Done for the Week: No Place Like Home

I am beginning this new week wiped out from the previous one.  And for some reason, the coming week's schedule was apparently fashioned by demons.  It calls for super energy, and warp speed.  Starting from my present rag doll state, that will be something of a trick.


Squeezed in around ten hours of plane travel and a couple of large last-minute projects, I managed to get the following done last week:

Done for the Week:  Sept. 12-18, 2011

1. Continued 5K training with my youngest son, in preparation for his first race--Finished Week 3 of 9 Week program
2. Ran 2 times; walked once with my sister, once with my daughter
3. Continued strength training
4. Read A Curtain of Green, and Other Stories, by Eudora Welty
5. Continued to work my two part-time jobs 
6. Provided technical assistance to nonprofit organization
7. Published 1 blog post
8. Continued significant work on current clients' projects
9. Attended Board meeting
10. Traveled to New Orleans; spent 5 days with family
11. Took my Mom out for lunch
12. Took my Mom to the movies
13. Helped my Mom dig out from under paper avalanche
14. Had dinner with my sister and my nephew
15. Did laundry
16. Took my dog to the dog park, with my oldest son
17. Had lunch out with my oldest son
18. Continued reading Elizabeth George's In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner aloud with my husband
19. Went out for Happy Hour with my husband

Last week's "most important thing" was traveling to New Orleans to spend time with my mother and my sister.  My visit was enjoyable, but not especially relaxing.  For one thing, there's the long-distance-daughter guilt, which I generally treat by full-tilt grappling with all manner of problems and dilemmas in my 83-year-old mother's life.  And then there's the time-bending--the exhausting effort to love and relate every minute of my abbreviated stays.  Add in the continuing adjustment to my dad's absence, and the pull to spend time with my caregiving sister, and the wrench of leaving for an indeterminate time, and it makes for a huge expenditure of emotional energy.  Still, it was overdue, and I look forward to doing it all again as soon as I can. 

My focus goal for last week was to "be a good Buddhist, and a good daughter, and to be fully present for [my] visit."  I managed that, with the help of a lousy internet signal "borrowed" from an unknown neighbor of my mother's that made blogging, working, email-checking and skyping with my family at home a near impossibility.  

This week, my goal is to return to work on the novel I put away last winter in the midst of my state's political upheaval.  I hope to maintain a regular, if minimal writing routine.  At least until the next recall heats up, and/or my daughter's high-risk pregnancy concludes, whichever comes first. . .