I seem to be having some technical trouble with the spacing. will keep working on it...
PNewL PNewS
Volume 17 No. 2 “All the pnews that phits.” July 2009
Time Management
The other day I was getting ready to go out. I had an hour before I needed to leave, and I felt I was already late. Then I paused. I have an entire hour with little more than a shower, getting dressed etc, and breakfast. This seemed manageable in an hour but for some reason, it felt unmanageable. I sat myself down to discuss.
For those who don’t know this about me, I am one of the fastest shower-ers ever. I am not sure what people do in the shower for more than seven minutes. I mean really—what are you doing in there? Whatever you are doing, either I skip it or do it super fast because other than when I am freezing cold, I am bored after a few minutes. And having lived in California for so many years during the drought and now in NC on a well, paranoid it will run dry, the sound of a shower is just not all that comforting.
Ok, so shower takes up less than 10 minutes being overly generous, allowing for undressing, organizing towel and bath mat, making sure the bucket is there collect pre-warm water.
Post-shower. In case there is any doubt, I don’t dither over what I am going to wear. Ok, maybe there are those times when something got into the closet or drawer just too wrinkled, or a little bit stained and I have to start over, but really, figuring out what to wear is not something I spend a ton of time on. I’ll give it less than 10 minutes, a generous amount of time again. Oh maybe not so generous. And here’s why: When I went to Florida to surprise Gini for her birthday, she asked if there was anything I wanted to do while I was there. I said, let’s get our make-up done. This was a bit out of character as I have not worn much make-up since I worked in downtown San Francisco in the ‘80s. Since my hair has started to get light again (I was a blond into my 20s and am, in my 50s, getting lighter again, this time heading silver), I think I look washed out and I thought it might be interesting to see if I could get some color back. We went to see Joanne who sells Mary Kay and she did the whole she-bang, with q-tips and cotton balls and dabs of this and that. It’s pretty basic, when I remember to do it—little line here, mascara there, blush and I am outa there. Don’t tell Joanne as she thinks I am putting on all sorts of goop too. All totaled, that takes about 90 seconds.
On the subject of breakfast: I do have a teeny ritual there that involves a little stovetop espresso maker and two cups. And in the winter I have oatmeal and in the summer, blender drink. Much of this can be multitasked so it doesn’t take as much time as one might think. At the outside, let’s give breakfast and reading the paper (or as Chris describes it, looking at the pictures) 15 minutes. At the outside we are looking at less than 36 ½ minutes. That number shocks me as I don’t think of those things as taking that much time, but there you have it.
When the dog is in residence, I need to add walk time: 30+ minutes, breakfast preparing: 7 minutes, telling him how handsome he is: most of the day. On the day that this whole discussion started, he was not here luckily or it would have been much more complicated.
While these numbers for morning prep are small and I should have 20+ minutes to spare, I know myself pretty well sometimes. The thing I know about myself that does not yet figure in the above equation is what I call “The Farting Around Factor” (FAF). I apologize to those of you for whom this language is indelicate, but it is what it is.
FAF easily takes several hours a day, or more if the time is available. It encompasses a whole slew of things that derail my schedule. It includes checking email which often morphs into googling any number of topics. It includes trying to get stuff that has migrated from its home in another room to visible horizontal surfaces, back to its home. This is complicated by the “Why did I come into this room?” dilemma. You know, you walk into the bathroom to put away something that was in the living room and on the way back, find yourself in the office thinking you would be efficient by picking up….now what was it I was here for? Yeah, I feel you nodding. And then there’s the adult onset ADD mentioned in previous issues in which I figure that as long as I am here and can’t remember why, I could just reorganize the thread collection or look for that article I wanted to read on crazy quilt stitching.
A friend was visiting recently and he said his wife’s time management issues drove him crazy. Ah dear friend, I feel your pain.
Things I am Learning & Miscellaneous Observations
* The birds that built the nest on my back porch are long gone. It was a bit disturbing that they left while I was out of town, leaving no note, no thank you, no “It was mighty kind of you to allow us to trash your back porch and prevent you from using it for over a month while we lay eggs, sat on them, hatched five lovely youngsters and taught them to fly.” There are Eastern Phoebes that fly around my yard but I don’t know if they were born here or were parents here or who knows, both.
