Getting rid of the clutter...

A friend sent me a link to a blog that had an article entitled Two Lists You Should Look at Every Morning and it was SUCH a fantastic post!

The two lists that everyone should look at each morning according to the author are as follows;

List 1: Your Focus List (the road ahead)

What are you trying to achieve? What makes you happy? What's important to you? Design your time around those things. Because time is your one limited resource and no matter how hard you try you can't work 25/8.

(I so love the idea of not being able to work 25/8 – I love clever people)

List 2: Your Ignore List (the distractions)

To succeed in using your time wisely, you have to ask the equally important but often avoided complementary questions: what are you willing not to achieve? What doesn't make you happy? What's not important to you? What gets in the way?

I know for me – several things popped into my head for the first one, the Focus List. It’s just not that hard to think of things that I want, or that are important to me, or that make me happy. But the second one… now there’s the rub. What are the distractions? How do you define that? I guess if you narrow down the first list clearly enough the second list becomes more apparent… what do you think?

I'm all about getting rid of the clutter - I am not a hoarder (well.. craft supplies notwithstanding) and love to throw things away - but I can't say I've ever really thought about it in terms of the things I'm striving for... the things I should be focusing on... the truly important things... I'm usually thinking about the contents of a closet or a drawer.

I’m planning on seriously trying to come up with these lists and keeping them active and fluid and relevant for me.  I challenge all of you to do the same. 

What are you trying to achieve?  What makes you happy?  What's important to you?

Here’s the link for the full post which does a much better job of talking about this;

Have a great day!!http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2009/05/two-lists-you-should-look-at-e.html?awid=9096134605609987456-3271

BYOC

Drazil's BYOC is 5 little questions we answer to get to know each other better and to give our blogging brains a break!  Come join us & enjoy!!

1.  Tell me about your first childhood home that you remember.

um... well... I have a very poor memory for all things childhood.  I lived in my grandma's house for the first 6 months of my life and I know it like the back of my hand - on the water in Annapolis where I spent much of my childhood.  It's where I learned to sail and to fish.  My great grandparents built the house and it is a lovely, wonderful place with ivy to hide marbles in for restless grandchildren, and haunted boiler rooms in the basement, and sunfish (the kind one person can throw in the water and sail on) in the shed, and these awful round burr things that fell from this huge tree that I stepped on more than I can possibly remember.  Of course I really only remember this from being much older - but... whatever

2.  What is hands down your favorite color on this Earth?

Orange.  I love it.

3.  What kind of hair do you prefer on your significant other?  Or what kind of hair is a turn on to you?

um... I can't say I have ever in my life thought about this.  I think people should have hair that goes with who they are.  Short and business like can be great, long and untamed can be great.  I hate hate hate long stringy hair - on men or women but even more on men.  My favorite hair on a male at the moment is the hair on my son Tommy.  He has my curls, but much, much thicker hair.  Right now it's too long, but I love him with longish hair and that's not usually the case, especially on kids, but on him I LOVE IT!!  He showers at night and then goes to sleep with wet hair - he wakes up with this crazy, wild, mess that suits him to a tee!

 4.  Now that it's summer...do you mow your lawn or does someone else?  How long does it take you?  Do you hate or love doing it?

either Dan mows the lawn or we hire a neighbor kid to do it, though I suspect we'll get Tom to do it this year. (though he may very well be too much of a space cadet to be trusted with something that could cut him... ).  I love to mow a lawn but it is this zen thing for Dan and he's always desperately wanted to do it, so I don't make too much of a fuss about it - except sometimes.  He puts his earbuds in and listens to some podcast or another and totally forgets the rest of the world.  It takes him a couple of hours to do it.

5.  Repeat question:  Summarize your week.

 It was just a week.  Jason participated in the annual 5th grade thing we do here in our county called simulated congressional hearings - or SCH for short.  Each group of 4 5th graders studies a topic, Jason's group's was freedom of speech and freedom of the press and they prepare a prepared 4 minute statement about their topic.  They then come and "testify" before "congress" and a 3 person panel of local politicians and other important people (Jason's panel was the State congressional representative for our district, the chief Circuit Court judge for our county, and a man from the Board of Education) have them put their statement and notes away and ask them questions about their topic (one question was - do you think the internet should be limited?) and then they give the kids good, solid, feedback.  The kids work hard for this end of elementary school event and have to come dressed in business attire as if they are truly testifying before congress.  It's just one of the many reasons I love our school system where we live.

 Then last night Tommy's baseball team was in a single playoff game to determine the winner of the regular season and they won 3-2 in a nail biter. It was killer to watch but so much fun to watch how excited all the boys were!! Have a SAFE holiday weekend!!!

BYOC - Bring your own crazy!!!

