I was playing Memory with Mary last night, and I am decidedly worse as a 33-year-old than as a child. I have--HAD--a good memory, and I always killed at that game. But last night, no matter how hard I concentrated, I could not remember where the banana was. Or the ball. Or the frog. Or the flower. And just when I was sure I had the umbrella match, I would turn over the card and there was the pizza slice. Arrgg! It was utterly frightening. I really am losing my mind. Already! I guess when my 19-year-old self looked at people in their thirties and thought they were ancient, she was right.
Despite the fact that the deterioration of my mind is real, I still feel like recording a weekly schedule. I did this last year for Greg. I wish I had done it a few times back in these days. And I really wish I had recorded typical days when David was a baby. Don't you wonder what people do every day? Don't you wonder what YOU did every day a few years ago? It's so easy to forget. Or at least it's easy for ME to forget. (My mind ain't what it used to be, remember?)
By the way, last year MY schedule was OUR FAMILY'S schedule. This year Greg is here. And I mean HERE. He has class on campus most days, and he studies a ton, but his schedule is flexible enough to where he can help shuttle kids around or watch them for a few minutes here and there. (It's fabulous!) But I think I'm going to record MY schedule rather than our family's master schedule (which would include lots of Greg).
This isn't a record of everything I do. You'll notice lots of unaccounted for time. I'm only including the things more or less set in stone. Here is the skeleton of my week...
Monday
- Laundry day
- Send out Young Women emails
- Practice reading with David
- Take David to school at 9:15 (Monday is late start day)
- Dynamic Strength class 9:30-10:30
- Pick up Mary at 11:45
- Snack, show, nap for Mary
- No more dance class. (Too bad. But good too--Mary loves her nap.)
- Pick up David at 2:35
- Snack time
- Brick Buddies Lego Club 3:30-4:30 (every other week)
- Make dinner
- Dinner at 5:30
- Family Home Evening
- Bedtime routine 7:30
Tuesday
- Book check-out in David's class 8:40-9:20
- Zumba 9:30-10:30
- Pick up Mary at 11:45
- Snack, show, nap for Mary
- PTO Birthday books at 2:oo OR visiting teachers (depending on the week)
- Pick David up at 2:35
- Snack time
- Practice reading with David
- Make dinner
- Dinner at 5:30
- Bedtime routine 7:30
Wednesday
- Mary to school 8:15
- Gym for an hour
- Clean house
- Pick up Mary at 11:45
- Snack, show, nap for Mary
- School Lego Club 2:35-4:00 (Somehow I ended up in charge of this.)
- Pick up dinner on the way home
- No more 5:30 basketball games!
- Young Women's activity 7:00-8:30
Thursday
- Mary to school 8:15
- Cardio class 8:30-9:30
- Laundry day again
- Pick up Mary at 11:45
- Snack, show, nap for Mary
- A good afternoon for visiting teaching
- Pick up David at 2:35
- Snack time
- Practice reading with David
- Make dinner
- Dinner at 5:30
- Bedtime routine 7:30
Friday
- Mary to school at 8:15
- Cardio and dynamic strength class 8:30-10:00
- Pick up Mary 11:30
- Help in bilingual kindergarten class 12-1
- Grocery store
- Pick up David at 2:35
- Snack time
- David's Friday folder and homework
- Dinner at Culver's or Noodles & Co. or Panera
- Bedtime routine 7:30
Saturday
- ???
Sunday
- Catch up on any Young Women stuff
- Write a letter to my brother Daniel on his mission
- Get everyone's clothes ready for church
- Church 11-2
- Dinner 5:00 or so
- Family meeting (review responsibilities, allowance, calendar) at 6:00 or so
- Bedtime routine 7:30
COMMENTARY
Yes, I do work out almost every day. (Or I intend to. Most weeks it ends up being 3-4 times instead 5 for various reasons, usually sick kids.) I know I don't look like I work out, but I'm battling a bad set of genes and stay-at-home-mom-hood, so, trust me, the situation would be a lot worse if not for my trusty gym membership.
We also fill up our time (and home) with plenty of play dates and friends for dinner. I also have Young Women presidency meetings a couple of times a month (I'm the secretary)--whenever we can manage to get together. And there's the usual errand-running, like Costco, Target, etc. Once a month I have a Relief Society meeting in the evening. I just like being with Greg too much to commit to anything else in the evenings, like a book club or something. Even though we've been reunited for well over six months, I still feel like our time together is immensely precious. (And we do such important things with it--like watching Modern Family and Parks and Rec!)
Afternoon snack time is almost sacred. I cut up some fruit for the kids, give them peanuts or raisins, milk, and a few packaged cookies. (I used to make cookies for them, only to discover they prefer nasty Chips Ahoy.) We all sit at the counter for ten or fifteen minutes and talk. Mary has established a strict system whereby they each take turns saying one thing about school that day. I may pretty much (unintentionally) ignore my kids for the rest of the afternoon while I'm folding laundry, blogging, making dinner, or whatever, but I am totally present for those fifteen minutes. (Yeah, I know my kids deserve more than fifteen minutes, but we have to start somewhere.) I'm good about practicing reading with David. I need to be better about spending one on one time with Mary too.
Evenings I usually spend with Greg, unless he needs several more hours to study. He usually needs at least a half hour or so to finish a homework assignment or something. So I catch up on email or read blogs until he's finished with schoolwork for the day. Then we talk and watch an hour or two of T.V. I also read for a while. Right now I'm reading the New Testament and a biography about T.E. Lawrence. I usually turn off my light by 11pm.
I'm not super crazy busy. Because of our stage of life, I think I have a pretty good balance. We're busy enough that I appreciate with a sigh of relief those mornings or evenings when we don't have to be anywhere. I very rarely wake up with that panicky feeling of "WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO TODAY?!" (like back in the old days). But I also have lots of patches of spare time, and the kids have plenty of down time too. Like I said, it's a pretty good balance.
But even with the good balance, I feel like my time is fragmented. Just when I am focused on and immersed in a task, it's time to pick someone up from school or start dinner or switch a load of laundry. I'm not overwhelmed with the constant crises, sleep deprivation, neediness, and messes of babyhood and toddlerhood. I will admit that I feel freer than when I had a baby on my hip and a toddler on my leg. But I still find that the structure of my life doesn't easily lend itself to long periods of concentrated effort, be it effort on tackling a disorganized basement or writing a thoughtful letter to my baby brother.
It's hard to accomplish anything meaningful.
Correction: It's hard to accomplish anything that FEELS meaningful.
I suppose that's the point. Finding meaning in the rhythm of daily life.
P.S. I realized as I wrote this post that this is one of the very reasons that I like blogging. I can sit down and post something within the time allotted me at that moment, be it five minutes or an hour. I always wish I had more time to be thoughtful. And, I suppose like everyone who blogs, there are a thousand posts in my head that never make it out. But some stuff does make it from my head to the Internet. And it stays there, in its same form. (Unlike the clean laundry and the lasagna and the disinfected toilets.) A single post usually doesn't feel very significant. But after a while they accumulate into something I really like: A record of our family. I guess that counts for something.
