over Sunday night dinner.
I also worked on the menu for the week after Thrift Shop because David will be away in the US that week and I try to be kind to myself. So in the last week we've had some large meals and yesterday I frozen portions for the upcoming fortnight.
Looking at the upcoming temperatures, I also asked David if he could get the big heater out and buy some kerosene to fill it up. Today, that already proved fortuitous. It's been grey and drizzling all day and barely made 14 today. Really quite chilly for this time of year.
I was still feeling rather tired last night and had boys needing stuff from me at 10pm, which is pretty much my Cinderella hour most nights, but last night even more. I do believe I said something like this to a boy who was occupying the bathroom and preventing me from cleaning my teeth and going to bed:
Today I've been working hard along the lines of what I wrote above, checking where I'm up to and trying to get ahead on as much as I can. I also walked over to school in my gum boots for a ninth-grade parent's prayer meeting at school mid-morning.
After that I walked through the drizzling, chilly rain to the doctor to get asthma medication for the next three months (hopefully, if I don't get a cold). That was a mildly anxiety-inducing affair. There's nothing like someone with a full-blown cold in the waiting room to make me feel as though my chest is tightening up, especially when it's a cold day and I'm thinking about asthma for starters. I'm not super fond of the rule that they can't give you repeats on prescriptions here, so that I can stay away from the doctor's waiting room for up to a whole year! But thankfully my timing was great and the whole thing, including getting the meds from the pharmacy, only took 40 minutes. Not bad with no appointment!
Then I walked to my local coffee shop and spent the next four hours there. My happy, productive place! I figured home would be cold and miserable (I never cope well with these pre-Thrift Shop days and a cold, wet, grey day wasn't helping my mood). And knowing that I usually get a tonne done when I'm at a coffee shop on my own with work in mind, I headed there and had a more upbeat day than I would have otherwise. There speaks the extrovert in me?
The upcoming fortnight is extra busy. This week is CAJ's giant bazaar, Thrift Shop where I volunteer for four and a half very intense days.
Preparing at home for that time means getting all the stuff that we're intending to sell with price tags on them (which we write by hand and include our PTA number so that we can get a percentage of the sale price returned to us as income).
For me it also means making sure my menu for the coming week is light on work for me because two nights I won't be here at that time and the other three nights I'll be very tired. And it also means that I'm working hard on Monday and Tuesday to make sure that as far as I can predict, I'm able to take a few days off from my editing jobs. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
On Sunday I spent time baking for these coming couple of weeks (snacks for our family as well as Thrift Shop volunteers) before heating up our usual left-over Sunday night dinner.
I also worked on the menu for the week after Thrift Shop because David will be away in the US that week and I try to be kind to myself. So in the last week we've had some large meals and yesterday I frozen portions for the upcoming fortnight.
Looking at the upcoming temperatures, I also asked David if he could get the big heater out and buy some kerosene to fill it up. Today, that already proved fortuitous. It's been grey and drizzling all day and barely made 14 today. Really quite chilly for this time of year.
I was still feeling rather tired last night and had boys needing stuff from me at 10pm, which is pretty much my Cinderella hour most nights, but last night even more. I do believe I said something like this to a boy who was occupying the bathroom and preventing me from cleaning my teeth and going to bed:
"Please get into the shower [i.e. out of the sink area] so I can clean my teeth before I collapse. I want to collapse after I've cleaned my teeth and I want to collapse in my bed."Monday
Today I've been working hard along the lines of what I wrote above, checking where I'm up to and trying to get ahead on as much as I can. I also walked over to school in my gum boots for a ninth-grade parent's prayer meeting at school mid-morning.
After that I walked through the drizzling, chilly rain to the doctor to get asthma medication for the next three months (hopefully, if I don't get a cold). That was a mildly anxiety-inducing affair. There's nothing like someone with a full-blown cold in the waiting room to make me feel as though my chest is tightening up, especially when it's a cold day and I'm thinking about asthma for starters. I'm not super fond of the rule that they can't give you repeats on prescriptions here, so that I can stay away from the doctor's waiting room for up to a whole year! But thankfully my timing was great and the whole thing, including getting the meds from the pharmacy, only took 40 minutes. Not bad with no appointment!
Then I walked to my local coffee shop and spent the next four hours there. My happy, productive place! I figured home would be cold and miserable (I never cope well with these pre-Thrift Shop days and a cold, wet, grey day wasn't helping my mood). And knowing that I usually get a tonne done when I'm at a coffee shop on my own with work in mind, I headed there and had a more upbeat day than I would have otherwise. There speaks the extrovert in me?
As a small aside—to give you an idea of how close all these places are to our house, I walked to all of the above places today and have only walked 1.7 km! Our house is crazily convenient to so many places, and yet, not in the middle of commercial or high rise buildings. It's hard to believe, even after we've lived here for nearly seven years.
At 4.30 my computer, that I hadn't plugged in, had almost run out of battery power, so I came home. I got little more non-household work done at home, though, as the rest of the household gradually returned home also and I cooked dinner. Now I've had a shower and am just trying to finish off this blog post before I'm going to relax in my chair in the lounge room and watch another episode of the West Wing with David.
At 4.30 my computer, that I hadn't plugged in, had almost run out of battery power, so I came home. I got little more non-household work done at home, though, as the rest of the household gradually returned home also and I cooked dinner. Now I've had a shower and am just trying to finish off this blog post before I'm going to relax in my chair in the lounge room and watch another episode of the West Wing with David.
No comments:
Post a Comment