Reviews, Recipes, and Random Slices of Life

Day 11.

My parents came and went last week, Phil's parents arrived last night and will depart tomorrow.

Goals accomplished:
* paid bills
* shopped for nursing bras (Target's sizes are a bit on the small side--a 40D barely covered things)
* washed the baby for the first time

(the tended-to-baby, tended-to-self goals always come first, of course)

State of the Abra Incubator
The sprogling and I are doing well. I think he's going through a growth spurt right now--my belly certainly is! At this point, I'm a bit worried I may outgrow some of my maternity shirts. Medically, everything's going along fine--as of the last checkup, baby's a little ahead of the growth curve, and I'm a little ahead of my target weight gain, but these things go in spurts and I'm not surprised by it. Also, you can see my belly move when he kicks. It's a little alienish, but feeling it is reassuring, not weird/creepy.

Pregnancy's treating me pretty well. At this point, I have no nausea and very little discomfort. When I walk, it's somewhat uncomfortable, and I was getting round ligament pain if I walked more than a block. This feels like somebody is stabbing a knife into my crotch. So I've avoided walking and haven't had that problem--but now I'm beginning to think I need to test it again to see if it's gone away (as many pregnancy symptoms do). I'm still pretty active anyway, with biking and "maternity" exercise vids. Hrm. The big things are that I need a couple more hours of sleep a day, so I get irrationally tired around 9 pm unless I've gotten a nap that day, and I need to eat something every two hours to keep my blood sugar from plummeting and leaving me all shaky (pre-pregnancy, this used to be a 4- to 5-hour thing). I do have pregnancy brain/forgetting things issues. Not things I try to remember, but things I usually don't have to try and remember. And I have to do this weird frog-squat thing to pick things up off the floor without getting dizzy. I think that's about it. Pregnancy is one of those "anything can be a symptom, the weirdest things are normal for somebody, and nothing's entirely predictable" things.

( Read more--Phil, cancer, work, socializing, getting stuff done )

(Oh, and Mom says, "I read your friends/readers comments on your blog and am grateful for their interest and support." She is getting treated with Taxitol on Monday, which I believe is the second-round treatment. I think one of the deciding factors was being able to start treatment immediately instead of delaying it for a week+.)

In happier news, I got the job! The job I posted about a few days ago, sitting with an elderly woman when her husband has to leave and making sure she's okay? It's 10 hours/week, and it doesn't pay really well, but it has a couple of major bonuses:
* It's a little over a mile away, and right on a bus line, so I can bus or bike it easily.
* I can work on my own thing while I'm there, so this can be writing time.
* Once I have the baby, I can take it along, so I won't have to pay for daycare out of this.

I start next week.

NgithOwl has been slammed by the super-large project. It's been keeping all 3 shifts busy, but it's due at the end of next week. I expect the work to go away then, back down to the low levels. Right now we're running 3 shifts, which means that work enough to keep *everybody* with hours is rare. I think that's part of the problem that caused the 3 months/no work situation.

PoorStaff has called me about a position at Target headquarters that would begin later this month and last for three. The pay is very good. It would involve writing procedures and doing database stuff, and in general, doing things that I'm good at. But it would interfere with the scheduling of the senior-companion job, which is more important in the long run because I could *keep* it in the long run. I still told them to send my resume. We'll see. First comes resume, then comes interview, then comes sorting out schedules and priorities.

I haven't gotten so much writing stuff done, but I have finished a number of other essential things. Real life comes first, sometimes, hard as I try to fight it.

* Dealt with publication contract for one of my short stories. Yay! Also, it was a very clearly written and thoughtful contract, which is nice.

* Made dentist's appointments for myself and Phil. The latter is a small miracle, as himself is *most* difficult to get in for the regular checkups of any kind. But a maybe-loose filling was enough to get him going, though he is distressed about not knowing how the insurance works. (It should be fine.)

* Signed up for a community ed. class for this spring. Shaolin Kung Fu: 8 weeks for $34. Can't beat that price, and it'll be a great way to a) ease back into being active, and b) see if this is for me. I'm looking for something less high-impact, easier on the joints, but still interesting and challenging. And Shaolin Kung Fu is apparently big on the deep stances, which is perfect for building quad strength. Quad strength is one of the keys to being healthy and active after having your ACLs replaced. Theoretically, I should try to have thighs like a Heavy Metal pin-up girl.

* Paid bills and sent in the Census form. We have been counted.

* Paid taxes. ::whimper, sob:: My job screwed us over again, withholding only $80 in taxes. Had to pay the Federal part of the tax bill using a credit card because we just don't have the money. Twice in the past I've asked NgithOwl to change my withholding, and they've said they can't. Add that to me pulling in income from writing and photography too, and--yikes. This year, I asked *again* and they finally sent me the form. Hopefully next year's taxes will not make us walk funny.

* Made an appointment to donate blood at the IDS Crystal Court blood drive coming up March 31st. You should too! Check out the list of where they have blood drives.

Lessons learned:
* Nobody expects the Squirrel Inquisition!
* Never, ever set a "misc" goal unless it's got a time limit on it. Try to specify tasks instead--or at least a number of misc tasks.

