Taking Charge - Late Summer 07

We are almost into 'normal' life again after the crazy, crazy summer we've just had, so I thought I'd like to take stock of how my routines go, and try to get a little HGP spot into my week.

I have a new daily routine, which I like in theory, but which I don't seem to be able to make work in practice. Theory goes that we do morning routine before 9am (kitchen, get ourselves ready, laundry etc); then things with DD until snack time (it's her best time of the day, I'm thinking painting, play dough, craft things, water (if I'm feeling brave!)); after snack time is housework; lunch; rest; and an outing of some variety in the afternoon. I think it will work better when DH and I are getting into bed in time, so he leaves for work on time and DD and I have that crucial pre-9am slot to kick-start the day.

The weekly routine is still a work in progress, but we have a 4 and a half hour train journey to London for a wedding tomorrow, so I might get a chance to think about it then.

Now I'm off to check out the holiday grand plan to see what I should be doing this week. I may report back . . .

Zillah

Well, this week being list week and front porch week, I'm giving thanks for not having a front porch and for having those train rides

However, as a concession to actually doing something, I'm going to wash my front door.

Anyone else making lists or sorting out their porches?

Zillah

My whole life seems to have taken a back seat recently. DH has taken to telling me that he finds cooking relaxing, which I find either weird or sweet, depending on whether he's telling me the truth or making me feel better about letting him cook dinner the last several nights.

We do still have a bigger plan to improve the house we're in for a couple or 3yrs before moving, starting from September. We unfortunately have several things which are clamouring to be done before Christmas so that could get unpleasant.

We took the unusual step of moving our computer and desk downstairs last weekend. Primary reason was to 'fix' the problem with unsightly wires trailing up the stairs and across the hall because we don't have a functional upstairs phone line (and couldn't sell the house with the wires trailing!). The desk is sat in the bay window which makes for a nice view and I've been at the computer more in the last few days than the last few months! It has also forced me to put the old sofa bed onto Freecycle (this morning) because we have a chair in the middle of the living room awaiting a home. We'll eventually have the IKEA chair and the kids' beanbags down here and we'll have to improvise the Christmas tree. We will be getting a new sofa bed before Christmas (if my SIL comes again) but before then we'll be moving to a larger office for the business (downstairs in the same building but it needs to be built first!). The second desk upstairs in our home office will go into DH's new separate office (the MD's getting fancy these days!) and then there should be room for the sofa bed. Hope it all works to schedule!

We've had our week or so in Singapore and bought even more stationery and food than usual. We can find useful things for the business there that we just haven't found sources for over here, crazy as it seems. We also had 3 days down south visiting our shops - Honey, I was probably within spitting distance at one point, and thinking of you. One day (probably not till next year) I'll drive down myself rather than wait till DH drags me down there kicking and screaming and I'll work out my own schedule. Meanwhile I need to do up a nice parcel for you!

DD starts high school next week and I just realised I haven't even booked her bus place so that needs doing. Things have been so sloppy round here for so long now. Hopefully having the computer and paperwork downstairs will help me pay my bills on time and not get my phone cut off for a third time!

Zillah - don't worry too much about your routine with DD. It will sort itself out to some extent and when Baby joins you it will all get messed up anyway. Use the time to do whatever can't be done after Baby comes and to spend time with DD getting her used to being a big sister and used to the fact that mummy will need to spend a lot of time with Baby but you'll need her help too. I'm beginning to think routines are highly overrated. They either come naturally or with only a bit of a nudge or they don't come at all, and when you're most desperately in need of routine there's no way you're going to get a new one going.

I'm going to see what else is happening around here since I seem to have been away so long. I miss my Morning Pages habit desperately too, so time to make lists and create routines seems like blissful relaxation compared to my current state of inner chaos. I wonder how the other new workers are coping? Lenora - you must be back at school by now I imagine, since the US always seems to go back so much earlier than the UK.

Miss you guys...

Kerri.

