05-27-17 Perhaps, we could do better than yesterday

Saturday, May 27, 2017 @ 9:50 am

• @ 10:22 am Good morning.  This is just us.  It is a late mid-morning start to the blog.  I'm trying to be ok with this.  It feels like we REALLY need a blog AA meeting. Know we don't drink often, but we DO have problems avoiding writing, which is the thing we want to be the number one priority.
• There … we’re going to see how this goes.  We go back and forth, whether, we like to write in Word or Evernote, but we’ve just switched now to Word, with Evernote in the background and although I couldn’t find checkboxes, we still have bullet points, AND we switched the spacing of the lines, so it is now at 1 ½, which make it feel less congested and scary.  We also got our yogurt – this time, peach!  That makes us feel better AND the last time we were up – just a few moments ago, we switched loads, so our first loads are in the washer and dryer.
• Hmm, just switched interests for a second.  We just started listening for information on Jared Kushner who has a problem recording his conversations to other countries through clan-descent methods. The TV was just turned on, but it is low … maybe we better turn it up a smidge.  I think we’re edgy.  We turned up the TV, but then, we went around the house and picked-up things on the table and opened mail – just two envelopes, and then we brought something back to Rich’s office – well not too much, but the thing is, it seems that when we stand-up – seems like we’re looking forward to it and we’re looking forward to moving and getting stuff done.  Oh, I know … we also cleaned off the table in the living room – like to clean them too.  There, that is done too and then we stopped in the kitchen and cleaned off my clean blender from the top of the stove and we straightened up the top of the microwave.  Very busy bee!
•  I feel better about doing this entry.  Not sure what we’re going to talk about, besides housekeeping, but I know we’ll get there too.  First thing I see other than the Evernote behind my word document is the Daily dashboard of our rescuetime.  It shows, we’ve been online for four hours and 19 minutes, and that we have a production rate of 84.  The top areas are Business, Communication & Scheduling, and then Reference & Learning.  My big business tasks have been Trello, Evernote, Housecleaning and Rescuetime.  The top Communication & Scheduling areas have been meeting with Rich, going through my emails, and checking out my Google calendar, and then Reference & Learning?  Those areas have been MyFitnessPal and Zillow. 
• A lot can be said for all this.  The biggest thing though is Trello – my number 1 activity of the day.  We’ve been doing some good figuring and moving things along there.  Let’s go back into some of that, because it will spill out the things that we are thinking about.  I would also like to say, we did spend 15 minutes of time with Linda, but not much was covered.  I gave her a copy of our “activities,” but I don’t think she’ll do much with that, and she was headed out the door with Tony.  AND, Rich has been here this morning watching fishing, but he is now at his mother.  He had a couple things to bring her like a ham bone and something picked up at the grocery store, but I think it’s just a regular visit. 
• So, Trello!  Maybe we’ll come in the back door.  I think we’re going to open several boards.  You can have as many as possible, but our main one is under our name, but this SECONDARY one, was a suggestion from Dr. Marin on Thursday.  He suggested, we open a board with hard stuff we can talk about.  Last week, we had our Trello Board set-up and had given him the password so we could talk about it, and I guess this was a good idea, because we are doing something new and interesting that we’d not done before.  We’ll see over time if it works out.  The Board itself is average in its title.  It says, “Board to curate hard things to talk to Dr. Marvin about.”  And then, for now in the background, we happened upon a picture which is now in six tiles, but it is a picture of a sheep jumping – looks like a frolic on a simple greyish background and it says, “When in doubt, FROLIC.  Hehe … I think it’s our way of letting off a little pressure.  It reminds me that in back of all this seriousness there is still fun to be done.
• So far, we have three categories.  They are problems w/desires to overeat, Rich-like problems, and household problems.  The first card in the first category is about overeating yesterday, and then there is a card about getting Rich to be using Trello before he goes on an eight-day fishing trip this week, and then the household problem is about getting the floor done.  In each, we’ve opened a conversation or more like a checklist of “Problems/Solutions.”  I won’t go into all the details at this time, but reserve my ability to do that later … Now?  Let me see …
• 5/27/2017 We had another problem on Friday, 05­26­17. We were ok on calories, But was 60% over in carbs and 49% over in sodium ­ it felt like a crisis on Board t…
• 05­27­17 we were over in that we had our normal protein shake in the afternoon, but then ate bananas, then ate pineapples ... fortunately Rich came home, but we then ate a big dinner of TWO cabbage rolls ­ and had started on chicken "noodle" soup, PLUS knowing all this we kept dessert yogurt
• 05­27­17 We knew as we were eating that we had to stop, but bull­nosed into the next item and next almost w/purpose though we weren't conscientiously understanding what it was
• 05­27­17 Now the day after, we are doing fine, but feel guilt and shame about yesterday, without knowing what happened to us, or how to stop it.
