So this weekend was super long and wonderful, yet no longer than most weekends. The only thing not wonderful was that husband o’ mine was away at a meet in L.A. But when Matt’s away, Annie will play! At home. All alone. And that’s perfectly OK with her.
I really cannot remember the last time I felt lonely. Is there something wrong with me? I think it might stem from childhood “quiet time”/my mom’s genius ploy to pencil in a nap for herself everyday.
“OK kiddos, it’s quiet time,” she would say as she took the home phone off the hook to insure the house remained silent. No random cell phones were around yet to interrupt the gift of a power nap. Even if I turn my cell phone on silent now, I still grab it as soon as I wake up. Like it’s been tapping me steadily throughout a rest and I’m finally giving in to its persistent presence.
Anyway- back to quiet time. I’d go to my room and magic would transpire. I’d have some unbelievable party at my Polly Pocket mansion or play out some Little House on the Prairie scenario with my American Girl doll (Kirsten) and her minion Barbie friends. I was never lonely. I was surrounded by friends…hard, plastic, never-blinking friends. haha. But those were such imaginative times.
Matt and I were talking the other night (as he half-watched Crocodile Dundee and could still forecast each line) about the vividness of our childhood memories. If there was a movie on, I was completely engrossed and it either needed to be turned off or paused in order for me to hear any outside dialogue.
Then sometime, maybe around 4th or 5th grade, we start getting distracted. I wish I could be so fully in-tune with everything I do now. I would lose track of time during quiet time because I was entranced by the storyline unfolding on the stage set in my bedroom closet.
This weekend, I did not lose track of time. I would look at the clock and be amazed by the amount of the day which remained! So much time for activities!
Yesterday, I coached from 6 a.m. til 8. Then Emma and I swam. Then I took a nap, because there’s no way I’d be peppy throughout the day after a 5:20 wakeup. I put in my fair share of those in training days. I taught a private lesson at noon, then went antiquing with Emma. We bought nothing, but came away with loads of inspiration for DIY projects. I still believe labeling trash as “antiques” jacks up their so-called value by $50. Then we went to one of the best places on Earth– Hobby Lobby.
Other random activities this weekend:
-Washed all of the couch cushion covers and counted putting them back on as “intense cardio” in MyFitnessPal. Accurate.
-Washed the bed sheets/all my laundry/towels. Simplified: I did laundry. Putting sheets back on = 10 min. of low intensity cardio in MyFitnessPal.
-Bought wedding gifts for three couples. I think I was on Etsy, looking at every type of personalized cutting board for two hours, maybe more. Carpe diem, right? Goodness. Everyone is getting hitched this year!
-Random boxing session on the back porch as a monsoon rolled in. I was making it rain…get it? I whiffed the bag on one punch and decided to call it quits after my shoulder almost swung out of socket.
-Post-pathetic monsoon: took some photos with my new Nikon D3300 of a not-so-pathetic sunset.
-Listened to this Timothy Keller sermon about God’s plans for us being incomprehensibly bigger than we may have imagined. He used this incredible metaphor from C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. Let me find it….
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
-Picked up both pups from a traumatic grooming experience. They were in side-by-side crates, therefore could not see each other and had severe separation anxiety. Well, Gretel did. How do you bark for four solid hours, little brown bear?
-Talked to mom, sister, best bud, and husband on the phone. Learned how to make myself clean….do it while on the phone. I hardly noticed the sweat on my brow from scrubbing the kitchen sink….again, I’m so far from the days of being totally engrossed by one activity. Must. Do. More.
-Wrapped a fried egg in a tortilla smeared with basil pesto and called it dinner. Have you had Kirkland’s Basil Pesto? Holy moly. I love it. Then I had fancy mixed nuts. Then a protein shake. Then an apple. Then I decided I should schedule meals while MG is away to insure I do not eat a Brazil nut every minute between 7p.m. to 10 p.m. #snackattack #pantryrampage
-Watched Robert Ebert documentary. If I can be a critic of a doc on a film critic, I’d say it needed to be an hour shorter. When movies start to feel long, I start to get the jitters…there are so many better things to do with my time!
Speaking of being a good steward of our time…I’ve been wondering. How many hours per day do people with 9-5s actually work? Matt and I have watched Mad Men, where they drink and nap and gossip in their offices, but is that a thing of the past…or just a thing of Hollywood?
I feel very guilty when I squander time that is meant to be purposefully spent, but sometimes I wonder if that’s an athlete trait. We NEVER had time to squander, and if I did, it was because I was carving time out of my night’s sleep….as I’m doing now.
I work from home in the mornings, which I thought I would suck at, but I (shockingly) don’t. I get stuff done as soon as I wake up. I grab my whopping cup of water and an equally generous serving of coffee, pull up my chair, and get to editing. That’s when I edit best. With fresh, swollen, morning eyes. So if there are any mistakes in this post, it’s because it’s late….and because I’m not perfect.
On Matt’s sleep-in days, I try to pound out as much as I can before he emerges from the bedroom….typically 2-3 hours after me. Intervals. Deadlines. I need them. I hate them. I love them.
In the Ebert documentary I just watched, he talks about getting in the zone. You know the zone. It’s a place you go when you’re doing something you like and/or are passionate about. I suppose I could get into a zone during tests in school; not because I was an impassioned test taker, but because I was an impassioned student. I wanted to succeed in school.
I love getting in the zone. I always loved when I was mid-main set in a practice, and I realized I had stopped thinking about any physical discomfort. I was in the zone. Grinding it out- thinking about anything and everything other than pain. Then I’d drag myself from the pool and feel it all culminate into muscly knots an hour or two later. Just like you feel sleep deprivation the next day when “your zone” encroaches into your night’s sleep.
Let’s circle back to work time. How long can we humans actually be productive? How many people sit behind a desk doing nothing but clicking and closing various tabs for half of the work day?
The 9-5 job I once had was from home, but I was so clueless as to what I was supposed to be doing that I probably did not spend all of my minutes wisely. I sure tried to.
I’d just like to know the average number of concentrated hours our brains are designed to work. If my days were not broken up into Swimming World editing/writing, afternoon workout, then coaching from 4-7, I do not think I’d be nearly as productive. I think Spain has a good thing going on with the afternoon siesta. There’s no doubt in my mind that segmenting the day makes for more productive, enjoyable work.
I get so excited about free days that I almost paralyze myself with ideas on what to do. And then I go and do something silly, like cold-turkey boxing, that may actually paralyze me with soreness tomorrow.
This entry went a lot like my weekend. All over the place. Spontaneous. Too many ideas. But just like my weekend, I loved living out every leisurely, unplanned part of it.
