Over the years, I’ve made resolutions and succeeded, made resolutions and failed miserably, and I’ve even taken the bah-humbug route and refused to make resolutions at all. While there is something appealing about the bah-humbug method, I have come to appreciate the time out each year to stop and think about where I’ve been, where I’m going, and the best next steps to get me where I want to be.
I want to be organized.
Lack of organization costs us so much time and money, and we have none of either to spare. We may be dirt poor college students and every dollar we spend is borrowed right now, but time is the element about which I am most concerned. I have less time than money, and I have no money. How is it that the people around me are constantly trying to figure out things to do with their time? They offer me suggestions on how to pass my time as though they’re doing me a favor. Thanks, I got it covered. They worry I might be bored. Sorry, boredom is a luxury, and I just don’t have time for it.
And that “Sleep when they sleep” piece of (ahem) advice people offer up to new mothers – that’s a cruel joke. If I slept when my daughter slept, I’d never get my bills paid, toilet scrubbed, homework done, or fight the daily battles with our health insurance company – which we pay for out of our student loans so we are also paying interest on the exorbitant sums they extract from us before refusing to cover preapproved expenses.
Where was I? oh, yeah, getting organized.
It’s not like I haven’t tried to get organized before. I have gone down that road many times. I actually enjoy the process of getting organized, especially when I have the time – and money to spend on little organizing toys like pretty file folders and label making machines.
This time, I want to take a different approach. In the past, the road to organization involved adding complication, and invariably, a long list of rigid rules. Not only did I have trouble getting buy-in from my husband on all those rules, it didn’t take me long to rebel either. The cure was worse than the disorganization.
So how do I do this? How do I get organized in a manner that doesn’t turn our lives into a rule ridden hell? How do I combine organization with simplifying?
I don’t have much in the way of answers just yet. We are going to start with downsizing. We are going to get rid of a lot of stuff. Here’s the kicker. Going through stuff (especially when making value judgments on what to keep) takes time, as do other aspects of organizing.
How do I make sure that the act of getting organized does not create processes that take up more time than they save? How do I make sure I don’t get bogged down while going through our stuff? That’s a tough one for me. I’m always finding something fascinating like an old year book, or journal, or photos, that distract me from the task at hand.
Has anyone written a book on organizing for people with ADD? I think that might come in handy. In the meantime, I’ll keep trying to draw my attention back away from the distractions, and focus on a game plan for getting our home, schoolwork, school financing, writing, medical expenses, and everything else organized.
Since I’m the only body in this house that actually eats chocolate chip cookies, I learned long ago that it’s actually better for me to buy the pre-made dough, than to make them from scratch. Why? Because I eat as many as I make. I have no self-control. I can, however, pull out a package of break and bake cookie dough and only cook up three or four cookies. It works for me.
Or it did.
Until today.
I craved chocolate chip cookies all day long. Finally I pre-heated the oven, pulled out a package, and broke off a few (or eight, depending on your definition of few). Once they finished cooking, I returned to my computer with a tall, cool glass of milk and a plate of hot, gooey, chocolate chip cookies.
These are the actual cookies in question
The very first post to pull up in my reader – cookie in hand, as of yet unbitten – was a warning that Nestle Toll House Cookie Dough has been recalled because of E. coli. Outbreaks all across the country. Granted most of the people infected had eaten the cookie dough raw, and I, for once, had not. Still the CDC recommends that you not eat the cookie dough cooked either.
I’m smart enough to understand that there’s no way I can get away with posting anything not baby related this close to my due date – and this far from the last time I posted. So: I’m still pregnant and baby is doing fine, I’m still on bedrest (and typing while laying down still sucks), I’m still surrounded by half open boxes from the move (the only room in the house entirely unpacked and put away is the bathroom – perhaps that shows where my priorities are), I’m still behind on all my homework, and I still have zero attention span so instead of a real post, I’m putting up a meme that requires a whole lot less concentration and mental acuity.
1. Who was your FIRST prom date?
Ben Pollen, Junior Year
2. Do you still talk to your FIRST love?
I completely lost track of him. He was a nice guy, I hope he’s having a good life.
3. What was your FIRST alcoholic drink?
Champagne, of course – at New Years and at my cousin’s wedding but I’m not sure which came first
4. What was your FIRST job?
A little kitchen shop in Palmer, AK, called Kitchen’s N Things. Sold kitchen gear, of course, and antiques, but the real bread and butter was selling gourmet whole coffee beans – and this was long before anyone had heard of Starbucks.
5. What was your FIRST car?
a copper and plum colored Oldsmobile Omega – great little car till I drove it off the side of Lazy Mountain.
6. Who was the FIRST person to text you today?
Don’t text much – doesn’t work well with my calling plan
7. Who is the FIRST person you thought of this morning?
the baby – I woke up having to pee and having a contraction at the same time. The two were fueling each other in a cruel circus of intensity and urgency, but the contraction made it difficult to get out of bed.
