Sunday Update: Reading, Sports, Sleep (and some photos!)

I give myself a 6.5/10 for this week.  It had some good stuff, some nice stuff, and a LOT of kid stuff.

 Time log notes that I did 77 hours of active parenting this week, and 53 hours of sleep, which still leaves 38 hours of other things in a week.  But... I like slightly more other things.

This is the weird thing about time.  I had a FULL TIME JOB of time left over after watching kids and sleeping.  It's weird that a full time job is considered a big deal and yet 38 hours in a week can disappear without me even noticing it.

As I keep saying - life is going to be so fun someday!  All these kids will be great someday!  But right now, a week off school and a week off nursery and a week where lots of stuff is closed = a long week.  That said, we did have fun things, of course.  Christmas was pretty nice.  We stayed up late (7:15pm!) playing board games (Poop Bingo) with the big kids.  The babies are solidly on one nap a day, which has sometimes lasted up to 3 hours.  We can leave the house in the morning (or have to leave the house in the morning, whether we want to or not).  It didn't rain.  It was cold and foggy though:

Reading

Very slowly reading The Dead Romantics still.  I got my copy of The Most Wonderful Crime of The Year on Libby and downloaded it so I need to get reading.

Andy and I started watching A Man on the Inside which is taking some reading time, but it only has 8 episodes so we will probably finish before the new year.  Enjoying so far.  Ted Danson is great, always.

Sports

I am still making a lot of effort to make sports time, although I am tired and unfocused and mostly doing it for the "streak" at this point.  Which is dumb, but not exercising is also dumb right?

Also, I donated blood on Christmas eve, in the morning.  I made sure to get my exercise in before I donated, but I think bodies and muscles need blood (note: I am not a doctor) because I have been way more easily fatigued since donating blood.  I knew I would be tired, but I'm a bit surprised on how long its lasted.  But also, my life might just be tiring.  

One of my life goals is to donate the same number of pints of blood as my age.  Women can only donate 3 times a year, and I calculated that I'll catch up to my age when I'm 55 if I'm able to keep donating at that rate.  

Anyways:

• Monday
• 30 Minute Holiday ride with Robin Arzon
• 20 Minute Pilates with Kirstin McGee
• Tuesday
• 30 Minute Sundays with Love with Ally Love
• 10 Minute Lower Body Stretch with Matty Maggiacomo
• Wednesday
• 15 Minute Lower Body Strength with Ben Alldis
• 5 Minute Core with Ben Alldis
• 15 Minute Pop Ride with Ben Alldis
• 5 Minute Lower Body Stretch with Ben Alldis
• Thursday 
• 20 Minute Full Body Strength with Ben Alldis
• 10 Minute Full Body Stretch with Ben Alldis
• 1 hour walk in lame weather with sad babies
• Friday
• 20 Minute Pop Ride with Tudne Oyeneyin
• 5 Minute Post Ride Stretch with Ben Alldis
• Saturday
• 20 Minute Upper Body Strength with Ben Alldis
• 10 minute Postnatal Core with Emma Lovewell
• 5 Minute Upper Body Stretch with Ben Alldis

I haven't really got a regular time to exercise.  Options are:

Morning.  Babies are generally sleeping or at least in bed until 6:15.  But... I am so tired.  Also exercise in the morning makes me hungry and tired all day

Midday (during baby nap).  Probably the best for energy levels, and I always feel great after, but it ifeels like the only hour of the day where one can accomplish anything in household management (Laundry, putting clothes away, writing a blog post, updating budget, Doing dishes, sorting kids toys, putting things back where they belong, writing emails... all of it.  Also I share this time with Andy and babies only nap a guaranteed 60 minutes (usually at least 90) but even if we split the time 50/50 (because one of us needs to be watching big kids) it's just not a lot of time

Evening Everyone is generally asleep by 7:30pm and I can theoretically do sport from 8-9 every evening but it's really hard to motivate myself.  I do motivate myself, but it's not the most inspired workouts ever.

