It’s all about choices

“I didn’t have time” may be the lamest excuse in the book. There are very few situations in which it is true. Most of the time it actually means “I chose not to use my time for that.” Conscious choice or unconscious avoidance, decisions are made all the time, every day. Can I fit in a trip to the grocery before picking up my daughter at school? What if there’s a line? Is it worth the hassle of potentially freaking her out by being late? Can I do anything to make sure I am still on time, or, barring that, that she doesn’t freak out?

I’m thinking about this today because I went through that calculus and computation this morning, trying to fit all the puzzle pieces of my day into a frame that seemed too small. So many things to do for the holiday! Errands Jason asked me to run, ones I need to do, and an appointment with my doctor that is awkwardly placed smack in the middle of the day. My brain has a map, a clock, and a list all open, shuffling tasks around like some sort of bad movie animation.

 If I exercise, I have to drive back to the house to shower and change, which means no time to return the boots, and all of my exercise stuff will be soggy when I try to pack. Oh, shit, the wet laundry from last night is still in the washer. Add that to the list. This would all be so much easier if I just skipped the gym. But I have a streak going, and I know I’m going to be slacking later this week. Not the way to kick off a holiday devoted to sloth and food.

I made a choice. I could have said my day was too busy, I don’t have time to hit the gym, and no one other than me would have known.

But I do have time, if it’s important to me.

I can return the boots next week, and Jason’s errand is on the way home from my doctor. And exercise doesn’t have to be performed in sweaty Lycra to count. It won’t be a full-on workout, and I’ll be drinking my tea and writing this post while I walk, but I can make it work, because it’s important to me.

So if you saw me at the gym this morning in my jeans and sweater, now you know why. A brisk walk in street clothes keeps up my streak and cuts 45 min of cleanup out of my schedule, or at least pushes it back to when it’s convenient for the rest of my errands. It’s not perfect, but compromise never is, and besides, I have the rest of the month to do “perfect” gym visits. This will do for today.

Well, I said I wanted more time to write ...

Yesterday my back decided to say "Fuck it, I'm done," for no discernible reason.  Seriously - it's disappointing.  This much pain should be from a car accident or an unfortunate attempt to lift a train off of a trapped child or something.  To have it just start for no reason is a let-down.  Sort of like when I had to go to therapy for weeks because I dislocated my kneecap ... by sitting down on the couch.  I got the oddest looks from all of the football-injured and car wreck victims at the PT gym.

Actually, it's just the right side of my lower back that's in spasm, which is involved in a disturbing number of everyday activities.  Like, you know, breathing.  Walking.  Sitting down.  Standing up.  Laying down.  Moving my right leg in any way. Moving my left leg in certain ways.  Coughing ... don't get me started on coughing.  Coughing is dead to me, as is anything that involves me bending forward from the waist.

Doctor Google says rest, ice, heat, and anti-inflammatories are about the only way to fix this, so that's what I'm doing.  Thanks to my boss (who put up with me only recommending yarn to customers if it happened to be at waist level or higher), my family (who turn out to be expert hot-pack microwavers and retrievers of things on the floor), ice packs, heat packs, ibuprofen, Tylenol, and Tylenol PM, I am now able to engage in some everyday activities without crying.   As long as it's above mid-thigh-level, I am all over it.  I even took a shower.  Trying to put on pants afterward was an adventure in swearing, and I gave up and had the kid put on my socks for me, but at least I'm clean.  And yes, I will go to the doctor if it gets worse or doesn't get better.  I'm not a martyr.  I'm just not keen on getting drugs that won't allow me to drive (and might lead me to say things I'll regret when I'm not taking them).

In the meantime, I'm out of commission for a few days, or at least only in commission if it can be done while standing up straight, sitting in a chair with arms, or lying down.  Look for lots of knitting and photo albums to get completed this weekend, I guess!

10 things I've been doing instead of blogging

(It's sad to say that the title came up automatically when I started typing "10." Guess I've been down this road before ...)

10.  Writing the Menlo Park Academy school e-newsletter every week.  Ever try to make field trip announcements, pleas for money, and reminders to FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE STOP SENDING FRUIT CUPS TO SCHOOL - THE KIDS CAN'T OPEN THEM WITHOUT SPILLING SYRUP EVERYWHERE!!!11! fun and interesting to read?  Yeah, me neither.  Hey, at least I'm using my degree!

9.  Working at River Colors Studio at least two days a week.  Heh - I get paid to fondle the yarn and organize things. Plus, employee discount for the win!

8.  Designing a knitting pattern - my first one ever!  Go forth, and make ye a pretty scarf.

7.  Spending way too much time posting on Facebook instead of here, because the Blogger iPhone interface is craptacular, and not in a good way.  It won't let me put the photos in the right order within the text, it just dumps them at the bottom of the post in seemingly random order.  Booo!  If you're on Facebook and not already my friend there, look me up (Gretchen Frick Woods) and say Hi!

6. Going to Florida and forcing my mother-in-law to swim with dolphins ... you know, the usual.

5. Writing and editing all the text for the web site update we're doing for the school.  It's a complete scrap-and-rebuild-from-scratch operation, complete with all new photos, a lot of new text, better organization, and more useful information for parents, students, and prospective families.  My brain hurts.  I'll let you know when it's done, and we can all have bourbon and pizza at my house, 'mkay?

