Done for the Week: Credit Where Credit's Due

Today is a national holiday, but not a blogging holiday.  I am committed to posting Monday through Friday, in good times and in bad, in sickness... 

...and neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow...

So while others are firing up the grill, hitting the links, visiting the cemetery, and whatever else they do on Memorial Day, I have been celebrating by doing some recreational reading before getting down to business.  

Last week held some surprises, good and bad.  I continue my struggle to live with the imperfect splendor with which I've surrounded myself.  I am sitting now on an aging wooden glider in my messy backyard, gazing at a lovely bank of irises and a blooming peony bush surrounded by yet-to-be-weeded mustard garlic and burdock.  I plan to get to the weeding this afternoon, but don't want to wait to recognize the beleaguered beauty of my flowers.  Or of my life.

So here's some of the good stuff that I got done last week.  

Done List--Week of May 24-30

1. Continued Triathlon training; ran once, biked twice, swam once
2. Finished The Help, by Katherine Stockett; The Stress Answer:  Train Your Brain to Conquer Depression and Anxiety in 45 Days, by Dr. Frank Lawlis;
3. Spent time with two friends I hadn't seen in awhile, watched a movie and biked with my daughter, and went to Happy Hour with my husband
4. Participated in family mowing marathon to reclaim yard-turned-jungle, using "new" rummage sale push mower
5. Walked my dog almost every day, and my daughter's dog once
6. Took my blood pressure daily
7. Wrote 5 Morning Pages 
8. Did some heavy-duty, middle-of-the-night mothering of one adolescent son
9. Supported same adolescent son in deciding to quit his not-so-part-time job
10. Helped other adolescent son buy his first car, and make a big decision about timing of schooling 
11. Published 5 blog posts 
12. Meditated 2 times
13. Continued clean-up campaign
14. Wrote 6 Gratitude Journal entries

Highlighted in green is last week's focus goal.  The week's biggest achievement with respect to this goal was to recover my kitchen sink, and to keep it (more or less) shiny and emptied each day--having managed to recruit my husband's participation, if not my children's, in keeping it cleared.  This is the first "baby step" in the Fly Lady's household recovery program, recommended to me by a friend.  While I'm not sure I have the stamina, or the personality to adopt her program wholesale, I am sure she has something to teach me about climbing out from under a decade of desultory housekeeping.  What she, and others recommend about taking change slowly is, I believe, important to much of what I'm trying to accomplish--what I am beginning to experience as something of a life-makeover.  So even if the sink was pretty much it for this week of olympic parenting and emotional work, fitted in around two part-time jobs and some socializing, I plan to keep going.  The clean-up campaign is once again my focus goal for the next week.  As the Fly Lady points out, it took me a long time to get where I am, and it will take some time to reverse course.

Once again, I have decided that the most important thing I did last week was to continue the triathlon training.  As I learned in reading Dr. Lawlis' book, aerobic exercise can help with brain rewiring, which can undergird the kinds of changes I am trying to consolidate.  And in the shorter run, it can burn off some of the stress byproducts that have invaded my body, and make life difficult for me and everyone around me.

And now for the weeds.