Recently I have been thinking about how I use my time. I am HORRIBLE about wasting time. Like just now, when I was supposed to be writing this blog post, I might have wasted an inordinate amount of time on Facebook and reading blogs. When I was working in an office it wasn’t the internet that kept me distracted, but it was conversations with my co-workers. If there was a conversation, I wanted to be in on it! (Can you tell I am an extrovert?) I am not a task oriented person if other people are around that I can interact with. Consequently, I ended up taking longer on a project than I needed to or causing myself undue stress trying to meet a deadline. Now, since I work from home, I end up working at undesirable hours because I might have squandered away the desirable hours wasting time. I know I am not the only person who struggles with this.

Obviously I need to be more purposeful with my time. I know this is a cliché, but it works and it is true. I need to:

Work hard: This is simple, but it is really difficult for me to do sometimes (especially when I am supposed to be doing

Git-R-Done

it). Work hard when you are supposed to be working hard so that you can stop when it is time to stop and not feel guilty about it. For myself, that means getting away by myself so that there is no one else to interact with and buckling down. That may not be possible for others, so you could use headphones to listen to music or white noise to drown out the distractions in the background so that you can concentrate on the task at hand. As my father in law likes to say (and incidentally Mater too): Git R done!

Play hard: Since you have finished you work, you can now play hard. Whether this means spending time with your significant other, your kids, or just watching TV, you can do it with a clean conscience. This is what this time has been allotted for, so enjoy it!

Sleep hard: You have to have enough rest to be able to accomplish the above tasks. Do whatever you have to do, but getting enough sleep is important.

Now if only I didn’t need the internet to do my work so that way Facebook wasn’t always calling out to me…..

Cold & Flu Season

I always dread this time of year. Christmas is over, and it feels like forever ago. It seems like it should be spring by now, but alas it isn’t.  A lot of us even still have snow on the ground- it’s pretty unless you can’t get to work or to the store.  To top it off, this is always the worst time of year for illness for my family, which is not surprising because February is the peak of cold and flu season.  In fact, we are still recovering from having the flu last week.

Tips to prevent illness

In light of all the illness going around right now, I thought I’d post some reminders about how to prevent  it so that way you can use your sick days for ‘mental health days’ instead of actual sick days. There aren’t earth shattering revelations—just some helpful reminders.

1. Wash your hands! My entire family washes their hands as soon as we get home from going anywhere. If you don’t have soap and water handy, then hand sanitizer is also very effective. This is your first defense against getting sick.
2. Wipe down your work area periodically. According to a study done at the University of Arizona, work stations can contain nearly 400 times as many microbes than bathrooms. (Go ahead and go grab that antibacterial wipe and wipe everything down. We’ll wait for you until you get back.)
3. Avoid touching your face. This one is obvious. If the germs are on your hands, you don’t want to give them a chance to get into your body through your eyes, mouth or nose.  Plus, nobody likes watching you pick at your face.)
4. Get enough sleep. I don’t know about you, but when I am tired, not only do I get sick more often, but it is a lot harder to cope with being sick. (Can anyone say, “Whiny?”)    Try to get better sleep- and because I think you’ll like it, a free white noise generator to help you tune out your annoying neighbors or snoring bedmate.
5. Take your vitamins. A lot of people are running low in the Vitamin D department this time of year. (Fewer hours of sunlight + lots of layers of clothing=vitamin D deficiency.)  Vitamin D deficiencies have been linked to higher rates of cold and flu, so now is the time to supplement since you most likely are not getting enough.
6. Think Spring! Okay, I don’t actually know if this will help you not get sick, but it will help your mindset. Perhaps put up a nice wallpaper on your computer background to remind you that spring will be here soon.

If you want to help your coworkers remember to also keep the germ spreading behaviors to a minimum, the CDC put out a helpful little poster for that very purpose.

(Please note. We aren’t doctors. Just people with common sense. Always ask your doctor before starting a vitamin supplement.)

Nothing like answering the same littany of boring questions 20 times.

I’ve never been that into retreats.  I’ll go, but I never look forward to it because it never ends up being very relaxing.  Whether you’re a college student or a career-driven adult, the weekend is something sacred, a time when you should be watching sports and sleeping in.   Instead, you sacrifice a weekend to go to a retreat because it’s going to be “so fun.”  Mm-hmm.  All the fun begins as you stick a name tag on and invite all eyes to stare at your chest (yes, I’m of the female variety).  Then, you get sub-par food at predetermined times, including a senior citizen’s early bird special at 5pm, leaving you starving at 8.  Then, you share quarters with either the friends who managed to talk you into this exciting event, or even better, with strangers you feel the compulsion to chat with to get to know (because that’s what nice people do).  At the end of the weekend, you realize you spent $100 to sleep uncomfortably and eat too many carbs.