* I am a bit frustrated with me and digital cameras because I don’t make prints and put them in to albums any more. When I saw the little books listed on the Kodak website, I decided to check it out and I had a small book made of some of my photographs of Bhutan. This is SO cool. A couple weeks later, this little book arrived with all my beautiful pictures bound into a little book that weighs NOTHING compared to the albums I have been carting around. What fun. I know a lot of you have been doing this for ages and I know there are all sorts of companies doing such a thing, but this is my first and it was a very satisfying experience!
* In the AARP Bulletin November 2008, there was a “snapshot” of a person’s life who works until s/he retires at 66, with a list of statistics. I found it interesting that the average worker spends TWO YEARS sick and only 1.4 years on vacation.
* Since I last wrote, I have been out and about. I went to a conference in Washington DC and fell in love with our nation’s capital, and to the Bay Area for the annual Angel Island picnic. All good. I also went to a quilt symposium in Raleigh (my first foray into the eastern side of the state) that was lots of fun and where I learned lots of neat stuff from really inspiring talented teachers.
* People are so different. I had some neighbors who are planning a backpacking trip in Colorado in a little over two weeks over for dinner the other night. Susan was talking about buying shoes for the trip. When I asked when they were leaving, they said they needed to make reservations. So they’d ordered shoes but not plane tickets? Very differen from how I do things…!
* I want to say something about Facebook but I am not sure what it is. I was struck by the fact that my niece has over 500 friends; that people are uploading over 1 billion photos a month (source: FB website); that the fastest growing segment of the FB population is over 35. In the March 15 NY Times Magazine, writer Peggy Orenstein ruminates over the effect this phenomenon is having on the younger generation. For her (a woman of a certain age) it’s fun to re-connect with people from the past—but with the young who don’t have a significant past, is it about staying up to date every minute? (I’m not going to even get into Twitter!) Another article in the same magazine (10/26/08), the author was realizing he had 700 friends on FB but no one to meet up with at a pub. Ok, that’s probably ‘nuff said.
* Back to School sales have begun. They actually started a while back. This is a very difficult time of year for me. I love new notebooks—I have a moratorium on new notebooks--and pens, scotch tape, Crayola products, and don’t even start on the plastic storage issue. Have you seen the Really Useful Boxes (Made in the USA) at Office Depot? I want one in every size and color. I am getting there.
* I am a bit frustrated with me and digital cameras because I don’t make prints and put them in to albums any more. When I saw the little books listed on the Kodak website, I decided to check it out and I had a small book made of some of my photographs of Bhutan. This is SO cool. A couple weeks later, this little book arrived with all my beautiful pictures bound into a little book that weighs NOTHING compared to the albums I have been carting around. What fun. I know a lot of you have been doing this for ages and I know there are all sorts of companies doing such a thing, but this is my first and it was a very satisfying experience!
* In the AARP Bulletin November 2008, there was a “snapshot” of a person’s life who works until s/he retires at 66, with a list of statistics. I found it interesting that the average worker spends TWO YEARS sick and only 1.4 years on vacation.
* Since I last wrote, I have been out and about. I went to a conference in Washington DC and fell in love with our nation’s capital, and to the Bay Area for the annual Angel Island picnic. All good. I also went to a quilt symposium in Raleigh (my first foray into the eastern side of the state) that was lots of fun and where I learned lots of neat stuff from really inspiring talented teachers.
* People are so different. I had some neighbors who are planning a backpacking trip in Colorado in a little over two weeks over for dinner the other night. Susan was talking about buying shoes for the trip. When I asked when they were leaving, they said they needed to make reservations. So they’d ordered shoes but not plane tickets? Very differen from how I do things…!
* I want to say something about Facebook but I am not sure what it is. I was struck by the fact that my niece has over 500 friends; that people are uploading over 1 billion photos a month (source: FB website); that the fastest growing segment of the FB population is over 35. In the March 15 NY Times Magazine, writer Peggy Orenstein ruminates over the effect this phenomenon is having on the younger generation. For her (a woman of a certain age) it’s fun to re-connect with people from the past—but with the young who don’t have a significant past, is it about staying up to date every minute? (I’m not going to even get into Twitter!) Another article in the same magazine (10/26/08), the author was realizing he had 700 friends on FB but no one to meet up with at a pub. Ok, that’s probably ‘nuff said.
* Back to School sales have begun. They actually started a while back. This is a very difficult time of year for me. I love new notebooks—I have a moratorium on new notebooks--and pens, scotch tape, Crayola products, and don’t even start on the plastic storage issue. Have you seen the Really Useful Boxes (Made in the USA) at Office Depot? I want one in every size and color. I am getting there.