I am hoping when I start work again (which is the 6th of Jan - Christmas breaks from school are LONG!) I can either do my sport in the mornings or at my lunch break. A day of work takes far less energy than a day of watching kids.  Until then, moderately consistent home exercise is probably good enough.

Sleep

This morning I slept until nearly 6:30am which a massive sleep for me.  I did wake up at 5:30 as usual, but decided to close my eyes for a few minutes and opened them with Andy sorting the babies at 6:30 and the big kids still asleep.  Miracle!  My average is 7.75 for the week, which has to be a recent high for me.  Not getting up in the morning to do anything = more sleep.  But also, less me time.

Some photos

Today during baby nap, instead of exercise, and while the big kids watched the Grinch (the animated one, a Christmas favourite now), I sewed Isaac's ripped jacket hood back together.  I don't like sewing or fixing kid stuff, but it's getting cold and I'm tired of seeing this broken jacket on the to-do list, and also I couldn't be bothered to drive it to our local sewing lady to fix.  So, TA DA:

It's not sewn particularly well well, but it is attached! Isaac said he doesn't mind the white thread showing.  I think my third grade sewing class skills really shine here.

In December Andy and I ordered new socks from Stance.  I really like Stance socks.  New socks are cozy. Rainbow socks are great.  I like my socks:

That's all for this week.  I hope you had a great Christmas (if that's your holiday jam) and otherwise if you have a bunch of kids at home and no childcare then please know I SEE YOU.

Time blocking - productivity hack or normal babylife? Plus a review of my last 168 hours.

This morning I enjoyed a 45 minute workout at a friend's house.  Here's how the morning went:

4:30 Nurse twins
5:30 Back to sleep
6:15 Awake, kids awake, Audrey awake
7:00 Breakfast
8:00 Get kids ready for school, get bike ready, tidy up breakfast
8:45 Leave for school with big kid, then cycle to friend's house
9:30 Workout at friends house!
10:15 Cycle back from friends house
10:45 Nurse twins

I would say my husband and I put in 100% effort from 4:30am to 11:00am for me to enjoy a 45 minute workout with a friend.

While on my bike ride I thought a bit about Cal Newport and the concept of Time Block Planning.  I personally love time blocking, I remember as a kid I used to make half hourly schedules of my time and was always amazed how much more time I had when I made a detailed plan.  Usually this detailed plan revolved around getting my homework done in time to watch certain TV shows.  [Probably Sister Sister or Full House?]

I find it somewhat funny that the idea of time blocking, through the lens of "productivity gurus", is new and exciting.  

There's a whole time block planner for purchase!  

I'm not sure time blocking is that new... I think perhaps it's just newly applied to the productivity sphere.  Almost every mother has had to live a life of time blocking.  I don't need a calendar to tell me what's happening next week.  I can tell you now:

4:30 Nurse twins
7:00 Family breakfast
10:30 Nurse twins
11:30 Twins (and Rachel) lunch
3:00 Nurse twins
5:30 Family dinner
6:30 Nurse Twins

And that's without school runs (9am and 3:30pm, or 8am and 5pm depending on the day).  And without baby naps (current put downs around 9am and 1pm).  

If the goal of time blocking is to give every minute a job, then small children and babies are particularly adept at structuring my day!

I am not trying to dismiss Cal Newport - I adore so much of his writings and obviously Digital Minimalism was a life changing book for me.  But I still can't shake the feeling that the Productivity world may be adopting and coopting lived experience and packaging it for consumption as something new and exciting.  

I am really looking forward to The Plan - the Kendra Adachi / Lazy genius book coming out in the fall.  I think there's a huge gap in the productivity sphere for women authors.  I've also started listening to 4,000 Weeks again on Audio, and thinking about how one of the major points in Oliver Burkeman's work and Laura Vanderkam's work is that it's not exactly important how we spend every hour or every minute, but it's vitally important how we *feel* about how we spend our hours.

