My friend NG and I managed to find a community pool that has a water aerobics class on Tuesday and Thursday nights. You don’t have to commit to anything; you just show up on the nights you want to participate with your money which is like $2.50 for seniors, $3.50 for residents, and $4.25 for non-residents (me). My only problems with it are that because it’s from 6:30 - 7:30pm, I have to eat dinner as well as lunch in town those two days and I don’t get home until around 8pm and by the time I walk the dog and get the cats fed (my neighbor is kindly feeding Pugly in the afternoon), it feels like the day is over and it’s time for bed.
Going through all of that last night, made me realize that whileI secretly took Neca’s advice about checking out FlyLady.net, I am failing at the project. I tried creating a kind of Control Journal and writing out morning, afternoon, and bedtime routines and wrote out a chore schedule for the week. I thought that would be a good start and decided to wait on the whole Zone cleaning thing for a bit until I got into the groove.
In about two days I was hopelessly behind in the chores and after three days I pretty much gave up on the routines.
So it’s a week later, and I feel guilty that I have these lists of things I’m not doing on top of the to do list of major projects around the house that seems to get bigger even when I cross things off the list. I always seem to be trying to do something but I seem to always be getting behind and there always seems to be more to be done and I don’t seem to be getting to do much of what I want and quite frankly I don’t know what I want to do that I would enjoy anymore because I’d feel guilty about what’s not getting done.
One of my friends, who doesn’t live here, suggested getting a maid to come in twice a month, but I have not had good luck in the past finding one.
I’m going to sit down and review the FlyLady stuff again and try to shuffle things around. Maybe I’m not doing it right. Maybe I’m not thinking about it right. Maybe I’m hopeless.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
You are NOT hopeless. 1) Maybe it’s not for you. 2) Maybe you started with too much. Try one thing - like, wash the dishes after dinner. Just one thing. I had to build up, and there are still times I adhere better than others. I (finally) stopped with the guilt and realized that even if I were doing it halfway, it was still an improvement.
But if it isn’t for you, then just forget it, okay? I didn’t mean to make you feel worse!!!
No, you’re right. I think I’m trying to do too much and expect too much from myself. I just don’t know how to not expect all or nothing. I’m very inpatient.
I think it comes from having family that has high expectations and wanting to meet those expectations. I need to learn to set smaller goals.
Oh girl, you are singing to the choir! I still remember getting a “C” in PE for the 2nd 9 weeks in 7th grade because my dad cried and told me he only wanted me to get into a good college and have a good life. We could sit down over a bottle of wine and have a great gab session about the weird messages our parents imparted!!!
Hugs.
Oh, that infamous, evil FlyLady. I’m convinced that she sits around on her tush, eats bon-bons every day, and laughs at all of the havoc that she’s causing.
What I do is write one cleaning/organizing task on a calendar for each day of the week. One task is not overwhelming, and I get things done. I get them done slowly, but at least it doesn’t become a backlog of things to do.
How lucky that your water aerobics class is so inexpensive!