So much work, so little time
Phil comes home today. His plane is scheduled to land in about 45 minutes. The planes come in right over our head and there is a park where they are particularly low. If I can get everyone fed and ready, I’m going to try to get us out to that park, and watch for the US Air flight coming in at about the right time. Then we’ll all wave at it. I’m pretty sure the passengers can see us.
I don’t mind Phil being gone all that much. I’m pretty busy with school and everything. But picking up his usual chores really threw me off. I don’t have them worked into my schedule, so I started falling behind last night and this morning. I had to skip my 15 minutes in the FlyLady zone this morning just to try to catch up. Plus, there is the Boo Factor. Boo has labored for 7 years under the misconception that I am his playmate. I could be elbows deep in hot soapy water and he would show up and say, "hey Mama, can you play with me." Actually, I’m lucky if he asks. He usually just starts in on, "I’m the guard, show me your ID!" I do have time set aside to play with the children – lots of it! He just wants to play with me 24-7. Or talk to me. He was telling me some elaborate story while I was trying to make dinner. I kept losing my place in the recipe. I finally had to send him away so I could concentrate. I digress. Phil’s going to be gone once a month for the next few months. I may have to come up with a revised schedule, to allow enough time for the extra work in a way that doesn’t send me over the edge.
Evening chores were so much better last night. Starting with rooms that had already been cleaned yesterday was much easier than trying to clean up the total disaster areas they had been. In hindsight, we should have taken Sunday to get the playroom and bedroom all cleaned up so we’d have a fresh start on Monday when we started implementing the new chore system. It would have been a good time to review my expectations, too. Well, as Phil would say, lesson learned. Pumpkin Girl still needs a good deal of supervision to help keep her on task. Boo does better working by himself. I’ve been taking notes on the things I need to tweak in our system. Some chores need to be done in a different sequence, for example. I think most of the bugs will be worked out by the end of the week.