Right now, my hours feel very... hard.  My days feel very kid-busy and me-light.  I looked over my time log from last week and calculated that of my 168 hours, I spent 91 hours engaged in direct childcare & family responsibilities. [My husband's total is also high.  We are not in a scenario where I am default parenting and my husband is playing golf... we just have a lot of small children right now] 

I spent 53 hours sleeping - mostly due to my 8pm bedtime.

In the remaining 24 hours I spent 2 hours doing active exercise (1 run and 1 trip to the gym] and 1 hour getting a pedicure.  I spent 7 hours reading!  And I spent 5 hours tidying.  So while I feel like I mostly do endless babies... there was some not babies.  Although the time log doesn't show it, I'm sure I also showered.  And clearly I wrote a blog post or two.

I don't have any profound end to this meandering post, except to say I am super honoured that Elisabeth over at OptimisticMusings invited me to her blog today for a guest post.  For all the typos and tangents here, Elisabeth is a blogger inspiration with her interesting, thoughtful, and spellchecked posts on incredibly varied and fascinating topics.  Thank you Elisabeth!

How do you feel about your time right now?  Do you "time block plan"?  Does thinking of time in hours and weeks feel weird to you?

Time Frugality and Maternity Leave time in Weeks and Hours

I love reading The Frugal Girl blog, even though my life is definitely not frugal.  I would love to DIY more, or to thrift more (Elisabeth is an amazing thrifter!).  I know there is an active freecycle here, and I also know that the TooGoodToGo app would provide cheap bread and other products if I could use it.  However... I am not financially frugal right now.

I've been wondering whether the concept of frugality could be applied to time.  I am frugal with my spare time.  I don't want to spend more time looking for clothes at a thrift store and I'm paying a financial premium to order online instead.  There is a wooden mirror in my room which I would like to paint and put in the kids room - but I want to do this less than I want to write a blog, or do exercise, or tidy my house.  And, of course, I can only accomplish anything with focus during the twins 2-3 naps a day.

Laura Vanderkam has written around this topic and I especially liked this post on the value of time.  Maternity leave makes this time value weird though, since I'm technically being paid (and soon not paid) to stay at home with the babies.  So arguably my time is worth... nothing?  But by the same token, I am watching twins 24 hours a day.  The nap approx 4 hours and "sleep" approx 11 hours a night.  I need to be asleep by 9 to get close to 8 hours of sleep (including wake ups) by 6:30am (when some iteration of our many children will be awake).

So in potential Rachel time, I have 4 hours of naps and 2 hours (7-9) in the evening.  6 hours per 24 hours not watching babies.

And in these 6 hours I need to do the the meal prep, the misc house work, the laundry.  And any sports or leisure I want as well.  And any house projects. Any blogs or emails.  Any reading or writing. 

On weekends the other kids are home.  If I split nap time with the Andy that only allows 2 hours of daytime free time on Saturday and Sunday.  And on Fridays I watch Lilah so the nap times are Lilah times.

Adding this up, my weekly non-baby and child watching time is approx 20 hours.  The evening hours include dinner tidy up, and they day hours include all the other life logistics.  20 hours a week of "free" time may seem like a lot, but it doesn't necessarily feel that way to me.  And it's also why I would rather order clothes online in 30 minutes than try and get to a charity shop.   Or why I pay our cleaner to change the bed sheets. Why I order groceries online (if the shop takes an hour that's 5% of my weekly "free" time and up to 25% of my daily free time!).

If I spend an hour a day cleaning up highchairs, doing laundry, doing dishes, and misc tidying, that gives me 10 hours left of child free me time a week. 

And yes, I can actually do some of these things while watching babies.  But I can't do all of these things while watching awake babies. Awake babies take a lot of attention, and nursing twins takes a few hours of my day as well.