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Anyone know what day it is? I don’t have to tell you – do I? Fine. Fine. It’s FRIDAY!!! That means it’s time for Drazil's BYOC – Bring Your Own Crazy! We answer five little questions to get to know each other better and to give our blogging brains a break. Copy to your own blog and enjoy!!


1. What religion were you raised as a child, if any, and are you still a member of that faith today? Why or why not?

Mostly I was raised Episcopal.  I do still consider myself Episcopalian, but I don’t so much go to church.  I’m pretty religious – but it’s very personal to me.  I’ve taught my kids the big things that I think are important about God, but I’ve absolutely done them a disservice because they don’t know a fair amount of the basic bible knowledge that is just about common knowledge in the world… like who Adam and Eve, and Cain and Able are… that kind of thing… I’m trying to change that basic knowledge stuff now.

I’ve said before that I really think all the organized religions are all just different flavors of the same thing.  There are good and bad in all of them.  For me the important stuff is your own relationship with God and faith.  The rest is just window dressing.

2. Do you have an all time favorite candy or do you change favorites often?

AT the moment I’m kind of unhealthily addicted to Nestles crunch crisp bars.  OMG.  That’s is really all I can say…. Just OMG.

3. Are you a green thumb? Do you landscape your yard or plant any flowers or a garden? Do you pay someone to do it for you? Do you not plant a single thing?

Well…  we paid someone to put in the gardens I envisioned.  I love beautiful gardens but really – I need to be independently wealthy so I can have the cabana boy double as the gardener – oh um. Wait – that’s stupid right?  I want a cabana boy and a gardener and a pool boy… aah, yes.. ok.. I digress.

I HATE to garden.  I desperately wish I was someone for whom gardening was a soothing and relaxing thing but… it’s just a sweaty pain in the ass.  And the look of my once pretty garden is proof of that.

4. Let’s just say you were a tattoo junkie and you were planning your next tat and it had to be words only. What words would you choose? A quote? Phrase? One word? Would you do it in English or a different language?

Well… I don’t know exactly – but it would have to be something very personal and very meaningful just to me.  And then… it would depend on what it was as to whether or not I wanted to keep it personal – and put it in a different language – or yell it boldly to the world.  I guess that doesn’t really help, now does it, Draz?

5. Repeat question: Summarize your week.

This week has not been my favorite.  I had a PITA mother’s day and continue to wrestle with big emotional things in my life.   I’m worried about Jason and his future transitions.  I’m worried about Tom and his transition into highfuckingschool.

I did have a much needed bright spot this week on Wednesday when I was reminded of happier things.  I have the day off today and I’m heading to the Science Center with Jason and another mother and son I really like, so that will be fun.  My birthday is on Sunday and I’m not at all looking forward to it, though I am looking forward to going out with my friend Jamie – I know that will be fun!!

Ten Things Thursday!!!

From the infamous Laura Belle - it's 10 things Thursday time.  I don't think I've ever done one as I've been a shitty blogger since she first had this brilliant idea.  One of these days that will change.

1) I am almost getting the hang of the new blogger.  I don't hate it quite as much as I did at first, but that's only because most of the time I can, in fact, get it to do whatever the fuck I want it to do - so that's made me happier.  It's not easy or anything like that yet, but at least I can manage to get things posted when I want to.

2) I did not enjoy mother's day this year.  That is all.

3) My 11 year old is already stressed about his upcoming transition to middle school.  I am not looking forward to the next several months.

4) I recently noticed that my 13 year old son now has a happy trail, then I threw up a little in my mouth.

5) I am already looking forward to Chicago.  I have a countdown thingy on my phone and right now it says that there are only 133 days until I land!!!

6) I want to know what the future holds.  And I want to know right now.  Who can make that happen for me??

7) My husband has been a total rock star in the getting healthy department.  He got some scary test results and the doctor gave him 3 months to get his shit together and he started walking on the treadmill every single morning and following weight watchers and in 4 months or so he's lost more than 30 lbs and all his test results are now normal.  I think since he started, he's skipped less than 5 days on the treadmill.  It's all about doing it.  I'm very proud of him.

8)  I have learned that being stressed makes me not eat.  It used to be that being stressed made me eat, but that seems to have switched.  I can't tell you how grateful I am for this little fact.

9) I have the best friends in all the world.  Some are close by...  Some live seriously in the middle of no where.  Then there are the kittens.... You know who you are - stand up and take a bow.

10) Farrah is wonderful.

New Orleans' blogger

Okay - so I'm very forgetful!  It's true.  I'm old, what can I say?  I'm heading down to NOLA for JazzFest on Thursday.  I'll be there through Sunday.  I talked to a lovely blogger who is considering coming to BOOBs for the first time this year and for the life of me I can't find her email anymore and I can not remember which blog is hers. 

So... if this is you - please contact me.  I'd still love to hook up with you while I'm down there.

Sorry I'm such a spaz!!!