Scatterbrained Sidetracking

WOTH named this blog IRL* In Real Life with Jamie Jo, but a reader recently commented that I’ve never devoted a post to what “real life” actually looks like for me.  At the risk of boring you to bits, I’ve decided to lay it out here and describe a typical weekday for me in Mexico.  (You’ve been warned.)

By 7:00 A.M. my day is well underway.  I am generally up and at 'em, a load of laundry started, with breakfast, personal and family devotions behind me, and one or two kids rushed out the door to catch the carpool to the MK school in the city.  (Hey, speaking of which, do any of you know of teachers or a principal who might want to come to Oaxaca in the near future?)

Just like that last paragraph, my day is full of rabbit trails and scatterbrained sidetracking.  Multitasking is not my strong suit.  My goal is to devote the full morning to instructing my youngest daughter who is way too much like me (except for talking too much) to ever accomplish this.  She has Apraxia in addition to, ahem, ADD tendencies, and school requires a heap of personal attention and direction.  Every history and science text must be read aloud to her, along with other books we read aloud together just for fun.

For a couple of hours, a home-schooled friend of Miss Will-You-Please-Hurry-Up comes for English, science, and P.E.  That helps us get back on track.  P.E. is worth mentioning because we close all the drapes and doors and turn the volume down low while we sweat to Wii Dance.  (The neighbors would not understand.)  That is the highlight of our morning, enabling us to stay awake to finish our morning studies.  No promises after lunch at 1:00 or 1:30.

Any typical day I might be interrupted with home deliveries of drinking water or gas tanks, neighbors needing to borrow something (until the lawn mower finally broke – what on earth are we going to do now?), one of the three phones ringing (Lingo phone from the U.S., local phone, or Skype – since now pastors in the villages have internet and think every time they see that Jim-Jamie are online they should ring us up to bless our day, and then once I’m on the computer, well, I really should check email, Facebook, and Pinterest. 

When dh is not traveling (this week he is in Mozambique for the dedication of a friend’s recording studio like ours), he is working mostly from home, in and out between here and the office next door.  That can provide a distraction, too, as we stop to discuss the day’s/week’s events, emails (will you answer that one or should I?), and challenges.  Did I mention we are both talkers?

Several times a week I am blessed to have a local gal (not a maid, but more of a housekeeper we have sort of adopted) come to fix lunch, do some light cleaning, and (thank you, Lord!) run interference with the phone and door while I teach.  She is my right hand and my sanity saver.  Whatever I start but don’t finish, she discovers and completes (hanging laundry, ironing, breakfast dishes, etc.)  When the babies were little, and I was home educating four children, she was indispensable.  Now she is just a blessing.  I can even send her a text message to pick up eggs, milk, or tortillas when needed.  Yes, I am spoiled.

Afternoon activities vary, but are boring to recount (housework, lesson plans, etc).   My favorite things are prayer with the other missionary moms on Monday, writing in my journal, blogging, talking to my adult dc*, playing the piano, or reading for pleasure.  Then there are those city days when I take teens to the orthodontist, do grocery shopping, get a haircut, or attend meetings at the school.  Those are tiring days for sure.  

No matter what a day brings, I'm always ready to crash by 9:00 or so.  Getting distracted and not completing tasks is exhausting!

IRL* Now I’m wondering how your day compares to mine…. Do tell!

Computer-induced ADD

Time is another one of my obsessions. I waste more time pondering what in the world I’ve done with it. Dh says I just think too much in general. But honestly, have you taken time to analyze where it goes?

In the old days of intense mothering (where some of you currently and seemingly forever reside), one day morphed into the next as I endured those 24/7 shifts seven days a week with no clue such a thing as “free time” even existed. Back then it was a good thing to be overseas where real life was busy, and we had no such thing as telephone and junk mail, not to mention sports or other extra-curricular activities for the kids. I could focus on the little priorities I was raising.

Nowadays I find I have developed a case of adult-onset ADD. I tend to flit from one time waster to another. Having Internet has contributed to the problem. I can “quickly” check in on Facebook, mostly looking for news from my children, and find myself fully sucked in an hour later, praying for this, “liking” that, and wishing a dozen friends a happy birthday.