Sometimes the math helps me realise that these really are the busy times.  And that when our nanny starts (in September) every hour she is here is an hour of Rachel time.  I will be going back to work, but we are adding 30 hours of childcare and 24 hours of paid employment.  I am almost doubling my "free" time from 10 to 14 hours.  

Anyways, today Andy put the babies down for a nap and I snuck out and got my hair cut!  I love when they make my hair smooth and pretty, especially after it's been in a ponytail for the last 6 months straight. 

Also, I am going to be not a red head soon.  I've had red hair since 2006 so this is a pretty big transition. The hair dresser today asked me what I was up to for the rest of the day and I told her I'm on maternity leave and spending the day watching 6 month old twins.  A few minutes later she asked if I was up to anything for the rest of the day.  I realised that my answer did not make sense to the 23 year old, because my answer was basically "I am up to nothing" which isn't an answer a 23 year old understands.

Thursday thoughts on time

I have been tracking my time since February and it's been an interesting exercise at this point in my life.  Here are some of my thoughts so far.

I am more aware of the free time I have.  Sure, I don't have a lot of free time.  I have four kids age 5 and under.  But I don't have *no* free time.  I have some free time.  Sometimes I use that time for hobbies and interests.  Sometimes I use that time to putter around the house.  Sometimes I write a blog or read.  I don't do a lot of this, but I definitely do some of this.

I am aware that in order to use my free time towards anything of value, I need to start planning this before the free time starts.  If babies go down for a nap and I think "what would be the best use of my time now?" I've already missed the opportunity.  For instance, if I want to exercise more, I need to decide early that when the babies go down for a nap I will do exercise.  If I wait for babies to go to sleep and then consider doing exercise I will waste too much time considering

I don't always need to use free time for things of value.  Today my time log includes 2.5 hours of "misc life putter house admin ?? Andy ??" time.  I don't really have much to show for that time, but I'm aware I had it.  I didn't have a day with no time for exercise or reading or cooking, I had a day where I chose not to do exercise or read or cook in the 2.5 hours available to me.

I am not as tired as I think.  I get on average 7.5 hours of sleep per 24 hour period.  This is fine.  Sure, I wake up once or twice or sometimes three times a night for baby stuff, but I am in bed early (usually by 8) and have been waking up between 5 and 6.  I'm not currently doing Rachel Mornings... but when my sleep average increases I'll start those again. Or maybe, someday, I'll leave the house after kid bedtime!

Our family works on a schedule, and right now Andy and I set the tone.  Because we go to bed early the kids also go to bed early.  Today Isaac and Lilah were asleep by 6:15.  Babies were asleep by 6:45.  Sure, everyone will be up at 6am, but when kids are tired we go to sleep.  We always eat dinner at 5:30.  If we get invited somewhere in the evening we don't go.  For us, this pattern is working for now.  In the future, we will have more spontaneity again.

My time feels so different on days when there is actually no down time, like when I am watching the twins and the three year old.  I don't know how moms do twins and small children without childcare.  I am not suited for it.  I adore all my kids, but I adore them more when I have some down time in a day. 

A smart phone can suck 15 minutes of my time as often as I let it.  It's very easy to create a "when/then" pairing with a smart phone.  "When the babies feed, then I scroll" is a hard habit to break.  Remembering that I have to write "play with phone" on my time log helps me do less of it, but this is definitely something to keep an eye on.

Really, the time log reinforces that I have enough time for almost anything I want to do, but I don't have time for everything I want to do.  So I need to keep thinking of what I really want with my time and focusing on that.  Sometimes, it is a day of puttering around the house.  Sometimes it's more. 

How I use our time is an indication of what I value. Time tracking helps me realign if I'm starting to drift away from my values.

Have you ever done time tracking?  Far more information, and far better written info, can be found at LauraVanderkam.com

Dinner prep, meals, the value of time and the value of food.

