My concentration has been CRAP the last couple of weeks. I thought last week was just an outlier week, since my head was wrapped up in figuring out the garage stuff.
But we got some of that resolved (at least some decisions made, I think, and even a lot of actual progress in putting things back together) last weekend. And my concentration is still crap this week. (Though maybe moderately better, I guess.)
I just can’t seem to keep my brain focused on one thing for more than 5 minutes before my thoughts start flitting to something else. It’s driving me quite insane.
It’s not even my phone that is a distraction right now- it’s more my own thoughts, or competing desires to “check things/ work on things/ accomplish things” that seem to be pulling me in many different directions. I’m not the best at just turning it off. I need to take some items on the list and just shove them aside, and say NOPE, not right now…not even thinking about you right now. Come back later! But that doesn’t seem to be working!
Anyway, it has made for a trying workweek, because obviously I need to FOCUS on my work and I feel more like a crazy squirrel looking for a nut or something.
On the plus side, we’ve made some good progress on misc. things around here.
- I bought some cabinets for the garage! They don’t completely solve our storage issues, but it’s a nice start.
- All of our garage stuff is out of the basement!! It took forever and I almost passed out from exhaustion, but after 85 trips up and down the stairs, all of the bins are out of my storage room. We spent 3 hours dumping everything onto the garage floor Sunday afternoon and weeded stuff out, threw stuff away, made a donate pile….YES. Felt amazing to have that done. Everything is now at least temporarily homed somewhere functional for the winter.
- We cleaned out our backyard shed. This was another huge and tiring job. But also feels amazing.
- I took a van load of stuff to the landfill (I know, sad…but this stuff was truly landfill-worthy. Like, broken junk/ stuff that could not be re-purposed).
- I made a trip to St. Vinny’s to offload some other re-usable items.
- Remember that pretty golden tree I posted the other day? Well, in about 24 hours it dropped >75% of its leaves. So the boys and I worked outside for 2 1/2 hours after school Wednesday cleaning all of that up. (Ivan spent ALL last weekend cleaning up the rest of our yard for fall…).
- I hung holiday pictures in my new frames in the basement! These are intended to display travel photos, eventually, but for the holiday season I ordered some past Christmas pictures. I walk past these frames about 20 times a day, so I’m loving this. 🙂
- AND…as mentioned… we put up a big chunk of our Christmas decorations Monday night.
- I also kind of started Christmas shopping- I have officially purchased some things for my nieces/nephew, something for my Dad, and a couple things for my Mom! REALLY need to get going on the boys’ gifts, though….
JEESH, no wonder I’m tired. This is quite a list for 1 week. I was feeling really annoyed with myself that after a solid month of perfect attendance, I haven’t made it to the gym this week. (Grrrrr……I WILL NOT let this habit slide away again! I’m going this morning, no matter what.) But I guess I have done plenty of other things.
Thought of the Day:
Don’t be so hard on yourself. The mom in E.T. had an alien life form living in her house for days and she never even noticed. 😄
Daily Gratitude:
I am grateful that the headache I had yesterday morning WENT AWAY promptly after some Ibuprofen. I had scheduled my booster vaccine for yesterday a.m. (through work, for hospital employees, so that’s why I was eligible) but cancelled it when I woke up with a bad headache. Didn’t want to add potential vaccine symptoms to my already pounding head… Will have to reschedule for next week.
GRATEFUL KAE 
Love the framed holiday pictures. I need to do this.
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Yes! It’s fun! My ultimate plan is to print a bunch of different travel and/or seasonal prints and keep them in a folder, and then set a reminder in my phone to change them on the 1st of every month. That way I’ll be able to enjoy a variety of great photos all year long. 🙂
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The framed pictures are such a great idea (I think I heard Gretchen Rubin mention doing this with Halloween pictures)? A few years I’ve posted our old holiday cards on our fridge – mostly I find it too overwhelming in terms of clutter with the rest of the holiday decorations, so having dedicated wall space over the holiday season is genius.
Hope next week is a little easier in terms of concentration. This week has been okay for me, but today is feeling…not great. It’s currently pouring outside, our renos (delayed for 2 months that JUST started Wednesday) are halted again and it’s supposed to rain all next week too. I’m sitting in the mechanic shop – a totally unexpected addition to my day – and I’m cold, tired, and just had a work meeting that is leaving me overwhelmed before a busy birthday weekend. Sigh. I “should” be dealing with action items from the meeting but, alas, the mechanic shop isn’t offering much motivation to be productive.
Onward and upward. A few weeks ago at my Bible Study the leader suggested “Use anxiety as a cue for gratitude.” So: thankful the renos started and the materials are in and the staging is up. Grateful for another birthday with my favourite little boy. Glad we can do some small birthday celebrations this year and make him feel special. Grateful for wonderful mechanics who treat us like friends and always fit us in when we need an emergency appointment.
There, I feel moderately less overwhelmed and grumpy. At least until I find our what’s wrong with the car…
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Ugh I feel for you starting renovations at this time of year!!! They are such a pain!! I love having things done at the house but I hate um, actually having to do them (or even deal with someone else doing them, if it affects me at all). Hahaha.
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it happens to all of us from time to time feeling overwhelmed, tired, unfocused. don’t be too harsh on yourself especially you’ve done a lot actually! 🙂
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You got A LOT done and much of what you did was a lot of work – especially the garage project! I hate feeling the way you do, but writing things down tends to help. But it sounds like you are already doing that. Hopefully getting your 2022 planner in hand is helping as you can put things in that that don’t need to be done right now (assuming some of these tasks can wait that long).
I haven’t bought any Christmas gifts! I know what we need to buy, though. And I told Phil he is in charge of finding the refurbished iPad for Paul. He’s good at looking at stuff like that and finding the best deal so it was the perfect thing to outsource to him! We put our tree up this weekend and I went to a wreath-making party on Saturday which was really really fun. Seeing all these gift lists posted all over the place kind of stresses me out and makes me think “should I be getting more for our kids?” But then I remind myself that we get to decide how to celebrate Christmas/how much to give our boys and that I do not need to guilt myself into thinking we shoudl buy buy buy.
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