33 Day Challenge Update

It turns out that when you challenge yourself to complete thirty nagging tasks in 33 days (on top of all of the regular work and chores and whatnot that you do) and combine it with going to bed at 11:00, there isn’t any time left to blog.

I always suspected that blogging was a massive time suck in my life, but never was that more apparent than the past week.  I started to say that it was a “time waster,” but how can something that inspires me, entertains me, and introduces me to new friends be a waste?  It isn’t, though it does take up a lot of my evenings.

Anyway, now I’m back from hiatus to give you this update.  I’m a third of the way through my challenge, and I’ve only accomplished five things on my list.  One-sixth, to be mathematical about it, which is only half of what I’d hoped to have done by now.

But when I unveiled this plan, the lovely Miss Robin commented:

Happy birthday!  And best wishes on your plan.  Just be kind to yourself as you do it.  The plan is great, but you are more important than the stuff.

I have kept this in mind every single one of the past eleven days, promising myself that even if I only accomplished one thing, it would be one more than I’d done before I started.  So five tasks is five times that! (And yes, all of my math skills are going to be used for good instead of evil.  Especially since my final challenge to myself was to stop being so critical.)

Now, without further ado, I have managed to:

Make two lovely baby books for my two adorable boys.  How on earth did they get so big so fast?  Cliché, and yet it’s the bittersweet truth that we all shake our heads and ask ourselves this every single year.  At least.

Put up new coat hooks for the boys.  While measuring how high it should be off the floor, I grabbed a jacket to test it.  Looked good, so I penciled in the height, screwed that sucker in, and happily hung the jackets on it only to realize… D’oh!  Sebastian’s jacket was a wee bit too long.  I’d grabbed one of Theo’s by mistake.  I confess that I’m less sad about the hooks than about the fact that I can no longer mock Jonathan for sending Sebastian to school in Theo’s jacket.  You see, I try only to mock him for mistakes I never, ever make.  People in glass houses and all that.  So now that one is off the list.  Even if it should’ve been obvious when child put the jacket on and the sleeves were 3/4 instead of full and it would barely zip.  Ahem.

Organize the linen closet.  This is definitely one of those things that I put off for months, fighting my way through towels and sheets that would come unfolded or fall down on my head, when it only took me a half hour to do.  I got rid of two sets of sheets, two sets of towels, and relocated many, many space-saver bags that, instead of doing their jobs elsewhere, were in fact taking up massive amounts of space in that closet.

Applied for Theo’s passport.  This took about an hour of prep and planning, which includes getting his pictures taken.  That’s it.  I’ve been putting it off for 15 months and creating a little extra hassle for myself every time I cross the border (about once a month).  Needless to say, I was delighted to cross this off the list.

That’s it, so far, but I also made appointments and planned ahead for some of the other items, so perhaps I’ll start cranking out two a day in order to get caught up.

Meanwhile, here are some things I’ve done that weren’t on the Challenge List:

Spent time with visiting family
Continued with my wardrobe overhaul (shopping with sisters is the best!)
Finally beat the miserable two-week cold
Rearranged my living room
Took my kids and their cousins trick-or-treating
Avoided almost all of the birthday and Halloween-related treats.  Almost.
Got two consecutive nights of uninterrupted sleep
Planned for and taught 4 different classes
Still managed to feed, clothe, and shelter everyone in the house

Not too shabby after all.