Listen

Today marks the start of my children's 4th week of school and I think I've finally got this whole schedule thing figured out... Don't get me wrong...I had a schedule from Day One! Ya'll know me!!!

Wake up 5:00 AM
Drop kids at bus 6:15 AM
Arrive work 7:00 AM
Leave work 3:30 PM
Pick up kids 4:15 PM
Arrive home 4:30 PM
Dinner 5:00 PM
Leave home 6:00 PM
Arrive at my school 6:30 PM
Pray to finish up so the kids can be home & in bed by 10:00 PM

In spite of having things so eloquently timed, this schedule left me with the blues and try as I might I just couldn't seem to shake it :(. I kept thinking maybe if I were just a little more organized? As my BFF Devediah (check out her blog devediah-theserialdieter.blogspot.com) pointed out, "you can't get much more organized than mapping your day out in 30 minute intervals!" I opted not to insert the spreadsheet in my schedule above. Suffice it to say being more organized was not the solution. The solution is what I've been preaching since the inception of my blog...BALANCE. I spent the entire day yesterday (Sunday) cleaning & preparing for the week. I even went a little beyond my normal neurotic cleaning and shampooed the carpet and area rugs throughout the house. By 7 PM I was on the verge of tears so I decided to chill for a minute. I laid back in my bed and thought what can I do to feel better? The above schedule is not gonna change anytime soon so decreasing my load really isn't an option. I dozed off for about 5 minutes and when I woke up, it was crystal clear! Even with a schedule broken down into 30 minute intervals, I was wasting time. How, you may ask? I needed to re-prioritize some things. Some things that I considered critical are really not that critical and other things that I had at the end of the list that I only got around to when I had "time" have moved up the list. The things that I let kinda fall by the wayside are "me time", exercising, and eating right. I realized all of these things are necessary to keep me going and therefore I may have to forgo having my house look like HGTV some days in order to make this happen. Even with this "epiphany" fresh in my mind, I still didn't get to bed last night until 1 AM after finishing laundry, etc. I'm definitely going to do better tonight! But...even going off only 4 hours of sleep, today has been better than any day I had last week (keeping my fingers crossed that this holds true since I haven't been to school yet). The lesson here is that although we often know what we need, sometimes the answer evades us 'til we sit still and listen. This could also be a plug for a daily 5 minute power nap! Keep striving :-)