A failure to plan fun is a plan to fail at being fun?

Fun and Plans

Today Andy and I are going to our local Mountain Bike Trail Center together.  I worked from 7:00 to 9:30pm last night to try and get "caught up" for my day off which is super against my working ethos. I don't really have anything against working at night - I just don't like doing it because I seem to then stay up too late, which is exactly what happened yesterday and I don't think I fell asleep until 10:30. 

For the first time ever, I planned what routes we are going to do and now I'm even more excited.  I don't mean to be a loser here, but planning my fun was fun, and I think I will have more fun doing my fun now that it's planned. 

In case you're curious and want to see what MTB trails are called, the plan I made is as follows

Pedal to top of mountain
Funnel down
Pedal up
Poppity Ping Sessions to Terrys Belly
Uplift (a truck drives me and my bike up, yay)
Melted Welly to Off Grid to Forrest Bump to Kermit
Coffee and cake stop
Pedal up
Sixtapod to Merthyr Rocks
Uplift
????

I don't know if I can actually ride that much but we will see.  Slightly constrained by school times - we have less childcare on a friday - but maybe it's possible?

We were supposed to do this trip on Thursday a few weeks ago but Ezra was ill and I had to stay at home with him.  Andy starts a new job in June where he works on Fridays so this feels like a last chance adventure.  To make this work our nanny is watching the twins, and then my mom taking Ezra to school, and then my mom taking Lily to nursery (which starts at 1, and is right over twin nap, which is why nanny can't do the nursery drop off), and then my mom picking up both kids from school so we can do nanny twin handover, make dinner, and then collect bigger kids. I know it will be fun but there's a lot of logistics involved in a 7 hour escape.

Plans and unfun

Recently I feel I've been missing things that could be planned better.  Small and mostly insignificant things, but I know they all add to the mental load.  

For instance, breakfast is annoying.  Why do we have to do it every day?  We don't usually eat cereal because it doesn't seem super nutritious as compared to pancakes or eggs, but also... toast and peanut butter is nutritions.  And then we run out of toast.  And then... plans.  Blarg.

Lily only has two school summer dresses because I waited until after Easter to buy them and then only bought two because I feel we have too many clothes.  This may be the case, but now I have to do laundry daily until I can buy more and the local shops are out because who waits until it's 20 degrees to buy kids summer uniform? Me.

Not having nursery means our house is basically a childcare setting.  For example, our garden & patio:

This is fine, but means I cannot come downstairs and grab food when twins are awake and home.  Which means, I can eat between 10 and 11:30, and 1:30 and 2:30.  I am trying not to eat breakfast first thing, so recently I have a big meal at 10:30, but usually I try and squeeze in exercise during my lunch break which leaves me very very hungry at 3:30 and also least able to come get more food.  

I am a hungry human and need/want more than an apple or a snackbar at 3:30.

Yesterday my meals were a bit less than optimal

I just feel vaguely unsatisfied with how I'm currently eating - not from a nutrition standpoint - but from an enjoyment of food standpoint.  This could be fixable by planning.  It's just... a lot of planning.

Do you plan your fun? Are you in a meal rut? Can you come make me lunches please?  Or, come mountain biking with me?

Photo Dump Confessional: A blog post in 5 photos (or 6)

I got behind in my photo albums.

I generally update these monthly.  It take 1 to 1.5 hours a month.  I do a family album, and then a small album for each kid.

I did my February updates on 31st March.  I actually only ordered the 2023 album in March as well, because there was a sale, and because I finally decided I wasn't going to proofread it at all or check for errors.  I definitely missed adding labels to some months. Oops.

I start every year album with a photo of each room of our house.  I had forgotten to take photos in January, so took them in March.  Oops.  I still need to add them to 2024.

This morning I uploaded all March and April photos to snapfish.  I also haven't done well about clearing out my iphone photos. I don't like using infinite storage, but it seems like that's what's happening.  At least I can get rid of QR codes and random photos of returns.  