Well, I finished the first three days of school "with kids" in fine style! It is so GOOD to be back in the classroom! I have one Child Development/parenting class, two secions of Career Planning, and two sections of Living Skills/Life Planning which is a class for 12th graders only. My "new-to-me" classroom is small...expecially with 30 teenagers in it, but it's good.

I did get my "Front Porch" done last week...including a bit of work in the front flower bed. I pulled/tossed my scraggly petunias and planted a couple of fall mums and did a bit of weeding. We'll have at least 3 more weeks of really nice weather, and then I'll probably pull the marigolds and stick in a few pansies. My geraniums decided to go to town here in the last few weeks (drier) and hopefully they'll look decent until our first frost which is usually in mid-late October.

I'm ahead of the game for this week. Since we had toempty EVERYTHING for the new carpet, we cleaned under/behind everything! All we need to do this week is put a few things back.

I do still need to make a couple of updates t my card list. I didn't send cards last year (new job, MIL's death) and have several additions/address changes to make! That's my SLUG from week 1....but I'll get to it this week, I hope.

We're off in just a minute for a hike with the DDS and a couple of their friends. It's a beautiful Labor Day here on the northcoast, USA!

Happy Monday!
Love to all!
Lenora

Failed miserably with my lists last week (DH had to write his best man speach on the train, so I didn't get that time after all). However, I did clean my front door. So this week I'm going to catch up with those lists as there's no point at all in deep cleaning my sitting room. Unlike you, Lenora, not because I've done it, but because I know there's going to be a great deal of shelf and window seat building in there before Christmas, so a deep clean is rather pointless at this stage.

Kerri, glad to see you peeking in Did DD start today? Here in Scotland they've been back for a couple of weeks already, so I keep forgetting that the English schools are only just starting back. Hope it's going well for her. How will DS get on without her at school with him? By the way, we went to Aberdour a few weeks ago, it was lovely

Lenora, sounds like you're going back with a glad heart How lovely to be going back to something you're so full of enthusiasm for.

We've just ordered a bathroom! DH is in the process of taking the old one apart, which is rather scary, especially as he's found damp under the floor tiles We know the loo is leaking from the cistern to the pan, so fingers crossed it's nothing more serious than that, and that it hasn't spread to the floor timbers.

Must go and make sure we get an early night.

Zillah

We're ready to re-do our ensuite shower and we also have a leaking downstairs loo, so I sympathise Zillah. We however won't be doing it ourselves because DH is more useless at DIY than I am (and clumsy with it) but I haven't got the guts to tackle something like that.

Both kids went back today and everything seems quite good and pleasantly uneventful, which is as much as I really expect for a first day back. DS seems fine, touch wood, given that he was so excited to be sharing a school when they first arrived here. It may wear off, but they're tougher than they realise.

I did my first actual morning pages (as opposed to evening or afternoon!) since January this morning and not having kids in tow inevitably made more chirpy too! I cooked the meal I planned last night - I have nearly 2wks planned and am working on the corresponding shopping list, so I just hope it's not too much for me to keep up with. I'm feeling almost positive at the moment, which is more than I've managed for quite a while. September has that effect on me anyway.

Kerri.

Yes, it's gone! Our bathroom is now a plaster-board and floor-board box, with stopped pipes to bring water in and a soil pipe taking waste out. There's a bucket for the essentials of life Hopefully this will not last long and we'll have some basic functions back in a day or two. Our new bath and loo have arrived, so I can see the potential for a respectable bathroom space again. Can't wait!

Kerri, morning pages sounds blissful. Since DD stopped her afternoon sleep I have no chance for that kind of thing, and I miss it. I'm also meal planning with a vengence, as we now have two veg boxes a week and I have to make sure things don't get missed and go bad. Also I have to plan properly to make good use of the more 'challenging' vegetables.

Ooo, my fish and chips is arriving. Must go!

Zillah

I just wanted to say hi to everyone.

I don't envy you at all Zillah!!

