Small Successes #2

Well, yesterday was another one-of-those-days. Life is running at hamster speed at the moment, and I feel like I'm running, running, running in that little wheel, and getting nowhere. So to celebrate the small successes of a week:

1. Oldest Cubkid is home again. This entailed 400 miles of driving, and organizing over the phone, if the pickup time would be early enough to allow me to continue to run the usual insanity at home. Thanks to a good friend for picking up one ball (kid) and delivering him, we got it done.

2. Oldest Cubkid is on her way to being organized into a summer job and lots of scholarship applications. At least I have thrown all the information at her, and it's out of my brain. This is a good thing, since my brain is failing me at the moment.

3. I actually managed to get 3 out of 6 tax forms electronically filed, and the other 3 finished to be mailed. And it's still January. This was driven by the need to get them finished to get the FAFSA filled out. Which is the next small success.

4. I got the FAFSA filled out, which for the life of me I can't figure out what the big deal with it is. It's not nearly as bad as doing the taxes. You just have to have the paperwork handy to pull the numbers. And I'd done the PIN numbers early.

5. For once in my life, I've been slightly ahead of the game with getting all the paperwork finished to actually launch this Oldest Cubkid successfully.

6. The best for last- she felt that we had adequately prepared her for college from an academic perspective. This is always the sword hanging over my head- am I doing enough, am I going to compromise these kids because they're not in school, are they going to be prepared... And she said other than providing her with a couple of resources, and potentially writing one more long research paper, she was in good shape. So I guess I can breathe again.

Small Successes #1

We seem to be measuring our days with the yardstick of 'what isn't getting done.' I've been quite frustrated and discouraged with this, so I thought I'd borrow a page from Danielle Bean's 'Small Successes'. We have so much that is in an unfinished state, that I thought I'd try to write down what did get accomplished.

Our successes for today include:

1. Taking down the rest of the Christmas decorations.

2. Boys making calzones in the kitchen.

3. Catching up the laundry downstairs. Folding all the clean, and shipping it off to its respective rooms.

4. Getting stuff picked up a bit in the hall, and on the landing/mudroom area. (If we had a mudroom...)

5. Priming some of the green, green walls in the kitchen, to try to calm the color down. It's taking at least 2 coats of high-hiding primer, and we're hoping that the new color will cover a multitude of ills.

6. Sorting paperwork/knitting patterns, to try to tame the paper tiger.

So we have accomplished a bit. I have these days where I feel I do nothing but spin my wheels. All hail the small successes.