Thursday, August 25, 2011

The Problem With To-Do Lists

It seems this time of year is just crazy busy.  I don't know why it always winds up being a rush to complete a never ending list of tasks each day leading up to the Labour Day Weekend.  The semi-annual sorting of the kids clothes, packing up and freecycling off what they cannot keep and purchasing what's needed.  Making sure they've got what they need for school.  Tearing out the exhausted summer garden and planting for the cooler months.  Canning everything insight.  Sweet corn, carrots, beans, pickles, jams, pie fillings, soups and stews.  Freezing anything that's leftover.  Of course there are the house hold tasks that got put off for cooler weather.  It's time for those now too.


I'm writing this blog today while being forced to slow down for one hour.  I've dragged my laptop to an appointment and hijacked some poor unsuspecting person's wifi network.  If I'm going to sit idle for an hour I'd better have something to keep my hands busy, my mind focused on task so that it doesn't wander too much, start worrying about something.  Come the cooler weather I'll take these hour long, forced breaks to knit.  


So that brings me to the thought.  I now feel guilty for spending any time not consumed with some sort of work.  A very Quaker-like work ethic has sunk in over the last year or two.  If' I'm not burning 1000 calories in exercise, or putting away a year's worth of food it doesn't feel like a day well spent.  Now you'd think that with all this expended energy I'd be as thin as a pencil.  Ha! If that was all it took then I'd have installed the hamster wheel years ago!


Perhaps it's time for me to slow down a little.  A girlfriend wrote on her facebook wall yesterday that she had an empty house and two hours to herself and questioned what she'd do with them.  What floated through my mind was "what not to do with them".  My stupid to-do list.  I should stop writing them.  Once written the demand to be finished.  Some awful self-fulfilling prophecy.


When I die, I'd rather not be remembered by what consumed me but rather what I treasured.  


   


Sunday, August 7, 2011

I Finally Snapped

This summer has been chugging a long at a rather rapid pace.  Each day I'm out doing something.  Never having a day to let grass grow under my feet.  Grass that is only now coming back to that plush green state after that dreadfully hot, dry period.  We've been on "staycation" since the end of the school year.  Enjoying the pool has been priority #1.  So much so that field trips have been down to a minimum.  No complaints from the kids.  They are too busy getting prune toes.

That said, I heard the snap today.  Up at dawn, fuelling for a 14k run then stepping out to the van to meet the girls I walked into the hottest, most humid morning I've ever experienced.  Were we crazy?  Here I thought yesterday's 10K in the humid heat was bad but today was so much worse.  With each step I prayed for rain though I was already saturated with sweat.  My shirt was so heavy and wet when I finally stripped off.  So gross.

Then as I was recovering from that crazy run, I felt it.  The snap.  That's it!  I'm so done with summer.  Oh sure I'll have no choice but to go through the motions for the next month or so but, really, enough is enough!  The heat can move off now.  I'm sick of wrangling wiggly children who don't want to wear sunblock.  Tired of the bugs feasting on me while I workout or run in the trails.

Normally, by this time of year the back-to-school shopping is nearly complete.  I've been cruising the fabric stores for quilt supplies and have selected my wool collection for the cold weather projects to come.  I blame the pool for the delay.  I was too busy bobbing around like a cork in the water to get that familiar feeling.

Now I'm daydreaming of cold weather comfort foods, the crispness that comes on a fall day.  The feel of the fabric being fed into the sewing machine as I work on Halloween costumes for the boys.  Now all I want to do is harvest the garden and hunt the farmer's market for the September bounty to be put up in shiny jars or tucked away in the freezer for a day when the yards are covered in a blanket of snow.

I've even fingered the children's back-to-school labels.  I need my routine back.  I need to be able to wear clothes without having to change a few times a day due to that constant feeling of being damp.  I'd also like my body to be only one colour rather then resembling a multi-tonal paint sample.  This has been the worst summer for multiple tan lines and I don't normally tan!  I don't really want to look like George Hamilton.

*sigh*  I now realize that by the simple act of just writing this blog, that I have cursed myself to an especially hot September.  More long distance training in crazy temperatures.  I've broken my rule about training in the summer and now my karma is coming for me.  I'll spend the next six weeks wilting while dreaming of my favourite season.  Fall.