I started a line a day journal in 2021 (actually my first post was December 31st 2020, because I am sometimes a rebel).  It's interesting for noticing trends.  For instance - it appears that I don't like March 13th.  in 2021 I complained about Lilah's bad sleep (it was terrible!!) and then 2022 Lilah didn't have a second nap for the first time and in 2023 I wasn't sure about work and in 2024... well it was fine.  It was cold, it was rainy, I spent basically all day making dinner and watching two babies and doing 2 loads of laundry.

I'm still keeping my time log but sometimes I feel I am writing "baby, feed baby, laundry, tidy, dinner prep, sleep" on repeat.  I know I should probably aspire to more than tidying and dinner prep... but here we are.  

What I realised about dinner prep is that I value cooking and eating good food.  I haven't been cooking recently because we have been in twin survival mode.  At the same time, I haven't been feeling great about what we do eat.  On Tuesday I made a try of fish fingers, fishcakes, broccoli and carrot then stuck it in the oven and served it with steamed rice.  We've had this a lot recently, mostly without the broccoli and carrots.  That type of food is fine and serves a need, but I am tired of eating it.  I want food made from real food.  Not machine food.

It takes time to make real food. I'm not cooking fancy, but vegetables take time to prepare.  Yesterday I made burrito bowls for dinner (because kids hate eating anything mixed together, so this was an assemble at the table dinner).  Over the course of the day I made pinto beans, roast sweet potato, quinoa, corn, cheese, avocado.

Chopping sweet potatoes took 15 minutes.  Chopping veg for slow cooker pinto beans took another 15 minutes.  Making Quinoa was super easy but I still had to look up a recipe and measure the quinoa and water.  Grating cheese takes time. Chopping avocado takes a minute. Defrosting corn and putting it in a bowl was another minute.  Setting the table, putting out enough serving spoons, making sure the kids have water cups.  Nothing takes no time at all... and then I have to set the table too.  I probably spent upwards of 1 hour on food prep throughout the day.  Split across 4 naps.  

The dinner was good, although I ate it cold because the babies woke up for their dinner at exactly dinner time.

[6:18am Interlude - I can hear my kiddos coughing in bed upstairs.  How come little kids don't realise they will cough way less if the just BLOW THEIR NOSES!]

I do love the philosophy of "don't spend all day cooking and meal prepping and tidying" but I am also aware that our recent meals have not been in accordance with my values. I value good home made food for me and my family.  Unfortunately food/cooking time comes from other time... and I don't have a lot of leisure time.  So if I'm going to value nutritious home-made food, I'm going to value it enough to use my valuable time cooking it.

Babies and Time.

I realized I started this blog wanting to talk about women and technology and time and I'm currently talking a lot about babies.  Mostly because I cannot really string a coherent thought together.  However... I will try!

One topic that emerges repeatedly in discussions of women's labour is the notion that women's work is the mental load and the all encompassing bits of keeping a household running. Men block their work into chunks... women consider the million tiny and unrecognized pieces of daily life.  The common trope is that men mow the lawn - a project that may take a good hour but can be done anytime.  Women pick kids up from school, or pickup a sick kid, or remember to get bin bags, or remember to pack the right lunch or to get teacher gifts... projects that take a similar amount of time to mowing the lawn but do so via tiny fragments of time.

Babies are this.  My entire day (24 hours) is now reduced to 2-3 hour intervals between feeds.  I know when the babies need to go to sleep.  I try and fit a task or two into the potential naps.. naps which last 30 minutes to 2 hours randomly.  At night they will be awake 1 to 10 times for 1 to 10 hours. 

Babies (and children) shatter time into thousands of pieces.

Andy's time is definitely shattered too. He's not doing much fun stuff now either.  We are both in full on newborn triage mode, while also watching the big two and trying to keep them fed and moderately happy. But while his time has been fractured it's not quite as fractured as mine, because I am around these babies 24/7 and he has the opportunity to... do things.  Take the big kids to the bike park.  Go to work for the day.  

