5 on a Friday: Speeding By Edition

1- MAY. It’s coming! I spent some time last night filling out our Essential Calendar through June and I will do the rest of the summer tonight (looking forward to this probably more than is normal). I feel like the year is going at warp speed.

I think it’s more due to ENJOYING it than too much monotony. This is — overall — a very fun and full phase and even though I am a parent who has NEVER wanted to ‘freeze time’ to keep my babies babiezzz foreverrrr, I wouldn’t mind doing this particular portion at some sort of magical half or quarter speed.

(That would be a cool premise for a sci-fi book, maybe? Varying life speeds – a year could be 36 days or 3650?)

ANYWAY! May doesn’t look as terrible as it tends to be known for, but we’ll see how I feel at the end. I also realized the kids have exactly four days of school during the month of June. We’re close to wrapping up pre-K / 3rd / 5th! (Which mean we’re close to middle school. Just wow. But she is 100% ready.)

2- On that same note: SUMMER. Camp spreadsheet is DONE! The kids are only doing 5 weeks of camp this summer due to a good amount of travel. This will also give them a few 2-3 stretches of unstructured weekday time. I think it will be a good balance!

On the negative side, for 2 of those weeks, ALL 3 ARE IN DIFFERENT camps. However, A + G camps are located next to one another and they are all specialty camps: gymnastics, dance, soccer. It will be ok. I recognize I can only do this because we have our nanny, and she will probably do more driving during the summer than the year. (But only for a few weeks. Also, I likely will do drop-off on my non-clinical days.)

3- Podcast rec: Organize 365 Ep #533: Is there an Organization Finish Line? I found this very interesting. My ‘failure’ to finish organizing our home may be, in part because a) I tend to want to organize areas that have some magically fast entropy to revert to chaos and b) I am not considering things ‘done’ when they are at the “functional enough but not minimalist and spare looking” level. Something to ponder. (I still am glad I cleared out G&C’s rooms. They may quickly appear messy again but there was an insane amount of (&#$ that just had to GO. It feels noticeably more relaxing to exist in both rooms.)

4- Book club pick: I had a fun book club (at our house!) last night. We chose for our next book:

Every single time book club night rolls around I think to myself “OMG I CAN’T DO THIS IT’S TOO LATE” (ps, it starts at 7:30 . . .) and then every time it’s so much fun and I am so glad it happened.

5- Time Tracking Thoughts so far: I am making good use of my time 95% of the time. The other 5% is a work in progress and honestly, I think I *can* fix it. I’ve made it this far . . .

I am going to continue time tracking through next week, but will just share highlights here. And then I will go back to not tracking time per se — but my daily planning style does track a lot automatically. (And then I throw the daily planners in the recycle bin, so it’s not a long term record – but that is enough for me.)

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D I T L: Nonclinical day

4:45 Up, read, plan. (Didn’t do Headspace; somehow it got to be too late.)

5:45 Treadmill workout: 3 mi warmup outside, 8 x 90 second hill repeats on the treadmill, 2 mi cooldown outside. YES! A way to get some hill work in while spending less than 30 min on the TM . . . win.

7:10 Shower. (I asked Josh to just take charge + get everyone ready, and he did)

7:40 Leave WITH Josh to drop kids off. Breakfast at a rather mediocre (but convenient!) diner near school.

9:15 Back at school for Market Day! We picked up G and she spent half her cash on handmade bracelets and treats. (I got a bookmark that said “Reading is LIT”. Haha. Get it!?)

10:30 Home. Record lots of podcast sponsor stuff! Very grateful to have some awesome sponsors right now.

1:00 Lead BLPA Spring Healthcare discussion! This was a great one. We talked notes, inbox management, making use of protected time, and more.

2:00 Email, some podcast stuff, work on kid camp forms

3:00 15 min BLPA 1:1

3:15 More camp forms . . . kind of a mishmash of admin

5:00 15 min BLPA 1:1

5:30 Dinner w kids (pasta with broccoli + cheddar); MORE camp forms . . . (I did pretty much finish other than some medication-related stuff)

7:30 Book club!!! I ordered Crumbl cookies (apparently this is my new party trick?) and served with wine (which I ended up drinking like 1/3 of a glass . . . did not like the one I tried and then decided it was for the best sleep-wise!), manchego + grapes. Then people brought stuff and we had way too much and I made them take it home. Ha. We had about 8 people there and it was really fun!

9:30 Guests gone, clean up a bit (wasn’t too much), set up coffee, read for 5 min

10:10 Asleep.

Total screen time 91 minutes – WhatsApp, YNAB, gmail, Notes, safari

(I actually do not know how I am functioning right now but I actually feel good . . . I won’t question it.)