Squeezing in some fall fun, a planning challenge, and Monday misc.

I still need to get one more Mexico post up (to recap the actual quinceanera!) but not feeling like sorting through all those pictures today.

I think I’ll just do a Monday Misc. post here with some random, real time life updates. 🙂

Charlie sleeping:

First, how sweet is this pic of Charlie?

I took this the night we got home from Mexico. He had been with my SIL and her kids all day, so he was exhausted I think. (When there’s a lot of commotion, he is very bad about going off anywhere to nap….).

Once I opened my bed, he immediately jumped right up, crawled into “his spot” (which is actually my spot… but he and I will agree to disagree on that one, lol) and crashed. Ivan and I were milling around unpacking, putting things away, had all the lights on, etc. and he was just OUT. Haha. So cute.

Savoring some fall leaves/ fall vibes

Between Nashville the 1st week of October and Mexico the 3rd week of October, I was bummed to miss so much of my favorite month in Wisconsin.

I didn’t really have a chance to seek out any “real” leaf peeping adventures this past week (at a state park or hike or anything), but I at least tried to soak some up on my daily walks with Charlie in the neighborhood.

One crisp morning before work, I also turned on our basement fireplace and settled into a video rocker chair with my tea to read for a little bit before anyone else was awake. (I finally got Cal Newport’s latest Slow Productivity in from the library, so I was excited to start that.)

Soccer Saturday on a beautiful fall day

Saturday Ethan’s Varsity soccer team had a playoff game at 11 am at his school.

It was a really chilly early morning (my phone said upper 30s!), but by game time it was a perfectly pleasant mid-50s with full sunshine. I wore a sweatshirt and a puffy vest and was not cold at all; the sun felt warm on my face.

The leaves in the school parking lot were so pretty, as were the trees lining the field. It scratched my itch for a “fall activity” while still basically doing something I “had to do”, anyway. (That sounds negative- not what I mean. Just that we’d go to Ethan’s game, anyway, so it was a bonus to have a beautiful fall setting, too.)

Sunday snuggles + holiday planning challenges:

Yesterday morning I sat at my computer in the sunroom. I spent quite a while trying to wrap my head around all of the various upcoming tasks that span the holiday season.

As you all know, I’m a Google calendar and Google Tasks devotee, but my usual “Do today”, “This week” and “Upcoming” tasks lists (among others) weren’t quite serving me exactly in this case.

The holiday season is a unique challenge for me. There are SO many tasks, yet some are bigger/ more abstract (like, “gift buying”….), some are more specific (“put up Christmas tree”) and some are dependent on other things (like, “gift wrapping”. Can’t really do that if I haven’t bought the gifts yet….).

My sister and family will be home for the holidays beginning mid-December, so I’m trying to be extra proactive this year. (Ha. I say that every year, and I always fail….).

But what I really wanted was to list out ALL the tasks I need to do between now (end of October) and Christmas, and then sort of “assign them” to myself at reasonable intervals, to hopefully space out the workload.

Typically I just drop any future/upcoming tasks on my Upcoming list (or another specific list), and then I pick from those each week to move a few items forward to my This Week list. Anything really time sensitive or specific usually just goes on my Google Calendar as an “event” so I can’t miss it (like, “cancel app trial subscription”).

But with this holiday stuff, these aren’t all hard deadlines exactly, so I more so just wanted to sketch out like, ok, I’ll inventory the Christmas lights/ buy any new ones in X week. Then in Y week I’ll put them up. I’ll plan to work on picking Christmas card photos and have it ordered by Z date. Etc. The idea was to space things out and ideally prevent a huge snowball effect pile up of like, oh crap, it’s December 10th and I’ve done nothing so far….

Anyway, my Google Calendar doesn’t really have a blank spot on the calendar for each week where you can just sketch general notes or ideas/ to- dos (I wish there was like a “sticky note” feature!! Or an extra column for the week for free text/ weekly notes.).

I can add “Tasks” (a separate calendar which can be toggled on and off) to specific days though (or of course, calendar events). I also have access to both my Google Tasks lists or Google Keep notes right in the sidebar.

I finally landed on:

1. Make a big master list of ALL upcoming to-dos in my Upcoming list.
2. Go through list, assign each a date (or, if just assigning a general week, put on the Sunday of that week)
3. Once assigned, pull these tasks from Upcoming list over to a (newly created) specific November or December list
4. Any not-yet-assigned tasks will just stay in my general Upcoming list (I review all my lists frequently anyway, can move around/assign as needed)
5. Each week I’ll also review the November and December lists and pop anything assigned for that particular week over into my This Week list, as applicable. (And then, to my Do Today list, that morning)

The dated tasks will also trigger a reminder on my actual calendar (as a “Task”) and will also be over in the sidebar on their respective list.

