playing catch-up

Sometimes, I feel like all I ever do is put out fires. Since this isn't my favourite way of living, I'm taking advantage of the post-semester lull to try and get caught up on various projects that have been waiting for my attention, so the past couple of weeks have been really busy while I do that.

One of the major tasks I needed to focus on is making updates and changes to a website that I'm responsible for by default since the webmaster, who I am supposed to support/supervise, had a baby last fall, took maternity leave and then decided not to come back. I had outstanding work requests to deal with going all the way back to September. It was definitely not pretty and it's extremely satisfying to bring everything up to date. On the other hand, I wonder if I've just shot myself in the foot by getting all this stuff caught up. It seems like suddenly, everyone in the organization has become aware that "Vicki's on it!" and they are sending in all kinds of NEW work requests... and I'm doing it... so now the sense of urgency may be lost as far as replacing the webmaster goes. Oops.

I've also been trying to tie up loose ends associated with another job that I gave up at the beginning of April. And clean out my email inbox, which seems to perpetually hover somewhere between 30 and 50 messages waiting to be dealt with. I am one of those people who needs to see something in front of me or else I totally forget about it, and I realize that the down side of leaving things in my inbox so that I don't forget them is that I end up always feeling like I am behind. I want to get that inbox to "zero" before our summer travels begin in mid-June.

My major focus with the kids lately has been getting us all to stick to a regular routine every day. I'm not naturally inclined to be a scheduled sort of person, but for various reasons (possibly including watching too much "Supernanny") I decided to try and get us eating and going to sleep on a regular schedule. This has been a major adjustment for everyone. The benefits are definitely worth it, though the down side of doing this is that the schedule has now become a higher priority than having us all eat dinner together. Since Jeff usually doesn't get home any earlier than 6:30, and a smooth evening routine involves feeding the kids no later than 6, we are having fewer family meals. That said, Jeff and I are now getting a bit more time together when he does make it home before my brain shuts down somewhere around 9 pm. Once or twice a week we can sit and talk or watch an episode of "Battlestar Galactica", and that's been really nice.

Of course, since my kids don't seem to need as much sleep as most children, putting them to bed earlier means they get up much earlier. Calum usually wakes up before 6 am, and since he seems to be incapable of sitting quietly out in the living room playing, reading or watching television, I end up getting up with him and then I have an extra hour or so to catch up on the work I mentioned at the start of this post.

Now it's time to stop all this rambling, turn off my computer, and spend a couple of days playing. I think I deserve it!