February pinks

I was going to call this post "February blues," but it occurred to me that it is February, and therefore the color should be pink, not blue. I am kind of blue, though.

This has been a productive week, if not really a happy one. That is, I got all sorts of things done, made dinner, pretty much stuck to my schedule every day, checked things off lists. And was gloomy. But it's better to be gloomy and productive than gloomy and unproductive. I think.

I don't know why I'm feeling low. I mean, the money is part of it. I'm so horrified by the financial mess we're in. But the fact is, unlike many people, we have options. The easiest one, and the one we'll probably use, is to dip into our mutual funds. I'm not sure how much we have, after the stock market crash, but certainly enough to pay the property taxes (and have some left over). I hate hate hate getting into the mutual funds, because once they're gone, we'll have to start selling off properties (which Rocket Boy will never agree to). Or get into our retirement funds. I guess we could do that. That's not sustainable, though. You shouldn't base your financial life on "getting into" or "dipping into" things that aren't supposed to be gotten/dipped into. Those are supposed to be for EMERGENCIES. Every year can't be an emergency. 

I know why I let this happen this year, though. I watched myself not putting any money into savings over the summer and I thought, "It's OK. By October or so, I'll have a job, and then we'll have more money coming in and we'll be able to save and pay for things." Sigh. I need to not do that this year. It would be great if I got a job, but I shouldn't assume that it's going to happen.

But I don't think the money is the whole problem here. It's more likely to be seasonal affective disorder. I haven't been exercising at all, for weeks now -- too cold, snowy, icy, windy, cold, icy -- yeah, much better to stay home, preferably sitting down.

Today, just now, I finally took a walk, with kind Teen B coming along for moral support. It's in the 40s today, and it's actually been in the 50s a few days this week, so we've had some good melting. I was just going to walk down the street to the park and then turn around and come back again, but with his encouragement we also walked over to the playground and back that way. We spent 18 minutes walking (very very slowly, with breaks), so that was good. Maybe, if I can keep doing that most days, my mood will start to improve.

But it was a pretty gloomy walk (though nice to be out and about with Teen B). Everything is so ugly right now, so brown and gray. Patches of snow (there's a lot still on our lawn). What wouldn't I give to see a flower blooming. Not at the grocery store, in someone's yard. I know, I know, it's winter. Flowers don't bloom in the winter (in Colorado). I should appreciate the quiet joys of winter. But somehow that's not working for me this year.

One other thing that I know for certain is contributing to my mood: I am reading the world's most depressing book. Seriously, it's breaking my heart. The book is The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, about the Black migration from the South in the 20th century to escape Jim Crow. It's one of those that's been sitting by my bedside for a couple of years, and it's something I actually wanted to read. I bought it at Barnes & Noble, new, paid full price for it. 

I realize that I don't have to finish it. I could close it now, give it to Goodwill, leave it in a little free library. But I can't, of course. I have to finish it, and then I'll probably keep it -- put it on a shelf and try to get other people to read it and be miserable too. I'm on page 242 (out of about 545) and the three people that the author focuses on, Ida Mae, George, and Robert/Pershing, have just made it out of the terrible terrible South to their new homes in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, respectively. But now things are going to get worse.

I read a little bit at a time. At first I thought I was going to try to finish the book in four days, but it's Day 5 and I'm not even halfway along. What I finally figured out was that I have to read it in conjunction with something cheerful. So I'm reading Crampton Hodnet, one of my Barbara Pyms for this year. I read 20 pages or so of The Warmth of Other Suns, and then I read a chapter of Crampton Hodnet. And then I go to bed, because I can't read The Warmth of Other Suns right before going to bed, it's just SO SAD. I can't take it.

Maybe, I tell myself, the fact that I'm finding it so sad means I don't have to read it. Other people, people who think Critical Race Theory is a lie, for instance, should read it and learn something. The thing is, though, I'm learning a lot too. African-American history is so little taught in this country that most people don't know much of anything. When I finally get to the end of the book, I know I will be a more knowledgeable person.

It just hurts so much, getting there. Arrgghh, this stuff is painful!

***

OK, enough of that for now. Let's think about what's been going well. As I said above, this was a productive week. For dinner we had marinated green beans and tofu over rice on Monday, vegetarian tamale pie (see photo) on Tuesday and leftover tamale pie on Wednesday, fried rice on Thursday, and then on Friday I kind of pooped out, so I made Teen A a grilled sandwich and Teen B had a can of soup (I had crackers and cheese). But still, it's dinner. Saturday we got MacDonald's (I had more crackers and cheese). Today we'll have pancakes, and Monday I'm going to make a dish involving farro, lentils, and feta -- we'll see how that goes. And beyond that I don't know, haven't planned the meals for the coming week yet. I'll do it tomorrow.

I have a lot of strategies for getting things done these days. I find that it helps to have several strategies going at once, because one may work where another fails. These are what I use:

1. Lists. I keep a running to-do list (rather than writing a brand-new one each day) and I also keep a done list, which is more cheering than checking things off the to-do list (though I do that too). I also constantly refer to my general FlyLady to-do lists: Morning Routines, Evening Routines, and the Monday Home Blessing.