So in summary, my personal Nested Lists system is (see photo above):

• Do today= do today (duh)
• This Week= do this week
• Upcoming= general spot to put things that I have to do in near-ish future, but not necessarily now, or this week
• November= assigned tasks with a November due date
• December= ditto for Dec.
• All the other lists= future tasks related to a specific life realm but not necessarily urgent (e.g. “Household” list currently includes a note to pick out some prints for some frames. I want to do this, but not now. This will just hang out here probably til after the holidays when eventually I’ll move it to my Upcoming list and actually take action on it. But I don’t want to forget about it…)

Overall, I think this should work! I realize this probably sounds very complicated, but I swear, it’s not!! lol!!

(I usually do not “assign” future tasks to myself in such a detailed way, but it always feels more complicated in this Oct-Dec timeframe and feels necessary/helpful here.)

FYI, this is what it looks like when the assigned Tasks show up on a specific day. (I like that I can just toggle the Tasks on and off, so I don’t always have to see them, either.)

Charlie oversaw my planning neurosis and was very helpful 😅. (He was not helpful at all.)

My new Dia de los Muertos decor:

Here are the things I bought at the market in Mexico, side by side:

And current spots on the shelf. I put them together to kind of keep the “Mexican” theme on one shelf.

World Series:

Not a big baseball fan particularly, though I enjoy it well enough. We were able to catch Game 1 at the Mexican restaurant Friday night, which was very enjoyable. Also WOW what an ending with that grand slam!! Will probably definitely tune in for Game 3 tonight because, why not. (Though no skin in the game here and I don’t particularly care who wins, but I guess we’re rooting for the Dodgers, per Ivan.)

More Charlie:

It’s fair game time for Christmas movies:

Hallmark channel’s Countdown to Christmas officially kicked off recently, so this means it’s fair game and no longer weird to have Christmas movies on the TV. Haha.

I have yet to actually sit down and watch one, but I really enjoy just having them on in the background when I’m puttering around. There is something oddly soothing about them, to me… I half- follow the story but mostly just enjoy glimpses of the pretty decorations and always good-looking strangers bumping into each other and falling in love. 🤣

A lovely fall afternoon:

Yesterday I cleaned the house. Ivan cut the grass and the boys worked. I made a chicken and rice soup in the crock pot, burned a Pumpkin Pie candle and had the Packers football game on TV. The house smelled wonderful and everything looked nice and was clean and in its place…. so wonderful. Sigh. Those little moments are the best.

We bought a bathroom light fixture!!!

We FINALLY went out on Saturday after Ethan’s game and bought a damn light fixture for the bathroom remodel!!! This project needs to end NOW. But we just had not found a light fixture, so, there is currently just a lightbulb hanging in there…

But now, done and done. Check! Should arrive within a week. Then we can get a mirror and the bathroom will actually look done!

We went to a Haunted Forest on Saturday night.

There’s a local farm that puts on a very scary and awesome Haunted Forest every fall. I took the boys a couple years ago, but Ivan had never been.

We weren’t really planning to go this year (we just hadn’t really talked about it), but last week Asher came to me and asked if I would drive him and 2 friends to it. I ended up asking Ivan if we should all go, and he then asked his cousin + family to join us, too!

It was super fun!! Perfect activity for the week leading into Halloween.

I texted my parents this as we were heading out… “practicing my scared face!” Hahaha….

We arrived a little early and got some snacks/ hot chocolate etc.

Asher had a lot of fun with his 2 friends too. I have a cute pic of them but am too lazy to block out their faces right now!

And finally, some misc. internet saves:

I liked this. And I think it is true!! Who hasn’t gotten sick at some point after pushing and pushing and pushing for too long without a break?

This made me crack up… Charlie is known for being very excitable when anyone comes home (currently working hard on that with our trainer! The excitement is cute, but jumping all over guests is not. We’re seeing some progress.)

Not Thanksgiving yet, but close enough to November now to share:

And this one…. currently not feeling this as high school sports have felt generally much more manageable, but I used to feel this when in the thick of multiple club sports!! Not that you really want it cancelled, but sometimes that unexpected cancellation could feel like a little gift from above in a busy week, just sayin’.

And some soda humor. If you know, you know. (#pepsisucks)

Phew, okay, this turned into a very long post! Sorry about that. I guess this is what happens when I blog infrequently. I have pent up words to say!! Ha!

(Speaking of blogging frequency, I am planning to participate again in November’s “NaBloPoMo” (National Blog Posting Month) with daily posts! My plan is to do what I did last year and make a couple rules. #1: No post may exceed 500 words. (Much shorter than my average “blabby” posts.) #2: It’s okay to just write whatever, even if it’s totally random or just sharing a pic from the day, etc. This keeps the stakes and pressure quite low. I had lots of fun doing it last year, so I do want to try it again!)

Daily Gratitude:

I am grateful for getting back to the gym this past week. I ended up taking completely off all formal exercise for THREE weeks due to various travel and just being really busy. My legs paid for it with being incredibly sore after Thursday’s leg day, but I’m officially back in the saddle again.