I am not trying to complain about this split - it's just different.  It's different because I'm the one at home.  Maybe it's different because I'm the mom?  It's different because of our feeding choices.  But it's still different.

I think the trouble comes when the split doesn't right itself later.  It's very easy to take this new small world of hours and minutes and make this my reality long term. It's hard to realize when life has changed and when the mechanisms needed for survival are not as needed anymore.  

I am acutely aware of my time now - but I wasn't aware of it five years ago.  If I hadn't stumbled upon the gender split thinkers and time management thinkers in 2021 I may still be living life in 2 hour increments from Isaac baby times.

Also, as I think about goals. just because something is hard doesn't mean it needs changing.  The current situation is hard.  It will eventually be less hard.  I am looking forward to using November 2024 to reflect on where my time is going and what I want for 2025.  

4 Weeks old today:

Time // Time Management // Focus

Tomorrow I'm giving a short presentation at work about time.  It's taken from another presentation I did at my last job on the similar topic, which covered info from Laura Vanderkam, Oliver Burkman, Daniel Kahneman, David Allen, Cal Newport and others in that sort of "writing about time" sphere.

Last time I talked a lot more about phones and family but this time it's mostly about time - how we perceive our time, and how we feel about our work time.  It's going to be a two part series, this first piece is on Time and the second piece will be on task management systems.  I realized I couldn't really talk about why task management systems are important without taking a bit about why time is important.

It's been a really good experience reminding myself things that I know but forget.  I talk about the Eisenhower Matrix and how it's easier to do the non important but urgent tasks than to do the important but non urgent things.  

I have gotten far to reactive in my day to day and have not been time block planning or even properly scheduling my work.  I've also started to get way more bogged down in teams, and I don't feel I have a good sense of what I need to accomplish in any day, which means I don't feel as focused during the day and then don't feel good about my work day when it's done.

So, I'm working on my task system again, and on both focusing and taking breaks.  I'm also working on scheduling what I need to do in a day and being realistic in how long it will take me.  I've added all my important but non-urgent tasks to my task planner and will tackle them on Friday, which is generally the slowest day in work.

I think part of the pressure is that I've moved from a 9 day fortnight (4 days then 5 days a week) to 4 days a week for July and August.  I don't work on Tuesdays - which is nice for hanging out with the kids but makes my weeks feel so odd.  I generally feel a bit stressed on Monday, then have Tuesday off, and then Wednesday feels like an insurmountable workload.  I'm hoping that this will slow down, but I definitely think if I stick with a 4 day workweek after maternity leave I'll want to have Fridays off.  Tuesdays are just... Awkward.

Tuesday Timeline - a day in the life

Here's a day in the life of me! This is a Tuesday, which meant I was off work and watching the kids.

5:30am - Wake up, drink tea, do some important admin (I forgot what it was, possibly blogs)

6:10am - drive to friend's house for breakfast

6:30am - breakfast with friend

7:30am - drive home

8:00am - kids play in garden and do "rice play" while I do some house tidying & dishes.  Andy goes upstairs to work.

9:30am - drive kids to nursery for Isaac's Graduation Photos.  Drop off Isaac, Lilah and I go to the park.

11:00am - Pick up Isaac from nursery. Stop at M&S on the way home to get ingredients for a picnic lunch

12:00am - Home and I finally accomplish my dream of making a kid friendly charcuterie board!

Andy joins us for outside lunch

1:00pm - Get the pool out and kids play in pool and outside.  Short lived arts and crafts time that doesn't go well.

2:45pm - Kids getting ratty so we head out to library for a change of scenery.  Lilah falls asleep in the car which is not a good sign.  She is very tired and I regret not trying for a nap (she is a very intermittent napper)

3:00pm - return books to library and get new kids books

3:30pm - home from Library.  We make smoothies (frozen spinach, banana, milk & frozen berries). More pool time.

