To-Do List

Indian Summer Leaves

/ wvfurandroot / 2 Comments
leavesleavesleaves

Leaves, leaves, leaves and more leaves.

I didn’t grow up in areas with 4 seasons. When I encountered a real autumn for the first time, I was awed – awed in every sense of the word. I couldn’t fathom that such a spectacle occurred every year and yet people just went about their business as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Nor could I understand how so many commented only to complain about leaf removal.

In North Carolina, we did have some deciduous trees – not many – and I’d collect leaves, make a glue of flour and water, and glob them onto my dresser mirror. When I moved here and experienced the glory of deciduous forests at their peak, those puny leaves I used to attach to my mirror seemed ridiculous.

indian summer

Indian Summer on the Patio

While I’m still awed, and sometimes rendered speechless, I do go about my life as if nothing extraordinary is happening. After several decades of deciduous trees in abundance, I also complain about leaf removal. It appears I’ve become complacent.

But not too much.

After several weeks of the dogs tracking leaves in the house, I finally got my butt out there with a broom and a rake. After years of this, I know better than to begin the process before all the leaves have fallen.

The idea was to at least clear the patio. Designing one’s garden with a sunken patio near mature oaks creates autumnal challenges. It’s easy to lose a small dog out there. Moreover, the condition of my gutters would make at least one person I know weep.

carpet

Outside Leaves In

It was daunting. It is daunting.

For several hours, I have maneuvered around patio furniture, the heat pump, small dogs, flower pots, dog toys, retaining walls, and the hot tub trying to bring order out of chaos. The task is made more daunting in that I don’t remove the leaves; I chop them up with the lawn mower and leave them lie to improve my pitiful soil. Three small dogs of a mind to help add an additional layer of difficulty.

leaves

Never too old for a good leaf pile.

But the truth is, I can’t bring myself to just attend to the task. I have to play in them. I’m still susceptible to the joy of jumping in a great pile of leaves and immediately being pounced upon by the dogs. The four of us romped, made leaf angels, and pretty much made a bigger mess than I started with. Towards the end of Romper Room with Leaves, the cat joined in. Indian Summer made it all that much more fun. The temperature is positively tropical out there.

The patio is clear, more or less. I haven’t gotten the lawn mower out yet so there are still great heaps of leaves about the yard. One brisk wind and they’re all going to end up back on the patio. I’m trying to summon the discipline to get out the lawn mower and finish – or at least make a serious dent in the project. But I don’t know, those piles of leaves look like they need some more playing in.

small brown dog

You could lose a small dog out here.

I was just lamenting that I have too many projects going on and too little time. In my hurry-hurry life, it speaks well, I think, that I can still find time to play in the leaves.  As long as I can still find time to play and marvel, life will be good – is good.

15-Minutes at a Time

/ wvfurandroot / 12 Comments

At my primary job, we are all undergoing a “time study” wherein we jot down on a form everything we’re doing within 15-minute blocks of time. For three days now, I have started my day with an 8 ½ x 11 inch piece of paper with clock times in fifteen minute increments running down the left side and lines on the right to fill in my incredibly important work.

It’s making me crazy.

The first day I amused my self by filling it in as I would a twitter account. The line next to each fifteen minute block holds, roughly, 140 characters.  I like doing it this way best.

Connie is downloading and reading email – deleting most of it and ignoring the rest.

Connie went to the kitchen, poured a cup of coffee, and explained flash mobs to co-workers.

Connie lectured Name Deleted for Privacy about clicking on attachments from unknown emailers.

Day Two wasn’t quite so fun. My tasks are pretty evenly divided between multitudes of less than 5 minute things OR multitudes of long term projects. The latter I can break down, I suppose, into 15 minute intervals, but there isn’t enough space to put:

Responded to Board Member’s email explaining volunteer policy, called Theatre Dept. (again!) to try and book puppet show, answered phone call from Concerned Grandmother, rubbed co-worker’s pregnant belly, ran the halls gossiping and loitering on my way to pee, poured coffee, checked to see that server hadn’t exploded or nuttin and succumbed to a blueberry muffin.

You see the problem?

As for the projects, I’m finding it difficult to break them down, so there are tasks where I fill in one line

Developing fundraising materials

and then put ditto marks down the page.

But that’s making me frown. I’m finding that I don’t like the ditto marks. If they want 15 minute intervals, then dammit, I want tasks that can begin and end in 15 minutes. So. For Day Three, I ignored everything that couldn’t be done within 15 minutes. Then I arranged stuff so that I had the 3 minute task, the 5 minute task, and the 7 minute task all together so that I had a “clean” 15 minutes. I don’t want to start something that has to carry over into the next block. Often I can’t get it all to work out mathematically and I end up spending a minute or two staring at the time study chart thingie.

I suppose I’ve mentioned that I’m neurotic. No? Well. Now you know.

Everybody knows everybody goofs off. A couple of times, I put:

Blatantly goofing off.

