Friday 22 March 2013

Falling by the wayside

A lot of things have been neglected in my world of late.  The blog, the kitchen, the tidiness of the house, friends and poor MR.

In fact, the only thing that hasn't been neglected has been my bed.  No more are the nights awake until 2 or 3am.  Now I am in bed and asleep by 11 most nights.  Sometimes even 10 or 9pm!  Unheard of, I know.  There has also been afternoon napping which hasn't at all affected my night time sleeping.

Starting back at work has been partly to blame, we're up to Week 8 of an 11 week term and Term 1 with Kindy kids is pretty full on.  I must admit though, I've got a really lovely group who are pretty independent and self sufficient for 3 and 4 year olds.  Three days of work a week is Most Definitely enough for me though, even with having a three day weekend and a day off on Tuesday I'm finding that if I do too much on the weekend I barely cope for the week.

Along with that I've had a week in hospital with a particularly nasty tummy bug back in Week 2 of term and I had Monday off this week with another one which was thankfully only a smidgeon as bad and managed to go away by itself. 

In much better and fun news, there has also been two weddings in the last two weekends.  MR's brother last weekend and the one before than his cousin (which also included a quick weekend holiday to Dunsborough for the event).  They have most definitely contributed to all the aforementioned neglected-ness.

Possibly the biggest culprit, although it is very hard to measure, is the increase of my Leukaemia medication five weeks ago.  It wasn't working as well as it should be and seeing as I was only on half of the recommended dose due to some issues with medication interactions and differing heart rhythms on ECG checks, they decided to put it up a bit higher.  I'm now on an almost 3/4 dose - 70mg of the recommended 100mg.  It's interesting how (in my mind anyhow), when I say I'm tired it somehow seems more lazy and slack than if I was to say I suffer from fatigue as a side effect from medication.  "Tired" is such a hard thing to measure.  I know that I am more tired than I was last year however, as I wasn't working this is not a good comparison.  I also know I wasn't this tired when I wasn't ill and was working full time and playing netball on weekends so therefore in my books that becomes "fatigue". 

After having a big sook the other night about how slack I have been at doing anything at all around the house lately and how everything is messy, how I am practically existing on fish fingers and a bit of salad for dinner when MR is away and when he is home he is in charge of all kitchen duties, how I am possibly the worst girlfriend ever and how MR should move on to happier and healthier pastures, I realised I needed to get over myself and sort my shit out.

I decided to reinstate my Twenty Minute Tidy sessions.  Once each day I do work and twice on days I don't will give me 2 hours and 40 minutes per week in which to tidy, clean and organise the house and garden.  My big goal right now is to do a bit more than than on the Easter weekend and get the house tidied up enough that I can get a new cleaner (our last one finished late last year), which will then decrease my stressing over a dirty house at least, if not a messy unorganised one. 

I've had two sessions so far.  The oven timer goes on for 20 minutes and off I go to work until it beeps.  After it beeps I dismiss all feelings of guilt over the state of the house and my lack of housewife skills.  I've unpacked and put away my case from my Dunsborough weekend a fortnight ago, picked up and put away all the clothes and other associated crap dumped on the bedroom floor, tidied out one drawer of my tallboy and tidied up and cleaned the bathroom basin.  Not bad for 40 minutes.  Today being a non work day, I'm doing 40 minutes - most likely in two 20 minute sessions.  I'm feeling better about it all already. 

Now I just need to work out some really quick and easy meals that do not involve fish fingers...








4 comments:

Beautiful Day said...

You're doing well, really! Teaching Kindy is an EXHAUSTING job. My house is a wreck too, but next week we have a five day weekend - woohoo! Might get some stuff done then!

Oh, and you could always sign up for Lite n Easy, not for the weight loss, but for the convenience and healthy food. It is so uninspiring to cook for one! xx

Margret said...

Wendy's lite & easy idea is a great one, who wants to cook all the time?! Not me! And def get a new cleaner and don't feel guilty about any of it, you teach a whole class of little people!
I'm so much happier having a cleaner come once a fortnight and do the bathroom and the floors. Maybe I should be able to do it myself but I wasn't, and it was always hanging over me. I'm about to get a gardener too. We've been living in this house for nearly two years and the garden is huge (half acre block) I just can't keep up and I need help. My MR won't help, so he can pay someone to do it I reckon. We can't do everything! Especially when you need to rest and take care of yourself first :)

Bron said...

Sounds like you are doing well considering....teaching is a tough job especially at the kindy level. take care and be kind to yourself. xxx

Anonymous said...

Cooking and cleaning sucks. You shouldn't feel slack. It isn't a conscious decision you are making to avoid chores - the tiredness is a physical reaction to the medication you are on.

It is hard to relax properly when you are feeling guilty though! Hopefully the 20 minutes timer helps!

Now that it is getting cooler, maybe you could make dinner in the slow cooker on one of your days off for the week Keenan isn't there? I did that last weekend and because I did it in the morning and made it something that I wanted to do that day (rather than had to do to eat) it was good! It was a bit of a novelty though because it was cold. Probably couldn't keep it up haha.