( Read more... )

As part of my quest to make my life not seem like a never-ending drudge through work and projects that will never truly be finished (that's the problem with being writer, photographer, and primary-house-caretaker--none of those come up with their own achievable "finished" markers), I've started picking a set of (achievable!) goals at the end of which I'll be realio trulio done for the day. After that I can do anything I like, including just reading pulpy sci-fi novels or baking brownies or making that lightbox or, hell, doing my filing. This isn't a to-do list, it's a to-be-done-after list. The difference is crucial. The goal is to accurately estimate how much I can realistically get done in a day and still have free time left over. Because the free time is the real goal: it's the recharge time, the reward, the reason to really dig into the to-be-done-after list. When faced with an endless task, it's easy to become unmotivated and to grind very, very slowly, with lots of procrastination.

I've been trying this on and off for the last couple of weeks. So far, I can tell the motivation part is working. I've got lots more done that I was before, and I feel less depressed and bogged down in, well, life.

This, despite my not yet having actually finished everything on the list. I haven't yet experienced this motivating free time. So yesterday I decided to approach this all scientific-like and write down my done-for-the-day goals (which I had been doing), how much time I thought they'd take, and then my actual day schedule and the time they really took.

Let's just say I'm not good at estimating how much I can get done.

( Today's numbers. Probably boring for anybody not me. )

My time is at a premium right now.* I'm working full-time, though hopefully not for too long. I have 2 hours of knee exercises every night (including stretches and icing and elevating at the end). I desperately need time to write, edit, and submit stories. Alas, I cannot just cut TV out of my life to get more time, because that's when I do my physical therapy. (I'm actually watching a bit more TV than usual. Phil has set Criminal Minds to rotate 3rd in our Netflix queue, and that's not often enough. Ahem. Anyway.)

One of my timesinks is email. (Another is LJ, but that's a topic for another post--or, er, maybe not.)

I love the idea of Inbox Zero, but once I was past the first week of my Gmail account, I've only had a blissfully empty inbox a handful of times. Complicating this is that I use my Gmail inbox as a rough gathering place for my to-do list. All hail red exclamation point stars and bright orange "Action Needed" labels! That's not going to change; it's way too convenient to have a centralized, accessible-anywhere, easy way to send myself reminders and/or flag various emails as requiring a follow-up action**.

The Process
1. Read personal emails, blog comments, etc. Respond if I can in a couple of minutes, or if a response is urgent or overdue, otherwise yellow star for later.

2. Tackle "Action Needed" items. If it's urgent, red exclamation point star it. If it has to be done this week, yellow exclamation point star it. If it has a more general due date or is just a reminder for a project, add that info to my Master Task List spreadsheet (that's straight-up Getting Things Done) and archive it. First tackle exclamation point items. Then go after the rest--if it will take only a minute and I'm in a location where I can, do it.

3. Read other emails only under the following circumstances:
* I have finished my writing quota**** for the day.
* I'm eating.
* I'm burnt out and honestly need a 10-minute break (note: not "I'm procrastinating.")
Give preference to news, writing newsletters, etc.

4. On Sundays, clean-slate everything more than a day old. Delete tasks that no longer need to be done. Archive*** unread emails, with the exception of writing newsletters, recipes, poems, and comic strips. The writing newsletters because they're professionally useful, the others because they're small bursts of enjoyment. By that time, I've probably absorbed the news through osmosis anyway, and the other stuff isn't essential.

I thought I was keeping up with my email pretty well, but just following step 4 still wiped out 24 email messages on Monday. Yikes. Although I'm starting this because time has become so short, this is probably a practice I should maintain at all times--sometimes I'll just be able to hit my writing quota more rapidly (or at all).


* But I can justify this post because 1) other people might find it useful, and 2) I really need to have a reference list for what works to help me be more productive. Writing things down is how I process and remember them. I think I'll include this post in a master "time management for Abra" file.

** Adding a recipe to the spreadsheet of recipes I can make with on-hand ingredients, processing a critique, adding a market to my market list, posting a poem.

*** I can only make myself do this by lying to myself and saying, "Well, if I have a lot of free time, I can always go back and read these later."

**** Currently defined as 1 chapter redmarked and edited, or 1,000 words written. For me, this is a difficult mark to hit.

09/04/2008 - Thursday, half-work at NgithOwl. I seem to have come out of my funk am finally getting some stuff done!
* Penthius freewriting: an idea for a women's lit magic realism best-seller.
* Posted write-up of TCSFWN workshop and associated story ideas.

I know this doesn't look like I did very much, but mostly what I'm working on right now is clearing the decks of the "I have to--" clutter, by taking care of it or by sorting it into its appropriate place in my system. I cannot even begin to explain how much stress this is removing. Some of the things I'm working on are writing things, some of them aren't. I'm trying to balance the proportions.

Here's the thing. Routines are vital in making sure that all the important stuff gets taken care of first. Without them, all the little crap around the edges slips in and somehow the things you care most about--well, there's just never time enough. But you need to check back in on the routines on a regular basis, to figure out where the flaws in your initial allotment were, to make sure that the stuff that matters is what's getting done, not just the stuff that's urgent. And sometimes the routines are working fine and you're making progress where it counts, but you've got this nagging feeling of panic because all that other stuff is building up. That's okay. It doesn't mean the routine should change (unless this happens too often). It just means you need to take a few days to clear the decks.

(You should also plan breaks from routine occasionally to make yourself happier and to spark creativity, but that's another post. Remind me sometime to tell you about my idea for a vacation from routine.)