We've made some definite progress this week, thanks to IKEA. We've got shelving for our pantry, a new sofa bed for the ex-office and an extra set of bookshelves for DD the bookworm. I've taken the last desk apart in the office, advertised the old sofa bed on another Freecycle site since it isn't shifting fast enough. Also bought a new toolkit (ours disappeared terminally to work) a paint tester and a small pot of varnish for DH's desk. The paint tester is the same system as those shoe polishes which just put on a layer of coloured slime - it was called Cashmere Cuddle, supposedly a warmish pale brown kinda colour, but when the first coat was wet on the yellow walls it looked kinda fluorescent lilac!! I hope it'll be better when the second coat has gone on and dried. I want to see what it will look like with the bright blue sofa cover which arrives on Wednesday.

before we get the shelving in for the pantry we have to clear the humongous clutter out of there and clean the floor up, along with the remaining 2/3 of floor that didn't get cleaned the other night.

hey Becky... how's things going with motherhood?? Are you getting into routines yet?? Is life getting somewhere closer to normal??

Kerri.

Bleeeegh! It's still bad, of course. Various Things have meant that DH has had to take out far more of the cavity walling than he wanted, thereby exposing some nasty ancient fibre glass insulation material, which had to be removed. So now we're behind where we wanted to be and we need to buy some insulation. Humph. Still, my aunt was staying in Edinburgh in a very nice hotel for the weekend, so we shamelessly used her bathing facilities this morning. And she took us out to lunch

Kerri, doesn't IKEA rock?! Can't beat it for that immediate home solution. Not sure about your Cashmere Cuddle. We had lilac tinted walls in a rented house once, they gave a certain air of depression to the room - we always had to have full lights on or a sense of gloom settled over us. Funny stuff, colour. I bet having that pantry done is great

Hi Becky, thanks for stopping by How's the studying and baby combo going? I found that DD had an uncany knack of having a really bad night right before I was due a work day. How did she know?

Zillah

...I remember it well......

fixing "that little leak" in the faucet on the tub took eighteen months and resulted in a completely empty bathroom torn down to studs and subflooring.

That was many, many years ago...when the DDS were still needing my presence while bathing...we only had a shower stall for the duration!

On the bright side, the end result was a gorgeous, updated bath...we sold that house just a few months after completion!

I'm just taking a break from reading/grading essays. The Careerscape classes wrote about "Someone I admire" and my parenting class wrote on "A significant childhood event." That's 87 essays...and I'm only about halfway through. Their mechanics (grammar, spelling, punctuation) are often appallingly bad, but most wrote sincerely...which is what I was after (gets me a little extra insight into each of them to start the year.) I guess I beter get back to it!
Love to all,
Lenora

I think we have our basic new routines down and they are no sloppier than the old ones. Sam is in daycare a few hours a day while I go to classes and do homework, which is sad for me but he loves it. He is learning to sit up on his own now.

This week is Entry/Foyer week, and I could certainly do some work in that area. We have a long flight of stairs up from our front door to the door which takes us into the flat. They are painted a lovely greeny-blue colour, but could do with a good scrubbing! To which end I have finally managed to track down a proper wooden handled, natural bristled scrubbing brush. Only one thing left to do now . . . That's right, get scrubbing There is panelling in the same colour on the lower half of the walls which could also do with a wash, and the white door at the top the same. Then the windows in the upper door could do with some attention. For the longer term, DH is going to remove the radiator at the bottom of the stairs. I think the whole staircase is going to be like a fridge this winter, and probably can't be solved without a massive cash injection which we can't afford, so I plan to make some thick insulated curtains for the top door (I have the material, just want to wait for the bathroom dust levels to reduce before getting any fabric out). I'm also going to buy a peg rail for the bottom of the stairs. Wow, that's quite a paragraph on one staircase. I'd better get going!

I've also made some cooking progress. I'm freezer cooking for after the baby arrives, rather than Christmas. I've got two chicken dishes frozen and the rest of the chicken left to deal with tonight. For Christmas I've made some sweet pastry for mince pie making. I meant to make the pies and freeze them uncooked, but I think I must have used all of my mince meat last year, or else it got lost in the move, or perhaps it's lurking somewhere . . .

I'm full of second trimester energy at the moment, and feel I ought to take advantage of it while I can!

Zillah