October--Time

"We live and we die by time. And we must not commit the sin of losing our track on time."

  --Chuck Noland in Castaway

The echoes of this line have haunted me from time to time, but I could never quite remember quite what it said, just the feeling of urgency.  Many, many days, it is how I feel.  Time slips past, and I'm suddenly surprised by an hour which requires me to school people or scoot them out the door for a carpool ready to leave or start dinner so we can eat before 7.  I live in the contant state of feeling unhappily behind-hand.  So, this month I have put my spare moments (between spelling words mostly) toward how to organize my time more efficiently.

First I mapped out my daily schedule with Bill.  Here it is:

6:50--Rise/dress/make bed

7     --coffee

8     --teach Cecilia 8:45 bath J& J

9     --Teach Charles

10   --teach Maria

10:30--BREAK (start dinner)

11     --poetry/table work, T,A, M, C & C

noon or 12:30--LUNCH  (work on dinner or do chore)

1       --Naps for J&J, some days others/me--email

2      --Finish T&A, sometimes M

pre 4--Get ready for eve activities

                  Little kids awake

6ish  --cook dinner

7      --eat

8     --kids upstairs, read books, clean-up

9     --big kids to bed, grade?

10-11--bed

When I first saw it on paper, I wanted to cry.  Where is my free time?  Where is the time I thought I would find for housekeeping or checking up on the kids' chores?  What about exercise and when will I take Joseph outside so he can remember what the sun looks like?  I feel like time marches on, and a whole battalion of heavy-booted minutes do it right over me.  

Bill's solution for me it that I get up earlier, but I know myself.  My internal clock is set to sleep from 11 pm or later until the coffee grinder goes off at 6:50 am.  A shower or a stiff legged run and an exhausted feeling for the rest of the morning are just not enough to tempt me from bed.  My biggest issue has been what how to get more out of the time I have while staying withing the comfortable sleep parameters of my day.  Communication and the calendar have been my solution.

I think I've mentioned that I love the clock because our schedule is ordered to the hours of the day.  More than the clock though, I am dependent on my calendar.  It sits in my office, which is in a centrally located room of the house. 

Bill and I usually spend and frustrated Saturday morning trying to drink our coffee while we plan the menu for the week.  Then he makes a grocery list and, collecting a few stray children on the way, he goes shopping.  We've decided that our Saturday morning pow-wow needs to happen before the kids get up and we need to communicare about the menu, driving/afternoon plans, and exercise for the week.  Ironically, this is something I am completely willing to get up early to do.  We daily re-check the calendar and communicate about decisions made and changes. 

Our first week we missed the alarm, so the meeting was later than we wanted, but it was effective.  In the large boxes for each day on the side of my calendar I wrote the menu (in pencil), my workouts and when they would happen (in blue), and one major chore I would like to accomplish each day (in red).  The menu is very flexible as to which day meals actually fall on.  Chores are fairly flexible; some days I do two, some days one or fewer. But the chore is standard from week to week, ie Monday will always be laundry catch-up day.  Workouts are the least flexible, and therefore the best planned.    And we remembered that I will get up at 6 or earlier to swim, so that is coming into heavy rotation on my workout schedule.  We're only one week in, but I've had more free time--completely unexpectedly--and I think we're moving in the right direction.

The biggest change has come with the computer.  The 1pm email has become read-only and oriented towards things like soccer game cancellations.  At 1:30 I've started reading aloud to the older kids.  Most days, I'm just not online, and when I am, it's in the evening when Bill is doing homework.  Since email is my favorite medium for communicating with the friends we've moved away from, it's been hard to give it up.  (You will notice that the phone doesn't even show up on my schedule.)  However, for this season of my life, I think this is the best I can do. 

One last thought on time:  I did institute one time saving device with the kids.  Any time someone wants me to find a "lost" school book, they pay me a quarter.  The quarters go in a jar that also holds a beautifully cut, red, laminated monkey--a remnant from the boy's preschool days and a reminder that there are some things that are just a darn waste of time.  I've made about 2 bucks and I've saved oodles of time already!