I’ve always prided myself on the fact that if I’m goofing off at work I don’t try to hide it. I’m an in-your-face slacker when I slack.  Now I’m goofing off in precise fifteen-minute intervals.  Slack?  Precise?  You see the problem, right?

Then there’s the white-out dilemma. Today I had already written:

Connie is outa here!

When the boss showed up to discuss Important Things™.

After she left, I pondered whether I should white-out the “outa here” or just cross it out or just ignore the whole damn thing like the conversation never happened. But then I got all consternated that the Boss was going to put “Talked to Connie about Important Things™ “on her time study chart thingie and then it was going to look like I was falsifying my work record!

Now, really, who is going to put “blatantly goofing off” and then lie about all the rest of it?  Hmmm.  That would be kind of clever. 

Anyway. I’m not really a white-out kind of person. This is because I do everything on the computer and it’s driving me crazy to have to hand-write this thing. And now that I think about it, I don’t know for a fact that I do have to hand-write it. Hmmm.

In any event, I crossed it out and wrote:

Foiled again! Boss chose quitting time to discuss Important Things™ which were discussed with no real resolution.

The conversation only took 11 minutes so I sat there for 4 minutes and straightened the things on my desk. I did not add “straightening desk” to the form because there wasn’t any room left.

I have 6 more days of this.  I’m a little manic.

Cow Udder Pink

/ wvfurandroot / 14 Comments

toilet paperIf I were going to channel the writers of Sex in the City, I might begin this post with “Can a toilet paper holder make a woman happy?”

I finally got around to painting the guest bathroom. Trust me, it needed paint like my 401K needs funding. Whilst buying the paint, I picked up the toilet paper holder of my dreams – black wrought iron and cleverly designed so that toilet paper can be installed without disassembling the holder.

I am challenged when it comes to inserting toilet paper in the standard type of holder. I become all fumble-fingers and end up hopping around the bathroom with my jeans around my ankles trying to pick up the middle rod. It’s always an Abbot & Costello moment not that I think those boys ever changed the toilet paper roll.

[I’m generally opposed to jokes that bash gender, race or ethnicity, but I absolutely love this one: How many men does it take to change a toilet paper roll? Nobody knows. It’s never been done. OK. Got that out of my system.]

I’m pretty tickled with the holder. In fact, I’m pretty tickled with the whole bathroom.

I’m two-for-two on recent paint jobs. After the disasters of recent years, this is heady stuff. The lavender office and now the cow bathroom have been freshly painted with the color being right the first time. Right and fabulous.

Um, cow bathroom – yes.

happy cowsBack when black and white cow motifs were all the rage, I made the mistake of saying (out loud) that I thought they were cute. I’m not generally a “cute” person, but I live in a barn. I like black. And I do, now and again, enjoy a touch of whimsy which explains why Miss Piggy lives on my desk in my oh-so-elegant lavender office. It also explains the cow bathroom.

Since I had declared the cuteness of black and white cow stuff out loud in front of God and everybody, my entire extended family gave me such stuff for every gift-giving occasion. It got entirely out of hand. By the time I shrieked, “Enough already, people,” I had cow dishes, posters, photos, cards, plant holders, door stops, stuffed animals, coffee mugs, sweatshirts, socks, salt & pepper shakers, cleverly designed lotion dispensers, Christmas ornaments, soap, stools, canisters, soup tureens, cookie jars, and, I’m not kidding, perfume.

cowsSurreptitiously, I had been getting rid of the nastier stuff as the years rolled by. A few years ago, I got rid of 90% of it. During the cow purge, I discovered that I like cow images. I saved those. I also saved the 4,327,643.5 greeting cards bearing cows that I received along with the cow gifts. I also cut out and saved particularly amusing cow cartoons. (No, really, they do exist – Far Side, for example.)

Over the past ten years or so, I’ve been putting some of these things in frames. I actually hung some of them, but most of them were languishing in a box pending painting.

While recovering from what was probably swine flu, I woke up with a powerful urge to finally paint the bathroom I’ve been trying to paint since 1998. I decided, after ten years of pondering, that cow udder pink would be just peachy – although I wanted a cow udder pink that veered towards orchid rather than peach.

I skipped-to-my-lou’d over to the Lowes and picked out paint in less than 5 minutes which left me plenty of time to snag the black wrought iron toilet paper roll holder. It was a good day. Those of you who know me know how out of character that is. It took me 3 hours in the paint aisle once to choose a white paint. There’s something to be said for buying paint in the wet-noodly-stage of flu recovery.

It was even better when the molding came off without cracking. Spackling went enormously well. Primer was easy-peasy. Paint went on like a dream AND the painter’s tape didn’t pull off the edges of the new paint when I pulled it off the wall. Really, it was like someone else painted the bathroom. (Of course, there’s paint in places there shouldn’t be and I’ll eventually get around to fixing that.)

sinkAfter all that, I painted the vanity and medicine cabinet, spray painted some stuff black and begun the onerous task of hanging stuff on the walls.