Then there is Pinterest. If you haven’t discovered Pinterest yet, don’t go near it unless you are highly disciplined, and can stay there only for 10 minutes of inspiration and relaxation. For me, I find way too many recipes and craft ideas that I know full well I will never try, but I file them away for a hypothetical day in the future when I might.

Being the frugal missionary, I was delighted with a link on Pinterest for painting upholstered furniture. That would be so much simpler than shopping for fabric, finding someone to do the work, hauling the furniture to the city, etc. Right? I wasted the next hour reading blog after blog about how to do this “simple” job. Then I discovered that the main ingredient I needed was something I would never be able to find in Mexico. Another good idea that will come to nothing.

One final time eater is my Kindle. I hesitate to say anything, because I honestly LOVE my Kindle. I have several versions of the Bible on it, plus several devotional books I am using for 2012. The trouble is that I fritter my time away hunting for online bargains and freebies to read. For a while I was downloading so many free books, it was a full-time job just to organize them all.

The biggest blessing I discovered this past week is that I can borrow books for free with Amazon Prime. Now that’s cool. I am only allowed one book at a time. That forces me to focus and actually finish one book before I download the next one.

Having Amazon Prime is worth it for me, since I tend to procrastinate on ordering things (another symptom of my ADD-ishness) until I am forced to pay for second day shipping or risk wasting further time writing emails to track down packages that inevitably arrive too late.

Somehow I picture the rest of you happily occupied with real people and projects, well organized and self-disciplined, ministering to others full-time. For your sake, I hope you are not in a computer-induced attention deficit mode. If you are, may 2012 be a year we both find balance between worthwhile and wasted time.

IRL* Striving to regain control over my time.

CHAOS: Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome

Giving people the benefit of the doubt, another viable reason people don’t have us over is that maybe, just possibly, their homes are a mess. It’s a thought. Flylady calls it CHAOS—Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome. In fact I'm suffering from CHAOS myself right now.

Being married to a neatnik tidy husband, my sloppy creative approach to housekeeping had to be somewhat modified. Early on I realized that my scatterbrainedness temperament type was not going to work as an excuse for long. I read Side-tracked Home Executives: From Pigpen to Paradise by Pam Young and Peggy Jones, and made up my own system for tidying up the house without making Jim [dh*] insane.

I vowed to never again lose eyeglasses and keys. A huge blessing was having free radial keratotomy surgery on my eyes. After my vision was corrected, I no longer directed the daily game of “Hunt for Mommy’s Glasses.” When the computer fonts started mysteriously shrinking (once I hit forty), I succumbed to reading glasses, but I seldom lose them. I simply hide them everywhere. I leave a pair in every room of the house. That, too, makes my dh* a tad crazy, but he doesn’t complain [much].

In order to prevent lost keys, I systematically put them on a particular hook in the kitchen as soon as I walk in the house. When I am out, the keys go in my right front pocket. When I am in town using a parking garage, I always put the ticket in my back right pocket. My cell phone goes in my left front pocket. When I’m wearing a skirt without pockets, I am in trouble. At home I am almost as compulsive about where I put certain things. In fact, I never noticed this before, but I’ve become a bit obsessive compulsive to compensate for my tendency toward scatterbrainedness.

Until now, that is.

Dh* hired some guys to cover our ugly cracked cement floors with tile. This project required emptying each room and closet one by one while the men worked. We're talking seventeen years' worth of accumulated treasures. Ugh.

This month I realized how systematic I usually am. My little routines all went haywire. I’ve become a certifiable ADD scatterbrain again. No order anywhere. All my compensating techniques are out the window (while the flies and dust are coming in the doors the workers never close). How does a reformed space cadet slob keep from sliding down that slippery slope to old bad habits?

To stop the pendulum from swinging from ADD to OCD and back again, I am clinging to the Holy Spirit to again take control of my temperament. Impulsive and compulsive are both dangerous zones. Meanwhile I'm thankful for tips and encouragement from the SHEs (Sidetracked Home Executives) on their website, and from Flylady. (If only Flylady could help me get rid of all the flies in here!)

How about you?

IRL*Do you need Flylady to rescue you so you can be hospitable again?