Time Management, or Lack Thereof

Its been a while since I posted something. I have been working on some entries but haven't had time to finish them. My problem is that I have a hard time scaling my ideas down to fit the time I actually have available. This principle applies to my life in general and not just my blog. My ideas are grand and detailed, and I have a full time job, a husband, three kids, parents, a dog, and mountains of dirty laundry. Does this stop me from making my daughters' dresses for special occasions? Tackling complicated home improvement projects? Severely overestimating my abilities? No, but it sure interferes with my sleep patterns and sanity.

Last night is a good example of this. I got a call at work in the morning asking me to sub for ballet class at 6:30, which of course I was delighted to do. There was no CD player there, so I would have to bring my own. Not a problem, I told myself, regardless of the fact that I do not possess a CD player. I would just buy a ballet class album from iTunes since I needed one anyway and take my daughter's iHome. I had a CD with a track on it I was going to use to teach a variation, and I would just have to load that in to my iTunes and put it on my iPod.

My dad called to say he was busy getting the floor at their old house ready for new tile to be laid, so I would need to cook dinner. There was a pot of spaghetti sauce on the stove and all I needed to do was cook the pasta and a vegetable or two. Not a problem, I told myself, I will have plenty of time.

I got home at 5:20, threw some pots of water to boil on the stove, fired up the laptop, and rummaged through the freezer in search of broccoli. First speed bump: iTunes needs to be updated. Of course, iTunes ALWAYS needs to be updated. So I set it to download and install, and tossed the veggies in the microwave. I checked on the computer's progress, and wouldn't you know it, some stupid Java popup stopped my iTunes update. Grrr. I cleared it up and started it over.

I tracked down No. 3 and put her on setting the table, made the rounds of talking to the husband and No. 2 to see how their days had gone, came back to the kitchen, searched iTunes for the album I wanted, and started the download. No, not really, I just hit another speed bump. It was in my daughter's account and I didn't know the password. I texted her, got the password, and again... No, the password was incorrect. So we tried my husband's. No luck. Everyone in my house except for me has an iTunes account, and no one knew their stinkin' password.

It was now 5:50 and dinner was ready. Through some miracle, my mother actually just came in the kitchen and sat down and ate, which was a pleasant change from her usual 412 distractions: "Napkins? Spoons? Water? Napkins? Is this pitcher OK? We need more condiments... Does everyone have a napkin? Everyone? Are you sure? What about spoons? Water? Does anyone need a napkin?" (I'm not making this up. It really is that bad, every single night. Except for last night.)

By 6:00 I was done eating and decided enough with the messing around, I just needed to make my own iTunes account. More speed bumps were encountered, such as "You forgot to choose a salutation", because apparently it is just not possible to make purchases from iTunes unless it knows if you are a Mrs., Ms., or Miss. At 6:10 it finally started downloading the album while I changed into my clothes for class.

Those of you intimately familiar with iTunes are probably laughing at me right now. I don't know where, in the neurons and synapses of my brain, my concept of time became so warped that I thought this whole thing was going to work out. But there I was at 6:15, with 2 of 53 tracks completed, believing that somehow this was all going to work out.

When it was 6:18, I had to admit defeat. Not only had I downloaded a paltry 4 of the previously mentioned 53 tracks, I hadn't even gotten the music from my CD to load on my iPod because it was to full. Remember that part about me not having a CD player? Still a problem. At this point I pretty much freaked out. I ended up grabbing my daughter's alarm clock which has a CD player in it and running out the door. I was halfway to the studio when I realized I had forgotten my class plan and my water bottle.

At this point, a weaker person might have cried; I just called my husband and guilt tripped him until he offered to bring my stuff to me. I got to the studio right on time at 6:30, ran in and...discovered that no one was there. In the end, a few people showed up for a class which had to be danced to ballroom music because the alarm clock/CD player did not have the firepower to kick out classical music loud enough to be heard over the roar of multiple electric fans, one of which is a genuine relic from the Stone Age. (Going without the fans was so not an option; there is no air conditioning and this is upstate New York in August.) I was distracted and frazzled and kept churning out exercises that didn't work because I had lost all sense of space and time. We did the Four Little Swans variation from Swan Lake to music we couldn't hear and nearly died of heatstroke in the process.

What can we learn from this? When I try to do too many things at once in too short a time, everything melts into crap.

The End.