One wall has always borne three of Jennifer O’Meara’s “American Barns” prints. I love these things and I could flay myself for not having bought more when they were on the market – they weren’t particularly costly. My goal was to complete that wall with a ton of barn images and cow images and touches of whimsy as well as the other three walls. I have two thick file folders of images suitable for framing (some blatantly stolen from Flickr).

People in bifocals with a significant astigmatism find lining up photographs and prints on a wall to be challenging. I got about half of it done when I ran out of frames (and energy).

barnsMy to-do list now includes the purchase of more frames (from Dollar General and similar fine framing establishments). I also must deal with the ceiling and the floor, but significant progress has been made.

And so? Can a toilet paper roll holder make this woman happy? Well, no, not in and of itself. But I’m tickled cow udder pink with the progress of the bathroom. If memory serves, I think pink is one of those colors that is said to provoke a feeling of happiness. And then there are the simple conveniences like being able to put toilet paper on the holder one-handed that do make me smile. But I’m especially happy that it’s all gone so well.


[And, in other news, I’ve replaced my stolen camera with an exact replica! In fact, for all I know, it could be my stolen camera. I mean do we really know? Is E-Bay just a giant fencing site?]

The Art of Doing Nothing

/ wvfurandroot / 3 Comments
Nope. Not gonna do it.

Nope. Not gonna do it.

Just as our bodies need downtime in the form of sleep, our bodies need downtime during our waking hours.

I’ve had a drought of downtime both asleep and awake.

Today, when the alarm went off, I silenced it, rolled over and went back to sleep. I clocked something like 10 hours. It wasn’t enough to eradicate my sleep deficit, but it was enough to provoke a feeling of well-being.

Yesterday, I did just enough housecleaning that I didn’t curl into fetal position when I went downstairs this morning. [It’s still a mystery to me how the house can become a Super Fund site when I’m never here.]

I plopped my ass on the sofa. After a few minutes, I arranged myself in a supine position. A few minutes later, I pulled the blanket over me. The dogs and I reacquainted ourselves there on the sofa.

I announced, firmly, “I have things to do.”

I got up, poured another cup of coffee, and stared out the window at the kitchen garden – looking at the mess I never had time to get to.

I forced myself to take clothes out the dryer, put the clothes in the washer into the dryer, and put the last load of laundry into the washer.  Drudgery, pure drudgery.  The inner adult had wrestled the inner child into submission, but neither were happy.

I poured another cup of coffee and stared out the window some more.

I announced, firmly, “I have got to motivate.”

Deciding that perhaps some sunlight on my pineal gland would help, I toddled out to the garden and plopped my ass in a lawn chair. From that seated position, I willed the calla lilies to bloom. I noticed that the morning glory had wrapped itself around the gate making ingress and egress impossible.

I contemplated getting up and whipping the morning glory into submission.

Stating clearly and audibly, I said, “Fuck It.”

Without getting too technical, the FuckIts are that state wherein no matter how hard your inner grownup spanks the inner child, nothing on the to-do list is going to get done without a change of strategy.

Nothing.

Facing this knowledge, the person with the FuckIts will develop a great sense of peace and sometimes giddiness. I am not going to do a damn thing and you can’t make me. It’s not rebellion, obstinacy, defeat or disobedience.

It’s very nice. It’s a lot like when you have a killer headache and you notice, suddenly and with pleasure, it’s gone.  The to-do list evaporates.

In my Geek Girl persona, I equate it with rebooting the computer. When you’re holding too many tasks in memory, sometimes you just have to reboot. (You Mac people can just shut up now.)

I trundled back into the house and heated up leftover tuna casserole. I settled in with a book – a bite of casserole, turn the page. Bite, turn.

Self permission to do nothing is energizing.

mmmmmm book and a nap

mmmmmm book and a nap

I’ve wandered about the house with the book. With no hurry, no agenda, no sense of looming responsibilities fixin’ to fall on my head and destroy me, I’ve managed to do even more cleaning between chapters. Paid some bills. Found and removed the source of the gnat problem in the kitchen. Readied my clothes for the following week. Put the jewelry back into some order. Cleaned off the desk.

I’ve actually done more than was on the to-do list to begin with.

People who are into meditation talk about this phenomena all the time. Quieting the chatter of your mind, either through counting breaths, repeating a mantra, or giving yourself permission to do nothing allows you to accomplish so much more. The essence is simply doing, or not doing, without thought of the past or the future. Without haste.

I had a fledgling meditation/yoga practice going that I abandoned when the to-do list got daunting. Big mistake. I haven’t been on the exercise bike (white noise and muscle toning all at the same time) in weeks. Another big mistake. I haven’t been reading well-crafted novels or listening to the music that makes my heart soar.

No wonder I’m a cranky bitch.

Doing nothing is both a luxury and a necessity.

I’m going back to my book now. I’m kinda thinking that napping in the guest bed in the afternoon sunlight after reading some of the book would be nice. If I do that, I’ll probably put clean sheets on the bed and vacuum – after watching the dust dance in the air for awhile.