November--Holidays

Today when James started throwing up, I realized how woefully unprepared I am for the season, Thanksgiving, Christmas or flu.  Since Bill has to make a commissary run for flu supplies anyway, I decided to make a Thanksgiving shopping list too.  But first I had to confirm the menu.  And as a tone of annoyance crept into his voice, I realized what a waste of time it is for us to discuss it.  Not only do we eat basically the same thing every year, I cook it all, so I get to pick!  I sent him to school and wrote down the menu:

Thanksgiving Day:
Breakfast
Empanadas de Calabazas, Scrambled Eggs, Bacon, Coffee

Lunch
Roast Beef Sandwiches and Fruit

Dinner--5pm
Turkey with Herbed Stuffing and Cranberry Sauce
Grandma Mapson's Sweet Potatoes
Mashed Potatoes and Gravy
Spinach and Strawberry Salad
Parker House Rolls
Sparkling Cider, Wine and Water
Chocolate Pecan Pie and Pumpkin Pie

Of course, then I had to pull out 4 cookbooks and look at multiple websites to 1. discover this is the menu I already had written in my cookbook and 2. double check recipes and ingredients and make a grocery list.  Once the list was compiled, I had to dig through the kitchen to see what we actually need--my least favorite part.  Why, oh why, haven't we just come up with a master list years ago? 

Here it is, although Bill will fix the order so it's shoppable.
Deli
Roast Beef
Cheese

Produce
onion
celery
3 sweet potatoes
6 oranges
10 potatoes
bag of spinach
lettuce
tomatoes

Dry Goods
White wine vinegar
mustard
mayo
shortening
walnuts 1/2 C
1 1/2 C halved pecans
sugar
flour
dark corn syrup
dark brown sugar
yeast
baking powder
confectioner's sugar
semi sweet choc chips
mini marshmellows
poppy seeds
sesame seeds
paprika
salt
pepper
ginger
gr. cloves
thyme
sage
majoram
basil
cinnamon
vanilla
anise
pumpkin pie mix
evaporated milk
can of pumkin puree
6-8 C chicken broth
saltine crackers
canned chicken soup
ramen
7 up
apple juice
sprarkling cider
liquid tylenol
liquid motrin

Meat
Turkey over 10 lbs
bacon

Frozen Foods (if can't find fresh)
2 pkg cranberries
4 C sliced strawberries

Dairy
Milk
36 eggs
2 lb butter
pint heavy whipping cream

Alcohol
Wine
Brandy

Now I just have to get out my Christmas gift spreadsheet, send out lists, and beg for lists so that I can go shopping this weekend.

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!

September--School

The plan with school supplies is "a place for everything and everything in its place."


These quart-size mason jars are just decorative enough for me in addition to being transparent, inexpensive, available in a variety of sizes and ... dangerous. Nothing motivates you to put things away like the potential for broken glass. Right now they hold staples, dry erase markers and eraser, chalk, colored pencils, community crayons, and more.



Colored electrical tape--available in a multipack at Staples or singly at Home Depot-- has been a life saver for keeping straight which readers are for which grade level. It also makes it immediately obvious which books are out of place.



The book-tape colors match the syllabi from Mother of Divine Grace , and I've had the homemade lesson plans bound to match too. This year I created a document full of information that the kids needed to memorize but is usually found buried in the syllabus--heights of rivers, state postal abbreviations, Latin prayers, history dates, etc--and added that to the front of their daily lesson plan book. If you look at it closely, you can see my other favorite 3M product, durable colored dividers which work like Post-its. We use these or the more flimsy flags for bookmarks in almost everything.






Here is a view of our bookshelves. Aren't they lovely? They are holding about a third of what they used to (and the basement is a nightmare because of it), and each square has a designation: mine, 5th grade, reference books, Vision readers, board books, etc. Up on top are the glass jars and flash cards in recipe boxes. Each child keeps a pencil and a personally owned crayon set in a color specific pencil box from Staples in their square, and I have one too!






These colored magazine holders keep us from destroying or losing the thin, soft-covered syllabi or other flimsier books, like music. These sturdy ones came from the Container Store. And if you avoid grading, like I am now, could this Peterboro Basket be the spot to keep your work for you? It is for me!

August--Survival Hooks

Moving into a new house is like being born...again. It is painful and messy, but also it's a chance to recreate yourself.

3M Command hooks ,brought to you by those same guys who invented masking tape, are a wonder to me. You can get fancy ones for $15 a pop or a value pack of 10 little guys for about $10. So far, I have used or plan to use them to hang:

• chore cards
• bath towels
• kids' clothes
• baseball caps
• snow suits/bathing suits
• dress up clothes

I've also used their velcro picture strips to apply temporary and lightweight decor, like phonogram cards on posterboard, to the dining room walls. My 2 reminders to self: 1. get the big hooks for towels 2. put them low enough for small people to reach

I also want to give Bill his props--he labeled bike parking spaces in the garage with duct tape and put up nails for our helmets and roller blades (my brother John used dowels which work better but are more of a committment). The change is amazing! We are considering hooks--real ones--in there for bikes between riders, the grass seeder, the bike trailer, the bike pump.... We are also considering real metal bike racks for the 10+ bikes in there.

This looks small and low key, but it made the difference between sanity and insanity for me.