Time Management

I would like to be a fly on my wall so that I could see what is happening around here from an outsider's perspective.

I seem to have lost all track of time management in my days. Before, during and after my daycare days begin and end.

I have set my alarm for a half hour earlier in the morning. Which translates into becoming exhausted an hour earlier every evening. Okay ... tell me where I am gaining productivity by waking early.

I have taken that extra half hour and lost it. I think that I can squeeze an extra hour of frittering into a half hour. Once again, am I losing time or gaining wasted moments?

I gave up make up last week in a move to gain five minutes in the morning and five minutes in the evening (the time that I figure I mess around with applying and then washing off make up). Well? I do believe that I've achieved the chronically tired look.

The five minutes that I think that I have saved applying make up in the morning, is spent taming the cowlicks and rooster tails and excess hair on the top of my head. Even though my hair is by no means long ... it needs to be thinned. The last time I told a hair dresser this, it cost me $78.49 and it took three months to grow back the hair that she 'trimmed'. Which brings me today. Ask me if I am just a tad fearful of hairdressers at the moment.

I write for an on-line publication which has become quite a challenge. They have changed up their design/format and I cannot seem to accomplish the simple task of posting a blog without ... resaving it numerous times (which has led to numerous identical posts). Each time I try to simply copy and paste a new blog post, I am inundated with problems. What should take fifteen minutes often takes me an hour. And I try to fit that into that half hour that I gained by getting up early.

Then ... I open up my Daycare Doors.

The past few weeks have been nothing short of a blur. Tending this particular combination of children takes up every moment of the day. I sat back and savored the moment at 8:00 yesterday morning. Everyone was happy. Everyone was in my eyesight. No one needed to be fed or diapered and no noses (in the millisecond that I took time to enjoy that moment) needed to be wiped. It was a glorious moment. And I spoiled it for myself by feeling like I should be starting to get our breakfast ready. I actually took time out of my precious day to write this statement: "8:00 a.m. Contentment reigns ... forgive me for simply sitting back and enjoying these fleeting moments". Then I made breakfast. And the spell was broken for the 9.5 hours that followed.

I used to be able to accomplish small things as I tended my young charges. Now? I don't even have time to go to the bathroom. I finally drank the dregs from my second cup of coffee (that I poured before 7:00 a.m.) at 5:30 last night. I couldn't believe how good that old coffee tasted. It tasted like ... freedom.

Mind you ... there are moments that I savor. Taking my work outdoors turns it all around. This is the scene that I basked in for a good portion of the morning:

Then came the non-existant synchronized sleeping time in the afternoon. I sat on the couch and bonded with my new little four-year-old girl. And it was good. Not good for my need-for-a-piece-of-quiet in my day ... but it was good for my soul. 

There are snippets of serenity in my days. Perhaps I've been spoiled prior to this because the quiet minutes aren't consecutive ones. Sleep has never felt so good. It is quiet. It is a solid eight hours. No interruptions. No short cuts. In fact, it is the only thing that hasn't suffered in this time mismanagement saga that I have told. Tacking on an hour on one end and taking a way a half hour on the other makes for a little longer night. And the way the days have been going, I'll take that added half hour of sleep. Just don't ask too much of me after 8:00 p.m. ...