Death By Organization

I gotta stop this sleeping in thing. It's killing my summer.

At the beginning of June I sat down and outlined every day of the following 2.5 months so that I could be as productive as possible and have no regrets at the end of the summer. It looked something like this:

1. 4:45 a.m. –  Go to gym
2. 6:30 – Return and shower, etc.
3. 7:15 – Wake everyone up and go pull weeds for 30 min
4. 7:45 – Fix breakfast
5. 7:55 – Serve it
6. 8:00 – Kiss hub's cheek and wave him off to work.  start everyone on daily jobs
7. 8:50 – Wave oldest dudette off to work
8. 9:00 – Organize storage room
9. 9:30 – Write. Make sure kids are being productive
10. 12:00 – Fix nutritious lunch, containing all 5 food groups and vitamin enriched water
11. 12:15 – Serve lunch, making sure to have Mozart playing in the background, as classical music is said to promote healthy digestion
12. 12:30 – Have everyone help clean up
13. 12:35 – Run errands, spend time bonding with middle child.
14. 2:30 – Write epic novel, epic blog, other epic blog, or at least answer email
15. 4:30 – Run middle kidlets to stuff they need to go to
16. 4:40 – Start dinner then pick up middle kidlets
17. 5:00  – Greet handsome hubby
18. 5:10 – Greet awesome oldest
19. 5:15 – Ring bell and serve dinner in dining room: a fresh nutritious meal containing heretofore unheard of vegetables of organic origin cooked in heretofore unheard of French style.
20. 5:45 – Enlist everyone to do dishes and general clean up. Sing old camp songs.
21. 6:00 – Call family planning meeting to organize next day
22. 6:15 – Read to youngest, and anyone else interested. Probably "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire," or some such.
23. 7:15 – Everyone goes to bed.
24. Ahhhhhhhh.

Isn't there a song that goes like this: "Dreee–eee-eeaaam! Dream, Dream, Dree-eam!" And the second verse goes like: "See Janiel's Schedule For Summer of Twenteeee-eeeelevehhhhnnnn! DREEEEAAAAMMMMM!!"

Yeah. This over-the-margin OCD schedule lasted about a quarter of a day. Then it just started giggling at me and floated away. 

This is my schedule now:

1. Set alarm for 4:45. Hit the snooze button no less than 18 times. You went to bed at 2:00 a.m. Like you can so much as belch before 10:00.
2. Run to garage and wave as kid goes to work. Throw a piece of toast at her windshield for breakfast. Feel guilty for a minute, then sigh and move on.
3. Call husband because you realize you never saw him before he went to work.
4. Pull other kids off of computer and nag them into doing their jobs.
5. Notice it's almost noon and you haven't exercised yet, which you HAVE to do since you are stinking old and your back goes out every week if you don't, not to mention your veins are getting all full of themselves.
6. 12:00 – Drag self to gym. Don't notice any of the perfectly coifed and made-up chickie babes that surround you in your drab workout stuff and your lack of eyebrows and eyelashes and your probably applied deodorant. Wait. Did you apply it? Yes. Wait . . . Guess we'll find out.
7. Try not to fling sweat on the Scarlett Johansson lookalike next to you.
8. Run your 3 (not saying whether that's miles, feet, or steps), gaze at the free weights area in resentment. Decide you've done enough power lifting for the day just trying to get out of bed. Go home.
9. Nag kids into doing jobs. Check email. Throw laundry in. Move a piece of paper and consider it another step toward organizing your office. Tell the phone solicitor that you have no money and don't make donations over the phone, and could they lend you some cash. Try to remember what you were going to cook for dinner tonight. Get in the shower.
10. Fall asleep in shower. You're too old to stay up until 2 a.m.
11. Get out and notice that there's no water on the shower walls because your skin has absorbed all of it. You look like a giant Sharpay. Gotta stop falling asleep in there.
12. Get dressed. Throw on makeup. Start to blow dry hair but hear ruckus from kids. Go peel them apart, and tell them that if they don't do their jobs RIGHT NOW you are giving away all of the computer equipment and the Gameboy and iPods and even the stinkin' waffle maker. And mean it this time.
13. Go to blow dry hair but run to save littlest dude who is trying to unclog toilet himself.
14. Answer phone. Oldest child needs to swap the truck for the van because the truck is big and scary and the turn signals are stupid and she might die if she drives it in the big city. Drive out and make swap.
15. Go to blow dry hair but realize it's time to start dinner. Throw something in the microwave to thaw.
16. Go to blow dry hair. Middle kid shrieks. THERE IS A SPIDER THE SIZE OF HER BROTHER'S HEAD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FLOOR AND IT IS STARING AT HER AND SHE CAN'T GET OFF HER BED AND WON'T UNLESS YOU DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
17. Coax the little beetle into a cup and set it free outside.
18. Sheesh.
19. What were you going to do?
20. Oh yeah. Your hair. Go and look in the mirror. You look like you've already blow dried your hair–with a vacuum. Sigh. Throw some hairspray on it and just go with it.
21. Return to microwave to find chicken cooked because you accidentally chose COOK instead of THAW. You could play basket ball with it. Sigh again. Maybe the fam won't notice if you throw spaghetti sauce and a piece of cheese on it and call it Chicken Parmigiana. 
22. Yell hello to hub and kid as they come home from work. Yell to everyone to come eat their Italian chicken with applesauce on the side. Look daggers at them if they say anything about eating rubber chickens for dinner.
23. Be inexplicably shocked that the kids did not get their jobs done. Tell them they ain't playing nothin' with nobody tomorrow until BOTH DAY'S jobs are done.
24. Mean it.
25. Sigh.
26. Tell everyone to go read or something. Ask what they've got going the next day. Scribble it down. Look at hub. He smiles and invites you to come read your kindle next to him while he reads his.
27. Smile back and say you're going to get a frozen yogurt and then watch "So You Think You Can Dance."
28. So you do.
29. And you mean to go to bed right after and snuggle up next to your husband, and get a great start on the next day. You do. You mean to.
30. But you're so tired and you feel like you're running ragged and everyone is after you all day long and when everyone is in bed it's the first moment of peace you get all year, and how can you just go to bed and start it all again the next day?
31. So you don't. You watch stuff. You write. You surf the internet. THEN, when it is appropriately 2:00 a.m. you slink into bed. And you kiss your hub and realize this was a bad idea. But tomorrow IS another day, and you WILL get up and do better.
32. Set the alarm for 4:45 a.m.

I will get this. I WILL. Before school starts too. I'm sure of it. I will have figured out a lovely little balance. But just to be safe, I think I WILL give away all the electronic devices in the house.