MrsBrown's philosophy of life and stuff

There seem to be a lot of things I both want and need to do and I need to work out a hierarchy, so I can make decisions on the fly that work with my intentions.  I also need to get a lot more strategic about doing stuff that maybe I need to delegate.

Here's what's currently on my list of things that are important to me;

Hanging out with Grandchildren
Hanging out with children
Getting Rose through VCE in a way that maximises the result, while keeping her happy
Gardening
going to Festival
Making things projects including clothes for Tam (started), wicking bed for Tam (started), thermal pants for A, my clothes projects
Regularly cooking interesting meals for people who enjoy them
Leading the Neighbourhood House committee
Being an active participant in my local community - North Richmond Reference Group, nifty grant opportunities
Keeping up to date and suggesting fabulous new things for the local community
Keeping my clients happy while avoiding being overwhelmed by work
Hanging out with my parents
House renovation
regular exercise
Active travel advocacy
Getting enough rest, both physical and mental, when I need it

Work has a bunch of urgent things, as well as a couple of important, non-urgent things that I'm just not getting to.  The important, non urgent thing was employing someone to reduce my workload, but has become rearranging my accounting systems so that I can easily manage employing someone .  The change in problem is because  my brain has almost processed the way to do this, so I should be able to start soon.

 
I also have a couple of life admin things that I'm not getting to, and it's starting to get me down that I haven't done them - my will, my dad's (updated) will and power of attorney, working out how to negotiate and approach care for my dad and step-mother.

In the past week, I've started doing some time blocking stuff that's working pretty well.  I'm working on one or two non urgent , important things each morning, the afternoon involves sitting in bed regularly working on a weekly deadline, then Rose comes home and we do homework.  Some days I've also gotten up earlier and done some work in the garden before I start work or I've done garden for 20min after Rose's homework. I also have regular commitments to grandchildren some evenings.  I'm a bit surprised that the time blocking thing is working - I often get quite rebellious about rules about when to do things, even when I made the rules.

Another thing on my list is to find a way to move my family into more of a mutual aid community, rather than me as the provider of all support.

This has become urgent because I need to work out if I have the time/energy to do a Diploma of Governance course, which has a scholarship available for women like me and fits well with my special interest in community. Can I allocate 5 hours a week to this?  Could I do it by going away for the weekend once a month and doing it intensively?  I keep putting myself into positions where this would be useful, but have been putting off doing it for the past 10 years.  If I don't do it soon, when will I have the time?

Actions: 
1. Expand the time blocking concept (without stressing myself out) and make a weekly timetable for me.  It will include allocations of "pottering time" when I don't have a regular schedule to do things.
2. Dedicate some extra time to the "employ someone" action item.

I just watched "Why we make bad decisions" (I'm making lots of them at the moment) and, at the very end he answers a question about how to get people interested in making a positive decision about the future.

I'm impressed with myself, because it's a technique I use all of the time; I imagine how I'm going to feel in a week or a year, when I'm suffering the consequences of some half arsed decision.  I learned it from renovating - making a decision that I was too tired to fully clean the grout off the tiles I'd just grouted and then sitting on the toilet for the next 2 years wishing that I'd done a better job.

Today I added a new feed to my dreamwidth reading page - http://khovenga-feed.dreamwidth.org/

I love reading them.  I have binges when I read lifehacker, seth godin, and tonight I followed a blog I'm reading regularly to Derek Sivers.[1]

Tonight they all seem to be saying, "find the thing you feel passionate about and go do it".  The photo below really excites me:



And, of course, I have a thing I'm currently saying "Hell Yes" to.  Except that saying yes to that thing will have implications for the other things I want to say "Hell Yes" to.  I collect stuff to say "Hell Yes" to.  and I also collect the consequences of saying Yes.

