Wow, both really cool. I love this stuff!

:-)
Now all we need is some cats climbing (or sleeping) all over those, eh?
(or dogs)

Well, that’s pretty cool.

After a few days of chilly rain, I walked through the backyard to see if anything was happening already.
It always amazes me in early Spring – the green life pushing up through the dirt, like magic, when everything is still all cold and wet, and patches of snow still around.

A few crocuses – purple & white striped, yellow, white – gotta catch glimpses fast, because the squirrels like to chew them up.
The iris blades are about 4" tall, and Lady’s Mantle (alchemilla) already showing little 1-inch scalloped leaves.

The snowdrops seem to have disappeared (squirrels?), but in their place are blue scilla.

This cat loves his Roomba.

HA! Those Roombas are pretty cool!

I’m fond of that cat.

Great ‘light entertainment’.
And Avner Eisenberg is wonderful in the comic role of the Holy Man.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avner_the_Eccentric

Loved that film, good reminder!

So as about your ‘heavy day’ loss and impending loss. That is always tough stuff to deal with.

Glad such a week is behind you :)

Sounds like a very difficult day, Mary Ann.
good recovery with fun movie.
This morning I saw the closing credits of The Pink Panther and laughed so much. I want to have a copy around for a medicinal purposes.
That and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It’s_a_Mad,Mad,Mad,MadWorld

Sounds like a trying time for a sweet introvert like you. Hope tomorrow is a restful day.

You used your much-demanded time well.

Wishing us both good sleep.

I love that you used Okey, Dokey and Hokey in the same post. I’ve never managed that! You MUST have had that shimmering blue light thing working well. :-D

What an interesting post and set of experiences.

Awesome that the annoyance quotient dropped significantly. Shimmer on!

Hmmm, I’ll have to try that blue-light-shimmer thing on the subway. Won’t be any weirder than some of the other stuff I’ve seen down there.

I also love your okey-dokey-hokey-pokey!

The okey-dokey-hokey-pokey-jokey was pure luck.

Sylvie – yeah, when I first heard about the blue-light technique, the example was in the subway. For sure, not weirder than anything else there. Even here, let alone NYC!

Wait, wait…what are weekends for? Oh, yeah, all the IMPORTANT stuff we can’t get to in the week. Ugh.

Hope your anxiety dissipates on the wings of progress, Mary Ann.

Time for kombucha tea!

:-)
Thanks, both.

Breathe!

Pant pant pant pant pant.

Such the clever girl! :-)

Me clever goil. &-p

%-d

@-d
%-9

Now that’s just plain silly.

I would, I really would.

:-)

Yay for doing a bunch of stuff of any kind by whatever means works! I’m still experimenting with online Pomodoro in the form of Orkanizer(.com). Aside from the work/break timer, it really helps me plan my day, prioritize tasks, record estimated and actual task durations, and stick to the plan (record interruptions, record new non-urgent tasks for later, etc.).

A green garbage bag is a lot! I quit using contractor bags out of concern for the poor thrift store workers who had to lift the bags later. :D Now I count my success in the form of white kitchen bags and I’m at least 3x more successful. (HA!)

Good idea. It would have helped to use a timer. I sometimes do that, but for some reason it didn’t occur to me on Monday. And to record what I’m working on.

I miscalculated about the Inbox – got it down to 1/12 of what it was!

I get little done on The Real Stuff without the Pomodoro. It may have become a crutch for me, or it may be ‘senior brain’ lapse, but a list and my little phone app (or whatever) seems to be de rigueur these days, alas. I can lose the whole day if I don’t watch myself.

And I, too, find my estimates WAY off. I’m not sure why. I don’t think my skills have completely left me; things just seem to take a lot of steps sometimes. Today, for example, I wanted to make an online payment to someone I pay all the time (dog food). Turns out the bank upgraded their own normally trouble-free system and all the saved information on payee names, account numbers, their bank name, etc…GONE! So I had to go find that, re-enter it, double-check 16-digit numbers etc… …blahblahblah… and everything seems that way sometimes.

On Sunday I got into a fuss with Google and a password issue (it made no sense and I don’t know what happened but it was ridiculous) and TWO HOURS later, I remembered what I set off to do when that came up. Google wanted to much information to retrieve the password (which, it turned out in the end, was what I knew it was in the beginning) that I just about jumped out the window.

Inbox down? I wish!!!

“Sufficient time on the most important things” — that is the crux of it, yes? What’s that quote, “Don’t let the urgent crowd out the important”? I wrestle with this all the time.

UKCynthia, I am REALLY LOL at your post because I have had those exact same experiences which always make me crazy!

MaryAnn, that little Pomodoro really works. I have to use it or I get totally lost and side tracked and accomplish less.

Yeah, must get out that timer. Will remember that, next time I tackle “the list”.

When you have that way to address said pattern, please post the solution. Many of us, myself certainly included, would love to share in the success of knowing how it’s done! Seriously. But, hey, yes, every bit counts. :-)

I’m really struggling, some days, to get the stuff done that needs to be done. Not all the time, but some (too many) days, and some kinds of stuff.
I have to remind myself that it isn’t the end of the world. Life goes on anyway. It would just be so much easier and less stressful if I could change this pattern.

I’m with Cynthia, let us know when you figure it out. I don’t know why, but the older I get the more ridiculously complicated life seems to be, and the more time required to take care of all kinds of stupid (albeit necessary, or apparently necessary) stuff, and that annoys me and then I procrastinate and then . . . well, you know.

I can think of two possibly useful things:
1 – are your time frames realistic? I tend to think something will take 30 minutes when it actually requires 5 hours. Being more realistic helps me focus better and do the thing I’m doing more peacefully.

2 – I reframe the problem a bit. I do something that REALLY matters to me every single day, and if at all possible I do it FIRST. Everything else gets done as possible, or not. If I can keep that framing, I am more at peace with the inevitable “nots”.

Good thinking, Sylvie.
My struggles bore me to tears.
Accurately estimating time needed would really help me.

I have lots of days where I don’t get near as much as I’d like to get done, so I hear ya. I will say that on the days when I figure out the result that I want and keep that result in front of me, I tend to do better. I find that the more specific I make it, the better it works. I learned this from Tony Robbins.

Good thoughts, all. Thank you.
Yes, more realistic time frames would definitely help a lot. For example, today I was determined, and spent the whole day working away at stuff. And it took 3-4 times as long as I thought it would, and so I managed to accomplish about 1/4 of what I’d hoped to accomplish.

And focusing on the result, and reframing . . . I’m making efforts to do that.

Thanks for the movie review, MaryAnn. Always appreciate then as your assessments are an excellent guide for my cinematic hopes. ;-)

Hope you get that introvert time :)

I am a big fan of both Michael Caine & Helen Mirren so that will go on the list of movies to see.
Your recommendations are always worthwhile.

May you get the introvert time you need! Thanks for the movie rec. I will check it out.

Just to make sure I haven’t misled anybody — I’d say the movie was “good”, but not “terrific” or “awesome”.

My standards are pretty high, because life is short.
There are so many hundreds of terrific and awesome films which I will never have enough time to see before I die . . . that I sometimes think I shouldn’t bother with a simply “good” film. But that’s kind of extreme, I know. :-)