2. Schedules. Schedules are kind of like big lists. They help to organize the days. I use the FlyLady's schedules and I also have my own. For instance, FlyLady divides the month into cleaning zones, which is helpful because when you're faced with your big messy house and you don't know where to start, you can say to yourself, what week is this? If it's the first week or half week (e.g., the first week of February this year has only three weekdays), it's time to clean the dining room, entryway, and front porch (for people who don't live at the North Pole). The second week is the kitchen. And so on.

FlyLady also has specific tasks for certain days of the week, but I don't follow that schedule closely. I do try to do the Home Blessing on Monday, and I pay bills on Friday. But on the other days I mostly just do whatever. I often grocery shop on Monday, but sometimes it seems better to do it on Sunday, or even Saturday. Errands can be done any day.

However, I also have started making myself a daily schedule, changing it by the month. For February, I have five main blocks of time while the twins are at school.

• 10am-11am: Cleaning and doing FlyLady things. The power of 3 (see below) is very important here.
  
• 11am-12 noon: Writing. I usually spend 15-30 minutes on my novel and the rest of the time on email.
  
• 12 noon-1pm: Lunch and exercise. So far I haven't actually exercised during this time, but since I went for a walk today, maybe this week will go better. Hmm.
  
• 1pm-2pm: Earning or saving money. So far I've used this time to write and submit a Chicken Soup for the Soul story (which undoubtedly won't be accepted, but at least I tried), sign up for Amazon Mechanical Turk and do a few surveys (total earnings: maybe $2?), and fill out a questionnaire for a CU study (earnings: $30).
  
• 2pm-3pm: Working on the files and taxes (my February project). I did a lot of filing this week!
  

3. The timer. I first learned about the power of 15 minutes from Virginia Valian, in her article "Learning to Work," published in 1977. In that famous article she suggests setting your timer for 15 minutes when you have something really awful to do. My timer helped me write my dissertation (as it helped Valian write hers).

I was amused when I encountered the 15-minute strategy again with FlyLady. It really works. Every night, facing a terrible kitchen, I set my timer for 15 minutes. I can't tell you how many times I've finished and gone off to do something else, forgetting about the timer, which then rings several minutes later -- because it doesn't actually take 15 minutes to clean my kitchen, it just looks like it's going to. When I need to do the breakfast dishes, I set the timer for 5 minutes and it doesn't even take that long.

This past Tuesday I wanted to vacuum the house, but since I hadn't vacuumed in a few weeks, I also didn't want to. I felt afraid. I was so unhappy. I said to myself, "In 15 minutes, this will be over." This turned out not to be quite true, because 15 minutes later, when the timer rang, I still had a room to do. So I kept going. It actually took me 19 minutes to vacuum the house (there were a lot of things to pick up and at one point the vacuum sucked up a whole plastic newspaper bag -- bad vacuum!). But at the end of the 19 minutes, the house looked a lot better and I was glad I'd done the vacuuming. And best of all, it was over.

(On a larger scale, this is also a way to approach my reading. If I read 50 pages of The Warmth of Other Suns every day this week, by next Sunday it will be over too.)

4. The power of three. This isn't a FlyLady trick, but it works very well in conjunction with FlyLady. I think the way it's supposed to work is that you pick three things you want to accomplish  that day and then do them. Nothing else, just those three. But I use the technique a little differently. Let's say it's 10 am and at 10 am on my February Schedule it says "FlyLady stuff, cleaning." OK, so I could do the daily mission or I could declutter or I could do part of the Weekly Home Blessing or I could clean the litter boxes, or or or. Meanwhile, the minutes have started to tick by. So I get out a post-it note, stick it to the kitchen counter, and I jot down three tasks:

1. Clean litter boxes.
2. Declutter for 15 minutes.
3. Mop the kitchen floor.
   

And then I get busy. I clean the three litter boxes, however long that takes. I set the timer for 15 minutes and do some decluttering in the room of the week. And then I get out my mop. When I've finished the three things I look at the clock. If it's only 10:30 or so, then I write down three more things on my post-it note and do them. But if it's more like 10:45, I say good enough, and pour myself another cup of tea.

Sometimes not even these tricks work. Sometimes I'm so freaked out about everything I can't get myself to do even one thing. In that situation I have two choices:

1. Choose ONE small task to do, only one, and tell myself that's the only thing I have to do today. Then set the timer and go do it. Afterwards, relax, have a cup of tea, read a (cheerful) book. Maybe later I'll want to do a second thing, and maybe I won't.
2. Give up, have a cup of tea, read a book (Barbara Pym, not Other Suns). Tomorrow is another day.
   

The thing that's disappointing about having such a productive week (as this one was) is that it doesn't necessarily make me happy. Isn't that nuts? I made dinner, I cleaned things, I worked on the horrible FILES for goodness' sake. I worked on my NOVEL. I put almost all the Christmas stuff away (left up some lights because they're cheery). I took Teen A to the dentist on Wednesday and to get his hair cut on Thursday and I took Teen B to get his hair cut on Saturday. I went to bed more or less on time, and I got up each morning and did Wordle. One day I even got it in two tries!

Didn't matter. Nothing made me happy. Sometimes there's just nothing you can do on that score. You have to keep pushing on, knowing that at some point you'll feel better. And so on we go.