Check it off

I am not good at a lot of things, but one thing I am good at is getting an obscene amount of stuff done in a short amount of time. Especially when I’m really excited to do the thing that requires all the stuff getting done.

Today we leave around 1pm to spend the weekend at a lake with a long time friend (of mine) and his family. I spent a lot of my childhood at lakes or beaches with family friends and sharing that particular experience with my kids is one of the reasons I wanted to have them. Doing this has been on my parental “bucket list” you might say.

I’m proud of myself for initiating this weekend and for helping see it through. Our friends rented the cabin and we wrote the menu and got all the food. The weather this month has been really dreary and I spent the last two weeks panicking that we wouldn’t have anything to do with four kids under five at a lake when it was 50 degrees, but suddenly things are turning around and now the forecast suggests highs in the 70s and 80s. Once again I am giddy with expectation.

I have sunscreen packed and sand toys, beer and margarita fixings. I really hope this is a great weekend, that is is the first annual trip of its kind and that this family and ours continuing spending a week together in the summer.

Yesterday was an insane day, one of those days when a million things all converge into one 24 hours and you honestly wonder if there are enough minutes to achieve them all.

First there was work: I had to clean my classroom for Open House that night, get a bunch of art projects organized by tables instead of classes so I could display them where the kids could find them, grade a bunch of papers and create a list of who was missing what for two classes and deal with a bunch of parents who are suddenly giving a shit that their kid hasn’t done any work all trimester and is now failing. All this while I was managing five classes (not a lot of teaching happened). And all this before noon.

At home I had to get all the trash that has been lying around since we did the big purge ready for a pick-up early Friday morning (I won’t explain how that got scheduled for the morning we left but I will say that I attempted to call our garbage collecting service 46 times (NOT an exaggeration) before resigning myself to this fate).

{I also won’t explain why we’re just now getting it all hauled away ::cough it was my husband’s job but I finally caved and did it myself five months later::end cough.}

Once the bags of junk were removed from this nook in our garage, I rearranged two giant sets of shelves so that we have WAY more space to store things. Our house is small and our garage is smaller and storage is a big issue for us–creating all this space feels amazing. Also, one of those sets of shelves has been living in front of our garbage, recycling and compost cans since my in-laws gave it to us and I’ve had to move the shelves out when I rolled the cans to the curb and rolled them back. It also made accessing the laundry almost impossible. This is why I finally broke down and made the call myself (see cough note above).

The garage project required two hours and a change of clothes since I got so sweaty hauling stuff around (but I was thrilled to be sweaty because that meant it was finally getting warm again!) Then it was getting up my son and picking up my daughter (who was a hot mess due to very little sleep the night before), preparing them dinner and getting myself ready for Open House, all in less than two hours. Oh and I had to finish quite a bit of last minute packing. (Why does last minute packing always take longer than the original packing did!?)

Open House was fine. I always dread it but it’s never as bad as I envision it will be.

Finally, at 8:45 I had to drag my ass to the grocery store to get the last things on our list. When I got home I had realized I’d never be able to pack the trunk without completely emptying it, a feat that has quite literally never been attempting in the five years we’ve owned our car. I had to excavate many layers of detritus to get to the bottom, which was covered in a thick layer of litter from the time (MANY years ago) that we slit open a bag when we were loading it. Yes, we live in filth. We’re working on it.

I managed to get the trunk emptied without creating too big a mess in the garage and finally, at 11:30pm everything was loaded into the car and all the laundry was done (if not folded).

I must say, I am shit at a good many things, but plowing through an insane to-do list is something I can manage. And that makes me proud.

Now I just have to get through my five classes and whatever traffic awaits us on the way to the lake. I’m so excited for this weekend!

What are you doing this weekend? What is on your bucket list these days?