4. Getting the kid ready for the spelling bee (again).  Yay.  They held the spell-offs in their classroom last week, and Liza was one of the four kids who will go on to the school competition.  The official study lists haven't been released yet, so we're using some online lists to eliminate the words she already knows how to spell, a few each day.  Turns out that's a great way to use up the commute time to the bus stop - the kid spells really well at 7:30am.  After school?  Not so much.  Only way I can get her to practice after school is to take turns and let her quiz me on the eighth-grade words, which involves rather a lot of embarrassed cursing on my part.

3. Getting the kid ready for the Lego Olympiad (again).  Double yay.  She's going solo this year, rather than as part of a team, so if she can't get it together this year, at least she's not holding any of the other students back.  We had the first meltdown yesterday, but I think we've recovered pretty well, and she's coming up with lots of really cute ideas.  Probably not going to win her any medals, but I honestly would rather have her have fun than win.

2. Cleaning.  Did you know that if you want your house to stay clean, you actually have to WORK at it?  Who knew?  I spent March tackling one major area each week, so large portions of my house are decidedly more tidy than they were before.  I also have tricked the kid into doing her own laundry, including running the machines and folding all the clothes.  It's amazing what a little reluctant "well ... I guess you might be old enough ... I don't know if you can handle it, though ..." can do when you've got a kid with a stubborn independent streak.  Buy her a hamper she can carry on her own, mark all the proper settings on the washer, and she's good to go.  I haven't had to fish her head-first out of the agitator yet!

1. Did you know there's a Zuma app for iPhone?  Yeah, there went most of my March ...

Why so silent, good messieurs? *

Top Ten Reasons I Haven't Been Posting Much Recently This Year

1. I'm kind of busy downloading all my CDs into iTunes.
2. I kept going over the usage limit on my cellular internet card thingy, and Jason gets a nasty tic when I mention we just paid $$$ extra last month so I could post pictures of my life on the internet for strangers to see.
3. But this weekend I got cable WiFi at the house, and a free Netflix trial for the Wii.  Meercat Manor and Mythbusters 24/7, baby!  And I can watch videos on YouTube without having to kill time by taking a shower while waiting for them to buffer!
4. Scrapbooking eats up all the time I should spend blogging and knitting and cooking and farting around on the internet cleaning.  But I'm making significant progress through the giant box of pictures from, um, 2010.
5. Let's not discuss the seven albums of pictures from Japan I'm trying to redo before the nasty acid-filled albums kill them, alright?  Or the pics from Europe in high school.  Or my college pictures.
6. There is no number six.
7. My dad's sick, but I'm pretty sure he's not comfortable sharing details with the world, even though I think about it all the time even when I'm doing stuff like interviewing potential investment advisors or looking through the SkyMall catalog on the airplane, FFS.
8. Sharing details of my husband's private problems = surefire route to divorce, which would prevent me from going back to Jamaica anytime soon.  So, not gonna do that, obviously, because I'd like to go back to Jamaica now, please.  They have rum there.  And nannies.
9. My daughter is in school and I don't want to put anything on here that would be inappropriate content when her friends and their families find it (and they will find it, school full of geniuses that they are).  Guess that TMI tag is going to start collecting dust ... and it's hard to be amusing when I can't make fun of my daughter's inadequacies or complain about parents of her classmates.  All I have left are topics like "How to clean up cat puke - now, with pictures!"
10. Ever have one of those days when you have 14 million things you need to get done, and they're all important, and you spend all day futzing around not doing any of them because it's just too hard to decide which ones are the most important to do?  Yeah, I'm having one of those years.  My list of things to accomplish around the house is about a mile long, as is the list of things I need to get into my etsy shop, and the things I want to write for my various blogs, and the things I need to do as a volunteer at school.  And then the bathroom project exploded in my face, and the basement flooded, and I found a couple of really good series of books at the library, and we went on vacation, and I started prepping for Liza's birthday party.  So, in other words, LIFE HAPPENED.  And I want to write about it all NOW ... but I can't, so I just don't write.

* That's a Phantom quote, but of course you already knew that, right?

Mmmm, bacon!

Also, I've discovered that having a laptop means I can do shockingly convenient things, like set it up on the kitchen counter and read blogs while I wait for the pasta water to boil. And since that's about the only time I seem to be able to string more than three words together coherently, I think the kitchen option is going to be used a lot this winter.

So if my blog posts smell like bacon, now you know why. Sorry, MLF!

10 things I've been doing instead of blogging

10. Reading other people's blogs.
9. Reading (and re-reading, and re-re-reading) the Twilight books.
8. Spending quality time with my family, trying to dig ourselves out of the cluttered shithole that is our basement.
7. Putting insulating Saran wrap over all the windows in the house, in hopes that it will help raise the temperature of our family room above 52F.
6. Buying a space heater, in hopes that it will help raise the temperature of our family room above 52F.
5. Putting a new damper and fireback in the fireplace, in hopes that it will ... yeah, that again.
4. Knitting my Shawl of Insanity. Fourteen rows to go now ... at only slightly more than an hour per row. And then a bind-off of 900+ stitches. Um, yay?
3. Reading more blogs. Lots more blogs.
2. Attempting not to eat anything until I fit back into my fat jeans again.
1. Snowblowing. Lots of snowblowing.