4:30 - Andy finishes work early and hangs out outside with kids.  We decide to do early bath and then TV as Lilah is starting to fade..

5:00 - Bathtime followed by Lilah meltdown.  Isaac and I watch Zog and the Flying Doctors while Andy takes care of Lilah

5:30 - Dinnertime - Chicken Gyros.  Normally a family favourite but poor Lilah is just too tired.  I put lilah to bed after a cup of milk and a story and she falls asleep by 6pm

6:00 - Finishing up family dinner, I don't often get the chance to eat family dinner without Lilah.  Isaac asks engaging questions like "why is my left hand on a different side than your left hand?"

6:30 - Isaac stories and bedtime, he's asleep by 7:15

7:00 - Dishes and tidy house

7:30 - Chat with my visiting family until 9pm

9:00 - Shower and Bed

That's a Tuesday.  I had a truly adorable moment where we walked out of M&S with Lilah holding Isaac's hand and Isaac holding my hand.  The cuteness lasted all the way to the car, where Isaac said "I need a wee!" right as I had strapped Lilah into her carseat. I told him to do a discreet car park wee. Sometimes you have to grab defeat from the jaws of victory.

How we organize everything: the F.L.O.M. (Family Logistics and Operational Meeting)

I wish I could ask every person how they organize their lives.  I am so curious – how does it work? What do you do?  If you are in a partnership, what does your partner do?  Every single person lives a life every day of the same number of hours and yet has a vastly different experience of those hours.  When it comes to families there are fundamentals we all need to follow: we all get food ready, we all maintain a home to a liveable standard, we all clothe ourselves and our kids.  We think about school and leisure.  Every family has 70% of the same things on our plates and we spend almost no time talking about how we manage it all.

A year ago my husband and I started having planning meetings.  They’ve evolved over the month and will surely continue to evolve.  Our current agenda is as follows:

• Short review of the week – specifically kids and food plan.  Did the week go well?  Was it hard?  Why?  Can we improve things going forward?  Lots of weeks repeat – I’m in para-finance so my months consist of regular 4-5 week intervals of busy to less busy.  If a busy week went bad, what can we do to make it better next time?
• Look ahead to the following week
• Food plan: go through each day and decide who will make dinner and what we are having
• Nursery run: who is doing drop off and pick up at nursery? Usually whoever does drop off makes dinner.
•  Nursery Cover: Who answers the phone if nursery calls to send a kids home, and who can take time off work to watch any sick kids that week
• Sport/Hobbies: do each of us have enough time for our scheduled sport/hobby in the calendar?
• Family Adventure: do we have at least 1 family adventure planned in the week, or enough family time in general?
  
• Shops and Driving: Do we need to go food shopping?  Anything else we need to drive to?
• Any Other Business: We have a FLOM notebook where we write AOB items in the back, things we need to discuss that we don’t get time during the regular week.  Often this includes holiday planning, potential trips, division of labor (a few weeks ago my AOB was “I don’t want to do all the laundry anymore).  Sometimes we have AOB items that stay there so long we have to schedule a new time to address them, like “pick out cabinet unit for dining room” which has been on the list 6 months and we finally scheduled a time to do it together because no one had the energy for that on a Friday)

We have additional items during our End of Month and Mid Month meetings as follows:

Mid Month:

• Looking at the month ahead to see if there are any scheduling issues
• Allocating days we will be away with work (we both do one to two nights away per month with our jobs)
• Scheduling bigger events like Christmas fayers, long weekend adventures, playdates with friend we don’t see enough

End of Month:

• Reviewing the family budget
• Making monthly family goals / reviewing the month

And that’s our current logistics system.  I know it will change again, and it is a lot of work to maintain, but it also means that hopefully when things start veering off course (as they usually do) we can at least right it in a week or two rather than waiting until everything implodes.