• 05­27­17 We always get the faithful part of thinking "we don't care"
• AHA!  We can do it!  Get the copy of tasks ON the cards to my Word document through copying the “print” version.  We had to clean it up a bit, but it wasn’t impossible.  We also took the link and added it to the title of the card, so if you really WANTED to follow the card, AND it hadn’t been erased by the time you looked, you could look at the card and follow along.  LOVE it!  In discussing the card – eh.  It’s just our problem right now.  It’s a very long-standing program, and because we’ve lost so far, 25 pounds, we do have SOME handle on the problem, just we have bleeps and that means that we still haven’t resolved one of our basic problems on having a strong desire to eat more than we desire.  So, there is that conflict and within a multiple system, we usually say ok … there are parts that want to eat right, and there are parts that want to eat whatever and whenever they want.  Something we know between the two, is that the latter is out more when we are tired and have less resistance. 
•  Maybe if we were Dr. Marvin, we would ask something like why were you tired, or when tired, what could you have done to prevent the overeating.  Like right now we’re thinking the most obvious, is to settle ourselves down to taking a nap until the craving has passed.  I don’t know if that is realistic, though more realistic here at home than if we were out where things could be purchased to eat.  That’s another problem.  ESPECIALLY, if YOU are the one driving the car.  Should we talk about Dr. Marvin’s and BK?  NAW … that was a long time ago.  BUT, that’s what was happening when we drove ourselves, so we better throw in caution now, because soon we’ll be driving ourselves again.  BUT, that is a side issue.  The main issue is eating in the house since that is where we are at most often.
• I don’t really want to think more about this now though, because we were talking about Trello and I’d like to get back to that.  I’m going to put out a picture of where we are at with the day.  It’s really a double picture, but you get the idea, right?  It’s a wide screen 😊

• @12:39 pm We’re back.  It’s now after lunch, and Rich had come home and is napping, and we’re still washing clothes and we re-cleaned the kitchen after Rich was through there, and we’ve checked through our lists of things to do.  We updated a few things.  Nothing much here … Let’s get back to the Trello program.  We HAD been on the board for Dr. Marvin, but that one only has a few things.  Let’s go back to the main purple boards pictured above.  BTW – if you click on those pictures, you’ll be able to read them YAY!
• The main part is that you have easy to make – by hit of return columns and cards within the columns and either are extremely easy to move around.  We have 13 cards right now.  They are: open for now, in progress – today, in progress – tomorrow, Quick tasks, in progress – later, to read later when there is time, moderate tasks, long-lasting tasks, questions, tasks for Rich, Rich’s work (PPA) tasks, completed tasks & resources.
•  In the first row – open for now – We have condensed the tasks down to four.  The first one – by design – is a doozy.  It’s our “lite” tasks to be done immediately during the day.  I think we may have talked a little about this before, but there are checklists within the major task.  The first is that we are getting pop-up windows from someone named reflect that is the first task.  We are going back and forth.  I send them a note, they send me an auto note saying they will consider it soon BAH!  The next item on the checklist is the steps to taking care of the kitchen floor, then we have a training video to watch, then laundry, and now a “situation” with Walmart.  They want to charge us more money than we believe they should be charging us.
• The next cards are simpler … the first reminds us to make notes in Dr. Marvin’s new board, then one note to work on taking pictures of ALL the old receipts for the year, and then the last one to look for Advocate Home Care to call us for our new C-pap machine.  Woohoo!
• The things in the next list – in progress – today have five things listed – most of these things were condensed and some have been moved over to the next column which is the things to repeat the next day.  I always have a card reminding us to maintain our routines of learning and curiosity, work, play, health, medicine and then food, drink & water.  After that, we have a long reminder to check Trello, Evernote, emails, phone calls, MyFitnessPal and Rescuetime during the day.  Then is my blogging reminder – and after that I’ve only got spending quality time with Rich and the animals. 
• The stuff for tomorrow, we already did today was first the part we collected our morning stats, then we checked news and our clarity journal.  Then was our big task of sorting/clearing the inbox, numbering the items, and then moving them through from table of contents, to master notes, and then to Monthly overview.  Believe me – that’s all necessary for everything else to work in our life.  I’ve also got reminders for working on my Financial Peace homework and sorting papers in the desk’s cubbyhole. 
