Timers & Tots

 So admittedly I got up stupid, crazy early yesterday, rolling out of bed around 2am and staying up until 9:30pm, but I did a much better job at actually rolling through my list than I have been doing.  Only 9 of my tasks are overdue this morning, compared to the usual number of between 30 and 50, it's highly impressive. I don't have those same high hopes for today, but we'll at least try.  My son came home from a friend's house the other day with some kind of crazy cold/flu that I didn't realize I was catching until last night.  I mean yesterday I was coughing more and blowing my nose a lot, but I didn't think much of it until later in the day when I noticed my throat was kind of raw and my coughing started getting insanely bad.  It was then that I realized that yeah, the mucus I couldn't seem to get rid of no matter how much I blew my nose was my sinuses draining down the back of my throat.  And oh yeah, I'm sick, again.  Today I woke up frozen with body aches, general exhaustion, a raw throat and stuff up nose, plus a hacking cough.  In other words, I feel stupendous.  I want to go back to bed, but the pain in my lower back says laying in that bed any longer right now is going to create more pain in that region. I need to wait until my muscle relaxers and anti-inflammatories for my back, which I generally avoid taking, kick in.  I have an indefinite prescription for both, but even though I know they're not narcotic and nonaddictive because I requested it be so, I generally don't take them too often.  I can take them multiple times daily, and I guess I'm supposed to as a preventative measure.  I only take them if I'm actually in pain because I don't want my body to build a tolerance and not have them work when I do need them.  I never want to have to ask for something stronger because what I have doesn't work anymore.  Anyway, I'm going to try today, but I don't have a lot of high hopes.

Anyway, yesterday was my day to strip the bed and since I like to wash the pillows at least monthly after I got the colors washed, I did the whites early to throw them in with my pillows, which is always a fairly small load in my house. We already know they're going to get stained from our general klutzy nature or our lifestyles, so we don't buy them.  Then, since I knew with my bedding in the mix I was going to have around 3 loads of towels and bedding in the mix, I decided to wash a few ahead of time.  Now I'm down to barely a load of laundry to wash today, plus finishing drying the last load from yesterday, then I'm done with laundry for the week, a day early even.  This works out since I feel like death warmed over this morning. 

I didn't do more than maintain in my office, no new cleaning because my husband wasn't feeling well, my son-in-law had to work last night, my youngest boy is too short to help me and my oldest boy is a bigger klutz than I am.  Point being there was no one really available to get those top two totes down from the pile so I can slide them under my desk and put the under-the-bed totes on top of them.  Until those get put away I can't really do much besides maintaining what I've currently done, but at least that was done yesterday.  

The bedroom got clean; the bed was stripped and new bedding put on.  The pillows were washed with new pillowcases, even the little wedges at the bottom of the bed that keep things from sliding down at the top of the bed, got their cases washed.  I even Febreezed the mattress and wedges prior to getting new sheets on the bed.  So anyway, when I did this, I knew it was a good idea to wait an hour for the mattress to dry between stripping it and spraying it and putting on new sheets.  I needed a timer, and I didn't remember where I put my phone again.  It happens, a part of me still resents carrying around a device where I can always be found and reached.  So I think that's part of the reason I lose it so much.  I mean my phone does cool things for sure, but it's still a digital leash for humanity.  I resisted getting one way longer than most of my peers until I finally caved because of the necessity of needing to be reached in case of emergency with my children. I searched up timer on Google and I found the most awesome site.  

Online Timer has the ability to save tons of different timers.  To my knowledge, there is no limit.  Yes, you can set lots of alarms on your phone, but it only runs one timer at a time, or at least the Note 10 does.  But a timer works better than an alarm because I can't get distracted when I'm checking out what time it is now and what time it will be then and generally paying attention to things other than my actual task.   I'm easily distracted and I feel like that rabbit hole just follows me around, whispering in my ear that it's so cool down there.  You know you want to.  If I get on my phone, that Facebook button is only inches from my fingertips.  And on Facebook, I get more book ads than actual posts, which is partially my fault because if I get tired of hearing their politics, I snooze people.  Most people don't want to talk about anything real on Facebook, only memes and politics.  Oh, and if they do post 90 percent of what they post is fake because of the desire to make their lives online look a million times better than their lives in reality and therefore make their peers jealous.  If I go on Facebook I'm going to spend hours on Amazon reading book blurbs.  If I didn't think it would offend most of my friends and I could somehow take the messenger with me, I'd quit Facebook altogether.  It's nothing but a time suck and involves no real quality communication. But I'm prone to that time suck so going on the phone and using the alarms is probably a trip down the rabbit hole.  