That's how I became a mother.  The first time I had sex I faced the question all women face;  what do I do if I get pregnant?  and as I started to problem solve I realised that I quite liked the idea.  That what would be a disaster for some was actually going to be an exciting way to live my life.  I didn't get pregnant that time, but a year or two later, when my partner and I started being silly about contraception and pregnancy became a real option, I could leap into that decision with enthusiasm.  I said, "Hell Yes" and started a path that has encompassed everything I've done since.

I don't think these people writing their lovely money spinning blogs understand about consequences.  How do you say, "hell yes" when last year's "hell yes" is lying on your shoulder dribbling?  Or needs a roof over their head and an education?  or funding for their own "hell yes".

OTOH, I don't think that Hell Yes 23 years ago has stopped me from doing what excites or scares me.

I love the feeling I get when I'm finding stuff I want to say "hell yes" to.  I get a little bit of a glint in my eye (I can feel it glinting), and a big grin on my face and start a sentence with, "wouldn't it be cool to..."  My problem is not that I don't want to do stuff, it's that I have so many things I want to do it's hard to work out what I really want to do.  I think I say "Hell Yes" too easily and then don't follow through.

[1] Of course, the best thing to keep in mind while reading this stuff is from 43folders - Why am I here right now instead of making something cool on my own? What’s the barrier to me starting that right now?


OK, I've written my view of the world, it's got lots of links to the club of people preaching individualism and self actualisation.  Can I have my book deal now please?

Some might call this the second shift.

We just got home from visiting my Dad.  MsNotaGot went to bed, mr-bassman went to bed with his laptop and I sat with Rose until she fell asleep again after getting out of the car.  Everyone's tired after a busy day of moving furniture to the point where everyone could have a bed in the right place.  Rose is sleeping in her own room for the first time tonight.

But I made a cake for Rose to take to kinder tomorrow where they will celebrate her birthday.  Then I punched down the bread I started this morning and put it in a tin so it can rise overnight and I can cook it in the morning while I eat breakfast.  I cleaned up the kitchen a bit and spoke to Sneetch for the first time today.

If I were the overachiever I normally think of when people talk about the second shift, I would still be in the kitchen; cleaning up while I wait for the cake to finish cooking before I can go to bed.  And then I'd set up my laptop on the kitchen table and finish that technical paper you're all over hearing me angst about.

But I'm going to spend my cake waiting time posting this and then reading the internet.  I might watch some telly or read a mag.  Also, mr-bassman will get the joy of cleaning up the rest of the kitchen tomorrow, so it doesn't feel properly sacrificial enough to get proper opression points and count as a second shift in the feminist sense.

OTOH, I'd really prefer to go to bed, even if I do have something self indulgent to occupy my time with.

What is it with me and things to do?

Since Friday I have decided to do the following things:

make garden beds and plant them with tomatoes, capsicum and basil
install the water tank I got for free from work
move the compost bin and make more garden bed where the compost bin is
help Sneetch make curtains (fabric bought cheap yesterday)
recover the couch in my living room that has a bunch of rips and looks ugly (fabric bought cheap yesterday)
clean my bedroom and get my dry cleaning processed
clean the sink
go to Bash.

I have to do every single one of these things RIGHT NOW!!! but there are so many things that I've immobilised myself with indecision and it's quite likely I won't do any of them. 

Of course, before I can start one of them I have to do the following things;

find Rose's clothes
dress Rose
argue with Rose about TV watching
find clothes for me to wear (probably getting sidetracked into tidying my room)
finish writing this blarney

by which time, it will be time to organise snacks and clothes for Bash. (Yes, I could dump Bash, but I don't really want to - I want to find the bits of my old life I enjoyed and rework them so I can keep doing them)

Sometimes I don't understand my brain.

Rose woke me up just after mr-bassman did, but that was at 6ish, so not so bad.

Then she chatted, and wriggled until I finally got up at 7am.  I had a shower, chatted with Rose the whole time and then I had to work out what clothes to wear and all I wanted to do was climb into bed and tell the whole world to f*ck off!

