At the Old Ball Game

We went up to Louisville last weekend to see my parents. The main event of the visit was going to a Louisville Riverbats game with some long-time family friends—the kids' first baseball game and a fun gathering of three generations of friends. I was in utero when my mom met a new friend and her little red-headed toddler daughter, who would become my best friend in late elementary/middle school. It means so much that Lindsay and I can reconnect whenever I'm in Louisville and our kiddos are all getting to know each other.

Jack and Kate get along famously, and I'd be lying if I denied that the words "rehearsal dinner slide show" go through my head whenever I take pictures of these kids together.

Popi and the kids watched the game while most of the rest of us chatted and tried to keep toddlers from eating popcorn off the cement floor.

Said toddlers weren't quite to the age they could play together, exactly. They're only six months apart in age, but it's a big six months, socially! Claire didn't quite reciprocate Emmalea's efforts to hold hands. (I may elaborate on this in Claire's 18 month post tomorrow, but I keep remembering Kate at two and how much development happens between 18 and 24 months!)

Claire was intrigued by the girls in the next box, though! She and Emmalea both tried to climb over the wall to see what was going on over there!

There's a nice carousel and two playgrounds at Louisville's ball park (it's a great one—relatively new and much nicer than either Nashville's or Louisville's older one, where my parents and I frequently went to see the Redbirds play when I was a kid). I had one of my guilty "just enjoy the moment" impulses and didn't take the camera down to the play area, and Lindsay and I were both kicking ourselves; the dads and kids were so cute riding around together on the carousel!

The evening ended with fireworks after the game, and though threatening rain meant the kids didn't get to run the bases after it was over, we still all had a great time. We asked Kate what her favorite part of the game was, and she said, "seeing Jack." :0)

It's always fun going to see Nala and Popi, and reconnecting with one of my favorite cities and some of my favorite people in the world!

WMW: Lists and Time-Tracking

A friend recently asked me for tips on getting better organized at work. I don't have a lot of super-fancy tricks or tips—my main thing is just being a compulsive list-maker. I have a master checklist for my work to-dos each week, with sub-checkboxes if there are numerous parts under one main task. For example, editing a book, I might make a sub-list of all the chapters, so that I can mark them off as I go. (That's part organization and part motivation—checking off a to-do is a proven endorphin boost, so the more small tasks you can get on that list, the more frequently you get to check one off! I'm like a productivity junkie.)

One "fancier" tool I did tell my friend about, however, was Yast.com, an online time tracker. It has become absolutely essential to my work life. I heard about it in the fall in a Forbes article listing several "must-try" online organizational tools. I tried a couple of them, but Yast is the only one I've found to be a must-use.

I actually started using it when I was full-time at my old job, just to track how long I was spending on certain tasks each day (a very educational exercise, I must say). And now that I'm a freelancer, billing some jobs by the hour, it is even more important to know how long I spend on each job.

You add your projects, grouped under higher categories if you desire, and give a color code to each one. I pixelated the names of my projects above, but you can see the two main categories, "UMPH Work" (my long-time employer for which I still do a good bit of work) and "Other Paid Work." Below that, I also have a "Personal" category for things like blogging, VBS-planning, etc.

To start the time on a certain project, you just click the blue arrow, and it starts running with that project's color on the timeline at the top and showing you the time next to the orange square on the line. On the above screen cap, for example, I'd been working for 24 minutes on my "orange" job. At the end of the line, you can see the day's total for that job (2 hrs, 20 min) and the week's total (6 hours, 40 min).

It's nice to know, at the end of the day or week, how long you've worked and on what. Yast tracks your time by the day and the week, and you can view reports of any time period (SO useful when turning in a time sheet or invoice!)

Whether you're tracking paid work by the client or project, or just want to know how long you're spending each day on various parts of your job or various other activities like email and blogging, I really recommend this tool.

Pastor's Wives Uncensored

My friend Kim invited me to participate in her blog series, Pastor's Wives Uncensored. I confess my previous status as a "disgruntled" pastor's wife, and also explain some of my recovery from that cynicism.

Here's a little teaser:

Unlike Kim, I wasn’t turned off at all by the idea of dating a pastor/pastor-to-be. Matt was working in youth ministry when we met on our first night of orientation at Vanderbilt Divinity School. Being a religion major in college, and going on to study religion in grad school, I already had a notion of hoping to marry a man preparing to be either a pastor or professor. My parents told me to hang out next door at the Law School, but I liked spiritual, scholarly types, and knew there was a good chance of getting my MRS at the same place I was getting my MTS (Master of Theological Studies).

Go read the rest on Kim's blog, The Seeds You Sow.

Backyard Weather

It's a little chillier today, but hopefully this weekend will be nice enough for a repeat of the backyard fun we've had the last couple weekends, with the girls playing on their awesome, relatively-new (it was completed last fall just as the weather was turning colder!) swingset, while Matt and I fix up the yard and patio. Summer will be here before we know it!

WMW: Home Office

I got my new Thirty-One organizer hung up, so I thought it might be about time to share my lovely little home office, where most of my WAHMing takes place. (Does that make this a Working Mom Wednesday or Show and Tell? Both, I guess!)