Some photos were clearly meant for blog posts... and since I don't think I'll manage a good post anytime soon here's a short post in 5 photos.

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While packing for Sweden we got our our luggage for the first time in 5+ years.  Here is a suitcase we used to move to the UK in 2016.  

After pulling our luggage out of eaves storage eaves storage I decided we don't need to hold onto giant suitcases anymore. This one is a late 90s jansport.  We got it for free.  I think it has made a final voyage.

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Sweden was a great adventure BUT it's amazing how easy it is to get out of exercise routine.  I wasn't feeling well between the 26th and 29th and then Sweden was 23rd to 29th and then... it was easy to not start again.  

I guess this is the tricky thing with habits.  Days formerly didn't feel right unless I did exercise.  It started to feel really optional when I didn't do it.

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When in sweden we went to a toy store to look at toys.  Lily really wanted this toy. Why does a baby need a moped?

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When we first bought our house we thought it had a great garden because it has a pretty big garden (by UK standards.  Also, I mean "lawn" or "backyard".  Except I feel it has a small lawn and a small backyard... so maybe that's why we say "Garden")

It turns out, gardens that are above the level of the house kind of suck for kids.  I got tired of the continued terror of the kids accessing the garden steps and falling off onto paving stones and bought a baby gate which we put outside.  I know this gate will get ruined in a year, but also I hope we won't need it for more than a year.  It's nice that the toddlers can now toddle around outside without me standing in front of these stairs.

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Finally, it's light outside now.  This is the train station on my return from a work trip to London. It's 9pm.  It's dusk.  It's nice to be able to stay outside later.  I don't really need it to be light later (this will be about 10:30pm in late June) but right now I'm super cool with a 9pm light sky.

Post where I complain about having too much stuff and end with a paragraph on acquiring more stuff.

Right now I am feeling like there isn't enough time.  This is not the "May-cember" chaos I read about - I don't feel like school or life is ramping up - I just feel like life *is* ramped.  I try to make a list of what I feel needs to be done to feel less behind and I end up with "laundry" and "sort house".  Neither of these things is a real thing, because you are never done with laundry, and what does "sort house" even mean?  And still, I feel vaguely dissatisfied with many of my home spaces right now.

I am not good at making a home look pretty.  I am good at making a home look tidy.  Right now, we have too much stuff.  We are in a stuff phase of kids, and it shows, but I feel there is just stuff everywhere.

In my little dream head I want to spend 2 days just going through everything in my house and getting rid of things and moving things and putting things away.  BUT if was given 2 days to do anything I want there is no way I would want to spend it doing that, because it's really not a great way to spend valuable free time.  So, the clutter and chaos persists for now.

Speaking of not enough time - Andy and I went on a out of the house date night! We always go to the same bottle shop and get pizza delivered from the pizza place next door and it's great.  We met the owner of this bottle shop on a cross country trip in the USA in 2014.  

Because we are still young at heart we rode bikes to our date night.  On the ride home I saw a free bike outside someone's house and noticed it was actually a really nice free bike! So we decided to take it home.  This was a bit tricky because it's hard to carry a bike home on a bike.  Andy made a
good effort.

We ended up dropping the bike off at a friends house, and will come pick it up in the car soon.  Also a great way to end a date night - surprise hang out with a friend - he thought scavenging for bikes wat not the typical date.  He gave Andy a beer though, and I still had some of my wine left (not pictured, me carrying a half bottle of wine home on the back of my bike), so we had one more drink before heading home.

One of my May goals is to make our outdoor space more fun and appealing.  Today I am picking up some more garden things to make the garden more fun and inviting.  Last year we had the coldest and wettest April on record.  This year we had the hottest April on record.  So far, we have. had three days of pleasant May.  Fingers crossed outdoor life continues!

Do you feel may-cember? Do you ever feel mildly unsatisfied with spaces in your home, or is there one space that gives you more trouble than the rest?