Life Is Tough

Taken last night:
Further proof that I like to torture my dogs. After playtime and dinner, I FORCE them to sleep on the loveseat on my cozy Christmas fleece blankie.

I'm just that cruel.

The Power of NO

I've decided this is a skill I need to work on. For example... a woman came to my shop looking for someone to fix a sweater someone else had knit for her. The sweater was horrible in almost every way possible and I wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. But without the power to say NO, I ended up agreeing to fix the mess of a sweater. She wants to pick it up tomorrow, you'll never guess what I said.
YES
So now I'm fixing I sweater I never wanted to touch in the first place, AND I'm going to stay up past my bedtime and be tired and cranky tomorrow all because I couldn't say NO.
Actually, after reading this over it looks like cranky has already arrived and made herself at home. So much for positive thinking this week...

-- Post From My iPhone

The new black market

I've finally figured out my big problem. TIME.
I'm writing this just before 10pm and I don't think I've come even close to getting everything done today that I need to. And, by my recent calculations, I need to get to bed at 10 if there is any hope of getting enough sleep to be functional tomorrow AND get up early enough to get everything done on tomorrow's list. I try to use this expression sparingly since I find it is overused these days, but WTF?!? I can't win.
Or perhaps I just try and cram too much into one day? I send this as an open call to all the put-together people of the world... HOW IS IT POSSIBLE??
I have been working on a plan for a daily schedule for myself for some time now. In a perfect world, I would get enough sleep and have enough hours in my day to: work out, eat real food for breakfast, go to work, tidy house, keep up with emails/phone calls, laundry, pets, banking/bills, make real dinner, spend time with husband, read book/listen to podcast/knit, and get to bed at a reasonable hour. I think not.
More often my day is: Sleep later than I should, eat crap for breakfast, silently curse self for not working out while rushing to work, stress out about things on to-do list, get home later than expected, eat crap for dinner, forget to change laundry to dryer, stay up too late working on business things on laptop, crash into bed at very late hour dreaming of pile of laundry/dishes swallowing me whole.
Do we see the problem?
So I'm convinced the perfect people of the world are buying extra hours in the day on some kind of secret black market. My question is, where the heck to I get them??

Have you met Joe?

Let me start at the beginning.

Recently, we noticed a possum hanging out around our house. I'm not sure if he is an Opossum or a Possum, I'm just flying by the seat of my pants here. Anyway, Brian noticed him a week or so ago in the middle of the day. He had put a bag of garbage on the patio planning to carry it down to the driveway next time he went out and THERE HE WAS. For the purposes of this story, we'll call him Joe. So there was Joe, sitting on the steps eating the bag of garbage. There was yelling and banging on the sliding door and Joe basically turned his little head and said, in perfect stoner-ease, "huh? Dude, that's LOUD."
He showed up a couple of nights later to lick up whatever remnants of garbage were frozen in the snow. Again, there was some banging on the slider door and yelling and AGAIN he just seemed annoyed at the excessive amount noise. I managed to get a picture of him as he climbed the pile of snow and eventually climbed under our patio table. The dogs then spent some time staring out the slider door wondering what was so interesting.
Fast forward to this evening. Picture it:
Brian and I are returning home (late) from a lovely, leisurely, valentine's day dinner. As we walk up to the patio Brian suddenly yells out and then laughs. Huh? Joe has returned and it now hiding behind the mini fridge and it's surrounding pile of snow. NOW WHAT?!?! Brian yells at him and even tries banging around him and poking him with the big piece of trim that fell down in our kitchen four years ago (that's another story for another day).
So the dogs are eating their (late) dinner, but will need to go outside to use the facilities eventually and I'm torn.
Potential Scenario #1: Dogs see Joe, Joe runs for his life, dogs chase after Joe into woods, dogs will not come back when called due to interest in Joe.
Potential Scenario #2: Dogs see Joe, Joe is too scared to run, Ellie Puppy decides to investigate and licks his face and barks at him or tries to wrestle with him.
I'm not willing to find out which of these scenarios is more likely, so I opt for scenario #3.
I put on Brian's giant rubber boots that are WAY too big for me, I put both dogs on leashes to maintain control and we head out into the yard. For some reason I can't explain, I also take the piece of trim from the kitchen with me. I figure, I can use it as a walking stick OR use it to fight off Joe should we have an incident.
I'm now walking with both dog leashes in one hand, the trim in the other. We venture out into the yard, me walking through the deep snow. The dogs are just light enough to stay on the surface of the snow. I am not. I trudge along, pulling Brian's too-big boots up through the Snow, then sinking back down. The dogs are bounding along dragging me behind, anxious to find the perfect spot to poo and I am struggling to keep the boots on and not lose my "walking stick."
After falling several times and laughing at myself in the ridiculousness of the situation, we finally return to the house. Joe, remains carefully hidden behind the mini-fridge.
I can only assume he's camping out until we re-stock the mini-fridge with more beer.

Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it

I find myself thinking of Anne Shirley's wise words tonight as I crawl into bed. Most nights I can't seem to stop myself from running through the day in my head and thinking about all the things I should have done. Or, beating myself up about all the things I need to do tomorrow and hating it before it even begins.
I think Anne had it right. Tomorrow is a fresh, clean slate that has yet to be determined. How can I dislike something or be mad at myself over something that hasn't happened yet?
Every night I go to bed and think to myself, tomorrow is the day I change it all. What if, maybe just once, tomorrow really IS the day??

Must remind myself of that when I wake up...

-- Post From My iPhone