One of the neat things about our house is the little room off of our master bedroom with glass French doors. It makes a great office and craft room, and would make a great nursery as well, if you wanted to keep a baby close for the first year or two. From the time we moved in, it housed an old desk that was my grandfather's. It had been used in a war office during WWII, and he bought it cheap after the war. It's a typewriter desk, with a platform that raises and lowers to hide the typewriter away inside when you're not using it. (My uncle has the typewriter from it.)

So between the desk, Matt's green banker's lamp, my plant and framed degrees, my office has a nice, homey feel. My new organizer helps me get papers, folders, and my ubiquitous legal pads off the floor (since the desk doesn't have a lot of spare surface space). I hung a legal pad over the calendar strap, stuck my file folders in the clear pocket, book catalogs in another pocket, and put some pictures on display. I wrote a favorite quote on the wipe-off board, a line from a Dixie Chicks' song: "If there's ever an answer, it's more love." I really feel like that's a good rule of thumb when you are stuck in any way. (What to do? Well, what's the more loving response?)

The printer just sits on an afghan-covered box, and Matt's old CD tower is getting more use than it has in years, just supporting the stack of review copies I put on top of it. And for a window treatment, I used a string of Tibetan prayer flags our brother and sister-in-law brought us from Mt. Everest.

Then there's my amazing craft area, which my in-laws created for me as a birthday present last year. I previously just had a rolling kitchen cart, but they got a cabinet to sit a yard or so from the cart and a tabletop to lay across them both, more than tripling my work space. My mother-in-law made the skirt that velcros around the table, hiding the storage cart and cabinet underneath. (The space between is the secret spot I stash gifts as I buy them throughout the year.) On Friday afternoons, when I finish work for the week, I close down the computer and move just two feet to my left to do some scrapbooking before the brood comes home!

The side of the room I'm not showing you has all my gift-wrapping supplies, several cheap bookcases full of books and random stuff. In every home we have, there is a room that never fully gets unpacked, where boxes sit for years. In this house, the office was it, though I cleaned most of that up and out when I went freelance and it became my main office, but the bookcases still have a lot of college memorabilia and other stuff we've had since our single days.

Where do you stash all your old junk? Where do you do your work, crafts, or other computering?

What A Week

I meant to write this post yesterday morning, and I wish I had, since it seems silly to write about a hard week in the aftermath of a major tragedy. We have life and limb, and all is well, but last week was nonetheless an experience.

Our teenage guest is wonderful. She is a very sweet girl, and has been great with our girls. Her school is almost twenty miles away from us, so that's a haul twice a day that is sometimes inconvenient, but what really made the week crazy was all the illness.

Monday started out nice and normal as we got our bearings with three young people in the house, but Kate got sent home early from school with a fever, requiring more driving and waiting around than intended, and then Claire had a fever that evening as well. So, we had to keep them both home the next day, and intended to go to the doctor, but then, the next day, neither of them had fevers or seemed sick at all! Matt and I traded off half days so that each of us could get stuff done while our two non-sick monkeys had a "sick day." I did the morning at home, and then went out in the afternoon for lunch with a friend, errands, work, and to pick up Theresa, then dropping her at home and picking up Kate, who was more than well enough to go to gymnastics. I was exhausted by the time we returned home.

Wednesday was pretty normal until a mix-up at pick up time for Theresa, then church, and by the end of Bible study, Kate was complaining of a massive earache. She was wailing the whole way home and went immediately to bed. Claire had a fever again that night, so we knew they needed to go to the doctor the next day.

But then I woke up sick as a dog with a 102.6 fever. The kids felt fine (of course!) and Matt had something he couldn't miss, so we had to call in the reinforcements: Granna and Opa. I went to the clinic and learned it was the flu. I got my meds and spent the rest of the day in bed. Opa went to pick up Theresa while Granna took our girls to meet Daddy at the pediatrician to find they both had ear infections. Daddy spent way longer than he needed to getting the girls' meds, and then after a quick dinner, our whole bio fam was back in bed by 8:00.

Friday, I felt somewhat better after 24 hours in bed, and sent everyone off to school with Matt. Then Claire threw up and he brought her back home. It was just motion sickness, and she was fine for the rest of the day. I, on the other hand, did a little work, but started getting major anxiety over all the kids in our care and the work I was behind on, due to illness.

Saturday, I was a little more better, but Matt started getting sick. At that point, I was definitely about to have a nervous breakdown, not wanting to call on Granna and Opa again, but wondering how a sick Mommy and Daddy with non-sick, rambunctious kids were supposed to get our writing done for a joint deadline we had on Monday! (Didn't I mention that!?!)

Well, we managed to feel well enough and care for our kids and write this manuscript and do church Sunday night and crashed Sunday night praying pleaseohplease let no one be sick this week!

So far, so good.

FYI, Theresa may be with us for another few weeks, but now that I'm not sicker than I've been in years, that seems okay. It's amazing how, when you're sick and anxious, everything seems so dire. Friday night, I was flipping out that Theresa would be with us for two years (she's sweet, but still...), a misbehaving Kate would become an out-of-control teen (that could still happen), and that I would miss deadlines I have in June (the Monday one was a possibility, but we did it!)

I had to remind myself not to take any thought seriously that I have when sick and anxious. That's good advice.

Wordless Wednesday: Bedtime Gymnastics