Priorities, Priorities

Sometimes my brain doesn’t work. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has this issue, but it’s awfully frustrating when I can’t see the forest for the trees. I hate causing problems for myself that should be easily solved.

Today was one of those days. It’s a Tuesday, which means that I don’t work and both wee ones are at preschool, so I can get a lot done. Usually, anyway. Then I’ll overbook myself and well… take a look at my to do list for today:
Get both kids up and fed.
Ensure Mister Man is ready for the bus to come by 8:25.
Drop off Little Miss at preschool by 9am and pick her up by 11:30
Pick up donations for Mister Man’s preschool fundraiser at 4 locations around town.
Run – which generally takes 35-40 minutes.
Attend the PTO meeting at Mister Man’s preschool at 10am – 15 minutes from Little Miss’s preschool and 25 minutes from my house.
Get home by 12:05 to meet Mister Man’s bus.
Feed both kids and get them up to naps.
Make dinner for three families (tonight is bunsteads and scalloped potatoes).
Drop off dinner for two families by 3:45.
Get Mister Man to Language Stars by 4:05.
Go to the library with Little Miss and get new books.
Pick up Mister Man by 5:30.
Cook dinner and feed everyone.
Get the wee ones into bed.
Attend the school board meeting at 7pm (which will last until way after my bedtime).

First, yes, I am cooking dinner for three families. Why, you might ask? To make my life easier, of course! Every week, I cook dinner for two friends and my family, which isn’t that much more work than making dinner for my family. On Wednesdays, one of those two friends cooks for me and the other friend. On Thursday, the second friend takes her turn. I cook one night and get two nights of home cooked meals delivered hot and ready to eat. It’s a great arrangement actually.

My dilemma today was where to fit in running. My running schedule is to go on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. I usually go on Tuesdays when Little Miss is at preschool – I come home, run, run errands and pick her up. Today, I can’t get to the PTO meeting on time if I do that.

Hmmm… possible solutions:

A) (From my husband) Run after the school board meeting. Uh-huh. After I get home at 11pm, I’m going to go running for a half hour in the dark. He pointed out that we have sidewalks, but that wasn’t really my biggest issue with this solution.

B) Run after hubby gets home and before the school board meeting. Whoops, can’t do that, as he won’t get home until 6:45, which is cutting it close for the school board meeting. And you all thought school teachers had it easy!

C) Run while the kids are napping. Tempting sometimes, but I could never leave my kids alone.

D) Hire a babysitter … ok, I can’t even finish typing that one. Not gonna happen!

E) Run on the nature trail by the library, which is five minutes (the wrong way, but still only five minutes) from Little Miss’s preschool. Oh yeah. We had violent thunderstorms all day and night yesterday. Plus, we’ve had so much snow that the ground was already saturated. Squishy, muddy running is not my cup of tea.

F) Drive to Mister Man’s preschool – and maybe snag a parking spot! – and run in the neighborhood there. Except this is not exactly a good neighborhood. Teachers are escorted to their cars if it’s dark. There are Latin Kings members in the neighborhood. And I don’t really know the area that well. Call me a wimp and prejudiced, but I’m just not comfortable with it.

G) Don’t run today. But then I can’t run tomorrow because I’m in the office all day and hubby again doesn’t get home until dark, plus I have a meeting at 7pm tomorrow night, too. And then I won’t run on Thursday because I’m supposed to run on Friday and Friday will be a really bad yucky run. And then I’d just never run again. Nope.

I finally resolved to go with option F, simply because it was the only one that fit into today’s schedule. As I was driving to Little Miss’s preschool, it dawned on me that I could just leave the car in the parking lot and run in that neighborhood. It has sidewalks. It’s safe. It doesn’t involve me wasting any time. Duhhhhhh!

So I did. I ran in the 35 degree weather (which I still don’t believe) on hills, which we don’t have in my neighborhood, while it was super windy and the sky was spitting at me. I say it was spitting because truly, it wasn’t quite heavy enough to be snow, it definitely wasn’t rain, and it wasn’t frozen enough to be sleet. Someone really doesn’t want me to run!

What did I learn from today? Use your head, lady! Oh yeah, and maybe running after hubby gets home is a better idea. I do a pretty intense yoga on Monday nights that doesn’t end until 9:30pm. Going running at 9am is a little mean to my body, especially since Tuesdays are my “move to a new week” day, so it’s a harder run already. Oh yeah, and I don’t like hills!

And now it’s 3:38, and I have 7 minutes to post this, get the potatoes out of the oven, wake up the kids, get their shoes and coats on, get in the car and drop off my two meals. But I would have been ok if my computer hadn’t frozen and crashed halfway through the first time I wrote this post! I swear!