Genius Toiling in Obscurity

The To-Do List

I hate days during which I do as much as I possibly can, non-stop, and it's not enough. Today I slept a little bit late because of a 3-hour insomnia break from 4-7, but once I was up I was a whirlwind. Well, a slow-moving whirlwind because with this ever-growing fetus to haul around I'm not whirling much lately. Once I was up, I:

• showered and dressed
• dressed the kid
• fed the kid breakfast
• cleaned out and medicated my dog's infected ear
• called the dentist and rescheduled tomorrow's root canal for after the baby is born (when I can have Nitrous Oxide, the blessed gas)
• washed the kid's potty seat, which is cleverly designed to allow urine to collect inside it, creating a wholesome and earthy odor that eventually permeates the whole house
• took the family to the chiropractor
• dropped David at work
• took Eric to the library where he played happily for nearly an hour with the puzzles, farm set, and Brio train while I sat comfortably on a toddler-sized plastic chair and read yet another book about what's wrong with education in this country
• evaluated the blowing snow and slippery roads and decided that finishing our errands quickly was a high priority, so
• bought lunch for me and Eric at a drive-thru instead of going home for lunch
• went to the bank for money to pay the housecleaner tomorrow
• ran out to the vet to pick up our cat Mitch's heart medicine
• came home, fed the kid a snack and read books to him
• sent kid off to bed for Quiet Time
• moaned "why don't I get a nap?"
• started my laundry, which has been in dire shape for days on account of I really only have two pairs of pants that still fit, meaning I should really be doing a load of wash every four days, maximum, and it had been better than a week
• downloaded a huge stack of homework assignments from my course website
• prepared a "here are the answers" handout and started grading homework while trudging periodically to the basement to move the laundry along

It's now 6:00 p.m. I'm frazzled about the brain region and have given up on additional work at this time. Also, I have a meeting at 7:30. So here is what I didn't finish that absolutely had to be done today:

• The homework, which I will now have to finish tomorrow, even though Tuesday is supposed to be a Protected No-Teaching Day
• Returning a phone call of last Wednesday to my mortgage company, which is probably just them trying to sell me payment-protecting faux life insurance, but which I should try to answer in a timely way in case our last payment bounced or something dire like that
• Working on my 3-months backlog of papers and receipts to be filed, soon to be falling over and burying a neighborhood near you
• Collecting the trash from all the wastepaper baskets in the house so it can go out to the curb tonight
• Tidying in the living room and kitchen so the housecleaner can do her job
• Unwadding the couch cover that has been sitting in a laundry basket on the kitchen counter for at least three weeks, and putting it on the couch
• Listening to my relaxation/birth hypnosis CD and getting pleasantly mellow
• Finishing my laundry, and doing Eric's.

Several of those things will have to be done tonight, no matter how drag-assed I am after my meeting lets out at 9:30: some version of tidying will have to happen, for instance, though to Tiera's credit, if there are a bunch of toys around she just tosses them all into Eric's room and keeps going. And I will probably get up from writing this and collect the trash and then do my relaxation while I wait for Eric to wake up so I can go get David from work. The rest of it will have to be added to tomorrow's to-do list, as if tomorrow's list weren't long enough already:

• take child to Toddler Patrol at the Nature Center and then the cafe for a steamer because I promised him we would have a steamer after our snowy nature walk
• hang Eric's one-year and two-year portraits, which it would be nice to do before he turns 3 in May
• contact all the incredibly busy members of a committee I'm in charge of, whose Saturday meeting was canceled and now needs to be re-scheduled, preferably before, well, Eric's third birthday in May
• complete a bit of writing for yet another committee, which I promised would be done last week
• go through my in-box and do money, including trying to figure out why we're always broke

Posted by Su Penn at January 26, 2004 06:15 PM | TrackBack