• I think we’re going to stop there because everything else is lists for something that we’re not working on right now – and maybe not even working on at all for the entire day.  Maybe we should check that out – it would help us condense our worry load.  I suppose the way the process is supposed to work are that there are a few “free” lists with stuff to do, but the main lists are the easy, medium and harder things to do, so it would depend on how busy we were as to getting other things done.  Like are any of those goals, we want to work on over the weekend?  I think that the FPU card – includes working on the budget and that’s a BIG task.  BUT, it’s time dated too.  Our leader in the group wants everyone to come up with a budget for June and that is only three days until the next class she wants to look at it, and two more days til the start of the new month.  Everyone wants procedures in place. 
• I can be VERY sure that after that tasks and some mentioned earlier, we have no more time for other big tasks.  The biggest and hardest to let go is the editing work on our e-book.  We had hoped to push that along, but I don’t think it’s happening.  The budget project is too big.  Maybe we can scan over the list to assure nothing else has priority, and then set some time goals for how long tasks are supposed to take and then schedule them into my day – YES and still get laundry done.  Oh, and Rich wants me to go to his club with him later today to get stuff out of his boat for the big trip.  PLUS, it’s 1 pm, and we’re not even dressed yet.  SHEESH!
• Hmm, just a little interruption.  Just had to wrangle with Rich to clear some time to go over the Trello.  Basically, what we’re asking for is ANN-TIME!  We went back and forth and he’s listing out stuff – none of it is thought through, but it’s taking a whole weekend.  THIS is what we’re trying to prevent – this getting blown away with things, because it isn’t ordered.  I KNOW what he goes through before fishing and it is a terrible time for both, and then when he gets back, he goes through the same terrible time.  This is going to prevent it by organizing and PLACING it somewhere so he doesn’t have to worry about it, but still has a place to find it nice and neat when he gets back. 
• What we finally got out of him was that he was going out in the yard or in the garage to do fishy stuff, for the next 3 hours.  Fine!  Then he has an hour off to chill – between 4-5 pm, and then he’s going to make dinner, and then we’re BOTH going to do the boat, and then AFTER the boat, when it is getting darker, he will sit with me and go through Trello.  If he hasn’t closed his ears all the way, he will have some idea of what’s going to happen, but most likely he’s closed-off.  What will happen is that we’re going to give him a five-minute tour, but mostly, we are going to open his own board – call it like he may. 
• Hmm, he just went through again.  He was reminding us of this or that, we were forgetting just remembered the part where we asked what we were going to eat.  Hmm, and then another time spurt – we got our message we’re trying to pay attention to where every 55 minutes, we stop what we’re doing at the computer, and for five minutes, we do something else.  This last time, we went in to the bedroom, and looked at our bench under the window.  It had some stuff that didn’t belong there, so we figured out where it goes, and then distributed it, and then we found our coat in the sunroom and figured it should go in the wash, so we brought it there.  Surprisingly, we only have 1100 steps for the day, but then we started two hours of our day where we didn’t wear the Fitbit, because it was charging.  *Sigh* I think we left off on we were looking to see if ANYTHING other than blogging and budgeting had to be done.  Wait again, please 😊  Oh and we have to do the boat and Trello with Rich, but THEN today is done
• Ok, good, great!  I can honestly say that I don’t have to do anything else today, except blog and budget and boat and Trello.  Shoot should have surveyed anything for tomorrow except the routines? must do floor, but other than that – tomorrow we can skip the blog and just do the budget … NOTHING ELSE.  AND, what’s more, if we could just straighten out where we left off, we could probably set it up right now so that it’s ready to be productive tomorrow.  OK?  Let’s just do that part 😊
• @ 5:02 pm Yay ... we're making progress, though somewhat slow and balky.  We did a big push on the wash, and now everything is put away and the bed is made - thanks to Rich's help.  He's been inside for about 45 minutes and we watched and played with him as he tried on his rain suite ... give me a few moments for uploading and I will post a few cute ones hehe.  He's my perfect person.  If you read this and you are relating to his friend, PLEASE don't tell him about the pictures.  We want to post them with our regular stuff, but he'd prefer not to be seen.  Little conflict. Pretty soon we’re going to have dinner … Rich has been in the kitchen for 15 minutes!  It doesn’t seem like too long, because we had to fix the pictures.  Just ONE picture, really – they are all grouped together.  Can’t blame me for that – ISN’T he CUTE!??  He’s getting ready for fisheyland.