The thing about me is I get daunted and overwhelmed and I just let things go until I'm forced to deal with them. So most tasks that I have to do could take hours or days to finish, if not longer.  If I spend too long on any one task, I don't make progress on the others.  So I went through my to-do list and determined how long I wanted to spend on the things that weren't writing, and readjusted my to-do list to fit that determination.  Then I created a timer for each task with a unique alarm for each.  Yeah, it's a little irritating when I want to finish just this one thing, but it genuinely allows me to actually get through my tasks, making progress on each.  It's my new best friend.

I worked on my templates, email, organization, and notes for my current story. I grabbed a nice shower.  And my areas generally stayed clean.  By 2:30 I was pretty much done with everything else on my list and I could focus on writing.  Except today was a half-day at school.  My daughter goes to work at 2, my son-in-law had to sleep at some point so he was down for a nap before work.  My older grandson's been in a mood lately.  He doesn't want to do anything on his own, not playing, not anything.  He doesn't want to listen if your instructions don't go along with his wants. If there's something he wants downstairs, he takes it and if you tell him an area is off-limits, he will go there.  And it's not just that he wants to play in the same room as other people. If he's in the room he must be the center of your attention at all times or he's attempting to take or break something.  He can't play quietly at all, ever.  My younger grandson is still easy, normally he'll just play in the walker or bouncer if you give him some toys if he gets fussy, you need to check his needs ie diaper, food, and sleep and usually, that fixes the problem. Some days he just wants to be held, but it's not a regular thing.  For two hours I had them both in my office while I repeatedly fixed my decorations because the older on refused to stop roughhousing and knocking things down.  My younger son saw what was happening and tried to help and get them both out of there to give my time since I'd done all the responsible things first.  That's when the tantrums started and I eventually had to wake his father.  He went to his room after but stayed generally loud enough that concentration was fairly impossible.  He came back down for dinner and followed my husband, but any time he heard me typing was right back in here to "watch" So I should have had the time to catch up, but I barely managed to break a thousand words.  And today I'm sick, plus there's apparently no school.  My daughter has the day off, but honestly, she doesn't give two shits if I get my time to do what I want to do so she won't be any help. 

I spend a lot of my time fighting feelings of helplessness and frustration.  If my actions don't benefit the other people in this house, most of those people act like those actions are unimportant and don't matter. I have to fight for anything to be about me and after over 20 years of going without; I need something to be about me.  I need the chance to pursue my own dreams and my own wants.  And if it's not my immediate family needing my time, it's someone outside of the house wanting to talk and since it's not like anyone who doesn't live here asks for much of my time, I feel guilty not offering it.  They don't understand that this small thing is just being piled on a laundry list of others.  They don't understand that wanting the occasional chat is probably one of tons I've already had today and I'm not getting the alone time I need to function, because the people that aren't living here barely ask for my time.  I've cut most of the people out of my life who take advantage of me, at least the ones not in my immediate family, and those people are with me forever because I want them to be in my life, I just also want them to respect that I need some time and space and for things to be about me occasionally. And that's more than just the time to check my email and get that under control or to do the responsible things that need to get done on the computer.  

I wasn't worried about catching up when I first started getting behind on NaNoWriMo because I write quickly when I do write.  A twenty-minute word sprint usually years between 700 and a thousand words for me.  But I can't do word sprints with a five-year-old constantly running in every time he hears me type and I can't concentrate to write when I'm constantly listening to tantrums from a child who hasn't gotten his own way.  Don't get me wrong, this is a phase.  My grandson is usually exceptionally lovely and I adore him.  I do like spending time with him, just not all of my time. I don't feel like it's wrong to want space that is just mine and time periods of silence.  And with his doctor insisting on a later bedtime because I don't even know I can't even wait until he goes to bed because if I've gotten up early then I'm going to bed around the same time he is.  And I know my rants sound selfish, but at the same time, you have to understand my life before you can really know whether or not that's selfish.  

Anyway, I'm sick, feeling disheartened and the to-do list starts all over this morning, so I have a bunch to get done so I'm going to sign off.