8. Who was your FIRST grade teacher?
I went to a horrid little private christian school that had 1st through 12th grade all in the same room. Instead of being taught lessons, we had little workbooks we worked in (yes all the way up through high school did workbooks) and instead of teachers we had monitors to make sure we kept our heads down and our eyes on our workbooks. I have no idea what the names of any of the monitors were, but the Principle was Mrs. Stokes (I know that because I was always in trouble) and she wore a scary amount of makeup that looked like a mask and had helmet hair that didn’t move even when she touched it.
9. Where did you go on your FIRST ride on an airplane?
I was a baby, less than a year old. I think we were going to my grandparent’s place in Alaska.
10. Who was your FIRST best friend & do you still talk?
her name was Christy or Crissy and we lived on Kodiak Island. This was pre-kindergarten and her birthday was the day before mine, but unlike me, she also got to celebrate her half-birthday and got presents for that too. We lost track when I moved to the mainland to live with Grandma and Grandpa and go to Kindergarten.
11. Where was your FIRST sleep over?
I suspect the first was at Marie Von Gunten’s when they still had the bunkbeds downstairs while they were building the house.
12. Who was the FIRST person you talked to today?
My husband
13. Whose wedding were you in the FIRST time?
Not sure which came first, but I think it might have been my brother’s wedding.
14. What was the FIRST thing you did this morning?
Get out of bed and waddle to the bathroom. You have no idea what an accomplishment that was.
15. What was the FIRST concert you ever went to?
Bon Jovi
16. FIRST tattoo?
no tats
17. FIRST piercing?
Ears – when I was 13
18. FIRST foreign country you visited?
Canada. I have no idea how many times I’ve been to Canada, but when it comes between the state you live in and the rest of the country, you tend to make your way through it a time or two.
19. FIRST movie you remember seeing?
We didn’t watch movies in theaters much when I was a kid, but I remember in the late 70s or early 80s we got a VCR and the three movies we watched over and over (and over) again were The Sound of Music, South Pacific, and CONDORMAN. I still love all three.
20. When was your FIRST detention?
we didn’t get detention, we got spankings. I cant remember which offense came first, I was always doing something bad. I would double up on undies and tights for extra padding.
21. What was the FIRST state you lived in?
I was born in Oregon, but we moved to Alaska when I was three
22. Who was your FIRST roommate?
Karen, Darlene and Kim – at college. Karen was cool – but Kim was an RA and Mormon (which is fine unless you’re expecting me to live up to your religious edicts), and Darlene was a little scary crazy and they were both a little too nosy and into my business and stuff, so I moved out at the Christmas break and moved in with Awesome roommates Tara, Monica and Karen (a different Karen, but still cool).
23. If you had one wish. What would it be?
A healthy baby
24. What is something you would learn if you had the chance?
Oh my goodness, there are so many things that I want to learn – how to write well, how to manage my finances, how to take care of a baby, I’m really itching to learn more web design stuff, especially designing wordpress themes, oh, and of course, how to get rich quick with no effort on my part – I’m sure if I come up with enough money, someone would be willing to teach me that ;-).
25. Who do you think will be the next person to post this?
Saturday morning Punk Rock Mommy died from inflammatory breast cancer.
Her husband uploaded her last post and I read it
and cried.
I never met Punk Rock Mommy, I had never read her blog before this morning. But I am struck by the human spirit and how impending death can clarify perspective. Punk Rock Mommy couldn’t be more different from my father, yet they both died from cancer in the past year, and they both, in that last year of their lives, gained a super-human measure of perspective and wisdom. Things that separated my dad from Punk Rock Mommy and Randy Pausch (who wrote The Last Lecture), things like religion, ethnicity, gender, and politics are superficial labels, but underneath – we’re all more alike than different. The messages that they left us with (or are leaving us with, Randy Pausch is still fighting pancreatic cancer) are essentially the same: love one another, choose to be happy, don’t ruin the rest of your life mourning, don’t live your life in “someday,” live right now, don’t waste your time on anger it’ll just ruin your day. This quote from Punk Rock Mommy really leaped out at me: “I am no doormat, but I just let go of all that hard core resentment.”
How can we learn from this? What would you do differently if you had a week, or a month, or a year left to live? What would you write in your last post? What message would you leave for your family, friends, and the world’s prying eyes?
Yesterday I was introduced to a new blog. I don’t know who directed me there because the moment I landed on this blog, time stopped. This is the heartbreaking, achingly beautiful story of matt, liz and madeline. Liz gave birth to a beautiful baby girl in March, and died the next day. This blog is about everything that happens after: a day by day account of Matt learning to be a father and grieving his wife at the same time. He has a strong community of friends, and a larger community of strangers reaching out to him from around the world. Madeline is lovely at a little over a month old and Matt is doing a great job with her. Every person in this story is beautiful, yet each new post brings more tears.
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