I now have jeans and the nearest top on, and some toast and tea warms my belly.

I'd still rather work from home today, but the world is not quite as bleak as it was as I contemplated dressing.

OTOH, I still have to work out what to wear...

The first Four'n Twenty pies, about 50 a day, were baked in Bendigo in 1947 by Les McClure.

When I was in high school I learnt to row. I rowed about 4-5 times a week, getting up at 6.30am to be on the water by 7am on school days and then rowing a regatta on Saturday or Sunday. For the first time in my life I was consciously fit and healthy and I bounded up and down the stairs at school and enjoyed the feeling of my muscles working as I climbed the hill from the river to the Swanston St bridge.

At the rowing club was a man called Bill. He was about 86 when I knew him and he taught us all to row. Sometimes, to get his point across, he would stand in the boat in the middle of the river.

When he was 20ish, he was a plumber and he worked in Bendigo. He would ride his bike to jobs all over the district, with his tools in a trailer behind. After work he would head to the boat shed at the Bendigo Lake and row. After rowing they would wrestle, for fun. Once, he and some mate from the rowing club rode their bikes to Sydney, to prove that they could. I was dreadfully impressed.

He also told me a story about turning up to a job at a bakery in Bendigo, to connect gas to an oven I think. The baker told him that he was going to make pies and would call them "four and twenty" after the children's song about blackbirds in a pie.

Tonight I sewed the butonholes on MrPeacock's new fencing jacket.

And then the machine stopped making nice buttonholes, it just went forwards and backwards with a skinny zig-zag stitch.

Luckily I had done all the main jacket ones.

I had a nice time using one of the wood chisels to cut the buttonholes. Why didn't someone tell me that it's so easy?

I'm just waiting on MrPeacock so I can work out where the buttons go and the thing wil be finished.

This weekend is a sewnig weekend. I'm going to:

cut out a new dress for me and sew it together enough that it can have a final fitting on Tuesday night
make venetians for Sneetch
make sleeves for Rose
make a Bruegal coat for Rose
make shirts to go with Sneetch's venetians (I'll use my new copy of POF4 for that!!), but without embroidery.

I'm also heading to the werribee zoo on Sunday to bond with my sister, allow Rose to play with her cousin, check out the animal exhibits, eat African food and enjoy mr_bassman's gig at 5.30pm

It's a good thing mr_bassman just pulled apart the sewing machine and "lubricated the shaft" and also that MsNotaGoth will be looking after Rose all day Saturday and Monday.

or else other people have a different definition of reasonable?

First incident:

At Aldi this morning I was the second person in the queue at the check out. My trolley wasn't amazing full (but it cost me an awful lot more money than it should have, impulse buys!). I was approached by a slightly older woman with a bag of stuff and a couple of other items, there might have been less than 12 items, but maybe not. She asked if she could go ahead of me in the line. I said no and she went away to the other line. To try someone else I suppose.

Second incident:

I was driving my Flexicar back to its carparking spot. As I drove into the street there was some one doing a U-turn and I followed him to go and park in the correct place. Then he parked in my Flexicar spot. I tooted and indicated that he should move. I tooted again. Then I put the car into neutral and got out to explain that the car I was driving had to be parked in the spot he had put his car. The spot clearly marked, "No Standing - Flexicar only". He pleaded with me and told me that he would be "only a minute, he just had to pick something up". I repeated my story and told him I expected him to move. He then locked his car and started walking away!!

That's when I enabled booming embarassing voice, "I THINK YOU ARE BEING VERY RUDE, YOU SHOULD COME BACK HERE AND MOVE YOUR CAR". All the people in nearby Victoria St stopped to look and he scurried back to his car and moved it. I was only just leaving the car when he came back, so he was right, he was going to be only a minute, OTOH, how annoyed would I have been if he hadn't returned?

BTW, come and buy a fighter at Arrowsreach Tournament tomorrow and raise money for the Bushfires, as well a possibly winning a groovy medieval thing.