a wonderful weekend passed again. it was an overall calm one and it was extra special because i saw many loved ones. anyway, sunday night, late sunday night that is, after i got all my little people settled and snuggled with them until they drifted into their slumber, i was laying in bed doing my usual internet browsing and thinking. and with it being sunday night, i had those thoughts that i am sure many of you do. thoughts that include, but are not limited too:
"i will get more done this week, maybe clean out the basement"
"i will exercise, in fact, i will take the whole family to the park, every night, we will burn so many calories"
"i will make cookies this week"
"i will get up earlier so i can get more done"
"i am going to get all the laundry done tomorrow, if i just devote my whole day to it, i can get it done"
"i will get more lessons done with the kids this week, maybe we could go to the library every day"
i get all these great ideas. and then with all these great ideas i realize i just need to put these things on my calendar so they will get done. 20 minutes later, i have added 15 reminders in my phone. and i was only on tuesday!
you see, i lead a very....hmmm what is the word...i dunno. my life doesn't typically compare to the lives of other mothers that have 3 kids. we just do things differently in our home i guess, i don't know why, it's just the way it is. sooo, these reminders that i put in my phone are reminders to be "normal".
one of my reminders i scheduled was to wake up at 7 everyday because i believed that is what other "normal" people do. wake up the same time every day. and early. the next reminder is "throw in a load of laundry". this reminder was set to go off shortly after i woke up because that seems to be what a normal stay at home mom would do. another reminder was "lunch" and it was set to go off at noon because i figured that is what every other family does at home, eats lunch at noon. i even put a reminder on my phone to "take walk" at 7 p.m. because that seems to be the time i see my neighbors strolling about.
we do not get up the same time every day. in fact, i don't even set an alarm because typically i have no place to be in the morning. i don't do laundry every day. i should. but life doesn't allow me to. the life we have chosen does not always support a rigid cleaning schedule. we do eat lunch every day. but not until we get hungry. it's sometime in between breakfast and supper, but it is rarely at noon. my family and i are pretty active. we take walks, go for bike rides, shoot hoops in the drive way and even do some yoga and hip hop dancing together from time to time. but we never seem to do the same sort of exercise two days in a row. it's always something different.
after setting all of my reminders in my phone i was feeling optimistic that this was going to be the week that we were a normal family. i went to bed feeling great. monday started off good. woke up early, drank my coffee to get me going, ate lunch "on-time" and so on and so forth. my phone kept dinging as each reminder went off and i would check it off and move onto the next thing. monday night was ok, but each time my phone dinged to remind me of something else i felt more and more agitated.
we went to bed and all was well. i was thankful for the day i had, but i didn't feel complete when i went to bed. i felt out of sorts and was grumpy. i was partly grumpy because i had my day all "planned" and some events didn't go as planned.
by tuesday afternoon, i silenced my phone. the reminders had gotten the best of me. i realized all i did was set myself up for failure.i canceled all of tuesday's reminders. tuesday was awesome. today was good. we had a wonderful school day, we ate lunch when the kids told me they were hungry and i got laundry done. i did it when i felt like it. i did the dishes when i noticed nats. i played with the kids when i noticed they needed me. and i wrote on my blog when i felt inspired even though i know i "should be in bed" as some would say. why "should" i be in bed? who says. for me, it feels fantastic to be awake at 1 a.m. I feel like I could write a whole book right now and for crying out loud, everyone thinks we should sleep at night!
anyway, i wanted to share with you what i learned. i learned that i do things differently than my neighbor. and i learned that i really like it that way.
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