Reading Update - The End of Absence and I Miss You When I Blink

I just finished my 48th book for 2022.  This is rather astounding as I basically didn't read at all between 2010 and 2020.  

I Miss You When I Blink was just as good as I hoped it would be.

I read The End of Absence this month.  It was interesting to read a book about the internet written in 2014.  It was interesting to remember that fairly recently the internet used to be so much different.  It was also interesting to realize that 1985 really is the cutoff point of pre and post internet life... and internet free childhood.  

I wonder what those born 10 years earlier that me think about this - do they relish the fact that they didn't have ubiquitous internet until after college?  I don't think internet was a great addition to my college experience.  

People 5 years either side of me probably didn't use GeoCities.  Or StumbleUpon.  Or forge friendships through the chimes of AIM (Aol Instant Messenger)

Remember when we thought the internet was an unexplored world of limitless possibility?  

StumbleUpon was the start of the internet entertainment lever.  "Show me a thing" you told the button and the button showed you a thing.

The End of Absence had some fascinating points.  Firstly, Michael Harris thought of Analogue August before I did.  On day 24 of his internet abstinence project he writes:

"Behavior that seemed utterly normal on the 30th of July now looks compulsive and animalistic. Now when I see teenager girls burrowed into their phones on the sidewalk I think of monkeys picking lice out of each other's hair"

That's what resonates with me, in my own internet experiment.  What if instead of a phone everyone was holding a banana? And every few minutes each person checked their banana?  Families at a table in a restaurant showing each other their favorite bananas?  Sitting down on the sofa after a day of work and staring mindlessly at a banana?

Harris was also on point with the following: 

"Nothing is as enthralling as the lovely, comforting, absence destroying internet"

One Little Adventure - Fermented Food Date Night (Tranquility by Tuesday Inspired)

 I am very exited for this book:

Laura Vanderkam is an excellent writer on productivity and life organizing.  Although the book isn't out yet, there is a sneak preview of the 9 time management rules for tranquility.  I was actually already doing a few of them, but it's definitely made me a bit more thoughtful about my own priorities and scheduling.

Rule 6 is "One big adventure, one little adventure".  I realized we were good on weekend adventures, but Andy and I hadn't really been scheduling many little adventures.  Sure, we had some date nights, and intended to do adult dinner after kid dinner, but most of the time when we both found ourselves home in the evening we chatted, played on the internet, read and went to bed.  

I know the value in scheduling, I'm currently writing from my weekly writing friend date night.  She's writing a book, I'm writing a blog, and we meet every Thursday (or as many as possible) to write together.

I also have my one work/social night once a week, and an alternate week run & wine club with my neighbor.  Andy has a MTB evening and a work evening.  We do our planning meeting on Friday.  I still felt like there were some evenings of tired at home time that could be better repurposed for fun.

I trailed our little adventure on Wednesday - we were both home after kid bedtime and house tidying so we decided to make Kimchee and Sauerkraut.  Recently we took an amazing course with the Crafty Pickle and had a ferment rotation going, but eventually slowed down and hadn't made anything for a while.  I even had a fridge full of cabbage and carrots and ginger and almost going-off bits which needed fermenting.  

8:00pm: it was go time:

And by 9:30:

Yay! My kimchee on the outside, Andy's sauerkraut in the middle.  He went for red cabbage.

And to end the night, like any good date night, Andy had to plater his finger back together after garlic chopping incident (I wasn't involved, except to say "do you need stitches?" and "do you need to go to A&E" and "If you do go to A&E you should probably drive an hour to Abergavenny because I think their minor injuries unit will see you faster than our local flagship A&E")

I am very excited to add a weekly 90 minute date night to our schedule.  Kimchee was ambitious, but next week perhaps we'll do cake baking for Isaac's birthday.  And we might get into a TV show!  Or, when we have childcare, go to the pub.  Or maybe play a board game?  

Tranquility by Tuesday comes out next week so I have another week to think of more ideas...