I didn’t know it got worse.  Evidently, meeting your husband at a college retreat means that you owe the retreat god big time because somehow, without knowing how, you find yourself looking at a retreat with said husband…and your 2 kids- both under the age 0f 4.  This should go without saying, but a retreat with children isn’t really a retreat at all.  I mean, grandparents take my kids for the weekend or give us an adjoining suite, and I’m all about it.  Truly.  I would actually openly embrace a retreat as what it’s meant to be- time away from what you normally do.  However, packing up 4 of us and loading our car with sleeping bags, duvet covers (what the what?) towels, pack n plays, and car seats is only the beginning.  We are paying to leave the comfort of our 3-bedroom flat and the ease of our own routine to share a room at a retreat- and calling it “a weekend away” in a charming Scottish brogue does not atone for the fact that we are sharing a room.  All 4 of us.  If you read anything I write, you know I do not sleep with my children.  Not even in the hospital- I feed them, I love them, I grin at their sweetness, then I send them right back to the nursery because night time is for sleeping….not for listening to every coo, cry out, and bad dream.  We have 4 white noise generators for a reason- we believe in rest to the point that we invest heavily in the white noise. Praise the Lord our sound machines are portable.  I might set up all 4 in the room just for good measure.  What do you think?

Anyway, pray for us and that the retreat god will be appeased…I cannot endure this again.

Living in Scotland

We live in Aberdeen, which is as far north as Moscow. That makes for some dark winter days.

Whenever I tell people that we live in Scotland, they practically get stars in their eyes and ask if it is wonderful.  Sometimes I say yes, sometimes no (it really depends on my mood), but I can always picture what they’re imagining.  If I am feeling particularly rude, I might mention that we don’t live in a castle, next door to Sean Connery or James McAvoy.  We live in a small flat that is cold more often than not.  We get more rain that I could ever have imagined, which does lend itself to lush vegetation and green, rolling hills.  However, we don’t always get to get out and actually enjoy aforementioned backdrops due to the cold, the wetness, and the dark.  While summers are great with a sunrise at 3 or 4am and a sunset at 10 or 11pm, the exact opposite is true for winter.  This morning, I didn’t even bother to open the blinds until 8:30am because there was no point.  We don’t even have to close the blinds to go to sleep November-February because I can guarantee that NO SUNLIGHT will be peeking through during that time.

How much sunlight do you get in winter?

The worst most extreme days are when the sun rises at 9am and sets at 3pm.  That means that Scottish children walk to and from school in the dark.   The peak is December 21st- we get 4 minutes back a day form that point forward: 2 in the morning, 2 in the afternoon.  I personally celebrate those 4 minutes- 4×7=28 minutes a week!  In all seriousness, that much darkness is tough.  Many people suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD).  In everyday terms, SAD is when people feel depressed as a result of the seasons.  Usually, it is the winter’s lack of light that affects people.

How do we cope with so much daylight in the summer and so little in the winter?

Well, these are opposite issues, but I’ll list a few things that keep us sane:

1. Kids tend to sleep more in the winter and less in the summer.  Deal with it, whether you like it or not.  Something about Circadian Rhythm, but their bodies adjust nicely.  We enjoy this and take advantage- if the sun is out, why not delay bedtime or a nap?
2. We usually get to go home (Texas) once a year.  We plan this trip for the winter- we try to overlap it with Thanksgiving and Christmas, so we can enjoy those days with family and miss a lot of the darkness.  This doesn’t work for everyone’s schedule/work, but it’s what works for us.
3. We never travel home during the summer.  Since school is year-round here anyway, there are lots of breaks that aren’t just in the summer we can take advantage of (such as Christmas, see #2), while staying home to enjoy the extra degrees and sun in the summer months.
4. To preserve sleep, we invested in blackout blinds.  They are worth every pound.  I prefer the velcro kind that adheres directly to the window so as to literally black out a room.  While it’s kind of a pain to initially install the velcro strips, once installed the blinds are easy to take off and on.
5. On the flip side, light therapy can be useful, especially if you’re prone to SAD.  My friends call it a “happy light“- true to its name, this happy light keeps us happy instead of wallowing in misery.
6. If there’s a sunny day in the winter (or the summer for that matter!), we drop everything and enjoy it.  There is time to work later, but you can’t count on the sun this far north.
7. We also find that having something to look forward to is helpful: a play date, a real date, movie night, downloaded TV shows from home, a trip, a visit from family, etc.  It keeps our minds off the dreary weather.

Hope that helps anyone out there who hates the winter as much as I do!